The birthing began with the nwankpa demanding the shiny thing on the ekwu. Nwanyioma knew not to give in to such. Her duty was to her staff of power but she was obliged by law to tolerate the nwankpa – the rights of the foetus must be protected. Having thus garnered this knowledge, the nwankpa sifted through Nwanyioma’s mind again, insisting that he be accorded the same rights as the umuada permitted to wield the speculum. Nwanyioma wished she had kept the nwankpa from seeing the speculum because she would need every scrap of will she possessed to resist the urge to give in to its demands. If the nwankpa pinched her, she would pinch it back.
No nwankpa had ever demanded for the speculum – it was sacred to the midwife who used it to dilate the canal between the worlds of ala mmuo and ala mmadu. It gave passage for the mother to receive her child; welcomed new life and paid homage to life departed. This foetus wouldn’t need it. The chosen ones did not.
Nwanyioma ignored the nwankpa and pirouetted to the corner of the birthing hut where an oil lamp burned. The foetus too, seeing that Nwanyioma paid it no mind, stopped lashing out from within its mother and retreated, bidding its return. Its breath soon faded into its mother’s womb until Nwanyioma could no longer tell the breath of the mother from that of the child.
She settled her curved length into a small wooden chair, her bole and limbs drooping on the sides. This style of wooden chair was quite common in birthing huts, it denied the midwife rest, one Nwanyioma needed at the moment. She leaned back against the mud-plastered wall to maintain her balance. The last birthing had been a peaceful one. The child had been born, freely and fairly, into the lowest order of the hierarchy; a kamharida. Her breath caught in her chest at the thought of the battle that lay ahead with this one. The chosen one. Each puff of breath she took felt like she was struggling for air.
The nwankpa returned again as suddenly as it had left, with nothing but mischief. As it appeared and disappeared over and over again, the membrane enclosing it bobbed up and down the in-between place of Urenna, its mother. Nwanyioma was not pleased with the progress of the birthing and the milky sap of agony running down the side of Urenna’s face was a testament to her angst.
No nwankpa had ever demanded anything of her that was beyond her power. She frowned, wondering why any of the nwankpa thought they had the right to demand anything before making their entrance into the Ripọblik. After all, ala mmuo where they came from was a place of order. She sucked her teeth at the thought of the divide between the spirit world and the human world, that place called the Unknown. That place where the nwankpa transitioned from was rife with tricksters; and those wily figures were to blame for her present situation.
In her years of midwifery, Nwanyioma had come across many an nwankpa who had made attempts to usurp power in the Ripọblik before their birthing. The nwankpa made their demands quite alright; but they soon learned that in the Ripọblik, territorial hierarchy had to be established. Just as in the other territories around them, the nwankpa must not be allowed to infringe on the authority of the Ripọblik that they were born to govern. A child should never be above the authority of its father.
In that moment, she reminded herself to accept that the nwankpa sometimes failed to realise that various privileges were bestowed upon them as rulers of the Ripọblik. Why, she thought, as she shifted her frame on the chair, even her own son had been born a kamharida; his father had absconded when Nwanyioma announced to him that she was with child. It was unfortunate that her son’s eriri uwa, his link to its mother, had registered its father’s hesitation and its greed for power sprouted from a thirst to avenge Nwanyioma’s broken heart. In seeking revenge against his father, he had pushed his own demands to the point that threatened to bring anarchy into the Ripọblik.
She’d been in the Ripọblik for a long time, and had learnt that the seed mothers, the mpkulu who visited her birthing hut, did not know many things. It was the duty of young maidens to prepare themselves for motherhood under the tutelage of the umuada. They were expected to plant their feet firmly and be ready to serve the Ripọblik when the time came.
A full moon ago, Nwadi, an mpkulu whose child had been born a kamharida, indulged her long-throat for the choicest foods, engaged in the baby-mama dance and made sure to extort exorbitant gifts from well-wishers who surrounded her. Despite all the ceremonies and rituals to herald the child’s birthing, Nwadi had not taken out time to thoroughly sieve through the thoughts in her head before coming to Nwanyioma. Her long-held fear of suffering a ruptured womb before it was time for the birthing made its presence known as Nwanyioma aided her in bringing her seed into the world. Nwanyioma negotiated as best as she could with the child, but its mother’s fear had already palpated tension in her membranes that travelled through the eriri uwa to the foetus. The damage was done, and it was too late. He was a kamharida.
