by Aluta Nite
His parents tried all they could to talk him into leaving his bad ways, but to no avail. According to him he knew better therefore they talked and he appeared like he was listening and direct from there he went to do the opposite. He smooth talked them and never agreed to start over a new leaf. It was like he was not there while they were talking to him. And to him, he was living his life while they were in dreamland.
He was never seen doing anything with his parents, siblings or going anywhere with any of them because he had no time for such formalities. His friends or associates were never known. The villagers were very nervous of him and tired of his behavior, but they knew in their minds that he acted alone and not with the consent of the rest of his family who were equally ashamed of him.
As years went by, he would not stop. He kept on being remanded and imprisoned and going back home to continue with this life. His jail and prison terms were normally short ranging from six months to one year to one and a half years to two years maximum and he would be back.
Sometimes he disappeared to where nobody knew for long periods of time like weeks or a few months then he would reappear just like that. He felt and believed that he owed nobody any explanation and therefore told his family nothing about his bygones and whereabouts.
His behavior made many people not keep their harvested grains in the granaries or grain stores outside the houses because stealing from the granaries was one of his specialties. His mother could be happy that her grains were well stored in the granary and on the day she decided to take the grains out to re-air in the hot sun, she found that there was nothing inside despite the granary door or window looking well-fortified as she did when she did the storage earlier.
Other things that he used to steal were chicken, sheep, goats and cows, ripe crops from farms and items from houses. With time, the villagers got tired and frustrated of his acts. They therefore decided to teach him a lesson next time he would be caught. Most of the times he was never caught, because he was very slippery and slithered like a snake, but people knew that he was responsible all the same. He was the talk in the village when something was lost or missing.
Other petty thieves in the village confessed when suspected or caught, but not him. He was a hardcore and could even challenge someone into a bad and dangerous fight if confronted. The petty thieves also knew if he was involved into an incident or not and said it openly even to the authority when culprits were being looked for, for questioning and arrest. Not that other thieves, were accepted or tolerated by the villagers, but his acts had gone overboard and beyond repair.
The last time he was caught stealing from someone’s house, he was given a very nasty treat. Several men pinned him down and several four-inch nails were driven into his chest and back. He got up and went, but the villagers knew that, that was it. There was no way he could survive the treatment he was given. They did not even bother calling the police because they knew that it was a question of time before his demise.
He was sick for a couple of weeks and then he started coughing blood. He coughed blood for a few days and then passed on soon after. Even his family did not bother to moan him. They simply buried him quietly. At least they knew that their ordeals with him were over. They henceforth walked tall with their heads up because the shame was gone.
The Night Runner in a Community
There was a wizard named Boda who enjoyed disturbing his neighbors every now and then in a large community. He was the talk in the village. He liked doing his theatrics at night when people were asleep. The villagers got tired of his games and decided to teach him a lesson. They decided to each treat him in the foulest way if they caught him doing his nonsense. The idea was to have him stop his stupidity once and for all.
After that decision was made, things started happening. The first house he went to belonged to an old lady. The old lady used to have dinner early and then spend most of the early night warming her body by the hearth while smoking her pipe. He used to kick her door and put his hand and fingers through the splints of her bamboo door. He then made funny moves with his fingers through the splints while his hand was inside the house.
The old lady prepared herself and stayed ready with a sharpened machete. As soon as his hand and fingers were inside, she whacked them with the machete with all her might. The wizard felt pain and withdrew his hand quickly, but not before blood started streaming all over. He went away and never went to disturb her again.
The second house where he was taught a lesson belonged to a family. He used to go there and kick the door very hard and then run away. The next time he went there, the family was very ready for him. The family had decided not to close the door as usual, but just push it to the door frame and then support it with a pole placed in such a way that it could give way and fall and the door could fly open at the slightest disturbance.
He therefore went and kicked the door real hard. Instead of running away, the pole fell sideways and the door gave way and he followed falling right inside the house with everybody watching him. He begged them profusely not to hurt him because he would not do it again. They gave him some kicks, slaps and punches and let him go because they knew that he would not dare go back there again.
After some time, he resumed his naughtiness and went to the next villager. This time it was an old man’s house. At this house, he used to moon the old man through a small opening on the wall by the hearth as he warmed himself ready to go to sleep.
The old man blocked the hole with old rugs at night but left it open during the day to bring in a little light and fresh air. The whole was serving as a window so that carbon dioxide could escape when fresh firewood was smoky. At night he only had red coal embers of fire therefore there was no danger of suffocation. Meanwhile, the small gap running round his house between the roof and the walls brought in extra air from outside and took away stale air from the hearth and cooking place day and night.
