Chapter One

Kanma and Osu

Kanma couldn’t bring herself to understand Ugoo’s fascination with Owerri.

‘At Owerri, I won’t have to go to the river to fetch water. Simdi said there’s a tap close to Uncle Rufus’ compound.’ Ugoo pointed out.

Kanma lived in Aninta with her parents and siblings. Aninta was a small village. It shied away at the end of Osu, a river that shielded the village from the rest of the world. Kanma loved to play by the river. She would leave home in the morning, only to be found by the river bank at dawn. Her mother feared that she might drown. She would scold and sometimes beat her for spending more time by the river than she did at home. This didn’t stop her.

‘I forbid you from stepping foot by the river again. Your umbilical cord was not buried there.’ Her mother would threaten. Yet, Kanma did not stop. It only got worse.There was something about the river that pulled her in. It was possibly the way the trees by the path towered so high and set a canopy above her head, or the chirruping of insects and bird songs that made her giggle as she walked to the river.

Sometimes, she would imagine that the birds were calling out to her and would sing along with them. The clarity of the river was the most beautiful thing she ever saw. She would sit by it for hours, picking shells and pebbles. When fishes came to the edge of the river for food, she would grab them, watch them wriggle in her palm for a while before letting them go. And when ripples stretched the bank of the river, she would rise and run, laughing wildly. Everyone in the village loved Kanma for how much she loved the river. They called her ‘Nwammiri’: river child.

Extracted from Nwammiri by Adaeze Nwadike.