One tap two taps my young shoulders felt
” Get up, get up,” papa’s hoarse voice whispers.
Half awaken half adreaming and faintly my name I hear.
I was eight and it was 3:00AM.
“Get my bag, we must go now;” papa commanded!
Walking the darkness of the night through the haunted narrow winding road
Misty leaves of roadside bushes slap left to right rendering us damp.
Passing the village public latrine and graveyard terrain,
Across my left shoulder to my waist hung the bag, and beside him,
Papa expounded stories of a beautiful bride named “wisdom!”
The bag is custodian of life-essentials: herbs, roots, barks, blades, concoctions,
Wine gourd-cups, oil, snuff, kola nuts, bitter kola, alligator pepper, handkerchief.
Tough, impenetrable and odourless goatskin this bag be,
Perfectly twined goat-hides its strap be,
Oversized rusty buckle its lock be,
Papa’s goatskin bag.
Unknown then was electricity, kerosene-lamps lit us, firewood our meals cooked.
Barefeet we trod, scooping along dusty sands and risking all.
Deadly hissing snakes and chirping crickets silence as we
Approach to reproach. The quietness more frightening and bone-chilling than the night.
It’s odd time for human perambulation.
Louder got the chirping and more vicious the hissing, clearly protesting:
‘Tis our time, humans!
‘Twas elders emergency meeting, summoned by the town crier.
Discussion is held hundred percent in proverbs and idioms
Otherwise taboo be it.
No business has a simply-minded in this gathering
Eternal frustration and shame to the elders unversed
To proverbs and idioms.
One third of the men, their kids they bring
To groom and to bequeath the
Secret of the goatskin bag.
Forty-four men in perfect circle on their individual 1ft. wooden stool sat,
Welcomed by ten clay jars of soured palm-wine and bowls of kola placed in their centre.
Mazi Efulefu, archer and porter, stone-faced and looking blankly inscrutable,
Clearing his throat, addressed the kindred:
“He who brings kola brings life; what the elder sees while seating on the ground,
A child cannot see even when standing on top of a mountain.”
Intent listening, easily bemused, hard understanding and forever I retain
Their rambled discussions that lasted but half hour, and
In reckless abandon did all speeches idiomatically centre on
Subjection, supposition and subjugation, born out of
Oppression, depression and suppression.
But why? the kids must evolve into
Papa’s goatskin bag!
Connected Words 