An Orphan Girl

Chapter 5:

Lying in his coffin, Mr. MBUNYA seemed to be sleeping, sleeping peacefully. Dressed in traditional clothing, he did not look much like the one his relatives knew. His brown complexion had darkened, his nose deformed by the days spent in the morgue… he was simply unrecognizable to most. The vigil ended around 10 p.m. The crowd was received by the family and began to disperse. Religious and traditional songs resounded in the night like an echo in a mountain.

At midnight the widow was escorted outside surrounded by her sisters-in-law, aunts-in-law, and her mother-in-law in the courtyard of the family compound to the rhythm of drums and traditional sounds. It was midnight, reached the middle of the yard, they disperse each on one side and left Mrs. MBUNYA alone in the center.

One of the drummers said a word and they all started dancing. This was a traditional custom of their own.. They danced like this until around 3 a.m. After finishing, they went to rest because, in just a few hours, they should continue with the final preparations before the burial. Everything took place in good conditions and Mr. MBUNYA was buried in the afternoon under the cries of pain and the tears of his relatives.

A month later, Mrs. MBUNYA and her children return to Douala. The children had resumed classes as best as they could and were trying to move forward.

The MBUNYA family already showed them their real faces. The brothers of their deceased behaved with them in an unpleasant way and did not fail to accuse the widow of the death of their brother. They called her a witch and many others. The situation worsened when they came to her house one afternoon accompanied by big arms. They demand Mrs. MBUNYA to free the place as soon as possible because, according to her, she did not deserve to live there as well as her children who for them were not of their blood. When the deadline passed, they expelled them from their own house. They cried, wept, struggled in vain. These people were much stronger than all of them put together. A crowd came to see what was happening and were amazed to see this woman and her children being rejected and humiliated in this way.

Mrs. MBUNYA got up with tears in his eyes, grabbed her phone and called someone. An hour later, they were all sitting in the living room of his elder brother who came to pick them up after receiving her phone call. Every night she cried, called her husband, asked him if he saw everything that was going on? Why did he leave them and go away? Andrea as for her, very introverted by nature, withdrew into herself. She barely spoke anymore, she had lost a lot of weight and had become very pale. At school, she was absent and it showed in her grades. She and her brothers mourned this absence on a daily basis and their mother felt so helpless in the face of the grief they felt.

One evening, after careful reflexions, she took the decision to fight and move forward for her children because her husband would not wanted her to die. As a result, she took a small studio in Akwa-nord and went to settle there with her offspring.. The studio was far from being a palace, but it was habitable. It was located not far from the water drain newly built by the government and was composed of a bedroom, a living room and a small veranda all built of planks. The toilets of the traditional type and not far from house and were collective. All this was very different from what they had known since their births. It sounded like it was some horror or sci-fi movies where they were stuck in a parallel world or something. Mrs. MBUNYA had fitted it out so that she could have a small kitchen area in the living room, all separated by a wooden partition. It was very difficult for these little ones to get used to their new environment, but they got used to it gradually as best as they could.