Godwin Inyang's Blog

  Ekam Dan made her reference to the incident to buttress her point for her belief but her grandson had since after the robbery had his eyelids, left or right, twitched and struck his foot, left or right, till it hurt and no one thing, negative or positive, had happened. Was the fault with him? Not too long ago, he had personally planted a farm with two sets of corn. The first set was done at the start of the rain and the second set was done towards the period the rain was getting intense. In both, Dan ate till he was satiated. During harvest, the cobs of the first set were full of seeds while a lot of the second set had a lot of spaces on them. Based on his observation, he had told his grandmother when they had their argument again that the time of planting rather than the state of your stomach could be responsible for a poor or rich yield. Who do you side with? This tale also Ekam Dan had made reference to. A certain man had a very charming daughter who he gladly married off ...

Dan lazed on the bench at the rear veranda and watched his grandmother, Ekam Dan, busy prepare a meal of yam and plantain in her open and detached kitchen. A twinned plantain she put behind her back and her hands had dragged them to split. The first time Dan had seen his grandmother do it, he had asked her why and though she had long past the age of menopause, she said she was doing it so she would not have twins (probably in her next life, if you asked her grandson) and by extension, so that her offspring would not have them too. Dan had laughed then and still laughed now over his grandmother’s antics and wondered out loud why she was still hanging on to some uncanny tradition and doing things bordering on superstition. ‘Well, my child, I was born at a time quite different from yours and saw some horrible acts. I thank God for our new ways of life and doing things,’ Ekam Dan had replied. ‘But our people only have the new ways hanging on them like a white shirt while underneath it ...