The wizard used to unblock the hole and then moon the old man with his backside. The next time the wizard went to moon the old man, the old man was more than ready for him. The old man had heated the sharp end of one of his old special trowels to red hot. It was a special implement in that it was usable on both ends, the hoe like side was for weeding while the other side was for lifting sweet potatoes, cassava and yams that were ready for harvesting therefore that end was long and sharp.
As the wizard peeked at the hole with his backside, the old man drove his red-hot sharp end of the trowel into his backside. The wizard screamed and ran away in pain. He never went back to that house again, but died from the wounds he got from the burning after living in serious pain for a few months.
Famine in a Province
This is a story of a while back when famine affected certain communities in an incomprehensible way. It had not rain for several years. The ground became terribly dry, cracked, bare and pathetic looking. Where there used to be water like in rain created dams, the ground became hard like rock as the remaining water dried up totally.
Where there was never water it became dusty with any slight wind blowing dust everywhere and people skimping to hide because dust was interfering with their eyesight. Wind erosion became very prevalent. It was like deserts encroached on the farmlands except that sand dunes were missing. The only good thing was that the streams, springs, rivers and lakes still had water but to lower levels than before.
The remaining plants became sticks and eventually crumbled to the ground. Trees lost their foliage and remained naked and cold. They no longer formed shade that human beings loved during the hot sunny afternoons. All the dry leaves were either used to feed cattle or they turned into humus and then dust. Even birds had no fun building their nests on trees.
Domestic animals died in numbers and the few that remained could not multiply because of inadequate feed and they looked emaciated or like packs of bones with slow motion and sad looks. No cows were being milked. The few chicken left were weak and could not lay eggs due to insufficient feed and they p
oked people’s nails thinking the nails were white corn.
Human beings became thin and malnourished with children having distended stomachs, big heads and eyes and brown hairlines and exposed rib cages all signs of severe kwashiorkor and marasmus. Adults moved around slowly and cautiously because of hunger.
All the stored food in the granaries had run out and people resorted to eating wild fruits and scarce leaves picked from deep inside the equatorial forests or by the streams, springs, rivers and lakes. Those with a little money went looking for rare grain crops and flour to buy from ill equipped stores and National Cereal Boards.
The rare grain crops and flour were expensive and weevil infested and the flour was bitter due to age, but if one had the money, they could not be choosy because if one were picky, another would come and immediately take what the other shunned. People in their weak conditions, struggled to get a little money through scarce labor, but there was almost nothing to buy by way of food.
If fact, if one bought a little grain crop or flour, they did not wish to have an outsider know about it because it would be food for his family for several days and a visitor was not welcome to share in the extremely scarce and dear resources. One would make their cornmeal mush or cook the grain crops when they least expected someone to come around, in order to save on the leftovers.
It happened that in one family, the man of the home whose name was Jonathan bought some flour after a long struggle to get some money for it. He tried to be very secretive about his purchase, but one neighbor happened to know of his secret somehow and he appeared in that home just at the right time when cornmeal mush had just been taken off the fire and out of the cooking pot.
Jonathan was sitting on the verandah by the door of his kitchen when he saw the neighbor approaching and he quickly signaled his wife, Sheri to cover the cornmeal mush under the children’s bed in the nearest room of his house. Sheri did so quickly and went outside to calm down the children who were excited because they were going to eat. She then went back and sat with her husband and the neighbor talking as if nothing had taken place.
The children also followed her and sat down impatiently waiting for the time to devour the cornmeal mush. The adults talked generally about the community’s calamity for some time then the neighbor started telling them a story as follows, “On my way from my home, I saw a big and long snake measuring like from where I am sitting to where your cornmeal mush is covered”.
The man and his wife got so embarrassed that they apologized and took out the cornmeal mush for everybody to eat including the neighbor. Apparently, the neighbor could smell the cornmeal mush and the pot covering it was visible from where he was sitting.
A Grandmother
Grandma Sarah as she was known in her community lived to be over one hundred years old. She lived alone always because all her fifteen biological children and husband died and left her alone. And only two of her children, both girls, survived long enough to get married and have children.
She therefore had a few grand children who did not live nearby and great grandchildren and great, great grandchildren who lived far. She also had a stepsister who lived not very far off.
She lived in a large, one roomed, round, thatched house with clay walls re-enforced with poles and several center pillars in the middle of the house providing extra support for the roof. The house had no partitions or private areas except behind the door.
The door was made of splints tied with sisal fiber. It was locked from inside with a piece of stick hanging on a string and the stick passed through a loop or receptacle on the door frame to another loop on the middle part of the actual door. From outside it was fastened by tying a piece of rope from the center part of the door to the hanging part of the roof.
