by Aluta Nite
Both were young, vibrant and in their twenties. These were their first jobs after finishing high school and training in typing and clerical work, respectively, at the civil servants’ training school. They were a happy couple looking forward to a long and rewarding life of hard work.
Two years into the marriage, they had their first child, a boy they named Warren. They were very content with the arrival of their baby, because they saw themselves as a complete family. Nellie stayed at home for two months after delivery, which was the standard duration of maternity leave, and then went back to work.
As a family, they really needed her contribution to the family income, as life in the city was not cheap and their bills, particularly rent, were considerable. However, they did not have a mature or knowledgeable relative they could live with to help take care of their baby. This type of arrangement would have been their preferred option.
Therefore, as Nellie returned to work, the couple hired a young girl from the countryside as their live-in babysitter, something that was the norm in many families. When the baby was asleep, she was to help with chores like washing dishes, laundering the baby’s clothes and cleaning the house.
The young girl was just beginning teenage, and coming from a very poor background, had never had the chance to get a formal education. By employing her, the couple was assisting her large family get some much-needed money for their basic needs, as they lived off a small piece of land. Most of her pay was therefore sent directly to her parents, whereas she used the remainder for her personal expenses.
Nellie and Joram had purchased household appliances and other furniture before starting a family. Their two-bedroom apartment was therefore well-furnished and reasonably comfortable. The baby’s cot was in their bedroom, and the babysitter slept in the second bedroom.
The babysitter came to live with the family two weeks before Nellie went back to work, so that Nellie could train her to care for the baby. The babysitter had never lived in a house with an electric stove, iron, kettle or refrigerator before, so they were fascinating to her.
The first day she was left alone, she had it rough because the baby cried a lot. He was used to suckling and bottle-feeding, but could now only bottle-feed. In addition, he was colicky. Nellie could not go home at all to breastfeed because her workplace was too far from home. Besides, there was no telephone at home for the babysitter to call her from and alert her of the baby’s condition.
In the evening, when Nellie returned, she asked the babysitter how the day had been, and she explained how much the baby had cried. The next day brought on more of the same, and the babysitter could not tolerate the crying anymore.
She eventually devised that if she could make the baby sleep longer, the crying would be diminished if not hushed.
She therefore fed the baby then changed his diaper and when he fell asleep, she reckoned the refrigerator would do the trick. So, rather than put the baby in his cot, she put him on a shelf in the refrigerator, and all was quiet the rest of the day. She went on to do housework and accomplished a lot more than she had the previous day.
She checked on the baby a few times and found him to be fast asleep. The cooling effect of the refrigerator had done the trick, as she saw it. The stiffness of his little body was not alarming to her.
When Nellie returned from work at five thirty in the afternoon, she asked for the baby. The babysitter explained happily, “The baby has done very well today. I only changed and fed him once and he has slept since ten in the morning. I have even managed to do all the housework. Come, I’ll show you the baby in the refrigerator?”
On hearing the word “refrigerator”, Nellie began to scream while rushing to the kitchen. She opened the refrigerator door and removed the cold corpse of her precious baby. She made no effort to address the babysitter as she was overcome with shock and grief.
Joram came soon after and found his wife in agony. The neighbours had heard her screams and came to find out what had happened. The babysitter was extremely remorseful about her ignorance, but it was too late. Nobody reprimanded her as the scene generated too much misery to allow for any hostility.
In another instance, a couple also left their only baby in the care of a young babysitter while they went to work. This one had had some little schooling therefore she could read and write slightly. Maureen, the lady of the house had a sharp tongue and often castigated and insulted the babysitter.
Maureen’s husband, Andrew, was very weary of his wife’s behaviour and warned her several times of what could happen to their baby girl while they were away. She never took him seriously, and instead retorted that the babysitter would not dare do anything for fear of the consequences. They too had no telephone at home.
True to Andrew’s fears, they came back home from work one evening, and found a note on the kitchen counter, written in their vernacular, saying, “Don’t bother cooking because if you are hungry, there is roast meat in the oven. You only need to warm it and it will be ready for eating.”
The note did not say where the babysitter or the baby was. So, Maureen ran throughout the house calling out and searching for them. They were nowhere to be found.
Andrew then got suspicious and went to check the oven. There he found the charred remains of their beautiful daughter! The couple was so overcome with shock and sorrow, that Andrew had no strength to remind Maureen of his previous warnings.
It appeared that the babysitter let the baby burn completely before putting the oven off and disappearing. In addition, the crime must have taken place much earlier in the day, as there was no excess warmth or signs of smoke in the house when the couple returned home, and the charred remains were also completely cold.
The babysitter was located a month later, arrested, jailed to await trial and later imprisoned for life.
