Fiction for Adults and the Youth

by Aluta Nite

  It was believed and made common practice at that time that while going on journeys, certain rules were to be observed by all that were participating in the journeys to make the journeys smooth and successful and give hope for safe return back home. People prayed earnestly to whatever their God was for days before the start of the journeys. And over and above that, there were certain things that those going for the trips were not allowed to do so as not to disappoint or annoy their God.

  These were things like telling lies, swearing, making false promises which one knew very well that they could not fulfill, stealing from others and such like issues. There were also things that travelers were not supposed to do while traveling; in other words, there were things that those on the journeys were told not to do while the journeys were in progress.

  As troupes were proceeding with their journeys, stories were told by the older folks to make the others laugh and therefore make the journeys look shorter and lighter. Laughter took over the thought of the distances yet to be covered before the next rest or eating or both.

  In this particular journey, in the course of laughing at one such occasion, Maria overlooked the instructions she had been given before departure about not looking back while passing certain objects on particular spots on the way.

  Out of forgetfulness or curiosity, she turned back to look at one such queer structure and there it happened. She was turned into a solid rock that could not move, wriggle, talk, laugh, eat or do anything else. She became a beautiful statue; well-structured and firm.

  Unfortunately, the others could not turn to look at her because the same fate would happen to them. They just went on with their journey quietly knowing very well what had just happened to her. Their journey was now lackluster and somber because one person was no more and no longer with them. They reached their destination the next day, but never stayed because they had lost one person and were eager to return home and report the loss to their community.

  Their hosts got to know why they were unhappy and had to return quickly and excused them because the hosts understood the norms and the seriousness of the matter at hand. The hosts therefore packed enough food and water for them and escorted them shortly before leaving them to proceed with the promise that they would send some people to attend her symbolic burial later on.

  On the return journey, they had the chance to see her new structure because they were approaching the place from a reverse position. They therefore had a good look of her new form, but once they started walking ahead, they could not look back otherwise the same fate would happen to them.

  On hearing what happened to Maria, some of her friends despite being sad and crying uncontrollably, said that she had always said that when her turn for a journey came, she would break one of the rules to see what would happen because she believed that the old people were just trying to frighten the young people for no reason or talking for talk sake. And being a curios girl, she did just that.

  When Laziness Turned to Riches

  A father, who was also a widower, was a small-scale farmer. He lived on a piece of land measuring about five acres. The farmer’s wife had passed on a decade back. He lived with his lone lazy son and child who was in his early twenties and never toiled on the family land like him.

  His son ate the most and complained everyday of tiredness and of any little thing. In short, he was terribly unproductive and ate where he did not sow and wanted even more in return for doing nothing. He had no mercy on his poor sickly father.

  His father was not amused because he was worried as to what would befall his son once he, the father was no longer alive. He therefore started thinking seriously as to what he should do to the son in order to make him change his way of life and become productive to survive on his own should the worst happen. He thought for several years, day and night without any conclusion, but fear was gripping him by the day about his son’s future.

  Eventually, he came up with a tale that could probably convince his son to start behaving differently. And the following is the tale.

  One evening before dinner, he called his son and told him not to go anywhere after dinner because he wanted to talk to him. After dinner, when his son was satisfied and jubilant, he sat down with him and started talking very cautiously to him through a fable without his son detecting anything.

  First of all, he reminded his son of his ailing condition and his getting weaker and weaker by the day. He added that he would not be in a position soon to work the land for them both to feed daily through the coming years, as had been the case.

  He asked his son what his plans were for the future to which his son had no response. His son was completely clueless as to what to do with himself in the absence of his father. In his son’s mind, his father would forever be there for him because bad things only happened to other people.

  His father though having relatives around and far, was a self-reliant person who took care of his every need come rain or sunshine and he would have wished his son to do the same if not better. He did not wish to have a son who would bother his relatives with this or that because that was not what he and his wife taught their son and that was not what his father taught him after the death of his wife. Moreover, he believed that with land and rains that rarely failed, the son would satisfy all his needs every year.

  His father then told him that on their land, he had buried a pot of gold many years back before his son was born and if his son would search for it and dig it up, he would not suffer, as he would sell the gold and easily survive without farming the land. His son got excited and asked his father to show him the exact spot where he buried the pot and his father told him that he would show him later.

