MEN DON'T CRY

Allow me to cry
To cry away this rivers in my soul
These rivers of pensive tears
That clog my soul in pains
That my heart would not drown

Remove these dams and let my Niger flow
To swallow this dirty Onitsha market
Screaming and touting in my head
Let my flood eat up Abuja road
And barricade every contact with them

Allow me to shade these tears
That my heart could swim through
Through this putrid murky stream
With tick creamy tears
That this rain could not wash away

Let the sun not shine again
Let the stars die and give no light
That my tears should not dry
And let the rivers run
Till there’s no more
‘cos men don’t cry…

A Group of Quarrelling Words

This is not a poem
It’s just about the feeling
A cluster of quarrelling words
Like a lad building castles on the soil
Until an adult appears from nowhere
And tramples on it
And swaggers on without looking back
What can a hapless lad do?
But be frustrated
And confused
Like these quarrelling words

This is not a poem
It‘s just about the feeling
A hen scratching cemented floor
Like a pregnant woman expecting a boy
She buys baby clothes in every shop
And writes a list of names for the baby boy
Only to be knocked down on the road
By a reckless driver that cares not
And the baby is gone
In slimes of blood and smelly fluids
What can a helpless woman do?
But quack quack quack
A hen mimicking a duck

This is not a poem
It’s just about the feeling
A bunch of straying confused words
Like a jelly fish in flowing lake
Swimming and making merry
Until a hawk appears from nowhere
And digs it fangs into the fish
And there it dies 
Gradually….

I am not a man
I am a fish
Hunted everyday by roving eyes
Seeking dirt under my flipping feebly fins 
They must surely see them
Cos I am a fish
Not a god

I am the orphan
The dirty orphan thrown behind the fence
By those wealthy clandestine chiefs
Like a plague
That could contaminate their spotless clans
Don’t call this a poem
It is just a feeling
A group of quarrelling words….

why do you want to marry me?

Why do you want to marry me?

Is it for the public cheers

For ever moving age inducing fears

Hope it’s not for those calls without

For the calls within will soon die

Like recalcitrant ogbanje they come and go

Why do you want to marry me

Hope it’s not to be like John

Note my name is not Jean

And life is not a tag team match

Is it ‘cos they hug and kiss and love

Mind you they also fight

And tear selves like venomous foes

The bed is not what it shows

Why do you want to marry me

B’cos your friends have rushed into it

As if whipped by diarrhoea on the butt

Into a dirty public loo

Mind you they are rushing out

B’cos the loo will always ooz

Why do you want to marry me

Hope it’s not for my pretty face

‘Cos beauty is everywhere

But when the sun will come

The face will wither and lose its milk

And shrink with a million freckles

Like a baboon’s hairless butt

Why do you want to marry me

Hope it’s not for my outward frame

My shape of an hour glass

Will just in an hour sag

Like empty raffia sac relieved of stones

It will droop like hibiscus in a hot sun

Why do you want to marry me

Is it for my smooth oily skin

That glows and radiates warmth

Soon it will wrench and shrivel

Like sandpaper it will roughen

And harden like palm kernel shells

Why do you want to marry me

It’s not for my firm fluffy breasts

That dangle like mango fruits

They too will soon flab

Like punctured balloon tubes

And sag like scrotum in intense heat

They will lay dried and flaccid

Like rubber slippers they will sleep

Never to wake again

Why do you want to marry me

So you can wear the black suit

And say “I do” before the church

For what you have always done

A fragile unsteady vow

Broken in every home

Why do you want to marry me

Not for what we did last night

When we moan and cuddle like cats

Hiding away from Mum and Dad

Do you just need a bed certificate

To sleep bare in guiltless bed

I guess you should ask the dead

They are tired of eating sleep

If you want me in a gown

Mind you my colour is pink

Why do you want to marry me

You need a fruit of the womb

An heir to wear your shoes

Is your mother pushing you

I guess she too has a womb

What if my womb is dried

And dead like kilinshi suya

Why do you want to marry me

Why?

