Blessed are the Meek and Mild

Togo is a small, narrow country poised on the West African coast. Lomé, the capital city, perched on the southwestern edge of the country’s thirty-one miles of palm-fringed, sandy beaches, hugs the blue waters of the Bight of Benin. As the country’s development accelerated in the seventies with the phosphate boom, the city swelled to swallow the surrounding areas. Then economic downturn came and stunted the growth. At this time the city had almost reached sleepy Akodessewa. Tucked between Be, the first settlement of Lomé, and the Port east of the city, Akodessewa sprouted like a mushroom when a bus station and a new market were built there. As the country slipped deeper into socio-politico-economic doldrums from the early nineties, the people devised ways to survive. In no time, small, shabby, unpainted houses, roughly constructed with discarded, rusting aluminium

roofing sheets, rotting wood, torn cartons, and odds and ends straggled in the wild grasses beyond the market-station where truck gardeners tended vegetables. Mainly the destitute found refuge in this zone lacking sanitation, running water, and electricity.

            It was 10 a.m. The sun now spewed oven-hot heat. Dovi Ayanu heaved the big basket containing the few ingredients she had bought to prepare lunch onto her head, slung the plastic margarine tub holding cans of her sales, margarine, and pâté onto her left shoulder and set out from the teeming market where she sells French bread, talking to herself. A primary school dropout who grew up in a village around Afagnan, one would think she was dancing from the jarring walk she had developed from trekking long distances over rough terrain to farm where the tired, eroded soil yielded very little. Her worn-out rubber slippers scuffing the sandy soil of the road littered with plastic bags and rubbish, Dovi soon branched right into one of the numerous, tortuous alleyways of her home, hopping over rough-and-ready gutters in which murky water scattered with plastic objects, cell batteries, broken bottles, leftovers, rubbish, and suds stagnated. The smells of putrefying matter, urine, and faeces rose up everywhere. She pushed their roofing sheet gate open and her husband, Ekue Kalipe, glared at her with eyes as red as a mad cobra’s.

“Why are you so late today?” he snarled.

Dovi tutted almost inaudibly, stalking towards a battered table and laid down her loads.

“Wouldn’t you answer me?” Ekue growled.

“Wouldn’t I first set down my load?” she retorted and frowned.

“Now, your load is down, talk!”

“Sales were slow today,” she said quietly, squeezing her face. Lord, how tired she felt and then this!

“Which sales were slow today,” Ekue rebuffed her. “Have people stitched their mouths?”

“I’m dog-tired,” she groaned, clutching her forehead.

Ekue sprang to his feet. “So I should go hungry here?” he barked.

Dovi sighed. She had been up since 3 a.m. and had crept through the darkness with the noises of the night to the market from where she rode a zemidjan—the motorcycle taxi—to the bakery at Be. There she had had to struggle with other women to get her supply of bread. Plodding along the Be road, she had cried her ware and sold very little until she reached her point-of-sale in front of the Akodessewa station. She normally returned home at eight o’clock but today business was slow and she had had to hawk the bread from bus to bus. Dovi stepped towards the door and Ekue bounded up to his tall stature and blocked her way.

“Don’t take me to be useless because I’m jobless,” he barked, brandishing his scrawny fingers at her.

“If I also sleep here, do you think we’ll survive in this house?” Dovi countered, forcing her way into the room.

Ekue stretched himself stiff across the door. “Don’t try!” he hissed, shoving her backwards.

“If you have such strength use it to win bread for your family,” Dovi yelled, jostling her way again into the room.

Ekue slugged her in the chest. Dovi screamed and hurled herself at him, her rough fingernails tearing into the flesh on his face. But what was the maddest antelope before the

meekest lion? Snarling, Ekue rained blows on her. Shrieking, Dovi tore at everything she clawed. Just then their three children burst in. The two younger ones—Mensah and Abla—flung away their tattered school bags, threw their hands over their heads and shivering, bawled. A few neighbors rushed in when Yaogan, the elder child of 13, held his father’s raised hand and pleaded with him to stop beating their mother.

“Yaoganto—” Meaning Yaogan’s father—a neighbor said, “Please, let there be peace.”

“Get back and mind your own businesses,” Ekue retorted.

