What goes around comes around I have often written on this blog.
Yes, be mindful of the stones you throw at the market place, you have no idea
who will be hit!
In this century, change is the most constant thing. Not only can you travel in a tube moving at almost the speed of light nowadays when it used to be weeks unending in times past, so also, these days, the evils that men do lives within them, not after them like our ancestors thought.
In this century, change is the most constant thing. Not only can you travel in a tube moving at almost the speed of light nowadays when it used to be weeks unending in times past, so also, these days, the evils that men do lives within them, not after them like our ancestors thought.
Today, I would like to share the tale of a certain fish seller, IYA
BOBO as generally called by all who know her and after you read this story,
feel free to either dissent or nod in the affirmative to my earlier assertions.
A few years back, I met a middle aged dry fish seller, who was
at the moment a mother of four- three boys and a girl. However, her husband and
father of three of her four children looked triple her age. Okay, that was a
little exaggeration but he was well above seventy and I was of the assumption
that she would be in her late thirties or very early forties and I was correct!
Moving on to the crux of the matter, Iya Bobo hails from the
coastal area of south western Nigeria, an Ilaje woman who had inherited the
fish trade from her mother. Although she migrated to Ile-Ife, the cradle of the
Yoruba people in search for the legendary greener pastures a few years after
she was given off in marriage to Baba as she called him. I met Iya Bobo via
business transactions as fish, be it fresh or dry and a full blooded ijaw
person is inseparable and it was that search for fish that led my mother and I
one day to the road side fish stall of Iya Bobo and in no time, a business
relationship blossomed and flourished into friendship.
Consequently, it never ended in a buyer to seller conversation
when we visited Iya Bobo’s fish stall. It was that between friends. She
confided in my mother about her personal-most especially, her marriage.
She was devastated about being married to Baba and kept
insisting on walking out of the marriage. My mom advised her not to. Baba was taking
good enough care of her and her children but it seemed Iya Bobo’s mind was
already made up and all my mom’s sermon fell on a rocky place.
Days turned into weeks and in four months, Iya Bobo got hit by
cupids arrow- she had fallen in love with someone her age and wasn’t hesitant
about brandishing her new lover.
That day we visited her fish stall, we were astonished by what
greeted us. Iya Bobo frolicking in the arms of her new lover. My dear mother
confronted her but Iya Bobo’s reply was “mummy, e ma worry, mo ti fi Baba
Oloriburuku sile jare” She went on to do the introduction, “mummy, meet my
dear, he works in the University with professors and earns millions” she
concluded with incoherent English.
My mother called Iya Bobo aside privately and began her
interrogations after which she discovered that the new lover already had his
own family- a wife and about four children in the same town. She warned Iya
Bobo that holding on to another woman’s husband would resurrect consequences
she won’t be able to bear and that providence was frowning at her misdemeanor
but Iya Bobo jovially tossed the advice aside. Iya Bobo behaved like the
proverbial dog that feigns deaf ears to the hunter’s whistle and soon
disappears into the forest.
She continued to bask in the euphoria of her new found romance.
Fish business was flourishing simultaneously as her love life. She even
instructed her children to call her lover, “father”.
She thought she had found a lasting happiness