The Birth of My Husband
My mother-in-law Grace was brave. She had gone to school for a few years at a time in the early 1920’s when not many girls did. She had made the decision on her own to become a Christian. Still, at the age of 16 the change from living with her family to living with a husband she barely knew, amidst a logging camp of mostly men, in an area where many people spoke another language was stark.
A new Igbo wife was expected to get pregnant in her first few months of marriage. But she did not. One morning after she had been in Sapoba for nearly a year she sat with the wife of another Igbo supervisor, a colleague of her husband’s. “My father said I would not be able to conceive because of our religion,” she said. “He put a curse on me. Can it be true that I won’t have children because I joined the Christians?”
“I am a Christian too,” the woman said, “and you can see my two children. I’m pregnant again and expect to have more offspring. No, it’s not true.”
As she began her second year in the camp, she decided to seek help. On the next market day, she approached one of the healers selling traditional medicines. It was embarrassing to explain her need, but she did. She came home with the dried bark of an evergreen tree. “Soak the bark in hot water for some time. Then drink a cup of the water every day for the next week,” the healer told her. It did nothing but make her feel slightly ill.
A few market weeks later when she had no result, she sought out another healer who sold her the leaves of a plant called ogilisi, to cook in a soup like the regular soups she cooked to eat with pounded yam. Again, there was no result.
Grace and Samuel paid letter-writers in the market to compose their letters home, reassuring their families they were well. But they knew everyone was waiting to hear about a child. Finally, one Sunday morning as they were beginning their third year of marriage, Samuel said, “We are not going to church today. We are going to the Dibia. Maybe he can help.”
“What will the mission priest say? Does he allow us to consult a native doctor?”
“We do not need to tell him. The mission priest does not understand our need to consult the ancestors. I think in their land they don’t even know their ancestors. This Dibia may help us find the reason you are not conceiving. Even if your father’s curse is at work, he may be able to remove its effect.”
She had her bath and dressed quickly, warmed the ora soup left from the night before, boiled water and made garri, took her husband’s food to him and returned to her cooking shed to eat her own. As soon as they finished eating he stood and called to her. “We will go now before the church people are arriving,” he said. Their path would take them near the church. She understood that even though he did not think the priest needed to know, he did not want to be questioned.
In less than an hour they were near the market in Sapoba, the same market where she had bought her useless remedies. Samuel paused to ask the way to the Dibia. A few minutes later they had reached his hut.
“Pam, pam,” Samuel said, hitching up his wrapper.
“Enter,” he heard. He stooped to go through the low doorway under the thatch roof, Grace following behind. In the dimness she made out the shrine in one corner of the hut, and the native doctor seated opposite. He greeted them as they sat on the floor in front of him. After breaking kola, he said, “What brings you here today, my children?”
“I have been at the UAC camp for six years. Three years ago, I went home to marry. I brought my wife here. My wife is not conceiving. It is past time for her to bear a child. We have come to ask for your help.”
On their way they had decided not to offer information about the curse. If he asked whether they knew any reason for her not becoming pregnant, then they would tell him. He did not ask.
He did ask if they had tried any traditional medicines. Grace explained the cures she had bought and used to no effect. “I will ask the ancestors for help,” he said. He reached into his raffia bag and pulled out a handful of seeds which he threw on the ground. He passed his hand over them, picked them up, and threw them again. Twice more he collected and threw the seeds. Then he turned to Samuel. “You must lay with your wife when the moon is full. She must be underneath you. Afterwards, she should lie still until the cock crows.”
Samuel thanked him and gave him a small bag of cowrie shells he had brought. For three months they tried his plan, but she did not get pregnant. She prayed every Sunday in church and every morning and night at home. One morning she went to the church and spoke to the priest about her problem. He prayed with her. “When God says it is time for you to have a child, you will conceive,” he said with a steady voice. She did not share his sense of confidence, but the next month she did not have her monthly bleeding. After another month she was sure.
“I think I am with child,” she said to Samuel when she lay down beside him on their mat. “I haven’t had my flow for two months. I have asked the other women. They say it is the right sign.”
“It is a good thing. I was beginning to think I would have to take another wife, even though the Christians say I should not.”
Her breasts got tender. Then in her fifth month she felt the baby move. She remembered women at home who were pregnant and had let her, when she was younger, feel their belly when their baby moved. She talked with the other Igbo women who assured her the baby’s movement was an ordinary part of her pregnancy. They offered other advice. “You must not take kola nut. You should not use too much pepper in your soup,” they told her.
One early morning in 1933, at the beginning of the rainy season, she felt the pain her women friends had told her to expect. She prepared Samuel’s breakfast of yam and oil as she did every day. “Today may be the time for the baby to come,” she said as he left for the work site.
A couple of hours later when her pain had become more frequent she went to the house nearby where her friend lived. “I think it is time,” she said. Her friend summoned the local traditional midwife. Together the women led Grace to the goat shed behind the house. They helped her lie down, urged her to push when it was time, and wiped away the sweat that poured off her. Three hours later the baby emerged, and the midwife cut the cord.
“Praise God. You have a baby boy,” she said to Grace as she placed the baby in her arms. An hour later Grace was back at home to greet her husband when he returned from work. He was ecstatic with joy when she showed him their baby.
Grace’s friends had come home with her and prepared the evening meal. “You know that our cousin is going home to Nanka tomorrow,” one of the friends said to Samuel. “He was visiting us for a few days. He could take a message for you.”
Samuel and Grace had not felt so happy since the day of their wedding six years earlier. They had a baby boy, they no longer had to fear her father’s curse, and a messenger would notify their parents within a few days.