Elder Enaho, called great father or Baba, sat by the fireplace in his master bedroom, traditionally called ogua, a bottle of local gin, kainkain, on a side stool beside him. As he was not doing anything else in particular, he sat and sipped from his kainkain fetcher, a small glass cup, with enough space to contain only a tenth of a litre, as he waited for his supper to be announced.
At supper, he would preside over a group of his still dependent household family members made up of his unmarried sons and young children of farmwork age. He was old but ageless, that was the popular way to describe his age. He looked exactly as he did ten years ago, that was what folks say, and anyone's guess was good as another's. Suffice it to say that his eldest son, Isamani, was above middle age, had a harem of his own, the double of his father's two wives and still counting, was father of his own children, and had his own living quarters in a session of the large family compound that was assigned to him as the eldest son. He also had his own farmlands, largely partitioned out of Elder Enaho's land estate, and those he deforested by himself. That was, generally, the way to go, land ownership by inheritance or deforestation.
Suddenly, the quietness of the pre-supper serenity in the ogua was shattered by the drastic crash of an intruder into Elder Enaho's fireplace. As sudden as the intrusion, elder Enaho vanished. The glass of kainkain that he was in the process of sipping from came crashing to the floor, like a faint echo to the sound of the earlier crash, a moment ago, of Otiti, one of the young daughters of Elder Enaho, into the fireplace, now empty, except for Otiti. The young girl barely survived a faint, but then, she had gone into utter panic mode. She scrambled up from the floor and bounded out of the ogua to find her voice after spilling into the azagba, the open space between the men's chambers and the female quarters, the erie or harem. "Ogogo - ooooh! Ogogo ooooh!! ogogo ghogo ooooh, ibaba horiee oooooh!!!" It was the vintage hazard call in those days, even till now, especially in remote villages, though sparingly.
Of course, no English translation may completely capture its meaning and syntax. The Esan vocabulary has fewer words than the English language and is therefore more diverse in etymology and contextual evaluation. In the present case, the closest attempt at interpretation could be: "Alarm oh! Alarm oh!! Alarm of Alarms ooh, our Baba had vanished oh!!!" She bellowed the ear-shattering screams as if she had gathered them from her ten toes and was spilling out her very guts. Gbagam! The entire compound erupted into pandemonium. You would never have guessed there were so many people in the place until you saw everyone tearing out from different directions into the open azagba.p
Otiti was still on all fours. She stared fixedly ahead of her as if in a trance. She took a quick deep breath. This time the scream seemed to gather from her big bountiful buttocks, barreled through her inner cavity, and bosoms to balloon out of her wide open mouth. I B A B A H O R I E E E O O O H !!! Then everyone was asking questions at the same time at the top of their voices. Somehow, it could be discerned from the cacophony of the babel that Baba's vanishing act was not the big deal here, it may have been a first direct eyewitness experience for Otiti. She was a naive and inexperienced young girl who may have only heard of people disappearing in plain sight in stories that touch the heart. But the real puzzle was why, why did Baba vanish? What triggered him and where was he now? So they all started to calm down and they began trying to stabilize Otiti as well. They had to get to the root of the clamour and she was the only clue to the "why" puzzle at the moment. Otiti ghokue delilin Ibaba? Did Otiti play a jump prank on Baba? The little devil was cantankerous enough to try that s**t! Dinner was in danger of being off the list at the moment, no one likes a night on an empty belly. It had happened a couple of times before and this has all the hallmarks of one.
When Otiti had calmed down a bit she told them the in and out of it all. All she wanted to do was to give Baba a confidential information, and she tripped over the pail of water met for Baba's ablution before his dinner. Yeah, talk about dinner again.
Ehiga, one of Baba's grown-up, but not yet married sons, a bow-legged big boy shaped like a big gorilla, sneered at Otiti. "So you didn't look where you were going?" He took a menacing step closer to her. "By the way what was the so-called great news that has now disturbed the peace and quiet of the whole world at mealtime, han? Common, you inquisitive little slob, spill it, tell me, before I beat the living crap out of you."
In those days dinner was serious business. It was the only full-time meal in any household. You woke up in the morning and go to farm or school or whatever the heck was your palaver business, eating whatever scrapings you could find from your mother's individual efforts, the Patriarch only provides for dinner which was cooked in turns by the wives in the harem. Each wife had her day to prepare the general dinner for the Patriarch which he ate with a select group of farm-age children and unmarried grown-ups. You returned at the end of the day and make do with snacks and stuff until the great dinner time. It was traditionally made up of pounded yam, regular on the menu, eaten with a variety of soups. Ikpogi, ikhiabhor, ohele, oriwo, ikpaghudo, irerele, and so on, were, and are still local pots of soup courses in Esanland. You were nearly always practically famished by the time it was time for dinner. You may find much past time to engage in before the clarion call to chao, but once it's your compound's dinner time, presto!
