agony upon agony
this is an excerpt from agony upon agony, a real life story of a young woman who gets married at a tender age. her husband is murdered and she is inherited by the late husbands step brother. she suffers the rewards of cultural dictation. she is diplomatically, but inhumanely robbed by the so called imposed husband. she remains with close to nothing, the piece of land is rented out to another p[person. unable to handle life, she leaves and gets married else where, but that doesn't bail her out. she decides to come back to the same home, this time, it becomes a very different story. guess what happened next, hust wait for the publication of this book
CHAPTER ONE
It was in the late nineteen nineties
in the deadly rural community of mella sub-county in which lived a young
slender creepy woman in her early teenage called ikolere, in fact she was in
her fifteen. Mella was a unique village not only known for a collection of a
diversity of clans and tribes, but also for its indescribable people who mostly
were from the ikuruk clan. Mella was feared far and beyond not because it
harboured lions and other dangerous animals but because a mere mention of its
name made blood trickle swiftly and intermittently cold and warm in the body of
the recipients. It natured people whose
sight for blood was as usual as offering Ajono to any other itesot , in a
nutshell, they were serial brutal heartless sleazy clumsy murderers and killers
who never thought their forty days would also come. Theirs was a daily routine in which they made
terror and horror to captivate and reign over even the not yet born child. The
close propinquity of mella to river malaba made the search for the perpetrators
of the deadly and horrific acts by the security personnel a mere joke.
Ikolere for that was the name with
which she was identified in the ikuruk clan... such names were given to women
married to that clan but possessed the attitude of being stubborn and unruly. She
was a young woman who decided to get married to Mande a tall muscular gigantic man
whose height almost tripled hers. Ikolere married Mande at a tender age an age
in which she was meant to spend with parents to learn what domestic work was,
but because she disobeyed anyone at the time, she decided to get married.
The marriage seemed to bring
happiness to her since she actually did what her mind told her to, but a moment
later, she realized that life looked hard-hitting and horrible since the saying
goes, grow and see. She, unlike other young women of her time, who got married,
possessed an academic qualification equivalent to lack of knowledge for differentiating
between one and two was not strange but real and as hard as squeezing water
from gold. That made her a heroine in a nobody.
Having grown in a home where hypocrisy
and gossiping made peoples days, ikolere seemed to have been the best learner
when it came to such activities. She was well known in just the little time she
had been to mella for her art and craftsmanship in rumour mongering. She was
stylish in causing anguish and causing division among the villagers and knew
how to go true them as if she were present during the British colonial time of
divide and rule. Her ability to speak and crack jokes usually made neighbours
to forget that she was always on time only to be ready for the launch time
meals. That was indeed in conformity with the saying that man eateth where he
worketh.
The bright beautiful beams of the rising
morning sunrays always blossomed her days with joy and happiness whereas the diminishing
setting sunrays gifted her with anguish and desolation. That is what
differentiated her from the other women who knew that the arrival of a new day
meant new problems and tasks and the sight of the setting sun that struck their
eyeballs of misery meant relief from the day’s destitution. This is because the
night drew ikolere closer to her sweetly bitter husband who was a man of great
effort and hard work and integrity though he owned close to nothing, while a
new day granted her opportunity to expertly juggle the prowess of her immoral
tongue.
Having grown up from in a home where
life meant close to nothing but something close to death, Mande learnt how to
mould a favourable environment amid controversy and hardships. It is
controversy because the death of his father left him in the hands of
unscrupulous and inconsiderate elder brothers whose conspiracy for his living
was as hidden and secret as a landmine. It was such uncertainties that ensured
that he never grew up with them. That worsened because theirs was a polygamous
home and their mother being elder, privileges came second because attention was
always shifted to the second wife.
His arrival back from where he grew
up raised discomfort and worry in the hearts of those who masterminded the
death of his father. It was so unknown where he had spent the last days of his childhood.
It was believed he worked as a shamba boy where he was so hard working and had
saved something good enough to enable him start an independent life. It was
then that he set eyes upon ikolere then known as Amoo. Slowly the two became
increasingly intimate and passionate about each other hence leading them to
begin life together.
