After-birth Palm wine

Ma Ekanem is a powerful woman; I have heard stories about her since I was a little girl in my mother's hut. She is not an ordinary human being, she battles the spirits that impede successful childbirth with herbs and seeds that severe the connection between the natural and paranormal. That is why it was bone-chilling when she demanded that I come to serve her. I was immensely terrified, the sort of terror that leaves a gripping sensation in your gut. But when such a woman summons you the way she does, pointing to your compound and screaming your name, you can’t help but respond. I was asleep with my Ebe when she came. We scampered out like lizards and listened in terror as her scrawny silhouette shrieked beneath the half-moon. She spoke in a cacophony of ancient riddles and proverbs, and from what we could gather, I was to become her attendant for as long as she pleased, serving her in the day and returning to my Ebe at night.

Now, after serving her for about a year, I have come to be in more awe of this woman. She is very strange. She lives alone in a big compound along the path to the stream. People say she has drunk neither the wedding nor after-birth palm wine. She has no idea how either of them tastes. She doesn't know how the thrust of a man feels, and the weight of a baby in her womb. It is rumoured she has no womb. My Ebe fears she would make me like her. I have drunk the wedding palm wine, but I haven’t had a baby so I can drink the after-birth palm wine reserved for a lactating woman. I want it more than anything, that wine. I want to drink it in front of my in-laws, make slurps and lick my lips, and then sing a lullaby for my baby loud enough they can all hear from their huts. I want to have a baby for my Ebe, a boy that would bring him joy and clear his creased forehead.

I stand in awe of Ma Ekanem, working diligently, secretly hoping she would help me. Most of the stories I have heard about Ma’s powers are true, and it is surreal to witness her prowess firsthand. She detects fertility problems by palpating a woman’s body and peering into her fluids in a bowl. She has cured women with such problems across the six towns, even though in some cases she bluntly says there is nothing she can do. ‘You cannot conceive, some women won’t ever have babies of their own,’ she says with a straight face to the wife of a chief who suspects her co-wives have her womb tethered with the sorcerous chain of barrenness.  

What Ma says is terrifying. How could she say some women won’t ever have babies of their own. I have to give my Ebe a child, a son. And if I can’t give him a son, I have to prove to him and his family that I can get pregnant so he can at least hope for a son. I suspect Ma can help everyone but has chosen not to help the chief’s wife because she doesn’t like her. Ma is truly skilled; she can redirect the womb of barren women. She had helped the other attendants have babies of their own. Some had their womb in slanting positions, others had their womb upside down, and Ma dexterously massaged them and set their wombs in place so they could give birth. It is not a thing everyone can do. She is the only one with such skill throughout the six towns. When she delivers such women, she does it covertly, in an empty hut, just herself and the pregnant woman, no one else. Everyone else stays outside the compound. That is why many believe she uses charms, others think that’s the instruction she got from Ikpa Ison, the goddess of fertility.  I don’t know what to believe. Most of her methods are a far cry from the deliveries I have witnessed in my father’s compound. Before delivery she has a secret potion she administers, incense she directs toward the vagina and oil she would rub on the stomach.

From Ma’s compound, by the path to the stream, she would show us children she had helped deliver, children who ordinarily wouldn’t be alive due to complications surrounding their birth, how they’ve grown big and strong, some married with children of their own. She says that’s why she loves what she does, helping bring life into this world. Her wrinkled face glows as she says so, and she flashes her gaped, brown teeth.

However, not every delivery brings joy, when a woman gives birth to more than one that is a taboo. It is the worst nightmare of every woman. You see, when the supreme one Abasi created humans, evil was denied entry into the physical realm. But evil, elusive and persistent disguised itself as twins, the Amanamba, and snuck its way into our realm. Many years ago, our ancestors let the Amanamba live and the disaster was great, evil spread throughout the land, the rains didn’t come and crops wouldn’t grow, the stream dried out, people died unnatural deaths; that generation was cursed because it ignored our tradition.

Our tradition is to dispose of the Amanamba and ostracize the mother. The Amanamba are placed in earthen pots and left in the thickest parts of the bush. As for their mother, she is to reside on the outskirts of our town and become the Unawo. The Unawo do not use the stream, they do not attend festivals, and they do not speak to others because they are carriers of evil and brought forth the unnatural into this world, risking the sanctity of our community.

