My Share of the Northern Cake

Chapter Four

And there we were. In the hole, a built cave where Mallam Balla and his students lived. When we got in with Haliru, Mallam Balla just looked at us and smiled. He got up and welcomed us. We thought he was going to frown at Haliru for bringing us in, or show some disgust and hatred for the additional mouths to feed, he didn't. He just hugged and welcomed us. He didn't ask who we were until at night when we camped around a bricks table taking dinner. We told him who we were. He let us finish our sorry tales before he made us know he knew who Rakia's father was and made us know how glad he was that it wasn't Rakia's father that was killed in that raid. He was happy that should there be any chance, he has had one person he could contact for the safety of us all.

We had fun staying with Mallam Balla. We played games; we told stories and ate fruits and foods. We quarreled, and settled, and fought, and took sides, and made up. We let Mallam Balla join us in the games, and let him settle issues among us. We got sick, and got well, and got homesick, and recovered too. Things went well; things weren't as difficult as they should have for a little community that had no source of income to purchase things, and no farm to harvest foods. We merely did well with hunting for food, for fruits and for water and wood. We didn't have grinded grains as meals, only boiled ones. We didn't have tomatoes and salts and pepper and oils, but we had cassava and tubers, nuts and fruits. We had meat, and the oil from the meats solved the problems of the needed oil by the body daily. We had our meats from hunting birds and pigs and rats and other kinds of bush animals I never read about or heard of or known in my life. We had fun in each hunt we went for. Bird hunting and fowl chasing were the best of it all. And when we got the fowls, we didn't often kill them immediately, we all got involved removing their feathers. We would make and tie long ropes on their legs, and let them run around on their bare skins for some time while we watched and laughed, and we would laugh until some of us fell on the ground. Then Moshood or Haliru or any other of the boys or even some of us girls would catch the fowls again and quickly cut their heads and allow them to stand again. The fowls would run staggering one-sidedly until often; they would be overcome by the power of death. Mallam Balla didn't often like that. He often said if the fowls would eventually die, why put them through such torture. We often replied that their strength often amazed us. Life continued this way, fun and joyful for Rakia and I until we started having some signs we both didn't understand, a development we didn't like and the signs were similar. She often had morning fever and so did I. she would vomit most of the times and pour spits and sleep often and so was it with I. She would say she was feeling dizzy, and she would just lie down, and I didn't like telling her I felt the same way too. Her eyes sometimes would look hollow and her face swollen when she woke up in the morning, and I feared mine would look the same too. It did. She often told me so and so did some other boys and girls that got concerned. One day, while only the two of us were bathing, we noticed that each other's breasts were getting larger, rounder and seemed heavier than normal. We started wondering what was wrong with us; if we had eaten something that others didn't eat and it was affecting our health. We confided in Haliru who encouraged us to speak with Mallam Balla. Mallam Balla said he had known about it. That he had kept close watch on us knowing what was going to result from those countless rapes we had told him about in our story, but he didn't want to tell us then, so that we didn't withdraw to our shells and not relate well with others. He told us blankly that we were pregnant.

It wasn't easy with Rakia when the reality of the pregnancy finally hit her. I didn't take it lightly all the same. But life would continue all the same. I won't kill myself, no matter what I encountered. I had more concern for Rakia than I had for myself. This whole thing was taking much from her. I had to keep a close watch on her, and talked to her often so that she didn't do something drastic and tragic, she didn't, and I didn't also. We believed in fate but more in the optimistic tomorrow. I began to wonder how I would become a mother. Ordinarily, if I thought of a young orphan like me becoming a mother in this uncertain world, it should make me cry, it should make me hate life itself; it should make me want to hate humanity and for that, take myself to the wall and nail my life put to it. But gradually, I got used to the thought of becoming a mother. I got used to making a faint image of my child and started making a real image of mother and child where upon, I am that mother. We, Rakia and I, now looked forward to having our babies in no long time. We didn't know how long it had been from the day we took in till this time because we had all lost count of calendar, but with our stomachs getting somewhat larger each week that passed, we kept feeling the day of delivery drawing nearer.