5 Fifth Marriage Anniversary
Today marked their fifth marriage anniversary. These two were not wealthy but were deeply in love with each other, which made their marriage a very happy one, lacking nothing except children. It was obvious they were made for each other. Ego treated her husband with respect and carried out all her wifely duties with nothing but love. She continually treated him with deference and reverential obedience. While he reciprocated by treating her as the queen of his heart and life. He provided her with all his power and money could get.
It was night again; she had prepared Nnanna's favourite food and was awaiting his return. She waited till it was almost midnight before she fell asleep where she waited; woke up the next morning, looked around and there was still no sign of him anywhere. Nnanna does come back home late sometimes but has never spent the whole night outside. This was the first night she has spent alone since they got married.
"This is so unlike my husband, there must be something wrong with my love. Something bad must have befallen him" she said to herself.
"The Nnanna I know wouldn't allow anything prevents him from returning home on this special night. Or is he still searching for a sizable antelope?" she wondered.
She knew the time to act was right away before it becomes too late. Speedily she went to report to the Igwe that her husband was missing. The Igwe wasted no time in ordering a search party with an instruction not to return without the former village wrestling champion.
The men searched for him everywhere throughout that day. Towards dusk, he was found deep in the woods lying lifeless under an Iroko tree. He had been dead since the previous day. No one knew what happened to him, and there were no visible marks on him; not of snake or animal bite or even scratches on his skin to indicate a struggle between him and any animal or human. It was not even the gods; they kill with thunder which makes the individual dark like charcoal. There was no evidence indicating he ate or drank poison too. It was more like he just fell down and died. Till today nobody knows what really happened to the strong man.
The men quickly made a stretcher with bamboos and raffia which they used to carry him back home. Immediately Ego saw them carrying her beloved husband, she fainted but was resuscitated by the few friends that were there with her. When she was back on her feet, the weeping began.
"Dim oo! Dim oo! Dim oo!" That was all she could say as she wept bitterly and rolled on the cold wet ground, not minding that she was half naked. Ego cried till her eyes were swollen.
She was not just crying because of the death of her beloved husband, but like every other widow at that time in Igboland; she was weeping because of what she will be made to pass through in the hands of her in-laws, the Umuada and the village as a whole.
If she is accused by her in-laws of killing her husband; she will be made to drink the water used to wash her husband's corpse to be exonerated from the accusations, or she would be forced to crawl over her deceased husband's corpse for the same purpose. She will not have her bath until after eight market days when she would be led to the river by twelve midnight to bathe. She has to cry aloud from this night through the first month of mourning, to the hearing of the whole village, to prove her grief and that she misses her husband. She could be forced to remarry any person that will inherit Nnanna's belongings, like his brother or any other close relative, at the end of the mourning period. There will be a punitive shaving off her hair by the Umuada the next day. If she dies within the mourning period of one year, she will be stigmatized and her corpse will be tossed into the evil forest to be feasted upon by wild beast.
The Umuada are usually the key perpetrators and enforcers. Most often, they are simply prejudiced against these widows for past disagreements. They see this period as a time to be vindictive to their rivals.
These and more she will be made to pass throughout the year following her husband's death. It was really a sad day for Ego, the whole of Umudibia even the sky wept for their fallen champion as it rained cat and dog in the evening of that tragic day; death has won again.
The corpse was immediately stretched out on plantain leaves, sponged down thoroughly and rubbed with camwood dye to make it sacred. After the cleaning, the body was laid out in the hut, with the feet facing the entryway. If the deceased was a woman, she would have been seated upright. Women are also carried in a stretcher back to their ancestral village for burial. His body has been prepared for its passage from the world of the living into the spirit world.
Mazi Okoro Nnanna's father welcomed the community into his son's home with kola nuts and palm wine where a wake was held. Prayers and libations were spoken to beckon ancestral spirits into the home to escort the spirit of the deceased. The wake lasts the whole night; then gunshots were fired early the next morning to alert the surrounding village of the death that has occurred.
After the wake, the body was immediately buried in a grave dug behind the hut. Usually enclosed with it are some of the deceased valued possessions. Men are often buried with their tools, gun or fishing gear, and women with their pots and dishes. Nnanna was buried with his hunting gun. The body was then placed in the grave by young men encased in wooden planks. Few hours after he was buried, thunder from nowhere struck down the Ube tree in their compound. It was believed to be him leaving the last mark here in this world before crossing over to the other one.
A year after the body was buried, a second funeral was held, but this time, it is accompanied by feasting and celebration rather than mourning. Visitors dressed in their best attire, there were rambunctious singings and merrymaking to alert the community of the event that is about to be held. After this second funeral, the deceased was said to have been sent off to take up a new place in the land of the dead as an ancestor.
