Mowabites Worldwide

It was supposed to be a testimony. To the glory of God. But a few minutes into her narrative, it all turned into tears. And sighs from church members. I sat there shifting in my seat at the unpleasant sight.

Everyone seemed to know her story, and probably what she was about to say. It was my first Sunday fellowshipping with them, a branch of my church back home in Ghana. And this was the scene that welcomed me.

Until this time, every Sunday I hopped from church to church, curious to find out which one was conducive to the kind of spiritual growth I sought. I would soon discover that churches here were very different from those back home. There were many things back home that we took for granted. Like sound Biblical teachings and church practices distilled from those teachings.

While returning home from church that day, I couldn’t stop thinking about the woman’s testimony even as I bought my atchieké (made from ground and dewatered fresh cassava) with fried salted tuna and  sobolo (a drink made with ginger, pineapple and hibiscus leaves).

Once home, I fall to my little mattress after the long walk through the muddy untarred roads  bordered by sedges and elephant grass standing in water as if they were about to undergo water baptism.

Then an idea occured to me. To recreate the woman’s story, doctoring a few details. I didn’t know much about her or about the story she shared, and that was probably going to be my last visit to that assembly. So, I had to rely on my imagination to make up for the missing details.

I  titled the piece “Come back”, recreating the elopement of the elderly woman’s husband with a younger woman in their vicinity into Togo, two countries away from their current one, leaving his wife with their many children and countless bills to be catered for with her petty trade.

Even as I wrote the piece, I kept asking why someone would do that. In the worst of cases, he could have kept the second woman somewhere hidden from the first wife, while still providing for his first wife and children, saving his family trauma and the shame  of being the talk of town, which leaves room for speculations about their marital problems.

Below is the link to the piece. And as usual, each time I look at a previous post written a couple of years back, I see areas I could have improved. I think what matters is progress and not perfection , like they say.

It is constantly working on ourselves and our craft that makes us look back and see how we could have done better. Satisfaction with what we’ve done and no longer striving to do more makes us see the feats of yesterday as monuments to pay hommage to, instead of seeing them as stepping stones.

Come back