The Joys of Motherhood Tradition and Customs Quotes

"How much do you want for her? What else do you expect? Is it her fault that you have no son?" Agbadi was beginning to roar like the wild animas he was wont to hunt and kill.

"Please, please, aren't you two happy that I have survived the birth? It seems nobody is interested in that part of it. I made a promise to Agbadi yes; but, dear Agbadi, I am still my father's daughter. Since he has not taken a bridge price from you, do you think it would be right for me to stay with you permanently? You know our custom does not permit it. I am still my father's daughter," Ona intoned sadly. (2.123-124)

Then her personal slave was ceremoniously called in a loud voice by the medicine man: she must be laid inside the grave first. A good slave was supposed to jump into the grave willingly, happy to accompany her mistress; but this young and beautiful woman did not wish to die yet.

She kept begging for her life, much to the annoyance of many of the men standing around. The women stood far off for this was a custom they found revolting. The poor slave was pushed into the shallow grave, but the struggled out, fighting and pleading, appealing to her owner Agbadi.

Then Agbadi's eldest son cried in anger: "So my mother does not even deserve a decent burial? Now we are not to send her slave down with her, just because the girl is beautiful?" So saying, he gave the woman a sharp blow with the head of the cutlass he was carrying. "Go down like a good slave!" he shouted. (2.84-86)

The people of Ibuza were never to forget the night the people of Umu-Iso came for Nnu Ego. Her father excelled himself. He accepted the normal bride price, to show that he gave his blessing to the marriage. But he sent his daughter away with seven hefty men and seven young girls carrying her personal possessions. There were seven goats, baskets and baskets of yams, yards and yards of white man's cloth, twenty-four home-spun lappas, rows and rows of Hausa trinkets and coral beads. Her ornamented cooking-pots and gaudy calabashes were attractively arranged round crates of clearest oils. A new and more beautiful effigy of the slave woman who was her chi was made and placed on top of all Nnu Ego's possessions, to guard her against any evil eye. It was indeed a night of wealth display. No one had ever see anything like it….

Agbadi's heart was full to bursting point when, the second day, the people from Amatokwu's compound came to thank him for giving them his precious daughter Nnu Ego. They did so with six full kegs of palm wine. Agbadi smiled contentedly and invited everybody in his own compound to drink.

"My daughter has been found an unspoiled virgin. Her husband's people are here to thank us." (3.27-29)

"Amatokwu's new wife is expecting another child, so I am sure he would welcome the return of Nnu Ego's bride price. He'll need it to pay for another woman, or else at the rate he is going he will kill his present wife."

[…]

It was with pride that Nwokocha Agbadi returned the twenty bags of cowries to his former son-in-law and he even added a live goat as a token of insult. (3.80, 96)

Nnaife maintained that it was his duty to go and see to his dead brother's wife and family. He had to go and thank Adankwo, he said, for the help she had given Nnu Ego. But Nnu Ego was far from deceived at this explanation. She knew that Nnaife's pride was wounded when he found out that Adaku had left his house; from all the rumours people had been supplying him with, h e knew that the young woman was doing very well without him. Nnu Ego suspected that he wanted to go home to make Adankwo his wife in the normal traditional way. This woman belonged to him by right of inheritance, but that right had never been exercised. Now Nnaife wanted to stake his claim. (15.122)

Her parents insisted on having nothing less than thirty ponds for their daughter; had not Nnaife brought home all the white man's money from the war? Not to hurt the feelings of his people, Nnaife paid this money, making the Owulum family feel proud of the fact that their son, who had been to the war, was one of the first people to set the pace for things to come. He paid thirty pounds for his woman instead of the usual twenty pounds stipulated by Ibuza custom. Some of the old people who heard of it simply shook their heads and predicted: "Things are not going to be the same anymore." They were right. (15.130)

Nnu Ego laughed with them, and she knew then that, had they lived in times gone by when families used to stay together, several generations living and dying on the same portion of land, Okpo's children would never suffer. For she saw the look of childish love that went from her son to this young girl his father had married. If it had been that time, If Nnaife should die, Okpo would never need to go back to her people, because on a day like this, she had given the boy Adim the spontaneous reaction which he needed and which said: "Well done. We know you will do your duty by us when you grow up." (16.71)

"I shall still kill you. No child of mine is marrying a tribe that calls us cannibals. A tribe that looks down on us, a tribe that hates us," Nnaife growled, struggling in the hands of his captors.

"So that is it!" shouted the senior man of the Yoruba family, the man Nnaife had wanted to kill originally. "Your girl is only a girl. You cannot prevent a girl from marrying anybody she likes."

"We don't do so in my town Ibuza. I will choose husbands for all my girls. They are too young to know their own minds."

"Look, this is Lagos, not your town or your village." (17.95-98)

"Don't blame anyone for what has happened to your father. Things have changed drastically since the days of his own youth, but he has refused to see the changes. I tried to warn him…but, no matter. The fact is that parents get only reflected glory from their children nowadays, whereas your father invested in all of you, just as his father invested in him so that he could help on the farm. Your father forgot that he himself left the family farm to come to this place. He could only help when he was well settled in a good job. For you, the younger generation, it's a different kind of learning. It also takes longer and costs more. I'm not sure that I'm not beginning to like it. My only regret is that I did not have enough money to let the girls stay at school. So don't' blame your brother for anything. And don't forget Oshia is my son, just like you. Some fathers, especially those with many children from different wives, can reject a bad son, a master can reject his evil servant, a wife can even leave a bad husband, but a mother can never, never reject her son. If he is damned, she is damned with him….So go and wash, put on your clean school uniform and hold your chin up. I shall see to it that your fees are paid before we leave. After that I'm afraid, son, your life is in your own hand and those of your chi."

"Thank you, Mother," Adim said simply, and he determined to do well in his forthcoming examination. (18.12-13)

She had been brought up to believe that children made a woman. She had had children, nine in all, and luckily seven were alive, much more than many women of that period could boast of. Most of her friends and colleagues had buried more children than they had alive; but her god had been merciful to her. Still, how was she to know that by the time her children grew up the values of her country, her people and her tribe would have changed so drastically, to the extent where a woman with many children could face a lonely old age, and maybe a miserable death all alone, just like a barren woman? She was not even certain that worries over her children would not send her to her grave before her chi was ready for her. (18.87)