When a widow becomes much happier after death of her hardworking husband

By Anayo M. Nwosu

Ikomma couldn't believe that Anịkakwụ of all men would look her way long after she had resigned to fate. Her glow is back and she feels like living life again.

When Ndụkwe her husband died of a strange illness, none of her husband's relations appeared to be given the shaving knife used to shave her head after her husband was buried. They obviously didn't want the lightening to strike twice. Whatever killed Ndụkwe, their brother,  didn't have to kill them too.


It was customary in Nnewi that when a widow's head is shaved after her husband's burial that, as a mark of respect of her dead spouse, she is expected to choose a man among the husband's male relations who will take her as an official concubine and also take care of her and her children.

A widow must choose from men present. Hence, all the men are usually summoned before the widow once the husband's female relations called umuada finish the widow's head shaving.

When Nnanyị Ifeka, the eldest man in the extended family, noticed that the able-bodied brothers and cousins of Ndụkwe didn't come out for the collection of the shaving knife, he stretched out his hand and collected the knife from his nephew's wife to fulfill all righteousness.

But the widow couldn't also be said to be responsible for the death of 87 years old Nwanyị Ifeka a year after.

Ikomma's husband was a very industrious man owning a yam barn measuring the size of a football pitch. He also planted two hectares long of oil palm plantation. He was considered to be a wealthy man before his death. Therefore, Ikomma and her three children didn't suffer starvation during her mourning period.

But she suffered lack of companionship.

Ndukwe's oil plantation was not receiving appropriate care as the palm fronds were not being pruned to make way for the flourishing of the fluorescence bearing the palmnuts.

If the fronds are not pruned, there's likelihood that the oil palm nuts production by the palm tree would be delayed or that the nuts would be small in size.

That was how untended the  late Ndukwe's oil palm plantation and the garden in between the legs of his wife were for three years after his death.

The farms remained untidy until one Mazi Anịkakwụ who just returned from Panya decided to befriend Ikomma and was determined to help out.


Incidentally, Anịkakwu worked in a plantation belonging Indians in Panya.

Panya is a name Igbos call today's Equatorial Guinea.

In just two months, Anịkakwu was able to turn around the late Ndukwe's oil plantation.

The very first night, after gaining the confidence of Ikomma, the widow, Mazi Anịkakwu tried to help prune the other plantation that had been left unattended.

Initially, Anịkakwu was met with a half-hearted resistance from a woman who wanted what was about to befall on her so much but was acting as if she didn't want it.

This made Mazi Anịkakwu to halt because he was taught while in Panya not to proceed whenever there was a road block.

Who would blame Madam Ikomma?

Even though a very beautiful woman, but now she looks like a hen displayed in the marketplace ready to be sold, but nobody has asked her, "how much are you sold?"

Not when her brothers -in-law had stereotyped her as a woman with fetish affliction who must have poisoned her husband to inherit his wealth.

"What if this man recoils and decides not to continue?" her mind skipped as she immediately conduced her body movements to counter her initial weak verbal protest.

Noticing that Anịkakwu actually halted his unorthodox woman happiness enhancing motion, Ikomma reprimanded him for stopping.

She said "ọ banye gonu, you cannot stop now since you have already started it, do with me whatever you will. I'm all yours. Ọ gịnị bụ ife nke a? Nkele bụ utu!"

That was the petrol Anịkakwu needed to step up his game to the loud acclaim of his hostess; a scream or loud moan that could wake up a neighbour in a deep slumber.

And Ikomma was taken to a fantasy land her late husband neither knew nor had any knowledge where it existed.

"Was it all you have been learning in Panya?" a grateful widow asked.

That was how the abandoned oil palm and human plantations of late Mazi Ndukwe came to life again under the able tending of Mazi Anịkakwu who was never married nor had any children of his own. He was contented with tending another man's estate  typical of most middle aged men who returned from Panya in the early 1970s.

Let no man ever delude himself that his widow would not find greater happiness when he is gone.

She would be wasting in grief or pining away over her husband's departure only if a man better than the dead husband, especially in happiness dispensing areas, delays in appearing.

Ụwa nke a sef!