by Aluta Nite
And what he thought was the wrong thing to do is what his people embraced and believed in and practiced. As a result of these divergent ideas, he became a suspicious man among his people always.
He learned never to share his ideas and ideals with his people because they would only put him down or off, while in the real sense he was right. The whole idea was to make him lose traction so that he could lose direction and behave like them.
They deeply knew in their minds that they were a group of lost sheep, but they did not care because they wished to have everyone in that community and society follow suit so that they could all drown together.
Baraka learned the hard way to choose and act differently from them all the time. This did not stop them from following his tracks every time to find out what he was up to at any one time. Emissaries were sent to try and dig information directly from him or from someone else who appeared closer to him.
In his quest to be different, he married from without and sired a few children. He took his children to school far away from his people because he was employed far away from his people and also because he did not wish to have his children emulate the bad instincts and traits from his people unless genetics would play their part.
When his first child did well in examinations and got called to a prestigious high school, news circulated among his people that his child won a lifetime scholarship. Where that came from, it is only them who knew.
Baraka got to know about it because, someone asked his wife about the range of tuition in such a prestigious school and as she was trying to explain how expensive they were, she was snapped at rudely by two bystanders from the community.
And the following is what she was told, “What are you hiding and yet it is common knowledge that you do not pay that tuition as the head of a particular non-governmental organization has been meeting and will continue to meet the expenses through the institution’s foundation scholarships program so long as the respective student is studying. Instead of being grateful and rejoicing at hitting a gold mine, you stand there telling lies. Do you realize what other people are going through in that respect?”
She was left stunned, as she was not given the chance to refute the claim because they knew best and would not wish to engage in discussing what they considered obvious. She therefore swallowed hard and moved away.
Later, when Baraka decided to leave his job in the city and move elsewhere near his people's domain and do something else, he rented his residential house in the city since he could not be at two places at the same time. Before he realized, word spread around that he had sold his house for millions of the local currency and joined the ranks of the newly minted millionaires in the region.
Again, where this came from, it is only hell that knew. He got to know about it because he met one lady that he told that he was traveling to his old city to check on his tenant and her reaction was strange.
The following is what she told him, “What do you mean and yet it is a well-known fact that you sold your house two years ago before moving away from that city and changing occupations?”
At least she was not arrogant about the matter as the two men mentioned above. He therefore had the opportunity to explain to her that, that was not true. Whether she bought his statement is not known because soon after, there was a sick relative of his somewhere and when he was not seen there, someone commented that he had met Baraka a few days earlier and he had told that someone that he was heading to his old city to see to his tenant’s issues.
On hearing this, one lady said, “He has no tenant. All we know is that he went to hide there so that he does not get involved in the hospitalization and treatment arrangements of so and so. Who does not know that he sold his house before changing jobs and work places?”
Unfortunately, Baraka was not aware of the funeral as it happened two days after he had traveled to his old city. On his return after one week, is when he heard about that damaging remark from another person who was also merely wondering as to why he could go and hide far away in time of need.
Loveable Dorina
Dorina was a wife and a mother of two girls and four boys. She lived in the village while doing subsistence farming and small-scale business of buying and selling fish. She was a fishmonger of sun dried and smoked fish as well as fresh grilled fish.
She lived in the village with all her children some of whom went to boarding schools especially the older three consisting of one boy and two girls except during school holidays and the younger ones who were three boys and went to day elementary and middle schools around her home area. Her husband, Eliazaro, was employed and lived far away in the provincial center as a watchman.
He husband, would only go home during public holidays and his annual leave time that was once a year for about a month. Any other time he would be seen at home would be because of some sort of family emergencies like sickness and any other unforeseen calamities.
Dorina woke up very early every morning and headed to the family land where she grew corn, beans, cassava, sweet potatoes, vegetables, bananas and other items. She did not have a kitchen garden behind her house because the homestead where her house was belonged to somebody else. It was like she was a tenant as far as the land was concerned although their house was hers.
She would be back from the farm at around nine o’clock, wash, take breakfast and carry her wares and head to the market of the day. Every day was market day except Sundays. She therefore went to different markets six days a week in different locations. Some of the markets were very far while some were close by.
