Please, go through this work and offer commendations as well as constructive criticisms. This is my first work here. Thank you... meanwhile, I have enjoyed some really nice works here...

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Please, go through this work and offer commendations as well as constructive criticisms. This is my first work here. Thank you... meanwhile, I have enjoyed some really nice works here...

AKWUBUNDU
(A short story)
His name was like him or rather, he was like his name. Whatever, all these ones are the part of the troubles the white man created for us when he gave us his language. Wealth is life- that's the meaning of his name. The story goes that he was always sick, looking sick, talking sick and acting sick until he got rich. As soon as he became rich, all the sickness vanished. I was not there, I just heard the gist.
They would ask him. He would say, "well, money has power. It has healing powers, it can cure many kinds of sicknesses, even the chiefest of them all".
"And which one is that?"
"Poverty! Yes, poverty. When you see a very poor man, you see a very sick man. People talk of headaches, malaria, typhoid, as though they are the real things- these are to me, illnesses not sicknesses- or better still, they are just symptoms. When one has them, he or she is ill,it becomes sickness when poverty is involved. A man that is ill and has no money to take care of himself is indeed sick. With what will he treat himself, pay the doctors bills and more?
"Poverty, my friends, is the real sickness and disease and it kills the black man faster than malaria"
Some would laugh- many. Some laughed beyond the reasonable boundaries of his statements. At first, he would wonder why. He had suddenly become a comedian, he thought to himself. Money and comedy? Together?
But as time went, he discovered the real deal. They were not laughing because he was so funny or even funny at all, they were laughing for themselves. They were laughing to impress him, to go back later asking him for money. He knew but he rarely refused any money when asked.
Stories were moving- traveling from lips to ears:
"His money is not clean. It is not a good money. It is blood money. He belongs to a secret cult."
Others said, "it is not blood money. It is brain money."
"Which one is that one?", another asked.
"Must I give you food and still spoon feed you? So, I will have to open your brain and put it inside?"
"Stop insulting me. Just explain yourself."
"Don't you see his younger brother? He is an slowpoke. Was he born an slowpoke? Was he an slowpoke when he was still staying in the village with us? But when he went to the big city to live with his brother Akwubundu, his brain left him. His brain knocked.
He used his brother's brain- his brother's star and destiny to make money. Not every secret cult asks for blood. Some ask for other things like the brain, some womb, some private parts."
Others said, "it is womb's money. He used his wife's womb to do rituals for money."
"How could she agree?"
"Am I living with them? Am I the woman? Go and ask her. Don't you know, is it news to you that she has never given birth to a child since their marriage? It is over ten years now and yet no child. No male, no female. No cry of a child in that house. He sacrificed their future children for money."
"Ah, poor woman."
"Poor woman? Does she look poor to you? See a poor fellow calling a wealthy woman poor. Does she dress poor?"
"Aki, Aki. Must you insult someone before you explain your point? We know you are intelligent and you know the latest stories going around but you are not respectful."
"Sorry. You will just vex sharply as if you are a woman. Small thing; vex. See what I am saying, don't you see how she looks. She dresses like a queen. Her skin is not from this side of the world o. What about her shape. She has not aged since they got married. She has always been looking young. She is not poor, and she is not feeling poor. I even think that she enjoys it- not having children and looking like a sweet sixteen."
Akwubundu knew all these stories but he never said a thing about them. He had heard them, the wind had carried them in whispers. But he kept quiet and acted as though nothing was the matter.
His wife was indeed a real beauty. Her shape and figure were breath taking. Everything about her was. Men always lost their composure around her and begin to act and talk clumsily. It would seem as though their spirits left them.
Her skin was fair- a gentle escape from albinism which her mother had. Her eye balls were light brown. She had a particular carriage and composure. She would walk elegantly and softly and though her heels were not touching the floor and she would sway her waist in a dramatic pattern when she does. And men would loose their breath, struggling to turn again and again to take another look at her and then another.
She had the right curves and edges at the right places as though intentionally perfectly laid by the Grand Designer. She was fit- no extra fat and weight, no lesser. It was just perfect.
