I stared at my posting letter, satisfied to be posted to faraway Benue State, to a local government that is a farm settlement; Ukum. There I met Kwaseshough, a young dark-skinned girl. I often visit her house, pretending to be visiting her brothers who were my pupils. Kwaseshough makes food, makes clothes and makes hair. She pounds yam and pounds palm kernel with her baby brother firmly strapped at her back and her kid sister who has a constant running nose, at her feet. Sometimes her kid sister reminds me of an art work I once admired in Ben Enwonwu’s exhibition, of a skinny young woman, breastfeeding an obviously hungry looking child from underneath a heavily knotted wrapper, with another strapped behind her, trying tirelessly to grab a view of the milk loaded breasts, and yet another at her feet, a little bit past the age of breastfeeding and staring not at the breasts but through and beyond the breasts, into the skies with sunken and tear brimmed eyes, and eye balls that report sunkenly from their sockets, ribs threatening to shoot out through her skinny skin. Now it is that child that caught my attention the most. As I sit now staring at this little girl who is staring at the heavens, probably daring them to throw down food or just throwing up myriads of wishes which the heavens may or may not have refused to honour, I remember the one in the still world of Enwonwu’s art, teary-eyed, begging the heavens to rewrite her family plot.
I think of Kwaseshough, who has learnt to be a hero and conquer the world at a tender age, caring for her bedridden mother, caring for the growing battalions her father left behind, nursing her private dreams while looking forward to the day when her father will walk through the door and change their world forever. Her zest for life and a future she can neither define nor describe touches the sour core of my humanity. I wish I can take her to a place where she can learn to live again as a young girl, not as a woman fighting middle age crisis in a crude way. I advised her to stop strapping the baby behind her and allowing her virgin breasts to be depressed, paying a price that is not hers.
I invited Kwaseshough to a sex education seminar organised by corps members. And as the seminar progressed, she grew stiff and sweaty. And when it was time for questions and answers, she sprang up from her seat and sped off. I hurried after her, calling her all the sweet names my failing strength could muster for she ran with the energy of a deer. I panted and gasped for breath. Soon the clouds began to twist and turn like a pregnant woman whose water is about to break. I felt the need to stop the wild chase but my ever demanding ego wanted to prove a point. She ran, deeper and deeper into the forests. The cloud began to release his pre-seminals, slowly wetting and loosening up the cuticles of the hard earth. Soon it began to release copiously in torrents, beating up clouds of dust like an angry man with pent-up passions. The last I saw of Kwaseshough was of her rich brown hair, tussled and dripping behind the nape of her neck, and of her body, wet and transparent beneath her organdy drapes. Balls of perspiration mixed with rain balls and made me thoroughly wet and humble. As the last ounce of my ego left me, my weak sinews gave the earth a big bow. My fragile body crumpled up on the humus earth. I thought of Kwaseshough’s back view, how magnificent and mesmerising it was as her whole body jiggled to the rhythm of her running legs.
I laid there, numb and drained of strength. This is worse than the forceful drills I received at the camp. Seconds turned into long minutes and I heard spattering steps drawing closer to my direction. Excitement rushed into my being and enlivened me. I tried to prop up myself, but my legs became seized by a muscle pull. I screamed and frightening was the loud noise that escaped my throat.
“If I die in this jungle, who will gladly tell my story? The story of an only son, who discouraged his parents from legging his posting to the big cities and chose to serve in a farm settlement but died in the bush while chasing a village girl he had fallen in love with. What sort of epitaph will be written on my marble vault?” I thought aloud.
The thought of death further scared the living daylight out of me.
Suddenly, someone tugged at my crested vest, yanking them off. All the cold in the world rushed into my wind pipe, leaving my pores swollen with goose pumps. I felt crickets in my belly as Kwaseshough unzipped my trousers. My upper and lower teeth engaged in an inharmonious counter rhythm of clatter…bang…clatter…bang. Just then her naked beautiful skin shone in the dimness of the rain forests and I realised how much I wanted her to carry on with this surprising adventure. Her touch banished my initial thoughts of death, and grave was the liveliness that possessed me as we both engaged in the dance of life. All the forces of nature were attuned to the rhythm of our moving waists and hips. Images of grains grinding into granules in the grinding mill played out in my head. The passion she offered was so furious and embalming. Sounds of gushing water in the nearby stream, the chirping of crickets, the croaking of frogs, the whispering of pines, the swaying of branches, the sounds of animals from a nearby poultry in the bush, the music of the rains as they dug repeatedly into the earth, all things human and natural came alive to form one solid repeated rhythm. Seconds turned into long minutes and probably into hours. She launched me into a timeless zone. Passion edifies the soul while defying time, space and status. With this dance came copious secretion of adrenaline. So beautiful was this music that even the sick and the weak will dance it and hanker for more.
We both moaned and squirmed until we had our hearts fill and the story came to its climax. Suddenly I realised how naked we both were. Until that day, I have never been naked before a woman since I learnt to take my birth. She is my first and I received all the gifts of her passion. She kissed me repeatedly from hair to head, head to toe and toe to neck and rested there. She stared into my eyes for long seconds and whispered some strange words into my tingling ears thus;
“Msough dedoo; I love you”
“Boki wam ushima shima; My best friend”
“Shior yam ihir hir; My first love”
I felt awkward, not responding to her mystical chants. I decided to use some very logical gap fillers. Our love is without language and today, without barriers. We may not hear each other, but our hearts will hear and understand. She continued.
“Me kera nenge awe yange miom chiem av; I shall never see you again”
To that I replied, “I love you too”
“Ulu ke mnyam chiem av kpem; You will forever live in my dreams”
“Saa shie gen udoo shima wam; Farewell my love”
Her last sentence sounded very emphatic, almost like goodbye. So I thought of a long reply for I wasn’t done with her yet.