Nwadi had failed to guard herself from her fear-filled ruminations; and her lack of accountability to her child had nearly thwarted the umuada’s efforts in reworking the state. The Ripọblik had been in dire need of a new leader, and not only had Nwadi failed herself, she had also failed the umuada as well as the will and wishes of the people that elected them. The birthing of a merije was solely dependent on the mkpulu; and this was why the title, Nneka, Mother is Supreme, was so sacred that an mkpulu had to work hard to birth a worthy leader to earn the title.
Nwanyioma stretched out of her wooden chair, went to Urenna and turned her from side to side to ease her pain. Nwanyioma recalled when she was a young girl sleeping against her mother’s breasts in her chambers, and how her mother had told her the vision the umuada had for their people. The umuada was another arm of the settlement’s lineage and had fought alongside the umunna, their male counterpart, to replace the former separatist organisation; the State Union. Led by Ekenma, the umuada bore a dream to establish a new order in the Mba. In the new order, the Mba which would be made up of the umunna and umuada who would take turns to report the affairs of the settlement to the executive Council of Elders. This system would be based on a lottocracy where each legislative armwas chosen randomly each year. And although the umuada had been allies with their male counterparts, the umunna for thousands of years, the impact of their influence in the governance of the settlement was not felt as it should have been. Things changed when some of the umuada, led by Ekenma, protested against the lottocracy that excluded them. They migrated to the land of the Mirrored Ones in the 2030s, their exodus precipitated by how deep the ambitions of the Council of Elders ran among its own members. Their settlement was in chaos and the umuada sought to fix it. For years, they lived in the land of the Mirrored Ones in a bid to learn their ways of government.
Many, many years later, long after Ekenma and most of the umuada who started the revolution had passed away, their land carried the sorrow of Ala who wept for her children lost far away. The Council of Elders gathered, and a retinue of titled men along with some women whose mothers had remained in the settlement after the departure of the umuada, pleaded with them to return home. The return of the umuada to the settlement, again swept away the existing order when they presented a new totem, a measuring scale, to the executive Council of Elders. This time, they used the totem to measure out an equal amount of power that would go round each arm of the government in the Ripọblik. It was now impossible for power and authority to rest only in one group while the others groaned under the weighty influence of absolute power. This new democratic settlement, called the Ripọblik by the Mirrored Ones, the population with pale skin that once colonised them, was suggested by the umuada and adopted by the Council of Elders.
#
When the Council of Elders was formed by Chukwu, his intention was for sovereignty, not inordinate ambition, to rest with every member of the community. In order to establish this divine mandate, the umuada chose the best selection from Ala’s children, the nwankpa. The birthing, relating to the nwankpa, from which the next ruling class of the merije would emerge, was greatly revered by the Ripọblik. And because of this, the merije was ranked above the kamharida who could not be leaders.
The kamharidas had a longer lifespan and outlived the merijes; the merijes lifespan of forty had been decided by their foremothers as a reward for their strength and leadership; followers were in abundance but leaders were few. It was an honour, Nwanyioma’s mother had said, that the umuada were chosen to birth the number of merije decreed to exert power. It was an honour, Nwanyioma thought, as the last stage of birthing eclipsed over Urenna, that she was chosen to deliver the child of an mkpulumma, a well-bred seed like Urenna.
“Your son is one of the Chosen,” Nwanyioma said to Urenna, who smiled for the first time since the previous night when she had been brought in. Reassured, Nwanyioma probed her midsection.
“Your firstborn child is almost here. He shall be crowned merije and we will name him Ahamefula, for his name shall never be lost”. She plucked a young leaf from her crown, pried open Urenna’s midsection and planted the leaf that would blossom till the fortieth year of the life cycle of Ahamefula. This signalled the traditional recording of the birth.
