Uma was disturbed. He didn’t know what the future held for him especially now that they were relocating to the village after his father’s retirement. All his life, fifteen years and four months to be precise, he had lived with his family in the city of Jos. Not once within this period had he ever visited the village. Whenever his parents were visiting the village, they left him in the care of Auntie Margaret, his mother’s elder sister who lived in the same estate with them.
He didn’t mind staying with Auntie Margaret but as he grew older, he wondered why he was never taken to his village. All he knew was that he was from Benue State, Gboko Local Government area and Ihugh Village precisely. The only extended family he knew were those who came to visit and a few others who he had seen in pictures. When he asked his father why he was never taken to the village, especially after a lot of his classmates at school told wonderful stories about their Christmas experiences in the village, his father told him it was because he was protecting him from their village people who had killed his first wife and his other children. “My son, I was born to the family of Tervershima, during the time of yam harvest. At that time, birth certificates were not known and women gave birth at home with the help of older women. Births were remembered by the season when the child was born. My father was a very wealthy man. He had large farmlands and storage space for his farm produce which included yams, maize, beniseed, melon and guinea corn. It was very common for a man to show the extent of his wealth by the number of wives and children he had. My father had six wives and over thirty children.