Farewell to my wife

We were ushered immediately into the house by a tall, beautiful woman in her late fifties or early sixties. She was the only one in the house. Shilan introduced me in Kurdish and the Chaldean welcomed me again with a warm handshake. She and Shilan began to chat and giggle, leaving me wondering what secrets […]

We were ushered immediately into the house by a tall, beautiful woman in her late fifties or early sixties. She was the only one in the house. Shilan introduced me in Kurdish and the Chaldean welcomed me again with a warm handshake. She and Shilan began to chat and giggle, leaving me wondering what secrets they shared.

  Shilan, a Muslim, was apparently a frequent visitor to the house. At 28 and unmarried, she was beginning to worry about her future. She was the butt of cruel jokes in her family and in her ultra conservative community. She was no longer on speaking terms with a father eager to marry her off to a relative or any decent Kurd. But she was a rebel. She was determined to choose her own man. She had brought me to the Chaldean to know if we had a future together.

  I was asked to produce a dollar to pay for a cup of coffee. I brought out a dollar bill. The Chaldean fetched a kettle of hot coffee from the kitchen and poured it into a white cup. She then poured the coffee in a bowl and began to study the sediments at the bottom of the empty cup. Sensing my unease, Shilan offered reassuring smiles. Soon, the Chaldean began to speak and Shilan interpreted. The long and short of her prophesy was that Shilan and I would not go far because I would be returning to my country to go through a disastrous brief marriage before meeting the woman I had been destined to marry.               

  Three years after this encounter, a tall, beautiful lady in dark suit and trouser walked into my office in Lagos to interview me for a story she had been assigned to write. At the risk of sounding corny, she fitted perfectly the image that the Chaldean seer claimed to have seen on the coffee sediments and had described for me so vividly. I was smiling to myself as I offered her a seat. I knew I had met my wife. For the next one hour we talked about everything under the sun except the issue that had brought her to my office. Each time she wanted to steer our discussion in that direction, I would change the subject. I was more interested in knowing everything about her than in being interviewed.  

  I got to know that the then Rachael Ogirri was born in Abeokuta on January 19, 1977 to Robert Ogirri, a retired soldier, and his wife, Anne Ogirri, a retired nurse. Her father hails from Ayua town in Etsako West local council of Edo State while her mother came from the prominent Okoh family in Uromi. She was the fourth of five children – two men and three women. She attended Saint Bernedette Private School in Ibara, Abeokuta where her father was then stationed as a soldier, and Saint Maria Goretti Grammar School in Benin City before proceeding to Ambrose Alli University, Ekpoma, where she graduated in 2001 with a Bachelor of Arts in English Language. She was performing her national service with TELL Magazine as the time we met in April 2002.

  The magazine was doing a story about age falsification and other related scandals among contestants in the Miss Nigeria beauty pageant organized annually then by The Daily Times of Nigeria Plc. She had been sent by her bosses to interview anyone in the company willing to speak on record. I had to be persuaded to see her. But I was not cooperative.  I urged her to drop the story, but she said it was beyond her.  Finally, I decided to satisfy her by responding to her questions. I denied the allegation that age and certificate falsification was pervasive, arguing that one isolated incident should not be used to generalize.

  At the end of the interview, the rookie reporter wanted to know my name and my position in the company. She had been ushered into my office without being told who she was going to meet. She looked so innocent and lovely. It was clear that she was not cut out for the hard grind of journalism.  But I could see a child-like enthusiasm to learn as much as possible during the one year national service. She was not intimidated by the personalities she was meeting and interacting with. She was self confident, articulate, warm and friendly. Though only 25 then, I would later discover that she was mature and wise beyond her age. She was also a very sensitive person and could easily be moved to tears by harassment, persecution, injustice and undue pressure.  

  Six months after we met, Rachael and I got married in Benin on October 19, 2002. It was love at first sight. We were both convinced that we were meant for each other. Since getting married, we have lived peacefully together raising our two lovely children and my niece from age three, and witnessing high and low moments, including the tragic death of her mother in April 2005. In Rachael, I found an irreplaceable soul mate, a genuine friend, a loving wife, a trusted sister and a kind and caring mother. She was fun loving and considerate. She adjusted easily to whatever circumstance we found ourselves. She was always being complimented on her beauty and dress sense. Like most women, Rachael liked to look good at all times. She spent quite a considerable amount of time dressing up for every outing. I was always complaining. She insisted on a minimum of two hours notice before attending any formal or semi-formal event. Every morning when she was fully dressed up for work, she would saunter into my room, strike a few catwalk poses and waited for me to compliment her. I was in big trouble if I failed to commend her looks.

  “You look gorgeous, Miss Estako”, I would tease her, referring to a place of origin she knew so little about.

  If she bought a new dress or made her hair, she would be eager to know what I thought about it. “It is fantastic!” I would quickly declare in order to be left in peace.

  “Are you sure?” She would query, not quite convinced.  “Yes, my dear. But for the fact that you are now “after-two”, I would have entered your name for a beauty pageant bigger than “Miss Estako” or “Miss Auchi”.  I would try to deflate her. “Sit down there. My dear, when I go out there, nobody would believe that I have had two children. I still turn heads, you know”. She would walk away, giving me a knowing wink at the door.   

Rachael was a good mother to our kids. She lavished attention on them, spent whatever she had on them, fawned over them, but she did not hesitate to discipline them if they misbehaved. She tried to raise them with the same old values she had been raised by her parents – honesty, empathy, belief in God, respect for people, and a strong sense of identity. She wanted them to learn to speak my language and to be culturally rooted.  She made our home warm and welcoming. She did not drive away my family and friends. Coming from a small close-knit family, she was not initially used to the crowd around me. But she adjusted quickly, becoming a good hostess who insisted on personally serving all who come into our house.    

  Rachael was the kind of woman any man would wish to have as a wife. I considered myself lucky to have met her. The predictions of the Chaldean woman have come to pass. However, what she did not see was that Rachael and I would spend only seven years together before succumbing to cerebral malaria on August 29, 2009 at the tender age of 32, leaving behind a heart-broken husband and a vulnerable six-year-old boy and his innocent four-year-old sister.