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.

Wanderlust

WANDERLUST

……my mother now newly single,

thrown out for her lack of fruits.

To wipe her tears, I pledge to stay,

but oh! I already feel the wanderlust.               

-          Ogbanje (Broken echoes…etcetera c.2017)

In the beginning, I was back again; in my favourite shade under the huge, leafy trees. The floor was grassy and made for a lovely plain field for gamboling spirit-children. The trees extended like forever, lines upon lines of giant plants. Massive roots entwined with the earth, branches stretching horizontally like a man with arms outstretched seeking answers from the elements.

The trees were thick above, but below nearer the ground was sparse enough for me and my friends to run around, play hide and seek, and other games as we made merry without a care. The sky above was invisible, blacked out by the treetops. Some of the trees seemed to go into the skies as they stretched like forever to my little spirit eye.

The thing I liked most of this realm, was the lack of time! There was no sense of time, infact there was nothing like time. We could play and run around for what passed for earth years without tiring. Our games only broken up when one of us was called away by a guide, which was often. The guides always appeared from behind one in an instant, their tall cylindrical hats tilting left or right, depending on the nature of message they had for the one.

In this realm too, there was no colour! There was only a permanent dawn, an everlasting twilight. Everything was seen in that dullness. There was no hue, all was grey and slightly blurred.

Who needed colour anyway? In this realm the thoughts were the words that were exchanged. There were no spoken words, but we understood each other just fine as we picked up the other’s thoughts and feelings easily. There was a transparency here than I had witnessed on my sojourns to earth. There was an animal instinctiveness and openness in the grey realm. It was not possible to lie or pretend here, to put it succinctly- we had no need to blush!

I felt a tug on my shoulder. It was my friend, Nedika. He was back. I was yet to see him since his current return. We embraced and soon began drawing trees in the grey sands. Another four spirit-children soon joined us, a male and 3 females.

Geicka, one of the females wasn’t playing with us. She was downcast, devoid of thoughts as well. We soon stopped playing and sat around her. Waiting to pick her thoughts and send ours. She sat with a stiff back and stared deep into the trees, all the while leaving her mind blank.

Then the pain washed over her again, and I picked up her recollection of her session with the guide that had returned her. She had been born to a woman back on earth. The woman named ‘uwaezuoke’, whose name in the earth language of that region meant ‘one could never have it all on earth’, despite her affluence had yet to bear a child. Then she had birthed Geicka, now Geicka was gone.

Uwaezuoke had cried for days on end. Uwaezuoke had committed suicide! Driven by the pain and frustration of her loss, weighed down by the guilt she felt as she had left her on the pram, parked for only a minute, to pick her change from the cashier at the window. Then that ear-piercing scream.

The parked pram had rolled onto the busy motorway. There had been an on-coming truck, the pram stood no chance. Uwaezuoke was inconsolable. She had fainted! She had to be heavily sedated and restrained within the hospital ward. Upon her release months after, she took her life. The sad news made the rounds in most of the local dailies.

The thing poor Uwaezuoke didn’t know was that the baby had been a spirit-child. One of us. Her spirit had long left the body before the truck pulverized the pram. Besides, it wasn’t Uwaezuoke’s fault. We had all been there. All the spirit–children in our group from the grey realm were there at that moment. Infact, it was Nedika who had released the parked pram’s hook, when Geicka hadn’t been watching.

Gecka had been growing fond of Uwaezuoke. She only had good thoughts about her. Geicka had refused to fall ill and die like she was meant to. That was what spirit-children did. She wouldn’t budge. Nedika was our self-appointed leader, so acted before it became late and we lost her forever. Nedika didn’t care for others’ thoughts, his was to ensure our togetherness and quick return to the grey realm.

All spirit-children are able to converge with any other on earth through a totem stick. We all had totem sticks buried in the grey grounds of our realm. Each stick had an individual spirit-child’s name written on it. All twenty sticks had been in a calabash buried at the four points junction, where East, West, North and South met, there our sticks were buried. The sticks had been bound with a piece of string and inserted deep into the ground.

Geicka was hurting. The guide had been hard on her in the aftermath of Uwaezuoke’s suicide. She had never seen the guide so upset, or any guide for that matter. The guide’s hat had been so tilted to the left that Geicka feared it might fall off to the ground. So began an angry dispute between Geicka and Nedika. Angry thoughts flew fast and furious between the two. “You should never have done that”, Geicka thought. ‘It was all your fault’, Nedika thought back in response. “I would never forgive you for this”. She stormed off deep into the trees.

