THE REAL MAN IN AKUKU

We as Africans feel proud being associated with our people and that is why it is common to meet a stranger and he/she starts tracing his/her lineage.
      "Your grandmother's cousin was the mother to my uncle's father, so we are related."
Though it is always hard to gauge what they mean, it is somehow good to acknowledge the "relation" which might not be there in the first place.
 
"Some things irritate me a lot, the other day while on holiday, I was walking, minding my own  business. Then this woman pops up and points to a young girl coming towards our direction. The woman goes ahead to tell me that the girl is my sister. the striking resemblance of the girl with my father betrayed the fact that I could not believe." my friend was narrating his holiday experience to us. there was a tinge of anger in his voice. He said that this was not the first time this happened. His father was probably a generous man. My friend claimed that he and his step brothers and sisters were always at loggerheads. 
In most polygamous families, the members hate associating themselves with others in the family. But in other families the wives are so close and the children are united. In some the men marry as many wives and never cater for them or the children. Many women are single mothers as a result.

I admired Akuku Danger in some way, he had a hundred wives and 200 children and he took good care of them and his children, he built them their own school and church. It is really hard to imagine how he managed it, when others can hardly be responsible for one wife and a few kids, and not that they are not able to but because they are simply ignorant. Akuku was truly a man.  I believe he also had fights with his wives but I have never heard that one of them walked away. It is obvious he felt the pressure but withstood it and he never died young because of stress. 

People saw the polygamist in him, I saw the hero in him

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