The Girl who Changed a Tradition

The Girl Who Changed a Tradition

Short Story

Sam Mwaka-karama

She looked. Then walked and looked back again her heart skipped… knocked her toe and stumbled two then three steps. She bent forward looking. No blood! A burning hot pain, that was all - must hurry, it was getting dark! Abeca hurried along she should have left earlier. Now you see, she had feared to take her early escape all this time… everybody in the village seemed to be looking at her – and strangely, even to make matters worse, her own aunt Lakwel did not understand.

“What did I tell you Abeca?” Aunty Lakwel had been angry and also doing all she could to keep her voice down and solicitous at the same-time. There were people within earshot… “Nen ba – the elders have already been here and, your issue has now been resolved! You can’t change what the elders have agreed upon: Wife heritage is a tradition. That culture will fight you”.

“A-a it is enough Auntie, I don’t want that man” said Abeca decisively

“Do you know what you are talking about?”

“Auntie I know exactly what I am talking about – my husband died and was buried; I can’t take another man even if he is his cousin brother… well maybe. Just maybe!”

 Abeca fell silent for a moment… bit on her lower lip contemplatively; she shuddered at the thought of having to sleep with Ogil Lajok for the rest of her life!

“Abeca stop playing around, you are not a little girl ‘just maybe’ what! Say it!”

“Maybe if it was someone else and not Ogil Lajok, I might have considered”

“That is a load of rubbish to say Abeca – it is the tradition you have to respect; do you know these people, you could wind-up dead”.

“Auntie, that is exactly what I want to get away from… there seem to be too many of very dark secrets in Larwecce here and I have come to hate this place ever since Ulaa-wiic died”. They fell silent another moment… slowly the charged atmosphere passed.

“Dok cen… go back Abeca – life is not like that; I also need you here which is why I introduced you to Ulaa-wiic… he was such a good looking nice person. A brave hunter - only to be put down by a Buffalo just after fatally spearing it; the short period you have been married to him here, things had become a lot easier for me – please go back to Ugil Lajok… you will get used to each other and eventually live well”.

“I was married to a good looking strong and brave hunter, Aunty, he is dead and gone – it is you who introduced me to Larwecce village people; it is not right to try to tie me down here for the rest of my life – to an ugly, invalid, poetic, lyrical Lukeme or Nanga and Adungu crooner” – what will the crooners sentiments help me? Help me cry all my life?

Auntie Lakwele Ukato - wanted even begged Abeca to stay – she had pleaded with her niece the day before, had tried to wring-out some agreeable commitment from her niece but it wouldn’t work. Things otherwise were falling to pieces between Auntie Lakwel and her niece Abeca.

Abeca couldn’t stand living with Ugil Lajok.

To Abeca, worst problem with Ugil was first of all his hideous looks having been born with a crack down his upper lip and a breakage down between his front teeth to give him a scatter-mouth and then, elongated spread-out front teeth. It was hard for a young woman to look at that face for a long moment. Let alone play a whole lifetime wife…

Even to further compound matters Ugil’s squint eyes were cataract blinded; even though at least his left eye had some small slot and through the thinned-out membranes of the cataract Lajok could see with strain and difficulty.

Ugil Lajok was talented otherwise in a weird sort of way, in days gone-by not long ago when his cousin brother Abeca’s husband Ulaa-wiic was still alive; the guy often played his Lukeme or sometimes Nanga in accompaniment with his haunty songs. The ugly crooner spread his poetic lyrical poverty through sometimes terribly dark nights… at first, as a newly married young woman less than a year before death of her husband; Abeca had even enjoyed Ugili’s crooning. Often in company of her great hunter husband, she had felt elated by the songs of the blind ugly man.

She had walked. And walked. The little numbness she had felt when she knocked her toe had gone. She was walking east then after crossing the Acwaa River, she would head north.

The sun had just gone down over the vast horizon. Crickets chirped. And the Ayweri bird scraped its last sundowner cried; wrrrret, wrrrret, wrrrret, wrrrrret, wrrrrret… she looked. And true the Ayweri bird was perched on top of an anthill a little way from the scanty trail she was following. The bird of the sunset had also seen her. Abeca mouthed her own self-blessing invoking the spirits of her ancestry to walk with her – suddenly, the fears all vanished.

The moon was still high on the eastern horizon at sundown. So that the night was immediately cloudless, clear. She could see very far. Another night bird had started her continuous nonstop song; tot tot tot tot tot tot tot tot tot tot tot tot tot… then the song of the children came to her mind in rhythm with the beat of that night bird; the song “Langwinye ki moo” . Now she really walked.

Her loincloth Udiye’e made of softened animal skin felt loose over her front and and lightly slapped her behind rhythmically.  She had several rounds of colorful beads on her waistline, round her wrists and neck. Abeca was bare feet and had nothing to cover her tiny molds of breasts. She held a small animal skin Kibeggu bundle whose long strap passed over her head to her other shoulder.

Abeca was young in her teenage and was childless. Her husband the hunter Ulaa-wiic died when they had only lived together one hunting dry season. It was in the second dry season that he died in the wilderness. Abeca had defied her favorite Auntie; Lakwele Ukato. And hardly did she know, but as she walked away that night – in her womb was a little fetus, pregnancy of the dead hunter. The man she loved had left her a seed! She was walking away towards another life. A change!

The Writer: Sam Mwaka-karama – Is an Independent Thinker, Author and Blogger