Killing the Girls

By Adakole Ella

In the late 1960s, the teenager Echeune flees the wrath of a society that discriminates and alienates her gender into the wilderness.

Born in triple succession of girls means ancient myths is at work and makes her worthless.

In pursuit of a new leaf, she confronts enemies worse than she did leave behind. She survives by hairs breathe but gains enigmatic powers and returns, engaging cultural oracles in a mysterious battle that exceeds all expectation as men brittles in a comic, exorbitant, and sad manner into the gender they so despised.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Partridge Publishing Africa
• Release date: Mar 2, 2015
• ISBN: 9781482804454

Adakole Ella

Adakole Ella was born in Nigeria in 1963. The son of a right-leaning politician whose first novel, “The Good Evil,” has sold more than three hundred thousand copies. A feminist activist and a freelance writer, he attended the Ahmadu Bello University Zaria and read Glass Technology.

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Copyright © 2014 by Adakole Ella.

ISBN:      Softcover      978-1-4828-0446-1

                eBook         978-1-4828-0445-4

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CONTENTS

Synopsis Killing The Girls

Dedication

Acknowledgement

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Glossary Of Words

SYNOPSIS

KILLING THE GIRLS

In the late 1960s, the teenager, Echeune flees the wrath of a society that discriminates and alienates her gender into the wilderness.

Born in triple succession of girls means ancient myths is at work and makes her worthless.

In pusuit of a new leaf, she confronts enemies worse than she did leave behind. She survives by hair’s breathe but gains enigmatic powers and returns engaging cultural oracles in a mysterious battle that exceeds all expection as men brittles in a comic, exhorbirant and sad manner into the gender they so despised.

DEDICATION

This book is dedicated to Isu, my mother, and Ella, my father, and all women across the globe, especially, those who have demonstrated beyond doubt that there’s no ceiling in what the feminine gender can pursue and achieve in endeavors of life, disproving that dictum that women were meant only for the kitchen.

This proven ground cuts across the fields of commerce, politics, finance, sports, movies, culture and society, etc. But because of space limitation, I chose to mention but a few names to be a bit unequivocal. They include; Ngozi Okonjo Iweala, Elen Johnson Searllif, Christiana Fernandez Kirchner, Yelena Isinbayava, Aung Sansun Kyi, Hillary R. Clinton, Onma D. Mark, Madam Angela Markel, Gloria Aroyo, Prof. Dora Ifudu Akunyili, Oprah Winfrey, Annika Sorentan, Kate Winslet, Ada Eza, Winnie Mandela and Martha Karua.

Others include; Lizzy Echinu Onche, Vrinda Grover, Judith Rotimi Amaechi, Miss Ene Opita, Ladi Obekpa, Onyechi Ochiba, Ngbakeni Grace Osaro, Kate O. Ocheibi, Nene Idah, Elakeche A. Olokpo, Ikwubiela E. Onobu, Oganya Carew, Aishatu Adamu Musa, Faith Sam Elaigwu, Enehi O. Ogale, Juliana Agwo, Winnie Kuku, Charity Idah, Cecilia Adikwu, Ada Bob Tyough, Patience Adakole Ella, Omeche Okoko, Madam Ogelegbo Okoh and National Council of Women Soceities (Abuja).

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

It will not be incidental to accept the valuable contributions of some very important people whose kind gestures are indelible to me in the course of this work. Some of them have also made useful contributions to women development in their capacity. Even people whose advices and benevolent acts have touched the lives of baby girls and old women are worthy of my acknowledgement here. They include: Ranee S. Clark, Gen. Harrison Adoga, Dr. I. Enokela, Mr.[Igbaka] Aklo Agada, Prof Yusuf A. Obaje, Mac Roy Odeh, Joseph Obelle, Mr. Jemetofe Kuale, Mr. Joe Ogbu and Kris Kindall.

CHAPTER ONE

My first two babies are girls. With this pregnancy, my husband has already gone to pick a new bride, said an expectant mother, appearing frustrated and dejected in a flowing gown, revealing her bulging stomach.

That’s certainly not new. But who knows whether the new bride will bear a baby boy, responded an aged trado-psycho-therapist in sequine, chequered wrapper and a silk brown head tie.