Adam'spen: ADMISSION WAHALA 2

Adam'spen: ADMISSION WAHALA 2

ADMISSION WAHALA 2

The E-block buildings were the face-me-I-face-you kind of houses like the type found in the slummy Ama-nmong areas of Aba. It was a community of eight rows of houses facing each other in twos with a row of four toilets and four bathrooms in-between each pair as if they were separating the houses from ramming against each other. A block in E-blocks had six rooms accommodating two students in each. The original plan for the building was for accommodation for married students and nursing mothers. Now the rooms were randomly allocated to single students crammed four in a room like every other undergraduate hostels in UNN as a result of accommodation scarcity. Mrs. Nwodo’s was Block E4 room 404, the fourth room in the fourth row that now looked quiet and deserted except for the cry of a baby coming from first room. Melvin walked gingerly down the lawn looking at the top of the doors for room 404. Sounds of dropping waters in the bath room followed him and he felt it must be from a water tap left uncorked. He thought something about going into the bath room to stop the running water but the sound was not steady. Water from the bath room splashed on the opposite pavement as Melvin got close and he jumped backwards. He heard what sounded like laughter from the bathroom and paused. 
“Maybe someone is washing the bathroom”, he said and moved on. As he meant to cross the bathroom, he caught sight of a girls buttocks shining glassy with soapy water. He flinched and looked away immediately like a solder on eyes-right command. They were two girls taking their bath with the doors widely open. Melvin looked again furtively to be sure of what he saw and increased his pace without looking back and the girls laughed. 
“Jambito!” one of them called out laud. 
He could hear their croaking laughter re-echoing in the other empty bathrooms as if the houses also mocked his timidity. He felt ashamed. 
Room 404 was locked. He still didn’t want to look back. He stood facing the door with hands akimbo, disappointed. He could not turn back to face the lucid pornography behind him though his eyes wanted to see more of the curves, to see more of the V and the balls. He stood there growing confusion and more weight between his thighs. There was nobody around with whom he could drop a massage but the naked girls behind him. Now he could still hear them laughing louder and the empty rooms mocking him from behind. Some ravens flew across the top of the building making their croaky sounds like they were part of the laughter. He thought something about walking up to the naked girls to ask them the whereabouts of Mrs Nwodo but his legs refused to move. He wouldn’t want the girls to see the mound that had formed in the front of his trousers. He pushed his too hands into his pocket to keep his crotch region even. He tapped his fingers inside the pocket as he thought of what to do next. He was trapped like a bird in a bird catcher’s net. Suddenly a sonorous feminine voice barked angrily behind him and he turned his neck. It was Mrs. Nwodo.
“What sort of non-sense is this supposed to mean? Who and who are there in those bathrooms?” she did not hear any response as the doors closed slowly and quietly. 
"How many times do I have to warn you shameless pigs to always close the doors when you are taking your bath? Don’t you know people pass through here? I imagine what kind of families you came from. If you want to show off your korokoro infested buttocks why not go up to freedom square and walk naked. Stupid girls” she smacked. 
She didn’t seem to have seen Melvin. Melvin hissed a long sigh of relief and turned around. Mrs. Nwodo raised her face and cowered a weak smile. 
“Good day Aunty” Melvin greeted shyly still with his two hands bulging up his pockets.
“Oh K.C you are here? Nna don’t mind these shameless girls without home training that want to spoil my day. How are you today?”
“I’m fine” Melvin replied.
“Cry cry baby” she teased Melvin as she placed her left hand on Melvin’s shoulder. She moved round him inspecting him like a cloth hung on a mannequin. She placed her left hand on Melvin’s head and ran it down his back.
“You are looking better today; no swollen eyes, no red eye balls, and no need for my handkerchief.” she laughed. Melvin looked up shyly with a smile and said nothing but savoured the aroma of cologne that followed Mrs. Nwodo as she crossed over to unlock the door. She slumped into the bed opposite the door and motioned Melvin in. Immediately, the bathroom doors opened simultaneously. The two girls emerged, grinned at each other like the mischievous Tom and Jerry in cartoon movies and ran into the opposite room. Mrs. Nwodo pushed out her head to know who came out of the bathrooms. She only saw the figures in white pants and white brassieres zoom past. 
“Idiots” she muttered.
“Tomi I already knew it would be nobody but you and Kemi. Let this be the last time I would see such non-sense repeated, else I will ensure you people are suspended from this school.” She warned the open air and went back into her room. Melvin was still standing at the foot mat looking round the room. His eyes were on the book shelves. He wondered more about how he could afford such quantity of voluminous books before graduation than how he could read them.