“Ahamefula is still so far away…”, Urenna agonised.
“Taaaaa!” Nwanyioma cautioned her sharply. This was no place for nso ala. That would be a taboo.
She lifted Urenna’s upper body off the birthing mat while the woman supported herself with her elbow. Urenna, in between grunts, kept her gaze on Nwanyioma as she bore pressure on her lower body. Her eyes, sharp brown slits barely visible through the shock of hair plastered on her forehead, never lost sight of Nwanyioma. Nwanyioma too, kept her eyes on Urenna, never looking away, shaken, but hopeful.
“Nma! I would like one look at the shiny thing”, the nwankpa broke into Nwanyioma’s thoughts from within its mother’s womb as Urenna, exhausted, rested on her side.
“Hush!” Nwanyioma cautioned. Her words pried into the core of Ahamefula’s ego and kept him quiet. She continued speaking, her words kneading Ahamefula’s ego until it swelled and burst.
“The speculum is for birthing the kamharida, for the ones who pray not to fall, those mere earthlings. Do you not know that your enterprise is higher than theirs?”
“May I fall then!” Ahamefuna spat out the words from the depth of Urenna’s belly.
“May you not fall!” Nwanyioma countered. Her heart raced and her breath came quickly. She left Urenna’s side and paced to and fro to calm her troubled heart before turning to the corner of the room. She walked over and stooped to pick up the speculum off the ekwu, and examined the silvery tool with its distinct blade and handle. The tang and the finger ring were a bluish metal; the colour of the skies above and the river underneath in Chukwu’s dynasty. She ran her gnarled fingers over the smoothness of the tool before placing it carefully into the nkata she wove for her trade tools and charms.
At that moment, she heard the birthing drums rumble in the distance. In a public meeting held earlier between the Council and the Elders, the umunna had been informed about the expected arrival of the nwankpa. It was the duty of the umunna to welcome the nwankpa. The Council of Elders too had gathered at the mbari, Ala’s shrine, the smoke wafting above the rafters of the hut signalled their arrival.
“Nothing happened.”
“You did not speak to ajo chi, did you?” Nwanyioma questioned. She now had reason to suspect that an ajo chi had a hand in Ahamefula’s ambition and could not help but wonder if Ahamefula understood how deep ambition could destroy the pillars of the Ripọblik.
Ahamefula became irritated at the mention of his notorious personal god. He burst out in anger. “You will not speak to me in that manner, Nwanyioma! You have no understanding. You are the keeper of the realm, not a merije. Do you care how we feel? Perhaps you do. You, like us, are only capable of one thing. I understand that one thing – fear. I smell it here. I also hear the igba drums in the distance. Do you hear the stomping on the earth, the drumming thumping in frenzy to signal my birth? You fear that you will let them down.”
“But your mother—” Nwanyioma pleaded, exhausted.
“Taaaaa, she has the strength of Ala, the totem of the python. Ala is with me. I am like the crescent moon that peeks at mere mortals from the skies. I shall make my arrival as merije when I want.”
“What have you become, eh Ahamefula?” Nwanyioma taunted. “An earthling?”
Ahamefula rumbled from within. “No!” he thundered. “Earthlings have ceased to interest me, and I will exhaust all possibilities not to return as one. No power in being an underling, a mere thing in the hands of the Council of Elders. I live for the power. Just as you, Nwanyioma. Tell me the power that you have does not go into your head.”
“Taaaaa! May you not fall!” Nwanyioma rebuked Ahamefula.
“We shall have our own Ripọblik, you and I”, said Ahamefula in response. “I shall be most pleased to have you in my Council.”
“May you not fall!” Nwanyioma rebuked, this time, she stomped her lower limbs on the red earth for emphasis and walked away from Ahamefula.
Ahamefula belched from the recess. The potion to ease the pain of the birthing mother was beginning to wear off. There was only so much the midwife could give to Urenna before it seeped into the foetus’s bloodstream. She’d already given her too much. That was probably why Ahamefula was rambling like a cock who had lost its head. It was a period of trial for her too, she had to stay strong in order to ward off temptation. If she could resist the foetus’s demands, then she had in turn produced a good seed. But if she gave in, then the Ripọblik was at the risk of annihilation.
