A visit to Bar beach for a swim. A naming ceremony in Enugu for Christian Junior. A visit to the orphanage to donate a half a bag of rice.  Mrs. Eugenia looses her job, and Regina elopes with Michael. More on Michael Asimnobi.

A sunny day he arrived in good cheer, with a wide smile on his face.

Michael Asimnobi was knocking on the door at the flat on

Chime Avenue

.  He seemed to be perturbed, as he knocked quicker than usual; two days prior, his suit had been out rightly rejected by Mr. Moses Okafor.   He had been told that Regina was, unfortunately, already engaged.  In vain were the reassurances given to the girls father, wherein was stated, that he in fact was there at Regina’s request; the father appeared to not hear, and went on to say that he was not a suitable candidate, and moreover, the girl was “taken already.” All attempts by Michael to persuade the father otherwise were in vain.  He had finally given up and had left.

 Many discussions later it had been decided between the two lovers that they would continue to meet, albeit on an unofficial basis.  And it was during these visits that she poured out her heart to him and he poured out his heart to her.  He chose to no longer co me in the evening, but chose to come when Mrs. Eugenia was out; and they would sit in the love seat in the little living room.     In all fairness, Mrs. Eugenia had no idea that this was going on under her roof.  She was aware of the commotion that had occurred when the engagement to the Chief had initially been broken; but then her niece had seemingly retreated into her shell after the reinstatement of her broken engagement; and from then on she had only said nice things about the Chief, and nothing about the young lover.  As such, Mrs. Eugenia assumed that the girl’s obedience to her father had got the better of her, and that she was now intent upon doing the best for her family.

On this day he was seated by himself on a chair by the café style dining table, and his voice was becoming more urgent in its tone, and there was weariness in his brow, which clearly betrayed the stress he was feeling.

“I have arranged all the details down to the last”, he said totally unable to contain his excitement, “and I think I have it planned; we will have to leave the day before the wedding with a coach for Benin.  I have my cousin who lives in Benin and I know they will never be able to trace us in such a large city.”

“The wedding will have to be arranged after we have settled there, and there is nothing to worry about.”

“What of work, and money and the like? How on earth are we to support ourselves?” she interjected.

“ I have not thought so far, but my father will set us up to open a business of sorts, this is the promise he has made me, all along; a business, even if small should be a way out .”

Michael Asimnobi was a person of great self confidence. He cherished no doubts about his intellectual capacity.  On the other hand he was totally naive about the effect of his physique, and manners upon the opposite sex.  Unlike most dashing young men with a reasonable amount of savoir faire and worldliness, he had no predilection towards profligacy. All these virtues and natural attributes of his, had turned him into an insurmountable foe for the Chief. He knew that he was intelligent, however, he was modest about his physical appearance, seemingly ignorant of the profound effect he had upon the opposite sex.  He was over six feet tall, and he had long well proportioned limbs, which had the right amount of musculature to make him attractive. Although his biceps was well defined, his triceps was not over large, and his chest was broad but not to the point that he was intimidating.  This was combined with a manner and a composure which was gentle.  He radiated a softness.  From his childhood he had been brought up in his father’s village, being the last born of a family of seven, he had been surrounded by unconditional love from his infancy.  At an early age he had been sent away to attend the Loyola Jesuit College outside Abuja,  as his father had worried that the quality of the education in the village would be below the standard required for admission to university. education.

 The story of Mr. Asimnobi himself was quite exciting.

Looking upon him as he was seated outside his bungalow on the outskirts of awka, it was easy to think of him as yet another retired man who had returned to the land of his ancestors.  The bungalow was painted a pale yellow hue which contrasted beautifully with the deep red color of the laterite soil, and the house was framed by a lush array of trees, mango, iroko, and palm trees, created a shade that provided a natural respite from the heat of the mid day sun.  Some of the trees must have been nearly a hundred years old for this was the compound where his father, and his fathers father had been born  it was here he was orn, and in this land that he hoped to be buried, right in this compound beside his father.  For that was the custom, to buiry the dead where the living were living, and in this wasy there was a natural continuum between life and death for death was never far off.

