A traditional wedding in Onitsha: rewrite

A traditional wedding in Onitsha:

Onitsha town sits on the eastern border of the River Niger, some four hundred miles inland from the coast.  By the time the  heavily silt laden river  has reached  this location on it’s last stretch in its itinerant race towards the delta, it meanders wildly like an irresolute judge, now swaying this way and then that way.  The town has been a major trading post for a good one hundred years; and apart from a brief spell of silence in it’s markets during the Biafran secession from Nigeria, when the market was razed to the ground, it continues to be a noisy and prolific market, the commercial capital of the eastern region. In many ways it is reminiscent of a large village the size of a town, but lacking all the necessary infrastructure to support such a populace. During the British colonial days, an area was designated exclusively for the use of the Europeans and this area was called the Government Reserved Area.  This area was exclusive, and there were well tarred roads and beautiful houses of brick, that were surrounded by impeccably manicured lawns, and these were in complete contradistinction to the houses of native construction which were laid out in a more random mosaic remniscient of a quilt which had run out of  certain materials and had thus been forced to rely less upon symmetry and more on intuition, still beautiful nevertheless, but in it’s own way.  In those long bygone days any “native” who entered this area would be subject to arrest/ and or a severe beating.  However, with the turning over of the reigns of government from the colonial rulers to the locals on October 1^st 1960, the Nigerian educated quickly populated and took over these government posts and the residences that were allotted.  It was in one of these old bungalows that the family of Henrietta lived in. Although they had lived in the town of Onitsha their whole lives, they were not really indigenes of Onitsha, as the family hailed from the town of Owerri.  Due to the general insecurity in the east, it had been determined that the risks associated with a traditional wedding in Owerri were too high; and as such it was decided that the traditional ceremony should be much abbreviated and modified to be held in town.

The town of Owerri had been the epicenter of many kidnap dramas, and not wanting to tempt fate( at least not in that manner) the patriarch Mr. Henry Okeke had decided to hold the wedding in town.  Mr. Henry Okeke was a wealthy trader in Onitsha, and had the means to secure the services of several armed guards who could be seen roaming the premises with their AK 47’s ready.  The security was tight and the gate to the compound was kept closed.  All the guests were rigorously checked against a guest list kept at the gate house.  Overall, Mr. Henry Okeke was not displeased with the wedding; on the contrary, he was much relieved that his eldest daughter from his first wife was finally going to get married at the ripe age of thirty four years. Hypocritically enough, he probably would have preferred for her to have been the only wife of Christian; but in this case he felt that as beggars they could not really be choosers.  The cause of their beggarliness was multifold; for the first part Henrietta was in years far advanced beyond the marrying age customary in their circle.  Secondly, her affair with Christian had been well publicized all over Enugu and Onitsha; that no single man in his right senses, even should he have found her desirable, would have dared to approach her.  Moreover, to make matters worse, it was not as if the girl was socially “out there” meeting people, unless of course, Christian was with her.  In effect, she had been a wife in all but name. 

Mrs. Clementina Okeke, the first wife of Henry,  the girl’s mother, was busy on the occasion.  She had arranged for the caterers and was seeing to the arrangement of the chairs in the courtyard. The grooms family was to sit on one side of the courtyard and the bride’s family was to sit opposite it on the other side.  She was slightly out of sorts, as she had hoped for a white wedding, but it seemed as if that would not be a possibility as the Anglican church had out rightly refused to wed a man who was already married in the church to another.  But she too was no fool when it came to matters of practicality. It had taken sixteen years to  bring Christian to the altar, although it in reality was no altar at all but the courtyard of a bungalow in Onitsha.   The mother remained mystified as to the attraction her daughter had for this man Christian, and she failed totally to see what her found so irresistible about him.  But then they had long since learned that Henrietta had a mind of her own, and any attempts on their part to dissuade her from the affair had only served to reaffirm her love for him. 

The outfits for the wedding had been carefully planned, and the color scheme had been diligently chosen to be a rich golden hue which so well complemented her daughters bronze colored skin.  A red head tie was to complement the outfit and she had given her daughter a set of bright reddish orange coral beads to wear around her neck on the occasion.   Her pregnancy was still too early to show and she still looked trim and fit in her wedding regalia.

Christian, the groom, was excited beyond words.  He was seated in the front row with his kinsmen from Awka; they were all dressed in a matching “ Anakara” cloth of brown and green.  In the presence of his mistress, soon to be wife, he was unrecognizable.  Here he was gentle, kind and considerate; whenever he spoke it was with a softness which seemed natural.  Gone were all the hints of irritation and the surly behavior he had so overtly displayed at his marital home.

Gently laughing and speaking softly he could be heard talking calmly to his brother who sat beside him, telling him how relieved he was that Eugenia had finally got the message and had left of her own accord the day before.  His brother had laughed , “ That woman,” he had said, “ Mama always wondered how you could have married someone quite so boring.” 

Mrs. Christiana Nwafor sat with the women and had a smug look on her face.  She was much relieved that her son had finally had the guts to leave the horrible wife Eugenia( whom she detested).

       After the formal introductions and the breaking of the cola nut, libations were poured to the spirits of the ancestors.  This was accomplished by spilling a few drops of liquor to the ground with a verbal dedication done by the elder in the group from Mr. Henry Okeke’s family.  Then the haggling for the bride price had begun; this purely symbolical gesture was more a reenactment of tradition than a real life monetary transaction.   The men scurried back and forth between the two groups each carrying bundles of broomsticks which were to denote the amounts of the transaction.