“Chukwu made gods out of men,” Ahamefula puffed. “With the help of Our Mother Ala, they made us Igwes, Ozo title holders, okparas. Everything the eye sees, they made. But the jealousy and greed of man took away that power from us. But you and I know the story beyond that. Because it was the foolishness of man that caused Chukwu to wipe out the first generation. We threatened his universe and with the interference of some notorious beings, we destroyed what He created. I have been here before, once as an earthling a long time ago. I was born into the Igwe’s palace, not as royalty, but the illegitimate child of the king’s poor mistress. My mother hid me in the crevices of her hut, and seeing that my father paid me no mind, I took my leave of this world. Then when the Ripọblik came, I tried to return, but seeing it was your mother, a former mkpulu, tainted by the blood of one with pale skin, I retreated, again. I have waited and waited but you have refused to make the journey on the crossroads. It would be impossible for me to rule unless you bring me into the world.”
“It is time,” Nwanyioma said and returned to the birthing mat.
“Upon this day, and with the powers bestowed upon me by Chukwu and with approval of the Council, I welcome you. You have passed your test, therefore, you will not develop greed for the glittering things of this world. You will be able to tame your ego as a leader, it will not grow big enough that you will seek to usurp power. Your lineage will continue in our peaceful settlement. Iseee.”
Ahamefula suddenly fell into a deep sleep. He snored so loudly that Nwanyioma suspected that the cord had wrapped itself around the foetus’s neck. Ahamefula had moved too much during his testing. She knew she had to act quickly. Nwanyioma fed Urenna the last gulp from the birthing juice that hung from the vines above them. She shook the broad leaves above and more liquid escaped into a small calabash. She would fill Urenna up with the juice and make the delivery before the potion got to the foetus.
#
The sweet herb water turned bitter as soon as another contraction caught Urenna midway between drinking. Nwanyioma grabbed some herb twigs from above and snapped them into smaller bits, set it over the ekwu, the smouldering mass within burning the fragrant wood. The incense would ease some of Urenna’s pain.
“Take some more juice,” Nwanyioma cajoled. “We do not have all night to bring Ahamefula to us. If the foetus was female, I would have said she was wearing her adornment, rubbing ori and decorating her body with uli”. She hoped her light banter would relieve Urenna as she made it through the travails of childbirth.
Nwanyioma also bore the burden of the birthing. The spiritual task of birthing was far greater than the secular roles of settlement which the women leaders of the umuada council carried out among their fellow women and the community at large. When their foremothers had made the pact with Chukwu to establish the Ripọblik, there was the agreement that none of the merije would live beyond forty years. This was because the tenets of the Ripọblik required each merije to live through the full life cycle of forty years before they were stripped of their power, knowledge and essence. Then began the samsara, the cycle of birth and death for the merije which accompanied them until they transitioned to the great beyond. In that way, the umuada made sure the seven pillars of the Ripọblik stood strong. Nwanyioma had lived long enough to see how the limitation of life expectancy made the merije take their responsibility as leaders of the Ripọblik seriously.
Nwanyioma lifted her hands to the skies in gratitude. “Urenna, brace yourself for what is to come,” she said before prying into her womb to see the nwankpa that stubbornly remained hidden inside. Ahamefuna’s birthing had exhausted her. Nothing good comes easy, her mother used to say. Her bones ached as she eased Ahamefuna into the world. She called on Ala to give her strength.
She watched as the sac within Urenna ballooned out in a perfect circle. In the hazy fluid within, she saw Ahamefula. He had presented himself feet first. She sucked her teeth in anger. She probed the membrane to turn him around, but Ahamefula sank into the murky waters of his habitation and continued snoring. Ahamefula’s destiny presented itself as a lucky one, Chukwu had given him the seven divinities, but his personal will was weak.
A short time passed.