He desperately wants a boy so he does not fall a victim of the culture of alienation, and secondly, he wants a boy to carry on the branch of his family tree through generations, said the pregnant lady.

Who tells him a girl would not carry a dynasty right through generations? The therapist voiced with a pitifull grin.

Well, that seems to be the odd and the traditional thinking of an average Amla man, she said, rubbing off sweat from her face with a piece of hankerchief.

Young woman, please stand up and undress, the therapist, Onyajenu, instructed kindly.

Alright! The pregnant woman muttered, trembling.

Hang your gown on the arm of that empty chair to your right, Onyajenu directed further, gesturing to the chair.

How old is this pregnancy today? The old woman enquired, stooping over the patient.

Just four months, mummured the pregnant lady.

And you are this big? Onyajenu queried after a brief interval.

…compared to my last pregnancy, this is a child’s play, said the worried patient.

Turn round, and come closer, Onyajenu instructed once again but with a pitiful gaze.

The woman, now only in under wear, got round the medium size table and stood before the ancient woman. The heaviness of her tummy became more conspicuous as if it was a nine month old pregnancy.

Onyajenu scrutinized the belly from the heart region downwards in a gentle manner with her eyes and terminated her curiosity right at the abdomen. She rolled her right hand through the same route down to where her eyes terminated its observation. She followed with her right ear, stooping with pains as she glided down. Her right ear ran the curve gently to her abdomen. The granny stood there for a few more seconds and asked the patient to return to her seat and get dressed. After the patient had been seated, Onyajenu said, You have a male baby in the making. As good as it had sounded, the bearer’s eyes became mirthful that morning. The patient departed the Trado-psycho-therapy clinic with great joy. This is not abracadabra. This is part of Amla myth and not an element of witchcraft. It is a cherished act of psycho-therapy, full of magical characteristics.

The bell rang again, and the shrill sound ushered in another patient, slightly older than the previous one but with a similar problem. She sat where the last patient just vacated.

Good morning Granny, she greeted humbly.

Good morning, how do you do? The granny inquired slowly, can I help you, please?

This is my third pregnancy and the previous two produced females, the patient said.

Then what do you want me to do? The therapist thundered sarcastically.

Granny, please, I want you to find out the sex of my baby for me, I’m worried

Undress and come forward, said the Granny in a low and encouraging voice. The patient pulled off her gown. She submitted herself to the ancient woman for examination. She was standing in patial nudity before the oracle.

How many months old is this one? asked the granny.

This is the seventh month, Granny, the patient responded, trembling.

With the visual observation ritual, Onyajenu followed with her normal hand diagnoses and subsequently, her ears. She then observed the mandatory seconds of silence and proclaimed, Madam, you have a baby girl in the making. This was greeted with a wild but painful wailing from the patient. As the patient cries in bitterness, she fibbles with her gown as she tries to dress up amid muddled utterances.

Madam, the therapist called. There’s nothing wrong with a baby girl, there’s only something wrong with the culture. Don’t cry, go home and think of a savior. Do not terminate the pregnancy or do something sinister, the oracle consoled.

The outcome of the examination has inadvertently placed the pregnant lady on the wrong side of the culture. On delivery of her baby girl, being the third in succession, the mother and her children would vacate normal residence for an outpost quarters called alienated homes until a requisite rite of cleansing for the taboo girls is performed.

Inspite of Onyajenu’s weak and impaired muscles, the burning desire to give out her services were enormous. Like nature’s most reliable source of record keeping, the tree ring, Onyajenu is the carbon ring of Amla history, and most successful Traditional-psycho-therapist in the entire Apa land.

Women from Adoka, Agila, Emichi and Otukpo, and even, the most remote part of Apa land, would seek Onyajenu’s wealth of knowledge to Amla. Amla was a relatively modern village perched on a chasm to the north of Otukpo metropolis. Starting as early as six a.m. most mornings, women, often pregnant ones, would float routinely on foot, or pedal uneasily on bicycles, seat delicately on motorbikes or seat comfortably in cars or even wobble cautiously in a group to the last apartment. The house seats on a little descending slope by the meandering road that runs through Amla to Emichi.