No jokes oh. The girls could be playing ali or tete or ise, as the case may be. Boys could be engaged in the game of akhue, or playing ball in some makeshift playground, barefooted, with some contrived round object for the ball. This local soccer game was the best pastime engagement for the boys then, but even so, while playing you keep an ear for that dinner call. It was a trademark one loud name call, just once, usually from your mother. " E J A M E S OOOOOH!!!" And then you are on your own. You immediately abandoned the match and leave your playmates to reshuffle themselves and sort it out, no longer any of your business. You light out of the playground as if the effing place is in flames. Even if you were about to score, that call was sacrosanct, sort of mother of all referee's whistle.
"So what was so great about Otiti's news that she had to go all clumsy chicken careless and click off that poor old Baba into a puff act," Ehiga snarled, looking round at everybody. He stepped forward to bend towering over Otiti, planting his paws on his knees and glaring down at her. "Speak up, before I repeat myself, you bumbling fat hen, what was the fancy news, han?" Now Otiti had a dilemma. The news was for Baba's ears only. She flinched away from Senior Brother Ehiga, squirming on the ground with reptilian twists as if to burrow herself into the ground beneath her. "It was for Baba's ears only," she squeaked. Ehiga lost control. But just as he raised his arm to deal the first slap, a voice from the gathering cut him short. "Baba is in the front courtyard, relaxing inside the otebhe sherd."
Ehiga altered his body movement and reached down with both hands, grabbed Otiti by her buba shirt front, and hauled her to her feet, her grumpy frame and all. "Let's go meet him," he grunted.
In a sit-out at the front courtyard is a palm fronds sherd under a kola tree. Sitting on his favorite agukpon couch inside the sherd, Elder Enaho fingered his not so well kept all-grey beard, an unfathomable frown on his angular, otherwise boxer-tested rugged face. Chief Ikuora, an elder who owns the neighbouring house across the road entered the compound and walked up to enter the sherd.
"Obhiaba, my brother elder, I greet you, " Cheif said breezily. Without waiting to be asked, he drew a cane chair opposite the collapsible native cloth sofa Baba was reclining in and sat down with a deep sigh.
Elder Enaho nodded and showed a set of complete, but tobacco-stained teeth. "Chief Ikuora, I greet you, obokhian." He kept looking at the Chief skeptically. He knew his cousin who just walked in very well and guessed he didn't come for a mere courtesy call.
Chief Ikuora touched his face with a faint smile, more like a slightly sly grin. "I heard all the hullabaloo, and I wondered if all was well." He reached into his baggy knee-length shorts and fished out a box of snuff. Theatrically, the visitor slapped his three middle fingers on the cover of the snuff box and opened it with a flourish. He turned a generous potion on his left palm and offered the box to his host.
Baba shook his head with a little irritation and impatience. He was just in the sherd to wear off the dizzying effect of his involuntary teleportation of a while ago. He wasn't shopping for company, and certainly not the type of Chief Ikuora's pork-nosing hue. He had his dinner session to think about. He was plain starving by now, not to talk of the crowd he kept waiting.
Ikuora proceeded to take heaps of the snuff with a practiced index finger and hit his nostrils in turns in the manner of snuff experts, grimace, spasms, and all. He repeated the process for good measure and sat back to absorb the effect. "Gool ole stuff," he wheezed, suppressing a giant sneeze.
Baba just kept watching him in silence, his face now inscrutable.
Ikuora put away the snuff box. "Concerning the uproar, what happened? Floods do not flow without rainfall."
Baba managed to keep his cool. "Otiti thought she saw a snake and she let go. It was my old belt on the floor," he snorted. "It is not every debris that a flood carries that it conveys to its terminus," he added, tilting his jaw at the visitor. It was an obvious return jibe in like proverb to infer that the Chief should mind his business. It was not everything he hears or sees he should react to.
"Must have been a black one," Ikuora teased, adamant "I mean the belt, black ones are more misleading, and black are quite scary too." The Chief coughed mischievously and stroked his own grey-bearded chin with a stubby right thumb and two additional fingers, his head cocked to one side and drawled, "It sure scared the piss out of the poor child."
