A eulogy for Fatin-Labbo

Exactly one week today, I lost my paternal grandmother, Fatin-Labbo. She had been bedridden for at least a year, and completely vegetative for the last few months. I saw her about an hour before she passed. She was brought back to Jega, our ancestral home by her children exactly five days before D-Day. I have been in Birnin Kebbi for the past few weeks for work myself and for some reason, the day she died, I was in Jega not for a visit but for work. My team and I were working on an education management database system for the Kebbi State government and on that day, was to tour the Jega Education Zonal Office.

After a meeting with the Zonal Director and his staff and setting up a team, I decided to visit ailing Fatin-Labbo. I met my uncle and a few of my aunts by her side, some reading the Qur’an, some armed with prayer books. Everyone was profusely at work – beseeching the mighty names of Allah and the mercy of His Boundless Dominion to come to the aid of poor Fatin-Labbo, who laid on her back with her chest heaving up as she struggled for every last breath her lungs were able to countenance.

I recognised that scene. This was an end-of-life scenario. I think after a medical sojourn everywhere they could take her; her children must have realised that this was really the end and they brought her back. They were able to remove her from her home, move her away from Jega only because she was unconscious anyway. She considered the very idea of moving anywhere from her matrimonial home a blasphemous abomination and had fought off all attempts by her children to move her away, even if only somewhere else within the same town of Jega. She would not have forgiven them if they let her die anywhere outside her own room. She outlived her husband, Labbo, whom we called Baba Mai-Keke by exactly 25 years. She had always wanted to die in the same room he died.

 I went to see poor Fatin Labbo together with my cousin, Aminu, who was the stereotypical witless Fulani clown. Aminu is my “tobashi” or “abokin wasa”, his mother being my father’s sister. The first thing he uttered once we were outside her room was, “she is not going to make it to tomorrow”. Fatin-Labbo being our grandmother, we were allowed to be impertinent and maybe even over the top with her. We have joked with her for years about how she was going to die, about how she had only a few days, complaining about how our parents were spoiling her, wasting so much on her old bones while our young blood is being neglected.

I actually agreed with Aminu that she might not make it to the next day. But then that has been the tale every day for at least a month. That was why they brought her back to Jega.

Fatin-Labbo was the glue that held our family in place. The main branch of the family is based in Gwandu, but somehow, the Jega branch had become dominant in the last few years courtesy of Fatin-Labbo. Perhaps, it was because she was the last (wo)man standing in Tambuwal in Gwandu in Zuru, in Sokoto and everywhere a spawn of the House of Hassan Maiwasa is walking the earth today. And not just our blood relatives… she was the matriarch of practically the whole community. It was a community that profoundly respected age, and she was the oldest living person there. Everyone came to her. The corridor to her room was a court where so many disputes had been settled. This was part of the reason her children insisted on taking her away because she literally did not have a minute of respite while in Jega.

In the days since her death, I have been calling up memories. In my mind, I have returned to Jega, walked through the wide expanses of my family homestead, where we played without a care as boisterous kids with nothing to lose. Some of my understanding of the world started here, such as the war of words we had with bombastic Baba Mai-Keke, who expected you to be spotless and wearing shoes at all times, himself always in covered shoes and a babbar-riga. I made some of my most unforgettable memories in this place. He grew up in Lagos as a Fulani herder who settled there as a cattle dealer later on.

Some years back, I started recording some of the songs she sang to herself. You could see that she was crying as she sang even though there were no tears from her eyes and no sobs in her voice. She was now all alone. And she sang songs you could tell were from her childhood. No one she grew up with was still alive. Everyone who could have sung those songs with her was long dead. You could hear that she was mourning the past.

Having finished my meetings and setting up a team at relevant locations to collect data and run focus groups, I decided to see Fatin-Labbo before leaving Jega. There was a presence that had stalked me since my idiot cousin uttered the word of death on her after our earlier visit – and that presence materialised itself at the entrance of the house. She was dead.

There was something sad about dying that did not apply to Fatin-Labbo. It was the end of an era – but I must confess that I was not as sad as when my grandfather died. I loved Fatin-Labbo to bits. But she was now at peace. It was much sadder seeing her how she was an hour earlier. She looked so peaceful, it was all over. All the pain, all the misery of this life. And she was finally going to be with Labbo Dalili.

Allah Yajikanki da rahama Fatin-Labbo.