  Through eagerness, his son said that he would try his best to look for it soonest as he now became impatient to get the wealth. To him, it was better to get the gold and live on its sale proceeds instead of doing the hard work of farming. Soon after, his father got sicker and passed on and his son was left alone. And, he had not shown his son the spot where he buried the pot.

  After his father’s burial, he started digging the land in search of the pot of gold and he could not find it. He ended up digging the whole piece of land and thoroughly, but to no avail. Wherever he finished digging, he planted something.

  The digging was so well done that the crops coming up were so strong and good looking that the harvest exceeded even what his father used to get. He had enough to eat and sell the rest to acquire other things that the land could not give him.

  He became so happy because the land became so rewarding that he went on digging year in and year out and reaping bumper crops and he even forgot the hunt for the pot of gold. In any case, there was no pot of gold.

  The tale was simply to jump start him into farming. His father watching him from above was very happy to see him flourish. He did such a good job that he became the envy of his village and community. He also now started laughing at young people who were lazy thus forgetting where he came from.

  This emboldened the elders of the community who approached him and told him to talk to their sons who were lazy like he used to be. He was told to advise them since he had learned the hard way. He was in a better position to pass the message to them because he was their age.

  They could see what he was doing and the success that had followed his hard work within such a short time. He felt honored and arranged for a meeting for the young men whose fathers had spoken to him.

  He told the young men, most of whom were his friends how he realized that hard work pays and how one could not rely on parents whose time on earth was not predictable. He told them how he was now financially stable and was even thinking of getting married and starting his own family. He could see the future bright and promising.

  They in turn expressed envy and promised to start thinking of what next in their lives. He advised them to talk to their fathers seriously and genuinely so that their fathers could help them out of the dilemma with ideas and possibly small financial as
sistance. Word went round and he became the envy of the whole community.

  A Widow and her Children

  In days of yore, there lived a young woman with her two sets of twins, two girls and two boys in a small home. Her husband and father to her children had died during a return journey one early night from a faraway market when bad luck befell him and he met wild carnivorous animals that tore him to pieces and ate him up.

  His remains by way bones were only identified because of his clothes that were scattered near the path covered in blood plus the basket that he was well known to carry around in market places. DNA was not in existence then, but the villagers knew that it was him because many other villages had departed from earth that way, through the mouths of cannibals and wild carnivorous animals.

  Despite the death of her husband, she swore to live in the same home that her husband left her in which was pretty far from neighboring homes and bring forth her young children who were all under six years old. Formal schools were also not available those days therefore there was nothing like going to school day time.

  Whenever she was going far like to the farm where she grew subsistence crops like corn, cassava, potatoes and many other foods or to the stream to fetch water or to the forest to look for firewood or elsewhere, she always told her children to lock the door from inside the way she had taught them till she would be back. And they were not supposed to open for anybody except her.

  She had coined a song that she sang for them on her return to enable them identify her tone and words and then open for her only.

  And the song went like this, “Abwanda, open for me, I’m back. Abwanda, open for me, I’m your mother. My feet have heavy and destructive boots that can destroy anything under the sun”.

  This song was supposed to frighten any enemy or opponent that could dare confront her family or her home. The name, Abwanda, was also a coined name that did not belong to any of her children. Her children knew the melody and her voice inside out. Even in sleep, they knew when she had arrived because the voice, tune and words woke them up.

  This went on very well every day for several months and her children did the right thing by only opening the door for her and nobody else. But, it did not take long before some of her adversaries developed curiosity as to the whereabouts of her children whenever she was seen away alone. One of those creatures was a female cannibal that dwelt on the edge of the forest nearby where she used to go and look for firewood.

  The cannibal started watching her in order to know how far she was going and with who; only to find out that she was always going places alone every time. She sometimes, had a rope for tying firewood or a pot for water or a hoe for digging or a basket to the market. The cannibal then kept watch by her house and heard her children playing and laughing inside and sometimes quiet because they were asleep.

  Later, the cannibal secretly watched several times and saw how she arrived and sang for her children. And the cannibal noticed that the song never changed and after three or four repeats the children were always sure it was their mother and opened for her.

  The cannibal practiced the singing so many times in order to go and cheat her children so that the cannibal family could have free meat.

  A few times the cannibal tried cheating the children and they told her in chorus, “Ahhh, you are not our mother. You are a cheat and a bad person. We shall not open for you. Go away whoever you are and never come back. And we shall report you to our mother. And you know she is able to crush even the most humongous creature.”

