By
Felix Oboagwina
ON ONE OF my trips to my native village, Irrua, in Edo State, I witnessed a spectacle that frankly demonstrated the ordeal suffered by those the Bible calls the “captives of the mighty” (Isaiah 49).
The commercial motorcycle I took had finally arrived at my destination street, going past the Catholic Church on the right. Suddenly, from the line of houses on the opposite side of the street, the left side, a well-built man, dashed out of a bungalow. He wore a flower-patterned shirt atop chinos or khaki shorts.
A child lay across his well-built arms. In that fleeting moment, I could see the kid had a string of cowries dangling from her neck. The toddler could not have been more than two years old. As the man ran with the motionless child, I could see he was weeping. On his heels came a woman, clutching a loose wrapper to her chest. I immediately guessed this would be the child’s mother. Screaming and weeping in the same breath, she ran after the man bearing the child.
The clamour they made drew the attention of the entire street, and heads began to poke out from several doors through the length of the road.
Soon, the man carrying the child veered off the dusty street and ran into a house nearby. I later learnt a native doctor lived there, and this Oboh had been the one treating the girl.
The woman also arrived at the Oboh’s place, but hung outside, fluttering about like a hen deprived of her chicks. In no time, fellow women gathered around her.
My cyclist slowed down. This was the village and life went at a slow pace; people didn’t hurry here. I allowed the bike-man take his time, curiosity about how the story would end having got the better of me. All of us waited with bated breath, to hear the news that would emerge from the Oboh man’s house. Our suspense didn’t last long. Within a few minutes, the father re-emerged from the native doctor’s place, holding both hands over his head.
The child was dead –pronounced dead on arrival.
Openly, this bereaved man wept. His wife threw herself on the ground and rolled in the dust. Villagers clustered around them. Villagers held them. Villagers wept with this weeping couple. Soon, neighbours began to guide them back to their own abode, up the street. But the couple would not be easily consoled.
My cyclist soon brought me to my destination, just a shouting distance from the tragic scene. I paid him. Shaking his head sadly, the bike-man slowly rode away.
“Alas!” someone exclaimed. “What sort of fate is this? This is the third child these people will be losing in a row. Their children don’t survive. They just stay one or two years, fall sick all of a sudden and die just as suddenly.”
It left me wondering. So this Oboh of a native doctor could not save the child, despite all sorts of charms, amulets and incisions he had placed all over her little body? How futile to seek charmers, necromancers and diviners!
Jeremiah 17:5 –“Thus saith the LORD; Cursed be the man that trusteth in man, and maketh flesh his arm, and whose heart departeth from the LORD.”
In contrast, Jesus assures His people: “I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly.” John 10:10
FROM THE BOOK, HELLO, IS THIS GOD SPEAKING? BY FELIX OBOAGWINA