Refrigerator Overhead

The weather was rainy that Tuesday morning. I am just finishing tolling that mighty bell summoning the faithful for morning mass when it started. The early morning rain is the kind we the priest boys see as a cursed blessing. 

Rushing from our boy's quarter base to the church to prepare for the morning mass and tolling the bell that is under the melia tree that is about three minutes walk away from our quarters without an umbrella is the cursed part. The blessing part is that the massive compound with flowers of every specie adorning strategic places and compulsory that we must water them all before morning mass is off once rain starts. But when rain decides to help in the wee hours of the morning, it's a welcomed thing and that is the blessed part of most mornings in the rainy season.

Waking up by 4:45am is not something we, three of us boys living with priest  enjoy doing by any means but body and spirit always get oriented and familiarise themselves over time when there is no choice. I was about nine years old at that period in the early 1980's and in retrospect, the country was somehow backward that period too. Economic and technological sense.

The rain that particular morning was different from the kinds I have ever witnessed in my nine years of existence. I have seen enough rain that it's no longer new or news to me but what was happening that morning was war unannounced, therefore unexpected. 

Blocks of ice were falling from heaven and adults called them hailstones or some name like that. I was under that bell tree drawing the rope with absent mindedness as usual, summoning the faithful for the morning ritual when I suddenly noticed that I wasn't the lone person tolling that bell that morning. Initially, I was surprised when the nearby zincs started making unnecessary noise, and stones that landed near me and ones that hammer on the bells triggered fear and confusion. Revenants at work concluded as I cast my eyes here and there to see human figures but no apparition emerged. That intensified my fears.  

It continued that way and as I dashed towards the comfort of the church and how pellets of frozen rain I heard all around me never hit me, is a thing of surprise to date. The generator was on that period and it was when inside the comfort of the church that I was able to peep through the window and enjoyed the spectacular through the window. Block of rain will land with a noise, and melt immediately. Kputu! kputu!! kputu!!! Was the sound I was hearing all around me and was enjoying it for sure.

Inside that village that era, there was nothing like landline, intercom and tv reception was not that bad in our 14 inches black and white TV that ruled supreme as undisputable attraction that period. The morning felt the impact of that unexpected hail as well as some flowers and economic trees planted behind the church compound. Their broken branches attested to the brutality of the hail. It's no kids play. What smashed solid things can kill humans with ease.     

"How did something that smashed branches,zincs and windows miss heads?" I asked my friend I.K hours later in the school when that phenomena became the talk of the school and town. 

  "People took cover in their houses, trees and zinc without houses beared the wrath of the hail instead" he said smirking. 

" frozen rains dropping from heaven, i never witnessed something like that, never heard of such before. "There must be fridge somewhere up there" I said with all seriousness. "If not, why did the water blocked before dropping?" i asked eyeing around seeking for confirmation. But, all coming from my mates were the same imagination talks like mine. No one knows any real logic outside our imaginations running riots. As far as we are concerned, ice blocks come from water in the fridge therefore, there must be electricity and a refrigerator up there QED.

The sun did not fail to show up in the afternoon the same day the water was being refrigerated up there in the wee morning so, there was rolling around in the damped dust and playing football without football but oranges and waterproof tied in round form and used as football. 

2:30 am, the school and ice blocked water over, stories and comments over, I went back to the parish and the priest was in the dining hall eating, automatically, I was supposed to stand and serve. As I rushed there still in my school uniform and dirtiness, the man was flabbergasted. "Humm, look at you, how dirty you are. Please shift a bit" he was at the same time sipping his Dr pepper i noticed was his favorite after schewapps and liptons. I went to our quarters to change clothes, washed my hands and wiped my body with the school shorts and rushed back to the dining hall. 

The priest was through and was heading upstairs as I came into view again as a serious waiter. I was not playing anyone including the cooks, my fellow guys or the priest, it's normal practice on play there. Who waits the tables eats what remains in the flasks and the plates.That is the practice there so i wasn't stressing myself to make the man's life less stressful but to help myself.

  "Start from up" the priest will admonish whenever the cleaning saturday comes around and he is around to observe us at work sweeping and cleaning. "Don't you see that the spider webs are everywhere up there. Start from there. Once you bring them down, kill them before you start to sweep. If you don't kill them, they will climb up and build another web there. The house is so clean and cobwebs everywhere up there. It sends wrong signals" he will voice out while doing the work himself to show and not just tell. I remember his modus operandi isn't to tell but to show. Father Simone is good at that and he never failed to use cane, boredom and time crippling to educate us. I remember those times as if they were yesterday. How will the three of us living with him ever forget? It sticks like glue in the memory. 

The man when you fuck up a lot will tell you to sit or kneel in the dinninghall and went upstaires to read or sleep and after hours, he will tiptoe to the staircase, spy at you from the space there. If you are new, you will be deceived by his supposed "i don't care" way of forgetting you for hours doing another thing when under punishment. He never forgets. In fact within months, you will come to realize that the number of canes you receive doesn't depend on your initial crime that ushered the crippling but whether you obeyed his own orders of sitting or kneeling down for hours well. 

The man is funny in many ways and at times I wondered what was going on in his balding head. Whether he lived overseas before I knew him or not. Some behaviors from him are never what you see with a man that started and is still in Africa. Nah. Many funny introductions from him I have not seen with any other priest or reverend Sisters ever. I suspect he must have picked them up from a book or movie. 

At times he will be spying on us down stairs in the kitchen corridors from the palour windows upstairs and smirking to my songs and revealing his presence.

   "When you hear that Christ is coming, run, run. Don't turn to the left or to the right but face straight"

Improvised song that comes to me out of idleness. If we that talk to ourselves and the cook can feel lonely at times in that massive compound, how about the man that stays alone upstairs most of the time? I recalled that Sundays and bazaars are special work days for us. Counting coins that have value then and exist in large numbers and worshipers never fail to come to service with one and when you have a population like we did then, you have a counting work to look forward to each sunday. I remember the first thing the other boys before me taught me how to count money. Coins, how to place them in columns and how to add the columns before putting them in a tiny money bag I guess doesn't exist anymore since coins as legal tender have practically ceased to exist in this country.

The man managing three different towns in that era church has meaning to the faithful, unlike how many view it these days. That period, the church didn't just act as a place you go to talk to God, it served as customary court handling many kinds of marital, financial, land dispute cases. People were illiterates in large numbers then, culture and traditions frictions with sermons in the church were causing little problems in most families and they valued the inputs and education of the priest then a lot that our living room is always full of families narrating their family problems to the priest they felt knows far better and the man was always busy advising. That place then in my young mind equals a mini courthouse.  

In hindsight, I think this society we are in now and these generation Zs would laugh their heads off if they were to be transported back to early '80s today and see how people lived that era. How many goes to church again let alone seeing the priest as chief magistrate with omniscience figure-like anymore. Gone forever that duty of priest and outlook it projects. Everyone is lord of manor in their houses and won't even tolerate your poking nose into their family affairs, Bishop or proffessor let alone filing a complaint with the priest for advice. 

To think i am heading down the ladder of live and that hail, those blocked waters falling from heaven i recalled i witnessed it once more years later but not in that town i lived with priest and confusing part is that at times, people from just next town will report they did not witness what you are narrating and i believed some of my age mates and even many before us never witnessed ice block from heaven in their lives. So i guess i must be among the blessed of this earth to not only read about them but saw it in reality. I no longer imagined, I have seen.

      I can never be a doubting Thomas in that regard for live. I saw. Frozen water from heaven.