What a Next of Kin!

Chapter One

1 Chapter One A s usual in the evening Mr. Ndi sat in his veranda singing one of his lachrymose songs that made him sigh and sigh until he went to bed in disgust. That day he turned and saw his eldest daughter enter the house with a shopping bag. She had done the last shopping before the D day. He eyed her with mixed feelings – half admiringly and half disdainfully and shook his head. She was a pearl of unearthly beauty – tall, black and stately. She was in fact a replica of her mother, a woman he had loved beyond description, but a woman who died in childbirth leaving behind that proverbial beauty. He recalled how he had taken the child to Shishong orphanage and after years of missionary expertise and devotion the Reverend Sisters had made the child survive. He was then invited to come for the child. He went for her and after paying a negligible amount, he was given the child. Now Emma (Immaculate), as he fondly called her was preparing for marriage and would very soon become some other person’s property. “Oh, that she were a boy!” he exclaimed in his heart and sighed. Gall jetted into his mouth. He spat out what he could and swallowed what he could not. A chill ran through him as he thought if he had known that his first wife’s witchery would render his future so bleak, he would have killed her when he first suspected that she was responsible for his misfortunes. He remembered vividly how after years of a childless marriage he had sought her approval before getting married to his late second wife. He was then a ‘head-man’ at the CDC rubber plantation in Tiko. 2 Charles Alobwed’Epie And it was only by virtue of his working down south, especially as head-man that a pearl of such beauty accepted to marry him. His first wife had tended not to be worried about her cowife . Because the CDC houses for the plantation-hands were extremely small, she surrendered her bedroom to her cowife and accepted her husband to make for her a portable bed that could be set up in the evening and dismantled in the morning in the parlour. Ndi was very thankful for that magnanimity. They lived together harmoniously so to speak, and very soon, the second wife got pregnant. But then, disaster struck at childbirth. After the death of his second wife, Ndi swore never to marry again. In 1959 however, the KNDP won elections in Southern Cameroons and his uncle was made Secretary of State in charge of Public Works (SSPW). The SSPW appointed Ndi to the lucrative post of Storekeeper General in charge of the Tiko Wharf warehouses. With that, Ndi automatically became the overseer of most government sponsored building projects. In 1960, he visited the Kumba Eastern Council bridge-building projects and spent two months in Bakossiland. When he returned from there he opened two large hardware stores in Muyuka and Kumba. Before long, he expanded business all over the Southern Cameroons and thus became chief supplier of building and road construction materials to most private and government building companies. Money started pouring in. And once money started pouring in, it became incumbent on him to marry for the third time. But before he took in another wife, he moved house from the slums of the CDC plantationhands to Likumba Senior Service Quarter, where he bought a five bedroom house with a sizeable veranda. As usual, his first wife approved of the marriage and facilitated its consummation especially as the new building was ample enough to provide independent rooms for each 3 What a Next of Kin! of the wives, guests and children. Ndi was very thankful to her once again. His third wife soon took in and begot a daughter. To appreciate his first wife’s openness and devotion, he named the child after her. He called the child Mafor, a name he fondly shortened to Mma. He and his two wives tended to live happily and harmoniously. But then, something kept gnawing at the root of his heart. With money flowing in and the acquisition of landed and other properties, he needed a boy – a next of kin. And so, he forced his third wife to wean the child at three months. He thought if the Reverend Sisters could make the...