Meet my grandfathers, late Ibrahim Namowa Bakori, who died around 1966 or so, and late Alhaji Barau Bakori, who died in 1985.
They were friends and business associates who relocated to Bakori from Tandama in Danja Local Government Area, Katsina State when my father was just two years old.
The two old friends decided to join the hands of their children in marriage (in 1943) at very tender ages as was the practice then; my father was 17 years old while my mother was just 12 years old and they lived together for 68 years until death parted them!
During the wedding, my paternal grandfather, Alhaji Barau, built a house for them and it was painted all white. Not many people painted their houses at the time, and the house became the talk of the town, so much so that when the famous Hausa singer, Alhaji Mamman Shata Katsina, sang for my father at the occasion, he mentioned the uniqueness of the house in the following stanza:
"Abdulƙadir na Garmaho, mai gidan kwatance na Laraba". Roughly translated as Abdulƙadir of (the famous) gramophone, owner of a unique house, favourite of his sister, Laraba.
The gramophone mentioned in the song is a musical instrument, a record player, actually, owned by Alhaji Barau, my grandfather. And my father's sister, Laraba, mentioned in the song, is Hajiya Bilki, mother of my late favourite cousin, Alhaji Aminu Mu'azu and my cousin, Muazu Dinah, of Arewa24 TV, Kano.
Interestingly, these two old friends joined two sets of their children in marriage, for, we share the same grandparents with Prof. Ahmed Mohammed of B.U.K. Both our parents came from the same houses.
I was told that my grandparents were among the first to buy cars in Bakori while my paternal grandfather, Alhaji Barau, was the first in Bakori to own a gramophone (Garmaho, in Hausa), a record player.
May Allah have mercy on them.