Osimiri & Other Stories

Osimiri, Dawn & the Girls

Sunrise. It was the most beautiful experience in Amaiyi. The orange glow lined the horizon like the marks on a ripening pawpaw fruit. Its soft warmth in the early hours of the morning was just beginning to set in. Thatch roofed huts littered the landscape, silhouettes of the huts, trees and everything else with significant height stood between one and the horizon. Music from the trees greeted the rising sun – from the Olive Pigeon to the Wood Dove all the way down to the lowly Crow, the loud deep-throated singer who woke everyone up three or four times each morning. Mgborie Agu woke up at the second crow but her daughters Mmecha and Anuli would not rise from their mats till the third or fourth crow. Their little twelve-foot-square hut would then be filled with yawns, moans and a little bit of stretching. None of these came from Mgborie herself. She was a tough woman, a widow of twelve years playing father and mother to her teenage daughters, hidden away on the outskirts of a remote Igbo village. Poor and burdened but happy.

Memories of Ikenna Agu filled her thoughts every other day since he died. He was her man. A farmer, a hunter, a Palm Wine tapper. He made every other able-bodied man in the village look extremely laid back. A few more years and he would have been rich enough to earn a chieftaincy title. He had organized the young men of his Age Grade to cut the path to Osimiri, the large river that gave the entire village and many surrounding villages life – Umuisi, Ezeama, Onu-Ibina, Okafia, Umuhu and many others. The drinking water, the rice fields, the farms all depended on Osimiri. The villagers were happy with Ikenna Agu, at least most of them. Everyone had said Ikenna had not died naturally. His body had been found floating on Osirimi late one night after a frantic search. Someone must have drowned him.

"Mmecha, Anuli, shake laziness off your body. Stand up and go to the river..."

"Mama I am tired o. I am tired..." said Mmecha. She was older but less enthusiastic about her morning chores. Her little sister naturally followed her but was not as vocal about her own feelings. She just kept that precocious little face like an innocent toddler making it very difficult to tell what could be going on in her fourteen-year-old mind.

"Stand up!" Mgborie snapped, giving Mmecha that look that made her upset but obedient. Mother was all they had and no matter how uncomfortable it was, they had to obey her. Mmecha stepped out to the door of the hut, tying her worn out wrapper from behind then across her burst till she made a knot with the ends behind her neck. She looked at the sunrise: One of the wonders of Amaiyi. The lands elevation and their hut's position made it a grand experience just watching it. Osimiri was in the other direction, westward. The view was even better from there. Going downhill made it look like the sun rose several times each morning.

Anuli had grabbed two twenty-litre clay water pots. She mumbled a greeting to her mother and lightly bumped into her elder sister "You are standing in the way..." she murmured. Mmecha was upset. She stared at her sister with disdain. Anuli had broken into her morning fantasies. When would the young, strong man come to take her and make all those stories her Mother had told them about their father happen for her? Anuli simply ignored her and stepped back into the hut briefly to pick up two large pieces of cloth. They looked dull and dirty, not obviously dirty because of the dark colours but any keen observer could tell neither had been washed in quite a while. Anuli threw one in Mmecha's direction and carefully rolled the other up into something that looked like a wheel whose diameter was small enough to sit on her head – a head pad for carrying water pots. It did not bother her that the head pad she had just constructed would make a mess of her plaits done with rubber threads. They were coming loose already anyway. Mmecha had similar plaits. It was common fashion for young girls of Igbo descent throughout Eastern Nigeria.

Before long the pair had left their mother in the compound cokking and started on the downhill path to Osimiri. Everyone had told them their father was known to have gathered the young men of the village to create this path but after years of poverty they had stopped being proud of that... it just did not matter anymore. Several girls and young boys were on the path too. A lot of chatter was not uncommon on this path early in the mornings. Normal practice for almost everyone in the village was to set out early in the morning to get water for cooking and drinking. Often they would bathe in the river before returning. The path was rough, undulating and about a meter and half wide. It was restrained by something that could pass for a short wall as if some erosion had dug through the path elevating the sides that we still preserved by bush and shrubs. Massive trees were spotted every few meters, even fruit trees.