Two six spring beds lay opposite the two sides of the door. At the foot of the beds were reading tables with a chair close to each. On the wall above the tables were reading lights attached to the wall and faced downwards like street lights. Mrs. Nwodo’s corner was the right wing with her pictures on the wall beside the bed. In the first picture she sat on a sofa, smiling and holding hands with a white bearded man and a baby on her laps. In the second one she carried the baby with a sucker in its mouth. High above the pictures was a bookshelf, in which were German language text books and some phonetics and grammar books and dictionaries. Directly opposite the door to the wall were two gigantic wardrobes, on top of which were boxes of different sizes. 
“Women and loads” Melvin marvelled. Though there was a ceiling fan at the centre of the room, Mrs. Nwodo had a small table fan placed on a stool by the window beside the door. Beside the door to the right, was a very big mirror not less than six feet long attached to the wall. Up above the mirror was something like a wine bar, packed full with all kinds of women’s make-ups. On the floor was red chequered linoleum spread from wall to wall.
Melvin made to remove his foot wears as he entered the room but Mrs. Nwodo bade him “never mind” and showed him to the seat by the reading table. Melvin felt something about saying; “what a nice place!” but his lips couldn’t form the words. Mrs. Nwodo dropped her bag limply on the table and went back to the bed. She sat on the bed and crossed her legs carefully as if she was preparing to offer Muslim prayers. She picked a pillow, placed it on top of her crossed laps and leaned back on the wall. She was tired. The skin of her legs looked like ripe pawpaw; so smooth that Melvin thought he saw the blood running through the greenish veins inside them. Melvin didn’t want to look at those legs again. He buried his face on the ground peeling some invincible things from his finger nail. There was a little silence as he waited to hear something about his admission from Mrs. Nwodo. To break the ice, she suddenly teased Melvin:
“I know you won’t cry again” Melvin chuckled and buried his face on the table before him, moving his right foot on the floor. He was shy.
“Are you the last born in your family?” Mrs. Nwodo asked trying to relax the tension in the air.
“No”
“The first?”
“No”.
“The only son?”
“No, I’m the second son” Melvin answered hesitantly, he had wanted to claim the first.
“Ah! Why is it you look so feeble like Ajebor” she continued with curves of mischievous smiles on her face.
“Your mother; what does she do?”
“She is a trader”
“And what about your father?”
“He died some years ago”. Melvin lied. He didn’t want to think about his father as alive.
“Ah! I’m sorry for reminding you. It’s a pity. Ndo nnu”. Mrs. Nwodo said and placed her hands on her chest. Her Igbo sounded so soft and anglicized, devoid of tones. The thought of Melvin’s father brought back the tension which was almost dissipating. The thought of Melvin’s father, always reminded him the need not to be like him; the need to struggle out of the depth of poverty that his drunken habit had dragged the family into. He had written his father off as dead because of his drunken habit. “He is as inactive as a dead man”, Melvin had said to himself one of the days he got home and saw his father drunk. He sighed bitterly whenever he saw his mates ride in their father’s cars. He too wanted that, but his father could not give him the comfort he wanted in life; his father would hardly provide for his family and he had promised himself that he would get everything that he wanted in life by himself. 
Melvin was still bent drawing shapeless images with his left foot. His face now looked stiff with hatred mingled with pity for his father. He didn’t hate his father rather he couldn’t decipher what the feeling was - A mixture of love, hate, pity and anxiety: Confusion. He was not sure what the feelings were. He winked and tears trickled down his cheeks from his eyes. 
“Ok, guess what; I have good news for you, would you like English Department?” Mrs. Nwodo dropped as if to console him and send the tears back into his skull. Melvin jerked his face immediately and wiped off the tears on his lashes. The only thing he had wanted to hear was finally up. He couldn’t fathom why the tears were coming out of his eyes. 
“I don’t mind what Department any longer, what I need is just admission Aunty,” he answered, looking straight into Mrs. Nwodo’s face. There was a mixture of frustration and desperation in his quaky voice. He wasn’t able to hide any feelings now. His glossy, watery eyeballs would show it. His pouted mouth would scream it. His ashen face would dramatize it. Desperation! Mrs. Nwodo chuckled mutely looking into Melvin’s misty eyes with pity. 
“Well, your admission issue is settled then. All you need do now is: go home, and come back in a fortnight when the list shall be pasted to start registration in English and Literary Studies Department,” she managed to say after a little silence. 
Melvin was stunned. It was like a dream. He wanted to move over and give Mrs. Nwodo a very warm embrace but his guts failed him. He wanted to cross over and give her a peck on the cheek as he used to see people do on TV and say things like:
“Aunty you rock!”
“Aunty I love you!”
“Aunty you are the best” but it was as if his legs were glued to the floor and his buttocks to the seat and his lips sealed. He meant to jump up and rejoice on his own but streams of tears flowing profusely from his eyes could not let him do that. He could not control the tears. They were tears of joy now. He couldn’t make a move. 
“Aunty, words cannot be enough to show appreciation for what you have done for me”, he managed to murmur amid tears. 
“It’s okay”, Mrs. Nwodo responded giving him a pat on the shoulder. She uncurled her legs and came down from the bed and hugged Melvin. Melvin felt as if never to let go in her warm soft body with his head on her breast and her sonorous voice sizzling into his ears. There was pin-drop silence in the room, except for the sound of Melvin’s sniffing to draw back his running nose and inhale more of the cologne aroma emanating from Mrs. Nwodo’s cloths. As Mrs. Nwodo left him, He wiped out the tears from his face with his palms and stood up to leave.
“K.C bear with me, I’ve not got cola to offer you”.
“Don’t mind” Melvin responded in a very low voice. She watched Melvin as he left the room. She shook her head in pity and leaned back on the wall and closed her eyes. She did not notice when her roommate entered the room. She had slept off. She was dead tired after the activities of the day in the skin searing Nsukka sun; the kind of sun shine that came with the rain.

