THE TALES OF OCUCUMBA.

There were eyes on me. Brown eyes, Black eyes and Hazel eyes. Sometimes the eyes whisper to themselves, questioning me, accusing me, judging me, their tones were derisive but I could hardly hear. I only could see the faces and sometimes the faces spoke more than those words.

The weight of those eyes unnerved me and made my legs shaky. I sauntered more than I walked and avoided the gazes of the men and women that sold their wares in the market. They sold vegetables, legumes, fruits and foodstuffs. I had come to buy, I am a customer yet their looks of suspicion did not waver. It was not about my physique because I was neither too beautiful nor too sexy, certainly not a cynosure of all eyes. When I walked past a reflective tinted mirror, I glanced at a reflection of myself and could see that my makeup was perfect. It helped that I did makeovers as a part-time job while I waited for a white-collar job.

When I reached the section of the market where they sold what I wanted to buy, I paused and looked down. The scenes were threatening. A massive sea of heads of men, for I could see no woman there. Some of the men bent down while others stood, some gesticulated wildly while others laughed uproariously. The smell of onions pervaded the air. As I drew closer, one man’s eyes met mine and he pleaded with me to patronize him. He was an aging frail man with a thinning hairline. He sold onions, cabbage, carrots, tinned baked beans, salad creams and tomatoes but not what I had wanted to buy.

“What do you want to buy?” His question sounded aggressive to me. His eyes challenged me to tell him what I wanted that he does not have.

“Never mind Sir, you don't have it?”

“Is it cucumber that you want?”

The question startled me and I looked away and started to leave.

“Don't worry Dear. I don't have it.” His voice was placating “There was a rush in the last couple of weeks. Hundreds of women invaded the market and bought hundreds of cucumbers at frankly exorbitant prices. I kept asking what they were doing with it.” He came round to his wares with a bowl of water and started sprinkling the cabbages and carrots and vegetables but not the onions.

“They only told me it was nutritious...right now, I doubt if you can see cucumbers in the market.”

“Ok Sir. I will look around” I took some steps away from his shop and could hear him asking a neighbor what he thought I needed the cucumbers.

“Maybe she has high-blood pressure? You know the doctors recommend it.”

Their voices trailed away as I moved away from their shop to another located twenty meters away from theirs. This time I met a hatted man. The hat was an embroidered round black hat and he was aggressively munching carrots when I walked in. He was missing his two front teeth and his belly looked bloated, like he would be delivering a set of twins in a very short while. He also wore a flowing black jalabiya. My eyes searched his shop for the cucumbers but couldn't see any.

“You want cucumbers?” He asked while crunching his carrot but didn't wait for an answer from me before he continued “I don't have cucumbers but I have Plantain, Cassava and Banana which Nigerian musicians believe could be as nutritious as cucumbers.”

My heart skipped a beat and I quickly beat a hasty retreat away from the kiosk of the hatted man.

The next shop I entered was that of another man, bare-chested with his pack of abs glistening with sweat against the midday the sun. He was fully-bearded and wore a tight tapered trousers that left little to imagination. He was handsome, powerful and self-assured. He did not speak to me but I could see cucumbers in his kiosk, more than I needed. Yet he was silent.

“I want some cucumbers.” I said.

“Which size do you want?” He did not even blink and his dreamy brown eyes captivated mine. “The big ones, rough-skinned. I don't want the smooth ones.”

“The smooth ones do not often make sense.”

“Yea yea” I agreed.

The man started coming closer towards me and held me by my shoulders and shook me strongly.

“Chidimma! Chidimma!” He called me by my name. I became scared. How did he know me and my name?

“Chidimma…” His voice changed into my mother’s insistent, gruff voice.

I was jarred awake and away from the handsome, nearly-naked, cucumber seller.

“When are you going to buy the cucumbers I sent you to buy since morning?”

I yawned and stretched.

“Queen…I bow to your throne." She gave me an elaborate obeisance "Sorry to disrupt your beauty sleep but it's 1pm”

“Mama, Uchendu can buy them please, I don't want to go out.”

“Your younger brother will be pounding the fufu that you hate pounding with an inordinate passion while you go and buy the cucumbers for your father.”

My father eats the cucumbers for medicinal purposes. My mother insists on its since she read from a health magazine that cucumbers are actually lifesavers. According to my Mama, Cucumber could extend my father’s lifespan by at least twenty years which Mama do not joke about since she was a full-time housewife and Papa is the breadwinner, the fufu-winner and the cucumber-winner since the money to buy even Mama’s airtime comes from him.

“I will pound the fufu today.” I blurted out. I was not happy about that but I would rather kiss the devil’s behind that day than go to the market to buy cucumbers.

“Are you sure? Chidimma, I ma na ume isu utara adiro gi”

“Mama, I am going to the kitchen now to start boiling the fufu.” I said and started heading to the kitchen while my mother trailed me, shell-shocked and mystified. I was going to pound fufu for the first time in my life rather than trek for ten minutes to a neighbourhood market to buy cucumbers.

She will not understand. Even cucumber will not want to buy itself during these times. Going to the market to buy cucumbers during these end times is akin to walking into a sex shop to buy some unmentionables.

Mr. Cucumber will understand.

THE CALLING (PART THREE)

‘The Need Itself is not the call’

-          Charles E. Hummel.

Emeka had not been gone for more than ten minutes when he called him back and introduced a friend of his who he said has been under the yoke of evil. His name was ododo and he started with a request.

“I want my unculu dead.” The word ‘Uncle’ was unduly stressed by the man.

He was jarred by the specificity of the request and it was not a part of the rule book he had adapted from the numerous videos he watched of Men of God sharing testimonies. But he was desperate still. The joy of having increases by having and the recent N6000 has inspired his desire to have at least one more zero added behind the figure.

“Emmy been dey tell me say you be Prophet Sharp Sharp.”
“To The Glory of God.” He answered sincerely. He had not known what happened. How had a snake bitten the man on the first day of his visit to Emeka. He had read somewhere that once a man’s mind is made up to succeed, the entire universe conspires to bring his ventures to fruition.
“Prophet…” The man, Ododo was still speaking on the phone but only half his mind was listening.
“Ododo.” He responded.
“I need deliverance from my oppressors, Pastor. Dem dey suck my blood.”
“Holy Ghost fire!” He shouted and the caller shouted ‘Amen’.
“My Bible tells me not to suffer the wicked to live and that is to say that the soul that sins shall die.”
“Yes Prophet.”
“See, I n eed to see you in this city on Tuesday and while coming buy candles and olive oil. Fast from now till that Tuesday, 6-12 and trust My God that answers by fire.”
“Ok My Prophet.” 

He is already calling him ‘My Prophet’ which is quite an upgrade for someone who was just speaking with him for the first time in his life. His easy trust spurred him towards the kill. He had learnt that the best time to make such requests was when the man or woman has already trusted him well enough to actually eat off the palm of his hands.

“While coming bring a very fitting sacrifice” He noticed the sudden tension in the conversation. It was unsurprising as he himself had lurched into that same lull during the sermon preceding offertories in the church. In those times, he never claimed to understand what the pastors were saying then as their words often sound as impressive and sweetened as that of a siren beckoning on sailors to their ruins. In those times, he often pinched himself to ensure that he had not been hypnotized, for he felt many had been.