Every year, for the past thirty eight years, more than ten thousand women on the average and men hungry for more knowledge, would visit Onyajenu.

Women, especially, those bogged down by the anxiety of becoming victims of the culture of alienation, would make inquest, mostly with ease and atimes with relative difficulties.

The choice would be Amla village and the house; the one on the left hand side by the old mahogany tree as you go out of the village. On most days, Onyajenu’s compound would be a bee-hive of people. Women, especially pregnant ones will appear quietly with the uncertainty of the mind that would fluctuate between tension and chronic fear as they try to sort out their problems. They were engulfed in the fear of being separated from mainstream society into extreme difficulties if they had their third baby girl in a role. They would go to the old woman to try to scratch off one part of the history of the Amla people and perhaps, seek antidote, or rather veer into un-pleasant alternative to alienation to lesson their eternal pains. Some would abort their baby successfully while some would pay tragically with their lives.

Onyajenu’s prowess in Amla oral history and trado-psycho expertise was of course, tied to her great-great-grandmother.

Onyajenu’s sixth mother was a victim of an apparition visitation and thereafter, a living witness to the subsequent accidental culture of alienating baby girls and their mother borne by the mystery of the apparition. Onyajenu’s grannies had however, laid the foundation, a very strong thresh-hold of knowledge of Amla oral history for Onyajenu’s emerging grand-children. Onyajenu being the only vestige of the family, became one of the most powerful beacons of the two-way history of the people, and of course, the most reliable of the account of an apparition visitation.

When Onyajenu was fifteen years of age, the elderly people of Amla origin had already begun to tap from her spring of wealth of knowledge of Amla hitory, especially those with the opinion that viewing the mysterious creature implores weakening element in Amla society. This view of course, was the opinion developed and held by the family of the recalcitrant ruling Monarch, whose great-great-grand-father was last visited by the creature that appeared in Amla about four hundred years ago.

On one cold, dry morning of January, 1981, a woman from east Amla would be the thirteenth person to seek the knowledge and perhaps, explanations into the culture that alienates a woman on the birth of three females in succession.

As early as six a.m., a woman in traditional maternity gown would have set out from the last street on the east, by the edge of the Mud Fish Pond, diligently but in mixed feelings. She would walk through the alienated community and series of near empty intersecting roads in pursuit of knowledge. Her destination: the ancient woman’s clinic. The clinic was the last house by the mahogany tree and in twenty five minutes, Enajuma was across the Trans rural road to the house of the old woman.

The burnt clay brick bungalow houses both the old woman’s living quarters and the Trado-clinic. The clinic faces the rural road in diagonal alignment, while the living wing faces the direction of the setting sun. Being the thirteenth person seated on the long running wooden benches, thirty minutes would pass before it would be Enajuma’s turn. The queue was long and tiring, stretching up to the mahogany tree, and to the edge of the road. Every five minutes or so, a woman would depart the consulting room with either tears dripping down her cheeks or clutching a smile to her face. At the strike of the bell, the anxiety stricken Enajuma took her turn in the consulting room.

Now seated in the antique office, though neatly kept with old upholstery chairs and formica table in perfect maintenance, there was no scientific equipment of any sort. Enajuma’s fear worsened as she was made to face the Oracle and her aid, a young offspring of the old woman’s lineage who just dropped in. Onyajenu got down to the usual ritual of prodding patients to talk.

Madam, she called. What benefit of us are you seeking?

Enajuma with a little caution tempered with great fear, rose fidgeting. She plodded gingerly to the end of the table on which the therapist rested.

You could see, granny, I am heavy with pregnancy. My first two babies are girls. She paused as if getting more confused, then, in another moment, as if startled awake by some realities, she went on, "I am very confused about my expectation.

If it turns out that I have a baby girl, you know certainly what will become of me; I’ll be on the other side of the society. Please, I need your help before I do unimaginable things."

The oracle coughed quietly then led Enajuma round the table to properly profer solutions to her anxiety. As the patient collected herself into a proper position, she raised her gown up, and the old woman took an effortful gaze at Enajuma’s inflated tummy as if piercing through with a mechanical eye, then followed with the rest of the rituals. Examination done with, the Granny concluded professionally what fate had bestowed on Enajuma – a baby girl. Onyajenu had been found to be more than 90 percent correct in her prediction and so, more than 90 percent of her patients took her diagnosis very seriously.