Baba was famous for his short and hard temper. To his surprise, he was still able to suppress it, but it was at an explosive point.
Ikuora noticed Baba's clenched fists, he also saw that his jawline had tautened. He leaned toward his inwardly raging host, as if he couldn't care less, and delivered the haymaker. "It was a bullhorn loud blast of a scream. I felt the tremor, you know."
It was the last straw. That was all Ikuora came to say all along, that he detected the teleportation. When a teleport occurs in a vicinity, a fellow teleportation expert person close by can feel the tremor and detect the after vibes. It could even trigger a ripple effect on the nearby person and send him into an involuntary teleportation. So Ikuora was in a way telling Baba to keep his nerves under control as his reaction could export trouble to his neighbours.
Baba rose slowly until he stood erect. At his age he could still stand straight and stiff, even the finger he pointed at Ikuora was rock steady.
Whatever he wanted to say was cut short by the sudden invasion of the sherd by a large contingent of Enaho family members.
Instinctively, both old men reached out to touch each other in a steadying gesture. Those who understand the move would know it as a teleport prevention act.
The invasion was led by Ehiga. He was dragging Otiti by the hand, and the rest crowd followed, talking, yelling, and screaming at the tops of their voices, all at the same time, in a cacophony of commotion, typical of a village family din.
Baba finally let go.
The walking stick he usually held as if it was a part of his body shot out of his hand as if it had developed a life of its own and struck the low swing gate that opened into the sherd. Simultaneously he thundered. "Awaaleee!" The closest, near-accurate English word was "Taboo," or perhaps, put more mildly, "Preposterous!". Whatever, it had the same effect. Ehiga and company came to an abrupt halt, freezing in different postures as they were at the time Baba yelled.
Next, Baba stormed out of the sherd in a few agile strides that belied his age and he came to the front of the family rebels. His flywhisk, which he usually hung over his left shoulder, was now in his hand like a lethal weapon. He swept his gaze across them and settled on Otiti. At that moment, Ehiga who was still holding her hand in his grip clumsily released her and shuffled away from her side as if she had transformed into a croc. It was the first movement on the part of the rebels.
Otiti remained motionless. If she was held captive before in the vice-like hands of Ehiga. she was now locked immobile in a trance in the fierce gaze of Baba.
Tale!, Baba spat. Speak.
Otiti snapped awake from her trance. In the face of the menacing Baba and ugbudian flywhisk, the words tumbled out of her mouth.
"Omogbon bie. Obi'okpia"
Just like that.
"Omogbon has delivered. She delivered a boy!"
Just like that.
Sudden Silence...
That was how the birth of Zokpia was announced.
It was the bomb!
And the flywhisk dropped!!
Uproar!!!
It began with the sharp intake of breath by Baba that shattered the silence. Then the audible fall of the flywhisk from the Patriarch's grip, a dull thud, but it landed butt end and ominous, but Baba still had the presence of mind to, instinctively, whisk it up before it could flip and fall flat on the ground.
A moment of stupifying silence.
Two words followed, more like exclamation and question altogether.
Flywhisk prophecy!?
The significance of this flywhisk prophecy aspect would dawn later, but at the moment it was drowned by the uproar that followed Otiti's bombshell news.
To reenact the scene, first Otiti blurted out her good news, it struck everybody dumb and still, Baba's sharp inhalation, his flywhisk drama, then all hell broke loose...
Baba's face, which, meanwhile, had been a study in a mask of anger, and contorted in rage, went into a complete process of metamorphosis, as, in the blink of an eye, it distorted and dissolved into a spectacle of pure, rapturous, vision, that was almost coarse, in its serenity and severity at the same time, as he, with the continuation of the swift motion with which he had snatched the flywhisk from the ground, swung it up high above his head, and went into a wild asolo dance. He by himself also raised the chorus, as wild and impromptu as the asolo dance: "Omogbon bi'okpia ree, mhanlen amonghon amonghon, imhanlen amonghooon..." Still on improvised interpretation: "Omogbon has brought forth a baby boy, unto us congratulations, congratulations, unto us congratulat-i-o-n-s...
