Ayinde Olatunde Olayinka
Come let us reason together
4 min readJan 3, 2017

--

The Epiphany

She's a nurse. A devoted catholic. She meets the love of her life and they attend the mandatory marriage course at the parish house together. An elderly nurse who had retired from the family planning clinic talks to them about family planning. You see, the church does not allow contraception. It is against the will of the Holy Father and God. They must increase and multiply. They must be open to life at all times. Nature has given them Billings method, a natural contraception, the only method approved by the church and which requires a meticulous charting of fertile periods and vaginal mucus and what not. No condoms. No injectables. No IUCDs. No vasectomy. No tubal ligation. Only Billings method.

So they marry. And Mr Husband, Nackson Nakamura, gets to work. Gbam, first one. Gbam, second one. Gbam, third one, Gbam fourth one! All within 4 years! Her day begins at 5 am. She's cooking breakfast with one hand and bathing the children with the other hand. Number 4 is yelling in the bathroom and Number 2 can't find her socks and number 1 and 3 are locked in a deadly battle in another corner of the house. She's yelling and threatening to kill somebody. Nakamura is asleep in the other room. No man who wants to live long wakes up at 5 am. For what?

After the world war of eating breakfast and retrieving the different paraphernalia of school-dom from nooks and crevices all over the house, she herds them into the family bus and begins to drop them off at their different schools, and manages to get to work at 8 am. The last she remembers of Nakamura before rushing out of the house was hearing his joyful whistling in the bathroom while getting ready for his middle income job. It is women's job to look after children.

She is busy from 8 to 6 pm. The medical outpatient clinic is a madhouse. By 6pm, she begins the round of collecting the children from their different locations. Her friends whose children attend the same schools have helped her to fetch the children while picking up their own wards and will help keep them till she can leave work and take them home.

They are home at 7:45pm and she is undressing and cooking dinner and washing the uniforms that are as black as mechanic coats. She checks their homework which they have tried to do by themselves unsupervised while waiting for her at her friends'. Complete disaster! They start again. She is yelling at Number 1 and 2 not to allow the devil to find a temporary abode in their hearts or so help her... She is yelling at Number 3 to count those pebbles well and arrive at the correct sum totals, while holding Number 4's hand with the pencil to trace the shape of a rooster and colour same. Nakamura crosses his legs on the centre table, watching network news.

She is totally fagged out, but she must clean after the children, get their things ready for the next day, take a long shower, get her own stuff ready for the next day and read a page or two in preparation for her fast approaching promotion exams. Yet this sight before her, reminiscent of the site of a nuclear war does not encourage her at all. She has survived a succession of maids. They are either children themselves who need as much care as her children, thereby increasing her work load or they have their own issues: conduct problems, mental or physical health problems. Or they simply run away and she's lucky to find them and return them to their parents in one piece. She's done with the stress!

She's finally ready to go to bed at 12. Nakamura has woken up after his first instalment of sleep and is getting ready for a romp. She shoots him a look deadlier than a shower of arrows. She remembers she has absolutely no idea of her ovulation cycle and stuff. She has not charted one single thing since forever! Billings method has successfully eluded her. Yet she is weary and just needs a cuddle. But a cuddle with Nakamura is deadly. That's child number 5 loading. She just cannot afford it now or at any other time.

And so her life goes on, one day rolling into the next, and satisfying sex begins to elude her for fear of getting pregnant and she begins to get cranky and Nakamura begins to complain regularly. Then it hit her one day! Is she mad? Is her head correct at all? Did somebody swear for her? One man in Rome who has never married a wife and who has never had to toil day and night to raise four children and who has never had to worry about sex, is controlling her life and happiness right here in Nigeria. Is she going mad?

So the next day, she goes to the family planning clinic to find a method that speaks to her fast crumbling and miserable life. And lo and behold, waiting there for the same thing are some of the members of the Catholic Women Organization! These are the women who have appeared to be perfect in church, doing their Billings to the letter and have only two children, a great career and a fabulous sex life! Her lower jaw was on the floor for several minutes! So what the hell has kept her away all these years, suffering alone in silence? She swears that this is just the first of so many things that will be changing in her home henceforth. She will be having a long talk with Mr Nakamura today.

--

--