The Devil s Gift BL

There is more to a name than it sounds.The literal meaning and spiritual connotation of names are believed to have covert influence on the destiny of the bearer.

In the days of old, tradition and superstition allowed parents to name their children based on the circumstances surrounding their birth, days of the week, place of birth or after any spectacular event that season. That was why some people bore names like Africa, independence, manager, January, strongface, warmate, Friday, etc.

In each of these cases such parents obviously did the naming as a way of expressing their anticipations, convictions in a positive or negative light or deep-seated emotional pains.

This was the case for Mr and Mrs Opus Okaro, a young couple living in kuroama, a remote fishing community in the southern part of Nigeria in the early seventies. They were very poor and could barely boast of one meal a day. The husband, Opus, was in his late forties when he got married to his wife Beatrice.

Being an attractive young girl who had just turned 20 years of age when he betrothed her, he hoped her beauty would one way or the other compensate for his penury; and inadvertently, he resigned to fate and accepted his poor condition without much ado. Indeed, her approval of him because there wasn't any girl who could bear his situation given that he was one of the poorest young men in that community at that time.

Beatrice fell in love with Opus unconditionally; she had always believed the Bible passage that says “he who finds a wife finds a good thing and obtains favour from the Lord." Anchoring her faith on this promise, she knew her presence in his life could change their fortune for good.she always encouraged him to be steadfast in his fishing business; seeing the possibility that by the grace and and favour of God, as he worked hard, some day they would start enjoying a life of riches.

It was her prodding and encouragement that kept him going. As a fisherman, Mr. Opus, barely eked out a living for his family from his daily toiling. Whatever he got in his outing was what his wife used to prepare their meal for that day. Their situation was so bad that even the poor in the community derided them.

They lived along the spread of a water front that was popularly called “suffer man area". The ramshackle thatch house he managed to construct from raffia palms and bamboo sticks had holes in the roof such that whenever it rained they used buckets to fetch stream of water to prevent flooding of the of the mud floor.

Their room was barely a twenty square feet space that contained an old bug-ridden mattress, which he picked from the bin; their kitchen utensils were so small that they tucked perfectly in a small wooden cupboard just as match sticks fit the box. Because there were no electricity in that area, the source of light at night was an old kerosene lantern hanging from the epicenter of the roof and lowered to a considerable height by means of a piece of rope tired to it's handle.

They had their convenience in a roofless raffia- made room linked to the river bank, in about ten-meters stretched, by means of rickety woods and planks which were also used as supports to hold the bathroom and the toilet over the river.

Nevertheless, it was a great joy for the couple when Beatrice took in a year after their wedding. They believed that children are a blessing from God; and also they hoped that what they couldn't achieve in life, their children would do for them when they become old. This was one thing that motivated them to raise a family even in the face of their abject poverty.

It was unthinkable to go to the village health center to register for antenatal because it was unaffordable. When her time was due for delivery they went to a quack matron in the community that charged a paltry sum which they even had to pay in four installments after Beatrice put to bed.

Much to his expectation, the child was a baby boy, given that a male child was naturally seen as the scion of the father and someone that would flag the name of family after him. With this, Mr.Opus was extremely happy as he invited friends and family members for the child's naming ceremony on the eight day after delivery.

It was a very windy Wednesday morning in the month of December. The weather was cold and icy because it rained the previous night, but even at that, most of those invited arrived just on time before the dawn of the day. The event was meant to be brief and so the guests that came didn't bother even as they were huddled up in the limited space within the room; as they watched Mr.Opus named the baby, “PATIENT" which means poor child in okrika language.