Many of them came there to know what was current in the neighbourhood and outside.
Wives were not welcome, but daughters of the place were occasionally tolerated for short moments. Agbon women had to live with their division by men into wives and daughters. The men were hostile to any wife who came there, as if to spy on her husband. Should a man's wife come there, she would be insulted by all the men. No man there picked a quarrel with other men for insulting his wife and in fact joined in humiliating his own wife. It was one of the many codes they kept at the joint.
This hostility to wives occurred even when there was an emergency that demanded the man's urgent attention. Even if a snake or dog bit a child, or he were stung by a scorpion, or pierced by a nail, which often happened, the men expected their wives to send their children to call them. Despite the emergency, the men frowned before leaving the joint for home to attend to their hurt children. They behaved as if they were being deprived of their rights to be alone with other men.
The women saw the male joint as a prohibited zone. In their minds they drew a line that they would not cross. They saw overstepping the line as fraught with perils. If they crossed it, they would become the butt of the men's jokes. And the men could make the violators miserable with humiliating insults that the specific women's husbands contributed to.
Deep-rooted fear could make slaves of free people. Those who should be on a pedestal not only stepped down but also grovelled on sand; they made gods of those that should be their worshipers. The so-called line was never drawn with chalk. It was not done with blood either. It was the limitation the men set for the women, who accepted it for lack of nothing to do about it.
The women knew from stories that women used to come to these joints. Then they were meant for all adults. But the ohwarha joints became meeting places for lovers. Elopement became rampant. Men took other men's wives, as women took over other women's husbands. Men and women plotted sleeping together beyond the first day of the yearly festival, as was traditionally allowed; an opportunity that was hardly used. The ohwarha joint turned into a rowdy place, where men challenged their wives and wives also challenged their husbands. Men fought men taking their wives; women fought women taking or flirting with their husbands. Some took rumours as truth and fought fiercely over a supposed violation of their marital rights. The spirit of the joint was definitely being abused and a remedy was needed.
The men, who always felt they had to take measures to stop any abuse in Agbon society, as if only women were involved in the abuse, banned their wives from coming to the joints. The women tried feebly to resist their unilateral and unreasonable expulsion by men from what belonged to all. The boldest of them wanted them to deny sex to their husbands to force them to abrogate the unfair rule. But on the night of the protest, most women did not resist when some men started beating their wives for denying them sex, which they felt was their right by virtue of marriage. The wails were loud enough for other women to hear. Their resolve was soon broken and they accepted the ban the men had imposed on them not to step into the joints again. Thus began the long era of ohwarha as a men's-only joint.
These places were virtually empty in the morning and the early afternoon. Every healthy man was expected to work from dawn till late afternoon. Those who farmed had to cover enough grounds before the sun drained them of energy. Those who produced palm oil had to go far into the forest before the sun set their soles ablaze. The more the day advanced, the more people lost their zest for work. So the ohwarha joints had people from late afternoon through the evening.
The session often started with light banter, which revolved around men-women relationships, such as what women liked in men and what men liked in women. The gathering would agree that many men did not like their wives to have those qualities they cherished in other women. That meant they did not want their wives to be too attractive and seductive to be the desire of every other man.
If there had been the rare case of elopement, it was there that they tried to analyze why the woman left one man for another. If a man made passes at another person's wife, they heard its unspoken narrative in the ohwarha joint. They deliberately spiced up what they heard to make it more appealing for others to hear.
The men gossiped about women who were known to sleep with other men and yet their husbands kept quiet instead of claiming adultery fines, as tradition demanded. Such women might have prepared food with medicines for their husbands to be so tolerant and stupid, they reasoned. They heard that Toje had become rich from claiming adultery fines from those who “touched” or slept with any of his eleven wives. Many suspected that he sent out the women to meet other men so as to claim adultery fines. Or it might be he did not satisfy his women, and they had to look for their own pleasures outside the marital home. Why marry so many wives, they asked, if you could not cope with their demands and desires?
Somehow the talk became more sober as night approached. Once there was an interesting discussion, the men forgot about their homes; they forgot that they were hungry until they got home however late. Soon they started to talk about the old Agbon practice of exiling or selling into faraway lands their young women who were accused of witchcraft.
Iniovo told his colleagues that it was difficult to confirm that any person was a witch or wizard.
“Have you seen somebody who was not sick who had confessed to being a witch?” he asked.
“You ought to know that there are witches who plot to kill those who prosper,” Amraibure answered.
He spoke with force even when talking to people sitting beside him. There was a harsh edge to his words.
“Why are rich people not accused of witchcraft? Why are the accused only poor and helpless ones? Why are the accused women and not men?” Iniovo asked.
“Men rarely imbibe witchcraft from childhood; they resist the craft,” Ode answered.
“Men acquire their witchcraft when already grown up to protect themselves,” Amraibure said.
He had got up, flung his wrapper over his left shoulder, to register his words more forcefully. His voice was ordinarily loud and almost split people's ears when he thundered at them.
“Let us talk about other things. We will not be able to change each other's views on witchcraft and we will continue arguing till tomorrow without agreeing on anything,” Iniovo told them.
It had been more than five years since Titi left with her children in a boat to rejoin her husband in distant Izonland. Titi's life had brought shame to Agbon people and nobody wanted to talk publicly about the injustice or otherwise of sending a young woman from her home to an unknown place because she was accused, without proof, of being a witch. When she came back as a prosperous woman, Titi was embraced. Those who approved of her deportation forty or more years ago were now dead or so old and suffering dementia that they could not remember what had happened.
The issue had always been a contentious one in Okpara. Those who took no part in the decision still talked as if she had not already been sold to an Izon man, who had transformed her from one to be feared to one who now commanded respect. They continued to debate the issue even after the practice had been outlawed. It was a wound though healed on the outside continued to bring pain.
At the time the deed was already done, Iniovo spoke against it as an unjust practice that Okpara people should be ashamed of. “Those who put themselves forward as leaders must show enlightenment,” Iniovo had told them, referring to Okpara folks who assumed leadership of Agbon and yet engaged in a backward practice. Amraibure supported the practice, which showed how deep his belief was in witchcraft and he did not shed it as a grown man. His was a strident voice against a unanimous view that as a people progressed they should abandon customs that brought them shame and ridicule by others. He said that
