This is why people loves the Yorubas. Abi I lie?
In Igala culture, if a husband dies, his relatives will come and carry all this property including cups and spoons before the burial.
I was sitting with some Igala people one day, and we were discussing culture when they started telling me something that shocked me.
They told me that when a married man dies, some of his relatives rush to his house, before he is even buried, they can pack almost everything in the house. Chairs, wife's clothes, TV, cups and spoons bags of clothes, kitchen utensils, everything.
I remembered something that happened in my neighbourhood. A man died, but before I knew he was dead, I saw people loading chairs, cups and other belongings from his house. I honestly thought the family was relocating or had sold the house. I didn't even know the man had died until about two weeks later, when I was having a conversation with a neighbour.
When I mentioned what I had seen, she explained what had happened. The man had children, and they were still little.
The Igala woman told me that her aunties husband died. And she took her husbands body back to the village. Immediately she got to the village, some of her husbands relatives left for Abuja.
When they got to their house, they had no key to enter, they tried to break in but the neighbors in the compound stopped them. They were asked what they wanted, the said the widows box or George.
This thing happened in 1999 so the didn't have phones then to make calls. Thank God, they didn't succeed. It was two months after she came from the village that they neighbors told her what had happened.
What surprised me was that these people were talking about it as a practice they knew existed, even though they didn't support it. One of the men even said most of his relatives didn't know he had a house in Abuja because he was afraid of what might happen to his properties if he died. He said whenever he bought land, he made sure his wife or wife sister knew about it.
Omo, I sat there wondering.
I know no culture is perfect, and I'm not saying my own culture is better than theirs. But in my own culture, even when relatives fight over inheritance, I can't imagine people rushing to pack the spoons, children's clothes and everything in the house before the man is even buried.
Imagine losing your husband and, on top of grieving, having to worry about how to protect the things you and your children have left.
Honestly, some traditions deserve to be questioned. 💔