Tucked at the fringes of several societies are a suffering group abused and vilified by persons, customs and traditions that prey on their circumstances. These people are called widows. The challenges that widows face are so ancient but continue in a modern world. Their sufferings are so rife that on the 23rd of June 2011, decision was reached to bring the plight of widows to international consciousness. The result was the setting aside of 23rd June of every year as a day to commemorate International Widows Day.
A widow is a woman whose husband died while she was married to him and has not since remarried. When a woman loses her husband, an empathetic and civilized society should rally around her and support her and her children through her grieve. This is not often the case. Perceptions, beliefs and customs sometimes inflict untold pain and victimizes the widow. The widow often struggles with the dilemma of where to turn, whom to trust, what culture to comply with and which to disdain. The situation is often worse for women who were abused by the husband in his lifetime and dehumanized by his relatives at his death.
Amidst this limbo, identity crisis sets in: Is the widow the wife of her husband or the daughter of her father? For it is in widowhood that the painful discovery sets in of non-acceptance into a husband’s family (since she may not inherit him) and the erasure of her name from her father’s house (since she is deemed to be acquired by a new owner and the fact that she is a female excludes her from inheriting her father).The stark reality then is that a widow has no last name.
A few examples of widowhood practices in Nigeria need to be cited. In Bini land, Edo State, a woman who loses her husband is restricted to a room outside the family house for a week immediately after her husband is buried. She is dressed in black with her hair unattended to and without a bath. She is urged to look sober and mournful and must force out tears in the morning and evening. On the last day of the week, a wake keep ceremony is conducted and the widow must stay up all night and not sleep as the spirit of the dead man is believed to hover around and will kill her if she sleeps. On that same day, she will perform a purification bath at 4am at a junction. If she returns home in safety, then she would have proved her innocence over the death of her husband.
In Idoma land, Benue state, the widow mourns in sack clothes for at least one year. She then performs the cleansing ceremony assisted by her age grade. She is then free to re-marry within or outside her dead husband’s family. Under this custom, only a man’s brothers inherit him and not his wife. In North-West Nigeria, a widow observes a four-month, ten days mourning period called the Takaba. During this period, she is kept in seclusion and speaks to no one. She may be prohibited from leaving the room where her husband died, made to sleep on uncomfortable beds, forced to change routes whenever she is going to the toilet or instructed to keep her hair short.
Among the Etulo people, a woman has a prescribed three-month mourning period during which she will be observed for pregnancy. She wears a mourning cloth called Bento which has a talisman in it. The Bento is first tied around the dead man’s waist before it is given to the woman to wear. The Bento is believed to be a deterrence to acts of flirtations and promiscuity. After three months, the woman’s hair is shaved. She is then given a white cloth to wear in exchange for the Bento in preparation of an outing ceremony.
In Ogidi town, in Idemili Local government area, a woman’s mourning period lasts a year during which time she sits on a bare floor for four weeks with her hair scrapped with broken bottles or razor. She wears an attire called Ogodo Upa (mud cloth), she exchanges the Ogodo Upa for an Ikpim (a black mourning cloth) for the rest of the year. The widow performs a praise singing ceremony for the late husband three times a day.
