So, Uncle Daniel didn’t come to the funeral — none of them did.

Years later, even my grandfather who was still alive at the time would travel to Ibadan to see us with one of his wives, a younger addition. It was somewhat awkward, seeing as my dad had remarried at the time.

Grandfather (in halting English): Sorry about your wife, my daughter. Sorry I couldn’t make it to the funeral.

Father: Oh, that’s okay, I’m recovering quite well from the loss. You must have noticed the woman in the house?

Grandfather (nonplussed): Oh, the one who just…Father (a little abashed but proud): Yes, that’s my new wife.

It didn’t happen quite that way, but after the initial greetings, I hadn’t hung around to make conversation. Sometime later, a half-aunt, who I’d never seen before, visited from Lagos, apparently to catch up with the family her half-sister left behind. My problem with polygamy, especially in a situation like mine where second and third generation families grow up far apart, is that you never really know your half-cousins, half-aunts or half-uncles.

They sometimes appear seemingly out of the woodwork, and you’re not quite sure what to do with them. Hug? Smile? Attempt to feverishly fill in the missing years?

After my mother’s death, I did see a couple of her family members. Not Uncle Daniel, though. I once came home from the University of Ibadan to be told by my father that Uncle Daniel had visited. I was surprised, and a bit excited, but all that fizzled away when he continued in almost the same breath that Uncle Daniel had left. At first I was nonplussed. Then irritated. After not seeing me for over a decade, he hadn’t tried to wait or look for me? The university was just about thirty minutes away from the house, not in another state. So, why had he come? My father was rather subdued when he informed me my uncle had been asking for some ‘assistance’. When I recently asked my father for the address Uncle Daniel had left on that visit, my father said there wasn’t one. I wondered if my father had bothered to ask, or if Uncle Daniel had been vague.

With my uncle’s non-appearance in my life, or his apparent apathy, some may wonder why finding him was important. But in Nigeria, it is customary to inform both sides of the family when you plan to marry and present your intended to them—usually with a bottle of wine, schnapps or a similar drink. With the paternal side taken care of, we were working on the maternal side. Left to me I wouldn’t have bothered. However, my fiancé brought it up. I brushed him off. Then my stepmother brought it up and I brushed her off in a similar fashion. After that, the father of one of my closest childhood friends sat me down and talked up the importance of contacting my maternal family. A few months later, so did my sister-in-law’s boyfriend.