I knew Mummy Agwuoma, my eldest sister, because she was visiting home from Port Harcourt. I knew Iyam Akuagwu, who was born after her and she fostered me. I heard that my third sister was living with Mummy Agwuoma. In 1947, when my eldest sister had a baby, my Mum and I went there, but I was very young to appreciate who the girl was. During our Christmas holidays in 1949, I saw a very beautiful girl, living with her and had been living with her all the years.
The girl was responsible for preparing food and taking my in-law’s lunch to him from Diobu to the township market daily, except on Sundays. Like a bee, she was always busy, but would make out time to impress it upon me, by word and by deed, that she was my elder sister. That was Ihedinachi. It was strange that my sister would not eat chicken. The death of chicken brought much joy to children in those days as it afforded the family the opportunity to eat meat. Ihedi was not eating rice, also, which was a novelty, and was cooked once or so in two months. A family of six might do with two cups! Imagine, seeing someone, my sister, not eating chicken and rice! Nobody, not even her, knew that she would spend her life in Maiduguri and Gombe, the homes of rice and chicken! Thank God that she adjusted there and was eating them!
True to her name – Ihedinachi – all things are in the hand of God, and that every good and perfect gift is from Him, her life was a testimony to that. At a tender age, she was married to Uncle Emmanuel Chima. In Maiduguri, where she went to join him, was when she saw him for the first time. ‘Avuekwe’ – Beautiful lady – as his people renamed her, was in conformity with God’s endowment of beauty and finesse.
A lady of the ‘most’ in our family – the most beautiful, the most humble, et cetera – her albatross was in childbearing. It had wanted to destroy the bloom from the marital rose, but God prevailed. God, Who said that children are His heritage, visited her, and Ogugua was born! Our mum, who died a few months before his birth, missed the glamour. At the end, she was blessed with four lovely and loving children.
Her returning to Ovim with Chileme, her mate, by the last train that left Northern Nigeria, when Ndigbo fled from there, was a miracle. The natives of Maiduguri had insisted that nothing would happen to Ndigbo in their place, based on the goodwill they had built, not knowing that attack would emanate from their neighbours. While some Ndigbo stayed put, Ihedi and Chileme saved their lives by leaving, though things were bad already but God brought them home safely.
Ihedi’s peculiar and humble disposition when making demands, which would attract compliance all the time, is praiseworthy. Capt. Ogugua, her child of comfort, as he was born to comfort Ihedi and our family, being born a few months after our mother’s death, inherited that DNA as well as his siblings. Ihedi taught me the meaning of love. During the war, 13 of us were summoned before our community leaders for being members of Biafran Organization of Freedom Fighters. Fearing that the summons was a ruse to appear before the Nigerian Army, I told my sister. She said that I must not honour the invitation because we would be shot. With great profundity, she insisted that I must flee to Biafra. I told her the implication if I did that. “They will kill you if you can’t produce me, since everybody knows that I visit you every other day,” I told her. “I am married with children, but you are not. Let them kill me,” she said. That was sacrifice, which is the true meaning of love!
A brave and intelligent woman, on Ihedi’s way from Ahaba, where she had gone to collect my stuff, which I brought from Biafra, when I was returning home, Nigerian soldiers arrested her. One of them insisted that she would be his ‘wife’. Imagine! In a good and fluent Hausa language, she said, “No problem, let us go to my house and collect my things and my six children”. Nobody told Uncle to run away. A lovely sister, she never allowed strangers to sow any seed of discord in our family. “I heard that Nwaka is not attending any school in Lagos but is only a babysitter,” someone told her to besmirch my reputation. “I am okay, if Osondu says that she will not be in school,” she gave the fellow a blithe disregard. As the truth speaks loud always, the surprise came to the intruder, when Nwaka, within a few months, secured admission at Ovim Girls Secondary School as a boarder.
I was born-again in 1972 as a student in University of Nigeria and by the grace of God, I led my sister to Christ, when she visited me in Lagos in 1981. Her spiritual growth was fast. One day, at the Scripture Union Fellowship, rain started to fall, when I came out to minister. I rebuked it and commanded it to stop and it did immediately. It made much impact on my sister’s Christian life. On our way home, she expressed much delight in the way God stopped the rain, and was busy pointing to us, the various places the rain fell.
When Ihedi was living virtually with me, a man expressed his surprise before her that our business was growing in a shop nobody had ever succeeded. The owner was associated with evil powers. I refused to believe it, for he had shut his shop and lost the rent for six months, waiting for us until we were ready to take it. “My brother is a child of God,” Ihedi told him. It was a laudable proof of her spiritual growth, for associating success with relationship with God.
Years before visiting me, a strange woman entered her shop in Gombe and could not explain why she came there, my sister told her to leave. She did, and perhaps with her mouth curved downwards in an unpleasant sneer. From that day, Ihedi would be seeing a snake and it would call her name, insisting that she must serve her. She spent much money in vain to stop the attack.
With a thought, it started, a tiny weeny thought that grew and grew in her mind, until the day she decided that she would tell me of her torment by the devil. She and Ogugua came to me in Lagos and I led her to Christ and then rebuked the evil forces and they left her. A committed believer, I noticed her fears a few days before she left for Gombe, though she was not seeing the strange things again. “Jesus lives in you now, it doesn’t matter where you are, be it Lagos or Gombe. You are safe anywhere you are,” I assured her. Thank God, she never saw those things again.
Death is painful but the pain subsides, when it is obvious that you and that person will meet at the feet of Jesus during the Rapture. Adieu, Ihedi, my sweet sister, we will still meet.
For further comment, Please contact: Osondu Anyalechi: 0817 223 7012; [email protected]