Darkness like dough swallowed a little shanty town in vain. Edging in to the dark corner, in the decaying smell of dark gutters, footsteps like soft drum beats, Jumo and Oldboy could hear the fading cargo train’s Kutu kutu kutu across the city.
Like thieves?
No.
Like fools?
No.
We know underdevelopment, Erico said.
Oldboy removed his cigarette and lit it. His slender legs, as the one painted in cartoon section of Vanguard, or the one in the frescoes, alone could tell us more about his history before we the white foreign miners knew.
“In the 1980s”, he said, “I had a big deal of loosing a windshield and tires of Peugeot. But thanks, I never held a gun.”
“I thought you will tell me a worse crime”, Jumo said and lit a cigarette.
“Have you read James Hadley Chase?”
“What are you saying dear? You mean you could cross the fence and loose a windshield and tires of Peugeot? Do you know what it means to own such a car in those days?”
“I can’t deny it”, Jumo said and lit a cigarette.
“We have unsophisticated categories of thieves, anyway.”
But Oldboy did not know what he meant by ‘unsophisticated.’ He continued, “If we broke, we could steal everything, even coffee. I stole a sack of flip-flop, and I was nearly caught. I became afraid, and slept under a cargo train that nearly annihilated me in the early morning hours.”
“You were tough”, Jumo said. “But those James Hadley Chase’s characters, even Crew could call you a monkey.”
The only thing Oldboy could do, after he realized his waywardness, was to reach out his hand in a wince to slap him, but Jumo, his friend, a bad boy, slipped out and careened in to the bar.
“Bad boy”, he stammered. “Idiot…let me catch you!”


Thanks for the reading. I am marenx from Jos.

Under that tree near the road that snaked up to Butura Company, card players looked at one another and shook their head surprised at how matawal was praised on the radio despite his outrageous behavior. They thought that perhaps it was a good behavior since radio people accepted it but someone said radio people too are parrots of the whites, that main stream media are the devils of African culture. The issue seemed to cause argument when someone concluded that whites are the inventors of the main stream media and all the publishing protocols. "Does that mean we can't use white's invention to promote our culture as Indians do?" After a while, the players returned to their game and finally guessed that Matawal chose that behavior to become a city champion for only in the city were people like Matawal praised.

The sun settled near the center of the sky watching the tree like the wicked security lamp of the temporary military heasquaters.