Children of Ọlómọwẹ́wẹ́
A story about carefree innocence, the rapid onset of evil and a delicate balance of longing and fear by Maureen Chinwe Onyeziri
We ran around our small Mushin neighbourhood barefoot and in nothing but panties. Those were the days when parents were not afraid to be away from their five- and six-year-olds for hours at a time because they knew we were safe — the good ol’ days before things once brightly coloured turned grey, before children became easy prey for monsters in human coverings, and play became a mostly indoor affair. I remember playing in the dirt with a few other neighbourhood kids back then, boys and girls alike. Everyone wore panties. Most evenings, we gathered at my house on Yusuf street after school and set out as a group to Aladura Cherubim and Seraphim Church, a mile away, and our unofficial playground. The church was a large white and blue concrete building surrounded by an even larger yard covered with red sand. It was mostly deserted on weekdays but bustled on Sundays with congregants who dressed only in white flowing satin gowns, wore no shoes even on the hottest of days when smoke rose from the asphalt-covered roads, and fervently chanted Holy Gabriel, Holy Michael during service. As a six-year old, I enjoyed listening to their chorused chanting interrupted here and there by high-pitched incomprehensible cries or screams of Jah Jehovah on Sunday afternoons as I walked home with my mother and father from our Catholic Church, Regina Mundi, just a street away. In stark contrast to our quiet mass, their service seemed lively and energetic. I didn’t think I would fall asleep during their service the way I often did in Regina Mundi.
Aladura C&S had no fence, and on the far east side of the church was a small bush that was probably a garden at one time but became abandoned and overgrown with weeds. On our playground, every day was a new adventure. Some days, we played police and thief, where ‘thieves’ ran around the church and hid behind pews in it to avoid being caught by the ‘police,’ other days, we girls busied ourselves searching the nearby bush for leaves to ‘cook soup’ with while the boys played soccer. Some girls joined in playing soccer, but I preferred making soup. Soup was red sand and tap water mixed together in empty milk tins, with all sorts of leaves for vegetables and stones for meat or twigs for fish. Once ‘cooking’ was over, our stage play would inevitably begin. Our plays were always improvised, with our soup for that day at the centre of the plot. There were no scripts and no assigned roles, but somehow we all knew what roles we played and what our dialogues would be. The days we were not acting, we sat together in a circle and one by one mimicked the people in our lives: teachers, parents, siblings, one another. Or we played horse race, where we chose partners, carried them on our backs and raced through the churchyard. Tinko, suwe, boju-boju, ten-ten, kilo n le jẹ, and name of things¹ were some of the other games we enjoyed playing. We spent a good amount of time at that church daily, exerting ourselves before deciding to return to our homes.
The trip home was always a race through the busy Mushin streets. Although we ended playtime after dusk, we were neither frightened of vehicles and their blinding headlights nor of the okada² that often crisscrossed the streets with lightning speed. We knew okada riders were the most impatient of road users. We were playful but not reckless, and we always looked out for one another. As we raced home, we would pause to greet Iya Gbémisọ́lá. She sold delicious akara³ in the evenings at Ọlómọwẹ́wẹ́ bus stop and we liked her because she never failed to give us free akara whenever we stopped to watch her fry the puréed beans in giant black pans filled with hot, bubbling vegetable oil. Because of her, we always ran through Ọlómọwẹ́wẹ́ even though we could have easily taken other routes. With oily lips expressing gratitude and sticky fingers waving goodbye to the kind woman, our race would re-commence. It was never a race to win. How could anyone win? We all ran to our different homes. There was no common finish line. We simply enjoyed the thrill of running in the dark, jumping over potholes and wide gutters and laughing as the cool breeze whipped past our near-naked bodies.
Something happened to Simisọ́lá on one of those nights, and none of us realized what was wrong until the next day, which started out like any regular weekday. By early evening, after getting home from school and quickly getting out of my uniform — a dark brown pinafore over a light brown shirt — I was ready to go out and play with my friends. As I ran past mommy in the kitchen towards the stairs, my name rang shrill and loud, “Yéwándé!”
I froze, mommy never shouted my name like that unless she was angry. She was standing by the sink next to the window, a window I had just run past in a bid to get to my friends who I knew would be waiting downstairs. “Ma?” I responded.
“Come back here!”
I walked back towards the kitchen until I was inches away from her. I looked down at the tiled floor, wondering what I had done wrong. My right index finger played with my belly button. My left hand pulled at the rubber band that held my yellow-and-white striped panty in place.
