Young ladies should stop looking at ‘pocket size’ to choose husband – 83-year-old Mrs Daniel-Eze

83-year-old former traditional healer from Ndi-Obasi, Abia State, Mrs Ezinee Daniel-Nze, tells GODFREY GEORGE about her childhood, marriage and her life lessons

Where are you from and in what kind of setting did you grow up?

My name is Mrs Comfort Daniel-Nze. I am 83 years old. I’d be 84 years in September this year. I am from Ndi-Obasi, Okagwe-Ohafia, Abia State. My village is well-known for buying and selling. It was a very nice place. It didn’t have hills like some other places in the East. It had very lush greenery and I had a lot of friends.

One thing I would always remember about my childhood was that we always went to the stream to swim. I was a very good swimmer. No one could compete with me then. Once I entered the water, I disappeared like a fish. Even now in my old age, my love for swimming remains as I am now training my daughter, Vivian Nze, how to swim. We had a lot of streams in Ohafia. We, girls, would go to the stream to swim and the boys would come to join us, and we would rush and cover ourselves up. In the end, we would still swim together with the boys. I was also good at sprint.

I didn’t go to school but people who were in school would come to beg me to represent their school in a race. I always won. When I look back now, it gives me so much joy.

How will you describe your family while growing up?

We were four children. I am the first daughter of my parents. My father was very wealthy. He had a lot of farmlands and houses in Ogbo Hill in Aba and some of them that he bequeathed to his children still exist till date. People knew him down to my mother’s place. They would always come around him to ask him to either give or lend them money. He was also very free-handed.