Explanation

Yaremi, a beautiful widow in her early fifties in Kufi, has recently lost her husband, Ajumobi. Their children, all grown up including Alani, the only son, have left home. 

Women I Kufi, by tradition, are only considered complete when they are part of a couple, even if they are the second or third wife. In the unfortunate event of the death of a husband, a woman is expected to re-marry. 

Yaremi, being the strong-willed woman she is, decides against re-marriage to any of the available suitors. Nine months after the death of her husband, Yaremi is still without another husband, to the chagrin of the men in Kufi, who she tells she is "neither a napkin nor a rag to clean up mess with". Hence, she rejects all the caps of the three suitors who want to marry her. 

With that firmly established, she then directs her energy towards filling the void left by Ajumobi's death. She decides to work hard, doing manual jobs to fill in the long hours of her lonely days under the hot sun. She does the farm work, cleans the family compound, dries maize grains, uproots cassava tubers for the goats, cooks, fetches water and firewood and does other household chores alongside her main job of buying and selling taffeta cloth in the market. Even so, there are certain jobs for which she requests assistance from the village men like Uncle Deyo. She still needs her husband to eat the food she prepares. She also needs, she realises, a husband to eliminate the termites, red ants and rats around the house. 

Yaremi also longs for her husband's touch and his deep manly voice. in her loneliness, she dreams about him often and imagines he has come to visit her. She misses their quarrels and prays for him to return as it is impossible for her to forget certain events. 

She tells Segi: "Your father was to me like the mighty Baobab, King of Savannah, towering above ten thousand lesser trees around, protecting me under its cool shade... But death was cruel. It came like the harmattan blaze, to strip me of my only dress, my Baobab, leaving me to stand alone in mournful nakedness." 

Thus, despite Yaremi's determination to stand against tradition in her refusal to re-marry, she realises that desirability of being part of a couple, as long as her husband is Ajumobi

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