Pointless Love

Adebayo was three months old when his mother, Nike by name, got pregnant. The whole of Abule shook to the extent that many people in the community regarded her pregnancy as an abomination. But all the elders of Abule upheld the pregnancy as being usual since Nike was married to Adebayo’s father according to the native laws and customs of Abule. She did not commit any adultery in so long as her husband was responsible for her pregnancy. Indeed, he accepted it. But danger struck six months later. As Adebayo’s father was felling a tree in his new farm, a big branch of a tree fell on his head. This sent him to his untimely death. The news of his death went round Abule and the entire community held that the death was quite unnatural. The consensus was that the gods and the ancestors of Abule were angry with the deceased for not allowing his wife a breathing space after her last child-birth. This was the general belief at Abule where the natives were known to be incapable of accepting scientific explanations of their misfortunes. No one accepted the fact that Adebayo’s father died from an accident even when some of them agreed that an accident, less than death, was minor.