**************

my butterfly

MY BUTTERFLY

Gently hovering around it

Carefully negotiating the best entry point

The colours are irresistible

You approached

Thrust your proboscis into its juicy pool

Like a dragnet it kept holding you fast

Your wings radiate so brilliantly in the sun

It’s like a nuptial flight of the termites

So passionately involved

So obsessed

My day is gone

As I kept beholding your radiance and delicateness

Above all

Your immeasurable beauty is unequalled

You are my butterfly

i am searching

I AM SEARCHING

I know she is somewhere out there

While I grope for her in the darkness of my heart

Where her first leg took a leap on a prong

Where we have been playing all along

Like twine kernels separated in an uncracked shell

So we have not seen each other

Yet every day I see her there

A tangible mirage in a concrete apparition

In that darkness of the enclave of my mine

Yes every day I touch her

A sky close-by seeming impossible to reach

And we play together in there

Like a drop of oil on a cold stream

She has always been here

Playing in my timid heart

Where I fantasized, since I was young

Where I have locked her all along

To nurse her to a full-fledged woman

My mouth I have zipped to keep her locked

And my anus is blocked to imprison her

Now she is gone out there

Having slipped away from the grip of my fingers

Like water from a rickety basket

Now I have got to keep searching all over

I am searching

That Xmas Day!

                                                                  That Xmas Day!

