AUNTY KAMA

June 2023

We all need an Aunty Kama in our lives, that aunt that other family members gossip about, the rich aunty that other aunties are jealous of. Aunty Kama the one who married late according to their standards.  I remember looking up to aunty Kama as a ten-year-old child admiring her claw-like nails brightly colored that called attention to her fingers, slightly patched with a darker tone at the knuckles.

During family functions, she never sat with the women to cook the meals made with firewood. She sat with the other uncles drinking small stout with the freshly killed goat made into pepper soup prepared by the other aunties. They were often pissed you can almost see fumes oozing through their ears. Aunty karma laughing hysterically and very loudly so that everyone could hear, my mother used to say women were not supposed to laugh like that, so loud and uncultured. But it was okay for men to laugh loudly and uncultured because we lived in their world. To hear aunty Kama laugh like the men, meant that this was her world too, I decided as a little girl to laugh very loudly because I belonged here. The men in the family I knew as a child revered her, the kind of reverence that in a way they loathed themselves for. The only uncle who would sometimes dare to scold aunty Kama was Uncle Dike because he too was rich. Uncle Dike still scolded her with caution, not with the venom he used to talk to his wife who decided that if Aunty Kama could sit down with the men and not cook then she too would do the same.

'Adanma what the hell are you doing here. Are you mad, before I open my eyes you would have left here and joined the other wives, look at this woman.' Uncle Dike was a few inches from slapping his wife, then he recoiled as if he suddenly remembered he was in public and they were supposed to feign a perfect marriage.

Uncle Dike was the alpha male, my father's oldest brother and the wealthiest, he was loud and everyone let him have his way, except Aunty Kama, aunty Kama his first cousin, the first daughter of his father's younger brother.

My family is large and complex, I don't know most of them, but during family occasions like this, the coronation of my Grand father's younger brother ( aunty Kama's father) I get to see all of them, including those of them who stay abroad. 

'You do not have to embarrass your wife like that Dike.' Aunty Kama said to him. She was always defending the women, but whenever I was called to slice onions or to oil the back of the pot, all I heard the women say were vile things towards Aunty Kama. It made me love her even more.

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'Who are you to question what I say to my wife?'

Aunty Kama took another sip from her stout, smiled at uncle Dike and I knew it was not a kind smile because uncle Dike adjusted himself with a quickness, and the anger he used to speak disappeared. 

'Kama mind yourself.' Uncle Dike said with less spite and almost cordial and walked away.

I and my cousins were usually invincible during huge family occasions like this, except for when it was time to be sent on errands, the adults suddenly remembered our existence. Until we were noticed, we took advantage of our superpower of invincibility and hid in plain sight listening in on the adults. Betting on who would succumb, who was afraid of who. And we all had our favorites, we bet them against each other. My cousins took the hatred of their parents towards aunty Kama, I always picked her and she always came up top shinning.

'Chukwuka look how your mother is almost about to kiss aunty Kama's feet, admiring her jewelry, I thought you said she hated her and she was a black sheep?'

'Well my mother is peaceful, she probably just wants to make aunty Kama feel better.'

'Aunty Kama looks like she is feeling way better than your mother who has been sweating from cooking over the firewood.'

We would go on for hours, peeping and hiding behind the trees, recycling stories about our aunties and uncles, arguing about who begged the most for money and who owed the other debt.

'Nikky, come and clear these plates off the table, Nikky!' Aunty Kama called for me. The joy I felt every time she called me 'Nikky' was indescribable. She had named me Nicole after her Black American friend who died a few months before I was born. My mother never openly acknowledged the name, but I squeezed it in on my exercise books, and I made all my friends in school call me Nicole. 'Nikky' was for aunty Kama only.

As I cleared the table, aunty Kama winked at me and smiled mischievously. 

'Go and get me a lighter, I want to smoke.'

'Ok aunty.'

I wish I had fifty naira to sneak out and go to Baba Bello's kiosk so that I could buy the lighter and not have to ask my other aunty's. But I did not have fifty naira and asking my mother would lead to a series of questions that would finally lead to the truth.

As I took the plates to the back of the house where the women were cooking, time stopped for them. 

'Is that the plate Kama ate with?'

'Is she too big to eat the bone?'

'Why is she wasting the soup?' 

I believed those questions were rhetorical, not meant for me and it was definitely not meant for aunty Kama either. I bent by the tap and washed the plates, overhearing their complaints and thinking of the least angry aunty to ask for a lighter. Maybe I would say uncle Dike wanted it, but his wife was there, still sulking from her husband's scolding. If I said Uncle Dike wanted a lighter the question would be 'what for?' and 'since when did he start smoking?'

