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.