Christmas was the celebration I had grown up to dislike. I always wished December never came. It was the time other kids in my street dressed in their December new wears and romped pea-cockishly up and down the road and I watched them enchanted. The high pavement in front of our house was my favourite sitting position; where I and my elder brother Johnson watched the other kids on Christmas parade throwing their fireworks in the air and they filled the air with smokes and the awful smells that caused some sicknesses for fowls in January. The 25^th of December, 1997 was very significant. I was barely nine years old. Johnson and I sat on the pavement watching families move their luggage up the street in a bid to travel to the country side for Christmas celebration. Daddy had warned us severally, to stop milling at the pavement while he was alive; but it was the order we never obeyed. We sat there and kept watch; to run back into the house at any sight of him. Now Daddy was no more, we sat freely. We had helped our neighbours get their bags into the brown Mitsubishi L300 saloon bus that took them to Ohaofia as they travelled a day before. They gave us some money and waved us bye and called us “ala wu otu” as the bus joined the traffic. We never joined in the Christmas frenzy. We never travelled during Christmas. Daddy never bought us new clothes during Xmas; he never bought us toys; and neither did he allow us to use fireworks nor partake in the street’s Christmas Carol. It wasn’t that he did not love us like other fathers liked their kids. It wasn’t that he didn’t want us to be happy. We were Jehovah’s Witnesses. We didn’t celebrate Christmas because daddy said Jesus Christ was not born on the 25^th of December. He said Christmas celebration was borrowed from Roman pagan celebration of the birth day of the Sun god and that Jehovah’s people should not allow themselves to get contaminated with disguised satanic celebration of any sort.

In the morning of 25^th December 1997, the weather was cold and dried with the harmattan breeze rocking the leafless tree branches and blowing dust in the air. The breeze was making a whirling pool of dusts and cellophanes and dried leaves in the air when Ojee came to our house. The breeze swept passed him in a gust and he covered his face with both arms and ran into the shelter of the veranda where I sat with Johnson.

 “Ghosts are heading for the market”, He said and smiled at us as he crossed over to the pavement where we sat. We laughed and greeted him; “Otete good morning”.

“Ehe… good morning,” he responded and said “this kind of dust will cause Apollo if it gets into one’s eyes”. My elder brother looked at him and said it was not Apollo season and smiled shyly. I did not smile. I never liked Ojee as much as my mother disliked him. I turned to look at him as he brought out a handkerchief and scrubbed his face. His eyes were red like he had Apollo already. The strands of hair in his nostrils were brown with dust. He must have come from afar. Ojee was one of my father’s apprentices. He was the one Mama rejected the first day he came to ask for a job with my father.

“Sam, we can’t take this boy” Mama had said to my daddy.

“Why?” daddy asked

“There is something in me that doesn’t want this man here”

“Do you know him before?”

“No but can’t you see the scars on his head? He can’t be a good person to have such big scars. We can’t risk bringing in a thief here”, mama warned sternly. Daddy had turned Ojee back the first day till he came again with his aged father. Though daddy later accepted Ojee, mama continued complaining that there was something sinister about him. That it was only robbers, pickpockets and motor park boy that were known to have such scars in Aba. After eavesdropping into my parents discussions about ojee, I came to dislike him too. I liked everything my mum liked and hated everything she hated because I loved her.

As he stood there behind us at the pavement cleaning his dusty face and the brown nostrils, I didn’t want to turn and look at him again. He wore a fluffy dark brown jacket that reeked of a mixture of cigarette and beer and some other unidentifiable pugnacious smells that upset my stomach. After cleaning his face he walked into the yard and my elder brother followed him to unlock the shop. We never expected that anybody would be coming to work on a Christmas day. There was no other person at home. Mama had gone out for preaching. I was still on the pavement when Johnson came out and asked me to join him, that Ojee had sent him to buy five bottles of water so that I would help him carry them. All the shops in our street were closed. Many of them had travelled to the village for Xmas celebration. Mama Adaobi the grocery woman opposite our house didn’t open. She went to church though she was a Seventh Day Adventist. So we had to go as far as Etchie road to get the bottles of water.

