I hope you read to the end. It is a true-life story, though it is long to read.
Each time people talk about checking the background of whom you are getting married to, and checking everything that needs to be checked, I always remember this incident.
Some people don’t care; all they want is to get married.
Some of the temptations that come with a wedding may be a result of a deity in your father’s compound that has refused to be pleased, just tormenting everyone and keeping everyone in suspense because you don’t know which sickness it is going to bring. Each year, it is either your family is doing one burial or you are going from one hospital to the other looking for solutions to a particular sickness, or it turns the family perpetually poor. Unforeseen spirits hover around, causing suffering that you do not know when it will end. You are no longer praying to have riches or wealth but to have life. That’s if it spares life. Sometimes, it comes when some family members have come of age to take life and to renew sacrifices and promises your father or grandparents made for it.
Here is the main story👇👇👇👇
On the 22nd of November, 2014, a lady I worked with in the same office had her wedding. Her four brothers were coming back from Benue and Ogoja for her wedding. Three were her blood brothers, while one was the boy they had adopted.
So, the four of them were boarding the same vehicle. On their way back, two left Benue to meet the other two in Ogoja, and they boarded a bus coming to Abakaliki.
You know that type of joy when all of you are coming back for your elder sister’s wedding, especially when people have mocked her that she was over-age for marriage.
She was their first daughter. You know village mentality: when someone is above 25, they will say she is getting old for marriage. She was in her early 30s then.
So, it was the D-day. Those brothers didn’t come for the traditional marriage, but they were ready to attend the wedding.
We were set to go to the church. Her phone rang, and it was one of her brother’s numbers. With so much joy, she picked up the call to know if they had gone straight to the church without coming home first, only for the person who called her to say, “Please, this person had an accident, and three people are already unconscious at a certain place after Ogoja.”
It happened that her phone number was the last number the brother called, so the person dialed the number.
Her phone was on speaker. I overheard the man who called trying to describe the place where the incident happened, but the phone dropped from her hand. We were just about to leave for church when the call came in.
But before the call came in, she had been saying she was getting weird feelings. We told her it was one of those things.
One thing I was sure of was that she was always going for prayers. She did a novena for her wedding to be successful. She tried. She was never reluctant about prayers.
She saw the signs because no week passed by without her shedding uncontrollable tears. She couldn’t describe what was wrong or how she was feeling about the wedding.
Sometimes, I got angry at her for crying unnecessarily. I told her that she shouldn’t worry and that her wedding would be successful. I had no idea what was coming.
No one told her not to go ahead with the wedding. All they said was that she should be prayerful, and she was really prayerful.
As the phone dropped from her hand, she fainted in her wedding gown. Her husband rushed and picked up the phone and called back the man to be sure of what we had heard.
Then it was confirmed that the three brothers had lost their lives at the spot, while the adopted boy was left without a scratch. And they were in the same vehicle. Just three of them lost their lives.
These were brothers aged 21, 23, and 26. The same father, the same mother.
That was how she lost her three brothers on her wedding day. Rev. Father came and gave them wedding blessings. There was no wedding reception till date.
The news circulated, and it was the worst news that had ever happened in that community.
The traditional marriage was successful. No one saw it coming. It was later that they said someone had given a message about it, but what I don’t know is whether the whole family prayed against it after the message was delivered.
People began to question it. You know people now; everyone had their own views on the incident.
She was the strongest lady I had ever seen.
The next year, on almost the same date she was supposed to do her wedding but had lost three brothers to death, she also lost her mother in November 2015, on her one-year wedding anniversary.
They went to check what could have warranted this sudden tragedy. One prophetess said it was their eldest brother they were staying with in Benue who had a hand in it, while some were pointing at the grandparents’ deity.
Another said the person who did it was from their father’s family.
They kept seeking to know what had happened. It was confusing.
It was a very terrible tragedy that gave her a big scar. It was not easy for her to get over it.
I can remember that after two months, she resumed work. Every day she came to the office, she kept crying because people kept coming to sympathize with her.
Some people heard the news but didn’t know it was someone they knew, so people kept coming to our office to offer their condolences.
It wasn’t easy for her to get over it.
It didn’t stop there. The husband hadn’t been able to stand on his feet financially ever since then.
This was someone who was doing well before she met him. He was working at one company in Enugu.
After the incident, everything turned upside down. He had issues with one of the workers, and he was relieved of his job.
He lost his job just when they were about to make him the manager of the company.
That was it. He lost his job.
A few months later, the wife said, “We will have to look for what you will be doing. I don’t want people to laugh at us.”
She went to borrow money and stocked up on Ogbono, Egusi, beans, and garri in bags for him in Enugu.
There, it was as if something somewhere was monitoring it. They all began to disappear one by one.
At first, she thought he was lying, but every day the goods kept reducing. They didn’t see the goods, nor did they see the money that was made from them.
She went there to check if it was a joke, saying that she didn’t understand what was happening.
The business she borrowed money to open for her husband had vanished.
“Chinenye, I didn’t see even one cup of garri from that business, nothing. I said I wasn’t going to interfere. I wanted him to stand, and I didn’t want to touch anything from the business, but it is all gone.”
I asked if he was robbed.
She said, “No.”
“Then what happened?”
The husband said, “I don’t know, but all I can say is that every morning, if I open the shop, one thing must be missing.”
Later, he closed down the shop and returned home with nothing.
She started sourcing for other means for him so they could at least feed the family, but nothing was forthcoming.
He stayed at home for one year. Then he decided to start looking for people who could at least call him for a contract because he had learned aluminium work before he got the job he was doing then.
It was terrible because he kept missing opportunities.
The story is very long. I can’t even continue writing about all they went through during that period and are still going through.
The wife was now bearing the burden of the family. She was doing everything possible to feed the family with three kids.
Not like the job she was doing was paying well, but they were managing.
The last time I saw the man, he was working in a refilling gas station.
I told her to go spiritually to find out what was going on, but she said she was tired of going from one ministry to the other.
“No one is telling us the exact thing that is wrong. They are all saying different things. They are there. We have stopped looking for solutions.”
She said, “Chinenye, all I’m grateful for is life. Let us just be alive.”
So, my dears, this life is just too deep. Pray that you never find yourself in such a situation.
Not fiction.
Chinenye Annah