Adanma was slicing the Okazi leaf, I hoped she was not making any more contributions to the soup. The last time she cooked, my cousins and I could barely swallow the food. It was rumored that her terrible cooking made Uncle Dike's affections towards her dwindle. Everyone had one rumor or the other hovering over their heads and aunty Kama always told me not to listen to rumors.

Adanma was beautiful and fragile, aunty Kama described her fragility as forced, the type one had to adopt in other to live with a tyrant. Aunty Kama tried repeatedly to befriend her, but Uncle Dike made sure that Adanma steered far from her. Now she was knee-deep in the group of aunty Kama haters, but she looked like she did not belong there.

I dropped the plates in the cabinet and searched around for a lighter, I found none. I felt bad that I could not do something for aunty Kama, she would understand why I couldn't ask the other aunts. I will sneak to her room as I did every night to hear her talk and tell me tales too mature for my age. I loved her because she treated me like an adult. She read books to me and told me about stuff I did not understand, marriage, sex, friendship, business. Her voice was warm and felt cozy like a blanket, it felt true and sure like the embrace of a lover, I always wanted to hear her talk.

My ten-year-old downcast self was approaching aunty Kama, then I saw she had already lit her cigarette and large bouts of smokes were coming out of her mouth and nose. She looked like a work of art smoking and I knew if I ever was going to smoke, I would tie large ashoke on my head, fix long nails, and be seated as aunty Kama sat, then laugh very loudly because I belonged.

At a distance I started to hear the drums, the first part of the coronation ceremony had started, it lasted for a week and today was the first day. The drums beat rhythmically, I wished I could move my waist in the way that aunty Kama started to move hers. Women cooking at the back all came forward, chanting and shaking their waist vigorously as the drums became clearer. Young boys with djembe, the slit drums, ekwe, ogene and udu came in through the gates. They made such beautiful sounds I felt like I was in one of Elechi Amadi's books as he described the wrestling festival. The young boys were shirtless, with beads around their necks and ankles, their george wrappers were tied to the side one could see their shorts underneath. Like an organized rally, everyone under canopies came out and formed a welcome line as the drummers and dancers made their way into the compound. The women were adorned with beads and colorful george wrappers moving their waists in sync with each other. My other aunties were cheering at them, my uncles spraying hundred naira notes on them. Uncle Dike stayed the longest, spraying an endless amount of two hundred Naira notes and so my other aunty's joined the dancing women and picked money off the ground. 

Then aunty Kama joined in the spraying and I was surprised to see that my other aunty's happily danced away and picked her money. I thought they would stop or better still avoid aunty Kama's money, but they danced towards her positioning themselves for the free fall of the Naira notes. Uncle Dike for a moment stopped with the spraying and left for his car. Aunty Kama kept on spraying the dancing women and my other aunty's, then uncle Dike came back with more bundles of two hundred Naira notes. Everyone screamed in an uproar singing him praises and Uncle Dike's head was visibly swollen. Aunty Kama stopped spraying and joined the other women to dance and sentiments aside, she was the best. She moved her waist exquisitely and bent all the way to the ground, everyone else screamed in prolonged delight. The local musicians started to sing in her name;

'Kama o ma ka esi aba egwu'

'Kama o ma ka esi iri ikwu'

'kama di mma, di mma, o di mma'

'kama mara mma, kama mara mma'

As always, aunty Kama took the shine, and uncle Dike reluctantly sprayed her, because a shine for aunty Kama meant that a little spotlight would reach him too. I and my little cousins swayed in the background, trying to bend and shake just our waists seemed impossible, we looked like tolotolo (turkey) shaking off water from its feathers.

The dancers and drummers gathered in the obiri to eat. The obiri has been at the center of the big compound for generations. Grandpa and grandma had told us similar stories about the obiri,  how wars against neighboring villages were planned and plotted underneath it. And the first white man to come into Omuokiri was welcomed there. It held a special place in history for my grandparents, tales told to them by their own parents about the Obiri, and events they also witnessed, the Obiri was going nowhere even when Uncle Dike was renovating and wanted a fountain in its place, my grandparents fought against it. It was first built with sticks and palm leaves, then mud and now concrete with green colored zinc, it is often used to have meetings with extended family members or councilmen as grandpa did not want people coming into his newly renovated house and sitting on his leather chairs. The dancers and drummers were fed there, they were served loi loi (foofoo) with okazi soup garnished with heavy chunks of stockfish and dried beef, my uncles served them palm wine and after their meal, they were given some money. I heard aunty Kama say that this was the first of many groups of dancers and more were to come, I looked forward to more music and waist shaking.

