Photography by Mandeiya Michael
By Hudu Salamatu
So after ear dropping the conversation of three old women from my community I have been thinking so hard trying to get my head straight but somehow to no avail.
So this afternoon I had a chance to eardrop a conversation with three old women I met on my way back to my hostel. I was in a hurry because the middle part of me won’t just stop making noises of second war world. I tripled my pace and still prayed I had a lift on my way before I passed out on the road.
Then boom, I met these old women, maybe in their late or early sixties carrying bunches of firewood on their head. Then the first question I asked myself was, “don’t they have children? Or maybe anyone to help them out. Habbba, this is too heavy for their age”.
I had to reduce my pace and walked slowly behind them, I guess it wasn’t just my lucky day, or maybe something good was on the way. Then from nowhere, a fine gentleman with a bicycle passed in front of them with a beautiful young lady seated at the back of the bicycle and waist cuffed the man. They looked beautiful and perfect together. Then boom, this my mother’s concluded they were lovers from the conversation they started after.
Woman 1: if they are lovers, aren’t they just beautiful?
Woman 2: What’s the beauty of this? We all in a way or the other experienced this but after marriage what happened? (Chuckles)
Woman 2: Mhmm, you’re right ooo! How can I forget those days I was the most beautiful lady in my hometown and different men did all they can to please me but somehow, unfortunately for me I choose that man as a husband.
He could go to the farm and bring me all sort of his farm produce and even sometimes to an extend he will go to my father’s farm to farm for me. How lovely was it when most market days he picked me on his bicycle to the market and later back to my house.
I use to enjoy all the bushmeat he got but today is another story. Seeing them just made me remembered about those beautiful movies. If only we knew tomorrow.
Woman 3: And you dare not ask what changed after marriage or else you even get the worst treatment. I pray my daughters and any other woman doesn’t go through what I have gone through and I pray God to save such women from such kinds of evil men. With this firewood I’m suffering with he could have used his bicycle to make it easier for me but he won’t ooo. He prefers to be served more than a god.
So the difference between our grandmother’s, mothers and young ladies of nowadays is just the “voice”.