Quietly the neighbors turned and stalked off. They knew how wild Ekue could be. Dovi continued to hurl insults at Ekue at the top of her voice, calling him good-for-nothing, goat thief, paedophile, drug addict, rapist, wife batterer, hanger-on, drunkard. Yaogan occasionally implored her to stop. Once in a while Ekue answered her and tempers flared again. Then clapping her hands, she hooted at him. “Your like are porters in the market,” she said. “But you use your strength to beat a woman. Shameless man”

“Me, from the Vogan Royal household to carry things in the market?” Ekue said as she hooted at him again.

Dovi braced her arms on her waist and craning her neck, taunted: “Do you think you’re better than those porters?”

“Why don’t you go and marry them?”

“I sure will, useless man,” she said, shuffling away from his range.

“I’ll throw your things outside right now.”

“Do so quickly. It wouldn’t be the first nor the last time.”

“And afterwards you’d beg me to take you back.”

Dovi stayed because of the children. She herself had refused to look after Ekue’s children from his second marriage at a time when he worked. Who will accept to take care of hers now that Ekue was jobless? “And don’t you also beg me not to leave?” So that you don’t die of hunger? “The stomach needs the anus and vice versa.”

Slowly the feud died down.

Yaovi and Abla stared at their mother with compassion as whimpering now, she went about cooking.

Dovi slept outside, on a carton spread on the humid floor and swatted all night at the hordes of fierce, whining mosquitoes.

She found it hard at dawn to keep her eyes open and lift herself up. She wondered what would cure men of this terrible plague. Not only did her head throb but also it weighted her down. Her body felt as if it had been pummelled with bludgeons. Her voice was gone. She winced. She’ll die if she doesn’t leave this brute. With much effort she heaved herself into a sitting position and clutched her forehead, moaning. From the room came Ekue’s snoring. Useless man, she sneered to herself, useless of a useless man.

Although she felt groggy in the morning from sleeplessness, Dovi prized the outside to the stuffy shack where her husband would have asked for her body for reconciliation. She wasn’t in that mood and she knew what that would lead to. With extra effort, she stretched slowly to her feet and wobbled.

Ekue slouched out up to find Dovi crouched on a kitchen stool with her head tilted into her palm.

“Didn’t you go to sell today?” he asked to make conversation.

Dovi tutted and rolled her head to the other side.

            Ekue knelt beside her. “I’m sorry,” he said, laying his hand on her arm.

Dovi whisked herself away and tutted loudly.

            Ekue rose slowly to his feet and slunk away. He always apologises and seems to feel remorse. But the violence never ends. How many times hadn’t their families sat on their cases? Only God knows if Ekue wouldn’t kill her one day. Dovi has learnt from the radio that such assaults were crimes but she couldn’t report to the police because she was afraid to be blamed as irresponsible. Besides, that would inevitably lead to divorce and she would have to start a new life from scratch. 

Towards seven when the children had gone to school, Dovi wondered how to prepare food for her family. It was from her small profits that she fed them. She had already used yesterday’s in preparing food and in giving the children pocket money. Although the body was weak, reality was stronger. Dovi slogged to the market to buy doughnuts to sell.

               Back home she felt as if her head would drop down at any moment. No, she came to Lomé to find money and live well, not to spend it on a man who batters her. She must finally begin saving with the micro-credit people. As soon as she had enough savings, she would hire a room and leave Ekue if the misunderstanding continues.

            The next day Dovi felt well enough to go about her activities. The pain killer that woman selling medicine in the market had prescribed had worked miracles as always. She wondered why the health authorities combatted that trade.

She tiptoed between the bodies of her children straggled about on tattered raffia-woven mats on the floor and groped for matches on a table and lit the home-made kerosene lamp. Mosquitoes zoomed about in the reddish-yellow light like meteorites. She loosened her cloth and lashed them. The fresh air made Ekue and the children sigh contentedly in sleep and

rolled about. The mosquitoes disappeared. Using a margarine tin cup, Dovi fetched water from a plastic bucket and washed her face in the yard. Crickets chirped all about. The night was cool and it refreshed Dovi. She swept the yard with a coconut-stalk broom, collected the heap in a basket and the lamp lighting her way, dumped the rubbish on one of the growing heaps behind the shacks. Then she stalked into the bush and eased herself. Soon she was on her way to Akodessewa market. Occasionally she started as she bumped into another woman in the dark carrying a basket or a bowl.