The strategy to get the purses and the wallets out from the pockets and bags of the congregation was as elaborate as it was impressive. Offertory was often sandwiched between testimonies and praises. The testimonies are often tilted towards the benefits of generosity, of compliance to the words of the pastor and the efficacy of faithful belonging to a particular denomination.

He was in a church when a Pastor stated that there is quite a difference between the God of His church and every other church. The God of his church answers prayers and is a God of testimonies. There are so many other gods in different denominations who sleep on prayers and never give returns of the investments of tithes and offerings. His God rewards and his reward is always parallel to the amount of tithes and donations and offerings one gives. God loves a cheerful giver, he stated.

On that day, amidst raucous praises and incendiary beats that lit up the tightly air-conditioned church and got the entire congregation in a frenzy, he asked that anyone who knew that he could give the Lord two million naira should line up in front of the altar. To Ogbunta’s greatest dismay, and while he was still wondering where his house rent was going to come from, four people came out with their cheques and with the size of their bellies, he could easily guess that there was a lot more where that came from. They were politicians with their stolen funds or monies earned through contracts awarded to their proxy organizations. Contracts for projects which they under-delivered or had never delivered. However at the end of their donations, The Pastor invited them to kneel down for blessings and afterwards assured them that wherever the money had come from, His God will replace it a hundred fold.

When the Pastor invited the people who could give the Lord one million naira, six people lined up with slightly less protruding stomach. They wore well-sown and fitted brocades and carefully cultivated looks of bankers and top-ranking civil servants and well-to-do business men who visit the church once a week and needs divine reinforcement for whatever underhanded practices they had employed to get ahead in life.

The size of the stomachs kept decreasing until the Pastor called on the ‘hoi poloi’, with their hungry looks and tired demeanor. He insisted that all file out line from their queues. These groups of people, those who could only give God N1000 and below were in their droves, and unlike the contented men who sauntered slowly and assuredly, these people danced ferociously as if they were trying to convince themselves that the dance was what they are paying for. Beside him, a dark short young man extracted a N1000 note from his pocket and closed his eyes in prayers or silent contemplation. Slowly but surely, the line filed out until it was their turn.

The usher tapped at the first seat to Ogbunta’s left and the man stood up with a dance. The contemplating man jerked awake from his contemplation and reached into the breastpocket of black shirt. He withdrew a N100 note and thoroughly squeezed it until disappeared into his fists. Ogbunta did not know where the N1000 naira had gone but he himself was not interested in giving a dime to the church, as far as he was concerned, the pastor’s would use it to buy the newest car or complete the building project he had abandoned before he became a pastor.

Thus, on his part, he just squeezed his fist tightly and filed out with the rest. He was too tired to dance and did not see the point of dancing for a pastor who must be subconsciously calculating just how much he had made for that Sunday, or the kind of lace materials that could look good on his beautiful wife who always wore heavy make up.

When, Ogbunta stepped into the line and could see the excitement of people who are all too willing to give their money to someone who was eminently better off, Ogbunta danced to their stupidity, bending down and making stomping movements with his legs. He danced so well that people looked at him and clapped. They must think that he was squeezing a wad of naira notes in his tight fists, he thought. When he reached the offertory box, he dipped his hand in and unsqueezed an empty fist and restarted a very vibrant dance, the one imported from the gold coast and called Azonto.

Therefore, he was not surprised to learn, a week later that the pastor had bought a new Toyota Venza and had converted his old rickety Peugeot to the church’s property. It was in the Pastor’s testimony and no one thought more of it. In that same church, after three collections, another was organized; a voluntary collection for people who had been led by the spirit to fuel the Pastor’s new car. A sizable number of the led have no cars and just outside the church, a widow with a cancerous breast which she often bared for all to see was being chased by the church’s security to an obscure part of the compound because she constituted an eyesore. She begged for alms to feed her three small kids and possibly cut off the cancer before it spread but could barely raise enough to feed them and certainly could not go for a much needed surgery to cut off that malignant cancer.

Speaking to Ododo and noticing that uncomfortable pause in the conversation, Ogbunta could feel a reflection of his own thoughts. He always did a double take whenever the issues of generosity came up. He called it scam alert and Ododo’s scam alert might have been triggered, so he needed to play down the finances. He will get to it when Ododo become’s comfortable.

“Sacrificing to God is optional” He quipped but he could not even convince himself.
“Ok Pastor.” Ododo replied, his hesitant tone underlining his doubts. He is yet to be convinced to make a purchase or to invest. He still has a man he wants dead and Ogbunta is yet to set a date of his demise.

“Are you ready to fast and pray?”
“I am ready to die if that is what it takes to be free from that man.”

At that statement, Ogbunta queried the mentality of a man who was all too ready and willing to die for something that he cannot pay for.

“Christ has died so that we may live, so there may be no need to die”
“So when are we starting the prayers?” The palpable eagerness, devoid of confusion has returned in the man’s voice. He is once more sounding like a man that could pay for his salvation. So Ogbunta went in for the kill again.

“Buy two Saint Michael’s candle, three bottles of olive oil and a white shirt.”
“Ok Prophet.”
“I want to prepare a holy oil made with a secret ingredient and imbued with the power of heavens. It is called The Oil of Judgment.”
“Yes Prophet.”
“It is an oil so efficacious that I am even scared to make it for my worst enemy.”
“Prophet of God…” Odedo’s excited voice interjected his “That oil is what my situation needs now.”
“My Dear, The Oil of Judgment does not come cheap. I will have to defer making it until the time when you have money.”
“Please Prophet…I need it right now, please.” His voice was insistent almost like that of a child demanding some candy from an intransigent mother. He was on the verge of throwing a tantrum; such was his ferocity of his need and insistence.

Finally, Ogbunta almost heaved a sigh of relief. He has him on the ropes now and could mold him to any shape he wanted. The only contention was how much he was worth. Even top businessmen agreed that it is rather impossible to cost a product which one had not seen. He had not seen the man, or his place of business or even if he had any. He had not seen his face, does it look fresh and cleanly cut? Does he look haggard and unkempt?

He sounded like a man with access to resources. He could see that in his insistence on having things his own way. There is also a whiff of presumptuous entitlement about him as Ogbunta could glean from his tantrums. He would possibly hail from a spoilt background where tantrums influenced decisions. He may not be rich but he had the temperament of one who had smelt opulence.

“Am not sure that you can afford it.”
“What do you mean, Prophet?” He queried impatiently “Is it one million?”
“No of course not. It costs N14,000 to make the oil.”

Then the uncomfortable pause came again. Ogbunta knew he had to interject it, in Spiritual jobbing, silence is a red herring and consequently disastrous. Silence forces the minds to open, falsehoods to sediment, keeping the truth as clear as the spring waters in the early morning. That is why most churches unconsciously compete against themselves to know who will win the war of the decibels. In that war, contemplation and meditation is shunned and the oft-used cliché was that ‘a closed mouth is a closed destiny.’