 Yet on speaking to him it was obvious that Mr. Asimnobi, had, known better dyas.  That is not to say that retirement to the village is bad in and of itself.  For here his bungalow was of reasonable size and not altogether without the comforts of modern life.  The structure had elaborate iron bars across all the windows, and had water running in the pipes, due to a stragically placed bore hole, and electricity supplied by a small diesel generator.  The furnishings were genteel enough, being the common wooden furniture, locally made from the local mahogany, with foam cushions placed on top.  All this a stark contrast to the comfortable apartments he had known when working in the Nigerian High Commission in London, but that was before the civil war.  Now thirty years prior, to him, sometimes it seemed as if maybe the London days had never happened, perhaps it was a sick joke of fate to tantalize him with  dreams of a past that was just as brief as it had been sweet.  Then, he had been recalled, to the Eastern region, and the hostilities had broken out.  He could still remember the day of the declaration of independence, he was in Enugu that day, what uncharacteristic unity had united them then, displayed ever so temporally and perhaps never to be seen again, at least not in his own lifetime, with the soldiers driving around in jeeps waving palm fronds, like the jews had done on the triumphant entry of Jesus into Jerusalem.  But that was before the starvation and death that followed in it’s wake.  He had of course  proceeded to loose everything, just as everyone else did, every stick of furniture was removed from his house after his return; indeed the devastation left in it’s wake by the federalist forces was ominous; so potent and effective had their plundering been of the vanquished areas that what could not be carted off in lorries, was burnt. He had lost and his three brothers, and his carreer in the diplomatic service had come to an abrupt halt, and not even the rendition of General Yakubu Gowon, that there was “No victor and no vanquished”, could reinstate him in the diplomatic service.  The sense of loss was real,  But those were all things and careers, and could be replaced, but his brothers’ could not.  And it was this fact that left him with a tinge of bitterness in his soul, a scar which would remain with him until the day he died.  During the civil war he had been in the cabinet of  General Odumegwu Ojukwu, and he had spent the first two years after the war had seized under house arrest by the federalist forces.  He had stayed on in the village, and had farmed his lands to survive.  And it was to this Biafran war time hero that the humble Mr. Moses Okafor had to present himself whilst in search of his daughter.  Mr. Moses Okafor himself, was a veteran of the war, and he instantly recognized the face that went with the name.  He himself was no stranger to suffering having fought in the xxth battalion.  He had narrowly escaped death on multiple occasions, and on even more occasions he had escaped loosing a limb and belonging to the dispossessed soldiers at the war camp of Oji river.

He walked in slowly after being announced by the steward, who had been reluctant to admit him into the compound in the first polace as Mr. Moses could not concisely state his mission.

“ State your mission sir.’

He had been told on entering.  Then had come the usual preamble amongst war veterans about who was who and who had fought where, and about who had died and who had lived. 

Then, Mr. Asimnobi stated emphatically.

“ No more war, no never, no more war.”

And in these few words he summarized the hopes of his people, who had never even intheir wildest dreams imagined what destruction could happen in a twentieth century war.  This was not in an effort to pretend that the peoples were not a war ;like tribe, no in all probablilty all the towns had known of some war or the other, or of their grqand fathers fighting against a neighboring town over some dispute. But the scope was different, for in those wars one or two bodies were brought back and it was a lot.  No with the arrival of the colonialists had come the effective machinery of war and in it’s wake the interplay of international powers who felt it their duty to side with whom they pleased.

“ No more war,” Mr. Moses echoed after him, “ But it is not the war I have come to talk about, I have come to find my daughter whom my sister in law states has written a letter to say that she has eloped with your son Michael.”

“ Michael?” the man asked. “ Hum, Michael jhas mentioned no lady friend to me, no fiancé either.  So I do not understand why you are saying all this.  Infact, how can he marry, a student just graduated, he has no job, no money either.”

“ That was just what I thought” Moses replied drily. 

       

The sights and sounds of Lagos were overwhelming.  This metropolis of millions sttod proud and ready to bring the unaware to their knees at a momnet’s notice.  The streets were teeming with activity and motor vehicles and large over crowded buses all the while being intercepted by motor cycle drivers and street hawkers darting in and out.  From the street stalls there were canteens with out door kitchens cooking for the tired travelers, and stroes selling watyer in plastic pouches which had been cooled to a desirable temperature.