Then Nwanyioma recognized a different voice floating into the birthing hut. It most certainly was coming from Ala Oma, the hut next door. It was the Good Land, the place where the merije transitioned to the other realm. She told the mkpulu that the decision to take away their children was never an easy one, but it had to be done to maintain the Ripọblik. It also warded off their warring neighbours because the soldiers from the Ripọblik were always young and hot-blooded men. Ready to defend. Ready to fight. Ready to lead.
Nwanyioma wiped the corner of her eyes. She leaned towards the carved door and listened again. She cracked the door open. The roll of drumming and accompanied singing that floated in from the small gathering outside was neither a farewell nor welcome song.
Ijeoma, the guardian of Ala Oma, stood at the door. In one hand he held a gourd of akpuru achia, and with the other hand, he dug his staff into the red earth. Behind him, the gentle throbbing of the igba drums urged the child to come to the Ripọblik because it was a sweet place, flowing with oil and good meat.
“Are you clean?” Nwanyioma asked in her capacity as custodian of Ala’s omenala, the laws and customs that governed all their institutions. The guardian of Ala Oma who was not in good standing was not allowed close to new life within any of the four market days of the week. Not until the end of the Great Afor market day.
“Yes, I have not seen any army ants.”
Nwanyioma sensed a different urgency as Ijeoma leaned closer and whispered his foul gin words. “The merije in my custody has not passed to the land of our fathers. Have you welcomed the nwankpa yet? I need the newborn’s caul.”
Nwanyioma looked back into the hut. Urenna kept well. She shook her head and let the visitor in. The chorus outside faded as she shut the door.
Ijeoma raised his gourd to the rafters of the hut after he peered into Urenna’s midsection. Nwanyioma was obviously having a difficult time with this one from what he saw.
“Take a sip and laugh”, he said, handing her the gourd. Nwanyioma took a swig. Her mouth had been so dry that the drink burned her tongue. The drink didn’t live up to its name. Akpuru achia indeed.She spat on the red earth and wiped her mouth. Ijeoma laid his staff on the floor, away from the birthing mat. They both had work to do.
“Nwanyioma, it is time.”
Nwanyioma would have wanted to keep any other mkpulu as calm as possible while the merije passed away in Ijeoma’s chambers. But Urenna was strong, this was not the first time she would hear the death drums. She probed the membrane again and Urenna’s backache intensified as Ahamefula floated away from Nwanyioma’s prying hands. She grabbed Urenna’s sides to ease the weight of the child as another wave of contraction coiled around her waist like the limbless aju-ala when it wrapped itself around its prey. Urenna lay back on the mat as the wave of pain passed. She felt like she was suffocating as the sounds of the death drums in the distance turned into a tangible presence in the room.
Nwanyioma approached Urenna.
“Urenna, you can hear the death drums. They have played for too long. The merije must now join his brothers and fathers long gone. But he needs you.”
“You must understand the urgency,” Ijeoma said to Urenna. “You must agree to help the merije, he is having trouble with his transition. We need you to bring forth this baby, else…”
“His name is Ahamefula—” Nwanyioma snapped. She wanted him gone.
“You need to bring forth Ahamefula, he holds the key into the next world,” he said, then quietly retreated to a dark corner of the room as though he had read Nwanyioma’s thoughts.
“Urenna, you must do the needful now, so the waiting merije can journey well. He is impatient to leave. Do not think of rest just yet.”
Nwanyioma wiped the corners of her eyes. Something caught in her throat and she swallowed painfully. The akpuru achia was indeed beginning to take over her common sense.
Urenna, her body wracked by pain, began to pray as her birth pangs progressed. “Oh Ala, mother of all children, help your son to return to the land of our fathers in the great beyond. His task is done. Let him go, and if it is his destiny to return, may he make the journey when his generation is long gone. I praise you. I thank you”.
Just then, Urenna’s birth pangs seemed to deepen and her moaning increased, urging Nwanyioma to take to delivering the child. This time, she was hopeful that the child would cooperate.
“The caul, we need the membrane,” Ijeoma called out to Nwanyioma from the recess. At that moment, Nwanyioma dug her hands into the groaning woman and pulled out the membrane. The entity looked like a universe of its own – the veins that criss-crossed all over, red and green, like the blood in their veins, the produce of their farms. It was shaped like an egg, made more visible to the eye as Ahamefula’s weight thinned out the sac.