“The feeling is mutual. I feel like we should live here forever…” I buzzed on while she started moving away, gradually loosening her grip from my shoulders, her lips away from my ears and her face away from my neck, in the most unwilling manner. She gathered her wet clothes and gave me a long stare, this time she looked angry as tears mixed with rain balls and trickled down her fleshy cheeks. She walked away, still naked, her wet cloths sweeping the grounds, head high, shoulders square and without looking back. The sky equally seized his drops, leaving the earth wet, fertile and loosened up. As I turned, my eyes met the green inscriptions and the emblem on my white crested vest;
NYSC
NATIONAL YOUTH SERVICE CORPS
SERVICE AND HUMILITY
I stared at the emblem for a long while: the national flag, hoisted against the middle white background of the national map. And behind the map is a black lighter bearing red fires. Suddenly I remembered that I am supposed to be in the middle of a sex education seminar for early teenagers and young adults. I am supposed to be a touch bearer, a light in the heart of the darkest darkness but here I am. All the guilt and shame in the world descended on my fragile conscience and remained there. How could I have done this with a minor? Suddenly, I remembered that she was in charge of the just concluded exercise and between us, I am the first timer. This thought lightened but did not clear my guilt as I hurriedly dressed and rushed off to the venue. For weeks, Kwaseshough avoided me.
I became friends with a corps member, who is a native of Benue and understands Tiv language. He told me he had lived all his life in Abeokuta. He speaks the Yoruba language fluently. I grew up in Lagos and chews the Yoruba language like the Megida crunches his bitter kola. So we crunched on, code mixing and code switching as I told him all about Kwaseshough and how I long to see her. He arranged to come with me to her house. We set forth at twilight, when all the children are by the fire place, telling twilight tales with their mothers.
We moved from door step to door step like celebrities, greeting endlessly and receiving praises that only Aondodoo, my tour guard could understand. My pupils ran after me, with oily hands and running noses, leaving their dinners of Gbachee and Ibieer, and their mother’s voices behind. We suddenly became like the British overlords but unlike the British, we came with our uniforms, our brains and our dreams. As we marched into the heart of Ukum, we were seen and treated like gods. Aondodoo is Zeus, while I am Hermes, his messenger. He responded to all their greetings, waving his national hands in the air, while I walked behind, nodding without speech, mind occupied by thoughts of Kwaseshough. If this were the colonial era, I would probably be the altar boy, standing behind a Reverend or an African guard, standing behind a white district head. We entered Kwaseshough’s father’s compound, a dead end as it marked the end of Ukum—no further foot paths led away from their compound. There is a long stretching cassava, yam and coco-yam barn that demarcates the building from the endless bush behind it, forming a fence of sorts. This is the season of harvest and Benue, the food basket of the nation, harvests in tons.
We saw an old woman feeding Kwaseshough’s brothers and licking all five fingers, one after the other. They were having Dafa; boiled guinea corn, a bit bigger than millet, red in colour, and tastes like rice and eaten with sauce. I swallowed hard, in a strong effort not to vomit the strands of noodles I had earlier, as she licks up even the mucus from the running noses of the children she was feeding, while licking up the particles on her fingers. Aondodoo greets the old woman with shriveled lips. She responded casually as though we were invisible. She dampened all the glamour of our triumphant entry. She was asked of Kwaseshough, and she points to a double faced hut, very close to the fencing barn.
On getting to the door, I tried to knock but Aondodoo stopped me and gently pushed the door open. Our eyes met with that of Kwaseshough’s bedridden mother. We moved on to the next door which is slightly open. My eyes met with that of Kwaseshough, legs astride with a slightly old and skinny looking man, riding away between her legs. She kept staring at the door, with tears in her eyes and the man’s back to the door. I rushed to pick a rock somewhere in the empty compound but Aondodoo held me.
“Leave me, let me stone that thief” I cried in a muffled voice.
“No, he should stone you for sleeping with his wife. I saw this coming” uttered Aondodoo.
I lay on the floor close to the door, hearing her painful but muffled groans which are worlds apart from the sounds she emitted the last time we danced. I sobbed even harder. Aondodoo spoke for awhile with the unwary octogenarian, feeding the boys. As we walked back to the corps members’ lodge, our sorry figures walked silently past the natives who were deeply consumed in their moonlight lives and hardly noticed our forlorn figures. No greetings, no echoes of “Mwuese; I am grateful” for us, the bringers of light, the national champs. I stared at them with all the bile in the world.
“Dude, get a grip. That old woman feeding the boys is Kwaseshough’s mother. The woman lying ill on the bed is her co-wife. She married her for her husband. She takes care of her and bears children for her husband. The man on her hips, is her husband; the very one that has been in the city. He returned days ago. The children being fed are Kwaseshough’s children. You, my guy, are the stranger who must round off his National Service and go home. Again, I think she would have told you about herself but for the language barrier thing.”
Aondodoo angered me more by speaking so casual. He sang and hummed his native tune which began to pall on me until I dozed off. In the morning, I woke up with a severe head bang and fever. For the first time, the boys complained that I snored noisily all through the night. But why won’t I snore? I guess I must have had a very heated quarrel with that woman snatcher. I must have rained curses on him in my dreams. I was held back earlier from stoning that lanky old man who descended three generations lower, to marry a girl, old enough to be his granddaughter.
Three years after losing Kwaseshough, I ran into Aondodoo. And he confirmed my fears.
“Kwaseshough has a very light-skinned child that looks exactly like you.” He said.
“How is she?” I asked, ignoring the statement.
“She is seriously ill. She is now bedridden like her late co-wife. Her husband died of AIDS. He refused to go for HIV treatment until it was too late. I think Kwaseshough and her fair child are also positive.”