The mood was soured. Every spirit-child present, now wandered off, all seeming to avoid Nedika. I chose a spot much farther from Nedika. This was clearly not his finest hour. I sat down against a tree. Thoughts were flying within me like a whirlwind.

I had just returned myself, from Earth. I had already lost count of how many times I had been born, and how many times I had returned to my friends, always before the 7^th month was up. I have been born in virtually all the countries of the earth. I have been born in all the different continents of the world at different times. It had been the same for me. I have been born to all manner of women, the very tall and the not so tall. I had once had a mother that was very rotund, I had once had a mother with a very prominent moustache that got painted from drinking milk or a bowl of soup, I had once had a mother with the saddest eyes ever, big round tear-filled eyes that begged me to live, to stay. I didn’t.

I have been a son to a Pakistani family, an African chief, an American slave merchant, an English royal’s love child. There were some countries I had incarnated in over and over again. I still had scarifications from my last earth trip. I had been born into West Africa, my twentieth time in Africa. My parents had firstly taken me to a witchdoctor when I began falling ill regularly at 5 months of age. Our home had been in a remote small seaside town. The witchdoctor had told my parents that I was a spirit-child and that my playmates had begun calling for my return. He had actually said this with a sweeping arm gesture towards the corner of the room where Nedika and the others awaiting my death were, as if he could see them. ‘Ogbanje’, he called me. Then proceeded to make tiny incisions on the sides of my face and small of my back. He said the scarifications would make my friends desert me and make it easy for my parents to recognize me if I dared return as a new child in their household.

Father’s friend had recommended the witchdoctor. He had come visiting with his family. They had stood and stared at me lying in my parent’s bed, covered in my mother’s best wrapper, the red one with the boxed design. I hated them for not refusing Father’s offer of hospitality. We weren’t well off and I felt bad seeing my parents spend most of their little savings on me. Yet here were these people, clad in their ‘Sunday dress’, eating the last of the ‘chicken-soup’ because they were visitors!

Over the next month, I became worse. I began to regularly throw up the infant formula, which cost my low earning parents a fortune, to ensure I starved the little body. The long journeys to the witchdoctor’s hut and my deteriorating state combined to twist my father’s hand. He overruled my mother and promptly wheeled me to the new town office of a fast-talking new preacher making the rounds then.

He regularly appeared on the television and his voice could be heard bellowing sermons on the radio. “My God answers by fire”! “Thus says the lord……..”. I had been urgently wrapped warm and driven to the preacher’s by my parents. The preacher asked that I be placed on a special cot beside the altar. My mother stayed behind, sat on the front pew, her eyes never leaving the cot. My father had to get to the bank.

The preacher knelt farther to my left on the altar, and began speedily praying and quoting passages interjectionally from the holy book. One of his followers, a fair complexioned female, clad in a white gown and a yellow sash with the inscription ‘Zion’, held a little drum in her left hand which she beat to match the tempo of the preacher’s loud prayers. As she swayed, she mouthed ‘yes lord’, ‘hosanna’, ‘el shaddai’, severally in no particular order.

I couldn’t see the preacher’s eyes as he had hidden them behind a pair of sunglasses. He was of a strong build and if I had been introduced to him at a sports centre as a wrestler, I would have believed him to be a very accomplished one indeed. His rippling muscles made his suit tight and stretched. Or even as a boxer, as he had huge calloused hands. He would have fitted right in, at a gym house. His chest was the size of a mini wardrobe with room to spare.

It was mother that noticed the goings-on in the cot and screamed at the preacher, “my son is foaming at the lips”. The preacher quickly felt my forehead and frowned at the high temperature. I had begun having severe chills at that point. The preacher dialed a number on his mobile phone, “Hello Sir”, he began. “Please come at once to pick up your child”. “The Holy spirit says we have done our part, the rest is for the doctor. Come take him to the hospital at once”, he concluded.

I had been on the altar all through with the preacher and hadn’t heard the phone ring, I had missed the Holy Spirit’s call. Mother was already beside herself in lamentations and grief. She grabbed me and held my fever ravaged little body to her bossom. I felt loved and wanted, but the call of my playmates was stronger. The grey realm awaited with the lush grasses and lack of time.

I never made it to the hospital. I had left the little body just before the hospital workers came running out with their stretcher and life support items. I hurriedly said goodbye to the other spirit-children who had come to escort me over the threshold of yet another death. I had long stopped counting. I went behind the nearest tree to await my guide. The guide was prompt as always but disappointed that I had contrived to return to the grey realm yet again.

