Little Girl: Where are we going, daddy?
Daddy: To visit a friend. His wife had triplets last week.
Little Girl: (scoffs) Hmm! Mummy bought six plates yesterday!
It had been a difficult labour and Irowoli arrived via caesarean section at Bwari General Hospital on August the 14th. This was a first for Tony, who has long desired to father a child. As such, we were delirious with joy when he called to say that Yinka had put to bed.
Why do we always say that; ‘put to bed,’ I mean? Rather obvious, I think, that a woman should do just that. The constant allusion to this natural expectation suggests that well, she could act otherwise: put to gutter, the pit latrine or some other forsaken spot that we hear of, and read about so often. Olo’un maje!
Hence, my unstinting admiration for Tuface Idibia, who, tasked by a reporter on his many ‘love children’ says, matter-of-fact like, “dem plenty-o. I’m still counting se’f.”
A week later, I was strolling to Tony’s when I heard my name and turned swiftly in the direction of a melodious feminine voice: “Mr. Pita, na your eye be dis; which day you come?”
Blushing deeply, I gave the truthful response, which elicited an accusatory squeal of surprise. “Madam, na work,” I parried. “I go still come before I go back. Dem done tell me de good news. Congratulations!”
Her answering smile was bright enough to light a hundred candles. I had known this sweet tempered woman during an earlier sojourn in the neighbourhood. “You remember Amazing, don’t you?” Tony had asked as we strolled past the family’s two bedroom bungalow on the first day of my return.
“Yeah.” A reel unwound in my head of a little girl not quite six years old at the time. Is that a baby on her back?”
“Hmm hmmn. Her mother gave birth again recently after five children. But guess what?” She delivered a set of triplets.”
My jaw sprung open like a cheap padlock and I paused in mid-stride. But that’s the good news for which Mama Amzing seemed genuinely delighted about. Do I blame her? No way! I am just as pleased that she is very pleased.
We had a pleasant time at Tony’s that evening, the high point of which was a praise and worship session to ask God for a shower of blessings on ‘Roli. “Every child ought to be celebrated, because every child is a success story,” the preacher said. Continuing, he painted the startling scenario of a million spermatozoa racing like crazy for one single prize. I had never thought of the child making drill in this context. Dreamily, I caught the tension and thrill of the chase at once and heard the orgasmic explosion of the stadium as one daring guy or lady, the Hussain Bolt or Blessing Kogbare of the lot, comes first! Praaaiiise-the-Looord! Alleluya!!
And when two or more sprinters breast the tape at the same time… should not the celebrations increase in proportion; our prayers double, triple or quadruple as the case may be, for the brightest possible future these sporting heroes can have? I could therefore empathize with the happy mother of triplets and her five earlier winners. The dry, raw witticism of Aldous Huxley came also to mind, and though he referred only to a Noah in “Fifth Philosopher’s Song,” I thought of Hitler, Idi Amin, Bin Laden, Mother Theresa and several other saints and villains the world has known. Everyone of them was a success at birth, not so?
If that preacher is right, then the primeval cry of the newborn is perhaps a shout of triumph. It does mean therefore, that we all come in to the world as champions. The cataclysm through which poor Noah dare hope to survive, I found to be quite symbolic, not only of prenatal trials and challenges but, the gamut of experiences that sum up our stay here on earth.
Indeed, the great marathon of life in Nigeria suggests that we are all winners. Yet, for some, the debacle unfolds too soon. After beating Huxley’s million million spermatozoa some newborn confronts harsh obstacles put down by harsher fate: Hospitals without incubators, callous doctors and nurses and public officials without the least qualms of conscience, whose wives and daughters put to bed routinely in foreign countries where the health care system is healthy and running!
That is the fate which Mama Amazing and her three champions have scaled. That is why her smile lit up the evening. That is the debacle which brought Mrs. Fatima Ibrahim, to a shrieking wreck at the Maitama General Hospital, where she had given birth to twins on 21 August, 2010. Who would have thought that a public hospital in Maitama, Abuja, residential area of the movers and shakers of Nigerian society, did not have incubators? Her premature babies died for lack of adequate care.
Mrs. Ibrahim, school teacher and mother of four is not alone. Mrs. Tautsoma Jubril delivered a set of premature triplets at the Maryam Sani Abacha Hospital, Damaturu on August 23, 2010. The hospital, named after a former First Lady of Nigeria, did not have incubators too for the premature infants. By the 27th, two of the babies had died…
Yet, women continue to put to bed, sometimes with multiple successes. Mrs. Queen Itama, mother of two girls, angled for a boy and got quads for her effort; three girls and one boy. A few days later, Mrs. Bunmi Oladele another mother of two delivered another set of quads at the same hospital in Lagos to make the double event a headliner in several national papers. Newsworthy also, were the urgent calls by both families for humanitarian assistance.
The neighbours also rallied around Mama Amazing and her family to help them through the palpable weight of her triple burden of joy.
Someone observed during the evening that the poor are usually more adept at making babies than the rich. Huxley has a salient view on the matter: “The bed, as the Italian proverb succinctly puts it, is the poor man’s opera.”
It’s the cheapest entertainment ever, from which they derive such mixed bundles of joy and sorrow.
P/S: The last of the Damaturu triplets also died in the last week of September. May their tendril souls rest in perfect peace
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