By Isaac Umelo
An ingenious way of shortening grudge time in my family was set up by my polygamous father. Our grudge was set to expire at the next meal time, either or not in obedience to the injunction of Jesus Christ, our Lord and Saviour, to His followers to bear no lasting grudge beyond sunset, I knew not.
In a home where the man married eight wives and sired twenty children, causes for grudge were never lacking. However, where grudge abounds, ways of making peace much more abound. By an unwritten decree, all the children resident in the house ate their dinner at the same time, sharing a very large table with the man of the house. Many of the children also dipped their hands in the same pot of soup, or scooped rice from a common bowl.
The game actually starts when everyone is fed or when the serving, often brought by four or five wives to the table is exhausted. The ritual is that every child, besides thanking God for what he has eaten, must also thank his fellow brothers and sisters around the table. So a visitor to our home will be patient to hear monotonous expressions of gratitude like: Papa thank you; Mama thank you; Dede thank you, Rebecca thank you; Uwakwe thank you; ad infinitum.
So what is the catch? This gratia exposes any angst any of the children may be bearing for another. If for example, John and Elisabeth have been quarrelling, John would either pass Elisa in his round of thanking or do it in such a halting manner that everyone’s attention would be drawn to him. When this happens, like a kink in a pulley chain, our father would halt the ritual and call for a repeat. In that tangle the problem is exposed and the two parties are compelled to be reconciled. The next meal time will determine if their hearts have been washed by the blood of Jesus, and strife dissipated. No one would want to be the attention of twenty siblings for none altruistic reasons. In cases of intransigence, my father could always reduce or deny one’s share of the goat meat that followed a meal.
Another interesting part of life in my polygamous family was in the treatment of girls. For a background, my father became a serial polygamist because of his search for male children, or what was called Tacas, a corrupted word for tax in his days. Only the male paid tax to the colonial administration. Therefore, whenever a male child was born, it would be announced that Tacas or tax payer has arrived. Until recently, a family that had no male successors was looked upon as one due for extinction. Every daughter was expected to marry and drop his family name for that of her husband.
The scare in the mind of a man without male children is reflected in the names given to some male children. Ahamuefule (may my name never get lost), Nwokejiulo (the man that holds the home) are regularly heard at the baptismal altars during the baptism of infants. An amusing scenario occurred in my village church while such holy invocation was happening. “Name this child,” the officiating minister intoned. There was graveyard silence inside the church. The proposed godfather of the baby fumbled in his pocket to fish out the name given to him. He carried a worried and hesitant face. While the godfather delayed, the real father jumped forward and grabbed his baby and moved to the front of the baptistery. ‘’Nwanyiabuighihe,” he shouted.
The hall was aghast. The women majority in the church echoed their disagreement with the name. The officiating minister took the baby from her father, moved towards the baptistery and with a smirk on his face, made a mark of the cross on the baby’s forehead and began to name the baby girl: “Nwanyibuezigboihe, I baptize you in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost.” The Amen was an ovation coming particularly from the section of the women.
Now this story needs a breakdown for readers not conversant with the Igbo language. The baby girl was the fourth from the womb of her mother that was born concurrently with no male intermission. The father was already fed up with the harvest of females and was contemplating marrying a new wife so he could try for a male. The name Nwanyiabuighihe, when translated means that women are of no use. But when the godly parson held the child, he quickly changed the father’s preference. Nwanyibuezigboihe means that a woman was not only useful but very useful. At the end of the ceremony, even the father of the baby girl joined the pastor to celebrate. We heard later that his wife gave him three boys in quick succession.
So the sex battle was the predicament that led my otherwise reasonable father to a multiple polygamist. But there were other reasons. When you have large tracts of arable farm lands, you need many hands to cultivate them. The regular labourers were always on hand for hire. But at harvest times the man needed trustworthy reapers who will not steal from the harvest. Out of the four days that make up an Igbo week, Eke, Orie, Afor, and Nkwo, one day Orie is reserved for the wives to attend to their husbands’ farm. It becomes of economic benefit for a man to have many wives who offer free labour to him. The reward for the wife given in form of farm products is no more than what she would be entitled to even if she did no labour at all.
My father was sixty-seven years old when I was born, and his first three daughters were old enough to be my grandmothers. My father managed through an ultra sense of fairness and adroit home management to maintain peace at home. One administrative fiat he introduced was to devolve powers among the wives. The young and able ones got start up funds to engage in business which then was buying tobacco leaves and selling them as snuff. Cooking for my father and the family was rotational among the young wives. Because of the `price he placed on his male children, we boys ate with him always while the girls were made to string along with mothers. When he slaughters the occasional goat or comes home with large cuts of cow meat shared at ceremonies, he would make it clear that every wife’s share included the daughters. But the boys were presumed to have their portion with their father.
I found out later in life that his motive was to ensure that the boys were bonded with themselves, no matter who their mothers were. My father understood the dynamics of a polygamous family. The weak point in the chain was always from mothers who do their best to gain advantages for their own children. The biblical ploys of the mother of Jacob and David’s wives to gain advantage for favoured children didn’t stop with the bible. The male child would be coached to think first about his own mother’s child as his first line among brothers or sisters. A common adage in an Igbo poly family is that akpa na ikwu nne, akpaa na ikwu nna; meaning that you first discuss a matter in your mother’s kitchen before it comes to the father’s obi (an outhouse where the fathers receive visitors and discuss issues). Left to the mothers, the young men of the family would come to a father’s meeting with manifestoes from their different mother’s kitchens. A mother would warn her child about possible dangers coming from her fellow wives and their children. Most of the time, the wife has a negative futuristic mind to what could happen at the demise of the head of the family. Her insecurity often led to schemes that create divisions in the family bond.
