I was about six and on holidays in our hometown. Did we live in the city? Yes, but every Friday Evenings, we went home so we’d cultivate my parents’ yam, cocoyam and cassava plots on Saturdays, peel and process cassava or process palm oil on Sundays, then hurry back to Onitsha to get ready for school Sunday evenings. It was just about twenty minutes drive from our town. So, you’d consider us regular village kids because we knew and experienced life as our mates in the villages. Meanwhile, we attended school in the town. Every term, the day that school vacated is the day we were taken home to the village.
I already bonded with this family that had kids my age from constantly spending weekends in the countryside. Theirs was a peculiar family, all five kids were dada, boys and girls. They came to our house to play, and in turn, we went to theirs.
That’s how I found out details that threw me about one of them, even as a kid. The third child in the family and a girl, she was fondly called “Queen.” I can’t say if it was metaphorical or not that she was addressed thus, but the name stuck and she had an august carriage about her.
Every night when she slept, her locks were arranged in a new way different from how she wore it the previous day. So she always woke up to a new hair do. What I mean is this; if she had a bun on her hair today, tomorrow, she’d have four buns with the hair parted in the middle, and another day, it’d be left flowing. Every night! What was more perplexing to me is that there were no strings holding the hair in the position, yet it looked neat, brushed and we’ll cared for. When she slept, no light was allowed anywhere near her. People had to knock to enter any room where she slept. Aside these seemingly mysterious aspects of her, a was a good kid and fun to be with.
It was at the time I was friends with her that I encountered another dada. At the time, he was a boy of about twelve and was well known in Eziowelle, Abacha, Abatete and the environs. An uncle brought him to our house. I was astonished to find that the boy could read palms! He looked into my cousin’s palm and told him that he had a twin sister who died young and who was still very much with him! He told the uncle that brought him that he would have a tumultuous marriage, which in hindsight, turned true!
Now, you’d ask what became of this seer dada with big locks who brought much fame and material possessions to his parents.
It happened that he told men whose wives couldn’t conceive quickly what to do. His remedies were applauded as they were effective. Those who were helped by him brought bags of rice and money in shows of appreciation. The boy’s mother’s nwunye di became jealous, extremely so.
She waited and on one of those days that the woman left her son at home to get things from the market, the nwunye di took a pair of scissors, removed the entire locks and dumped them in their pit toilet.
The boy not only lost his powers, became crippled after a life threatening illness.
Ada Obi