Even the gutters were overflowing with refuse of all kinds and covered with a green slimy layer of putrid algae.   To the children this was all exciting and they watched the sightjs as they drove thorugh ikorodu road to their aunt’s flat which was in a relatively new area in  Ikeja.

Chinedu and Afam were the same age as Chas Jr. the first child of Mrs Margaret Obiora. He was two years ahead in school and was in the same year of SS6 as Chinedu and was seeking admission to the University as well.  The boys were off by themselves playing table tennis on a table in the back garden which was under a Guava tree which provided shade.  In the evenings the boys were mostly playing a variety of video games in Chinedu’s room whilst the younger girls seemed to have monopolized the television in the living room and were watching a seemingly endless series of movies until the day after Christmas when Mr. Charlie Obiora decided that a trip to the beach was the thing to do.  The children were overcome with excitement, as it promised to be a speactacular and sunny day at the beach.  Overhead there loomed a few ominous clouds, but no one would put off the trip to Bar Beach for the day.

On their arrival at the beach the group found a small locally mad e hut to rent, it was made from dried palm leaf fronds which were held together by raffia, and this was made to form a roof and walls. By the seaside the open expanse of the Atlantic ocean was visible as far as the eye could see.  At the bar beach the waves were large, and came crashing down on to the sand benath their feet in white trubulent surf which lapped at their toes.  None of the group being particularly strong swimmers it was decided to noly roll up their trousers andn to wade in the surf.  The young girls were walking down the beach with the maid and Charlie to supervise them, whilst the boys were deemed old enough to take care of themselves and were allowed more freedom to wander away on their own but only after the admonishment of not going into the ocean above their knees.  The two sisters were thus left alone and at peace to walk along the beach.  Mrs. Eugenia Nwafor felt the sea breeze against her cheeks, and it blew her hair up into an untidy mess.  Yet she flet that here, by the water she could stay forever, and perhaps the heavens could heal her soul here better than it ever could in the dry hot air of Enugu in the dry season.  Out over the sea she saw the sea melt into the sky and the white clouds danced above and the sun glittered down in a scene of unparralled beauty.  It was during moments like this, that she could not but help but reaffirm her belief in zGod, and His Divine purpose.  Although she could not pretend to understand His ways, yet who was she mere mortal as herself, and could only in all humility, accept what little solace He gave her when He pleased.  And as she walked arm in arm with her sister she could npot help but confide this thought to her dear sister.

“ My dearest sister, how happy I am today to be walking here on this beach…and to be surrounded by such beauty and to have you my most favorite person in the world beside me.  It is in moments like these, that I thank God for the little things, because, sometimes I am not sure if there will be anything else, or anything more. To me the redemption is in the colors of the sun and the water, to once again be bale to see beyond the pain has overcome my soul.”

“ When we were young and Papa and Mama would always tell us that one day we would have our day to shine and we would be married.  Infact, now that I think of everything, I think the whole society programmed us in this belief.  Look how it affected us all! Comfort ran away at the age of sixteen and married before all of us!  It was all backwards, I the first daughter, was married the last, and the last was married the first.”

Margaret laughed.

“ Yes, and much good it has done for Comfort, who has no education herself.”

“ I have often thought of that, and I am not certain that my own education has been of much use, yes I have a job, for now at least, but for how much longer? The reality is that at any moment intime I can be recalled, and replaced.  At least Comfort owns her own stall and has more job security than I.’

That is all well and good, and now tell me about the preparations for the wedding between regina and the Chief, tell me about her dress and the plans for the party.  How I wish I could have attended, but Charlie has refused to allow me to go to the east again just now, I think he does not approve of the marriage as e has said that he knows the Chief is a divorcee and he does not really nfeel this is aappropriate for RFegina.  And I know it will be acourt weding only.

Well, she will wear a white dress even though it will be a court weding. However, the reception will be much smaller than the engagement party as the Chief has said that he will return later to do the real thing.