In the beginning of time, Onyajenu began once again with cracked voice but tried to keep it steady to give credence to her job and perhaps, a little moral upliftment to her patient.

Apa women were born equal to one another and to men, she hesitated and then followed up. Then one early morning at a distant time in the past, everything suddenly changed till today. She would stop, take in some delicate breath and saliva and would then go on in a low but steady voice and speed. In the silence of that morning, an apparition appeared in the form of a dejected creature before a woman called Etachum, who was a devoted mother of course, and a wife to one Abogonye in their small locality at the fringes of the Ochito forest and caves here in west Amla. It’s not too far from here you know. She stood up with difficulty, and pointed westward, through her open wooding window to a spot, which could be about a hundred and fifty metres away. Enajuma gazed through the window with keen and concerned interest. The creature was a harbinger of good tidings for the Amla people and therefore, was to strengthen the general reproductive level that was lacking in the people. She continued, "Before then, Amla population was just at a mere 330 people, and only ten percent were female.

This ugly creature, red winged with wrap-around eyes on a small, angular head, was nevertheless, not a ghost. It had six partly interlocking legs with a tapered belly, and this made the creature look like it’s belching. However, its two antennas poking from its neck spoke of a famous house pest, the roach specie, as it stood with its imposing figure before the heavily pregnant Etachum. Shocked and trembling, Etachum, who was cooking, pulled a pestle which she was using to stir a delicacy and drove the devil away. But the creature had imparted its message. It would vanish at once into the ambient and later to be found in the house of the present king’s fore forefathers. Through an exceptionally hospitable sense, Ikwuyatum won the creature’s appeal, and it revealed its mission as well to the man. In a near inaudible voice, the creature spoke, I endow you with a potent power and the ability to procreate. I also bestow you the ability to make babies in multiples, almost in the same way it related to Etachum, and it quickly did what the old man had never seen before: The mysterious creature dismantled itself onto the bare floor of the one room and vanished instantly into thin air. In another couple of moments, this complex creature, which was twice human size, reappeared less than half of the host’s physical size. And then, gradually it vibrated in loops, infinitesimal loops, until it evolved into a small, palm like roach. Ikwuyatum planted this oddment of the creature and mystified it. He began to wield the mystic power to create the Amla dynasty, chiefdom and culture.

Etachum subsequently gave birth to quintriplets, who were all baby girls, while Ikwuyatum’s offsprings in succession were of mixed gender. A year and half after, Etachum bore triplets which were all baby girls. Before then, one proud pregnant Onyanji, out of extreme doubt of the fierce creature, went to take a view of the idolized creature outside a shrine, in the compound of the evolving King Ikwuyatum.

By the time the arrogant woman put to bed, she had quadriplets that turned out to be baby girls, reinforcing the supremacy of the miserable creature championed by its devotee; Ikwuyatum. Elders tried appeasing the creature by series of trials of known cleansing processes in the land but without fruitful results. Then, women who sited Onyanji or deliberately took a look at her became infected with the consequence of defying the powerful idol (the bad omen of having baby girls in triple succession). This punishment strengthened people’s belief, and Ikwuyatum further decreed that such women and their offsprings should be banned from the mainstream society. Subsequently, any woman who bears three female babies in succession was regarded as a taboo, and both mother and babies were alienated from mainstream society.

This mystery became heresies that are today’s Amla cultural orthodoxy. Ikwuyatum appointed people he called oracles to work to preserve the culture. Oracles are his eyes in every hamlet, every village, and every town. These oracles enforce the demands of the culture, interprete traits and traditional values. They also carry out sacred rituals and serve as overseers of the Monarchy, Onyajenu concluded. But after a while she chipped in words of consolations. One day, she progressed slowly, a redeemer to the truth of the wealth of the people shall come. Such a redeemer will throw away this repressive culture and replace it with an equitable one."

Enajuma left the clinic more pathetic than she had come. Several negative thoughts flushed through her mind – to abort the pregnancy or to terminate her life and escape the penalty or even, go into exile, leaving her two baby girls for death to claim in near future, or rather, bear the baby and face the wrath of the culture. After weeks of evil thinking, Enajuma resolved to have her baby.

