Tale of an African Woman

Chapter Thirty Two

186 32 bout twenty years had elapsed since the priest arrived in Yakiri. It was evening and Tafon was standing in his compound, concentrating on the tremendous development strides the village had made. Darkness was fast gathering. His wife and daughter had still not returned from the fields. Even though such an occurrence was common, he was still worried. He paced up and down in front of his house and then cleared his throat. He was heading towards the small patch of grass which grew not very far from his own house to spit out the mucous when he heard a dry cough and then saw the silhouettes of his wife and daughter. “Wirba,” he called out as the silhouettes surged towards him and when his wife responded he couldn’t hold back his protest. “I’ve often warned you against staying in the fields up to this hour.” “After we were through with work on the farm, we decided to fetch some firewood,” she strained to respond under the weight of her burden. She made her way towards the front of her house and put down the load she had carried on her head. She moved her neck slightly from side to side, and then forward and backward to ease the pain. Her daughter, Mayemfon, had also put down her load and was going through the same exercise. Wirba went to a corner of the wall of her house where she hid her key. She took it from the crevice where it had been stuck and returned to the door. She fidgeted with the lock before finding the slot and as soon as the key went through, she turned it and pushed the door open. Inside the house, it was pitch dark. Dishes rattled and empty pots clattered as she stumbled by them in search of her box of matches. She finally found it, pulled out a stick and struck it. It sputtered into a yellow flame which sent its light across the dark A 187 room. The new hurricane lamp glinted with the light and she reached out for it and lit it. Mayemfon was still standing outside. She was a tall, well built and pretty girl and was the only daughter and child of the Tafon’s before Forsuh, the child of Wirba’s older sister who passed away, and Bong, the son of a distant relative of Tafon, came to live with Tafon and his wife. She could have been around seventeen, already overripe, some villagers would say, for picking. But the long anticipated line of suitors had not come calling. This was not a good sign. How would he feel in the midst of his friends, if he were stuck with an unmarried daughter? Her breasts were already full and her butt quite round. He had dreamed of the huge amount she would fetch as bride price when young men came banging on his door to ask her hand for marriage. He knew from mere commonsense that when fruits became overripe and were not picked, they started to rot and fall from the tree with the slightest wind. The village had more than its fair share of young men who spent their time devising schemes to get naïve girls pregnant or even to elope with them altogether. This prospect made Tafon sweat. “Our tradition is going down the drain,” he murmured to himself, obviously recalling the good old days when young girls remained virgins until they got married. “These days some of them start licking honey of the loins even before they’ve learnt to crawl,” he added, heaving a sigh. From the vantage position in front of his house, he watched his daughter as she carefully followed the shaft of light emanating from her mother’s house until she went inside. He turned to enter into his house. He had not lit a fire and it was very dark. “Mayemfon!” he shouted out her name. Her shrill little voice rang out in her mother’s house, just to the left of Tafon’s. She came running, her mouth stuffed with roasted sweet potatoes. “It’s dark and you need not run, lest you trip on something and fall,” her father scolded when she got to him panting. “Light fire in my house,” he ordered. 188 The girl returned to her mother’s house for a torch of bamboo reeds and put...