I and my cousins were asked to take the plates the dancers had eaten with to the backyard. My aunts were counting the monies they had gotten from dancing, they did not pay much attention to us as Chikodi took some fried meat from the warmer and we shared it.

'Dike tried o, sprayed a lot of money today, and he has more to spray. The umunnaya women are still coming.' Aunty Nennda said, directing her comment to aunty Adanma (uncle Dike's wife). 

Aunty Adanma looked rather sad and did not partake in the waist dance, she was upset about the money Uncle Dike was spraying.

'I got a cool three thousand, this one my husband will not hear it before he comes to ask for his share, useless man.' Aunty Hechikaru folded the money and put it in her bra. She had big breasts and I was sure her husband would not dare find the money in her bra, her breasts would conceal it and not betray her. 

I never understood why her husband uncle Lekwem had become the village drunk, my mother had told me he was utterly useless and a jester in the village because the juju Aunty Hechikaru used on him to force him to marry her, many years ago had worn off and now rendered him useless. But aunty Kama did not agree with the story, she said he was probably depressed since he lost his job and lands and properties after his company was foreclosed by the bank. Aunty Kama said he needed real medical attention and not going from one native doctor to another. 

Aunty Hechikaru was robust and loud I wondered why she could not just take the bottle of gin from uncle Lekwem and refuse to give him her hard-earned money to buy any more gin, he was rather skinny and looked sickly, she could fight him off and force him to the hospital.

Aunty Kama finally came to the backyard, time froze for me, and my ten-year-old imagination became active. I saw pestles flying around, with loi loi and fried meat as bullets. There was a huge fight, now my other aunty's came together to beat aunty Kama mercilessly, there goes the hot soup aunty Kelechi threw at aunty Kama and how quick aunty Kama moved like Samaria Jack my favorite cartoon, she dodged it and threw loi loi at aunty Adanma and then I could not quite tell but there was chaos everywhere. I and my cousins cheered on for who we liked while fried meat flew like bullets and we picked them off the ground and ate. As they surrounded aunty Kama her ashoke head tie fell to the ground revealing her thick, full afro and the strength of her hair threw them off the ground. Her outfit changed like magic and... there she was a warrior queen

'Nikky! Nikky! Nikky!'

I heard aunty Kama's voice calling me, maybe to bring more pestle.

'Nikky! snap out of it.' Aunty Kama smacked me a little across my face and jolted me back to reality. I saw that everything was normal, with no flying loi loi or meat or pestles. And Chikodi had been caught taking meat from the warmer he was kneeling down with his hands up. My other aunty's were doing their cooking, some pounding the yam, others cooking different soups. Everything was normal. Thank God.

'You have to tell me all about what it was you were daydreaming about. Not now, when you sneak into my room this night. Go get me my flip flops, check the green leather bag, it's where I kept all my footwear.'

I looked around me and even though they appeared to be minding their business, my other aunty's wanted to know what she was telling me. And when she turned back to them, they were all smiling at her. Hypocrites.

I hopped away happily knowing aunty Kama Looked forward to our nighttime storytelling and gossiping as I did. 

Aunty Kama walked confidently to my aunty's. They were all welcoming except for aunty Hechikaru, if anyone could raise hell, it was aunty Hechikaru.

'Since morning Kama, it is now you are coming to say well done to us.' Aunty Hechikaru had her round fat face set like she wanted a fight, or that was how her face was normally.

'Ha, Hechikaru even without you talking you are too large to not be noticed.'  Aunty Kama smiled at her.

My other aunty's chuckled. Between Aunty Kama and aunty Hechikaru, I did not know who they were most afraid of. But since there was more of a rapport of gossiping between them and aunty Hechikaru, they respected aunty Kama more, so they had to laugh at aunty Hechikaru's expense. She would address them later.

People always fear what they do not understand. Aunty Kama's life and lifestyle was an abomination to them, to see a woman so free and so wealthy and unbothered about not being married, even though she did finally get married, she was supposed to walk around with a certain humility because she got married in her forty's. Yet shoulders high and unbending, as strong as the ocean's tides and unflinching aunty Kama was there in all her glory.

'Here, aunty Kama your flip flops.'

'Thank you Nikky, take back these shoes, clean the heels first ok?' aunty Kama said as she took off her mustard-colored mule.

'Yes aunty Kiki'

'Hechikaru, now I can reach your side, all that mud would have ruined my heels, I can spare these flip flops, not those shoes.'

'Hmm, you mean slippers, stay where you are biko, I am cleaning the snails before your ashoke would get stained.'