CHASING SHADOWS

 

                                        CHASING SHADOWS

 

I was crouched behind the huge akwu tree, deep in the small forest, the one adjourning the widened footpath that led to the stream. One could faintly hear the voices from the stream, of excited play and chatter.

I was on my haunches, watching from the side of the tree at the movement in the tall cane bushes. It was a grasscutter, of that I was sure and clearly headed for my trap. What it was doing out and about at that time, earlier than usual, I couldn’t tell. My trap was homemade from discarded household items and strengthened with a strong string I had cut from a fallen pole and laid with it’s wide snapper invisible beneath the camouflage of old leaves.

The anticipation was killing me as my palms had turned clammy from profuse perspiration. The trap had managed to lose game before today. There had been two catches in the past, but both had escaped before I got there in the morning. I had only returned the trap yesterday after the last repairs.

Closer, closer, I cued inwardly to the rather boisterous grasscutter. I would have to club it down once the trap snapped shut, I thought to myself. It stopped as if it had picked up my scent, then began moving again. It was so close, I could hear the small grunts. I could see the whiskers on its face as it re-surveyed the environment yet again. It raised it’s right claw and hung it just above where my snapper was laid. The air stood still.

The still air was broken suddenly. The town-crier was hammering away on his fabricated bell. The grasscutter took off in the opposite direction to the loud ringing sounds coming from the village. ‘No ooooooo’, I screamed in rage. Tears coursed down my cheeks as I beat the ground with frustration. I had been robbed of something to boast of tomorrow in class. When Thomas caught his first fish, I didn’t hear the end of it.

I delayed my return a bit, in hope that the grasscutter or another small animal would make a detour for my trap. Nothing. Only the early hoots of the tree owl, the rapid clapping of wings by the bats overhead as they awoke with the coming dusk, was to be heard.

I trudged home with a heavy heart. The heaviness found it’s way into my greetings to passers-by. My grunt was that of an aggrieved dog. ‘O bu ke na eme yi?’ I turned around. It was the lady I had greeted last, Elewe ukwu. ‘O di yi o’, I replied, shrugging my shoulders.

Elewe ukwu was a newcomer to our village. She was a new bride and married to a much older woman and matriarch of the Ndudi family. Elewe ukwu had only come to live in our village within the last year after the conclusion of her marriage rites in her hometown, beyond the great river.

In our village and most surrounding villages, women could also marry other women, and not only men. Older women who sought to fill their compounds with children, or were yet to give suck, as well as those who had lost their children to misfortune and had mostly gone past childbearing age, married women into their homes. Sometimes it could also be that the older woman craved company and could afford same.

Elewe ukwu was beautiful, as far as my young eye could see. She was very tall, that her head tie tips seemed to scrape the clouds. Her skin was a light chocolate hue, and her smile only laid bare that she was blessed with sparkling uniform white pearls for teeth. Her legs were straight and joined to her wide hips, which rolled like the river’s waves when she walked.

Despite her beauty, her marriage to the matriarch hadn’t been without hitches. The matriarch’s late husband’s family raised such a ruckus that the case had to be settled at the customary court. They had claimed the matriarch was too old to exert sufficient control on the relationship or regulate same. They kept asserting, even though no-one was buying it, that their concern was only for the matriarch’s health and wellbeing.

There was also stiff opposition from some of the village women, especially the newly married ones. The thought of a beautiful woman, totally at liberty to choose any man of her liking totally unsettled most of them and made them uncomfortable. Most patrolled the matriarch’s house front under different guises, to ensure their husbands didn’t come near.

The only group who were indifferent were the older women, the grandmothers or soon to be grandmothers. They had tired of waging fruitless wars against the younger wives of female husbands. They had also grown weary of the tradition of ‘ikpa uga’, where older men kept known mistresses. Indeed, one time papa sent me to the old carpenter’s house, he wasn’t at home. ‘O di na ke uga ya’, the old wife informed me and proceeded to give me directions to the ‘uga’s’. True enough, I found the old carpenter there. He was sat on a reclining chair in the house front, picking his teeth with a piece of chewing stick!

 

‘Close the door after you, the mosquitoes are about’, mama said. Papa wanted to know what had kept me so long in the small forest, but mama was still talking. ‘Did you hear of madam philo?’ she asked papa. He hadn’t. ‘They say her shadow has been stolen, as well as some others. That the shadow catchers would come soon, was the message from the town crier today’.