“Let's leave the oil and start with the prayers. Prayers can move mountains.”
“Prophet, please make the oil.”
“Ododo, please don't stretch your meager resources, we can still demobilize the wicked man with prayers”
“Prophet, I don't want all those ones. I want his annihilation. I want his total obliteration”
“The Oil of Judgment is the oil for you” He said with undisguised relief. The marketing was effective and he was now at least sure that he will be getting an inflow of N14,000. He had made in a day what he could not make in the six months that the construction company declared that they could no longer pay salaries. He had never made so much as a porting carting people’s wares on his back in the popular Oze market.

It was after consummating the sales to Ododo that he realized that he was yet to have breakfast and by that time, a ferocious sun was already overhead, as if it was competing with the rain of the morning. He had been standing at that same spot in that junction for more than twenty minutes and could now hear the surrounding cacophony of drivers shouting their routes and destinations on top of their voices, hawkers announcing their wares on top of their voices and food vendors, carrying food in wheel barrows and calling on hungry men and women to patronize them.

Ogbunta was hungry but he does not want to eat his usual breakfast of N50 okpa and pure water. He does not want to eat the rice and beans carried about by the vendors. He needed a proper meal, the first he had eaten with his own money in six months.

Having made up his mind, he hailed an ‘Okada man’, a commercial motorcyclist. He had always been known as Johnny Walker by Adara who could often see him, from the comfort of her husband’s cement shop, trekking all over Oze market in search of menial jobs. However, today he felt rich. He will not trek.
"Jesus Christ trekked barefooted so that all of us will never have to trek to anywhere" One of his mentor pastors said in a video

He asked the motorcyclist to take him to a popular restaurant, Restaurant De Real, located three kilometers from the junction and which was known for their lavish menu and exorbitant charges.

 They settled at N50 and he climbed the bike.

In the restaurant, he ordered a plate of fufu with egusi soup mixed with small okra soup. The waiter was to make the egusi slightly more than the okra and would add a turkey lap to the soup. As he waited for his order, he looked around the restaurant. A Flatscreen television played some music in the background. A lady clad in matching black leather underpants and bra that revealed her massive cleavages shook and bounced her huge behind ferociously that her behind seemed to have a mind of its own. He felt a familiar stirring in his loins. He had not lain with a woman in six. Sex was only a consideration when one had eaten properly. However, the dancing woman’s backside reminded him of someone’s.

It seemed a lot like Shirley’s. However, Shirley was shorter and had fortunately missed being a midget by inches. She is a very pretty lady that spoke very good English delivered in a very attractive, breathy American accent that gave his customers the illusion of laying with a white woman. Her skin was fair and her eyes brown. She smelled like vanillas and sometimes like exotic fruits and flowers picked fresh from the wild. Furthermore, her attraction was reinforced by creating the legend that she is a Calabar woman, renowned for their prowess in the other room. But having shared a certain level of intimacy with her that went beyond ‘service provider’ – ‘customer’ relationship, he learnt that she was indeed an Igbo woman, Chimuanya, who lost both her parents while she was eleven. She cried as she told him the story of how she could not even finish school.

As she cried, she kept asking rhetorically why she was giving her all the details of her life. Ogbunta felt that it was in a bid to get more than the N500 they had agreed for ‘short time’ yet Ogbunta wanted to give more. He Wished that he could give more. The short time became an overnight stay in her dingy room, carefully scented with vanilla perfumes to mask the smell of male fluids that could have hung around the room, a testimony of her hard work.

“How many paying customers have you had today?” He had asked during the conversation that had succeeded their first session. He saw himself caring. He wanted to make sure that she was making enough money.

“All my customers are paying customers. I have had nine for today.” She had answered caressing his hairy chest “You are the only customer that I did not collect my money for hand before my back touch the mattress.”

At that answer then, he reached into his trousers to extract the N500 he had kept there but Shirley stopped him, placing her hands on that pocket first to stop him removing any money from it and from there, her soft hands wandered immediately to his throbbing member. They had another round of sex, conversed, had another one, conversed and still had another. Ogbunta had entered her hotel room at 9pm in the night and had left at dawn. She asked him to call her anytime he needed her companionship. She said she will not charge him.
They exchanged numbers and names before Ogbunta left. However, struggling for survival had not allowed Ogbunta to think of Shirley until that day in a fancy restaurant, after having ordered his favorite meal.

He will pay her a visit after the hearty meal. He wanted to buy her something nice. He does not necessarily need sex, not that he would reject if she insisted, but sorely wanted companionship. He had always thought of her everyday since they last met but his squalor could not allow a visit.

He would see her that evening, after dark. He would divest, remove the crucifix he wore and drop the bible. He would go to the market and buy her apples and oranges and Bananas. Then they would talk. They may not end with mere talk.

When his order arrived, he purposely asked how much it was.

“N1200”
“Add 'Sir' while talking to me”
“Ok. N1200 Sir” The waiter responded with a half-smile. The price was steep but the whiff of the aroma suggested that it was worth it. That was the same aroma he could only salivate after whenever he trekked past the restaurant but was not able to savor. Now he is there, surrounded by big men and women who could afford to throw N1200 for a meal; an amount that could feed him for a week.

He would finish the meal without ceremony and then move around the tables for more marketing. The gospel should not only be preached from nation to nation but also from table to table. He was on a lucky streak right now and would wish to maximize the opportunities offered by fortune.

As he swallowed the first morsel of fufu, he brought out his phone with his left hand and dialed Shirley’s number.

THE CALLING (PART TWO)

  

"The Presence of a path does not necessarily mean the existence of a destination"

- Craig D. Lounsbrough.

Ogbunta began his church on a Monday, clad in his then-black-now-grey suit with his favorite red tie. He wore small, plastic-rimmed optician glasses because he felt that it gave him the air of quiet intelligence and sincerity, valuable commodities in the business.

He sat on a white plastic chair and positioned two others directly opposite him as he anticipated his first customers. He sang slow worship songs in loud voice to draw attention. It was a marketing move but for the first two days it was futile. People cast curious gazes at him but their curiosity did not draw them through the open door of his church.

On Thursday, he went fishing. Evangelism is the key. It is the way to capture his first few members. With his huge silver crucifix hung around his neck, and the heavy Bible cradled inside the crook of his arm, he set out in his badly scuffed black shoes with the soles badly scraped. He walked slowly, weighed down by the heavy Bible he slugged and the crucifix he carried across the neck. He sweated as he walked, like Christ on his way to Calvary.

He entered shops and markets and spoke to men and women about Christ. He received mixed receptions. some asked him to leave before he even had time to introduce himself while some listened distractedly their very demeanor telling him that they would rather be somewhere else.

One of the shop he entered had the lady there confusing him for a beggar and throwing a N200 note at him. He caught the note midway, opened his mouth to protest that he was not a beggar but stopped himself. He had not eaten since morning and it was already past afternoon. He would get himself something to eat. Probably something heavy, he still has a long day ahead of him. He had resolved to not come home without a member.

He bought two okpa and a bottle of Coca Cola in a kiosk by the corner of the Oze market. Before he entered for another round of aggressive evangelism. He was invigorated and was somewhat inspired. He would not preach again, he would use prophecy and revelations. There was a reason why the prophets had to come to prepare the way for Jesus Christ.

