Ola was 100 percent wife material. We had already started making plans for our future. She wanted all her four sisters and an additional six cousins on the bridal train; I wanted three sons and two daughters, preferably the boys first.

As much as I wanted to fulfil my responsibilities as opara and help my family, I also wanted to get a job because of Ola. Marrying an Igbo girl entailed much more than fairy-tale romance and good intentions. The list of items presented to the groom as a prerequisite for the traditional marriage ceremony was enough to make a grown man shudder. And that was even before you considered the gift items for family members, the clothing for the girl and her mother, and the actual feast itself. Several couples had been known to garner all their financial forces together in the process of organising their marriage ceremony. Afterwards, they could sit back in their new home and gradually transmute to skeletons. At least then they would be married and could die penniless – but happy – in each other’s arms.

Still drenched in these thoughts, on the way back home, I did not notice when one of the tambourine-jangling zealots stepped into pace beside me and extended one of his flyers.

‘Good morning, my brother,’ he said in greeting.

The man sounded as if he had slept on a bed of roses, woken from a scrumptious slumber that morning, and placed his foot right onto the ninth cloud.

‘I would like to invite you to fellowship with us on Sunday,’ he continued. ‘It promises to be a marvellous time. Come and be blessed, for there’s nothing impossible with God.’

On any other day, I would have called the man a bumbling buffoon and walked on. But like a well-oiled robot, I automatically stretched out my hand and collected the flyer.

Chikaodinaka and Odinkemmelu stopped chattering and resumed servile postures as soon as I entered the kitchen.