“Where do you think you’re going?” She asked. The pitch of her voice remained the same even though I was right in front of her.
“To play, mommy.”
“Will you go inside and put on something? If I see you step out of this house in pata⁴ again…”
I did not wait for her to finish the sentence. I ran to my bedroom, picked the first dress I could find in the Ghana-must-go bag⁵ that held my clothes — a floral print gown — and threw it over my body. I was shaking. Why did mommy sound mad? What did I do? Why did she suddenly want me to wear clothes? It had never been a problem before. Was this punishment for an offense I didn’t even know I had committed?
Now dressed, I slowly walked past her. This time she said, “Return early.” I nodded. I could feel her eyes burn holes in my back as I walked away until I couldn’t feel them anymore.
Downstairs, all my friends had clothes on. The boys wore singlets or t-shirts over shorts and the girls wore skirts and tops or gowns like me. It was a strange feeling standing amidst them and wondering why we suddenly had to wear clothes to go play. It seemed everyone wanted to ask the same question, but no one had the courage to speak. I noticed Simisọ́lá’s absence.
“Where’s Simi?” I asked.
There was silence, everyone looked downward and fidgeted for what seemed like a long time before Tẹ́jú replied, “We went to her house but her mommy chased us away.” He sighed, then continued, “I think she is sick.”
“But she was fine yesterday,” I countered. A sense of dread had begun to crawl up the pit of my belly towards my chest. My heart began to pound. Something didn’t feel right. Simi’s absence and the demeanour of my friends plus the fact that we all wore clothes troubled me.
“Simi cannot play with us anymore,” Dayọ̀ chimed in. He was the talkative of the group and seemed too curious for a six-year-old, always wanting to know the why and how of everything. “My daddy said she was raped last night, on our way home. Someone grabbed her close to her house. My daddy and mommy were angry. They did not know I was listening to them in the parlour…” He hesitated, as if questioning his next statement, “We have to go home early today. Before night.”
“Raped? What’s that? Why did someone grab her?” It was Hárúnà, the boy we often teased for not knowing how to speak Yorùbá but admired for his soccer skills.
Like Hárúnà, I did not know what the word rape meant, and if Dayọ̀ knew, he wasn’t saying anything. I certainly did not know how it correlated with putting on clothes, but it sounded like something grave had happened to my friend and we were all being punished for it. I sighed. “I don’t think she will be coming out to play with us anymore.”
“I don’t think so too,” Tẹ́jú whispered.
We walked silently to the playground.
***
Whenever I think back to that day many years ago, the day Simisọ́lá stopped coming out to play with us, the day we were mandated to wear clothes to go out and play, a wave of sadness washes over me. The rest of us still went to Aladura C&S to play, but it wasn’t quite the same without boisterous Simi. She was the one who often dictated what game we would play next, and we missed her terribly. Whenever we sat in a circle to play the imitation game and someone mimicked Simi’s voice and gesticulations, we all stayed quiet. No one dared laugh, and we quickly switched to a different game. I heard things — gossip from friends and neighbourhood tattlers and my own family. Simi’s father, who used to be a rather cheerful man became listless and apathetic after the incident. He stopped visiting the local beer parlour to drink cheap, watery beer and laugh heartily with his friends, or to watch the Premier League. Simi stopped going to school. Speculations filled the air about who might have raped her, but there was no suspect, and Simi could not identify the person because it happened at night and he had dragged her into an unlit alleyway between two closed shops. I heard the word rape a lot — usually when people assumed I wasn’t listening — but it would be a long time before I would decipher its meaning. Yet, even without understanding it then, I knew enough to know that Simi endured a terrible thing. It was difficult to know how she was faring, because the many times we tried to visit, we were turned back by her parents. Once, as we walked out of her father’s yard after being told Simi could not see us, I caught a glimpse of her through the mosquito netting that covered the sitting room window. She was standing and staring at us as we walked away. She looked different, lost. I couldn’t remember her eyes ever being that sunken, and I could have sworn her fingers trembled as she slowly waved goodbye. I waved back. She bit her lower lip. I was the only one who saw her that day, and I will never be able to shake off that image. It was my last image of her. I remember thinking how terrible rape must be to transform Simi and her family so drastically. We never visited or saw Simisọ́lá again.
Playtime was not the same. It didn’t last as long because we had to leave the church earlier than we used to. Walking in the dark became prohibited.