CHAPTER TWO

It is in the roundish thatched hut a piece of native architecture, reminiscent of ancient Amla design that the alienated casts (women who’ve had three baby girls in a row and their babies) are quartered. This house is situated to the south of a pond: on a long wide corridor of land: partly bordered by a forest to the north and a mud fish pond to the east. This structure, tell a lot of story about its people and its culture, contrary to how simple in form and shape it appears. The community of the alienated is seperated from all other communities. The Mud Fish Pond community, as it is called, is an embodiment of pain, grief and death for the out-cast of Amla tradition.

Ten days after the successful birth of a third baby girl, five oracles of the land of Amla will come from the cultural office in east Amla to escort the mother and her offsprings from anywhere in Apa land to the isolated community until a requisite rite, the Festival of the Tattoo Creature, is held to cleanse the children and their mother of incest.

When Enajuma’s fear of a baby girl came to pass weeks ago, she was not spared by the culture or by the oracles who are charged to carry out the order of the land. Progressively and painfully, gender discrimination and isolation was enacted. Enajuma and her children were forced and led out of Abogonye Farm Way, in east Amla. They were led through the ornamental lily pond of the Mud Fish Pond community to a new outpost. The newborn was resting peacefully on her mother’s back while the other two held hands with each other and their mother.

The troubled mother held a protective umbrella up with her right hand and walked ahead of the five oracles escorting her to a new home as eerie silence trailed her passage through the neighbourhood.

Three weeks after she settled down at the alienated quarters, Enajuma’s husband, Uka, began to issue out the customary conditions for giving birth to three successive baby girls. These includes: cutting off his personal relationship with the siblings and withdrawing his fraternal responsilities of feeding, clothing, and of course, taking care of their medical concerns. Uka being an oracle of the land, and a typical native would go the extra length to uphold all these traditional consequences directed at his wife and children. Even such punishments as slighting, verbal insults, bullying and ridiculing of the out-cast would be encouraged by the ancestor.

These sanctions brought immediate hardship to Enajuma and the children. Even the awareness that she would live and cater under painstaking efforts without the support of her husband was in itself a tormenting imagination. Enajuma would begin to double her efforts at providing food, medicine, clothings and of course, other domestic services such as: cleaning, washing and providing water and firewood for the household all by herself. She would go out to the surrounding woods to scratch for firewood and what the children will subsist on or medicate in times of sickness.

As she woke this morning, the thought of what her children would eat ran through her mind like lightening, just the same way as the thought of whom to leave her daughters with to rush to a much distant farm was a headache. Coming out of the one room cylindrical hut, she suddenly turned around in confused posturing and gaped at the round disk thatched hut; the structure that tell a lot of story about its people and the culture that is hinged to the appearance of a dejected creature two hundred years ago. Enajuma then wondered aloud, How come God has placed me in this unfortunate situation? She probed into her inner mind and began to unveil a query to the architects of Amla culture. Whose idea is it that the birth of three girls in succession could complicate a woman’s existence? What political or cultural gain is there in segregating one for what one has no powers over? Not even the male gender or Ikwuyatum himself could determine the sex of a baby in the womb. Then, why would this society subject a woman to unbearable pains for something she or the man could not manipulate? It’s an appalling machination of my people, she cursed, worsening her mood the more.

Enajuma ran out of food and firewood the previous day, which was the last of her stock and thought of replenishment almost immediately, but her last daughter was an obstacle. After breakfasting on the left-over of the previous day meal, the middle daughter was raving against her immediate senior for an improvised toy. Enajuma had to calm both siblings down. Now sitting stark naked on the bare floor of their hut, her second daughter resumed her vituperation once again with a running nose, that bottle is mine, just give it to me, it’s mine…

No it’s not yours, it belongs to me. Mother brought it for me, the elder sister barked back at her.

You must stop this! You are too big for this! The mother bent low and plucked the bottle from the elderly one and placed it before the younger daughter. You leave it for your sister. I shall get you one as soon as I return from the farm.

The eldest of the three who was four years and, protested once again, No, I want this very one. The mother ignored and tendered the middle one.

