WHAT THE NANNY GOAT TOLD HER KIDS (CHAPTER 4)

 

CHAPTER 4

 

THOUGH THE ‘EUROPEAN UNION SPONSORED’ PROJECT was yet to take off, the small-scale cassava flour business thrived with its unique gain and pain. Because of the large number of farmers involved in processing cassava in the four sections of the village, there was a glut of cassava flour at a point in time. Buyers made a mess of the situation, hoodwinking the sellers. So the prominent people in the cassava flour supplying business, including Mr Ransom, formed the Fufu Sellers Union (FSU) and eventually checkmated, as they thought, the excesses of the buyers.

Apart from passing their bye-laws, the union demarcated the village into two sections that respectively would supply the buyers with the product every fortnight. The situation was ameliorated. But from time to time, some woes and blows kept surfacing.

There was this speculation initially of some farmers who had taken more cash from buyers of cassava flour who thought they could outsmart their rivals by lavishly advancing money to those they saw as major suppliers. But they later realized the big supplier during the dry season when motorcycles could go deep into swampy terrain who kept telling them they had acres and acres of cassava might turn out irrelevant in the rainy season when the tracks became waterlogged and slippery.

When it became hard for their debts to be offset, the farmers who had rolled balls of fufu that were bigger than they could comfortably swallow suddenly realized they were in a dilemma. They resorted to sneaking away from their homes when the buyers were around and returned when they had gone away.

Some of the buyers around the tail end of the year had bought on credit from the farmers and reneged on paying till late in the New Year. The information that later filtered out into the ears of the sellers (and believable too) was that the money the buyers did business with was borrowed from thrift societies and the loans were repaid so contributions could be returned to members but the buyers (who were top-contributing members and also in top positions of these associations) would get the loans back as fresh contributions started in the New Year.

Grace remembered one jovial and popular buyer, Madam Cash, who owed the Ransoms a large chunk of money for several sacks of cassava flour she carried away on trust. She betrayed that trust when other buyers started coming around to the Ransoms and Mr Ransom, with great worry, asked after not seeing her for more than three months, if they heard any news about her. Everyone initially wondered if she was sick but they started sniffing foul play.

It was at that point Perempe, who often bragged how deep he was into traditional medicine but because of his new-found faith decided to do away with the spiritual aspect, felt highly provoked and decided he might plunge back into the mystical craft. And that did rattle Mr Ransom a bit.

Perempe threatened: ‘So this woman would pack my twelve sacks of fufu and run away with my money leaving me hungry with my wife and children? Then she would force me to pick the nonsense things I’d thrown away. I’d make her realize cunning isn’t wisdom. She’d leave to regret it!’

Mr Ransom and those who sat around his veranda that morning did believe, if forced to, Perempe could carry out his threat. Most of them had benefited from Perempe’s vast knowledge of herbs and their application.

Apart from that, there was a story told in the village about what once happened in the big town to a bunch of youths, when he was deep into traditional medicine, who robbed him one night on a visit to his brother.

With Grace’s fertile imagination, she tried to fit the pieces together to have a clear picture of the incident.

The sun had gone down in the west leaving the sky with the bright colours of orange and gold. Birds sang sweetly on trees as they prepared for the long night’s rest in their nests hidden between leaves and on rooftops but the owls and bats were warming up to fill the space the others were about to vacate.

With the steady approach of night, men and women returned to the comfort of their homes from their diverse places of work – offices, factories and markets.

The public electricity was on. Bulbs and fluorescent lamps and lanterns lit beautifully the darkness gradually taking over the town.

Good girls busied in the kitchens with their mothers as they prepared the family meals for the night and obedient boys assisted in fetching water from nearby commercial boreholes and carried loads into the stores.

Then everyone gathered in the living rooms watching the weekend family programmes on television. Those who did not have television sets walked around to the homes of those who had and peeped through the blinds of doors and windows at the interesting programmes.

On a lane saturated with potholes, the sides lined mostly with mud-walled houses topped with corrugated iron sheets, a youth walked up and whistled to another. As the second youth joined the first, they walked up a few houses more and whistled to the third. Their number completed, the three-member gang went downtown combing for targets they could rob.

They walked past the motor parks, big shops and bars and areas around the town’s two big markets for prey. Not seeing one quickly, they crossed the motorway into the dim and serene streets of the Government Reserved Area (GRA) where big fruit trees surrounded big houses owned by big men in government services.

