By Lechi Eke
Will the unicorn be willing to serve thee or abide by thy crib?
Canst thou bind the unicorn with his band in the furrow?
Or will he harrow the valleys after thee?
Benjamin Nguuma Torkular, the younger, knew that it was not one of life’s easy things to find a spouse. A bedmate was easier and so was an aficionada as long as you fed the union with the right nutrients. So how does a young man find his missing rib? And by missing rib, does it imply that only a rib is missing from the 12 ribs each side of man’s ribcage? His younger self had asked his mum that and she had laughed him to shame, but explained it to him.
The search had been on for Benjamin’s missing rib since he turned 20, and increased in intensity as time downloaded years on him. At the present, it drew to near frantic since he hailed from an ancient descent of potentates at the peril of extinction. As Wan Tor of the people of the kingdom of Tiv; the second in line to the Tiv royal stool, what his tribe considered as evil had befallen his family. His father’s brother, the ruling Tor Tiv, had no male child; his father, Benjamin Nguuma Torkula, the elder, was over seventy with a single male child. To the people of the kingdom he was the one eye that hindered complete blindness and everyone with batted breath stood to see who he would marry and how many sons she would regenerate.
Already, gathered loads awaited the shoulders of this individual who would be his life partner; filled with defined roles and no room for personal needs. She would be a computer uploading downloaded stuffs as time and nature demanded of her; classic of women’s natural role birthing whatever seed deposited in them. She would live a prescribed life.
Benjamin’s life faced an unfathomable dilemma that only he knew. What the kingdom needed was a consort for him; whereas he needed nothing short of a sibling/ lover/ friend and companion rolled into one. He actually needed himself moulded into another human being, his missing rib.
The search of who to spend the rest of his life with, who would give him peace, was no simple matter. Benjamin had searched frantically. In the heat of his confusion, a casual friend, an office colleague, invited him to his wedding. It was something he could decline. Usually, he would give cash gift and explained how choked his itinerary was which wouldn’t be a lie for he was always fully booked for occasions. Incidentally, he shocked himself with consenting to go as something in his subconscious asked him if he would appreciate people sending gifts rather than attend his own wedding when he eventually found a wife.
A curious thing happened at the wedding when his colleague testified after being pronounced a husband that he received direction on what to do as a searching single at their ministry’s, what he called SWWTQ, and profusely thanked the head of their church. The applause he received was deafening. Jamin respected his wedding night by holding down his curiosity and waiting until the following day to call a man in honeymoon to ask what SWWTQ meant and what kind of direction he received.
“SWWTQ? Oh, those stand for Singles Who Want To Quit,” his colleague said with a laugh. “It’s a programme in my ministry for singles who desire to get married. They tell you how to go about it.”
Jamin feared it might be rude to ask him what direction he received but inquired when the programme would hold. The very next one was a week after. He gathered that this quarterly programme was strategically held after every wedding in The Redeemed Evangelical Mission (TREM). Jamin couldn’t wait for the next one. Anything that would help him in identifying and picking a spouse and make him celebrate his own wedding, he would attend. So he cancelled a trip to Jos where his cousin arranged him a meeting with a beautiful tokunbo Tiv girl. The girl lived all her life in Paris and was of excellent behaviour having attended French etiquette school and was refined to the hilt. Jamin cancelled the meeting. Most times, he mused, these girls were plastic and affected.
The famous pastor of the ministry, the presiding Bishop of TREM, in his talk, lifted a heavy load off Jamin’s shoulders. In his brief homily, Okonkwo told singles and searching fellows how to identify their life partners. Jamin was shocked that he never thought of that. Look to God!
“The blueprint of a successful marriage partner-search —‘Don’t shop around for a partner,’” Bishop Okonkwo thundered. For Jamin, it wasn’t even loud enough. If he had ever felt a need to hear clearly and not miss a word, it was in that moment, in that meeting. He pulled away from comfort and sat at the very edge of his seat.
“When you want to marry, go to your Creator, your owner and, He would show you who He reserved for you.” Who He reserved for me? Elation electrified Jamin’s entire being. “God,” continued the veteran preacher, “is the greatest Matchmaker. So, don’t get involved in hits and misses. You can actually get it right at first try.”
Jamin pulled out his phone to record it; a man by his side patted his knee and said, “They record it, ogbeni. You can buy the CD.” Although he hated people calling him friend, that day he tolerated it.
“How do you go to God?” Jamin was all ears. “Go in supplication, you may add some fasting if you please. But very vital, go, armed with the qualities you desire in a mate. Be as frivolous as you want, talk to Him as a Father. He knows who your mate is and where he or she is.”
He bought the CD and listened to it over and over again. Prior to that time, he had been doing it wrongly. He had been checking out ladies his friends and relatives arranged for him to meet. But none stirred his heart. In fact, some of them turned him off with overt willingness and availability knowing he was the Wan Tor Tiv.
Being a breakfast person, he proclaimed a week-long breakfast fast. It was a great sacrifice. With determination and fervent prayers he turned away from breakfast for seven whole days. He had no doubt in his heart that he would break through. One thing was sure the weight of searching had been lifted off him. It was now the business of another, and that other was his creator. It gave him a good feeling. He no longer was anxious.
One of the things he had asked God was to give him a virgin. He never shared this with anyone but inwardly he had great repulsion for girls who had been passed around. Once his mother caught him with a girl and took him on her ward round to see AIDS patients. That put an eternal fear in him for sex outside marriage for she told him that those who indulged in sex outside marriage had no conscience to be faithful to a particular partner so they indulge in philandering. There and then he decided that if illicit enjoyment could reduce human beings to that state, he would rather not enjoy. Not until he was of age that he found out that AIDS could be contracted through other means than sex.
He had also asked God for a kind, patient, and easy-going girl, a non-talker. Since he did a lot of cerebral work he had no need of a chatterbox. His preference was also for a tall girl since he was six three. Above all, he needed a woman who would love him without reservation. This was something he could not put into words, he intended to give all and he desired to receive all. So, he communicated this to the only One who could understand it and do something about it, he prayed in the spirit. His friends he knew might misunderstand this and might think him archaic, but marriage was one thing he did not want to do twice in a lifetime. He purposed to get it right the first and only time.
Benjamin had met Ulari before he met her. He knew her in the visions of the night. Although he had no idea where she was, yet from that moment after the fast, he began to search for her where life’s journeys took him sometimes engaging in a very embarrassing act staring into young ladies’ eyes.
God tested him with kindness. Not that he lacked kindness, but he was Wan Tor of Tivland and so could not be involved in lowly things. Would he be kind and humble enough to drive a fellow soldier in need to a place where his own problems would be solved? That was the test. He had no idea. His friend at the cantonment asked in a desperate tone. He had only few minutes to consider it, and then he gave a nod.
Jamin drove his friend to quell a mêlée in Unilag. There he met Bukky. And through Bukky he met Ulari and there lay the beginning of the story. But she was a unicorn; would she harrow after him or with him? With each meeting with her, he realized that life never fall like bags of cherries on anyone’s laps. He needed to work on it. The journey into togetherness was not for the fainthearted for it wouldn’t be easy.
Culled from The Girls Are Not To Blame by Lechi Eke
