That New Year"s Eve

The 31^st night which gave birth to the New Year was a night of jamboree too – New Year eve. It was like nobody slept in Ozuakoli. All the churches in Ozuakoli bubbled with people for tarry-night. The night bore different names from different Pentecostal churches - Passover night, Crossing the red sea night, Liberation Night and too many other names. They clapped and sang and danced all night as they crossed over to the New Year. Melvin did not go to the church with his parents. He tarried at home playing cards with his cousin Emmanuel because he was feeling sleepy. Before now, he went to church every 31^st December to participate in the crossover prayers and to submit his yearly prayer points to the prayer warrior group. His recurring prayer point was that God should deliver his father from his drunken habit. Now he had grown tired of saying unanswered prayers. He wanted to spend the night differently. He wanted to spend the night together with like minds, with other undergraduates on their planed burn fire night.

The village square was quiet at first as everybody froze and waited for the great double bell to chime. It was the big bell hung on the umbrella tree at the centre of the village square. It was as if the harmattan froze too waiting for twelve midnight too. Dried leaves didn’t fall from the umbrella tree at the village square. Only some distant sound of bangers could be heard. Even the smell of smokes that oozed from the nearby compounds into the village square now felt seized. Soon the bell would announce twelve midnight and the square would catch fire with activities. And there would be electric in the air. Melvin was prepared with his fireworks and tyres to burn. He jumped out of bed immediately the bell sounded and rolled his tyres to the village square. So did almost everybody in Ozuakoli who did not go to the church that night. It would be folly to stay indoors in such a night like Tee Ukandu who saw no reason for the New Year eve.  He said there was no difference between the incumbent year and the coming year. It was just days coming and going and nights coming and going. No changes. They called him a foolish man mad with wisdom. The village square got crammed full with people displaying various things in a twinkle of an eye, throwing all sorts of fireworks into the air. Before Melvin could roll out his tyres to the village square, the entire place had already lit up with burning tyres and their black smokes ascending sky high like propitiatory sacrifice. It was serious bonfire night with people singing discordantly and dancing round their different bonfires. As Melvin caught sight of Emmanuel and the other undergraduates dancing around their fire far from others, he thought what it would be like in hell fire and shuddered. He did the sign of the cross, sighed and moved on. The frenzy was meant to last for only one hour. From the gate, Melvin watched a little while.

“Afo laa oh!”

“Afo laa oh!

“Afo laa oh!”

Mixed voices screamed from different corners and hurrying legs scampered round burning fires provoking sleeping dusts that comingled with the choking black smokes of the burning tyres. Weary hands rolled out some more tyres and some cloths that descended into the fire with them. The owners of the cloths would not need them again in the coming year lest they come with the ill luck from the outgoing year clinging to them. Okafor danced uncontrollably in the crowd making from one burn fire circle to another, throwing his fireworks in to their fires too. He had no tyres to burn. Melvin watched him run towards the village township hall. He tore the Pentecostal church banner tied to the wall of the village township hall and ran along with it like a parachute. It was the banner that said “CROSS OVER AND LEAVE SATAN BEHIND”. He wrapped the banner together and threw it in to the fire together with a knockout and screamed; “afo laao!” The sounds of the fireworks cracked the growing mist of dust and smoke; they were meant to chase away the stingy incumbent year and usher in a fresh new year and the smell of carbide filled the air; the kind of odour that caused sicknesses in domestic fowls and get them turning their necks round and round as if watching some aeroplanes in the air. At the undergraduates’ corner, they sang one kegite song after another and walked gently round their fire in Ajebor fashion – their cloths homely, their steps comely and the songs funny and ridiculous rendition of gospel songs. Other people watched and admired them. Melvin joined and swayed with them round the bonfire.

The situations in the churches were similar, only that tyres and cloths were not burnt there. People in the church danced and sang choruses; their thunderous clap of hands sounded louder than the fireworks outside; songs that chase away the incumbent year. They conjured Holy Ghost fire and burnt the stingy year; fire that burnt on invisible incendiary materials stronger than the tyres outside. They didn’t burn there cloths in the church. They donated them to the church to be given to the needy. Some donated some other properties of theirs to the church; cars, cloths, shoes and money. Those properties didn’t follow their owners into the New Year lest they come with their accompanying bad lucks. The smell of incense filled the churches the way the carbides did outside. Like the welcoming of the messiah in to Jerusalem, songs of praises poured on the ground like red carpet for the New Year. If he were a human, the New Year must have stood by the corner watching as Ozuakoli gave him the red carpet reception. He might be smiling at them now and spotting the people among them whom he would visit with bad omen and whom he would bless. Tomorrow they said was pregnant and nobody knew what her offspring would be; twins to some, a male or female child to others, some others triplets and to yet others imbeciles or still birth.

As for the incumbent year, if it were human too, he would be moving away now with face ashen, step by step as the restless clock went tic-tac, tic-tac, tic-tac for him. He would turn back at intervals to look at the unprecedented injustice they paid him with as even those he had been good with joined the crowd; chased him away like a horrible disease, just as the good book said the ungrateful Jews did to the messiah.

Tic-tac, tic-tac, tic-tac, the clock would continue banging for him, so rudely.

“Ingrates, you are chasing away the devil you know for an angel you do not know”, he would mutter and breeze out but that would not matter because the people were no longer interested in him. Then the New Year would give a wicked grin and step in gently like a king.  

“Damn you ungrateful fools,” he might grout and stepped in, knowing that in no distant time he too would be treated the same way as his colleague.

Melvin thought these over as he poured a little kerosene on his tyres and lit up fire that rekindled the students’ corner.

“Afo laa oh!” he shouted and they all made round the bonfire several times. People threw in fireworks into the fire that made thunderous sounds splashing fire and embers about to scare away the stingy year.

12.30am marked the beginning of welcome songs all over the village square. The year stepped in accompanied by several gun salutes made by the cacophonous sounds of fireworks far and near and the crackling of the burning tyres. The year finally stepped in with a very heavy chilly harmattan wind and the people made joyous sounds in unison as they felt his presence, though he did not talk to them. One by one they dispersed, feet dragged wearily. Melvin got home dead beat and famished.

“It was all the same,” he thought, “wasn’t it the same farewell and welcome? Only the final Passover prayers in the church made the difference.”

 He knelt down facing the bed. He pushed his index finger into his nostrils and the finger emerged smeared with charcoal black substances. He repeated the action severally to clean the smokes he had inhaled from the burn fire. With his head bent on the mattress he said a short prayer ambivalently and made his New Year resolution.

Even before dawn everybody knew what Mr. Samuel’s New Year resolution had always been - To quit taking alcohol - a resolution he always failed a day after. Melvin closed his eyes and said a short prayer again and asked God to help his father live up to his resolution and refrain from alcoholism. It was the kind of prayer he always said whenever he saw his father sober. He crossed himself and sighed. He felt God had ignored him as usual. After his prayers he started arranging his things to travel back to Aba. The remaining two days were like two years to him. The village would become boring from the next day. Many people would travel back to the urban areas and left in the village would be the elderly and little children.