Den, Paul and Ken peeped through or over hedges, fences, walls and their gates. Everything they could have easily stolen was either locked away securely or guarded jealously by giant dogs or grave-looking uniformed guards. Disappointed and afraid their movements would soon be noticed, the young gang returned to the loose part of the town.

They walked past the open sports ground used for march-past during Children’s and Independence Days, football competitions, crusades and conventions, free film shows and not too long ago, when the ‘khaki boys’ were still in power, for shooting armed robbers. A wicked thought suddenly filled Paul’s mind. He turned, giggled and was about to say something to his friends coming behind.

‘Laughing jackass!’ Den said, annoyed. ‘What now tickles your fancy?’

Paul had a quick change of mind. ‘Nothing,’ he said and walked on.

‘I don’t know when you’d stop laughing stupidly,’ Ken added, miffed too.

Paul was known for laughing and giggling in light and serious situations. It made no difference to him whether it was a comedian’s silly jokes or the pious face of a priest. If the spirit moved him, Paul would giggle or laugh out loud. For his two friends, his fits of giggles and laughter were pain they forced themselves to bear.

Outside his stupid laughing moments, Paul was a go-getter. He was the most efficient in carrying out even the most trying tasks. Paul in class and their thieving acts carried out every set plan to the letter.

Den, Paul and Ken attended the same secondary school on the other side of the town and this sometimes saw them boarding commercial motorcycles to and from school. They all were in Senior School Two (SS2). Their high taste stood them out among their peers.

The school knew them as ‘the triplets’ for their flashy association. Children of struggling parents, they acted like their fathers owned half of the town. Not only did they dress well but they also threw up big parties now and then. For the Independence Day celebration a few days away, they planned to hire a cab to take them to sights in two states’ capitals with their girlfriends in the polytechnic. So they would not fail, they desperately needed a target to rob tonight.

They followed the motorway and returned to the main motor park. Hiding in the dark fringes, they watched eagle-eyed the buses returning from long-distance journeys and sized up every passenger coming out. Not long, their patient wait seemed to pay off.

A man from an interstate bus with a briefcase moved briskly in their direction, ignoring the motorcyclists soliciting to take him to his destination. The man burst the grotty lane behind the motor park (with a chink of light from a door across signalling a whore was still available for a quick or an all-night service) and strode off as if pursued.

Such lone movement on this particular lane at that hour of the night was rare. The young gang thought he was new and stupid to the place. And it pleased them well. They signalled one another. Paul drew near the man as Den and Ken followed closely behind. As the man stepped onto the rickety bridge over a deep gutter crossing the lane; Paul flew, struck the man on the arm and snatched the briefcase from a hand numbed with sudden pain. He jumped into the gutter and his two friends followed him on his heels. Surprisingly, the man did not chase them nor scream for help.

They knew the shape of the gutter and crawled through it cautiously lighting their pen-size torches. They reached the point they climbed onto a bush track, took a shortcut through farms and reached an abandoned building used formerly for storing sacks of palm kernels. They slipped through a broken back door and with a torch assessed their prize.

They congratulated themselves, shaking hands and patting their backs before thinking of how to open the briefcase. With a jackknife, Den impatiently pried open the bag. Ken shouted: ‘Snake!’ The fang barely missed Den’s thumb.

Den screamed and kicked the briefcase with his muddied sneaker to the far wall and as it burst open, swollen-necked cobras slithered cautiously out tantalized by the torches on them. The dazed young gang flew outside.

Den whimpered and Paul giggled.

‘Laughing jackass!’ Ken spat at Paul.

Den, from shock, cried like a baby. ‘My mother had told me,’ he moaned.

‘Told you what?’ Paul had asked curiously.

‘That … that … that at the rate I was stealing things around the house, that if I didn’t stop soon, I’d steal a witch doctor’s bag!’

‘And how right she was!’ Paul said and burst out laughing.

Ken folded his hands and moved towards Paul. ‘I’d punch you if you don’t stop this nonsense!’ he threatened.

‘You call a mother’s prophecy coming true “nonsense”?’ Paul said. ‘That was what I wanted to say at the front of the stadium. My mother had mentioned if I didn’t stop this bad company I’d soon be hanged!’

‘That would be good for you!’ Ken sneered.

‘I’m going home,’ Den said, extremely scared.

‘What would you tell your mother?’ Ken asked.

‘You’re asking? What else than that her prophecy came true,’ Paul answered, giggling.

Ken turned around and rained Paul with blows. Instead of fighting back, Paul ran in the dark and hollered: ‘I’m running home before I’m hanged!’

Ken chased after Paul.

Den, dazed, trudged home.