Papa’s face was incredulous. He couldn’t fathom what he had just been told as true. I couldn’t either. I retreated to the kitchen with my thoughts, for my supper. Stealing shadows had never being a thing in our part of the world, even though I had heard of such occurring in quite a few of the villages beyond the river recently, from mama. I often listened in at dinner as she updated papa with the day’s latest happenings. Sometimes she used the words cleverly due to my presence, but this was no such time as the words were clear and I had heard them from her before.

The first time I heard of the theft of shadows, I imagined giant men with huge sacks slung over their shoulders, hanging around the alley ways or sharp turns where darkness had enveloped. Going out in the dark to relieve myself in the surrounding bushes became a well-planned quick dash, before the giants noticed my shadow. That night, I had nightmares where I became my shadow and was pursued by a hunch-back tortoise carrying a huge basket full of shadows it had already stolen. I lurched up from the bed just as it made to wrap it’s forelegs around my shadow.

The theft of one’s shadow was only akin to being robbed of one’s chi. Such was bad, that I wondered what our village had come to. I was so scared afterward that I wrapped my two hands around my body to safeguard my shadow after I had seen it on the wall. I had never been as happy as I was after sighting my shadow. All memories of my today’s escapade with the grasscutter were now gone.

The theft of the shadows, played on my mind throughout the next day. I was surprised that none of my classmates discussed it, even though they must have heard the town crier the day before. I felt they were only keeping it a secret as they must have been directed by their parents. Even Thomas my close friend didn’t mention the shadow theft or seem overly worried about the whereabouts of his shadow.

I made sure to check my shadow throughout the day’s classes. I continued checking it on my way home as I walked in the sun. My shadow followed me all the way home and even when I made a brief stop at the small forest to check my trap. The trap was empty but my shadow was intact.

Mama sent me to buy kerosene for the stove and lamp. She was busy at the back, peeling the harvested cassava tubers, the first step in the preparation of cassava flour, along with some kindred women. Then the peeled cassava tubers are washed and cleaned. They are packed in basins and taken to the grater’s, where they are grated by a machine into mash. The cassava mash is fermented to remove the acid then packed in sacks which are pressed with wooden ladles to drain the water. After draining, the wet cake is sifted into grits. A day is now fixed when the kindred women will re-assemble, with huge pans for frying over firewood, to fry the grits and make edible cassava flour.  As I greeted the women and took in the scene, it was strangely joyful and filled with laughter. There was no sense of bedlam or deployment of well-built guards to ensure the safety of their individual shadows.

I quickly paid at the kiosk three streets away and began hurrying home. The sun was hot overhead and there were shadows everywhere. I was so enthralled with my shadow on the sand as I returned with my purchase in tow, that I nearly bumped into a small circle of villagers gathered around a white van parked on the street corner. There were four nurses or medical workers, three men and a woman wearing gloves and white plastic coverings. The woman was definitely a nurse as the ribbon that adorned her head was similar to that of Aunty Agnes, at the chemist shop. Aunty Agnes was quite liberal with injections and had deaf ears for pleas from her patients. Many a child was quick to recover at the threat of being taken to Agnes.

I watched with the others as they opened the van’s side door and some villagers were marched inside. Madam Philo and the husband, five other men and their wives, as well as Elewe ukwu were among the van’s occupants. Elewe ukwu was the last to board the van and her famed hips rolled faster than usual today, as if a tsunami was afoot. All the men in the van, had met up with Elewe ukwu in the recent past, a villager in the circle stated. He further claimed that one of the men still bore a scar atop his temple, earned over a fight for Elewe ukwu.

There was an inscription on the other side of the van, “FEDERAL SEXUAL HEALTH PROTECTION – Anti Syphilis Unit”. I wondered if this ‘Syphilis’ might have any relation to philo. Elewe ukwu was looking out at the rear window and I wondered at the absence of her husband, the matriarch.  I ran home to tell mama as soon as the van drove off with them.