The next shop he entered had all the evidence of strife and poverty. The dusty shelves were scanty, and few and far between. Empty cartons of sold goods were strewn all over the floor while the ceiling fan played a slow beat of frustration and of hunger. There was the overarching sense of disorder that was evident in the scattered shelves of poorly arranged goods. The shop-owner was sitting in the center of the chaos, sleeping on a reclining wooden seat with his massive sweaty head thrown back over the seat. He sometimes fanned himself in spite of the fan that was beating a slow dance song and intermittently yawned, totally oblivious of Ogbunta whose tall frame was now crowding his doorway.

“You are a blessed man Sir.” He said, his deep voice startling the man from his nap.

The man opened his bloodshot eyes slowly, regarding Ogbunta with an undisguised hostility. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hands cleaning some saliva which he had drooled as he slept.

“Ehen…what do you want?” He approached slowly but Ogbunta held his ground. He was determined to make this sleepy man his first convert. He was not his kind of member. He was evidently poor as he could glean from the state of his shop. But he was still a good place to start. He would climb the ladder slowly but surely.

“They are attacking your destiny. They know that you were meant to be a very rich man but they do not want that.”

The man’s curiosity had been irked and his features changed from hostility to confused curiosity, his eyes asking the questions of identity that his mouth could not.

“You make sales per day but find it difficult to account for it.”

At this assertion, the man drew ever so closer until Ogbunta could almost feel the stale breath of alcohol emanating from the man’s mouth fanning his nostrils. Ogbunta saw a torn receipt on the floor. The header announced the man’s name as the Manager of the Mek-Richy Investments.

“Who are you?”
“I was directed to speak to you on your deliverance.” He smiled confidently and asked “Can I come in?”
“Sure Sir.” The man drew back from the door to allow Ogbunta easy entrance into the chaotic shop.
“The occultic men and women of this market have been doing so well for themselves with your very bright destiny. But God” He pointed to the heavens at the mention of God “Has heard your cry and has sent help from Zion.”

At that the man looked him over again, wondering if the help from Zion looks this bedraggled and unkempt. However, he seemed to resolve that help could easily come in the most unattractive of packages and proceeded to motion him towards a seat.

Ogbunta slumped into the seat with an undisguised relief. The moment was epochal, he was the first man to offer him a seat in his shop, others had merely listened to him with distractions, writing receipts, excusing him for a phone call or merely counting their goods in the shop.

The man ran out of his shop and for a moment before he returned with a cold bottle of coke, Ogbunta wondered if he had gone to call the police to arrest him.

“Pastor” He said handing him the cold bottle of coke before he drew a small wooden chair from behind him. “I knew that I have a very great destiny. All the prophets I have met have told me that same thing.”

“What I want to learn now is…” The wooden chair made a scrooping sound as he drew it closer to Ogbunta “…who has been the men and women that do not want me to drink water and drop the cup comfortably.”

“I will want you to take it calmly. The battle we fight is not against flesh and blood but against principalities and powers and wickedness in the highest places.”

Ogbunta watched the man whose name he had learnt through the receipts was Emeka as he nodded in agreement. The war will be fought in the spirit.

“I want us to pray together for 21 days. I will fast on your behalf for 7 days.” He fiddled the large silver crucifix unconsciously while his mind churned through the ranges of available prices he could give him.

His was a business, with declining fortunes and thus could probably spare some thousands. He could feed him for a week in the prayers if he maximized the opportunities.

“We can even start right now, Man of God.” The man said eagerly, he tapped his foot restively. On the floor as he spoke “I am already sick and tired of my luckless life and compromised destiny.”

At these words, Ogbunta invited him to his church the next day, told him to buy some fruits that they will use to end their prayer session.

They exchanged phone numbers and he mixed him some Chapters of Psalms. He understood the business, the more Psalms, the better. It was also best to ensure that the Psalms are long, promised divine vengeance and intervention.

“Please come along too with an offering that will pain you. It is a sacrifice.” When these words left his mouth, he cast his gaze upon the tired man, trying to detect some traces of rebellion in his tired bedraggled face. However, the man’s face retained its anxious equanimity, depicting his total conviction on the words of the Pastor.

He was not expecting deception and right then, Ogbunta was not sure that he was deceiving any other person but himself.

Friday was unusually depressing for the new pastor, on that day, the dry earth welcomed the first rain of the year. The clouds started gathering in the early hours of the morning and the cool wind from the seas caressed his sweaty skin, as he lay on the old mattress which he shared with cockroaches and bed bugs. The cool weather almost forced him to appreciate the imminent rain as his night was restless, uncomfortable and disrupted by so many nightmares. However, he was deeply pensive about his decrepit church structure that could give in against any sort of pressure. His thoughts gravitated between the much-needed rain and his shanty-like church. He was almost certain that the church would have been reduced to a rubble by the end of the rain. He feared that he may have to meet his first member on that pile of rubble. With this at the foremost of his mind, he had a restless sleep waking up severally in the night before the rain pummeled the roof in merciless torrents by the first light of the morning.

The rain was accompanied by a fierce gale similar to the fearful ones that had names, the ones he had sometimes watched on the television, destroying cities and leaving carnage in its wake. He could hear the gale, whatever it’s name, tearing rooftops off buildings, battering trees and banging wooden windows and doors to walls. Despite being kilometers away, he could almost swear that he could hear the old, weak aluminum roofing being shredded piece by piece by the fierce hands of that gale, he banished the image of his church reduced to rubble of alumina roof on top of woods, crowned by the cross he had constructed by weldering two metals to each other.

The image terrified him as much as his current squalor. It was the threat of a reversal to type, a return to status quo ante. The shanty church built by his hands, wetted with his sweat and his blood was symbolic. It stands like his life, shambolic and weak, threatening to collapse with every gale battering the weak fabrics of his life.

When he woke up in the morning, he did not pray; the worst must have happened to his church built with his bare knuckles. He had no reasons to pray to a God that had decided to release the greatest storm of his time to shatter his fledgling dream, his desperate grasp at survival. So he just rinsed his mouth with a satchet water, bathing would be superfluous for the morning. All he needed to do was to reach the site of his church and get to work. He could piece something together to form a shelter before Emeka arrives.

He wore his big crucifix and cradled his heavy bible in the crook of his arm.

He did not pray in his one room apartment but as soon as he emerged from his room, he broke into a song.

“What a mighty God we serve!” He crooned soulfully, straining his voice to achieve that difficult and nearly absent baritone. He saw the Landlord’s wife, Adara sweeping off pool of collected water from off the corridors of their two bedroom apartment. He sang louder and threw himself into tongues .

