Saving Agu's Wife

(By Chika Unigwe) - So Yaradua goes to Israel on an official trip. He gets sick there and dies. His entourage is told, ‘Well, you’ve got two options. Your president was a Muslim and so must be buried quickly. We can bury him here at no cost to you since he was our guest or you can take his corpse home but that would cost a lot. Thousands and thousands of dollars.’ Yaradua’s men beg for a few hours to think about it. Five hours later they come back to the Israelis. ‘Well?’ The Israeli president asks. The head of the entourage clears his throat and says, ‘Your offer is very generous but we’ll turn it down. Thing is we all know the story of the famous someone, the son of a carpenter, who was buried here and who rose after three days. We don’t want to take that risk!’

The laughter bursts in to the kitchen and Prosperous shakes more salt than she intends to into the simmering pot. It must be John telling jokes again. A raised voice says over the laughter, this is an old joke. Yaradua’s been dead two years already. In any case, you’re not right. Muslims are not buried. They are cremated. For their sins, they are burnt. You’ve not told that story well.

Someone – perhaps the one who told the joke – shouts the voice down: You’re the one who is wrong! Cremation is forbidden in Islam. Another voice shouts something she does not clearly hear. She cannot tell who is speaking. All the men sound alike. That’s what this place has done to them – homogenized their voices. It is almost as if they were clones of each other. Their stories are not that different. They have all escaped something – religious riots, poverty, dead end lives – and are hoping to resurrect here.

Why I No Longer Use the Term "Game"

(By Chika Unigwe) - Why I no Longer Use the Term, ‘Game.’

Years ago, I was enjoying my bushmeat in an Australian restaurant in Belgium and said as much when my dinner companion gently reminded me that what I was eating was “game” and not bushmeat, and I had been invited out to “enjoy game.” Apparently, bushmeat is what you get in a small, ramshackle affair by the roadside in Nsukka, paired with palm wine and most often eaten by hand, not meat carefully paired with a Pinot Noir or a Shiraz in a restaurant where the silverware is so shiny and so smudge free you can use it to fix your makeup. 

This morning, I did a quick google search and found this:

“The term “bushmeat” refers to meat that comes from wild animals captured in developing regions of the world such as Africa. Bushmeat comes from a variety of wild animals, including bats, nonhuman primates (e.g., monkeys), cane rats (grasscutters), and duiker (antelope).”

“Game are wild animals and birds. Large native game animals living in America include antelope, buffalo, bear, deer, elk, moose, reindeer, and wild boar. “

Fact 1: bushmeat and game come from wild animals.

Fact 2: Antelope is bushmeat when in Africa but game once it crosses the ocean. 

Question: Who does the naming? 

Growing My Hair Again, by Chika Unigwe

Source: vowinitiative.org

(Chika Unigwe)--"I am crouching beside the bed, my palms flat on the deep red rug that swallows my sobs. The rug is warm. It is a mother's hand. My posture is--I hope--appropriate to the occasion. My mother-in-law is watching me, her eyes hawk-like even through her own tears. She sniffs and says, 'You're not crying loud enough. Anyone would think you never loved him. Bee akwa!'

She never approved of me. I had an excess of everything. Education. Beauty. Relatives. Hair. Sure to bring any man down. At the thought of my hair, my palms go cold. By this time tomorrow, it will all be gone. I shall be taken to the backyard by group of widows, probably all of them strangers. One of them, the oldest, will lather my hair with a new tablet of soap (which will be thrown away once it's been used on me), and then shave all of is off with a razor blade. I shall be bathed in cold water. Strange women splashing water on me. Cleansing me to make my husband's passage easy on him: a ritual to make the break between us final so that he is not stuck halfway between this world and the next shouting himself hoarse calling for his wife to be at his side when he joins his ancestors.

'You should cry louder. You sound like you're mourning a family pet. You are a widow, nwanyi a! Cry as if you lost a husband! Bee akwa. Cry!'