‘They all had their shadows stolen’, mama confirmed. ‘They have been taken to a place where their shadows will be recovered and they will return, along with those carried from the other side of the river’. My puzzled face seemed to amuse her and she winked at me as she quipped,’ I hope when you are older you won’t travel beyond the great river and allow anybody to steal your shadow’. The kindred women all burst out laughing loudly and began talking at the top of their voices with some making lewd gestures. I took the stove and lamp to refuel them with the kerosene.

Papa didn’t say much upon his return when mama brought him up to speed on the van and the shadows. I noticed though, that mama had made his favourite meal and dotted on him lovingly all through dinner. He soon grunted and ordered me to go to bed. I packed the plates to the kitchen and flopped on my bed. As I lay on my bed, I raised my hand and sure enough a shadow appeared on the wall. I smiled in relief and blew out the light.

 

HOME IS THE HUNTER!

HOME IS THE HUNTER.


I was awakened by the knocking. 

It was the rapid, quickfire type. It sounded hasty and urgent, like an SOS message. Occasionally it was accompanied by a loud thump on the protective iron bars by another set of knuckles. The thump must have come from a huge man, one with bulging muscles or hefty fingers, a well-fed man, i thought .

The sun had just begun throwing its long, measured rays into the room, somehow squeezing past the dark curtain barriers. My sleepy eyes squinted into the smuggled golden rays. I was loathe to get up this early on a saturday. I was still covered up in my new wrapper, a gift from mama after my last school examinations. It still had her smells, of oils, pomade and the inevitable camphor she used to protect her garments from roaches.

‘Who is that?’ mama shouted as she began unbolting the room she shared with papa. The room’s door hinges had lost their grease and since developed a unique squeak. 

There was a technique to opening or bolting the door. You had to lift the knob ever so deftly whilst giving the lower door a big shove. It was mama’s unique formula for catching intruders targeting her stock of confectionaries. She displayed sundry confectionaries on a table beyond the iron bars protecting our verandah during the day and retired alongside her wares behind the squeaking door at night. Many a time, the twins had borne the fury of her fast hands when caught out by the noisy door, as they went in search of candy or a biscuit. Mama’s hands were too quick for a woman of her girth.

‘O bu mu, nwanyi nurse’, came the reply came from beyond the verandah. I had thought as much, the knocker couldn’t have been one of mama’s customers, one of those early risers in need of an item or two. Definitely not one of the children sent on errand by a wayward father, in need of a cigarette or a cold bottled beer from mama’s fridge. The knocks had been hurried, this was serious.

‘A nam a bia o, I am coming’ mama replied as she firstly unlocked the front door key, before pulling back the dead bolts. She now collected the set of keys tied on a piece of red electric wire along with a faded key holder wishing some no longer visible couple, a happy golden jubilee. Mama opened the door and stepped out to the verandah. ‘Goodu morni’, she called out to the visitors. ‘Good morning’, they all chorused as she began unlocking the medium padlocks used to secure the iron bars.

I knew ‘nwanyi nurse’. She was the wife of the only certified nurse resident in our village. The nurse also operated a drug store, in which sundry drugs and medicinal items were sold. The next primary health centre was about 2 hours away in the next village, so the nurse’s drug store served as our mini clinic, and he our doctor. He took care of the sick, attended the ailing, nursed and administered care to the wounded. There were 2 other voices besides the nurse’s wife, aunty ugo. One was a booming baritone which I quickly tied to the heavy hand thumping earlier.

The last voice was shrill, coarse and well known in the village and beyond. It belonged to the oldest lawyer in the village, with all it’s shrillness mostly employed in threatening legal redress over any and every dispute. This month alone, the lawyer had already vowed to sue the village’s priest, the college principal, a traffic warden, 3 market women, a local goat herder, a grinding machine operator, his father-in-law, yet these were only the ones known to most as the threats had been made in the open. He had once threatened to sue me for throwing stones at his guava tree; when mama had
reminded him of my status as a minor, he vowed to sue her instead! He was endured by the villagers and affectionately referred to as “Mr. Shue”.

‘What have I done to Mr. Shue?’ mama wanted to know. ‘It’s not you my dear, it’s that your husband. I will sue him very soon’, he responded with an affected guffaw. I lifted my head and forced my reluctant body to sit up on the edge of the bed. I searched the floor for my worn slippers with my feet, to no avail. One of the twins must have kicked them away as she made her way in the dark to the latrine for relief last night. I got down and rummaged under the bed with my hands till I found them. I quickly planted my feet inside and tiptoed to the door leading into the living room to eavesdrop.