It is this tradition that Ma has flouted. Right before my eyes, she delivers the Amanamba and the mother begins to breastfeed them. You don’t breastfeed the Amanamba; you don’t touch them. Our people say: That a woman has two breasts doesn’t mean the Amanamba have a breast each. Everyone knows that. Ma should know better. Yet I have seen it twice as women have come to deliver the Amanamba from neighbouring towns across the stream. Ma knows when the Amanamba is in the womb of a woman, she is experienced like that, she feels it when she massages them weeks before delivery, and since the women don't want to become Unawo they deliver both babies in secret and take one home. The male is always preferred, and if they are both males, the male that looks more like the father is selected. Two females are often rejected. Ma Ekanem wraps the rejected Amanamba in banana leaves and takes it away. She takes them to nearby Okoyong.

The people of Okoyong believe they have their eyes opened. They call us bush people because we have not accepted the Mbakara and his god. We have not allowed the Mbakara to reside amongst us and infiltrate our customs. The Mbakara in Okoyong patrol the forest in search of earthen pots, and Ma goes through the trouble of taking the Amanamba all the way there in the hope they would be saved and raised by the Mbakara. She takes the arduous trip on the lonely bush path, wades through the shallow edge of the stream, and further through the forest, fighting animals on her way. She should have been struck dead by the gods, but for some reason, she has been spared and doesn’t look like anything would happen to her anytime soon. She doesn’t care that I can divulge what I have witnessed. She must believe I don’t have the heart to tell anyone and even if I do no one would believe me. Indeed, my Ebe laughs when I whisper to him at night. He thinks I’m delusional.

But I'm not. Ma tells me the following day, ‘The Amanamba is harmless, that is why I go through all that trouble to save them.’ She says she is one, born in secret. ‘My mother refused to become an Unaowo.’ I pinch myself to ensure I’m not in a trance or something. She continues, ‘My mother had two females; I looked more like my father.’ Suddenly I am no longer surprised, I am now sure that that is why she acts so strangely, why she hasn’t been married and why she doesn’t have children of her own, why she is old but strangely so agile, because evil possesses supernatural power and has no interest in order.  ‘That is why we have been doing our best to save the Amanamba since. It hasn’t been easy, but we have been trying.’

My first thought is to leave Ma and bear whatever consequences follow, it is rumoured that she had struck disloyal attendants with madness in the past—a woman had become fed up with serving her and now goes about naked, eating leftovers. I don’t want that, so I go with my second thought: she is the only one who can help me have a baby. I have been married for two years now and still haven’t been able to conceive, my in-laws are already suggesting my Ebe should take a second wife. He is stalling now, but very soon, when a wife is brought before him, he would have no choice. Even as I despise Ma’s sheer disregard for tradition, I still believe she can give me a selection of herbs that would open my womb; I believe she can massage my womb into place like she did the other attendants. But she does none of that. After thoroughly examining me, peering into my pee and saliva mixed in an earthen bowl, she says, ‘You wouldn't give birth no matter how hard you try.’ She says I am like her. ‘My mother had seen my condition and asked me to stay single because being chased from my home was inevitable.’ I can’t believe her, how easily she had accepted her fate without even trying. Maybe she couldn’t have babies because she was an Amanamba meant for a pot in the bush. But my biggest fear overwhelms me, my biggest fear is to be like Ma and never know the taste of the after-birth palm wine. I wouldn’t be disgraced in my husband’s house and watch my Ebe marry a second wife who would take my place once she bears a child. I wouldn’t be chased by my Ebe back to my father’s house and bring shame to my family.  I ask Ma what I can do. She laughs. ‘We would cheat the community,’ she says. ‘You will now know why I summoned you. You see all the women with me, we are all alike. I didn’t massage their wombs into place. I did something else.’

Ma gives me two leaves and the bark of a tree to chew daily and my stomach begins to swell, it swells and swells, gradually like the stomach of malnourished children. I fall sick. My Ebe is happy, he gives me special care. I stop going to Ma, she now comes to me. She massages me twice a week and gives me herbs to drink, my stomach swells further. I fear I would die, the herbs make me constantly nauseous. After twelve weeks she summons me to her hut. My Ebe is asked to stay outside the compound. She gives me seeds to chew to bring down my stomach— bowel-emptying diarrhoea follows.  A woman in the adjoining hut is in labour, I can hear her scream.

‘She has the Amanamba in her stomach, male and female. Which would you prefer?’ Ma asks.

‘A male,’ I mutter.

‘She wants a male too, don’t be selfish. She has agreed to give the female away, they are not from our town, and they don’t know who you are. Take the female and go your way in peace.’

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