I have spent centuries now coming and going. Sometimes I wondered how come there were no other children in the grey realm, except other groups of spirit-children. Could this realm be one for abnormal spirits who had refused to grow up? Was this some kind of purgatory? These thoughts deeply troubled me as I had never seen my existence in that light before. Was it my last view of Mother as I left with the guide? She had sat on the ground tearing out her hair! I feared for her health but couldn’t inquire from the guide if she’ll be alright, as the guide was clearly in no mood to respond.

‘Maxila, maxila’. I knew that thought density. It was Geicka! Her thoughts were happy and loud. They were of euphoria and elation. I had never seen her this excited over anything before. “I have been given another chance “, she thought towards me. Yes, right behind her was the guide, her guide. The guide’s face was bland as all guides tend to be, devoid of thoughts and feelings until they have a message to be delivered.

“But Geicka, you just came back”, I thought towards her. “Yes Maxila, but my guide told me it’s already 5 earth years”, she thought. “I am just excited to get this opportunity, my friend”. “I have not been able to get my last earth trip out of my mind, especially the suicide”. ”One last thing Maxila, I would not be coming back”! “I am going to try and make good this opportunity”, she concluded the series of quick thoughts. Then she grabbed me in an urgent bear hug. I just knew that I would never see her again in the grey realm. Her guide now took her hand and they melted into the trees.

Nedika and some of the other spirit-children then appeared. His thoughts were those of bedlam and disorientation. I quickly learnt that Geicka had dug up the calabash of totems and gone off with her’s. Nedika was going to make a dash along with the other spirit-children currently in the grey realm to the ‘departure bridge’, the point of departure for all spirit-children. He would appeal to Geicka before her totem was lost. Nedika feared losing Geicka would diminish his authority amongst the other spirit-children, and with it his exalted status.

The departure bridge is the busiest transit point in creation. There were always thousands moving across it to be born while thousands were returning from time expired on earth, at the same time. It teemed with all manner of spirits at all times.

“Maxila”, he thought towards me. “Please hold onto this calabash until my return”. It was Nedika. “You know you are the only one I trust in this realm”. His thoughts towards me now ceased as they quickened their paces in hot pursuit, soon swallowed up by the trees.

I quickly thought of Geicka. I understood her pain. My earth life before last, I had been born to an American soldier stationed in Kabul. He was on his way back, halfway around the world on a week’s pass, to see his new son. I had pleaded with Nedika to allow me stay till the soldier, father, arrived and his week was done. Nedika wouldn’t budge. I was gone before they returned from the airport. I sometimes wonder if they carried out their threat to prosecute the poor Filipino nanny.  I had heard most of the angry exchange, as I sat behind the oak tree in the front lawn awaiting the guide.

My guide now appeared again, startling me from my reverie. There was an opening for a child. Since I was the only one left behind in the group, would I take it? Even as I had been back a mere 2 earth years. Yes, I thought. I wanted to go.

My guide held me fast, and we were soon at the ‘departure bridge’. It still retained the bustling activity all around. Now he gave me a pat and a slight shove on the back. I felt the familiar rush of air vapour again. That falling feeling. That zapping of thoughts from roaming lost spirits and the hushed tunes of malevolent spirits singing. The wild thoughts of newly expired spirits as they pondered the futures of their funds, children, parents, spouses were all around us.

I awoke. I had an earth body again. A tiny one once more.  All was quiet save a booming sound up above. I was back again in a woman’s womb. The woman that would be my new mother. I could hear sounds again. In my excitement at having made it to earth again, I tested my new right leg. It connected with some tissues, then again, then again. It felt good.

“Honey”, it was my new mother to be. She was on the telephone. “Honey, it happened, he just kicked”! She continued, “Just like the Gynecologist had said he would in this fifth month”. ”At first it had felt like fluttering butterflies, then I felt it hard”, she said. “It’s going to be a strong boy”!

The husband at the other end began sobbing. The deep sobs of a man who had lived through 7 years of endless IVF treatments and hospital visits, without the bundle of joy they craved. He began pledging to her, that he would always be there, that he would be a great father, and their child would never lack for affection.

I felt really welcome. I will finally get to go to school. Ride a bike. Grow to an adult age to vote, and be able to buy a drink. I will get to know the joys of earth life this time, and really savour them. Watch the sun rise, the sunset. Hear the birds sing, dogs bark.

I was certain of this for I had tossed the calabash of totems into the air vapours as I left the departure bridge. Yes no spirit-child could ever find me again. I had said my goodbyes to the grey realm.

It is finished!