DOLLARS FROM LIBERIA (1)

 

MMA TOM SAT BESIDE THE FIRE, the oil in a pan sputtering as she formed balls of milled beans and carefully dipped them in the oil. With a perforated ladle, she would check to see if the underside was brown enough, showing half the bean cake popularly called akara was done and then she would turn it over for the other half to be equally brown. When the entire ball became sensibly brown, Mma Tom gingerly with her ladle would remove them, placing them in a tray on a table with customers itching to buy. Her eldest daughter assisted in selling, wrapping the balls of akara in old leaves of newspapers, collecting the money and putting it in an empty plastic custard cup.

Mma Tom from the corner of her eye did see a police jeep crawling on their yet-to-be-tarred dusty road, being the dry season, as if the driver was scared of unnecessarily raising dust, towards her. But her younger daughter, who was churning the milled beans in a mortar with a pestle by her carelessness, distracted her.

‘Eka, would you look at what you’re doing?’ she hollered at her. ‘You want to spill the beans on the ground?’

As Eka sheepishly corrected herself, shyly smiling at her mother, the police vehicle rolled to a halt not too far from Mma Tom but not too close for the fire to pose a threat to the petrol in the tank. Well, all sorts of people, far and wide, bought akara from her and also the corn starch called akamu, used in making pap. Her products were of esteemed quality.

The doors of the Land Rover opened and three men simultaneously stepped out, all in plain clothes. But two were keenly watchful of the movement of the third and it was plain miraculous Mma Tom could still keep her customer-reserved smile for long. She quickly recognized one of the men and that sent a chill down her spine.

‘Good morning, sister.’

‘Good morning, Bro Ukut. When did you arrive? Ah, such a long time!’ Mma Tom said and rushed over to embrace the middle-aged man clad in a ‘kampala’ jumper over a pair of black trousers and sandals.

‘Long time indeed!’ Bro Ukut replied.

The woman and man were biological siblings and the last time they saw themselves was four years ago when he last visited home, taking Tom, Mma Tom’s fifteen-year-old son, with him back to the city to give him a job as a servant with a ‘big man’. Since then no one saw Bro Ukut with the boy again and no feedback whatsoever.

‘Have you seen Tom?’ Bro Ukut nervously asked his sister, his eyes trying much to evade hers.

‘No. Now, who should be asking who of Tom?’ Mma Tom calmly said. ‘Since you left with him four years ago, is it not today that my eyes are seeing you again?’

‘I’m sorry, my sister; it’s this work thing o. We hardly have time for ourselves,’ Bro Ukut said

‘And you have no holidays?’ Mma Tom asked.

Bro Ukut laughed painfully. ‘Holidays are for those who do big-men work. A holiday is not for people like me.’

‘And you would not send a letter? You know I can’t read but at least I have some little ones who would read and interpret it to me.’

‘Letters you would send and if they don’t disappear in the post office, it would take more than a year for them to reach the persons you send them to. My sister, you should understand.’

‘I understand. But what exactly did you say is the problem with my son?’

Bro Ukut was tongue-tied for a while; then he spoke: ‘His master says he ran away with his money.’

Mma Tom suddenly went berserk. She screamed, beating herself. ‘Where have you kept my son? Where have you kept my son?’ She raged towards her brother.

The other two men, one of a different ethnic group, physically restrained her and the indigene, in English, tried to explain to the stranger what was going on. While the men were talking, Mma Tom beckoned discreetly to her younger daughter, walked close to her and whispered something and in seconds, the young girl had melted out of sight.

The eldest daughter kept attending to the customers who were now obviously dragging their feet as they were dead set on eavesdropping. When the men were done with the explanation, they introduced themselves.

‘I’m Sergeant Ikpong, madam. The man here is the oga your son served which your brother here took to him. Your son early this week as his oga returned from Liberia was noticed to have vamoosed and we’re here to carry out an investigation to be certain of his whereabouts. We know you don’t live here. Can we go to your place so you and your brother can talk to each other?’

(READ 'DOLLARS FROM LIBERIA {2}')

(READ 'DOLLARS FROM LIBERIA {3}')