Vivian had learnt to cushion the effects of her situation in life with hard work on the farm and with strenuous work in the private apartment she had reserved for the business of cooking-her kitchen.
This kitchen was Vivian's kingdom where she spent a great deal of her time washing plates, boiling water, frying meat, arranging things, mis-arranging things, re-arranging things, and cleaning all cooking utensils.
The kitchen was large; propped with vertical stakes and raffia crossbars. It was adjoined to the main family building, and thatched with sedges and bulrushes. A grinding stone, stained yellow with pepper clot, learnt against the kitchen's cemented wall. Two wicker baskets, which Vivian recently purchased from the village basket weaver, dangled on a wooden fulcrum. And on top of the mahogany slab, on the kitchen's Kulu, was a large calabash, filled to the brim with grains of guinea corn.
William his husband had assisted a lot in putting Vivian's kitchen in good shape. And Vivian, in turn, had always compensated her late husband with preparation of sumptuous meals; meals to put him in an active mood and keep him perpetually in loin clothes inside her sleeping room, even during afternoon periods!
Vivian kitchen was the traditional home of the engulfing smoke where vegetables were diligently chopped, and cassava flour meticulously sieved; where heavy thuds of pestles always punished the mortar on the earthen floor. At evening times, the thuds used to raise yamful cacophonic squeaks, which would resound all through Kufi and it's neighbouring villages.
Inside this saturated kitchen Vivian now waited, patiently watching the fire glowing, and a tiny eye-stinging smoke coiling round the bamboo vaults, escaping through the numerous thatched roof holes into the open air, and straight to the sky, like an accepted offering. Playfully, she tossed a long piece of wood inside the fire, then poked and fanned the smouldering embers into a roaring flame. A soft light illuminated her face in the darkness of the surrounding, and her black robes flickered in and out of vision, with the vicissitudes of the hot fire. Cooking was becoming increasingly time-consuming and energy-exhausting because of the many activities involved with it. Yet a village woman must cook at least three meals a day; Pottage or porridge, in the morning, with lashing pepper soup, fried lobsters and credit deeped in a red-oil garment inside a black cooking pot. Amala or pounded yam, in the afternoon, with the tasty ebolo vegetable soup, and the appetite-whetting chicken stew. Boiled beans or fried plantain inside a flat griddle, for evening meal, with bush meat, snakes and snails, all dancing a sweet-aroma dance in the hot frying pan.
Vivian turned her mouth to the wind and sang a song to lighten the burden of cooking; a private little song which carried a faint vibration, almost too low-pitched to be heard by passers by.
Women of Kufi were powerful singers. Songs to them were a means of expressing consent and dissent; a means of intimidating rivals and vexing opponents.
They sang to put children to sleep, and to rouse husband to action. They sang to attract lover's attention, and to seduce concubines. They sang to give praises to men for their wonderful earthly achievements, and to make men's eyes turn green with envy against imaginary contenders.
Life is fire! Vivian sang of the hot fire wearing a garment of red guinea brocade, a song she stubbornly like a favourite anthem. She sang of the hot fire that must ignite slowly, but steadily; fire that must leave behind a mound of papery ash and a pile of glowing wood; fire that must burn a woman's finger, yet give no pain; and fire that must jab a woman's face with it's strong beam but not disfigure the face, even when she bent low to blow the cool air from the lungs into it's ember..... Vivian's song was the song of the flaming errand boy of the kitchen, spreading it's one thought red tongues round the anus of the black clay pot. The song of fire that must kindle the hot food, to warm the greedy throats of the starving people of the village.
There was something really ancient and unchangeable about fire. Fire was like the current flowing slowly, steadily in a domesticated stream. It was like the restlessness of the demonic wind churning up dust during rainstorm. Fire was a gentle lamb and also a blitzing monster! Vivian's low pitched voice suddenly rose to a high crescendo. It rang out like a bell:


I'll tame this fire!