“Maki supre tandika kayama labuska seprelamande.” He said and with great quaking of his body, he strode with large strides and pace towards the exit of the compound, ignoring the greetings of Adara, The Landlord’s newest wife who also functions as his self-appointed lawyer and manager. In his thoughts Ogbunta called her Daughter of Eve. She has the penchant of asking for rents at the oddest of hours. Ogbunta does not think that it had to do with the fact that he runs away from home and returns at the oddest hours too. Like this morning, he was already leaving home at 6AM and will not return until it's past 10PM so as to ensure that The Daughter of Eve would have been sound asleep. However, Adara had adopted the strategy of that Eneke Nti Obama bird that has resolved to flying without perching since the hunter had learnt how to fire without aiming. So some nights, she would knock at his door at 11pm in the night clad in the sheerest of nightdresses, her hardened nipples showing through the silk robe, announcing boldly that she was wearing nothing underneath. Sometimes, Ogbunta would pretend that he did not hear her and other times, he opened his door and feasted his eyes on her almost naked body, often clad in sheer, see-through robes that she uses as nightwears. In such times, his head tells him that Adara had come to collect her six months overdue rent but his little member, his third leg argues otherwise, often standing erect to make his point.

That morning, she was dressed in a tight black yoga pants that showed her robust behind but wore a woolen grey sweater on top. Her hair was disheveled and her eyes darted about as she greeted. Acknowledging the greeting was dangerous thus, Ogbunta resorted to hurrying to the gate praying in tongues.

“Good morning oooo” She greeted rushing after him but Ogbunta hastened his steps even as he was engrossed in his deep prayers.
“I will be here when you come back, Ogbunta. Even if you come back by 13 O’Clock.” She shouted after him “I will be waiting in front of your house this evening. If you like be casting out demons then.”

He pretended not to hear her. He was very scared. He had only N200 on him and he still has to worry about his dilapidated church.

He prayed on as he strolled, in loud voices, He wanted people to see him praying devoutly, it would not hurt his emerging brand. He strolled through the street, head bent devoutly. He was hurting for his dilapidated building but anxiety and anger is not a good sign for a Man of God.

He strolled, sweaty and with his breath tainted with bad breath, he prayed on towards the church, but when he was within sight distance of the church, he witnessed a miracle. At the center of destruction, broken branches, torn roofs from better structures, fallen kiosks and destroyed uncompleted buildings stood his shambolic church, standing, barely scratched by the terrifying storm that had ripped through the night. The improvised cross still stood proud atop the structure.

It was 7:30am when, Emeka’s call came in.

Why was he calling him this early?

“Man of God…” He was excited; possibly by the prospects of his impending deliverance from the forces of deliverance that has been plaguing him.
“Emeka…how are you?” His heart leapt when he heard him call him ‘Man of God’.
“I am fine Pastor.” He said.
“I am on my way to your church.”
“Ok…hope you have not eaten today?” He told him, still stupefied by what he had seen.
“No Sir.” His voice broke probably due to network “ have fasting.”
“Okay…come to the Oguegbu Junction and call me.” I will come to pick you.

Emeka ended the call.

He hurriedly left the premises and started towards a kiosk. He needed some menthol sweets. He cannot afford halitosis while praying for his first customer. He can buy some from the N200 he had on him.

When the next call came, he was already at the junction.

Emeka was looking better than he had looked when he saw him the last time. He was fresher and the frustration he had seen earlier had disappeared. He looked fresher and was wearing a long-sleeved black shirt and a faded blue tapered jeans. He broke into a smile when he saw him.

“Pastor, you can't believe what had just happened yesterday.”

“What?” His heart skipped a beat. Has he been found out already?
“I have a testimony.”
“A testimony already?” He broke out incredulous. He was expecting to be lucky in the near future but hitting the target with his first throw is unbelievable. Is this a sign that he was going to become a millionaire faster than he had imagined.
“Yes ooo.”
“Praise The Lord.” He said and added “Please share this to the glory of God.”

Emeka excitedly told the tale of how after he had prayed with the Psalms, he slept and dreamt where Pastor was pulling him out of a quagmire riddled with insects and snakes. The next morning, he woke up to the news that one of his fetish uncle had died in the night as a result of a snake bite.

According to him, the Man had been dragging his father’s land with him and his death has settled the case which he, Emeka had tabled before the kindred.

“Please Sir…I am traveling to the Village from here and will ask for your prayers and spiritual permission to travel.”

“Okay…May God keep you safe for when they moved from nations to nations and from one kingdom to another, he suffered no man to do you wrong, he rebuked the princes for your sake saying touch not my anointed and do my prophet no harm.”

“Please Man of God…accept this token as sacrifice.”
“Please…no. Emeka.” He began to reject the outstretched envelope unconvincingly.
He handed him an envelope and hurried away.

He opened the envelope and counted six pieces of one thousand naira notes.

Without understanding fully what had transpired, he fell on his knees at the junction and burst out into tears. That was the biggest money he had received in six months. His sick mother in the village would need it. He would need it for a proper meal. He had not had any in three months.

As tears flowed freely, his next prayers of gratitude were clear, distinct and was sincere.

THE CALLING. (PART ONE)

“God did not direct His call to Isaiah – Isaiah overheard God saying “Who will go for us.”

Oswald Chambers – My Utmost for His Highest.

It was the worst of times and it was the abysmal of the abyss. It was the depth of squalid trenches and the darkness of a closed lightless tunnels. It was in those times when women locked their pot of soup with heavy padlocks in fear of rabidly hungry neighbors. It was those times when a bag of rice cost an arm and a leg and unemployed youths trudged about in the streets with disappointed features cradling dry looking files in the crook of their arms and armpits looking for non-existent jobs in organizations that were discarding staff like it was going out of fashion and owing their employees like it is the trend not just dictated by the times but enforced by it. One either worked or left to be replaced by him who would work without pay or who would be able to count his abstract remuneration in his dreams and possibly get one of the malignant spirits that prowl through the nightmares of men and women serving delicacies and offering other delectable afterwards to serve him three square meals.

It was in those times when one would pack a barrow full of naira notes just so he could buy a loaf of bread. It was in these sorts of times when the igbo folk tale will most certainly tell you that the tortoise would be up to some sort of mischief whether he was naming himself “All of you” when invited to a heavenly feast or he was feigning fantastic tales of a dancing tree to scare men and women off the markets so as to grab himself enough foodstuffs and condiments to sustain his wife and his family.

The igbo wielding entrenched wisdom have already through time and folk tales established that it would take great cunning and craft to survive these times and Ogbunta considers himself a true Igbo man, a son of the soil that starts every prayer with libations of kola and gin thrown to the ground with strong prayers to the ancestors below and the gods above to answer wishes of long life and prosperity and sometimes merciless vengeance meted out to enemies who he may not know. He may not even eat before he had thrown some lumps of fufu or some spoonfuls to the ground to feed his ancestors. But that was before the recession when one can afford to throw food underfoot to people that may not even be there.

In these times, he felt that they should pay him back for all his faithfulness he has shown through the years of plenty, when people needed to simply trek on the road to pick some money from off the ground, or climbed trees to pluck them. But in these times of recession, the gods and the ancestors may have taken a recess. Definitely, their jobs may have gotten a lot more difficult as men and women fall down in prayers triggered by hunger and hardship occasions by unpaid salaries, economic strangulation, unemployment and rising inflation. He could sometimes imagine the gods sleeping upon a mountain of prayers, too tired and worn out by a litany of requests each one more insistent than the other one and all insistent, threatening suicide, disloyalty and sometimes attempting a blackmail.