‘We are looking for your husband, papa lebenna’. ‘He is sleeping o. When did he come back that you are already looking for him? Who has he wronged that he cannot have a peaceful rest? Is it a crime to be a policeman, what is it sef? After all, no matter what happens, the sun will still shine, the birds will still sing and the earth will still turn!’ ‘Mama lebenna’, it was the lawyer, ‘please we come in peace. We only want to see your husband over the nurse, who spent last night locked up at the police station. Papa lebenna could not be found to approve his bail’.
‘So, if I couldn’t be found, then you have to harass me and my family in our own home?’ It was papa, he had woken up and joined them in the living room. ‘Today is saturday and not a working day. Please come to the station on monday with the funds required for his bail’.

The baritone now spoke up, ‘Officer, but we waited for you at the station for long. We were there till 9pm…...’ Papa quickly cut in, ‘if you people don’t leave here now, I will arrest you all and charge you for trespass and invasion of privacy’.
The lawyer was incensed, ‘I will sue you for illegal detention, this is an abuse of your local powers! Besides, bail is free, you have no right to hold him at the station till monday! This is wrong on so many levels’.
‘Charge 2, defamation of character’.
Aunty ugo was in tears, ‘please sir, let my husband go free. He hasn’t wronged anyone, just a good nurse caring for the people. Pity me and my 5 children, our drugstore is locked up. Mama lebenna, please help me beg your husband’.
‘Charge 3, emotional blackmail’. Papa held the door ajar, ‘please leave now before I add a charge for illegal assembly’.

Aunty ugo had to be dragged away by the two men who had accompanied her. She was distraught and had begun pulling out her hair and screaming. People lined their individual door fronts, watching the drama in ours’ that early morning. Their eyes spoke volumes in their searching stares, more than their lips could ever utter against the village’s police chief. Even mama, who never interfered with papa’s work and generally kept herself to herself, begged for the poor nurse to be released.

‘Woman, stay out of this matter! Enough already!’ Poor mama stumbled away, muttering as she did so, about what the neighbours were saying about us. I had run many an errand for mama to the drugstore, the last of which was the previous day’s morning. The twins had run a high temperature, mama had sent me there for paracetamol. Papa had a smirk on his face which only grew wider, ‘that nurse thinks he is a match for me, he will stay in that holding cell till monday firstly. Imagine the fool telling me that bail is free’.

I came into the living room with my duster and broom. Papa was in a foul mood this morning, so I quickly counted my teeth with my tongue, and went straight to work. I turned on the radio, hoping for some cool tunes to lighten his mood and continued dusting in one swift movement. There was a social critic on the breakfast show and he was boiling,’… a nation of terrible leaders that loot the peoples’ heirloom, a land that has been abandoned to chance and utilities fast falling apart, where tomorrow’s dreams are cut short and many youths are unemployed! A terrain that is torn by the politically manufactured strife of corrupt elites, where home is the hunter! Home, yes home, home I say….’

Papa switched off the radio and sighed in disgust. He glared at me and stormed off to his room. I was the only one left in the living room. The twins were still asleep and mama was sat at the verandah, humming a ditty about a saint stephen who was martyred long ago, while tending her wares.
I had never walked in papa’s shoes, but I knew most people in the village disliked him. People stopped their conversations when we came near. Everyone believed his officers that fleeced motorists and
commercial cyclists across all the village checkpoints made returns to him, being their boss. If not for mama’s industry and lineage, most would have boycotted her wares.

I had been determined to give myself, the twins and mama a better life. I had thrown myself into my studies. Mama paid for the extra lessons as well as forms for the Ielts examinations, which was a test of english language required by most foreign universities in the west. I had applied to the university of vancouver in canada. They had an option for a working scholarship if one was accepted. Then began the long wait. I waited to receive my hard copy admission letter which would contain the ‘form I-20’. I had already seen their congratulatory email and printed it at the café adjacent the police station. Mama had been ecstatic and gifted me one of her new wrappers from her garment box. Papa had been unaffected by the news, but his steps had a new bounce and he was the one telling all who cared to listen about his son, the prodigy.