The wind caressed her cheeks, and the cool air held her in its gentle embrace, and she could feel the sorrow draining out of her soul.  In its stead there was a lightness of spirit and she seized upon the moment greedily to extract with an unrequited urgence every morsel of joy that could be gleaned from it.  On an imimpulse she ran up to the boy Chinedu, and held him in one arm and Afam in the other and walked down the beach

The boys had found some ponies with their owners and paid to take a ride down the beach taking turns on the rides. The girls returned with their father and had hands full of se34a shells which they were putting up against t their ears and listening to the sound of the sea. Then they went to a shed and bought fresh coconuts cut from the tree and opened in front of them with coconut milk and they bought suya.

The widow Mr Oke Ejiofor.

It so happened that the day before the families departure to Enugu, Charlie decided that he would have a small get together for his in laws , a send off , so to speak.  Mrs. Margaret Obiora  quite liked the idea.  It was a nice way to round off the holiday with a few friends, and some dancing and some music.  A family oriented party was planned, and there were three families invited.  Of note was that  Mr. Oke Ejiofor, the lonesome widow, whose wife of thirty years had died three years prior, and whom Charlie thought would be a decent man to introduce to his sister in law.  Mr.Oke Ejiofor was no spring chicken, but then neither was Mrs. Eugenia, he thought to himself; and he glossed over the fact that though Mrs. Eugenia was old she was barely 44 years of age herself and he was introducing her to a man who over sixty years of age and he was deemed an equitable match.  For his age he was not bad looking, however, his hair betrayed tinges of grey all over, and the beard that he sported was mostly grey itself making one think he was older than his age.  He was a quiet man who said little, and was a retired civil servant.  His loneliness was amplified by the fact that even though he had two children they were both abroad and as such he really had no close relatives nearby except the Obiora’s. Charlie was related to him by being a nephew of his.  The widower sat quietly in a corner and watched the proceedings with interest, without himself becoming directly involved.  Charlie was the dee jay for the occasion, and also seemingly the life of the party; and he danced on several occasions with his wife, and also with the wives of the other guests whose husbands seemed more intent on drinking than on socializing.

 The sights in the room were to die for, with all colors and shades of the rainbow being amply displayed on the dresses of the females guests who were all dressed up in their Christmas finery.  Not to be outdone, Mrs. Margaret Obiora was looking dashing in a bright red George wrapper with a contrasting blouse in a brown lace; Mrs. Eugenia  Nwafor presented herself in a new black dress, not having the courage to wear any lighter color lest it show the size of her frame to a disadvantage.  Mr Oke Ejiofor finally summoned the courage and asked Mrs. Eugenia if she would dance a slow dance with his. She agreed and above the music he introduced himself to her again and asked her how her trip to Lagos had been, and he lamented about the insecurities in the east which had made the party possible in the first place as none of the party goers had been able to return home for the Christmas.

Due to the sobriety of her dress, and her general sparing of use of makeup for some reason he had forgotten that she was actually a dovorcee, thinking that she was a widow like himself and as such he had poised to her the improbable question, “ Now tell me how long have you been widowed for?” Mrs. Eugenia Nwafor had been taken aback by this faux pas and had quickly corrected him. “ I am not widowed, sir, no I am a divorcee”.  Mr. Oke Jideofor had cleared his throat in embarrassment, “Pardon me, I don’t know why I thought you were a widow.” He lied, knowing full well that he had thought so as she was dressed in black.  “ Forgive me, Ma’am,” he had continued, “ But I am mistaken in saying that these colors are reserved for the mourning and the professionals who are neither called to the law professions, or  bankers; now might I guess that you may belong to one of these professions.”

She had proceeded to correct him, and his apologies had been profuse. He had insisted that to be forgiven for his lack of chivalry that she must promise to go out with him to lunch at a future date whenever he came to Enugu.

Comfort was standing above the large cast black cast iron pot in which bubbled a large red stew which was steaming up into the air. She was singing a song and stirring her pot with wanton abandon, on the other side of the compound there were two other pots with their contents being watched over by her cooking mates. She looked up from her pot and saw what seemed to be her older sister Mrs. Eugenia who was walking hurriedly towards her.

Sister, how did you find me?