Ogbunta knew that survival is hinged on being as crafty as the tortoise  and as flexible as a yoga practitioner, that is why he chose the easiest job available in the market but the job has a very good return. It is the job of intermediating between God and the increasingly desperate Man. It is the job of telling people what they want to hear, telling them anything but the truth. It is the job of assuming knowledge on behalf of the increasingly ignorant men who won't take responsibility even when it falls into the palms of their hands.

At the height of his hunger and desperation,  Ogbunta decided that he was going to become that intermediary men sought to relate their endless requests to the unreachable beings above. He firstly thought about being a native doctor. He could dress the part and knew enough  igbo proverbs and some more Ogene songs and that helped add the much-needed mysticism to the running scam. He also knew some thoroughly bitter herbal concoctions with questionable efficacy that he would give people  to cure their wide range of ailments which he would always tell them was spiritual.

He had the withered looks of a native Doctor, hunger made sure of that. His forehead was permanently furrowed probably through habitual worrying about hunger and family engagements. His cheeks seemed to have been sucked into his mouth with a suction pipe. He had a brown teeth which  was a little too large. It could be scary when fully bared, thus whenever he grins, he was told that he looked like grinning tiger who was amused by its prey. His eyes are red-shot often, as a result of his arduous hours spent in the dusty Oze market carrying loads which are never his for some small charge. Those eyes, considered fiery whenever he was angry could be to his advantage, the mastery of this game would be hinged on his ability to maintain eye contact with his clients and customers, choosing carefully the time to feign disapproval, anger or disgust especially when the usually gullible customers stumbles upon some sliver of wisdom. Shouting often worked, often as much as as muttering unintelligible gibberish which sounded as sane to him as it does to the startled customers.

Having resolved to market God as a commodity, he had to choose between being a native Doctor and a ‘Man of God’. Those men never go hungry, he thought wisely. However, he was convinced that Men of God did better than their native counterparts.

There are at least two offertory sessions that guaranteed a hearty three square meals, one could easily get a car if he was aggressive enough. There was a little work involved. Ogbunta knew there was also a bit of work involved. Being a spiritual con artist is hard work, especially in these recession times when even the most ardent believers are using their supposed tithes to feed their families and save up food for the rainy day because the storms have been gathering since the previous year when an unpopular government lost power to an even more unpopular one. It was not long before Banks started firing their staffs, foreign direct investments started disappearing like smoke and soon, the Construction Company where he worked as a labourer, the company that had been owing him for three months of work, declared bankruptcy and left him penniless and almost hopeless.

He started dreading his sick mother’s calls. Her drugs are often too costly for his bare pockets. Of course, he always had the intention to return her calls but calling her sick mother in the village to tender an empty sorry devoid of monetary backing insulted him.

He had plans to start calling her frequently. Men of God rarely ever get broke or run out of money. People will always have testimonies and would credit these to the last Man of God they spoke to. Furthermore, there are more Christians than they were traditionalists which was considered fetishist from the onset of colonialism. Ogbunta considered his margin of error too large. It's a numbers game and he fancied himself lucky. The law of the average was with him. The sea is large enough that he is fairly sure that he would catch something. He was going fishing with a net and not a hook.

But his sort of fishing had its sort of tools, so he went to the market and with the last money he had on him, he bought the biggest Bible he could find in the bookstore. He had entered there with a specific requirement that the book seller give him the Bible that he could not carry. However, he settled for one that he could scarcely carry without some level of discomfort. Carrying that Bible was exerting and would easily substitute for a strenuous workout. However, that was what he wanted and that was what he got. He also got the biggest silver crucifix with the biggest rope he could find and tied it around his neck. The crucifix was made of heavy metal and forced him to bend his neck often times under its sheer weight. His marks would consider that an act of perpetual prayer and not a physiological imperative occasioned by the humongous weight he suspended around his neck. The imperatives of the 21st century Christianity favored big over small, loudness over subtlety and any ‘Man of God’ that failed to appreciate this would end up very hungry and frustrated. Prayers are required to be long and sweaty while incorporating as many tongues as one knew, the more indecipherable, the better. The argument is biblical, since the time of John The Baptist, the Kingdom of God went somewhere and suffered violence and now belongs to the violent and the loud.

Ogbunta started reading the scriptures but cannot wait to digest it fully. He could learn on the job and thus he started buying videos of preaching of the successful Men of God who had private jets, convoys and wore impeccable designer suits. The preached the things he liked. They spoke about how blessings and grace is tied to faithful tithing. They preached of ‘Abrahamic Blessings’ that grew from his faithful tithing practice. They spoke of full measures that would be pressed down, that will be shaken together and that would be spilling over which would be handed to those who were generous. God loves a cheerful giver was cliché. They rarely spoke about the poor, about the schools they built from the sweat of the poor which the poor could not even afford, they forgot to mention that even the houses raised through the mite of the poor would be used to accommodate the rich, leaving the poor as they were, homeless, hopeless and disillusioned. These preachers that Ogbunta adored had private jets in a church where some of the members could barely afford to eat.

Ogbunta had to learn first, the response he would give to anyone who would dare point out that there was a lot he could still do with that money he would use to buy his dream car, a Mercedes G-Wagon.

“Christ had died poor so that we would all become rich.”

Let no one tell him that Christ had also told the rich man to sell off all he had and follow him and that whoever placed his hand on the axe and looks back is not worthy of the kingdom for he would not know how to respond to that.

When he was ready to deploy his skills, he had nothing to start with. There was no naira to his name so he got one landowner and made a deal with him. He would stay in the land and doing his business there while he garners the needed resources to start developing the land. The land was located in an area where an empty plot of land could be sold to seventy-seven people by someone who do not even know the owner.

Thus, the arrangement was mutually beneficial to both parties. He becomes the caretaker of the plot of land for the landlord.

He built his church by his own hands, literally; from bits and pieces of wood he was gathered while he cleared that plot of land, he roofed it with old corrugated roofing sheets. However, when he was done, he worried about the rain and the gale that could easily compromise the shambolic structure.

However, the Lord that called him was with him and no rain fell for months as it was during the dry season. He wrote the name of the Church there with white chalk with upon the brown wood “HolyGhost Opreshion Intanashonal Church.” He loved the sound of international despite his wooden shambles being the only one in Oze and in the whole world. There was nothing wrong with big dreams. Great things starts small. Jesus Christ did feed 5000 people with just five loaves and two fishes.

He has designs of going international. He will grow in the business, organize as many crusades as he can and do a minimum of twenty prophecies in a day.  He cannot be all wrong with twenty especially if he can be perceptive and sensitive to the needs of the congregation. Thus, there is no need prophesying to an unemployed youth that he will be getting married soon when he is even finding it difficult to get a three-square meal per day. A beautiful spinster would definitely have suitors and the not-so-beautiful ones will always think that do, so for the young ladies, prophecies of an impending, imminent marriage is a very safe bet, however, he cannot guarantee a happy one. Since sickness and death is a part of human existence, it is only wise to prophesy to the sick that they would be well if they do not die. They cannot be anything else.

So he resolved to start with these core branches of prophecies that addressed the needs and fantasies of people.

Would the people know any better?