And if someone untied the rope outside to gain access inside in her absence, she would know and question the neighbors accordingly. The door while opened swung inside to the left.
Inside the house, along the wall on the left hand side, were her earthen pots of all sizes where she stored her things like dry grain and root crops for future use, flour, sun dried fish, her best clothes and an extra blanket for the cold season. Suitcases, closets or wardrobes never existed then. She cooked food in small pots which were also stored inside bigger pots so that rats could not eat it when the cat was away.
Her wood framed bed was placed next to the pots by her hearth. The center part of the bed was intertwined with fiber ropes made of some thick grass resembling coconut fronds cut and dried before braiding. The bed had no mattress or sheets or pillow, but hard, dry cattle hides and skins. There was a sisal rope passing over the bed tied from one part of the top end of the house wall to another and she used it to hang some of her clothes.
On the wall, by the hearth, was a hole the size of bathroom tissue roll to let air in and out when fresh firewood was smoky. This was the only part one could call a window and it was blocked with old pieces of cloth when there was no smoke. Otherwise there was a continuous gap between the top part of the wall and the roof that let air in and out throughout the day and night.
She spent her evenings after dinner by the hearth warming her body and smoking her clay pipe. She used to eat dinner at four o’clock in the afternoon, lunch at eleven and breakfast at six in the morning before starting her daily chores.
Her cooking place and hearth both had permanent red coal embers therefore there was no need to use a match box and match stick because she just used dry grass and dry twigs to bellow flames from the embers.
On the right hand side of the house and near the door was her cooking place where all the cooking took place on a three stone tripod burner with firewood as the fuel. Next to the cooking place was dry firewood ready for use and after the firewood were pots and pots of water for cooking and drinking.
There were a few low stools and mats behind the cooking place for sitting and conversing while cooking and for use at meal times.
Above the cooking place, in a rack like formation were piles of firewood for a rainy day. And hanging below this pile of firewood was salted and smoky meat, fish or chicken ready for eating whenever it was part of the menu.
In the middle of her house and between the pillars slept her chicken at night who roamed her compound during the day. She swept their droppings very early every morning as soon as they went out to look for worms, insects and grass otherwise she gave them water and grains once every day.
Outside the house, along the wall were mounds and mounds of firewood drying up for use in the future and more pots of water for washing and bathing. Her kitchen garden was around the house and another one just nearby with the third one a bit far off.
She practiced kitchen gardening for all her vegetables and tobacco all the year round while she planted grain crops like corn, millet and quinoa; beans, lentils and root crops like cassava and sweet potatoes elsewhere. She used waste water from her house for her kitchen garden during the dry periods. She had a wooden rack outside her house where she dried her cleaned dishes every day in the hot sun.
Her house had no bathroom therefore she bathed at night under her citrus trees or between her banana stools and used a hoe in the bush as her water closet during the day, but at night she used the night bucket from old tins for short calls for security reasons.
She worked very hard and never lacked food. What she did not grow, she got through barter trade at the local market or used tiny cowries shells or pearl saucers from the river and lake as means of exchange.
Going to the stream to fetch water was rather difficult for her because the route to the stream was sloppy and steep at places and climbing up from the stream with a water pot on her head or back would have been tricky with her age and fragility. Moreover she walked using a stick to support herself.
Her great, great grandchildren went to visit her every weekend and during school holidays and filled all her water pots. She looked for firewood herself and split logs herself while using an axe.
She also suffered elepha
ntiasis; a disease that affected her legs by causing them to swell beyond the normal size from the feet to the knees therefore her walk was rather unstable. She therefore could not even wear sandals.
On Sundays, she put on her Sunday best from the clothes’ pot and went to church except when she was sick. When she felt sick, she did not go to any doctor, but went around the fence of her home or to the woods to look for herbal medicine ingrained in her by her long departed ancestors to treat her ailments. In any case dispensaries or hospitals were few and far between and public transport was very, very rare. She walked most of the distances she had to cover.
She also ground her grain crops and cassava into flour herself using a stone mill. She was always clean and thoroughly organized in her ways. Despite the fact that she never had a refrigerator, which was unheard of in the village, she knew what she would eat in three days’ time because she planned her life. Her favorite food was a big mug of sweet hot tea black or with milk.
She treated all her grandchildren very well. She always kept some goodies hidden in one of the pots for them to enjoy after drawing enough water for her. Despite her age, she was able to eat hard and fibrous food like sugar cane, meat and peanuts because she had all her teeth that she brushed everyday using a stick tooth brush dipped in dry ash from her cooking place or hearth.