25^th December 1997 was a Thursday; the kind of Thursday that looked like weekend because it was a public holiday. We half ran and half walked and played along the lonely Street of Okezie as we headed towards Etchie Road. At the cross road that led to Abam Street was a black heap with strings of burnt tyres on it and white smokes ascending sky high like the kind of smoke I saw in the kitchen the day mama’s oil burnt. The smell from the heap was like that of a roasted goat meat; the kind of smell that made me run away from Musa, the Hausa boy that roasted suya beside our house. I disliked the smell because it upset my stomach. I blocked my nose with my palms as we ran passed it. There, I saw what was like a burnt human head and the roasted hand jutting out under the heap. Johnson blocked his nose too and said it must be a thief that was killed the night before. People crossed freely without looking at the direction of the burnt thief. Nobody cared. It was not a strange sight. At Ndoki Street another corpse was still burning with smoke ascending sky high. Mama Obi’s shop at Ndoki besides our primary school was closed. It was the shop where we bought kpof kpof at break times in school. So we crossed over to Etche road near the primary school field and bought the bottles of water. Johnson suggested that we shouldn’t pass through Okezie again so as not to see the burnt corpses again. We followed Abam Street opposite Riverside primary school. At No1. Abam was the big lorry that had a monkey jumping around in it. Johnson threw a small stone at the monkey, it ducked and charged after us. We ran from there till we got home.

We came home breathing like lizards that had fallen from the top of an iroko tree. We expected to meet Ojee waiting for us at the entrance. We expected to hear him say “well done boys” and laugh throatily like he did whenever we bought him his lunch, but he was not there. The workshop door was ajar with the harmattan breeze rocking it back and forth. The back yard gate was also widely open and making some creaky sound as it obeyed the dried wind. Johnson searched for him at the back yard but he was not there too. There was no sign of life towards the toilets. We dropped the bottles of water on top of his sewing machine in the workshop and went back to our position at the pavement.

We sat there watching people pass by and waiting for Ojee to return till the afternoon when Johnson caught sight of Mama turning into the street with her preaching bag strapped to her left shoulder. Immediately, we ran back into the house. As we heard her foot step in the passage, we ran out gaily and greeted her. I collected her weighty bag containing bibles and many other publications of Watchtower Bible and tract Society and slung it over my shoulder like a hunter’s gun and ambled behind mama as she led tiredly.

‘Did anybody come here?” she asked with jammed brow as she struggled with the padlock of the door to our sitting room. The padlock gave way and fell on the floor and separated into two pieces.

“mmm…,” I replied affirmatively with locked lips and nodded.

“Yes ma, Ojee came and…”

“Where is he?” mama jerked interrupting Johnson.

“He sent us to buy pure water for him and when we returned he was nowhere to be found. The water is in the workshop.”

Mama didn’t seem to be listening as Johnson reeled out the story. She turned the knob of the door gingerly and worked into the room. There the drawer of the room divider was pulled out and its content over turned on the center table. The video player that used to be on the room divider was now on top one of the single sitter sofa. Mama dashed towards the opened drawer and shuffled the papers in there frantically. She looked up with wide eyes and let out a loud cry like she was stung by a bee.

“ojee e gbuo m’!” she screamed and turned and jabbed Johnson's cheek with the left hand. Johnson screamed and held his cheek and fell backwards on the red three sitter sofa besides the standing fan. He didn’t cry. She stood up calmly and worked towards the door where I was. I held my cheeks and bent my face so as not to look at her face that now looked scary. Her eye balls were near red and glassy with tears. Her lips quaked the way they did the day she threw an empty milk bottle at me and smashed the wall mirror in her room. She quietly walked past me and tied her hair scarf around her waist just the way Mama Kalu our neighbour did whenever she fought her husband. I looked at Johnson. He was seating now on the sofa. There was no drop of tears in his eye. He was looking at Ojee’s dirty slippers that lay on the red and black flowered rug and they disgusted me. Then we heard the sound of the front gate and ran out to see who was there. The gate returned and hit the frame again and again and again and stopped ajar. There was nobody in the entire yard of six rooms facing each other in threes. Mama had just left angrily. Johnson went searching the back yard again and the toilet and the bathroom. I sat in front of the seating room waiting aimlessly.

Mama returned with two men in black. On their breasts were the lapels tags that said NPF and their names. The fair one had what was like a cap attached to his shoulder. He picked up the broken padlock pieces and put them in black cellophane. The dark one pushed open the door and went straight to the room divider drawer.

