The narrow river road at Kufi upon which the high foliage sprinkled drops of sunlight had been the widows' road, long before Vivian ever became a widow. This lonely road sloped right in front of the old St Andrew's church building, through a region of forest hammed with all palmtrees and the giant araba, straight into the village stream. Lianas twined round the trees along the road and raised their heads as they approached the top, like snakes about to strike.
The road, thenceforth, meandered through stony pavements and crooked laterite hedges and was slippery and lacerated with gulleys, during rainy season, as it got nearer it's destination. Several water pots on shaky neck had been smashed into pieces along this slippery widow's road, otherwise called' the road of life' by the people of Kufi.
It was quite easy to trip here with one's wobbling legs falling wide apart. One could fall flat easily here with one's chest hitting the wet ground, never to be able to get up again until the helping hand of a farmer, returning home would come, probably from behind the tall tree by the roadside, to lift one up with a caution;
"Take time. Take your time. This road is muddy. You know it is a special road. The widows'Road. If you flatten your feet on this road, you are in trouble. If you trip-toe on this road you are doomed. You just must learn to take one step at a time; gently, millimeter by millimeter, like the cautious millipede, on this road of life.
"Your eyes firmly fixed on the slippery ground.
This is not the road for the short-tempered people. Or the self-conceited ones who think highly of themselves. They will falter; they will trip and tumble especially at dawn, whenever the morning begins with a wind, and greasy-short in length and crooked in shape, like the walking stick of an old man."
Here on this road, windows were free of raise their voice, like birds just released from captivity and returning to the village. It was their habit to sing improvised songs of sorrow-their voices quivering with emotion, drifting through the bush, before anybody ever met them and their bare forehead gleaming in the fading light of their receding sun.
Widows of the land were united by the same notion of life and were joined by a common sense of loss, which included the loss of dignity and of status. They shed tears for the same purpose and laughed the same hollow laughter with the tip of their tongues. All widows we're silent for similar reasons and looked very much alike in their garments of black colour, which they wore down to the ankle like a harem of religious devotees. They had one voice to speak with, on topics of common interest, each time they found themselves on this lonely road, their road. Three widows, long before Vivian, had trudged this road, and had several issues of interest to discuss.
"Our hairs are matted and unkempt," they began "No necklace and no earrings. The world looks at out elongated necks and chuckles."
"We are the subjugated people of the world with no hope and no security!"
"We tread the path of life carefully, warily."
"And are followed, all the time, with suspicious gaze."
"Wicked gossip trail our movements."
The beat of the talking drum had filtered into the windows' ears from a neighbouring village, riding on the back of the talkative spirit of the air, and breaking lose among the waving palm-fronds with a jarring sound.
"When last did we dance?" the widows had asked themselves, as they listened to the faint, far-away sound of the distant music, filling their ears with joy.
"For several months now, there has been no music to trickle our nerves, no melody to make our buttocks tremble.....But this one coming to us on this road now really is something."
The sound of the drum floated in more compellingly. The widows had listened. It seemed as if the talking drum would not stop talking! This talkative goat-skinned spirit with a rotund white countenance, all dressed up in one hundred leather straps. There was the rapid clash of expert fingers on calabashes too, and what sounded like a bold, quivering twang on the narrow neck of rattle gourds, all drifting in sombrely towards the three widows, though the cool air.
"Long time since we last danced," they lamented.
And quickly they began to console themselves with words of self-pity and self-assurance.
"When everything is over and we cast off these black garments, we will dance again."
"When will dance all sorts of dance "
"You won't get to know the excitement and joy in wriggling your body rhythmically until you've been deprived of the opportunity to dance."
"But, we surely will dance again, gracefully, elegantly......"
"We will shake our bodies to the sweet song of elopement of secrets lovers, and dance the full-chested dance of the duck wading in the pond."
"We will dance the happy rock-and-roll dance of the earthworm twisting on the wet soil, in the rain."
"Our nimble toes, we would shuffle, to the fast rib-cracking chorus of the yam-pounding village damsels."
"We will twist our body to the current-flowing melody on the lips of the hard-working washermen at the bank of the rolling brook."
"We'll dance the seductive, epileptic dance of the red cock, wooing mother hen, in front of the roosting shed."
"We will hold our buttocks with our two hands and dance heavily like pregnant women, to the slow tempo of the labour-room song."
"Yes, we will dance, market-bound reapers, to the sweaty throb of farmland music, in the season of a bumper harvest."
"One can't really dance well wearing this kind of garment," one of the widows had observed. "This garment which sticks stubbornly to the body, like the ragged robes of a disgraced masquerade."
"Several times, l had been trailed to the farm in this ghostly garment by the village dogs. The dogs must have wondered who l was, and where on earth l came from. They had always escorted me back home from the farm howling vociferously."
One by one, the three widows had returned to their various houses in the village with their water jars, cautiously picking their way through the slippery terrain of the widows road. But the burdens they carried in the minds were by far heavier than the water-filled jars on their head.
Maria, for instance, used to cry all night brooding over the humiliation she had suffered at the hand of her husband's relatives.....When her husband died, they had sat her down alone by the side of his corpse which lay on a wooden slab in the inner apartment of a dark room, and had asked her to confess her sins.
"Confess, confess, confess," they had told her.
"Ask your husband to have mercy."
"Kneel down and beg him for forgiveness."
"What offence have l committed?" Maria had protested.
"A thousand offences!" The people had snapped back, their eyes flashing with deep-seated hatred.
The mantle of the fantastic had fallen on the entire village the day Maria's husband passed on. The elders had ordered the village men to begin to beat the purification tune on the face of the sacred drum.
The heat that came over Maria made her blood to gush. Hot air slashed through her flesh and shot straight to her marrow as she beheld the rigid body of her husband. She shrank when she saw the inordinate expansion of his temple, and the ghastly pallor of his skin.....Her dear husband.....Those fingers that used to caress her during tender moments had completely gone stiff and lifeless. Those eyes that used to flash warning signals out to her in times of impending danger had closed forever.
To Be Continued....