The big parcel from vancouver finally landed this morning. The village postman had ridden up on his old bicycle. The postman was riding so slowly that a tortoise could have run him close in a road race. The postman was always jovial, often had a new story to share about goings on in other lands. He was the one that told of new presidents, of coups, of natural disasters, terms that were alien to our ears. Once I opened the parcel, mama was beside herself with joy. She held me tight and burst simultaneously into a song that heralded her victory over all her enemies. Enemies that had said a policeman’s son would never prosper o, would never make progress. Enemies that my young mind was ignorant of. I thanked the postman and Mama gave him candy for his children and he seemed happy. People were staring at our door front again, feeding their eyes on the excited scenes, while their ears starved.

When the euphoria at home subsided a bit, I left for my best friend’s house on the next street to tell him the good news. His parents were happy for me and promised to attend my send forth party. Afterwards, I walked alongside my best friend towards the high school, a good distance away. I needed to share the news to my other favourite friend, prisca, who lived in a small cottage next to the school.

I had never been in love, but i always felt giddy whenever i saw or thought of prisca. Her smile, the way her lips began stretching from one soft end to the other. Her full hair when let loose from the colourful scarves, was the size of a lion’s mane. I regularly hid my palms whenever I was around her as they would be covered in plenty beads of perspiration. One time, she put an arm around my neck and leaned close, in between laughter. I had many dreams that night, so much that I soiled my sheets and had to carry the mattress outside to dry in the sun.

‘Remember to buy me scarves when you are coming home’ It was prisca. ‘Of course, dear but I am still here with you’. ‘I hope you won’t forget me and marry a white woman with the sun in her hair’. This was said with a chuckle in her eyes. The kind I had read in books and older boys spoke about. The kind that let you know, it was time to ask her out on a date. Then there was an uneasy silence, us 2 young lads, giddy and excited, yet uncomfortable, walking down the sidewalk with a smiling young lady, who was still ignorant of her many powers.

We got to a police checkpoint. A policeman was haggling with a driver and his conductor, from a white 14-seater bus he had ordered to park along the road. The passengers inside the car moped at the negotiators as it seemed what was being demanded and that being offered were well apart still.

We walked past. I was more embarrassed than the others were amused. This was the kind of day I detested being ‘the’ policeman’s son. Thankfully I would soon be on my way to vancouver and the embarrassment would end.

We all heard the very loud bang of the gunshot. Later it would be reported that it was from an AK47 rifle, that the conductor had been exchanging words with the policeman over the latter’s insistence on N50, rather than the usual N20. I had felt something hot briefly sting the side of my neck. I hadn’t bothered too much, I was more intent on getting home before mama got worried.

‘You are bleeding’ prisca screamed! And so I was, only just realizing. The blood was bursting forth like a massive current escaping a broken dam. The red wet had spread all over my shirt front. I felt faint and crumbled to the floor. All else happened in a blur. The screaming, the yelling for help. I remember being carried to the only drugstore in the village, but it was locked up.

‘It has been locked since yesterday, after the police arrested the nurse’, a neighbour offered. ‘The police head purposely made himself unavailable so that the nurse wouldn’t get bail, Mr. Shue says he wanted to teach the nurse a lesson’.


Lebenna was interred the very next day. They wouldn’t let his father or mother attend; it was a taboo to bury one’s young, it was against the custom of the land. By the time the news had got to the police head yesterday and the nurse hurriedly released on a non-working day, the drug store urgently flung open, too much blood had been lost. Lebenna’s features had already turned pale and his eyes shut.

The elders insisted a heavy iron chain be used to ring around the grave. ‘A young spirit whose breath had been snatched in such a violent manner would be restless in the afterlife’, they reasoned. This gave the grave a sinister, foreboding look. Prisca thought it would make Lebenna lonely in the spiritworld, his grave in chains like the way the newly deranged in the local asylum were restrained, in a forlorn part of the village.

The police called it an accidental discharge. The shooter was arrested and detained briefly. To the surprise of none, he was soon released and wasn’t charged to court. It was just another unfortunate event and by the next week, the village and it’s people had moved on. After all, the sun still shone, the birds still sang, and the earth still turned.

HOME

Home

Beneath the boughs where I rest,

from twilight to wee hours, as my bed can attest.