He was sure that they will not. There are a lot of men who have gotten away with it.

RETURN TO INNOCENCE.

“All that is gold does not glitter,

Not all those who wander are lost;

The old that is strong does not wither,

Deep roots are not reached by the frost.”

JRR TOLKIEN in ‘The Fellowship of the Ring.’

I lost my innocence quite early.

I lost my innocence at eight when I was in Primary Three and was the Head Pupil, popularly called a Monitor. The Monitor is an arbitrary role given to that student that does some of the teacher’s job and earns none of her salary. The Monitor is a beloved of the teacher, rarely flogged nor reprimanded by a Teacher who considers him ahead of his peers. That was how it was between me and Mrs. Menkiti until that particular day that came to redefine guilt for me and became an early precursor of the warped nature of the society; a society where guilt is subject to hash-assembled evidences that are as untrustworthy as the Serpent in the Garden of Eden.

Beloved of the teacher, I was the only pupil that was permitted to sit on the teacher’s desk and earns a portion of the food from her flask. It was more than Teacher-Pupil relationship, she was like a mother and adored me even as much as my mother, sometimes, through the distorted spectrum of my childhood, I considered her much more loving than my mother. Thus, I woke up on weekdays excited, while other pupils my age cry and dread waking up on Monday mornings. I wake up on Mondays with a song, leaving my first mother for the next and while my biological mother packs my lunch in my knapsack and tuck my red and white checked shirts into my khaki shorts and sermonize on various ways to keep neat and ensure that my school uniforms were not shredded before I come home, I count the minutes ticking away at the grandfather clock that was hung just above the television in the sitting room. As soon as she loosens her grasp, I break away with pace towards my second mother, with a song which is usually a recitation of the school rhymes that she had taught during morning assemblies or march past or a comprehension from Edet who lives in Calabar and was twelve years old.

I end my run inside her arms which she widens as she does her cheeks when she sees me running towards her from a distance, my knapsack dangling from side to side while my flask is clutched tightly in my right hand. After the hug, she pushes me back slightly and looks me over. Sometimes she finds crumbs of bread or scrambled eggs by the sides of my mouth, or some dusts in my hair or something she considered unwanted on my well-pressed shirt and creased short. I will be by her side while she conducts the assembly and as far as she is concerned, I could do no wrong. The few instances when I came late, she would simply walk out of the classroom, abandoning whichever task she was doing then to bail me out.

“Aunty…I need him to go and buy me something.” She would say to whomever was the disciplinarian for the day. The Disciplinarian would merely frown and leave Mrs. Menkiti whose nickname was ‘The Boss’ for her plus-size frame and her commanding presence and tone; to take me away from the group of kneeling pupils who may not stand up and enter their class until their skin had tasted the sharp end of a cane or they had done some sort of labour.

I was so loved by Mrs Menkiti that she and every other person in the school called me her son and I in turn called her ‘Mummy’.

But then like every other epochal tragedy, Love would play a part.

I had a girl I had my eyes on even then Ujuaku.

Ujuaku was the dream then. She was beautiful and fair, the colour of ripe mango. Her face was oval, shaped like an egg. She also came with the full complements of a gap tooth that increased the wattage of her smile from brilliant when its hidden to dazzling when it is fully deployed, to the perils of my nascent heart. Her uniqueness was further accentuated by her slightly bowed legs that no other girl could manage to pull off. Other girls like Urenna tried to but what they only got was a queer gait and a funny nickname that mocked their legs which the fellow pupils agreed was merely shaped like an ‘O’. So they were called ‘Ukwu O’. But what impressed me most about Ujuaku was her quiet brilliance. In a class of thirty-eight students, she gave me a run for my money and often came perilously second, too close for comfort as I had believed then that my very identity hinged on my intellectual prowess; that was why I was loved by Aunty Menkiti, that is why Ekpo Monday, the oldest, tallest boy in the class and the self-designated class bully did not beat me up, that is why Afam bought me Agidi Jellof and Okpa after school hours, that was what made my mother to love me; losing that would come very close to losing my life.

She was so good that Aunty Menkiti allowed only the both of us to grade the papers of the rest of the pupils and only her, herself would grade ours. She edged me in Mathematics but I recovered often to put clear daylight between the both of us in General Papers and English.

I also love it when Aunty called us husband and wife often to the uproarious laughter of the rest of the class. Ujuaku would smile shyly in that beautiful way that often sent my young heart racing or hide her face in one of the story books she carried or bend under her desk while I would often act furious, pretentiously, feigning anger that was only skin deep. Aunty Menkiti knows that I was pretending for she goads me in those moments of feigned anger.

“Why are you pretending that you don’t like her?” I would look away whenever she delves into that line of conversation. Conceding that I like her is inappropriate for two reasons; firstly I was only but a pupil whose only encounter with amorousness was through foreing Hollywood movies where hunky handsome actors with long hairs protected outrageously beautiful ladies with even longer hairs; or indian, Bollywood movies where as a matter of rule, a boy must meet a girl, fall in love and surmount long odds to win her love through long songs in assorted sceneries, wearing assorted colorful clothes; or Nigerian movies where love is encapsulated in giving until one is broke and seemed to be recommended for a rich girl to be enamoured by a poor boy and vice versa. My parents tried their hardest to stop me from seeing such ‘corruption’ but their efforts were mostly futile as I would often slink away from home to peer through window curtains at a neighbour’s television and often witness even worse scenes as the neighbours were grown-ups who watched more corrupt movies than the ones the shielded me from through endless and emergent tasks.

Secondly, denying that I do not like her is inappropriate because it is tantamount to deception, the sort of convoluted deception that only the tortoise of the Igbo folktales would attempt and often pull off.

There was Ujuaku and her beauty and then there was Agude, the beast. He was a beast in every sense of the word. He was as tall as the oldest Ekpo and was twice as mean. His litany of crimes included theft, bullying, harassment of girls; with me, he added blackmail to the list.

He told me he loved Ujuaku; warned me off all sorts of contacts with her.

“I like Ujuaku so run away from her.” He said.

I pretended that I had not heard.

The day after that initial warning, I came in after the afternoon recreation to discover that my lunch of beans and vegetables had been thrown away, poured all over the class to the chagrin of all even Aunty Menkiti herself. She was furious and invited the culprit to own up so as to receive a softer punishment. According to her, someone had seen the culprit carrying the food from my knapsack and had given her the identity of the villain, however, she wants the person to stand up himself or herself. Her gaze was steely and a deathly silence had covered the class uncomfortably like a wet blanket. Pupils, including myself anticipated with palpable dread, the unleashing of The Boss who once flogged the entire school because of noisemaking. Yet no one stood up. Pupils futilely looked back, front and around, expecting the culprit who would also act as the unfortunate scapegoat to volunteer like the sacrificial lamb

After some minutes, Aunty Menkiti flogged the entire class sparing just me and Ujuaku.

Then came the palaver.

“I told you that I don’t want to be seeing you and that girl?” Agude fumed at me later one Thursday. His grouch is that we seem to enjoy each other’s company and would often take the long, leisurely trek home from school together, luxuriating in each other’s company while holding hands and generally gossiping about our classmates. In fact, we rarely left school without each other as I would often wait, as often as she would for me whenever she was yet to complete her notes or finish her assignment while we were in school.