In yet another case, Pauline worked as a nurse and though married, was unable to bear children for quite some time. Eventually, after years of hoping, she had a baby girl that she and her husband adored. She returned to work after maternity leave, but always came home during her lunch break to feed the baby. She did this even after weaning the baby of breast milk, when the baby was about a year old.
While at work, the baby stayed with the couple’s babysitter. One day, during her lunch break at home and while weaning, Pauline decided to try feeding the baby rice. She gave her several spoons which she seemed to like. Pauline therefore finished feeding her the rice, put her to sleep and prepared to go back to work.
Just before she left the house, however, the baby started coughing. Pauline went to check on her in order to relieve her discomfort, but instead witnessed the baby coughing excessively, choking then dying within minutes. The heartbreak and sorrow that consumed Pauline and her husband were unthinkable. In this instance, however, the babysitter was not to blame. Grains of rice did it.
Unsettled in Matrimony
Joash and Rhoda were a married couple and great at sports. Joash was an athlete while Rhoda played netball, a game similar to basketball. They loved sports so much that they became part-time coaches to young and upcoming men and women, though they pursued careers unrelated to sports.
They could have made a living at sports, but they were involved purely for the love of it.
As they aged, they became officials in the organizations that governed their respective sports.
They were well known locally and regionally because they traversed provinces and regions as participants in various competitions, initially as players and later as officials. They therefore bore the name of their country in high esteem.
The two actually met through sports, came from the same province, spoke the same vernacular and also attended the same church. They were a very happy couple and the envy of many who paid attention to their sports-related success.
They both worked in the city where they bought a house in a middle-income area.
They also owned a farm in one of the most productive rural areas in their country, which they visited when on vacation. They stayed at their farmhouse when they went, and had a caretaker live on-site with his family. Sugarcane and corn were grown commercially at the farm, and poultry and cattle were reared.
Despite their happiness and enchanted life, they had one setback. They could not have children. They were married for over twenty years without having had any, though they wanted some. Meanwhile, Joash had male friends that were taunting him to try “elsewhere”.
Joash, being weak in this regard, acquiesced to peer pressure, and tried “elsewhere” without Rhoda’s knowledge or consent. His mistress conceived and gave birth to his first child, and later to a second child, that made her like an unofficial, secret, second wife. She was a lady from another province, who spoke a different vernacular and belonged to a different religion. Rhoda found out about everything just before the birth of the second child, and was not partial to her husband’s mistress or their children.
She made it clear to the mistress that she and her children were not welcome in her domain and life. However, she and Joash continued their life together as husband and wife, undeterred.
Nevertheless, one day a sudden and drastic change occurred. After work, Joash attended a brief sports meeting, then went out for a quick drink with a friend, after which he intended to go home. While out drinking, Joash collapsed and later died on the way to hospital. Rhoda was called on phone immediately, and she rushed to the hospital to find his body still warm, but lifeless.
His body was taken to the morgue immediately, and Rhoda returned home alone, distressed and pondering the future. She then formulated secret plans alone, keen especially to exclude Joash’s mistress.
The death occurred on an early Monday night, and by the following morning, the news had travelled far via telephone. In fact, some, including his brothers and sisters from the countryside, began travelling to the city on Tuesday, to participate in the burial arrangements, alongside other relatives and friends in the city.
On Tuesday evening, there was a meeting at Rhoda’s house to discuss burial arrangements. Those travelling from Joash’s ancestral home arrived in time to participate. Rhoda never told anyone of her secret plans, however, and Joash’s mistress did not dare attend the meeting.
The group met again on Wednesday evening at Rhoda’s house, to finalize plans for removing the body from the morgue, for the funeral service in church on Thursday. The body would then be taken to the couple’s house and remain there overnight, ready to be transported to their farm on Friday, and buried over the weekend. Rhoda still told nobody of her secret plans. The meeting ended and they all dispersed, ready to do as they had planned on Thursday.
Though Joash’s mistress did not attend the meetings, she knew of the plans made and intended to go to the church service, and travel with her and Joash’s children to the farm for his burial.
After the final meeting on Wednesday, Rhoda brought her secret plans to fruition. Previously, she had organized for Joash’s body to be cremated on Wednesday night, which it was, and the ashes were put in an urn for her to collect! As his wife, she was also already on record as the sole beneficiary to his assets.
On Thursday morning, several close relatives and friends went to the morgue to collect the body and take it to church, where crowds were waiting for the funeral service to begin. There was of course no body at the morgue and upon inquiry, the attendant described what had happened. They realized that Rhoda had fooled them entirely!
They proceeded to the church and broke the news. The crowd could not believe what they heard regarding Rhoda’s scheme, and she was nowhere to be found. Nevertheless, the service went on as scheduled, after some delay.
