Chapter two

   "Mummy please don't go. Don't leave me here with him." Modupe cried clutching her mother in a hug as tight as her teenage strength could allow. "Please, please, don't go."

Mariam patted her daughter's back returning the hug. "Come on, it would just be a few weeks and I'll be back. Why are you crying so hard? I already told you that I'll be back soon for you, baby."

Mo shook her head not convinced. Her parents didn't know that she heard their heated discussion when she came home early from football practice the week before. She heard them talk about their divorce. 

"I need to go home to explain to my parents that I cannot continue to live with a cheat hence the divorce. I'm also going to get my things in order so I can settle there permanently." She had heard her mother say as she came in through the backdoor since her mother didn't like her soiling the doormat with her muddied trainers.

She paused mid stride as soon as she heard 'cheat'. Quietly, she retreated out of eyesight but within earshot. 

"Mariam, please. We can fix this marriage. It was just that once, it won't happen again."

She couldn't see them but she felt her heart plummet into her stomach as her father's voice confirmed her fear. 

"Don't give me that crap, Michael. I clearly warned you about that Claire girl. I told you she was into you. You said I was just being paranoid, I was jealous, I was imagining things. And now, is it not finished? Michael, you kept it a secret from me. You couldn't even be bothered to tell me. It was your little miss 'project partner' that came to confess to me." Her mother rarely raised her voice,  but when she did, everyone who knew her knew that it must have been something really serious. 

"I'm sorry. I was so ashamed. I didn't know how to... " He began to sob unable to continue. 

She heard the sound of a furniture scrap the ground. "What is done is done, Michael. Please let's go our separate ways."Her mother's voice sounded tired and croaky like she had been crying. 

Modupe heard footsteps steps and ran away without thinking without caring about her foggy eyesight as tears streamed down her face. 

Mo pulled back to look her mother right in the eye. "Mum,  promise me you would come back for me. Promise you won't forget me here. '

Mariam let out a laughter that could have fooled Mo if she didn't know that everything was not okay. "Of course Modupe, my dear. I'll be back, just for you. "

Modupe shot out of her chair panting, her eyes wet with tears. She looked around her and saw that most people around her were asleep except Will who was across the aisle reading a medical magazine.

He looked up at her direction and gave her a smile. Then he paused and frowned and mouthed "Are you okay? " to her. 

She angrily wiped the tears on her face and purposely turned her back to him. Her shaking hands clutched the silver cross pendant her mother gave to her for her tenth birthday to calm herself down.

She hated people seeing her being vulnerable. And she wasn't going to explain anything to him.

Gosh, she hated him and his intrusive personality.

She hated her father and that home wrecker, Claire. 

And most of all,  she hated her mother for breaking her promise and not coming back for her. 

She hated them all. She would prove to them that she could do fine without them. 

Aderele sat at in the backyard of her home. Her body shook with grief as she cried out her heart into the quiet night.

The moon shone brightly down on her and the night was surprisingly quiet even though there was a pond nearby from which toads and crickets used to make noise from.

Sure, the pond was dried up due to the current drought but Aderele would like to think that the darkness felt her pain, that the moon sympathetized with her. 

A streak of pain gripped her heart painful and she had to cover her mouth with her hands to muffle the sound so as not to wake those inside the house. Even now, with people she considered family just a few feet away from her, Aderele had never felt so alone. 

Three days ago, she had lost her daughter. It's for the good of the land and the to ensure the survival of the community, everyone told her including Adebayo her husband. But no one felt the pain of loosing the only daughter she had ,not even Adebayo. 

How could he ever understand? He was a man wasn't he? He had two wives, the other which bore him two sons that ensure his legacy would continue. And even if he had none, he had to the rest of his life to bear children. She had hit menopause a year ago but it was okay for her to loose her daughter because some god of rain demanded it. 

The community could go suck his cock. And lick his ass while they were at it. This was the second time she had lost a daughter and it wasn't any less painful this time.

She couldn't bear it any longer, she wanted to die. She wanted to kill herself. 

Even as she made her way to the cooking area to grab a knife, she wondered if anyone would miss her. Would they simply bury her and then move on with their life? Most definitely, her mindeed mocked her. 

Not even her husband would break a sweat. Only women were obligated to mourn their husband's death in her community. The same courtesy did not apply to men. 

A lot of things were like this because women were considered the weaker sex. She had also lost her daughter because she was a young virgin.The god requested for young virgin girls to be sacrificed to him every ten years the chief priest had said.

She  had asked her father once as a kid why boys were never sacrificed in any ritual, it was either girls or animals or food, her father had told her that it would be a waste of a bloodline. 