“How come you put that kine money inside a drawer, you no get bank account?” the police man asked and mama looked away without saying a word. I leaned on the wall and watched as the police men wrote something on a piece of paper and the two of them left and Mama followed them out of the gate. They didn’t come back again. Mama didn’t say a word to me and Johnson. She didn’t cook any food. The night was cold and quiet as we slept on empty stomach.

It was a calm night till mid-night when we heard a big bang in the neighbourhood followed by a horrid scream; “ewo! Ewo! Isi m’ o!” the scream tore through the cold wind of the night and died out as abrupt as it came. I froze with cold mingle with fears. I was lying on the floor in the sitting room and Johnson was snoring heavily on the red long three sitter sofa. “Boom!” came another deafening sound; the sound I could not tell if it was a gunshot or the sound of Christmas fireworks; those long fireworks that came with a picture of boxing glove on their packets. The bang came again for the third time. This time it was louder and nearer; louder than any banger I ever heard. I felt cold run through my spine and I covered my ear with the small pillow that was on the single sitter sofa behind me. Then the door between the sitting room and mama’s room creaked and I peeked from under the pillow. Mama’s hand slide in through the door to the wall switch and turned off the light. And the door creaked again and shot. I felt like jumping up to follow mama to her bed because I was afraid, but I couldn’t bring myself to do that. I felt mama was still mad at us. Sleep did not come to my eyes till the light came up again and I heard mama’s voice;

“James, you are not sleeping?” she said and shook me up. I jerked up and threw off the pillow rubbing my two eyes limply. Mama took me to her bed and covered me with the new blanket she bought the week before.

To be continued….

To See Nwautam

Every 26^th of December was for Ekpo Nwautam at Eche road field in Aba. I had heard so much about Nwautam but had not seen it for once. Nwautam was the spirit masquerade that they said came from the world inside the waters. They said it came out from the Ogbo Hill waterside river every December. It was the Ekpo that mummy-water had given powers of appearing and disappearing at will. “I am going to see Nwautam tomorrow” victor had said to me as we sat looking after his mothers stall. he looked me in the eyes for some reactions and I didn’t say anything but watched him as he continued cooking the stories about Nwautam’s magical powers; how Nwautam used to steal scared children away to waterside for rituals; how its followers used to disappear with it at the end of their performances and many other incredible tales. Victor was three years older than me but I was taller than him.

“It doesn’t walk like us humans” victor said “it is not human; It just appears wherever it wants to be at will.” Victor’s big eye balls looked as if they where bulging out of his small round face as he told the astonishing tales. I was stunned to speechlessness. Kalu had told me this same story of Nwautam some time ago. It could not be a lie. Right there, I decided to go and see Nwautam the next day.

“This December,” I beat my chest and said, “I must see Nwautam”.

 26^th of December 1997 was a Friday. The weather was cold and dried with harmattan in the air. The dried dusty harmattan breeze hissed at intervals, rocking tree branches and blowing leaves and papers and cellophanes in the air in a whirling move; the kind of whirling breeze they said could carry away even little children of my age.  I was barely 12years old. Fridays was the day we attended our mid-week services of theocratic ministry school and service meeting as Jehovah’s Witnesses. My mother had gone out for preaching. She had wanted me to go with her but I pretended to be having a terrible head ache. I was still lying feebly and pretending to be sleeping on the broken bench in front of our house when my mum left. It was one of the benches we used for visitors on my father’s burial the year before. It was the bench that Ete Ndukwo and the members of his age grade had broken when they argued that my late father will not be buried if my mum didn’t pay the dues my father owed the age grade for not attending all their meetings. I peeked hazily through the tail end of my eyes at my mum as she sashayed out into the street. The streets of Aba looked deserted amid the frenzy of Christmas festivity. Many people had travelled to the country side. We didn’t celebrate Christmas as Jehovah’s Witnesses. So we stayed back with the Ngwa people and people made jest of us and called us; “Ala-bu-out”.

I stood up from the bench and peeked behind the unpruned bushy hibiscus flowers in front of our house, into the street to ensure that my mum had gone far before I went over to meet victor. As I watched my mum get out of sight, I said a silent prayer that people should not throw knock-outs on her.

