AISORE AND THE MILLIPEDE
Fr. Dr Okhueleigbe Osemhantie Ãmos|August 25, 2025
In Esan, as in many corners of Africa, marriage was less about companionship and more about children. A home without children was a silent house, and a lineage without offspring was like a riverbed without water. So when this young couple lived for years without the cry of a child, they carried their sorrow to shrines, consulted oracles, poured libations to the gods, and still their arms were empty. Seasons came and went, and they were worn thin with waiting, until hope itself packed its bags and left. Yet one day, when they had almost settled for barrenness, grace stretched forth her hand, and a womb long thought dry blossomed with life. A daughter was born, and she was named Aisore.
But this gift was no ordinary child; she was adored beyond measure, pampered beyond reason, almost worshipped like a spirit that had descended into flesh. Aisore’s feet never touched the dust of the market road, nor the mud of the riverbank. She was kept from kitchen smoke, from the sweat of farm work, from every duty that other girls bore with ease. She sat enthroned in beads, with gold in one hand and silver in the other, while servants and neighbors hovered about to do her bidding. The child was so overprotected that her very breath seemed guarded.
Then came the day when fortune turned to folly. Her father had gone to the farm, her mother had stepped to the market, and Aisore sat in her splendor, queen of a house too silent. As she gazed, she saw it—a millipede, slow, crawling, harmless to most, yet to her eyes a terror. She began to cry out in fear, “The millipede is coming, the one who bore me is not at home, tell them that the millipede is coming!” Passersby heard her strange lament and rushed to fetch her parents. But before they could arrive, the creature had already crept its way into her nostril. Her parents came in haste, trembling, struggling to pull it out, but in their effort it snapped, and fluids began to drip. Thus, the elders say, catarrh was born among the people.
Yet the story does not end in myth alone; it carries a wound for our own time. For was it not the worship of Aisore that ruined her? The very hands that refused her the kitchen broom, the very love that shielded her from stream and soil, became the cause of her weakness. A child who never learned the rhythm of work or the patience of struggle was defeated, not by a lion or a serpent, but by a mere millipede. So it is in our age: many Aisore still walk among us—children so coddled that when life’s smallest trial approaches, they tremble, they cry, they collapse, because they were never taught to stand. They are the tribe of children who are good in relationships but bad in marriage. It is the net end of the Indomine generation
And more still, the tale stings with a warning to parents and leaders alike. Love is not indulgence, love is preparation. To pamper without discipline is to lace the child’s cradle with thorns for tomorrow. We see it today in homes where sons cannot lift a hand for themselves, in societies where daughters are groomed for beauty but not for strength, and in nations where leaders, once raised with excess honour, turn fragile and falter when hardship comes. The millipede will always come—it comes in one form or another—but only those trained in the fires of duty will know how to face it.
Above all, the story mirrors our own folly with the gifts God entrusts to us. Aisore was a gift, and instead of nurturing her, they idolized her. How often do we do the same? Wealth, children, status, talents—all turned into little gods until the very blessing becomes our undoing. A gift is safest when it is trained, disciplined, and offered back to God, not enthroned above Him. The ghost of Esan wisdom whispers still: the child who is spared every burden will in the end be crushed by the weight of a millipede.
Fr. Dr. Okhueleigbe Osemhantie Ãmos is a priest of the Catholic Diocese of Uromi and a Lecturer at the Catholic Institute of West Africa, Port Harcourt, Nigeria
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