My Son Ran Mad For Falling In Love With A Strange Woman
admin
June 26, 2017
Share

Children! Every child would grow up to become a parent tomorrow. But how do you help a child who refused to be a child and would prefer to become a parent without first being a child! That is the lot of my wife and I as parents to our second son.
At the age of twenty-four, he came home one evening from Enugu where he lives and trades on articles in the company of one akatikolo woman who is old enough to be his mother and introduced her to us as his wife-to-be. He also had the effrontery to tell us that they had come for our blessings. My wife simply broke down in tears. My first son is yet to get married as he is only twenty-six years of age. As a man, I took it calmly and asked my wife to go inside as this was not an ordinary happening. I asked my wife to go and prepare them food to eat as it was dusk the time they arrived our village from Enugu.
As soon as they had retired, I excused myself on the pretext of going to fetch the palm-wine I asked my friend to get me in the morning; I quickly hurried down to the dibia’s house for immediate divination. I had to pay for express service as trying to catch a cock in my house would incite my son’s curiosity. The dibia had everything that I needed to satisfy and appease the gods for proper divination.
After proper consultations with the gods, the dibia confirmed my worst fears. My son has been fed some powerful charms by this young woman of about thirty-six – a woman far older than my son. When I asked for the remedies, the dibia simply told me to look for a strong man of God to minister deliverance on my son so that he would be set free from this strange woman from the land of the dead. I had started shaking by the time I realized that I knew no deliverance man of God in our community. Maybe I would ask my wife for she may know such a person.
I went home and met my son and his wife-to-be eating. I sat beside them and lied to them that the palm-wine I went for was yet to be brought home by the palm-wine tapper. The strange woman by my son’s side gave me a knowing smile that chilled my bones. It became obvious to me that she knew where I had gone to. I cleared my throat and asked her where she is from. She started by washing her hands and when she was done, she stared me down. I wanted to force myself to get an answer from her but a stronger power clipped my lips together as my tongue became as heavy as lead inside my mouth.
I stood up and went inside my obi to consult with my chi only to see that my shrine has been desecrated with urine all over the graven images handed down to me by my forbears. I still saw myself not being able to extract from myself a proper reaction to the abominable desecration of a god as old as two hundred years. What is greater than cricket has joined him in his hole! Chai! What am I going to do!
My wife came to tell me that she saw the strange woman come out of my obi while she was busy in the kitchen preparing them dinner. To my shock, my tongue untied and I gestured my wife to follow me out of my compound. We walked an earshot away from my mud fence before I told my wife the outcome of my outing. It was already dark when I asked her if she knew any strong man of God who would minister deliverance on our son. She knew no such person. My hope sank. I said to myself that no strong man comes into the house of a powerful man like me and snatch away his son from him! That would be a shame and a taboo. What tongue would I share my predicament with!
My enemies would mock me to a shameful death.
I did not sleep that night neither did I eat my dinner. My wife was shattered and there was no one to share my burden with in my search for solution to my son’s situation. Children! Where and how did he meet with this evil woman who does not have ordinary regard for the strength of my fore-fathers! The only church in our community does not have a deliverance minister or it is that such vogue was yet to get to our community. Now I see one of the disadvantages of antagonizing and standing in opposition against some churches from establishing in our community.
“I have tasted grief!” I shook my head as I searched my mind for any plausible solution to my son’s, nay, and my burden.
When a solution eventually came to me, I was able to close my eyes for some moments. As soon as it was morning the following day, I called my wife and told her I wanted to go to Chi at Aro. She encouraged me to do so. We didn’t want to wake my son and his strange woman up, so I stealthily left my compound only for me to run into this strange woman at a four-way junction. Goose bumps enveloped my entire body.
“How did she get here before me?”
She stared me down again before she said tersely in clenched teeth, “Go anywhere you like, your son is already ours!”
And before my very eyes, like an apparition, this devilish woman vanished into thin air.
I rammed my ofo into the ground and continued on my journey. By the time it was my turn to consult with the Chief Priest of Aro, I was told that the worst has happened. That my son would never be the same as my coming would result in him going mad. There were no remedies.
It is six months since my son went mad and the strange woman was not there when I came back from my sojourn for solutions to my son’s problem. I now have only a son left. My chi has disappointed me! I have wasted my effort at washing my hands cracking palm kernels!