4. Welcome Party At The Wharf

They went to the wharf that day, these happy women, to welcome someone who had been to have taste of that civilization; the civilization which soon afterwards to hook them all, liker opium. That day, they were happy to welcome their man.

They went in their uniform. Adah mill remembered its color. It had a dark velvety background with pale blue drawings of feathers on it. The headscarf was red, and it was tied in such a way that it displayed their straightened hair. The shoes they wore were of black patent leather called nine-nine. No one really knew why, maybe it was the rhythm of the repetition. In any case they wore those 'nine-nine' shoes with their 'Ezididijt ji de ogoli ome oba' and bought new gourds which they covered with colorful beads. When these gourds were rattled, they produced sounds like the Spanish samba, with a wild sort of animal overtone.

They had had a good time. Adah was told later. They danced happily at the wharf, shaking their colorful gourds in the air. The European arrivals gaped at them. They had never seen anything like it before. The climax of it all was when an Englishman took their photographs. He even singled out women with babies on their backs and took several shots of them. Ma and her friends were really happy to have their pictures taken by Europeans! These were the days before Nigerian independence when nearly every boat from England brought hundreds of English graduates and doctors to work in the schools and hospitals in Lagos.

The few gaps in the magical story of Nweze's arrival were filled in by Pa. all the Ibuza men went to welcome him the following Sunday. They could not leave their places of work during the week. Pa said that the lawyer could not swallowed pounded yam anymore; he could not even eat a piece of bone. The meat they cooked for him had to be stewed for days until it was almost a pulp. 'I felt like being sick' Pa said as he spat on the floor. It reminded me of the sickly watery food we ate in the army. There is one thing, though, Pa went on, 'he did not bring a white woman with him'. All Pa's friends agreed with him that that was a good thing. If Nweze had brought a white woman to Ibuza, Oboshi would have sent leprosy on her.

Remembering all these taboos and superstitions of the western Ibos of Nigeria. Adah could not help laughing to herself. She had been brought up with them, they were part of her, yet now, in the seventies, the thought of them amused her. The funniest thing about all these superstitions and beliefs was that they still had a doleful grip on the minds of her people. No one dared ignore any of them. Leprosy was a disease with which the goddess of the biggest river in Ibuza cursed anyone who dared to flout one of the town's traditions.

Well, Pa and his friends toasted the goddess of the river Oboshi for not allowing Lawyer Nweze to go astray. That Oboshi was strong enough to guide the thoughts of Nweze, demonstrated her power. They toasted again.

Later, Adah did not know what came over that river Oboshi, though oil was discovered very near her and she allowed the oilmen to dig into her, without cursing them with leprosy. The oil men were mainly white, which was a surprise. Or perhaps she had long been declared redundant by the greater gods. That would not have surprised Adah, for everybody could be declared redundant these days, even goddesses. If not redundant, then she must have been in a Rip Van Winkle sleep, for she also allowed the Hausa soldiers to come and massacre her sons and some Ibuza men had married white women without getting leprosy. Only last year an Ibuza girl graduate had married a white American! So Oboshi was faster than most of her sons and daughters a catching up with the times.

Anyway, the talk about Nweze's arrival went on for months and months. Adah talked about him to all her friends at school, telling them that he was her cousin. Well, everybody else talked big, so she might as well, but she made a secret vow to herself that she would go to this United Kingdom one day. Her arrival there would be the pinnacle of her ambition. She dared not to tell anyone; they might decide to have her head examined or something. A small girl of her kind, with a father who was only a railway man and a mother who knew nothing but the Ibo Bible and the Ibo Anglican hymn book from the introduction to the index and who still thought that Jerusalem was at the right hand of God.

That she would go to United Kingdom one day was a dream she kept to herself, but dreams son assumed substance. It lived with her just like her presence.

Most dreams, as all dreamers know quite well, do have setbacks. Adah's dream was no exception, for hers had many.

The first hitch happened all of a sudden, just a few months after she started school. Pa went to the hospital for something, she could not remember what. Then someone – she was not quite sure who it was – told her that Pa was staying there for a few days. A week or two later Pa was brought home, a corpse. After that things moved so fast that she sometimes got them confused. Adah, like most girl-orphans, was to live with her mother's elder brother as a servant. Ma was inherited by Pa's brother, and Ben was to live with one of Pa's cousins. It was decided that the money in the family, a hundred pounds or two, would be spent on Ben's education. So Ben was cut out for a bright future, with a grammar school education and all that, Adah's schooling would have been stopped, but somebody pointed out that the longer she stayed at school, the bigger the dowry her future husband would pay for her. After all, she was too young for marriage at the age of nine or so, and moreover the extra money she would fetch would tide Ben over. So, for the time being Adah stayed at school.

Adah missed her old school, the cleanliness, the orderliness and the brightness, but she could not continue there. The fees were almost six times the cost of the others and she had to get herself used to an older and nosier school, otherwise she would not be allowed to go to school and her dreams of going overseas will be shattered. But she had learned a lot during her short stay at Ladi-Lak, a very good and sound beginning, which put her ahead of her peers in her class. Her efforts amused her cousins greatly – they regarded her as a funny little girl. She was glad, though that they mercifully left her to dream after she had done her house chores.

But she kept on pressing unto her dream of going to United Kingdom. That someday, her dreams will come true.