ERIMA: A Tale of Unfulfilled Dreams
Kúseńlá, a village located in Ìdó local government, miles away from Ọmí Àdìó, and the first of several villages along that same path, was my destination almost every holiday. A village of my childhood, filled with memories of fields and sheep and the aroma of è̟kọ and olẹ which grandma fed us with every morning before we feasted on our selection of hot and delicious puff puff – one of the snacks she made for a living. I ate little at home, but in Kúseńlá, the case was different. Maybe it was the rural setting, with the sight of animals grazing lazily, little children running around, and the green of nature. Maybe it was the smell: fresh air with a ting of that foul odour of a passing Billy goat pursuing its latest conquest. Or maybe it was the “B-co” grandma downed our throats with immediately we set foot in her house. Ah, yes. Most likely. All I know is, at grandma’s place, I ate twice as much as I did at home.
The first thing we did when we got to the village was to go round to the homes of important persons – the village pastor, grandma’s old friend, Ìyá Ìbejì, amongst others – announcing our arrival with shy smiles and greetings.
Then the elders blessed us with their hands and words, smiling wistfully at the vibrancy of our youth.
On one of those holidays. I met Erima.
She was dressed like a typical village girl: a black top tucked in an old wrapper firmly tied around her small waist, her hair sectioned in a traditional hairstyle of kíkó, and her hand outstretched to buy káraóle, a drug used to cure fever and malaise.
Her voice was tiny, but not weak. Grandma smiled at her. “Erima, báwo ni? Ìyá rẹ ńkọ́?”
She smiled back. “Wọ́n wà.”
I decided there and then that I liked her. I was drawn to her, that petite girl of the tribe of Egede from Benue state, but who somehow lived in a Yoruba village, Kúseńlá, like many of her people.
From then on, Erima and I were inseparable. We played lákálàká on the dusty sand in front of my grandparents' small house with my cousins, went on errands together, and visited the forest to explore. On several occassions we went to the stream outside the village. Many of us went on those trips - my cousins and me, Erima, and several of the village children, some of whom just wanted to play but carried their tiny buckets to prove otherwise. The path to the stream was muddy, a misstep could well lead to us falling flat on our faces. We were ankle-deep in grey mud, and the water was anything but pure. On our way back, Erima would entertain us with different stories. I ate them all up, including the one about the glass lizard, aláyúnbẹ̀rẹ́, turning into a snake when she placed its tail in its mouth and spun it around several times. Common sense told me that wasn’t possible, but the ardent way she said it, even going as far as swearing it was true, that sold me.
On one of such occasions, combined with the deep mud, there were soldier ants. They roamed the mud in their numbers, forming black patterns on the grey background. We all hesitated. How would we get to the other side without getting stung? You know what Erima did? Erima, my village superwoman, carried each child on her back and braved the ant-infested mud with her feet. She did this for every child, getting stung in the process and dragging some ants off her skin. My cousins and I braved it ourselves. My cousins because they could, I because I wanted to prove I could.
One of our favourite sports on our way back was to pàntèté — a hands-free method of carrying the water on our heads. A risky sport, which could lead to us losing the water we struggled to fetch, but fun nonetheless. I was a learner, but I held my own. Erima was a pro, as expected. Our journey from the stream was one of fun and laughter and unprovoked races.
One thing that amazed me about Erima, apart from her creative ability to tell stories, was her good grasp of English grammar. I had never heard a village kid speak English as well as she did. In my eyes, she was an oddity. A gem, more like.
That childhood holiday was my last, until I returned for a two-day visit. To my chagrin, Erima wasn’t there.
Erima, like many members of her tribe, was poor. The Egedes in my grandma’s village bore many children, and not all went to school. I pined for her friendship on my return home, wishing my parents were rich enough to invite her to live with us in the city. Grandma told me Erima had been sent to work as a help in someone’s house. I wondered, would they give her the education she desperately wanted to have?
Years later, I remembered Erima again. Grandma was visiting, so I inquired about my distant friend.
Grandma’s lips turned downwards and she heaved a sigh. What she said next broke my heart.
“Erima has given birth,” she said.
I was saddened. Erima, a mother? She was the same age as I was, nineteen! Grandma then told me the entire tale.
To make ends meet, Erima’s parents had sent her to the city to work as a maid. Unfortunately, Erima had gotten into the hands of the wrong people — those whose hearts were devoid of love for the younger generation, filled with greed and sadism. She was maltreated and denied the right to education. She wasn’t even paid for her services. The worst of it all: she was sexually abused, battered, and bruised. Helpless, her poor parents took her back to the village, gave her away to another man when she conceived, and the cycle of poverty continued.
I sat and listened as my grandma recounted her tale. The tale of that beautiful Benue girl who could tell stories in impeccable English, who fell into the hands of those that preyed on the souls of young girls, and who became a mother at a premature age, denied of education, thrust cruelly into womanhood, and becoming another link in the unforgiving chain of poverty.
My heart broke as I heard her tale, and it breaks still. Not for the first time, I wondered what would have happened if my parents had had enough.
Erima would have come into our home, gotten an education, and gone to the same university I chose. Maybe she would have studied law, mass communication, or the English she so desperately loved. She would have returned home an achieved woman, her degree in one hand, able to break the cycle of poverty once and for all. We would have been friends for life, and is it selfish of me to want that for myself?
But my parents hadn’t had enough, so I struggle with tears as I write this story, hoping that, someday, I’d be able to rescue a girl from a fate like Erima’s, and that, maybe, someday we’d meet again, and I’ll hold her hands and listen to her tale, hug the children that she has raised, and pay a visit to the home she built with the pain of her unfulfilled dreams.
So when next you visit your village, look at the poor and get to know their dreams. And when you hit it big, don’t forget that Erima in your village – a boy or girl with big dreams but no means to achieve them. Reach out a hand, and help make their dreams come true.
Glossary
Èkọ and ọ̀lẹ̀- corn jellos and bean pie
Ìyá Ìbejì- Mother of Twins
Puff puff- Deep-fried dough
Ìyá rẹ ńkọ́? - how is your mother?
Wọ́n wà - she is fine.
Lákálàká- a game children play.
aláyúnbẹ̀rẹ́- glass lizard.
Pàntèté- to carry a load without supporting with hands.
