I am currently rereading The Joys of Motherhood by Buchi Emecheta for like, the seventeenth time, and I can't help but feel pity for Nnu Ego again. The book's title is an irony compared to the events that take place in it. From when she is a new bride in her first husband, Amatokwu's house, Nnu Ego has always wanted to be a mother and everyone who drinks the palm wine her in-laws sent to her father, the great chief Agbadi, expects that the next time she visits home she would be cradling a baby in her arms. After all, the kegs are filled to the brim, aren't they? She had kept her virtue. It is a long wait, for with every passing month, there are no signs of Nnu Ego getting pregnant. Eventually, after Amatokwu hits her for breastfeeding her junior wife's baby, she goes back to her father's house. Another man pays her bride price and she moves to Lagos to be with him. She despises her new husband, Nnaife for his round stomach and his job of washing the white woman's underwear but then she falls pregnant and when she has her child, a son, she thinks maybe she could finally love him. Has he not given her all that she had ever desired? A child. A boy child who is named Ngozi. But Nnu Ego has a wicked chi and Ngozi passed away one morning on his sleeping mat. That is the last straw for Nnu Ego. She hadn't only come so close, she had actually become a mother and now her title had been taken away from her. She tries to throw herself into the lagoon but she fails at that too, because she lives in Nigeria and Nigerians do not let you take your own life without trying to stop you. 

As some would say, luck finally shines on her and she takes in again and delivers a baby boy, a suitable comfort for the one she lost. And here the journey begins, one where she keeps giving birth to more and more children until she has birthed nine children in total. It is a tiring and difficult life. She fights to keep Oshia alive when he falls sick after Nnaife has gone to Fernando Po. She fights to maintain her position of senior wife when Adaku, Nnaife's inherited wife arrives in Lagos. She fights to put food on the table for her children and send them to school simultaneously. She has to struggle to keep her little store on the verandah after she returns from her father's burial in Ibuza where she was busy trying to be a good daughter to see that most people on her street have started selling things on their verandahs too. She even tried to fight and keep Nnaife out of prison even when she doesn't understand the questions the judge asks her in court. 

After a lifetime spent living for her father, her husband, her children (mostly her sons), she dies alone. SHE DIES ALONE. People like to advice other people to have children so as not to be lonely in old age. That is one of the most unpractical pieces of advice that have ever been offered. It is very wrong to have children for the sole reason of wanting someone to cater to our loneliness when we are old, because those children will grow up and they will not be around as much anymore. Oshia, Nnu Ego's first son instead of Ngozi, went to America to further his education and did not return until after her death. Adim, her second son also went to Canada. The first set of twin girls, Taiwo and Kehinde, married and stayed in Lagos. Obiageli, one of the second set of twin girls, stayed back with her sister Taiwo. Nnu Ego returned home to Ibuza with only two of her children, Nnamdio and Malachi. She couldn't even go to her husband's people, because Nnaife rejected her. 

In contrast to Nnu Ego, Adaku had a lucky life. Her luck began when her husband died and she had to go to Lagos to be inherited by Nnaife. Because her only son dies and she has no child after the first daughter she had for Nnaife, she is able to make the decision to move out of the house when Nnu Ego's jealousy of her becomes too difficult to hide. She had only two children - daughters - and I'm pretty sure she must have counted herself amount the most unlucky ones until she moved to freedom. She was even able to have lofty dreams for her daughters and send them to school beyond the level expected of most girls at the time. 

Cheluchi Onyemelueke, in her NLNG prizewinning novel The Son of the House, wrote, "It is important for a woman to have a life." A life full of rich and meaningful female friendships, traveling and seeing the world, making money in order to afford luxuries. In the last days of her life, Nnu Ego goes to the market square and tells people that her son is in 'Emelika'. There are market squares in every community, don't wait until it's your last days before going there to introduce yourself to people and make yourself some friends.