Description
A locust-bean seller (Iya-Oniru)’s obsession with her locust-beans – her excessive fear of parting with any of them will lead to the most unbelievable and extraordinary decision of her life.
Iya-Oniru is one of Makawa’s sellers of the best quality and best-tasting locust-beans – always in high demand. When there is a scarcity of locust-beans, sellers in Makawa, including Iya-Oniru, who are still in operation, exploit the situation fully. They are soon seen as the richest in town, but labelled ‘stingy’ because the more money they make the more they hate parting with any of it.
Iya-Oniru, who is ungenerous by nature, and who has the tendency to be stingy anyway becomes even more so. She becomes so obsessed with making money from her locust-beans, and takes precautions against losing any of them, including handling the washing of the locust-beans herself at a nearby river. However, she soon decides to take them to another river, Odo-Alo, where she is unlikely to come across anyone – a river that is nevertheless seen as sacred and mysterious.
One day she goes there to wash her locust-beans when a bowl with one locust-bean gets swept away by the swift current, and she chases after it.
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