It came slowly. The rain became lighter and lighter until it fell in slanting
showers. Sometimes the sun shone through the rain and a light breeze blew. It was a gay
and airy kind of rain. The rainbow began to appear, and sometimes two rainbows, like a
mother and her daughter, the one young and beautiful, and the other an old and faint
shadow. The rainbow was called the python of the sky.
Okonkwo called his three wives and told them to get things together for a great
feast. "I must thank my mother's kinsmen before I go," he said.
Ekwefi still had some cassava left on her farm from the previous year. Neither of
the other wives had. It was not that they had been lazy, but that they had many children
to feed. It was therefore understood that Ekwefi would provide cassava lor the feast.
Nwoye's mother and Ojiugo would provide the other things like smoked fish, palm-oil
and pepper for the soup. Okonkwo would take care of meat and yams.
Ekwefi rose early on the following morning and went to her farm with her
daughter, Ezinma, and Ojiugo's daughter, Obiageli, to harvest cassava tubers. Each of
them carried a long cane basket, a machete for cutting down the soft cassava stem, and a
little hoe for digging out the tuber. Fortunately, a light rain had fallen during the night
and the soil would not be very hard.
"It will not take us long to harvest as much as we like," said Ekwefi.
"But the leaves will be wet," said Ezinma. Her basket was balanced on her head,
and her arms folded across her breasts. She felt cold. "I dislike cold water dropping on
my back. We should have waited for the sun to rise and dry the leaves."
Obiageli called her "Salt" because she said that she disliked water. "Are you
afraid you may dissolve?"
The harvesting was easy, as Ekwefi had said. Ezinma shook every tree violently
with a long stick before she bent down to cut the stem and dig out the tuber. Sometimes
it was not necessary to dig. They just pulled the stump, and earth rose, roots snapped
below, and the tuber was pulled out.