Ijeoma rushed to Nwanyioma who turned away from Urenna to hand him Ahamefula’s membranous lining. Outside, he raised it to the skies then ran to Ala Oma where the merije waited for his transition.
Nwanyioma opened the birthing sac with all her devotion and attention. There lay the most innocent of children, his arms raised in front of his face. A loud cry from Ahamefula pierced through as the cold air swept over him. She separated the cord between the merije and his mother with the blade of an m̀kpà.
Once she had ascertained that his breathing was normal, Nwanyioma wrapped the child with a large strip of fresh banana leaves and laid him on the birthing mat to tend to Urenna as her body eased out the placenta. In a later ritual, Urenna would bury the placenta where other seed mothers would squat over and urinate on it, to ward off infertility.
On one arm, Nwanyioma carried Ahamefula to her wooden stool, and with the other, she set a calabash before her. She filled it with warm water from the herb pot before soaking in a sponge made from dried coconut husks until it softened enough to be used on the newborn. Next, she made a herbal bath in the calabash, adding a broth of medicine that smelled like the earth. She kept a cup close by, it was filled with ude-aki, the black crude kernel oil that would provide relief for the coldness and discomfort associated with a night birth.
Urenna looked up joyfully when Nwanyioma brought Ahamefula to her and nodded her approval when Nwanyioma told her it was time to present the merije to the Ripọblik. Ahamefula was The Chosen. Not only was he a merije, he was also a caul bearer. His foetal abode had become the bridge that would aid his predecessor’s transition. It was uncommon for it to happen, but it did.
Nwanyioma, with the confidence of a guardian, swung the wooden door of the birthing hut open and cried to the waiting crowd:
Onye nuru akwa nwa
Me ngwa ngwa eeeee
obughi otuonye nwe nwa
Whoever hears the cry of a baby
should hasten up eeee
Not only one individual owns a child.
Nwanyioma received a few shakes on her shoulder in salutation for returning from the journey between life and death. She went to the mbari and presented Ahamefula to the Council of Elders before returning to the crowd. The people prevailed because Nwanyioma had prevailed. But amidst the drumming that had stopped abruptly and the celebration that followed, Nwanyioma’s attention was turned to Ala Oma. She had birthed the departing merije; his birth had been like that of an earthling, quick and without negotiations. For a fleeting second, she wished she could go and bid him farewell.
In the nearby hut, Ijeoma looked at the merije laid out on the pallet. The long lashes no longer fluttered and its mouth, once hidden by a thick moustache, slacked open in one corner. His cord with the Ripọblik had been severed. Ijeoma ordered his porters to carry the merije out for the crowd to see. The terrible groan that rose from Nwanyioma’s bosom when she saw the departed merije was soon replaced with the joyous song of the crowd as they welcomed Ahamefula:
Onye nuru akwa nwa
Me ngwa ngwa eeeee
obughi otuonye nwe nwa
Whoever hears the cry of a baby
should hasten up eeee
Not only one individual owns a child.
#
Nwanyioma watches the child as he peeks around the mud walls of her hut. Usually, children spied on her because legend went that she was their mother and that they were born from the udara tree in her compound. It was said that when she sucked on the fruit, she swallowed its large seeds. Each fruit had five seeds. After a few moons, the seeds grew and at night, while the moon howled, she regurgitated and filled the village with children.
The child approaches her. The nwankpa looks familiar – the sharp angles of its shoulders, the dimpled place on its head. But she had delivered too many of them to remember. She leans forward to get a better look at the child. Then suddenly, the child rushes up to her. She is taken aback, and with her last strength, she springs up from her chair. He grabs her arm with a force bigger than his size and leads her to the bush behind her house. There he points to the herbaceous vines of yams, the seed crop of Ala. She glances at where he points to among the foliage. The plant flourishes among other tree roots. This plant is about twice his size.
Harvest time is near.
“Is that mine?” he asks.
“Who are you?” She questions, more out of incredulity at the audacious child than curiosity.
“I am Ahamefula. And you … are my mother.”