I'll cast a spell on the fire.....
I'll put the burning ember of this fire
Inside my palm
And smile a smile of courage
To the world.
Life is hot
hot like fire
Life is fire!
That was what Vivian's life had become, now that her husband had died. Fire. Hot, fire to be handled with extreme care and caution, lest it burned and consumed everything. Fire up above, fire down below.
She must be prepared to walk through fire; unscratched; the fire of life!

Vivian stirred her corn dough. And twacked the okra soup simmering in the clay pot on fire with her slender ladle. Morning meals was well on it's way, to give new strength and hope to her and to little Kelvin.
She momentarily savoured the aroma of her pepper soup and tasted a small quantity of it from her left palm. She sneezed; then wiped the lines of tears trickling down her face with the helm of her garment.
Her eyes growled with satisfaction.
"Just the right quantity of salt," she whispered to herself," and the right amount of pepper too! A tasty soup to make your tongue snap tra-tra."
Vivian now had learnt to grapple with her daily itenerary, stretching out before her like a long row of black ants crossing the country path. No complaints.
Her bean-seeds were always ready for threshing and her boiling cocoyam for tending. She had her old quilts to stitch and her palmnuts, husks and straw, to separate. All these were no interruptions as they would seem to casual observers, but an integral part of Vivian's everyday life.
She must amble through the deep forest to gather fuel wood which she often carried in enormous bundles on her sinking head and bent supple back. She must retire, late in the afternoon, to her dyeing yard, sweating, roasting the earth which contained ash and lime, burning the chaff and the grass to produce the lye, finally extracting the dye..... A long day's work.....At night, she must withdraw with a loud yawn-veiling all worries of the day in her small anteroom; an anteroom with a window of buckled wood which opened only briefly, in the daytime, during her search for needles and threads, match sticks, misplaced pen knife, kerosene lamp and coconut-shell ladle.
Most of the time, Vivian would not feel the pain of hard work. Only occasionally would the pain come around the joints, stretching from her back to her hips, down to her thights. And that time, she would fluffy her cotton-wool pillow, gingerly nestling her head and armpits on it, to drive away her smarting pain.
In the morning, Vivian would begin her daily round of duty afresh. It had become a routine. God had given her the will-power and the physical strength, which most women of Kufi lacked. She could challenge and beat the young women of the village in the game of hurrying to the brook to fetch water, and scrambling to the farm to collect banana leaves and kolanut droppings. She could overtake the girls along the dry country road on sunny days, hurtling downhill in giant strides. She had, several times, laughed to scorn the lazy maidens lumbering under heavy loads of fuel wood.
"Get out of my way!" She had always teased them.
"I am a busy woman; time is precious to me. I've no time to plod awkwardly, like you, along the footpath. l run, all the time, like a fleet-footed antelope in the bush, and fly like a sparrow that would never prech....
Get out of my way l say! Let's wait and see if your husband will be able to tolerate this your slow-motion movement when finally you are married. You will arrive in the village from the forest at an unusual time, cook late meals and begin to make stupid excuses to the man. Your man will roar like a lion, and growl like a tiger; his bellow will consume you! Men have no patience with silly women like you. Get out of my way! Clear out of my sight!"
Vivian looked almost untouched by age; tall, with a slight elegant stoop and an alert gait. The baggy skin on the base of her eyes was not too prominent. Her plaited hair, dry and brittle, still looked intact and well kept. Vivian's three tribal marks stuck attractively to her two cheeks, unrubbable like the line of black antimony on the pretty face of beanseed. There were, of course, little wrinkles here and there on her face.
But these wrinkles used to disappear anytime she put on her radiant never-grow-old smile, reminding the beholders that Vivian, in her days, was smashingly beautiful......But still very good looking, even now, in her early fifties, in spite of the occasional traces of fatigue, hanging over her sober countenance.
To Be Continued....