It was the children who directed me here.

I know you cannot be here unless for a reason, she said half not wanting to hear as it always seemed there was no bad news to learn.

‘I have just this moment seen that Regina left this morning with her friend Micheal.

The young man, you know the one who used to come form her school to visit her.

I know of him, but last I asked you told me that you had not seen him and that she was determined to continue forward with this marriage to the Chief, and now you say this man has come back.

I do not know I have a letter, she has left the ring and the dress to be returned to the chief.

Comfort who was standing in the heat of the sun over the pot felt her knees buckle under and if not for a quick reaction of her sister she would have fainted right into the pot of bubbling stew, instead she was steered clear of the fire  and her sister was fanning her on her face, wake up, wake up ,

She woke up and stuttered,

No, I do not want to wake up; I want to go to the hospital. In fact take me to the hospital right now as I cannot face Moses this time, I will not be the one to give him this news./

And so it befell upon Mrs. Eugenia to become the3 harbinger of the bad news to Moses at home.

As it was a Thursday holiday he was seated on a bench in front of the compound with some of his friends and they were enjoying a lazy afternoon with palm wine and beer and some cola nuts being shared around the men were relatives from Moses village who had come to town for the wedding which was to take place the next day at the courthouse.

A stray dog was nosing his way through a near by pile of garbage which served as the area garbage dump.   

As she neared the group she was met by a young boy with a set of rosary beads around his neck and dirty brown shorts, in his left hand he carried a stick and he was carefully running down the hill beside her guiding a wheel of an old bicycle in a familiar game played by the boys in town. His eyes were quite oblivious of all around him and he was intent on maintaining the wheel upright with his stick and the gravity pulling the wheel down the hill. Carefully he negotiated his ways past the gullies and vanished behind a curve.  The conversations on the bench under the tree which were being conducted in perfect Igbo, seized upon the arrival of the woman, and Mr. Moses who was in a jovial mood stood up to greet his sister in law initially with a smile, but when he noticed the smile went unreturned and that she was motioning for him to follow her he excused himself from the group and went with her into the inner courtyard for some privacy. She brought out the note and handed it to him

For a moment he was close to accusing the woman for all this, then he took hold of himself and said instead,

“ Mrs. Eugenia, you had no idea of this? You had reassured me that after I rejected the young man you never saw him agasin”

“And that was true, I never saw him again.”

So who will tell the chief?  Who will tell my wife.

It was then decided that one of the cousins from out of town would break the news to the chief at his hotel.

Early the next morning Moses was rushed to the University of Nigeria Teaching Hospital via ambulance. He was unconscious having drunk himself into  stupor in the early hours of the morning.

He was vomiting and having a profuse diarrhea, and he was too weak to get out of the bed. His blood cultures came back positive efor typohoid and in the meantime his father came from the village to check on his son .

The father was horrified and he asked repeated questions of the doctor and did not believe a word the doctor said. So the next day he hurriedly returned to their town and he went to visit the village dibia to find out what could have gone so wrong for his grand daughter to have run away and for his son to mow be hospitalized with typhoid fever.  The dibia was an old man and he was in his hut wearing a wrapper and a tee shirt and he had his magical pouch with him that contained all manner of feathers and stones and  potions he started with his incantations and after a while he seemed to enter a trance and started to hold conversations with people who were not present and all manner of things were moving on their own in the room. At one point there was a rope which he had held up which was now hanging freely on it’s own in the air, suspended defiant of gravity.  He threw his stones up in the air and drew marks with his magical sticks and then came the verdict that the problem was from the family of the dead mother of Moses .  Apparently Moses had failed to give honor to the family of his dead mother for the successes of his trade.  He then went on to ask the native man to tell him about his daughter the runaway Regina.  This was followed by a blank look, and the medicine man said he could not find Regina, nor could he find the purported husband Michael.

He was told that he must go the market place to buy a chicken for sacrifice and that it would be a specific white chicken and that when he got to the market he would know which chicken it was.  On arrival at the marketplace as he and his son were walking around the chickens, all of a sudden a white chicken jumped up high in the air and stayed up crowing loud and flapping its wings frantically, crow crow.