Baba was spontaneously joined by Chief and they led the charge, followed by first the gathering of Enaho's household, the drums, ukose, egogo, and other native musical instruments were soon introduced. Ehiga was a gifted drummer. He manned the igede nokhua, and he took time off to dance with vigour, he and others had caught the frenzy. Soon the entire neighborhood was drawn into the unexpected melee, in singles and batches until the Enaho compound was crowded. They danced from the early evening and far into the night. The men and women danced sometimes apart, sometimes together, and the children had their sessions and fun. The women, in particular, would dance sometimes provocatively, mimicking sexual copulation and brazenly sexual content songs such as: "Bakhin? oyenmwen nor, bakhin? oyenmwen nor, oyenmw'omon, oyenmwen nor, oyenmw'echa, oyenmwen nor, oyenmw'uhe, oyenmwen noooor..." What's up? it's all merriment, what's up, it's all merriment, merriment of childbirth, it's all merriment, merriment of male reproductive organ, it's all merriment, merriment of female reproductive organ, it's all merrim-e-n-t... This song was not in the local Esan dialect, but from the larger Bini language, and the stanza on the reproductive organ is toned down here from the brazen actual names of the organs as in the song's context.
The dinner time got further delayed, but then the euphoria of the moment more than assuaged the hunger in the stomach, and though delayed further, the feasting that followed overcompensated for it. There was enough to eat and drink, to get overfed and get drunk, for those who had taken their supper before and those who had not.
The Enaho family was one of the well-to-do households in the community. In terms of means, they could easily afford to provide the food and drinks needed to occasionally fete the community at celebration times. However, in the old custom and tradition of the Esan people most celebrations and festivities are communal in execution. Every household contributes to the occasion according to availability and capability. Different items would come out of the various houses and there would usually be enough to go around and for leftovers.
All that while something strange had quietly played out. No one, including Baba himself, had even bothered to inquire about the mother and newborn baby. They all presumed that since the news had been transmitted all was well with them.
At that same time, Omogbon was in her erie, her room in the female quarters in the Enaho compound. All was indeed well with her and her newborn child, just a few hours old. The traditional midwife had just taken leave of her and the baby, but within recall distance, a couple of blocks away, and was known to Otiti, her second daughter, who had seen so much excitement in the last few hours. She was back now in her mother's bedroom, now doubling as a private maternity ward. She had quietly slipped away from the chaotic celebrations after her dramatic mission to relay the news of her mother putting to birth to her father.
Otiti narrated everything that transpired to her mother and the midwife before the latter departed and left her to remain in attendance to her mother and the newborn. In fact, they had overheard pretty much of the unfolding drama from the erie and there was little Otiti could add. Omogbon just glowed in the satisfied peace of a woman who had just passed through a successful normal delivery.
This was her fourth child since her marriage to Elder Enaho as the second wife. The first three children of the traditional marriage were females. Though she was proud of her girls, the society she lived in, then, and to s diminishing extent. even to the present day, was rooted in ultra-male child dominos, in which the family rate of birth preference, was tilted heavily toward the boy child priority in the societal balance of scale.
It was an open knowledge that Omogbon was Enaho's favourite wife. It was also no secret that his first wife was problematic and a constant source of conflict for the Patriarch. Many a time he would resort to the physical fisticuffs option, when he would bring the ugbudian, the dreaded flywhisk, to play. However, the yellow witch, or azen nobha, as he would often call her, had developed anecdotal resistance to the ugbudian, and had remained unbendable to rules or reason. But she had many children for him, predominantly male, and was in the prestigious position of being the mother of the first son, his successor.
In contrast to the first wife, Omogbon was humble and calm, the toast of the community as a woman of virtue. Except for the fact that he lived at a time in, and a type of, society in which emotional love was strange and seen as weakness, she was the closest being that Elder Enaho would have taken as the love of his life, which indeed, she really was, prejudices apart.
The yellow witch had equally been oppressive to her junior in the two-door harem. She hated her, especially, for the community's high regard for her good character, and, when she started birthing female children, she seized that avenue to taunt her no end. Strangely, Omogbon proved to be no pushover. With time she evolved a resilient spirit against her senior that was a delightful surprise to her supporters and a source of severe annoyance to the yellow witch. Their husband was forced to be protective of his second wife and was earnestly yearning for her to give him a son of her own. It was a society which does not allow inheritance to female children. It grieved him to the heart that the one woman who truly appreciated him would have no stake in his estate unless she had a son.
The birth of a baby boy was, therefore, a turning point in the growing Enaho family tree.
When the midwife showed her the baby, she sighed in relief. but it was, in the real sense, not so much l because of herself, for she was as defiant as to love and be satisfied with her daughters, but actually, because of her husband, whose anxiety for herself, mattered more to her than the mere need to add a son to her blessings. So she had turned to Otiti, who stood by her during the labour, and whispered: "Go and tell only your father first."
And Otiti flew to her father's ogua.