Those long walks home, holding hands and looking at her slightly bowed legs were the epitome of our affection. In our hearts, certainly in mine, I wondered if we were permitted to do more, if we can do more. I wonder if I could allow my lips to touch hers like I often saw in the movies. At those times, she bought me ‘choco milo’ and biscuits with the money Agude gave her while I sometimes surprise her with a wristband, a small watch or sunglasses which are gifts I got from home.

 During those walks, we were rarely alone. Agude trailed us from a distance, his tall frame looming threateningly, his presence was an implicit warning which I had refused to heed until he came clean and direct that Thursday.

“Why do you want me to leave her?”

“Because I like her.” He responded fiercely, his tattered uniforms, torn at the seams, popped open at the chest owing to damaged front buttons to reveal a threatening, sweaty dark chest that seemed to have taken a life of its own. He was at least five years older than my eight and at least twice as tall as I am. His words spoken in a gruff bass barely threatened as much as his massive frame. He looked like a tense tiger ready to pounce and tear me to shreds.

“I…Li..like her too” I muttered weakly, somehow accepting deep within me that I cannot fight him. Dying for love even then was romantic but I was already as the best student in class, cognizant of the reality that if I was ever maimed for being recalcitrant, I was only going to get a sorry while Ujuaku concedes to Agude.

“You still want your teeth abi?” He came closer to me, looming over me by two meters.

I told him that I still love my teeth the way they are and he left.

That Thursday was the formal birth of our conflict. The conflict that would claim my innocence.

I reported our exchange to our teacher, Aunty Menkiti and she flipped, shouted herself hoarse at Agude and lastly administered the twelve strokes of cane she had always threatened but had never used. To my utter dread, Agude took all of those strokes with a frightening equanimity and with his gaze directed fiercely at me. Vengeance was evident in those looks because he shot daggers that pierced my morale through it.

However, he did not talk to me for the next two weeks but he was always uncomfortably near whenever I was with Ujuaku. She clinged closer to me during those times and I often wondered even then if she was trying to offer me some sort of moral support or consciously trying to compound my woes. She relocated from her seat and came to seat immediately next to mine. Mrs. Menkiti asked Ekpo to leave that seat for her that we were going to get married soon. Ujuaku did her happy-shy routine while I wished that the ground would open and swallow me whole because from behind me, I could feel Agude’s gaze behind me.

If looks could kill, I thought.

Then came the time when the looks killed me.

It was after recreation on a Monday afternoon when one boy, Ifeanyi Onyia, an albino declared that he was looking for his flask of food. It was theft and that was the top of Aunty Menkiti’s Capital Sins list. Whoever was guilty of theft would be stripped to his underpants and paraded before the class. She has zero-tolerance for theft and would say as much to anyone who cared to listen.

She told me about the theft before she spoke to the class and I was already feeling sorry for the unfortunate soul that would be guilty of that heinous crime.

“A terrible sin has been committed.” She boomed with a loud voice, her voice reverberating off the walls of the class.

“A sin this huge has never been committed in my class and I have detailed the monitor, Uche.” She said pointing at me “…To ensure that anybody leaves the class”

“Everybody should bring his or her bag to the front.” I moved to bring my bag to the front but the Teacher stopped me with a wave.

“Stay at that door.” She said with a tone of finality. She was not interested in searching her favorite pupil.

Pupils piled their bags in a random heap while Ifeanyi Onyia stood in front of the heap like a priest before a sacrifice. I stood beside the door ensuring that no one ran away.  Not that anyone would dare try that in The Boss’s class.

The search started and one after the other, pupils identified their bags and had the contents spilled haphazardly all over the floor by a visibly angry Aunty Menkiti, leaving the contents strewn all over the place to be picked by the confused pupil. I was half-anticipating the flask to be found in Agude’s bag but nothing was found.

Aunty Menkiti was chagrined at the end of the search and was already preparing to extend the search to include other classes when Agude suggested that the monitor’s knapsack be searched too.

Then the gazes fell on me. Aunty Menkiti scoffed in disbelief but proceeded ceremonially like a priest performing an altar rite to my knapsack placed on my seat. Her jaws dropped in disbelief when she opened the bag and reluctantly, she lifted the yellow flask like it was the heaviest object she had ever carried.

The entire class shouted and almost immediately, Ujuaku shifted unconsciously away from me. The rest of the school started rushing into our class as the pupils chanted ‘thief’ ‘thief’. Dazed, I was transfixed and for the first time in my life, I felt strength leaving my body. I could not talk. I was finding it difficult understanding what had happened.

I could feel the pain in Aunty Menkiti’s eyes as she came to the conclusion that I had actually stolen a flask I had not even seen for the first time until then. My classmates drew back from me. Ujuaku ran to her seat crying, but close to me, Agude’s hand clamped firm on mine, ensuring that I did not escape.

In my daze, I could feel them stripping me down to my underpants.

I could hear some excited singing.

Then I could feel lumps of paper, books, pen, pencils and broken pieces of chalk hitting me from all sides.

The teacher made a declaration promoting Agude to the position of the prefect and asked each of the students to flog me once for the pains I had put them through. I cried till I almost bled through the eyes. Ujuaku was too distressed to stand and lash out at me but she never spoke to me after that.

No one gave me the chance to explain that I had not stolen the food. The evidence suggested otherwise.

After that incident, I was called a thief by all the student and Aunty Menkiti looked for every reason to flog me or mete out any other sort of punishment to me and she often found some.

School became hell and I was moved from the front row to the back, where the deviants and students with the poor grades sat. My Parents were the only ones that believed that I had not stolen the food, citing my massive distaste of yam porridge.

My mother stated further that they had done proper investigations before she got married to my father and was 100% sure that nobody in their immediate lineage was a thief.

“The apple does not fall very far from a tree.”

For the remainder of the term I was alone. No one spoke to me but I still ended the term top of the class.

“It’s such a shame that with such a good brain you became a thief.” Aunty Menkiti said to me as she handed over my result to me.

I had turned to leave when I had her say that “I would make a good politician.”

The next term, I transferred to another school, sealing my guilt in the eyes of my other former classmates and lover.

Fifteen years later, I ran into Agude. He is doing quite well for himself as he was the head of the motor park touts. He told me that he had confessed after I had left and that Aunty Menkiti had been looking for me all over the schools then. I asked him how it worked out with Ujuaku.

“The girl is now married with two kids. You see how stupid we were then?” He asked rhetorically. I wanted to tell him that he was the only stupid person then but I reconsidered because it was not an entirely wise decision to insult the Tout Chief in a Motor Park.

“She asked of you a few times then.”

It was ironical. I had thought about killing myself then, as young as I was.

But the episode taught me something the. I learnt then that not all who are accused are guilty. That not all who wander are lost and that people should be considered innocent until they are proven guilty beyond reasonable doubt.

Not the situation that obtains in Nigeria where upon discovery of an amount, an entire nation will queue with stones ready to pummel anyone without questions and process which has resulted to the prisons holding more innocent people than the guilty.