            Neon security lights lit the shops at the Akodessewa market. Most of the stalls loomed in the dark. Not a soul stirred at the lorry station beyond where a few mini-buses were parked. Some motorcycle-taxis plied the cobbled road towards Be, their lights tunnelling the pitch darkness. Dovi sighed when she saw an empty motorcycle. She hissed and shouted: “Wo le yia!--” Are you going? The motorcyclist was. Soon they were bumping on their way to the bakery.

No matter how early one came there were always people. The savory smell of baking bread filled the place. Dovi squattet in a corner and engaged in small talk with the women. Soon everyone dozed. Occasionally another woman came and they threw their eyes open and answered her greetings in their sleepy voices and lapsed into silence again. There was a crowd by 5.30 when the bakers called them and they jumped up and scrambled for places in a straggling queue.

“Hot sacomi!” Dovi started crying on coming out of the bakery. “It’s fresh!” She swallowed saliva from the tantalizing smell of the French stick. She would eat beans mixed with palm oil and gari—a steamed corn dough meal—which was cheaper and solid.

“Bread seller,” someone soon called her and bought a baguette with margarine and pâté. Others preferred it with margarine or pâté or plain. Soon she reached the Akodessewa station two kilometres away. The mini-buses had begun to load passengers, the mates shouting the routes and scrambling for passengers’ luggage and haggling with them over the tax and then clambering onto the carrier carrying them. Taxis began to arrive at the ranks. Many passengers came on motorcycle-taxis. Others got in by foot. Soon loaded buses left the station and others arrived. Hawkers and peddlers shouted their wares. The market began to fill up and soon bustled with activity. “Nice bread, yes!” Dovi shouted with a smile when people passed by her. “Buy sacomi for your loved ones.”

Soon her basket got empty and she set back home.

From far the ramshackle dump dotted with a few scrawny trees looked rusty and jumbled like a giant abandoned scrap yard cum dump heap. At the dump itself one noticed that the houses had holes all over. Dovi’s leaked like a sieve when it rained. The windows were small, high apertures hardly letting in light. Everywhere worn-out tires, discarded furniture, rusting tins, car rims, firewood, bags of charcoal, and heaps of charcoal dust could be found. In between them, tall grasses flourished. The rain stagnated in places and the mosquitoes bred like germs. But what really struck one was the noise and the crowds. Everywhere many women and their numerous children and a few sickly-looking men slouched, talked, or argued.

“You’ve bought a new slipper,” Ekue remarked when Dovi took out a polythene wrapper.

“The string on the old one snapped on the Be-Akodessewa road.”

Ekue peered at his large feet filling his slippers, the string sewed in several places.

“I walk a lot so there’s no sense getting it sewn!” Dovi snapped. “Besides, I bought it from my own profit.”

“You’ve forgotten who gave you the capital.”

“Compare it to the expenses I’ve been making in this house.”

Ekue shook his head. “Live on a woman’s money and you’ll hear things.”

Dovi prattled and tattled.

“Sweetheart,” Ekue said when she no longer talked.

Although Dovi was startled, she turned slowly. She wondered what has made Ekue so sentimental. Wasn’t he going to sweettalk her again to take money to drink sodabi—the locall-brewed gin? “What?” she said nasally.

“Do you still remember that friend of mine who went to Gabon?” he said in his lazy drawl.

“What’s with him?” she almost grumbled, taking out ingredients to prepare food.

“He went to the other house and someone brought him here and he took me out to a bar ...”

Dovi puffed. “Is that why you drank your eyes red?”

Ekue laughed. “Don’t be jealous. He gave me money, I’ll buy you beer. Anyway I’m preparing food today.” Ekue was a marvelous cook. He got to his feet. “I’ve bought chicken wings, rice, carrot, cabbage, potato ...” He went over and kissed her.

“Aww, leave me alone,” Dovi complained weakly, shoving him away. Ekue guffawed and asked her to relax. Who could believe this man had punched her the day before and who could have imagined it would be this way when they first met?