She mostly bought her wares from far away markets three times a week and retailed them at nearby markets three times a week; at home in the evenings, on Sundays after attending church service and public holidays. She was a very keen worker who paid a lot of attention to her business and she made a lot of money through the business.
The money she made helped the family towards payment of tuition, buying what the family did not grow, other items and she also saved a lot. She was in fact known as the lone rich woman of the village.
She walked to every market place with her wares in a big basket on her head and never complained of tiredness or sickness. Her demeanor was simple and unassuming. She was always going back home every day before nightfall. She always wore white tunics with side pockets for keeping her handkerchief and a small purse with money. On her head she wore matching headgears as her tunics. And she wore no shoes.
In her kitchen, fish and cornmeal was always cooked for dinner besides a mixture of corn and beans that her young sons loved very much and it is what they ate daytime while she was away. She was a soft-spoken woman whose shouting was very rare indeed however nasty the situation was. Even when she was at home on Sundays after church or in the evenings, it was very difficult to hear her voice.
She was always calm and compost. Her clients were many because villagers loved fish and her fish was well taken care of and reasonably priced. This endeared people to her.
She was also one who did not mind selling on credit because she understood the villagers' financial problems. Somehow, her trust in people to pay worked very well because of her consideration and kindness. Moreover, if one refused to pay her, then they would be the ones to lose because not many people traded in fish. It would force one to traverse afar to buy fish the day one had money to pay cash.
Despite her good heart and work, she had other problems with her three young sons. Somehow they all had some devilish idea of causing untold suffering and loss to the family. Each of them set fire to the main house that consisted of three bedrooms, a sitting room and a store for her wares at least once in their childhood. And the house burnt down to nothingness with all the personal effects inside.
If the family did not have a separate building next to the main house as a kitchen cum store for grain crops, firewood, water and chicken, there would have been no place for the family to sleep in under such circumstances. And every time this happened, the ch
ildren were alone. She would just go back home to find disaster awaiting her.
This is the time when she would summon her husband to go home urgently via telegram, as they had to make fresh arrangements for a new family house. And her savings came in very handy at such times. Still with such occurrences, nobody would hear her screaming or fighting with the child responsibly for the damage.
She would work hard with the builders and a new house would be in the offing within six months at most. Why the young sons used to cause this type of callousness nobody ever got to know.
Delusion in Adhina
I do not know what to call the scenarios described below surrounding this old lady called Adhina because they were stranger than fiction.
Adhina was born by a fresh water lake in the tropics by the equator to a father who practiced polygamy. She grew up by the lake and whatever type of life she lived there is not known, what is known is her married life far away in another location where she was observed to have a very queer way of life.
Another thing known about her is that she had a stepsister who was older than her and they both got married in the same location. The older stepsister got married first and with regular visits to the stepsister, she got hooked to one man from the location that she got betrothed to.
She was blest with three children in the marriage consisting of two sons and one daughter. Like her father, she got married to a man who practiced polygamy and she was one of the middle placed wives.
Her life was not easy because of the nature of her personal life. Occupation-wise, she did subsistence farming on the portion of the land allocated to her and her sons by her husband. To get extra money to get other things that she needed and could not grow like paraffin, matches and many others, she sold her extra produce in order to buy them.
As her male children reached age of majority, they got employed in small towns far away and provided her with some cash to supplement what she got from sales. Her husband was not helping her because he claimed to have younger wives and many children to take care of.
She had one permanent ordeal in her life that many people could not understand. Sometimes, the ordeal was not there then, she appeared very normal like anyone else. But, when the ordeal was with her, she was another person in another world unknown to many.
She claimed to be hearing voices from within herself that nobody else could hear and in response, she communicated verbally with the said voices. People around her knew about her ordeals because her responses to the voices were loud and clear.
People also knew that it was not one voice because of the nature of her responses. Her responses varied from small sounds to medium to huge in correlation to what she was hearing. In other words, her voice changed from that of a child to that of a man or woman and to that of a shrill voice to any other type of voice one could think of. Her responses to the inside voices also indicated that she was communicating with both sexes of human beings, both young and old.
And she clearly told people that she was talking to different people at any one time depending on the issues at hand in her mind. At such times she could be very worked up, active and moving up and down nonstop. She could get very tired just doing this and in the end go to deep sleep because of the job she had just done via communicating to unseen creatures while moving around nonstop.