Stop crying, my sweet Ugbajuma. Just have the bottle. Enajuma reduced the intensity of the unceasing quarrel, lifting her last daughter from the mattress while the Coke bottle now clutched by Ugbajuma seemed to have resolved the quarrels.

The two taboo-babies fell asleep after a protracted anger. Enajuma frantically began to rush to overcome her depleted stock of firewood and her exhausted corn meal stock.

Contrary to her east Amla main-stream home routine, Enajuma was being compelled to run down to her farm (the Mud Fish Pond heritage farm normally allotted to every taboo victim) to meet their afternoon needs, as the menace of the culture and its uncertainty continued to exert enormous ordeals for her.

Enajuma had no one to leave her children with and so opted for her husband’s nephew, an eleven-year-old chap called Ejegbogo, who often helped out in one domestic chore or the other. He had lately turned into a juvenile whirlpool that twist babies to his nymphomaniac field of lust in the Mud Fish Pond quarters.

He had such notoriety now that is questionable. Ejegbogo, now stigmatized by the large community of the taboo family as a tenacious child abuser had lived up to every bit of it. Enajuma had no choice but to settle for Ejegbogo as the only person who could keep custody of the children till she returns. Ejegbogo lived in the main family clan in the neighbourhood of mainstream women, but was always at the alienated end of east Amla. Ugbajuma was soon ravaged. Her mother (Enajuma) was pondering on the direction to take in order to quicken the days work. She began to cry with an intolerable harassment of an innocent baby in need of something to fill her tummy. Enajuma knew too well that her daughter’s appetite had multiplied lately like the chick that eats throughout the day. Choosing the devil, she raised her voice frantically calling Ejegbogo to hurry up. Eje, she shortened the name as it pleases her, hurry up! Please! Run up here quickly, your little babies need you by them. She shouted to the hearing of everyone across the neighbouring compound, which was almost thirty metres away. Eje! Eje! her voice pierced through the noon once more, I am on my way to the farm; I shall be back in a short while; watch over the kids, she bellowed. Almost immediately, Ejegbogo came around.

She departed the house hurriedly with the last baby on her back and the basin already in-between her arms: Having the children secured in Ejegbogo’s care was the beginning of another incisive problem of insecurity of her children.

As she ran down through the picturesque countryside towards Emichi, on the Otukpo-Amla rural highway, in a mindless, disorientated pacing, her baby shuffled comfortably on her back.

Soon, she aligned eastward on a tiny footpath wondering in pains like a sheep stripped of its only baby. As she wades through the rough road, she expresses inaudible concern and worry at leaving the custody of her children to this pervert.

These children constitute the center of my heart and entire life, be they labeled as taboo offsprings or whatever, she soliloquized. At this point, the little baby on her back intruded with a piercing cry. Enajuma had to pet and shower praises on the infant who soon became quiet. She ponders over this obnoxious life culture had put her and then began to feel depressed. Enajuma drifted further with ease into how providence could rightly intercede and ameliorate her problem. She thought of God lifting her and her children up from this cultural dungeon into a sanctuary of freedom and of hope and abundance. Enajuma regarded the norms and the way of life in Amla as defective and retrogressive culture.

Ejegbogo, she soliloquized once more, whose character I understand so well. This Amla man, whom I have seen more than once roving eyes at women’s privacy. All Amla men: let painful death be their portion. She conjures up and flings open what she knows of the boy. Ejegbogo, who had skillfully sorted through women’s thatched bathrooms to view their nudity, the boy, a typical microcosm of Amla male gender, innately engrained with the mind of a hawk. Quite frankly… At this juncture she tediously tried to recall from her well of memory Ejegbogo’s activities. The infant shuffled and babbled. The estranged mother responded by tapping her back to restore peace to her. We will soon be on our way home, she comforted and reverted to her earlier concern. Ejegbogo is a hawk dancing to a crazy horn blower, discretely to pick whatever prey he gets in the sky, be it an albatross, to do similarly in awful brutality to any creature it finds on the soil surface, even the tiniest bacterium. Enajuma began to question the stigma of superiority of the Amla male gender in her mind, this is a call to duty of a typical Amla male. Women demand interpretation to this call in explicit terms. Ejegbogo’s disposition as a hawk seeks a rational understanding. A hardly definable phenomenon as it appears but objectively a tangible desire of both the organ player and its dancer; the Amla monarch and its oracles. Ancient myth; given birth to a culture, and; a culture raised essentially to dominate a gender is but a backward drive for the society. This backwardness is lubricated by a tiny click of men with the desire to anguish a malleable and sectile gender. A culture the masculine gender of Amla enforces with harsh and coersive tendency.

