Chi Amanda 2
Destiny Will Not Fail.

Scene 1
There are three young black women in modern Western clothes.
The first one is in a simple knee length gown and sandals with braided hairdo.

The second person is in close fitting blouse, blue denim trousers and flat soled shoes and has long braids.

The third person is in a long ankle length gown with slippers and with plaited hairdo.

They are sitting on one of the two long logs of wood under a baobab tree.
The sun is setting.

They are Lantana, Adaure and Ivie.
They are looking dejected.

An old gray-haired black woman walking with the aid of a crooked walking stick enters. She regards the three young women.

OLD WOMAN
My daughters.

LANTANA, ADAURE AND IVIE
Good evening Mama.

OLD WOMAN
Good evening my daughters.
You are not looking well.
What is wrong?

ADAURE
If only we could say otherwise.
Even, if we can hide our wounds.
But, we cannot deny our pains.

LANTANA
The pains of our bruises.
The bruises of our wounds.
The wounds of our tortures

IVIE
The tortures we have suffered
What we have suffered in the hands of the wicked
The wicked men who have damaged our womanhood.

OLD WOMAN
Hmn.Hmn.Hmn.
(She sits down on the other log of wood nearby.)
That is why you have such long faces and hang your heads like weather-beaten drooping wall flowers?

LANTANA
Mama, who wouldn’t look so dejected
When we have been so rejected
By those who crushed us and then abandoned

ADAURE
Abandoned instead of being comforted

IVIE
They jeered and sneered at us.

LANTANA
Stigmatized and ostracized.

ADAURE
We are now harrowing in the dilemma of our trauma
Wandering outcasts bearing the anathema of our stigma.

IVIE
Mama, I was raped on my birthday!
By a man I thought was my uncle.

ADAURE
Mama, I was also raped!
When, I was visiting a man who called me his sister in Christ.

LANTANA
Mama, I was ravaged by a husband who was even older than my own father.
My bladder was ruptured and I became afflicted by VVF.
He rejected me and threw mw out of his house.
He said he couldn’t bear the odour of my curse.

They all fall at the feet of the old woman sobbing profusely.
The old woman beats her chest grunting and gnashing her teeth.
She turns to the sky and cries out.

OLD WOMAN
Oh! Oh!! Oh!!!
Oh, God!
Where are you?
When we are being battered and ravaged before heaven and earth?
Where are you?
When, wicked men rape your daughters and waste their seeds?
Where are you?
When your children are crushed and murdered daily?
Where are you?
When I cry for your help when my life is in danger?
Oh, God!
Who will rescue us from the wicked?
When, we are suffering and dying everyday by day in this wicked world?
Oh, God! You said you will avenge the rape of your daughters and you will also avenge the murder of your innocent children.

N.B: Chi Amanda 2 :Destiny Will Not Fail is the second part of my stage drama on the violence against African girls and women as narrated by the victims themselves.

Most women are not interested in solutions. They just want to talk about their problems. It's annoying!

Thank you for reading.

The first part is 12 pages long.
And I have no wrtten the third part.

Here is the major part of Part 1

Chi Amanda
Destiny Will Not Fail

A Musical Drama on the Burden of Women

This is a musical drama on the travails of three Nigerian women from three different regions of Nigeria who fled from persecution and met in another land where they found refuge and comforters.

Hadiyat the nursing mother accused of adultery and was going to be stoned to death, but she escaped by miraculous intervention.

Modupe who escaped from the iron clutches of a merciless polygamous husband.

Nkiruka is the widow who had to escape false accusations by her ruthless in-laws who blamed her for the untimely death of her husband.

Chi Amanda is their jeremiad.

SCENE 1.

Hadiyat with her baby is being chased by over a dozen scornful men in native Hausa attires and armed with big stones about to attack her with the intent of stoning her to death.

Suddenly lightning flashes and thunder claps envelope the place and Hadiyat and her baby disappear from the presence of her attackers.

SCENE 2.

Modupe runs from pillar to post as she is battered mercilessly and ruthlessly by her enraged husband. And his other wives are supporting him. They accuse her of witchcraft. But, she denies it. They throw her possessions after her and she picks them up as she laments and leaves.

SCENE 3.

Nkiruka is with a clean-shaven head and in black clothes is being reviled by her in-laws who accuse her of killing her husband. And the more she denies their charges, the more they assail her. They try to force her to drink the concoction in a calabash cup. But she refuses to drink it. They drive her away and she leaves in tears and pains.

SCENE 4.

Hadiyat with a baby, Modupe and Nkiruka meet at a T-Junction and as night falls, they decide to bivouac there and in the moonlight, they share their testimonies.
Until the choir enters to join them and the choir performs a medley of different songs of comfort and hope to comfort and cheer them up till they all fall asleep. The musical drama ends here.

