The Woman with Two Heads

The Woman with Two Heads

By Halima Abdullahi

Once upon a time, in Tokoroa village, there lived an elderly woman called Lantinga. She was friendly but had no friends. She always wore a large hood over her head that covered her entire head, and people thought she was a witch, and because of this, they stayed away from her. No one bothered to come close to find out why she wore the large hood.

One day, Lantinga decided to find a solution to her problem. She would consult with the oracle. She would go and see a soothsayer and find out what she needed to do so that she would have friends.

The next day, Lantinga went to see the soothsayer early in the morning, so no one spotted her. Once she got there, she told him it was Lantinga at his door, and he let her in. He never liked her. He could not see beyond her hood, and that angered him. Now that she had come to him, he knew he was going to find a way to get her to leave the village and make the people of Tokoroa happy.

After he had done his tests with the ‘oracle’, he told her that all she needed to do to make friends was for her to remove her hood. He knew at least then; everyone will see her face. “We will know what she is hiding,” he thought.

She walked back home, thinking about what the soothsayer said. It was a tough thing to do, but she decided to remove the hood that had covered her shame for so long.

When the sun came up, and everyone came out of their mud huts, she went out, and everyone now knew why she covered her head. She was a woman with two heads! People ran away! Children went into hiding. And some other people laughed at her. So, she went back into her house to cry. She was very sad. She wished she had not gone out of her way to think of a way to make friends because now everyone did not want to come near her at all. She should have kept on with her life, and those who would love her for who she is would do so. She vowed never to worry over what people thought of her again as she wiped a tear off her face.

Halima Abdullahi is a ten-year-old pupil of Corona School Victoria Island. This piece is her submission for the Jordan Hill February 2020 Writing Challenge.