And she was so fashionable. She would shade her eye lids, paint her lips, cream her skin, put on perfumes, wear her foreign, important and expensive hairs- Brazilian hairs, Venezuelan hairs, Peruvian hairs, and her Mary Kays and height heels and well shaped dresses all selected carefully for the different occasions.
Akwubundu was so proud of her. She drives him crazy. She was his woman. And he would just laugh softly to himself when men turn desperately to catch repeated looks at her as she walks or smiles. He was always proud to go out with her and introduce her: "meet my beautiful wife." She was indeed beautiful, a wonder to behold. As one poet once said: such women were made on Sunday's morning.
"Beauty? What is that? Is it food, are we going to eat it? Is it children? Who cares? Who will inherite her husband's properties and wealth when he dies? Will it be beauty?"
By now, you should know who is talking- women. They would not let her. They were so jealous. Jealous! And they envied her and spoke badly about her behind her back.
"Proud peacock! Always walking to entice men, to entice our husbands. Prostitute! She thinks she is the queen of England. Dry thing. Let her not go and find how to get pregnant and have children. She thinks all this 'I love my wife' speech that her husband gives will really last. He is a man now. All men are the same. Men want children- male children. Very soon, he will leave her and look for a watered garden to give birth for him not a dry land that paints every part of her body. She does not know that time waits for no one."
Mrs Akwubundu, like her husband, had heard all these bad talks about her but she would say nothing. She would smile to everybody.
Every year, during Christmas, they would travel to their home town and organize an End of the Year Party for the less privileged and all the children and also share food stuffs and clothes. The event would end with them selecting some young girls for her Foundation- Hope For the Girl Child Foundation to be enrolled to acquire skills in make-up, sewing, baking, weaving and other related skills.
People continued to talk.
"She is a good woman. Oh, what a good woman she is. How can such a beautiful and good woman not have children? Oh, God help her."
Others said, "God's ways are mysterious. Do you think He does not know what is happening? He does. Who know whether as soon as she starts having her own children if she would abandon us the poor ones and our poor children?"
Another group had theirs: "she knows what she is doing. It is a plan, a game- the devil's game."
"What do you mean?", the other woman asked.
"Are you also blind? Who just goes about doing good without any aim in mind? You think she cares for us and our children? No, she does not."
"I don't understand"
"Sit here and be acting like a child. Don't you see that I don't let my children attend that party of hers and even if they stubbornly do, I make sure they don't eat or take anything there. No food, no clothes. What is it? Is it the chicken? Can't I get chicken and prepare for my children at home. So, it is not a long- throat matter. She is not feeding them and giving gifts in vain. She is collecting their destinies."
"Mama Abiku!!!"
"Stop calling my name anyhow. Stay there now. Just cool down, let me tell you what is happening. She gives to them and collects from them. Don't you see how she smiles during the occasion. Who spends such huge sum of money under this hard economic conditions and keeps smiling? She is taking from them- their destinies, their stars and their future. Me? I can't close my eyes like some of you do. Nobody will destroy my children while I am alive. Even if I am dead, my ghost will hunt such a one."
The next year came, being their twelfth year in marriage, Akwubundu and his wife did not return for the usual End of the Year Christmas Party. They sent a delegation with pictures. "Pictures? What for?" You might have guessed.
As usual, stories took off walking down the street, some took buses to the village- "it seems Akwubundu's wife is heavy."
"She has started again", one of the women said- Mrs Abiku. "Is this the first time we are hearing such stories? The main thing is not to get heavy from bedroom business, it is to release the load at the due time so we can see what has been hidden inside."
Others, prayed: "Oh God, help her to have her own children. She has helped us with our own- feeding, paying school fees and even clothing them. She has done well. Reward her good heart and her husband's."
At the hospital, there was no way to enter, cars filled up the parking lot and beyond. Beyond, on the inside were the soft loud cries of three babies- all so fair as their mother. These were the new Akwubundus- the new arrivals- triplets- two boys and a girl.
No one could contain their joy. God had indeed remembered them. They sent the pictures to their people at home to celebrate with them. And their visitation the subsequent year was in grand style. It was like a community celebration. The jealous ones buried their heads in the sands. And Akwubundu's brother later got better. I will not talk about that one today, its a different story for another day.