  Her children always reported to their mother who warned them even more and drummed it into them as to how dangerous it would be to open for someone else.

  Whenever the children turned the cannibal down, she went away and practiced even more and hid and listened to their mother even more. Finally, she felt and concluded that she got it right and she therefore assembled her family for the kill.

  The cannibal family consisting of the mother, son, daughter and father got ready and left for the kill one midmorning. The son and the daughter were in their early teenage. Mother cannibal sang so well because she mastered the words and tone perfectly. The children did not even wait for the third or fourth round of singing. They opened quickly and there they met their fate.

  The cannibal boy grabbed the youngest boy child, the cannibal girl grabbed the youngest girl child, their father and mother grabbed the older two children after sucking blood from the children’s necks thus killing them there and then and dragged them all out of the house to the forest. And the children were meals to the cannibals for weeks. Before leaving with the children, the cannibals bolted the door from outside.

  The children’s mother came back two hours later and sang her heart out but there was no response. She got worried and as she tried to knock on the door, she realized that it was bolted from outside and her heart sank. She unbolted it and went inside, but there was no child a part from their torn clothing and drops of blood on the floor.

  She screamed so hard that the nearest neighbors a mile away heard and came to find out what was wrong. She was inconsolable for her loved ones were not there. The villagers then traced the blood of her children to the edge of the forest where the cannibal family lived.

  Why Tortoise Shell is Hard

  At the beginning of planet earth, all creatures were already created except the tortoises. All living things were in-existence including plants, animals, birds, sea life, insects and even man.

  At the end of the enormous tasks of molding all the above living things in twos and breathing life into them to start living and procreation, there was quite a bit of bits and pieces of clay left that could have gone to waste if some thought did not go into its usage. But wastage was not to be practiced.

  All the bits and pieces were used to create two tortoises by joining this and that, plastering here and there while using bear hands. The bits and pieces had been fumbled with for long when molding the other creatures therefore the bits and pieces were hard and not easy to maneuver. Just like in real life working with left over pieces of any material is normally not that easy.

  A lot of the remains were used to form the shape of the tortoises with anybody passing by taking a bit or a piece and heaping it on the molds of the tortoises. It took a long time to make anything out of the molds because of the nature of the materials as a result of having been used and also the fact that it is easier to make something new out of new materials rather than remains.

  Eventually the end result was the current patch work shape and look of the two tortoises on which life was breathed in and the tortoises started moving slowly as they do today due to the heavy load on their backs. No wonder tortoises' backs look seriously artistic.

  Man and Domestic Animals

  A farmer had different types of animals on his farm. He had cattle consisting of goats, sheep and cows and chicken. All the animals lived together very happily and were taken good care of by the farmer. Problems arose only when it came to slaughter time because none wanted to be the one to be slaughtered or its type to be slaughtered.

  One day, a good friend of the farmer sent word that he would visit the farm. Being such a good friend and because of the respect the farmer had for him; he started thinking of which animal to slaughter during the occasion. He decided to slaughter a sheep, a bigger animal rather than chicken that was normally slaughtered more often.

  The other animals and the chicken got to know about it and were very happy that one of their own would be spared. However the sheep were very miserable because it was going to be their turn to lose one of their own.

  One of the cocks went about cock-doodle-doing because he would be spared. Unfortunately, for the chicken, the farmer remembered later that his friend did not like red meat therefore he decided to slaughter one of the cocks for the occasion. Scales therefore turned and the chicken became very sad while the sheep started bleating in celebration.

  The guest did go to visit and one cock was slaughtered and the chick
en family was quite sad during that time because they lost one of their relatives.

  Villagers and their Neighbors

  In villages lived many families, some with few and some with many children. Homes in the villages were nicely fenced with the main gates in front of the homes and small gates at the back of the homes or near the main houses. The main gates mostly faced the road, railway line, river, stream or spring while the small gates faced the opposite directions.

  Visitors mostly used the main gates while family members, close relatives and neighbors mostly used the small gates. The road and railway were used for walking along by people from all walks of life from near and far besides motor vehicles, bicycles, handcarts and trains. Between homes and farms were numerous paths leading all over.

  The villagers moaned together when they lost one of their own and also came together to solve some common problems, but each village also had their norms that were slightly or very different from the others. This was so because the villages were bordering provinces, districts and locations occupied by communities of diverse ethnic backgrounds, cultures and traditions.