My mother told me my father was very hardworking and successful until he lost everything to a fire accident. When everything changed for him, he tried to work his way back to the top but was stopped by an unfortunate accident that disfigured his right hand and leg.

When he got better, even though the accident’s scar was very obvious in the way he walked, he lost his old life and found a new life in palm wine.

Whenever I watch Nigerian movies and see those drunkards who sing funny songs and tell you all the village secrets, I see Papa. Sometimes it makes me cry; other times, it makes me laugh, depending on my heart’s situation.

As I grew older, I started becoming aware and ashamed of the situation. So, I gave myself the task of looking for Papa every morning to avoid neighbors from seeing him.

One morning, I woke up by my usual time of 5 am, took my wheelbarrow and touch, and went to look for him. I knew all his palm wine customers, so I tried all the routes to their place. On that day, because it was the harmattan period, everywhere was cold. When I found Papa, he was sleeping inside a gutter full of mud. I tapped him, “Papa, papa, come, let’s go home” he turned to me, looked at me as if he was trying to see through me, and said, “Ebuka, is it you? Please close the window, am feeling cold”. If not for the Deeperlife Sunday school lessons in my head, I would have just left him there, I wanted to, but I carried him into the wheelbarrow and pushed him home on the second thought. On getting home, I just toppled him out like cassava and went inside. My mother had the duty of taking him inside and washing him up.

On the 23rd day of December, he didn’t come back home, so I went on my usual early morning Gulder Ultimate search, I didn’t find him. I decided to go to his favorite joint, which was across the only major road through our village.

On getting to the road, I saw numerous people gathered - the police and some people. When I got close, I noticed a terrible accident in that place at night. The police were telling us that the whole 19 passengers died. The accident happened at night, so the police had taken away all the bodies. The site was horrific as there was so much blood there.

After looking around, I left there and continued my search for Papa but went home when I could not find him.

That evening, my mother and I were worried; we told the village youth leader, who started calling the youths to start a massive search for him.

Then a black police Hilux van accompanied by a white ambulance, Volvo, drove into our compound. My mother was about to start shouting and crying when she saw Papa also sitting inside the car.

We were all confused.
The policeman dragged Papa out of the car and asked him, “is this your house?” we all helped him answer, yes sir.

Then he started the story…

“Yesterday night, we hurried here when we got the news of the accident that occurred on the road there. We check all the bodies in the accident scene and thought this man was dead, so we bundled this idiot here together with all the corpses in the accident scene and took them to the mortuary. This morning the mortuary attendants ran away from the mortuary because they said they heard one of the corpses saying, shift na your body is too cold. Do you know that this idiot here made everyone in the main hospital to run away? Including sick people, because everyone who came close to the place was also hearing his voice. At a point, he started screaming and calling Ebuka. Look! I want to sound this as a warning, any day, this man tastes any alcohol again, or doesn’t come back home, ever. Just call me.”

Since that day, because of fear of that policeman, Papa doesn’t drink again.


Written by: Peniel Samson


Face book: [url] https://m.facebook.com/peniel.samson.33?ref=bookmarks [/url]


Group: [url] https://www./130979675259014/?ref=share [/url]

Very funny


.

Very funny