18/08/2025
A FAMILY DIVIDED:
- The Tale Of Ogedengbe's Family.
Long ago in the bustling village of Okukpo where the red earth clung to people’s feet like a jealous lover, lived the Ogedengbe family. They were known for two things: their wealth of yam barns and their tongues sharper than the village blacksmith’s blade.
The patriarch, Pa Ogedengbe, had two wives—Mama Sade and Mama Efe. To outsiders, their compound looked like a kingdom of plenty, with goats, chickens, and children running about. But inside, it was a battlefield disguised as a homestead.
The wives competed over everything. If Mama Sade cooked pounded yam with egusi soup, Mama Efe would cook amala with ogbono and announce to everyone, “Those who have teeth should eat real food; those who don’t can manage pounded yam.”
Pa Ogedengbe, instead of settling matters, only fanned the quarrels. When he ate at Mama Sade’s hut, he would praise her cooking so loudly that Mama Efe could hear from across the yard. When he slept at Mama Efe’s, he would laugh extra hard at her jokes, as if to say, “See, this is the wife that makes me happy.”
Soon, the children inherited the quarrels like an unwanted heirloom. Sade’s children refused to share water with Efe’s children, and Efe’s children would deliberately chase Sade’s goats into the cassava farm just to watch them get flogged.
One day, during the annual yam festival, the family’s madness reached its peak. Pa Ogedengbe had promised both wives that their own children would present the sacred yam to the chief. Neither wife would back down.
So, when the festival day came, two different children arrived at the palace with two different yams. The whole village burst into laughter. One yam was so large it took two boys to carry, while the other yam looked like it had survived a famine. The chief, shaking his head, said,
“Is this the Ogedengbe family or a comedy troupe?”
But shame turned to rage back at home. Mama Sade accused Mama Efe of bewitching her yam, and Mama Efe swore that Mama Sade’s children had been born to disgrace.
That night, poison found its way into food, charms were buried under doorsteps, and secret trips to the village dibia became as frequent as trips to the stream. Each family member plotted against the other, until one fateful moonlit evening, Pa Ogedengbe himself was found foaming at the mouth after eating from the communal pot of stew.
The tragedy didn’t stop there. Soon, one by one, the mothers, the elder sons, and even the daughters-in-law followed him to the ancestors, each falling victim to the very traps they had set for one another.
The villagers, though saddened, could not help but laugh. One old man even remarked,
“The Ogedengbes have turned themselves into the entertainment of the gods. Who else dies by eating their own poison?”
But the story didn’t end with death. The children who survived inherited not only the barns of yam but also the burning hatred. Sade’s grandchildren refused to attend the weddings of Efe’s grandchildren. They fought over land so much that the village square became their courtroom.
And when one branch of the family tried to raise a new house, the other would hire masquerades to scatter the building materials. What their parents began in envy, the children perfected in betrayal.
Years later, the once-mighty Ogedengbe compound was reduced to ruins. Strangers lived where their barns once stood, and travelers used the family’s name as a proverb:
“When brothers turn to enemies, even their shadows refuse to walk together.”
And yet, in the evenings, the villagers would gather under the iroko tree, retelling the Ogedengbe story with chuckles. For though it was a tragedy, it was also comedy—the kind only life could write.
Tales By Moonlight.