Furthermore, those going to the burial the following day decided to symbolically bury something at the farm. They therefore travelled to the farm, and buried a banana stem in the coffin they had already purchased.
Rhoda thus denied Joash’s mistress the chance to identify herself as part of the family. His mistress wept saying Joash had conveyed to her his desire to be buried at the farm, but there was nothing she could do about it anymore.
Rhoda went back to her house in the city after briefly going into hiding at her close friends’ place. The urn with Joash’ ashes rested thereafter in her house.
Unthinkable Acts
A young woman, Isadora, got married in the countryside. After some time, her husband, Jaconia, left her in the village to seek employment in the city, far away from their village. He could not take her with him, because he did not have a job or house in the city. She was six months pregnant when he left, and stayed at their home with his relatives.
He was going to stay with friends or relatives until he got a job, after which he would look for his own place, and eventually bring his wife to live with him in the city. After two months in the city, Jaconia got a job, quickly looked for a house, found one and wrote to Isadora asking her to join him in the city.
He could not go back and bring her to the city, because he was new on the job and therefore could not take time off. They made arrangements, however, and he awaited her arrival at the bus terminal.
After joining Jaconia in the city, Isadora delivered a baby boy and they were very happy about the birth of their first child.
When the baby was one month old, Jaconia was transferred farther away to the suburbs, where he had no house. He had to sleep in the company hostel during the week, and go to his wife and son during the weekend.
Women were not allowed in the hostels; therefore he could not have his wife and son with him. So, he usually left his wife and son on Sunday night and returned on Friday night. He commuted every weekend without fail to see his family and they delighted in being together.
His friends and relatives in the city also visited them from time to time.
However, after a month working at the new place in the suburbs, the baby got sick at the beginning of the week, just a day after Jaconia left his wife. The baby got worse, and at just two months of age, passed away unexpectedly before the week was over.
Isadora became desperate and disoriented. She took the money her husband had left for food and decided to buy a ticket back to the countryside. In her view, that was the best decision she could make under the circumstances.
She did not know how to get to Jaconia’s place of work or have a phone number by which to contact him. Cell phones were non-existent at the time. Since she had recently moved from the countryside, she also did not know where his friends or relatives in the city lived.
Unfortunately, she could vaguely remember how to get to the ticket office, though it was not distant from where she lived, just farther down the road to the market where she bought food. She decided to try to find it, and left the baby’s body at home.
She succeeded in getting to the ticket office, purchased a ticket and prepared to make the ten-hour journey by road to the countryside where she and Jaconia were from. She wrapped the dead baby, as if it was asleep, carried it to the bus station and boarded the bus at eight in the evening.
She sat quietly at her window seat with the dead baby. The bus drove off and she stayed put throughout the journey, never leaving her seat when the bus stopped, until it reached her destination.
When a fellow passenger asked her why the baby was not feeding, crying or having its diaper changed, she responded that the baby was a very heavy sleeper. The passenger was suspicious, but did not want to be impolite or disturb the peace.
On the way to her village, after getting off the bus, Isadora began to wail after having maintained her composure all along. Upon witnessing her arrival early in the morning, the villagers were surprised at her fearlessness.
Meanwhile, her husband went to the city from the suburbs over the weekend as usual. He knocked the door and there was no response. So, he used hi
s own keys to let himself in and found a telex slipped under the door for him from his relatives in the countryside.
The telex explained everything.
He managed to get a ticket that Friday night and headed to the countryside without informing his employer, until the following week when he returned to work. He reached the village on Saturday morning and the baby was buried the same day. He travelled back to the city on Sunday night and arrived at work on Monday morning, leaving his wife in the countryside.
What a tragedy she had endured, and how unusual the solution she chose to address her dilemma!
In the same city was another man, Jethro, whose aunt came from the countryside to seek medical treatment. She stayed with him, and unexpectedly deteriorated despite undergoing treatment at the hospital every week. She eventually passed away in Jethro’s house one evening, after he came from work to find her groaning in pain.
To avoid the long and tedious process of taking the body to the morgue, and obtaining the required authorization to transport the body to their village in the countryside, he did the unimaginable. He did not allow his family to moan visibly or audibly, in order to avoid attracting the neighbours’ attention. He also prohibited his family from allowing any visitors in the house the evening she died.
He told his wife, Ethel, of his secret plans and then rushed to the gas station to fill up his sedan. When he returned, he and his wife prepared for the journey to their village that night. By nine at night, they were ready to leave.
They put the semi-rigid body of his dead aunt in the front passenger seat, and strapped it in place with the seat belt.
Jethro drove, Ethel sat in the back seat and their luggage lay in the trunk of the car. They set off for their village in the countryside, driving slowly throughout the night, which made it easier to avoid the police, who only patrolled during the day. They reached their village before six the following morning.