This fear may not be unfounded in many homes, but my father put paid to it by his method of administration. I spent my holidays in the home of one of my father’s wives who lived next door. I would move my bag to her house, follow her to her own farm, and give her domestic services for the weeks of the holidays at the end of which she bought new clothes, shoes and biscuits for me. On my return, my siblings from my mother would gather in envy to check the gifts I brought home. Meanwhile, another child of the family would be holidaying with my mother. It was something we all looked forward to. This relationship with my father’s wife was never affected by any disagreements or rivalry my own mother may have with her co-wife. The wives promoted the peaceful accord in order to gain favour from their husband. We children addressed the wives of our father as Mama as they stood as mothers to us.
Many of the wives were traders who rode their bicycles to distant markets like Owerre-nta, over ten miles away, to sell tobacco snuff. The children would await their return with expectation. Once we hear the pumping of the horns and the clanging of bells, a signal that our mothers were returning, we all troop out cheering to share “Ihe ahia,” which are edible stuffs like tapioca and groundnuts, bought for us from the market. There was absolutely no discrimination between the children of a particular wife and the others in the sharing.
My father has been dead for over sixty years and our mothers are gone, but the apocalypse expected for our family never happened. In fact, I am as close if not closer to my half brothers (hump!) as I am to my mother’s children. I have trained children of my father’s wives who were mentally gifted with great enthusiasm while my own direct brothers were coming up the ladder. I call the word, half brother with a lump in my throat because it doesn’t exist in my mind or lexicon. There is a large table placed at the centre of my father’s obi. The table was there before I was born. We call it a covenant table. Discussions and decisions made around that table were expected to have the imprimatur of our late father, binding on all the children. We didn’t swear by that table but integrity among us was implied with no partiality or discrimination between siblings.
To demonstrate his affinity to male children, my father would pay school fees of the boys before those of the girls as he expected the mothers to cater for daughters from their trades and sale of farm products. Money spent on the education of girls was said to be money wasted on their future husbands. Barren wives or those who lost an only child, often due to crude maternal care by the local birth attendants were well cared for by my father. The very enterprising ones married wives for their husband. They made the kind of Abrahamic arrangement where they gave money to my father to pay the dowry for a young lady of their choice. My father would not accept a house girl for wife as Abraham did, but the new bride was expected to come from a respectable family with good antecedents. She becomes a wife with full rights as the others. Incidentally, I am a product of such triangular arrangement.
My Elder mother Oyiridie (the one who resembles her husband), who was the second wife of my father, lost her only child within months after the child was born and could not get pregnant again. At her old age, she brought my mother from a nearby village to my father. My mother was of fair complexion and beautiful so my father had no problem accepting her. She gave birth to two girls and two boys. When my elder mother retired to the village from Ngwaland, she took me and my sister with her. The native visionaries said at our birth that we were her reincarnated parents. No wonder, my elder sister and I were inseparable until her death! In an autobiography I wrote as an assignment for a foreign journal, I started like this. “I am the product of two mothers; one carried me in her womb for nine months; the other carried me in her heart until the day she died. I was a beneficiary of multiplied affection from two dotting women.” I went ahead to explain the arrangement which whaoed the editors of the magazine.
The names given to a daughter often portrayed the value my father placed on such a daughter and is related to the expected bride price at the time of her marriage. In Onitsha division, a very mercantile neighbour of our people, fathers are very explicit in choosing names that determine value. Ada Eze (daughter of a king or princess), Ezegalu (only a king is qualified to marry), Ogbenyealu (not for a poor man in marriage). My father was more definite in his choice of names. My eldest sister from another mother was named Ogupam, a corrupted form of Twenty Pounds. Ogu means Twenty in the Igbo numerals and pam was an alliteration for pound. This was a big sum in my father’s days. His second daughter was named Akpa Ego meaning a bag full of money.
I must confess that the names didn’t necessarily determine in monetary terms the value my father placed on his daughters. He didn’t take part in the negotiations of bride price, often done by his brothers and cousins. The names were meant to signal to the prospective bridegroom the level of comfort his daughters should have in their marital home. To him, you don’t send Ada Umelo (Umelo’s daughter) to carry firewood on her bare head. The properties my father used to send forth his daughters to their marital homes often outweighed in value whatever dowry was paid on such a daughter.
The names given to male children reflected my father’s experience in life, the name of the incarnated forefather or his philosophy of life. Ezenwa (kingly son) indicated that he expected me to become a sort of Joseph in the house of Jacob, a deliverer. But that was his wish. I cannot wager my banger of a car that I have lived up to father’s hope. Among his philosophical names were Ojini Anusi (he who has should not boast), Anaelechi (let’s watch tomorrow). It would require a volume of books to attempt to decode the many names of my brothers and sisters in this brief novella. However, as Christianity took over our lives after his death, most of the children in baptism consigned our meaningful primary names to an inconsequential second and in some cases to the dustbin of history. It was either Samuel, Isaac, Charles or such biblical English names.
Isaac Ezenwa Umelo is an octogenarian Electrical Engineer who has authored many books, short stories and articles. He resides in Lagos with his family.
