Bride Prize

Nine: Paying the bride price

About 10 o’clock that morning with the sun warming up, Ugba, accompanied by his junior brother, Shima and his son, Tersoo, arrived at the Zasha compound. This was exactly one week after the infamous farm meet.

 Ugba was dressed in a white ankle length gown and black and white striped locally woven cotton cloth that he flung over his right shoulder. He wore a red cap on his head and a walking stick across his shoulders with his hands hanging over it. Shima is similarly dressed in an ankle length sky blue gown, wearing a black and white striped native hat which he cocked to one side of his head. Hanging on a strap across his shoulder was a huge animal skin bag which dangled at his side. Tersoo wore a simple long sleeve shirt over trousers, his feet in a new pair of synthetic leather sandals.

 “I greet those inside the shed!” Ugba called out in a loud voice as he stooped to enter the thatched shed, leaning heavily on his walking stick.

 Zasha was seated in his usual low wooden chair near the fire place, his two brothers, Bagu and Torkuma were seated on the wooden logs around the shed. A couple of kids seat on another trunk close by, watching expectantly. The meeting was anticipated. This was the day agreed upon for the paying of Iveren’s dowry.

 “You people are welcome inside,” Zasha responded in the same loud tone.

 One after the other, the guests stooped and entered the shed. 

 “Ugba, here is a seat,” Zasha indicated another low wooden chair beside him.”

 Tersoo and his uncle sat on a log close beside Ugba.  “About your farm meet last week,” Ugba began, already in the process of rolling his native tobacco out of a pouch that he carried in one of the pockets of his gown. “I hear the farm meet was a success, many young men turned up.”

 Zasha looked pleased. He too, as if on cue, picked up his smoking pipe, gently knocked out the ashes and began to squeeze in fresh native tobacco.

 “It was great,” he said. “Twenty young men honored my invitation. You know, I told you that I had tied this mighty he-goat and, before the sun had turned this way, they had finished the job and were just sitting around having a great feast.” He laughed to himself.

 Bagu, Zasha’s immediate junior brother, who was sitting across, turned to Torkuma his immediate junior, “Zasha is always exaggerating, those young men were not up to twenty, but hear what he now says.”

 Tersoo cringed. It was the worse day of his life. He would rather not remember the day that he had been so humiliated before his beautiful young bride.

 “It would have been more successful if a clear leader had emerged,” Zasha added like an after-thought.

 Ugba looked up, his eyes growing thin, “But I learned there was a clear leader,” he said, turning to look at his son, Tersoo.

        Zasha shook his head.

 “I heard different,” he said. “Indeed it would have made me happier, but I heard it was this other young man of Kwaghtsee’s...”

   Torkuma reacted to this.

 “Which Kwaghtsee?” he spat angrily. “If Venda thought that he was such a good farmer why did he have to poison sTersoo’s drinking water?”

 “Torkuma,” Zasha turned his hot eyes on his stubborn younger brother, “nobody asked your opinion! You were not even there.”

             “Although he wasn’t there,” Bagu interjected, “but we all heard the same story.”

  “Gentlemen,” Ugba said hastily, “that is not our

mission here this morning.”  Zasha waved aside his guest.