HADIYAT
Where is justice where only a woman is always caught in adultery and is stoned to death whilst the man goes scot-free?
Yes, I admit my guilt?

But, I am a victim of my weakness for a man I loved and would have preferred to live with forever.
Yes, he was not my husband. But, he loved me when my so called husband neglected me.
Because, he had other wives to comfort him and he neglected me when I was ill and that was the time I needed him most. He left me to harrow in sorrow for days and nights until Usman came to comfort me and my heart welcomed him. So, why could that be wrong?

When your neglected body found comfort in the arms of someone who loved you and comforted you when your so-called husband turned his back on you?

MODUPE
Ahaah!
This is forbidden.
Your husband can marry as many wives as he could and still sleep with others. And commits adultery too. But, no man dares to seize him and stone him to death.
They always pick on the weaker sex. The woman. Is woman the scapegoat of mankind? They treat us like the dump sheep for their Shearer and slaughter slab.
Woman is the bearer of the burden man. We bear the burden of their children and yet they treat us like jackass.

NKIRUKA
Jackass?
What is a jackass?
Is woman not the beast of burden of man?
He hops on her anytime he wishes and she dares not complain and his wish is my command.
My dear sisters and fellow travelers, what are we?
For how long shall we sing this song of our miseries?

MODUPE
Our miseries will continue until every woman refuses to be the beast of burden of every man.
Until, we refuse to be their dumb sheep.

I was the first wife of my husband and the apple of his eye when he sore to heaven and earth that he loved me more than even Queen Elizabeth of England and said that my humility reminded him of Mother Theresa of Calcutta. He lied to win my heart and I fell for all his cock and bull stories. I married him and I thought he was indeed the love of my life. So, he seemed for some years and he started complaining.
“Modupe, there is too much salt in your stew!”
“Modupe, there is too much pepper in your soup.”
“That retarded daughter of yours is an embarrassment to me. I wonder who she resembles. Because, nobody is retarded in my family.”
I tried to object, first a menacing scornful look warns me to shut up and from the scornful scowls, the sharp slaps followed and then the heavy blows as he turned me into his punching bag. He now remembered that he would been a better boxer than Mohammed Ali. Then, he started coming back home late. The late nights turn to total absence from home and the first strange woman appears and she was introduced as his sister. She came to assist me with the chores. Suddenly, his sister was pregnant and I thought it was a scandal and his people laughed me to scorn for my foolishness and ignorance. Why did he marry a second wife?

He wanted a male child and I have failed to give him a male child.
Male children are more important than female children.

NKIRUKA
Who says?

MODUPE
The men say so.
Yeah, male children will bear their heirloom and continue their hierarchy.
The female children would be married off to men from other places.

HADIYAT
But, were they not born by women?
Is woman not the mother of man?
What makes the male child more important than the female child?
Does the male child have two heads?

NKIRUKA
I wonder.
Do you know that other men laugh at their fellow men who don’t have male children. They make jest of them that they are not man enough. As if it is a great feat for a man to claim the right over a male child? Who bore the burden for nine months of the labour of love?
Men can be so ignorant of the great sacrifice of childbearing.

MODUPE.
As I was saying, the conspiracy of my unfaithful husband and his usurping mistress got to a head when the second wife was pregnant and they expected a male child. But alas! She gave birth to a female child. And before I knew what was going on, she accused me of witchcraft! That I was the one who caused her to give birth to a female child? That I bewitched her whilst she was pregnant with a male child. And my Abracadabra spells changed the sex of the fetus from male to female. I was now equal to God that could determine the sex of unborn babies?

Then, he went to bring in another woman who soon became the third wife and when she also failed to bear a male child, I was also accused of preventing the birth of a male child. So, they all pointed their accusing fingers at me. That was how he started to beat me. And his illegitimate wives and my in-laws became his tag-team and the more I protested the more he battered me. And finally they threw me out of the house.

NKIRUKA
Were there no interventions from your people and his own people?
His people were already deceived and their minds poisoned to accept that I must be a witch who ate up male children before they could be born. And all the efforts of my people to reconcile us failed. They and the church told me to continue to pray and bear the persecutions until God would intervene.

HADIYAT
Did God intervene?

MODUPE
God must have intervened.
Otherwise, I would have been battered to death by the monster my husband has turned into.

God saved my life from the evil women he brought into our home without my permission. And here I am alive and safe in the company of two people who are caring for my welfare. Yes indeed. God intervened.
The sooner you leave before you are beaten to death, the better and safer you would be.
Modupe oh!

NKIRUKA
True my dear sister.
Thank God, you escaped to this place of refuge
My case is not worse.
You know, when you think your situation is bad, you now see the person whose situation is worse. Then, when you see the person whose situation is even worst, what do you say?

I loved my husband.
We were happily married and things were quite rosy for years.
Then, unfortunately he became ill and it was a protracted illness that eventually claimed his life before our seventh year of marriage. And I thought his people would be very sympathetic to our innocent children and me. God gave us two boys and two girls.