That is the one, the father shouted. And the poultry seller, died the legs of the wildly flapping chicken together, which had singled itself out as the one for the ungodly sacrifice.  The chicken was placed alive in a sack and they returned to the dibia, who took the chicken and walked with them on a bush path to outside the town, where the throat of the chicken was cut with a knife and the blood was drained on the ground.

At that moment  in Enugu, Moses who had been asleep in his hospital bed in Enugu woke up for the first time in three days, his fever was gone, and he asked his wife to bring him pepper soup.

From then on his health had returned and several days later when he felt well enough he decided with his cousin to go in pursuit of Regina and Michael.  To make matters even more complicated the only information they had on the young man was that he was a student of the Agricultural college of Awka, and that he had successfully graduated that year.  It was known that his name was Michael, however, Mrs. Regina had never known the boys last name, but had a feeling that his last name was Obi, a more common name could hardly more have been his in Igbo land.  On arrival at the registrars office of the college of agriculture he had introduced himself only to find out that there was no one by the name of Michael Obi who had ever attended the college, he had then been forced to go the police station and to make a missing persons report ignored for the school to agree to open up it’s books as they were protected by confidentiality laws.  It was determined that the only name similar was Michael Asimnobi, who hailed from a nearby village on the outskirts of Awka township/

A visit to Michael Asimnobi’s father at his bungalow outside Awka:

With some of the funds at his disposal from the generosity of the chief, he paid a visit to the father of Micjhael Asimnobi in his retirement in the village.  It was quickly assessed that the young man had not returned home with Regina, and in fact, the boy’s father had never heard of Regina, nor of Mrs. Eugenia, nor even of Moses either.  He knew that his son had finished his degree and that he was to start his youth service corps, but the boy was still waiting for his posting, and had told his father he was going to spend  some time with a friend in Benin but the father did not know the friends name nor where he lived.

“ You know, sir, I may not be a rich man, but I deserve better than this, I must find my daughter, I cannot rest until I know she is safe.  Yet you tell me you have no idea where to look for your son, surely you must have some ideas about who is friends are,. Or where he might have gone.  How can I appeal to you, as a father, a brother, please help me. “

Mr. Asimnobi, was affected by his candor, and promised he would do all in his power to search for the two, although he reassured the man that no matter what his son’s fault’s might be that he was certain that he meant the young girl no harm.

 And so it came about that Moses had to leave and return without Regina, but there was nothing more he could do.  He could not really afford to be off work, and he most certainly could not afford to be travelling all over Nigeria,. Looking for his daughter, ass this was equivalent to looking for a needle in a hay stack.  He trusted she was fine, and sol now with a renewed self confidence he sent a letter to the Chief who had since returned to the U.S. that regrettably, the marriage could no longer go forward as his daughter had officially eloped with another man. 

Mrs. Eugenia returns to Enugu after spending Christmas in Lagos:

The harmattan came late that year, and by the time the family was to return to Enugu, a swarm of dust had descended on the southern part of the country making the air heavy with dust; the sun was barely visible as a round shiny disc far in the distance.  The Lagos airport was forced to close and the flights had to be diverted, and the offices of the luxury coaches serving Eastern Nigeria were overflowing with passengers.  The family was lucky to still get a seat and started the long ride home to Enugu. 

A lot had happened over the past year, and she sat by the café style table and thought to herself how everything was now so different from her dreams and her hopes.  Then she remembered that there was much to be thankful for, and thaty as long as there was life there was hope. True, if she had had the chance to have written the story herself she would have written it to have had a happy ending, for her weakness had been to only read happy books, and  watch happy movies.  In essence, in her subconscious she had relentlessly pursued this very happinees that had evaded her.  She remembered how papa had laughed at her when she was young and she had said she wanted to be happy always, and he had repleied that “ if wishes were horses then beggars would ride.” And she smiled to herself, for so well had her situation improved now that she could smile to herself, and said, “ I may not any longer have a husband, through no fault of my own, and society may well castigate me for this” and she took a deep breath and pulled her shoulders back with a renewed confidence and a gentle smile lingered on her lips…”.and in this rejection I shall find my salvation, and one day joy will return to my soul”.