As the mother and daughter progressed into the forest through the lonely bush path, something interrupted their conversation. There was a light, slippery movement of grasses in the woods by the path. Enajuma stopped abruptly and stared in that direction fearfully for a few moments while the infant continued to make sharp crispy metal noise.

This is where many have gone from the jaws of reptiles. Enajuma spoke aloud to her infant as she erected herself momentarily; her profile proved the potentials of Amla male society right. Her vulnerable appearance, shoeless feet, the single over-patched wrapper knotted round her waist, even her worn out blouse, all define an infinite sense of humiliation Amla culture had subjected her gender to.

The action increases as she stared in the direction of the noise. It subsided gradually and ceased. The lonely two returned into another long stretch of thoughtful monologue and dialogue, as they walked the path.

Like releasing the pause on their conversation, Enajuma began again.

"The initiators of this torment must have been spurred in part by a doctrine hinged on egoism.

What a sense of extreme selfishness of the Amla male. What a domineering tendency their repressive spear is tipped with? Well, a poison that is not only against the three baby girls born in succession and their mother, but, for all living women across Apa land. I see that these devilish traits continuously erred by the culprits; the custodians of Otukpo culture and a few men at the behest of Amla tradition, is bolstered by the claim to self-righteousness. This claim to supremacy was inherited by one man who evolved the culture. This coyote may not be the true copy of the Amla male gender. These assertions, this belief, frequently ride on a circle of evil cultural wheel that de-humanizes and takes a toll on our kind. It tramples and reduces the physically powerless, the weaker sex, so they would say. The feminine gender of course; the cradle of beauty, the central well of joy and happiness from where mankind draws warmth and happiness run dry with callous brutality. The Amla man would be lost forever on the chilly fringes of existence. Force, misdirected force and irrational muscle demostration no longer reigns." She spat and made disgustful display and the infant leaped to a sudden wail.

The basin viberated, and slipped loosely out of the taboo woman’s infirm arm, as she stopped to pet her companion. She bent weakly, stooped hard to pick up the flattened basin and then reverted once again into the abyss of endless chat with the infant whom, she now props from behind and attaches to her right breast. The baby sucked with peace. She delved back into her troubled world. "I see that the inequitable physical force of beasts to man is disproportionately large, so also the inequitable sense of man to beasts. For me, I know this very last reason accounts for man’s control and taming of the most powerful and the wildest of predators, not the latter reason.

Similarly, that sensible touch, soft and subtle of a child, that could move a whole white man’s gigantic ship to space, has less to do with his or her physical ability.

The years of worshipping physical force and allowing it’s enormous manifestation to play on inter-personal relationships and societal affairs have clearly passed and far gone into the ash heaps of history. It has given way to an era of soft touch and malleability. Emphasis on male gender and its masculinity is a child of the past. Yet Amla society is still trapped in this decaying past where male offspring is viewed with irrational pride, while the female gender is being depleted by death through cultural alienations."

At that instance, on the thought of male children, Enajuma became vividly agitated. She began wondering how the culture had affected her, only for a woman to be annihilated by the successive birth of girls. She despises the culture. It began to hurt her the more. She tried to fathom reasons for the course of the culture but to no avail, making her loath the political elite and the culture.

As she paced in bafflement, muttering to herself, she suddenly met a woman on a bicycle by a bend. Her bicycle loaded with broken firewood and articles of food. She stopped by a huge Iroko tree on the path. The woman in her early thirties was physically erect, the right predisposition for Amla cultural fiasco. She must have encountered many of her kind en-route but have been too carried away by her trouble mind to pay attention.

The woman seemed to have an affiliation to Enajuma by fate, weary looking but physicaly fit as she spoke. Mama Echeune! Why so late? She queried, holding to her bicycle off the path with a little