They seemed to be so sympathetic at first until we went to their village for his burial rites and that was when my nightmares begun. They shaved my head and I put on the black clothes. I refused at first. Because, my husband and I were devout Christians and our church did not believe in all the primitive fetish native rites of passage. But, when they shut me up and for the sake of peace, I abided by the native custom and tradition as they insisted. But, it was when they demanded that to prove that I was innocent of my husband’s death, I must drink the water used in washing his corpse. God forbid!

HADIYAT & MODUPE
Whaaaaaaaat?
To drink the water used in washing the dead?

NKIRUKA
Yes. They insisted that it was their custom.
But, I refused. And they said I was guilty of killing my husband, because I refused to drink that water already used in washing his corpse. They pounced on me and tried to force me to drink it. I escaped back to our house in the city. And they came after me, seized my young children and drove me out of our house.

HADIYAT
To drink the water used in washing the corpse of your husband?
God forbid!
What an abomination.

MODUPE
I am going to trop.
What an outrageous ritual.
They must be devil worshippers.

NKIRUKA
Haah! They do it. And believe me or not.
I know widows who had drunk the water used in washing the corpse of their husband.
But, this is evil and totally unacceptable to me. And my family even wanted me to abide with the evil ritual. They said that I should do it. Just to prove my innocence. God forbid!

HADIYAT
Thank God you refused such an abominable ritual.

MODUPE
These are some of the abominable traditional practices and taboos of the violations of the rights of women that we all must refuse and reject and save ourselves from further maltreatment and punishment from these diabolical acts of injustice and violence against women.

NKIRUKA
We must stop all these atrocities against women.
Such as rape, female genital mutilation, wife molestation and the other abuses of the female folk.

MODUPE
Rape is the worst form of crime against women.

HADIYAT
In most cases, you are even too ashamed to let anyone know.

NKIRUKA
Because, if they know you have been raped, they stigmatize you.

MODUPE
And most men despise a raped woman.
As if it was her fault.

HADIYAT
That is why most women are afraid of reporting it.
They don’t want to be despised for being the unfortunate victims of demonic men.

NKIRUKA
Oh, God! What a burden we bear.

HADIYAT & MODUPE
But, this is not our destiny.

NKIRUKA
Our destiny is what God has made us.

HADIYAT
We are the comforters and nation-builders of humankind.
MODUPE
Yes. The hand that rocks the cradle rules the world.

NKIRUKA
Is that not a tongue-in-cheek cliché?
Used by men to flatter us with their sugar-coated words of eulogy to continue to woo us with conceit and deceit?
From the wooing on the street to having you at their feet.

HADIYAT
But God has made woman the mother of man.

MODUPE
And any man who insults and assaults a woman is insulting and assaulting his own mother. Except, he was not born by a woman.
And is there a man not born by a woman?

NKIRUKA
Our common destiny brought us together.
So that we can help ourselves.

HADIYAT
We should never give up our destiny.
To be what God has destined Woman to be.

MODUPE
Woman is the Mother of Man.
Our destiny will not fail.


HADIYAT, MODUPE and NKIRUKA sigh and regard themselves.

HADIYAT
My name is Hadiyat and it means “Oneness in God”.

MODUPE
My name is Modupe and it means “I thank God”.

NKIRUKA
My name is Nkiruka and it means “The future is greater”.

HADIYAT & MODUPE
Indeed, the future is greater.
Our future is greater and we must not allow our lives to be persecuted and wasted any longer. We must join hands to save our future from further violations of our rights to justice, peace and social security in the society.


HADIYAT, MODUPE and NKIRUKA join hands together in unity and then they hear the echoes of the song “Chi Amanda” in crescendo and they see a choir coming into the place.

The choir enters in solemn procession with candle lights.
The choir surrounds them and begins to sing different songs in Igbo, Yoruba, Hausa and English to cheer and comfort them.
The choirs ends with “Chi Amanda” the theme song in the Igbo language meaning “ Destiny will not fail”.

Chi Amanda

Your destiny is not in the stars
But in your own hands.
Whatsoever you sow, so shall you reap.
If you say “Yes” to your destiny, your destiny will agree with you.
But, if you say “NO” to the devil, the devil will flee from you.
God has given you the chance to make a choice
So, think twice before you choose
Lest, you make a mistake that you will regret.
Beware of evil thoughts
Lest evil thoughts will destroy you.
Do good to your fellow humans
And their goodwill will follow you.
Don’t give in to injustice and wicked ness
Reject oppression and persecution
And fight for your right
And your destiny will not fail.


Chorus: Chi Amanda!
Chi Amanda!
Chi Amanda!
Chi amah!!!
(Repeat the song from crescendo to decrescendo and fade out.)

End of Part 1.