In the wake of Simi’s rape, more cases were reported, then children went missing altogether. I remember my mother and father joining search parties to find Dékúnlé, then Ibiene, then Tosin, three of my closest friends. They were never found. I recall growing increasingly frightened, and wondering what was happening to my friends. Ibiene was an only child, and her parents waited thirteen years before she was conceived. Although she was pampered and lacked no luxury, she was very kind, always willing to share her sweets and expensive toys with her friends. Six-year-old Ibiene was a giver and a lover, and I couldn’t understand why she had suddenly gone missing. Three months after she disappeared, her mother died. Some people said she ate rat poison, others said she swallowed otapiapia or locally made insecticide. My family attended her funeral, and I remember being unable to take my eyes off a second, empty casket that was much smaller than the one Ibiene’s mother lay in. I didn’t need anyone to tell me who the casket was for. In everyone’s mind, Ibiene was never going to be found. I dreamed of that empty casket for months.
Mushin became a scary place. Parents tightened their leashes. I was banned from going out to play, and never got to see most of my friends again. It was during this same period that the notorious ritual syndicate led by Otokoto was ravaging Owerri in Eastern Nigeria, kidnapping and beheading children for ritual purposes. Word soon spread that something similar was happening in Mushin, spearheaded by one mysterious Baba Agbero. Yusuf street became a ghost street after 7pm. The once thriving nightlife disappeared, and was replaced by eerie silence and the occasional mad man roaming the area dressed in torn church banners. Stores closed early and people vanished into the burglar-proofed safety of their homes. My parents moved out of the area exactly six months after Ibiene’s mother’s funeral. We never returned.
Sometimes, I wonder what became of Dékúnlé and Tosin and if they were ever found. Dékúnlé and Tosin were brother and sister and came from a family of seven. Losing two children wreaked havoc on their family, to the point that their father would sleep outside the police station every night, hoping that the more the officers saw him, the more they would intensify efforts to find his children. Before we moved, I heard that five-year-old Gbénró’s lifeless body was found in a gutter, half covered in blood and maggots and missing both eyes. I never really knew Gbénró. We weren’t friends. We attended the same school and were in the same class but he was a trouble maker and most people except other trouble makers avoided him.
Sometimes, I wonder if Simi’s family ended up moving like we did. Many families were moving at the time for fear of losing their children.
I wonder where on earth the rest of my friends are, those of us who were fortunate enough not to be raped or kidnapped or killed. Do they still remember Aladura C&S? The red sand? The cool breeze? The nightly race home? Okada riders? On cool evenings, when I sit on the cane chair in my veranda, watching street activity and sipping green tea, I wonder if I’m the only one who misses the taste of Ọlómọwẹ́wẹ́ akara.
I live in a gated estate now. Marwa Estate, where the rent is expensive, and every building has a gatekeeper. There are security men with big guns always stationed at the estate entrance, and high fences around the perimeter. Yet, on the evenings when I look down from my second-floor veranda and see children running around in nothing but underwear, I’m filled with an emotion I can hardly describe. A strange mixture of mild dread and deep nostalgia, of the beautiful and the painful and the scary all twisted into a hole in my chest. These days, only children of the poor run around in panties, and even though I know that the children I observe in the evenings belong to gatekeepers and street-sellers, I still feel my chest tighten with emotion as I watch them race through the streets like I used to, and my eyes still water as I hear their laughter and feel their excitement and dance to the melody of their calls to one another. I watch their waving arms and dancing feet, I see their little chests swell with joy as they play game after game — games I know too well — and for a fleeting moment, I’m tempted to let my own two children play outside too, to be one with the breeze, jump gutters, avoid moving cars and know how to play ten-ten and suwe. Thankfully, I’m quick to shake off the feeling when the voices of Wúrà and Tófúnmi drift from somewhere in the house to the veranda. I let the voices of my precious children drown out the voices of the children on the street.
My children are safe. That is what matters, I remind myself.
- Local games played by children in the South-Western parts of Nigeria
- Okada: A motorcycle taxi common In Nigeria
- Akara: Traditional street food of Nigerian origin, made from puréed black-eyed beans seasoned and fried in hot oil
- Pata: Yorùbá word for underwear [panty]
- Ghana-must-go bag: a large bag characterized by its chequered appearance
Maureen Chinwe Onyeziri writes from Bloomington, Indiana, where she is currently a microbiology doctoral student. Her stories have been published in African Writer, Bakwa Magazine and several other literary journals and webzines. She enjoys taking long walks, writing short stories, eating good food and falling in love — not exactly in that order. You can visit her online storybook at maureenonyeziri.
