There was a story a “man of god” once told his congregation which I happen to be among, he was on his pulpit sermonizing, cajoling and admonishing, he had to consult, narrate from, and refer to his personal wealth of experience and biography all along as usual, that day he began from when he was a mischievous lanky boy and had a bad tempered black hen that always lay two dozen eggs, hatch it, and suspiciously brought the chicks up to age and number, she would never allow anyone near her chicks, she would always spread her wings provocatively threatening anyone trespassing on her sensory perimeter of mothering security, this hen is said to be infamous all around the commune, she was nicknamed harridan, but then there was a notorious eagle that had appeared and taken up residence near his family compound just before harridan began brooding that period, this eagle would stay on and fly around peoples roof all day and might sometimes venture into people’s barn to steal eggs and food ingredients whenever their presence and attention was so lacking, this bird had ambushed a lot of hens and their brood, no matter how he and the others tried, no one had had the luck of arresting or killing it, so there had been this incident when the eagle had surprised harridan and the chicks, seized the fattest of the lot and flown, trying to get away, but harridan flew after the bird of prey instinctively with some vigor and caught up with it sooner, mounted it just before it could reach the roof where it would go perch and devour her baby, she started pecking it seriously on the back of its head, the eagle lost balance and it staggered, it opened its beak to scream surprise but it dropped the baby, it realized what had just happened and determine to challenge harridans effrontery and audacity, the other chicks had sought refuge under a broken water pot, shrieking all the time, as they crashed the eagle turned on its back to repel the offensive and initiate defense but it was too late, they were too near ground for its eagles strong wings to be so useful and effective, they landed and it broke its right wing, harridan was still on top of the situation while the young man of God and a sizable audience of neighbors were taking in everything from behind their low compound fence that clear afternoon, the birds began to duel, the delivered chick had joined its siblings under the clay pot unhurt but scared, the eagle gave a good fight trying to use the advantage of its giant size on the dwarf harridan but the latter has a very ugly temper, it never gave the prey bird time to recuperate from its downfall, or enough time for it to strategize as it stayed on its neck pecking it while the bird was desperately trying to claw harridan mortally and fly away, however it succeeded in drawing blood from harridans left eye, the eye was totally damaged but harridan would not relent, it tore out the eagles intestines probably by luck because it should have happened the other way round, as the eagle fought for dear life attempting to fly away harridan disengaged and retreated to where her chicks were hiding under the pot, the eagle could no longer fly as it had a broken wing and sheared off innings, it was incapacitated mortally, harridan had lost an eyeball in the battle, such a pyrrhic victory but the fight had gathered crowd, the eagle was flogged to death by the onlookers and its carcass was displayed on the roof to ward off any other bird that might try to invade the vicinity sooner or later, harridan was celebrated and awarded animal hero first class, she became an instant heroine, when it died after so many months her body was interred and not sold to the northerners that sold barbecue……………………………

Sometimes it gets too late before returning home from outings as we might have had to go to school, attend classes all through, meanwhile on lecture free days we might just keep strolling around from hostels to cafes, see friends, go watch football or play PS, then venture to bars and when it’s getting somewhat darker, you can head straight to the school’s guesthouse where frolicking on credit is permitted.
Automatically a card carrying student is entitled to some of those privileges but some students do abuse it, if not so, any student visiting the guesthouse is entitled to a free dinner but around the time dinner gets done the few students around could be bet on to have gotten super drunk and troublesome that they would barely remember what supper actually means.
Suddenly some boys and tomboys alike might develop the fetish for picking and flinging bottles across the room to break it on the adjacent wall where some other guys they had recently beefed about might happen to be sitting, such an ugly coincidence, those other guys might then decide to retaliate impromptu if they wanted to be brave or might decide to pretend they don’t know where the missile came from if they were lily hearted like they might just decide to keep the malice till when they got on the dancing floor and then take it out on some other guys they know they could easily bully about, the issue gets complicated as those latter boys might be somehow affiliated to the original ones that initiated the melee as they could share some sort of allegiance, the highest point of the evening would be when unisex slaps, kicks, strange weapons and blood starts circulating like a hula-hoop, sometimes school security might have to be called in to let out some drunk delinquents or take them to school jail, unfortunately most nights every student will have to be evacuated from the premises if things were heading to getting out of hand, this particular night was just like that……………
I always manage to excuse myself unmarked from such situations but on account of my being a peptic ulcer patient I always had to munch something no matter how inebriated I got, so that particular night I found my way to the hostel all alone hoping to cook something up therein, it was around 9pm but there was no one in there coupled with the fact that there was no electricity supply too, the whole place was dark, it could be so scary when you are alone in there at such moments as the building was just at the mouth of a very big mangrove swamp that was filled with cairns, the place used to be a shrine for Soponna the Yoruba god of chicken pox in the pre-colonial days, those cairns were actually spots were its victims were interred with all their belongings, the atmospheric pulse emanating from this jungle is so surreal that you would hear all sort of forest creatures and probably ghosts mumbling, crying, sneezing, laughing, Naturally it all collaborates to produce a sort of hullabalutic, barbaric and cacophonic Orchestra, of course when you are drunk and all by yourself in such an environment with such eerie composition emerging from your backyard you might just have to get yourself scared willingly just to make an excuse for yourself that you really do not have to be there, so that was why I headed back to town on foot to a bukateria I use at those desperate times that call for desperate measures.
The canteen was located by the town’s most popular road’s side, it was almost a quarter mile from my hostel, I had decided not to call a bike, walking detoxifies my system but I was out of breath by the time I arrived, the place was dark. I entered and felt spacey. There were others in there who had accustomed to the darkness as I heard voices and the shuffling of feet supposedly coming from the inner room, I was still standing at the entrance not daring to move forward when a girl came in from the inner room bearing a lighted candle stuck on a milk tin, as it was a big room the candle barely illuminated half of it, she placed the candle on top of a table where some five guys whom I didn’t recognize were sitting around and in between of their meal, I presumed the other seats where the light couldn’t reach to be empty but I sat with the guys, they all, including the waiting girl hadn’t noticed me until I moved to take a seat, because I noticed some sort of surprise on their face and someone almost screamed, I just sat and ignored their feelings, they resumed their occupation, then the girl approached me, welcomed me and explained that their Generator had just developed a fault but was being repaired as we talked, I nodded my understanding and stated my order immediately, she went away to get it.
When my order was brought and I commenced eating it voraciously, I started to hear some noise that weren’t there before or that which my brain had chose to shut out because of its lack of food, it was an argument and the sound of tools coming from the inner room, it sounded like a woman was trying to fix the gen set but another woman was bossing her around................................ to be continued

