READ: Amara Episode 2: Here Comes The Boy
It was Aunty Ifeoma’s sharp eyes that first noticed the suspicious changes in her body. At first, Amara denied it but when it became glaringly obvious that she was pregnant, she confessed. The family could not believe it. Afulenu, who hurried to the city, did not bother hiding her disappointment and regret for persuading her daughter to take ‘this foolish girl’ to the city. As far as she was concerned, Amara was a disgrace, involving herself with an ordinary okada man -a Yoruba man for that matter, ha! Why couldn’t the stupid girl be smart enough to hook and get pregnant for one of those rich Igbo boys in Alaba market, eh? Tufiakwa!
Ayo owned up to the pregnancy and proposed to marry her. Amara was excited and corky and rude to her Aunty and her family. As long as Ayo was with her, she was fine and she made that clear to them. Her Aunty pronounced that she would regret it and she replied indignantly that she would not, in Jesus’ name.
“I pity you,” Aunty Ifeoma had said, resigned. “You think it is easy to raise a family without the right foundation. You’ve decided to throw your life away for an okada man. Good luck with that.”
“Aunty, Ayo is not an ordinary okada man,” she had boasted, “he is a very talented musician. He may not be doing so well today but I believe in him. Very soon he will drop his okada, and become a star. You will see.”
That was three years and six months ago. Ayo is still an okada man with no musical prospects in any foreseeable future. They live in a rented face-me-I-face-you apartment in the slums with their two children and oh… she is pregnant with the third.
The pregnancy is the current wahala.