By Abdu Rafiu
MY colleague, Dr. Lasisi Olagunju in his inimitable and breathtaking outing last Monday, 02 February, discussed exhaustively the harrowing experiences, the torments a childless woman goes through in her daily life in different parts of the world, but mostly in the developing countries in times such as ours.
She goes through unceasing anxieties and sleeplessness; she faces disapproving stares, mocking grimaces, disapproving giggling, whispers and hate-filled side-talks in the gathering of peers or among neighbours.
The sisters-in-law and the mother-in-law would not leave her in peace. They wrinkle their faces, wondering what she is still looking for in her matrimonial home! Even when the couple resolve out of love to hold out, side-talks and hostile stares soon weaken their determination! It is seldom to find many a couples holding hands and shoulder to shoulder weather the frustration triggered by external interference and storms. There are reports of messy break-ups between couples.
A Customary Court at Ibadan dissolved a marriage which began on a very promising note but hit the rocks because of childlessness. “We had a beautiful relationship at the beginning of our marriage, and we were happy,” so said the woman seeking the dissolution of her union. “We started experiencing a strain in our marriage when we had a delay in having children. My once loving and caring husband gradually became cold and withdrawn towards me. He stopped giving me attention and cared less about my welfare.”
It is typical of the pains in a childless marriage. Women run from pillar to post seeking children. A woman would be made to drink concoctions or go through weird rituals. They flood church prayer houses. At a major church in Lagos, women in their thousands file out with their little children to the Altar during its yearly convention to show the congregation what the church’s prayers of intercession had blessed them with; and they give gratitude.
It is similar to what is done at Osun Osogbo yearly Festival when women throng the famous river with their babies in thankfulness. Young ladies flood there to beseech the Nixies to bless them with babies, too. Nixies belong to the family of formed forces of Nature which all govern the chemical processes of inanimate matter and the biological processes of animate entities. We are the builders, indeed the governing and regulating agents of the world.
They work with unbelievable precision and harmonious beauty. Nixies are the nature beings that are in charge of water, tending rivers and oceans. They are referred to as water goddesses. Some of the people whose inner eyes are open to see them describe them or reproduce their pictures as females with wings. They are also known as water sprites.
The Nixies and Gnomes the latter in different sizes tending the earth, hills mountains and the sands are more easily seen because of their denser consistency than those of fire and the air, salamanders and sylphs respectively.
Some say because of the size of the oceans and the seas, it is logical to expect that masculine Nature Beings would be in charge of these. Enoch is quoted to have said, for example, “And the spirit of the sea is masculine and strong…”
In the South West, during the Festival of the Water Goddess, “Yemoja”, the celebrants are attired in white. Women are in front during their procession and men trail behind them. I am not out to discuss full blown the elemental beings, but to show that there is no length women in ardent longing for babies cannot go. They will leave no stone unturned. The knowledge of the nature beings is universal otherwise different peoples and races would not have had names for them.
Cicero on “The Nature of the Gods” says and I quote him in part: ‘For the belief in the gods has not been established by authority, custom, or law, but rests on the unanimous and abiding consensus of mankind…’ They are called ‘Oro’ by the Yoruba people of South West.
Everything is radiations. Nixies in their perfect dexterity combine the molecules of hydrogen and molecules of oxygen to provide water in their automatic and loyal service to our Lord and Creator. The knowledge of females as specially endowed bridge between man and the Creator’s Footstool, the Throne of Grace, makes man to believe that Nixies would readily intercede on behalf of women in search of babies.
See to what Dr. Olagunju has drawn our attention in his accustomed and unrivalled kaleidoscopic wanderings and sails in overview round the world:
“One sad Monday in June last year (2025). I wrote in passing about the perils of fibroid and the ruin it does to hopes, wombs and homes. I got plenty of reactions and comments, some of them from ladies who have seen everything fibroids—with all the tears and pains.
“One victim volunteered a close-up picture of her problem for me:
“‘You may publish,’ she said.”
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“She attached her real name to the message. I found it very surprising that she said that much. I was surprised because afflicted women rarely talk; they merely sulk on their reproductive disappointments. The person who spoke with me added that she had twice gone through fibroid procedures.
“I did the second surgery because it grew back since I didn’t have children still. They say fibroid grows in a disappointed womb. It takes over when pregnancy refuses to occur.”
“‘But why did she open up?’ I asked her.”
“Well, I talk to guide others. People now speak out on previously no-go areas. I was stunned when a lady told me that she had a hysterectomy…”
“Hysterectomy?” “Yes. Removal of the uterus, the womb, so as to save the woman from very bad troubles and complications.”
“Removal of the womb is huge, and final. It means there will be no conception again and no biological child. You didn’t do that?’”
“No. I didn’t. Mine was just the removal of the fibroids from the uterine walls. But I still don’t have a child yet…”
“Sorry about that…”’ She could go for IVF or surrogacy, I suggested. She kept quiet. I suspected finance.”
“But who really is a mother? Why can’t a woman be a mother without a child?” she asked while hinting that she had decided to live a full life of service, with or without a biological child.’
“Why not?’ I responded. Madam Efunroye Tinubu was ‘a mother without a child.’ She actually had two children, but both of them predeceased her. After those terrible losses, she changed husband after husband, drank medicine, but destiny stood on her way. She then ploughed her boat fully into the oceans of business and politics and made a success of both in Lagos, and later, in Abeokuta.
“I read a portion of Madam Tinubu’s biography to my friend: ‘The Lagos Observer, reporting her death editorialised as follows: She (Madam Tinubu) played no mean part in the circumstances which necessitated British interference in the death struggle between Akintoye and Kosoko for the Lagos throne, and led to her expulsion in 1853. She was, by the way, the last of the principal actors in this historic drama. She left many an indelible mark, too, in Egba history. Requiescat in pace
“The conversation was intense as it drifted into the emotional swamp of childlessness and how to handle it, especially when the clock moves towards midnight. “Stories of childlessness are emotional charged themes in life and in fiction.”
“Efuru is a 1966 novel written by Flora Nwapa. Literary historians say it is the first novel written by any African woman and published internationally. In ‘Efuru’ we have ‘Efuru’ the protagonist. She has beauty, she has character glazed with inner and outer strength. But she is unlucky, then her womb dries up. Her husband, the ‘weak’ man she tends like a child, leaves her. She marries another man, who for reason of her childlessness, goes for another woman.
“Childlessness is a silence that follows the childless everywhere. Efuru, the character, is childless but she finds great success in trade. In her story is the story of the lake goddess, to whom the childless lady becomes a devotee.
“Efuru…dreamt of the lake, her beauty, her hair and her riches. She was happy, she was wealthy. She was beautiful. She gave women beauty and wealth but she had no child. She has never experienced the joy of motherhood. Why then did women worship her?” (Efuru, page 221).
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