to be continued...........

There is this epileptic’s story I came about, it intrigued me that the human being could be plagued by things that the ordinary mind couldn’t decipher like attacks from unseen but malevolent gods, this attacks could either be reprisal or provocative naturally, the young man had suffered and his illness seemed incurable despite the fact that his father was a great medicine man who also came from a very long line of rapacious herbalists known very far and wide, their specialty is the treatment and cure of palsy, leprosy, madness, bad coughs and infertility, some people would say it was nemesis that caught up with the man’s genealogy as it was known in this part of Africa that some sicknesses were better cured free of charge or else the same illness with all its symptoms might manifest in the life of younger generations of whoever charged money for the cure of such afflictions like schizophrenia, epilepsy and leprosy, but this sire and his sires were so good at this art that they assumed a token could be ransomed from patient’s family without repercussions, as it seemed now they were wrong. Their young son had palsy before he could even crawl.
The old herbalist died after his several personal attempts to cure his son failed, he had developed high blood pressure as it was a shame that he, a very powerful occult from a clinical heritage that had rid several people of their ailments could not cure his progeny, he died shamefully but his son’s travails never diminished, it was believed that his death wasn’t natural, there is the believe that it was chemically assisted. However the son grew but couldn’t get a spouse as most people like to consider him a plague, notwithstanding the known fact that his predicament wasn’t hereditary or communicable.
There was also the rumor that his mother had been caught trying to feed him some herbicide exactly the day he clocked ten and his situation seemed irredeemable already, that she was sent away by his father’s kinsmen who frowned at the attempt on their young blood’s life even as he was considered a misfit and embarrassment to their nomenclature, well the fact was that the woman left anyway but the family always insist that the woman had left unconditionally, till he became an adult the woman never came back for him, the effect his mothers desertion had on him was that he lost the basic care he had enjoyed while she was around, he was really left on his own, he had no playmate even among his father’s kiths and kins, he was practically existing but not living, he was disfigured because many times when he was alone and having a fit he contacts dangerous objects and substances while gyrating. There was a time when he was eleven that he fell and started convulsing near naked flames that was busy consuming an empty neighboring hut, some other kids had started the fire and fled when it was getting out of control, he was just passing by and tried to get attention with help to stop the fire before it could spread to other huts but in the excitement he developed a fit, unluckily there was nobody around to help, he had rolled near the conflagration, his body beginning to burn and smell like roasted bush meat, it was the odor that attracted the nearest person who had to pull him away from the inferno with a long stick forked at the end, the whole of his left side had burned, peeled, later healed but left ugly scars.
When he matured and dropped out of school due to shame, he couldn’t get a job on account of his appearance and the fame of his klutz, so that he went into business selling foot wears where he soon made tangible money that made some of his peers who had rejected him to accept him, he was made a proposal, the position of the patron of their elitist club was offered him uncontested but the price was that he host their forthcoming perennial meeting and the feast that follows, this meant nothing to him as he calculated offhand that the whole ceremony’s expenses would barely leave a dent in his purse, the real situation was that those other guys had seen that he has a lot of money to throw around but very few people to throw it on, so they had made themselves available for the task, meanwhile he was so elated that he could be so honored that he consulted his kinsmen who readily agreed not to let him down as they were all wrapped in effusion, they promised him necessary support in monetary terms, admonitions and service. As it was thought such ceremony might improve his status and lot in the community.
The chosen day arrived and preparation started, tripods were erected all over his compound and a cow was slaughtered as yam foofoo was being prepared with egusi and okra soups, the event had pulled crowd, but not because most of them came to celebrate with him, some were there superficially just to witness his indubitable and impending ridicule, Epilepsy patients were wont to be allergic to excitement in any form. In expectation, he had consulted and bribed oracles to make the day shame free, they had taken advantage of his desperation to charge him exorbitantly, well to save face was what matters to him and so he had complied without complain................. to be continued

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