All fast thinkers, good in varying proportion with anecdotes, metaphors and sarcasm, strong women, amazons in their own right, amazing mothers with a unifying title...MRS ADAGIRI...Meet the Adagiri Wives.
For the #Kuwda uninitiated, that is, a newbie fan, this is a basic intro. to the kind of women my late Dad and his 12 brothers married thus with this number of strong-willed women in one room naturally comes with it, a whole lot of drama! Their late mother-in-law and original Matriarch of the Adagiri family knew this and being a strong woman herself, knowing this about the women, used that information to play the thirteen women like a game of chess, turning them against each other and stirring in them, a sense of intense competition and a common fear for her. Of course everything went pretty well for the original Matriarch with one glitch...Mom...she was the rebel, the one who dared their monster-in-law and challenged her at different occasions and when Dad had died and she was hounding Mom along with rest of the extended family, rather than wail and bemoan her fate, she had had the audacity to square up to a most feared woman in our immediate community.
Thus, the other wives thinking Mom must be some kind of super woman, would pitch sides with whoever seems to be having the upper hand whenever it was convenient. Long story short, the Matriarch has long passed on and her daughter, the new Matriarch who had inherited the long standing feud between Mom and her mom hope to keep the flame burning and Mom is clearly perturbed in the least but lately, it seems as though something has changed and we are to find out.
After the very annoying outing at our cousin's wedding in ADAGIRI NUPTIAL , given how disappointed everyone were with the planning et al, this weirdly brought Mom and the new Matriarch closer when we all gathered at our family country home for the annual family reunion.
72 HOURS EARLIER- It was a cold night, I couldn't sleep, I was ecstatic, it was 11:45 pm and at the stroke of midnight, it will be my birthday, so I stayed awake, awaiting flood of text messages, calls, etc from friends and acquaintances! The rest of my family were sound asleep. At midnight, no one called or texted, I was shocked because I felt let down by people who should know...if everyone forgot my birthday, my best friend shouldn't. Arranging my duvet to prepare myself to sleep by a quarter past midnight, his text came in and couple of other texts messages plus messages on Facebook, it made me smile. By morning, my family just wished me a happy birthday and we had a hearty breakfast where Mom then announced over food the date for the annual family reunion with Hamz quickly interjecting, saying he has plans and the family won't miss him if he doesn't attend as Mom's eyes went saucers in shock, shaking her head slowly in protest, she cut him short, telling him she doesn't like attending the reunions either but every son of the family has to attend and for security reasons, every mother accompanies their son so he has to go and whatever plans he had has to be cancelled or rescheduled. As the day progressed and my bothers took me out to fete me for my birthday, sponsored by Shalewa to obviously work my way into my heart and have an ally in me, Mom got dressed up to go visit her islamic marabouts just to make findings about our intended trip to the annual reunion to ensure all will be well. She was told to carry out some little acts of charity just to ward off trouble which she did.
By evening, tired from our birthday hangout, Mom understood and suggested we all eat out so we went to eat at a nearby restaurant, she kept asking us to get our things ready to travel in 2days. The next day, while in my room folding my neatly ironed clothes into my traveling bag for the trip, my phone made a chat beep so I picked it up to see who it was and thus take a short break, it was one of my paternal cousins Qamas and he wanted to let me know he'd just stumbled upon my blog and had shown his mom who read through some posts and thought I must be foolish to not just talk about our immediate family on blog but also the rest of the family to entertain the world, asking who the hell do I think I am to do that and would definitely be bringing up the issue at the reunion...