She could also break into song and dance round and round the same spot like she had company. This could go on for hours during the day. She did not care whether someone was watching because to her, she was in another world that those watching were not seeing nor could imagine.
In between, at the beginning and at the end, she belched a lot and loudly like she was trying to get rid of something from her system. During all this process, she was not eating or conversing with other people.
She made musical instruments with a variety of gourds full of small cowrie shells she collected from the lake that she shook with one hand at the time of singing and dancing. She sometimes played a variety of drums made of cowhide and wood at times of singing and dancing.
Her pottery especially the big ones that she used for storing grain crops were garlanded with fresh tendrils every so often as she was directed by the voices within her. Many of her relatives and neighbors were concerned about her because these exercises were really draining her energy. They often begged her when all was normal to get converted into established religion to stop all this drama.
She resisted the change for a long time till some people eventually managed to convince her to have a priest pray for her, although in her mind, nothing could change. They approached a Christian priest who agreed to go and pray for her at her home. The priest went with part of his flock one Sunday afternoon after the morning service and lunch.
She agreed to be baptized as well and she became someone else altogether. Her shackles disappeared and she got completely relieved of the heavy burden she had carried for decades. Her garlanded pots were broken, the drums and gourds burned and the cowrie shells thrown away. She started going to church every Sunday, learned hymns and immersed herself in Christianity till she died.
His Life with a Car
Haden had to have a car in his working life because of distances he covered to his work station; to perform some of his duties like rushing to collect or buy spare parts as his job dictated; the routes to some of his work stations did not have public transport and his employers were not willing to provide transport to certain categories of staff like him.
Good and useful as his vehicle was, it also caused him untold suffering at times. Although he tried every time to maintain his car well including insurance, he was not in control of what could happen on the roads sometimes.
The direct and short route to and from his residence was always overcrowded and he had to leave his house as early as six in the morning to drop his wife at work in city center before rushing to his work station outside town. He was required to start work at eight o’clock every morning. When the road was not congested or he left his house early, it merely took him thirty minutes to drop her and reach his work station.
He left home early every day to avoid the perennial traffic jams. If he did not do this, he could sit on this jam for two to three hours just burning fuel and getting worked up and frustrated. And if by some strange coincident he was late in leaving his house early, he had an option of taking a longer route that headed backwards for some time before he could in the end head to the right direction.
This route would take him over an hour to drop his wife and reach his place of work, but it was still faster than sitting in the jam. The return journeys to his home did not worry him as much even if he sat in heavy traffic for long because he was going home to relax with his family.
On one misty morning, when he was late leaving his house and had to take the longer or alternate route, he met what he had not planned for. As he headed downtown down a sloppy road to drop his wife, he faced a real challenge. Out of nowhere, a figure illuminated from the sidewalk running onto the road. Luckily, he was not fast.
Before he realized, he had a loud bang on the bonnet of his car. In other words the side of his car hit the figure in question and the figure flew up and landed on the bonnet and dropped on the center of the road. To him it was a dream and not a reality. He slowed down further and came to a stop.
He opened his door and went out. There on the road was a young teen girl of about fourteen years old. She was wearing slippers and a green dress and she had money in her hands. It turned out she was someone’s house-help rushing to the shops on the opposite side of the road to buy some bread for breakfast.
He stood her up and asked her how she was feeling. She could not talk for a while because of shock. He put her in his car and drove her to the hospital nearby. The doctor at the casualty department checked her and found nothing wrong with her and Haden took her home.
At home was her employer who was very appreciative of his action, but he told her employer to give him a call should her situatio
n change. He then left to report to the police station nearby before proceeding to work because maybe, the girl was injured internally and it could not be determined immediately as is the case sometimes and he did not wish to be accused of negligence later. Her employer did call Haden after a few days to report that she was just doing fine.
Before driving her to the hospital, a mob started forming because those nearby had heard the bang and some of them saw the ordeal as some of them were on their way to work. The mob started baying for his blood as is usual in those parts of the developing world in that he had hit a poor person who could not afford a car like him. He drove off quickly before they could do any harm to him.
Some motorists are known to take off after causing an accident and rush straight to the police station to report instead of waiting on the road because of this type of persecution that can easily end in the death of the driver or extensive damage to his car or both.
