The dreamer

I think of My Mother as one of those irons will rarely speak figures of haunt. She grew up in one of those poor third world countries in Nigeria in a village called Katuka, Kaduna state. She grew up in a brutalized society, who takes girl‟s education as nothing. The kind of Nigerian girls who are destined never to get off the mountain, or out of the village. Her mother was a straight haired terror, she expects her to work on the family farm, until she dies or was married off. My mother always dream of becoming a nurse in the capital, where she heard that every street had electricity. To be a nurse you need education which is not possible for her. In the village there were some girls who attend a one room school at the base of the hill.

My grandmother hated western education. Any time my mother was caught near the school house, my grandmother gives her beating, a beating not of the first world but the beating of the world which you cannot easily shake off.

As months passed by and horizon started to dim, the President of the time passed a mandatory education act stipulating that all Nigerian children under the age of fifteen should be enrolled in schools, and not stuck in the fields. Any parent keeping a child from school would be imprisoned. My mother heard about the law and she brooded on it. Their house like all other houses in the Republic of Nigeria had a portrait of the military president. My mother thought nobody can stop her now from going to school except the president, not even her mother. She had only learn later how little the dictator protected her or anyone else. The news of the school came in a crucial time. My mother‟s family were preparing for its seasonal move up higher into the hills, in the midst soaked highlands, where the groundnut were waiting, but my mother had other plans. Two days before the journey, she got down on her knees beside a stagnant puddle of water, put her mouth on it and drank it. She was so sick that the family decided to head to the hills without her, “the coffee could not wait”. My mother was left with a cousin, as soon as my grandmother was out of sight; my mother bent over doubled from the stomach pains, hobbled down to the school house and reported her mother. I want to go school was what she told the teacher. She thought the teacher would as well send her back to the hills to plant the groundnuts, but as it turned out, the teacher was an idealistic young woman from the Capital “God bless all idealistic educators”. She took my mother‟s clam seriously. She went to police, who took the president‟s laws seriously; a serious warning was given to my mother‟s family especially my grandmother. They said if anyone stops her from going to school all the family would be imprisoned.

As times moves, my mother was very excited to be among the students going to school. She started at the age of fourteen. She learned the basic A-Z and some to two letter words. My grandmother did not get off the hatred of education off her head for a year. She make a plan with one of her brothers who lives in far place up the hills, to take her with him. She asked him to marry her off there. My grandmother always cries that her daughter has grown too much at home without marriage, which is a taboo in the society. Unknown to my mother one Saturday night when she was far asleep on her mat they tied her mouth, her eyes and her hands. She opened her eyes, she saw dark, she tried to use the hands it was also tied, she wanted to shout but she couldn‟t because the mouth was tied. She was only dragged; she thought that some people have kidnapped her, even though she doesn‟t know the people that kidnapped her. She was very afraid, she cried but nobody listened to her, nobody was talking as well. The journey took them a month.

They arrived in the village and she was untied, she saw her uncle and she started crying. He said you wanted to be stubborn that is why we planned to teach you a lesson, a lesson you would never forget. I have gotten a husband for you; tomorrow I will marry you off. My mother started crying and he said that is not his problem.

The next day the wedding took place. My mother was not aware of who the husband was. She heard her cousins saying, he is hunter and he has three wives, she is the fourth. She cried until her eyes almost plugged out. She couldn‟t do anything; she was so helpless, nowhere to run. They took her to her husband‟s house the next day. The house was a real village house, everyone has his own hut ( a room made from dried grasses). This was not she wanted her destiny to be like. Like all the traditional weddings of the traditional Hausa society, she was taking to the first wife to great her, as she opened her eyes she saw an old woman who is almost seventy years of age, with grey hair and brown teeth, which is decayed because of a longtime eating of kolanuts. She burst with tears , saying in her mind this is hell. The second wife was also old almost seventy years too. The third was the youngest who is almost her age, but a little older than her. What came into her mind was how the husband would be; she knows he would be almost hundred years. My mother always dream of marrying a doctor, a very handsome young man from the capital, but she thought see what her has turned into.