Aderele laughed bitterly to herself. She had cried and begged that Morenike was the only child that she had but no one had listened to her pleas.

Her husband asked that wasn't he more enough for her, but where was he now? Probably in postcoital bliss with his younger male bearing wife and it had only been three days! He couldn't mourn his daughter at least a week? 

 Being a female was a burden she had to carry all her life and today, she was going to free herself of that yoke she didn't deserve to bear. 

She got into the area they cooked in. She thankfully had the moonlight to help her locate the bowl all the utensils were and she poked around for a knife. A hiss around her leg had her peering at the ground carefully. 

Dread uncoiled in her belly much like the snake her eyes fell on. Without thinking twice, she ran for her dear life and straight into the house. She didn't stop until she was safely in her room, her heart beating like rain on corrugated rooftops. 

It wasn't until she calmed down that she realized that she had just run away from death after she claimed to want to kill herself. Aderele had never felt so guilty.

After her only child died, she couldn't even find the courage to kill herself. She was so pathetic! 

No wonder she was called the weaker sex, she really was weak. And she hated it. And she missed her lovely Morenike. 

That night she cried herself to sleep praying that her daughter would be okay wherever she was. 

"Do you know that that there are over five hundred indigenous languages in Nigeria?" 

Mo heard a chorus of woah! Wow! and Really! follow the statement.

Will was reading an article on facts about Nigeria to an excited sextet of resident doctors who were behaving like a brunch of highschool kids on a field trip. 

"How many languages do you speak Doctor Mo?" A petite brunette in heavy lens glasses asked her. 

"I only speak English." Modupe replied shortly not looking up from her phone where she was trying to set up the new SIM card she had gotten from a vendor in front of the airport while the others waited. She was the doctor in charge while Will has volunteered to assist her. So she had to give feedback regularly to Dr Miley Evans throughout their one week stay. 

"Oh." The girl sounded dissapointed as though she had been expecting her to start speaking in different languages instead. Mo couldn't care less, she wasn't here for their entertainment and there weren't here for fun either. 

"But that's okay because English is the formal language of the country." Will quickly said to cheer the pouting brunette up. And got a round of 'thanks God's from his younger audience who were relieved that they would be able to communicate with the locals with ease. 

"Give us another. Doctor Moore." This time a guy with sandy blonde hair urged. 

Will quickly glanced at his phone to read out another fact for his delighted audience.

"Well let me see here...." He muttered to himself. "Nigeria's main religions are Islam and Christianity. Others are classified under traditional worship."

"This people sure are diverse." A raven haired guy with glasses on his heavily pimpled face commented in a scornful tone. 

"Diversity can be a good thing, Bob." The brunette answered him.

"I mean how can they be united if they are all so very different? I am reading up news on the country unlike the rest of you. And I hate to burst your bubble but the country is just crawling with not just bad roads like this one but corrupt leaders, injustice and also poverty. And what's more? World renowned fraudsters. I can't wait to get out of here already." He went back to typing on his phone before muttering his final blow loud enough for them to hear "No wonder, they kill each other everyday."

The silence that followed mourn the death of his colleague's excitement. Even the ever optimistic Will had no comeback for that.

The bus was eerily silent forcing Mo to look up at the guy that had just judged her country and all its inhabitants from a handful of news articles. 

" I would advise you all to charge up on your phones when we get to the hotel. The light here isn't as constant as you are used to so...  Less phone time and more people time." Modupe advice as the car came to a halt in front of the hotel they were lodging for the night.

"What else do you expect from a godforsaken country?" Modupe heard the pimple guy mutter loudly again. 

"Did your article also tell you about human rituals, Bob?" Mo asked the guy as he made to pass her on his way out. He looked up to give her a bored look. She had always noticed that the guy was racist from the way he behaved with her and other black or Asian people.  

"I am also a Nigerian, you never know if I am into that. If I hear you say one more rude statement from you before the end of the trip, you might just find out. " She said with a glare.

The younger male huffed and went out of the vehicle with the other resident doctors. 

"I'm sorry about him." Will said coming up behind her. "Are you okay?" 

Modupe nodded letting out a tired sigh. "Am okay,thanks." She replied. "He should be the one apologizing... to you."

Will was surprised. "Me? Why?"

"I could tell what you were doing. Reading out only the good stuff, the fun facts, trying to get them all phsyched for the trip and though I also think they should know about what they are getting into so they would be prepared for any situation, he was rude about it and ruined all your effort. He better hopes I don't catch him mouthing off for the rest of the trip." She said walking into the hospitality establishment.

Will laughed nervously. "You are not really going to sacrifice him though, are you?" 

Modupe didn't answer him. Leaving him to wonder