Searching for sleep, the night sounds a pest,

my legs thrashing around, seeking refuge from mosquitoes with zest

.

Beneath the boughs where I rest,

my co-tenant, the squirrel had in the ceiling made its nest.

Of its gender I was not certain nor did I show interest,

as a low thump told of its arrival with today's heist.

Beneath the boughs where I rest,

with buckets and sundry cans in place, lest;

the leaking boards discharge the rains in their trickle fest,

upon the cracked floor, it's face now a mason's jest.

Beneath the boughs where I rest,

tonight's shadow on the wall seems clad in a vest.

And seemed to have lips, swollen like a nursing breast,

a flash of light later and it's my jumper hanging from the drawer chest.

Nnamdi Wabara.

The Sounds of my quiet

The Sounds of my quiet

Whilst I waited, my breath bated,

The Sun outside was shining, the trees caught in the wind, billowing.

A little bird against my window was furiously pecking, at its own figure reflecting.

The clock kept ticking as if in answer to the fly’s constant buzzing.

And I was in my bed lying, waiting yet listening.

Whilst I still waited, my senses jaded,

There was a swish of the Hawk swooping, and a Hen began crying.

The aroma of freshly fried beef was rising, my nostrils moistening.

The vulture soon arriving, onto the roof, its wings flapping.

And I was yet in my night dress, sans worries nor yesterday’s stress.

Whilst I yet waited, my mind feeling eroded,

The thoughts mostly fleeting, as my pulse kept racing.

My fingers began twitching, as the air outside began changing.

The sky quickly greying, as the rain drops began falling.

And there I was in my quiet, tired but thoroughly content.

Nnamdi Wabara, 2016.

A mid October dream

If i were a body of water,
a lake,sea or a river.
And i could ebb and flow,
that i would join kin tributaries,
or beget many sons or layers to form a delta.
i would run roaring , over stones and small rocks like a brook,
sometimes falling from high with a splash, a waterfall,
I would be fine!

If i were a road that led to somewhere,
not mattering if i was paved,tarred or formed.
And i could branch off to join sibling highways or busy motorways,
that i would sometimes create mirages, aided by a naughty Sun.
I could go through hills,valleys and over mountains.
I would catch my breath and hold still for the trekkers, cyclists and vehicles,
sometimes laden with signs and pointers,others ridden with gullies and potholes,
I would be fine!

If i were the wind , that i were invisible,
yet every man and being felt my fluttery presence.
And i could blow hot, or cold,
that i would create a sandstorm, teaming with the right measure of dust.
Or blow in spirals like a cyclone; or trunk extended like a tornado.
I might just for a laugh, shake the trees ever so slightly,
sometimes sneak in under the curtains to smack the pots and pans with my rattle,
I would be fine!



Nnamdi Wabara

Another day, another requiem

ANOTHER DAY, ANOTHER REQUIEM

I am certain today, there will be many flowery words.
That bouquets of roses and carnations will be plentiful.
The priest to extol, in a lengthy eulogy,a fellow he may never have set eyes on.
The mourners to gaze in pity at the casket, piety starched throughout their dark garments.
Dark mournful garments!

Whilst the welcoming angels and their wings will be in radiant hues;
When the streets of paradise,where they all affirm the one is headed, are covered in brilliant and blinding light!

The old lady checking her wrist clock intermittently, hoping her presence has been registered by the grieving family!
The younger ones typing on phones, their minds long departed here.
The landlord, sat there by default;pondering how long will be polite before writting for his rent.
And am sat at the back, sad at another demise,yet bored of the usual things.


Nnamdi Wabara, 2018.

PEACE

PEACE

Where the waters flow,

Meandering over stones and rocks,

There you will find me.

Visible in my silence.

Complicit in the serene quiet.

Watching stars fall out the sky, yet remain.

Hearing the owl awaken with the dusk.

The shadow of the moonlight upon the silver stream.

The shuffle of drowsy feet echoing in the darkened hallway.

A chapel on a working day.

A school on a holiday.

Till I hear the wind, walking amidst the graves;

Shifting the dying flowers ever so slowly, burnt out candles.

I am the sole citrus by the Cemetery gates;

Largely forsaken by man and beast.

I am the shade in the grove of trees.

I am the empty patch in a sea of flowers.

I am the home, where harmony once dwelt.