HISTORY ON THURSDAYS WITH COLLYBRIGHT
Do
Benue Men Give Their Wives To Guests As Welcome Gift?
My
Personal Experience As A Yoruba NYSC Member To Benue State.
EX-Corp
Member shares his experience on this historical made-belief.
"When I checked
my NYSC posting and saw I had been posted to Benue stat, I felt disappointed. I
had hoped to go to the southeast particularly a village in the heart of
Igboland and experience a glimpse of the world Chinua Achebe had described in
his books. As I was grumbling in disappointment about how much I didn’t want to
go to the middle belt, one of my friends patted me on the back saying I was
going to be having the best time of my life in Benue. According to him, Benue
people particularly Tiv men have a culture of giving their wives to guests for
the night. I was shocked. I had neither heard of this custom nor believed it
was possible for any man to offer his wife to a guest but my friends and some
other persons insisted it was a tradition handed down over years of practice
and I should look forward to such ‘gift’
as consolation for not getting the state I wanted.
I had planned to
leave for Benue on the day camp opened but due to financial constraint, I
waited till the following day. This made it impossible for me to use a
transportation service that would have taken me directly to camp in Wanune.
Instead I used the regular transport service at Iddo Park which goes to Gboko
in Benue and we set off.
I soon realized I was
the only Yoruba person in the vehicle when we got to Ikire in Osun state and
one of the passengers out of curiosity bought Dodo Ikire from the hawkers. The
man who later told me his name is Kumbu noted that he had always seen the Dodo
Ikire and had no idea how it tasted. He asked if there was any Yoruba person in
the bus and I signaled before asking me how the Dodo Ikire is made. It was
after I explained it to him that we got on talking. I told him it was my first
travel to Benue and he assured me I had nothing to worry about. He said Tiv
people were very welcoming of guests and treated them like family. I wanted to
ask if the generosity extended to gifting their wives to guests but decided
against it.
The driver had
predicted that we would get to Gboko at 7pm but that was to change for two
reasons. First, the vehicle developed fault in Ondo state and we were delayed
for about two hours before the problem was fixed. Secondly, the driver received
a call from another driver warning him of robbery at Okene in Kogi state. We
had to park for another hour before we received the all-clear message to
continue. Because of this delay, we entered Benue around 10pm. From my
calculation, I knew I would be getting to Gboko around 11pm and I was not ready
to continue the journey to NYSC camp that same night. I asked Kumbu if I could
get a cheap hotel in Gboko. He said he would have willingly taken me to his
place if he was going to Gboko too but had to stop along the way to attend to
something important. He then asked if I would not mind staying with his eldest
brother who had a house in Gboko and would readily give me a room to pass the
night. I accepted the offer when he assured me it would be safer if his brother
picked me at the park and take me to his house than for me to start looking for
a hotel to pass the night. When I agreed, he placed a phone call to his brother
and everything was settled in a few minutes.
When we got to the
park in Gboko, Kumbu’s brother was waiting for me. I thanked him for agreeing
to give me a place to pass the night even when he did not know me. He laughed
and waved off my gratitude. He said: “Corper,
you will soon know how kind and welcoming Benue people are.”
His house was not far
from the park and in the short walk there, I was glad I agreed to the offer as
it would have been difficult for me to find my way in a strange place looking
for a hotel.
When we got to his
house, he showed me where the bathroom was and told me food would ready soon as
he asked his wife to prepare food as soon as his brother called. I thanked him
again and went to the bathroom to freshen up. I thought about what I had heard
about Benue people but hurriedly pushed it out of my mind.
I went back to join
him in the living room where I finally met his wife. She was putting food on
the table when I joined them. She greeted me shyly and said she hoped I would
enjoy my one-year stay in Benue. I soon found out her name was Dooshima. She
was young and beautiful and I thanked her for going through the trouble of
making food for me within a short period.
The pounded yam was
one of the best meals I had ever eaten and I told the man so. He joked that if
I stayed in Benue for a year, I would not want to return to where I came from
because of the quality and affordability of their food. He then showed me to my
room and bade me goodnight.
I lay on the bed
thinking about how hospitable the man was to me which confirmed what I had
heard about Benue people. Just when I was settling in to sleep, I heard a soft
knock on my door. My heart was beating fast when I opened the door and saw
Dooshima standing there. She asked me softly if I needed a wrapper to sleep as
she had brought me one. I nodded because I was too tongue-tied to talk and
mumbled my appreciation. She bade me goodnight and left.
For minutes, my heart
kept on beating fast. For a moment, I thought the gifting of wife to guest
story was finally coming true. Eventually, I slept off and had a long sleep
because of the journey until morning when Kumbu’s brother came to knock on my
door to wake me.
Half an hour later, I
was sitting with Kumbu’s brother again who had insisted I had breakfast before
going to NYSC camp. While we were eating, I put the question to him directly if
it was true that there was a Tiv culture that made men gift their wives to
guests as a welcome gift. He burst into laughter amused and laughed till tears
came out of his eyes.
He said eventually: “We like our wives too much to gift them to
strangers. It’s a rumor that has stuck for a very long time. No Tiv man will
hand his wife over to a stranger. Yes, we welcome strangers and treat them well
but it does not extend to giving them our wives. You see how my wife came to
give you a wrapper last night? In the past, it used to be the woman’s wrapper
that is given to the visitor. When the visitor now comes out in the morning
with the wrapper around his body, people from other tribes will start to
whisper that the only way the visitor would be seen in the woman’s wrapper is
because she was gifted to him over the night. That’s how the rumor started. “
He said it has not
stopped them from being hospitable to strangers but there was nothing they
could do about the rumor that has spread far.
I thanked him again
and thanked his wife when I picked my bag to go to NYSC camp. I would
eventually spend one year in Gboko and in that period, I experienced how highly
hospitable Tiv people are and nobody, not even the kindest of them, offered me
their wife as gift."
Source: Mccollybright.blogspot.com.ng
About The Author: Adeshile Adekolajo
Adeshile
Adekolajo is a graduate from the University of Abuja, He works for Ntel
Nigeria and he owns - Mccollybright.blogspot.com
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