Victor came dressed in a pair of blue jeans trousers under a black and white striped T-shirt to match. I didn’t have jeans wears because my mum said they were immodest and debased dressing; that Jehovah’s people must dress modestly to radiate Jehovah’s holiness. I had worn a pair of plain trousers under an over sized T-shirt that was more like a gown on me and we hit the street. In the street we could still see people dragging their luggage to the park and other kids heading for Eche road field to see Nwautam.

Eche road field was randomly rowdy and noisy. There were too many people roaming about in their December best wears. Even little kids of my age were loitering and throwing fireworks everywhere. I had no knockout because mama said I would be participating in a pagan celebration if I threw fireworks during Christmas. There was so much smoke in the air, so much noise in the air coupled with the choking stench of the knockout everywhere. Even in the rowdiness of the arena, it was easy for me to identify the different mafia groups locking in the corners of the street. There, was Dibia under the mango tree behind the goal post area. Dibia was the small boy that broke bottles on his palms. It was he who had stabbed Uncle Mark on the neck and robbed him of all his belongings on his way returning from the market. I remembered vividly how Uncle Mark demonstrated the smallish size of the little boy that robbed him.

“That one under the mango tree is the devil they call Dibia” victor had pointed at him surreptitiously and looked around to ensure no other person heard him and added with adoration, “he is the capon of Ajagba maf. He has graduated from the middle of the street to the corner. His boys are now working for him as small as he is. He has so much jaz.”

In the middle of the field, where everybody ran around with fireworks, were other street boys parading their mafia identities and extorting money and other valuables from people. Besides the gutter across the road was a girl in a gown that had been white before, crying helplessly. Somebody had thrown a knockout inside the dirty muddy waters of the gutter that had refused to dry even amid the hash harmattan. The knockout had blasted and bathed the girl with the dirty water as she passed by. The small boys sitting at the veranda of the bungalow in front of Eche road field laughed uncontrollably. At the other end of the street a boy was screaming for help in the middle of three ugly looking boys with scars on their faces and their heads, dragging his pocket. One of the boys held him on the neck and punched his face in a swift jab, yet he held his two pockets tenaciously with his hands despite the creamy blood that gushed from his nose. People crossed freely and nobody seemed to look at their direction. The boy did not leave his pockets until he saw one of the boys brake an empty battle of bear with the flap of a white handkerchief. The other boys tore his pocket and kicked him down on the ground and ran away with all his belongings.

“You see that one in red running down there?” victor whispered and I nodded and he continued; “they call him Okiriko. He breaks bottles with handkerchief. He is…” Victor was about to tell me more about Okiriko when the noise in the field increased, announcing the arrival of Nwautam. I regretted that I didn’t see him appear from nowhere as victor and Kalu had said. I couldn’t see Nwautam clearly from the back where I was. Many people had converged to see it.

From Eche road it was hard to tell that over 70 percent of Aba inhabitants had travelled to their various villages for Christmas. The Nwautam started pursuing people. I ran too and stumble in the middle of the road. My over sized white T-shirt turned something between brown and coffee with dust and I ran to the corner of the street for shade from the blazing sun, not even for Nwautam that I couldn’t see. I didn’t see victor again. I searched through the crowd and victor was nowhere to be found. I didn’t know my way home; I didn’t want to ask the way from anybody. I was afraid of Ngwa people – with the tale of human flesh eating and head hunting. Soon the noise died gradually, the day was getting dark; knockouts were still firing; and people where dispersing. Nwautam had gone. I didn’t see it. I followed a group of grown up boy at the back as I sought my way home. I was wallowing in the confusing streets till I saw a man walking hastily with a bag that looked like a Jehovah’s Witness. I ran after him.

“Brother good evening” I said and asked if he was a witness. He said yes and I told him I had lost my way.

“Where is your house?” he asked keen to assist.

“36 Okezie street” I answered sounding throaty like I was about to whimper. He asked what brought me to the town and I didn’t answer him. I didn’t want to let him say I had participated in a pagan celebration. He took me home. My mother had flogged me with the cane she had bought specially for me and rubbed some pepper in-between the parting of my buttocks. I cried all night till I slept off. Even in the dream I didn’t see Nwautam.