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.