While in their new home, time went by
as days counted as their presence I the village of mella became known to many
and even children of my age who had not known them. As soon as Mande learnt
that the person he so treasured had won increasingly cheap bewildering popularity
of being well-versed with irrelevant and divergence causing information, he
decided to start a diplomatic war with ikolere, which definitely made her one
of the most forcedly hardworking women in the village. The zone in which they
resided was called sodoma, a name earlier on used in the bible to portray the
unfairness and the stupid and wicked silliness of humankind sodoma and Gomorra.
It was so nicknamed because it was well known in the whole of mella for its
people were mercenaries in witchcraft, infidelity, incest, and aggressiveness.
It is claimed that it natured one of the most dangerous and well known but
feared women who could put objects such as broken bottles, gravel, rubber and
others into people’s flesh, she was called Isuta.
Soon as they had just settled, word
went round about a couple that had made a significant amends from a meagre reimbursement
Mande had previously. That created wakefulness in the whole of mella and
beyond. Not even Mande’s brothers were happy of that since Mande’s land was
previously in their use and his arrival meant no more for them. Several attempts
to get rid of his life where made but none of them was successful.
Later on, Mande’s life seemed to ride
on a bare rough steep and sloppy hill that some nights passed by with the duo
surviving on water and wild fruits they gathered from the forest, as they were
out to dig. Mande decided that he sells off part of his land and it so landed
controversially on his cousin Ekwenyi who had been witch hunted by mande’s stepbrothers over an
existing land row between the two families.
Thereafter, Mande agreed to get a brand new double frame bicycle and a
goat in exchange for the twenty five by two hundred metre piece of land. That
even created greater rift between Mande and his stepbrothers who never wanted Ekwenyi
to own the piece of land. The acquisition of such assets put Mande at a position
his brothers only dreamed to reach. A few years later, his goats had multiplied
and were kept in a big stall that caught the eye of any passerby.
One evening, his elder stepbrother
called Omelako confronted him in the guise of knowing why he made such hurting
a transaction. ‘’In our culture, if any child wants to sell of anything inherited
from parents he has to get permission from the hare but you have done the contrary’’
Omelako arrogantly remarked while swinging his hand and looking at mande as if
he were wishing to strangle him to death.
Exasperated by such clumsy remarks, Mande looked at Omelako with no
comment but the eyes spoke for themselves, as they grew wide and open. ‘’Are
you fooling me’’? Omelako further asked. ‘’That’s your mind‘’ Mande replied.
‘’What do you mean’’ Omelako enquired with rage. As if he had been offended by
Omelako’s remarks and his belated concern, Mande smacked his lips and moved
away in silence. It though seemed that Omelako was as foolish as a sheep to realize
that his brother had been offended and decided to follow him up. Immediately
had he reached him, he saw red, Mande drew a terrific slap that made Omelako
cry like a child in fire. He scampered for safety of his life in his younger brother’s
hut but it wasn’t too strong to inhibit Mande from executing his incontrollable
anger. To create comedy in jeopardy Omelako went and closed the door but stood
still behind it to hold it so strongly that Mande never got access to the
house. The boisterousness with which Mande approached the door depicted how
many plates of Atapa he consumed in a day. He kicked the door once and hardly
had he done that, when he found himself in the room- to his utter surprise, he
found Omelako confidently but miserably interacting with the door. Mande gained
pity for his brother and moved away in disgust.
He thereafter moved away and picked a
chair made of palm sticks and sat at the front of his hut with a very gloomy
face, too gloomy to scare away any fly that flew by in pursuit for presence of
waste. Ikolere had just returned from the spring well from where she had gone
to collect water for evening use. The sight of her husband’s mood scared her to
the extent that she stumbled and fell to the ground. To add discontent to
anger, the pot with which ikolere had carried in water broke to pieces. For a
while she lay flat and breathless on the ground for all she knew was not
something any far from the usual insults of an itesot man whose tongue was as
bitter as Sodom apple.
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