When Dovi emigrated to Lomé fifteen years ago she worked as a porter in the Central Market. One day she carried a 50-kg bag of rice for a man who said he worked in a Free-Zone factory. On paying her, the man asked why a beautiful lady like her was a porter. That embarrassed Dovi. She knew she was beautiful with a tuft of shiny black hair, bright eyes, and a well-proportioned face, but she never thought she could attract a city man. The man gave her a generous tip, said his name was Ekue and gave her rendez-vous for the weekend. Ekue took her to a chic bar where they ate fufu—pounded yam—with large chunks of grasscutter meat. Then they strutted to a bar and drank beer. Dovi’s fancy of the city was taking shape. From then she couldn’t help dreaming of Ekue. But she had to be patient. Ekue was divorcing with his second wife. Six months later Dovi packed into his room at Be. It didn’t take long for Ekue to display his true self as short-tempered. But then she was six-months pregnant and couldn’t think of leaving. Besides, she thought Ekue would change when the child came. But he didn’t. Ten years later Ekue lost his job. He became a heavy drinker and frequently smoked marijuana to forget his troubles. As the years passed, he became more brutal. But sometimes he became loving, like today when they dined like royals and conversed like lovers, and any thought of leaving Ekue vanished from Dovi’s head. Then for nothing he would become wild again. Like a month later.

Ekue has not paid the bridewealth to ratify his marriage with Dovi. “You may leave right now since I haven’t paid your bridewealth,” Ekue often hurled at Dovi during arguments. For an Ewe-Mina woman, this was the worst insult since it meant that she was cheap and not properly married. So Dovi wanted Ekue to legitimize the marriage traditionally.

“Look, if your people are thirsty for alcoholic drinks and you need cloth, it’s not from me that you’d get them,” Ekue snarled.

“I can help you buy some the items,” Dovi said pleadingly.

“So you’ve money for that foolishness and we’re going hungry here?”

“Why are you so insensitive?”

“I won’t go today nor tomorrow.”

“This is why men like you are considered as good-for-nothing.”

That degenerated into a heated exchange and Ekue ended up beating her with an electric wire. When she had the opportunity, Dovi rammed him on the head and forehead with a stout stick. Blood spurted out and she ran away and sought refuge with some distant relatives at Djidjole, northwest of the city. Dovi shivered all night. She had never hurt even a fly before.

The two families reunited them at Ekue’s uncle’s house at Tokoin a week later after Ekue had finally accepted their mediation.

            Ekue spoke first, as a man, and complained about Dovi practising family planning without his knowledge. The elders shook their heads. She also asked him to use condom with him. “Isn’t she on the way to prostitution?” he said and they sighed. He also complained about Dovi’s numerous friends and how sometimes she would come home late. But nothing irked him more than her failing to care for the home, going somewhere without his permission and saving money secretly.

When it was her turn, Dovi said: “All our problems hinge on money. I face the family expenses alone. Everyone knows how overwhelming that is these days. My husband says I practise family planning. That isn’t true. He needs another child but there are no more children in my stomach.” The elders had a hearthy laugh over that. “I asked him to use condoms because he’s been going with doubtful women.” Ekue complained bitterly and

threatened to leave. The elders restrained him. “My husband sometimes wouldn’t talk to me for days, even weeks and he wouldn’t let me go out and talk with other people. So I sneak out. Sometimes I don’t realize time running until someone draws my attention to it.” The elders shook their heads. “He says I don’t care for the home, how then do we survive? I go somewhere without his permission if he wasn’t present.”

“No!” Ekue complained and bounded to his feet. “What a lie!”

He was quieted down.

“If I’m saving money it’s to face contingencies.”

The elders concluded that if Dovi was practising family planning she should stop but in case she wasn’t and Ekue didn’t believe her, they could go for medical examination. As for condom they asked Dovi if she would eat sweets with the wrapper on. “It has no place in marriage. It’s for immoral people,” they affirmed and continued: “A married woman should limit the number of her friends and care for the home, they affirmed. “Now if you go somewhere without your husband’s permission and he accuses you of infidelity, how can you defend yourself? As for saving money for contingencies, it depends upon the family’s financial situation.” They concluded by saying that they didn’t approve of Ekue beating his wife although some women believe that if a husband does not beat her, then he doesn’t love her. They advised Dovi to be meek and mild and her marriage will be blessed.

Ekue went home accompanied by Dovi.

But it didn’t take long for the events that trigger violent responses from a wife beater to surface. 

A month later Ekue complained that although he was fed once a day, the food was never ready on time. He threatened to throw Dovi out.

“You know my financial problems,” Dovi said. She had lost her capital during their short separation. She had had to take a loan from a pawnbroker. The weekly payments were bleeding her white. Meanwhile Ekue got more and more drunk. “If you’d bring the money you drink with, I can manage something with it.”

Ekue whipped around. “What money do I drink with? Is that why you starve me?” he boomed.

Dovi flinched. “I didn’t know you’d worked for the sodabi seller and you go to drink on that account.”

“Mind your mouth,” Ekue yelled.

“You should rather mind your drinking,” she retorted and Ekue reached for the broom. It was considered taboo to beat one with a broom. Dovi fled outside while Ekue shouted after her that he didn’t want to touch her again but she will taste it if she continued to taunt him. Dovi stalked nearer and nearer until she was in the yard. Ekue forced her to sleep there for three days. She had got ready to go to sleep on the fourth when Ekue called her in.

In bed, Ekue began to fumble her breasts. Dovi stiffened and hurled away his hand.

“Are you in your period?” Ekue said.

“No,” Dovi said, “I don’t feel like it.”

“Then you’ve slept with somebody.”

Dovi regretted for not lying to him.

“So far as you’re clean, you can,” he said, fumbling her body roughly.

“It’s depressing if one doesn’t feel like it,” Dovi said mournfully.

“You don’t feel like it, do you want me to go and have it somewhere else? Why did I marry you, to look at you?”

Dovi was worried about the doubtful women Ekue had been bringing home during their separation. She wished she could insist that he used a condom but that would be asking for another trouble.

In the morning Dovi summoned courage to ask Ekue about his girlfriends.

“Which ones?” he said truculently.

“The ones you were courting in my absence.”

Ekue gave her a mean look. “You’re associating with gossips again.” Then clutching her lips in a vice-like grip, he snarled: “You foolish lady, you’ll never change.” Then he slapped her.

Dovi pounced on him, her claws out. Ekue tumbled over and bellowed like a dying bull. The neighbors rushed in and yanked off Dovi. She stood at the gate shivering with rage. Ekue knelt on the floor, clutching his face and screaming: “She’s burst my eyes, the witch. This woman will kill me if I don’t let her go.”

“Who is a fool to be beaten everyday?” Dovi shouted.

“No more beating, witch, go away.”

The neighbors helped Ekue to his feet. Somebody brought hot water and they bathed his wounds. Luckily his eyes were intact. A lady strutting out discreetly thumbed Dovi. After Ekue had assured them that there would be no more fighting, the neighbors left. For three days, Dovi lived in the house constantly on the lookout like an antelope on a lion-infested savanna. Then everything became normal again.

Three days later Ekue was summoned to Mensah’s school. He looked pensive on his return. Dovi thought something must be terribly wrong. Through investigations, she learned that Mensah had been displaying aggressive behaviour towards the girls at school and he

risked being expelled should that happen again. Was her child copying his crazy father? Dovi wondered. As for Abla she cowered when one raised the voice. Has she Dovi failed all along? It was for the children’s sake that she accepted to suffer. What would be her reward if they should fail in life? Dovi broke down and wept bitterly.

Shortly afterwards Ekue was summoned to Vogan. Dovi found out that a large tract of their family land has been sold and the money was shared among the members.  Dovi woke Ekue up one day at dawn. “I just wanted to tell you to try to get a piece of land with the money.”

“Which money?” Ekue hissed and went back to sleep, grumbling about a nosey witch. “Where we’re living, is it a jungle?”

“If you wouldn’t buy a land, then find me capital.”

Ekue bounded to a sitting position and glared at her. “I said I have no money, can’t you understand that? Even if I did is it you who’ll tell me what to do with it?”

Dovi tried to reason Ekue and that soon erupted into another violent argument.

Violence came again a week later when Dovi asked Ekue one dawn whether it was true he was taking on another wife.

 “I can marry as many women as I want and that’s my  own problem,” he boomed.

“You’ve forgotten that a wife has to give her opinion.”

Ekue laughed. “Opinion,” he sneered. “Are you the one going to sleep with her or the person she is going to cook for you?”

“You know what we’ve gone through,” she said. “So if we’ve some means now we mustn’t squander them on rubbish. Besides, too many women in a marriage can only bring AIDS.”

“Jealous woman, you’re afraid to have a rival,” Ekue said. “But a rival you must have to learn a lesson.”

“No woman can stay here with us!” Dovi swore.

“If you dare challenge my position here, you’ll really know who I am.”

“You’re nothing but an ungrateful son-of-a-bitch.”

Ekue slapped her. Dovi replied.

“What!” Ekue cried and turned into a lion. Dovi also became a tiger.

“But what’s the matter with you people?” Yaogan muttered and stormed out, crying. The others joined him. That calmed their parents a little bit.

Soon a woman started coming to the house. Dovi and her children were so cold to her that she felt ill at ease and reduced the frequency of her visits. Dovi took to drinking heavily.

“I don’t like the contacts you have with those men at the sodabi bar,” Ekue complained after pulling her one day from the midst of swollen and dried men.

“We were only drinking, not more.”

“Drinking,” Ekue sneered. “Are you, a woman, proud to say you’re a drunkard?”

.“I’m not the only drunkard in this house.”

Ekue raised his voice: “A man has the right to drink as much as he wants.”

“And what prevents a woman from doing so?”

Ekue held her throat. “Don’t challenging me on top of your silly act, right?” he boomed.

Dovi slugged away his hand. “You’re the biggest idiot in this hell of a place, don’t you know that?”

“Me?”

“Yes, you!”

“Am I the one in control here or you?”

“You’re nothing here.”

Ekue lunged at her. Dovi tumbled backwards. Ekue tussled with her as with a man. Dovi owed her safety to neighbors who intervened again.

For weeks Dovi and Ekue were cold to each other. The other woman will come and cook for Ekue but she didn’t dare sleep in the house. Not only that troubled Dovi. Since he returned from the village with money, members of Ekue’s extended family have been coming for money. Dovi saw this as a direct threat to the economic survival of her nuclear household. One morning as an aunt came and she and Ekue talked in undertones at a corner of the yard, Dovi leered at them. She bounded to her feet and blocked Ekue as he strutted in.

“What?” Ekue bellowed, surprised.

“Don’t they have ten fingers to work?”

“Do you know what she’s here for?”

“Money!” Dovi muttered. “Lazy people!”

The aunt got up and stomped away. Soon a group of aunts with cloths tied firmly around their huge waists burst into the house. Already Dovi and Ekue were hurling insults at each other.

“Woman of  bad character,” one of the aunts bellowed. “You can use your witchcraft on your people not to spoil our family member.”

“Disappear from here, bellingerent prostitutes,” Dovi retorted.

That was the worst insult for a married woman. Before Dovi knew the women and Ekue were on her. She fought back. Her children joined her. But what were the three compared to seven adults?

Dovi opened her eyes to see a gleaming white ceiling. She felt plaster over parts of her body. She rolled her head to a side and saw bandaged people in beds. She turned to the other side and saw others with the bandaged legs up. A lady in a white overall appeared at her side. “Where am I?” Dovi murmured.

“Thank God you’ve come out of the coma,” she said.

A man in overalls with a stethoscope around his neck joined the woman. Then Dovi understood.

“Why am I here?” Dovi asked tearfully.

“Thank God you’re alive,” the doctor said. “Those women and your husband nearly killed you.”

Dovi rolled her head to the other side and wept. Lord, what risks she has taken!

Three days later Dovi felt immense pain. A nurse told her her people were no longer able to afford the medical care and she may be discharged.

“Am I not going to die?” she asked tearfully.

“You’re at such a risk,” the nurse said.

“Can’t anybody help me?” She almost burst into tears.

The nurse told her about women’s NGOs working on violence against women who could offer her medical care.

“Please, get them for me,” she pleaded. “I don’t want to die now!”

The nurse shushed her up and promised to contact an NGO on her behalf. Soon a militant with anger written all over her face came to see her. She explained that their work consisted in enabling survivors of violence in the family to have access to justice, including free legal aid, counselling, shelter, and employment or the setting up of a business. Why didn’t she hear of them before? Dovi whined.

Soon after her release from the hospital, Dovi hobbled towards the offices of the NGO to help her lodge a complaint against Ekue and her aunts.