QUEST FOR IMMORTALITY

Baale chewed over the fleetingness of life throughout that night. He didn't wait for the first cockcrow before he made way to Ogbon's house.

“Ogbon has all the answers,” he would mutter to himself whenever he was faced with some kind of weird difficulties. Now that someone like Ogbon exists, he would finally be freed from what had disturbed him for a long time.

Awele, his first wife died a year ago and he found himself already forgetting her even though it wasn't what he wanted. The only way he could remembered his Mother was through a piece of cloth he was gifted and his father—a farm.

He longed in his heart to see them again neither as ghost nor spirit but as something indescribable to no one in the village but Ogbon who seemed to know everything and finds normalcy in weirdness.

The harmattan wind blew ferociously at him and he staggered, he clutched on tightly to his cover cloth which he had brought along with him, his toes gripped the tip of his sandals and he walked more faster. The dust which accompanied the wind had settled on the withering shrubs and grasses by the road side and the mass on the road painted his sandals and feet brown no matter how carefully he tried to walk.

He tapped the god on the door frightfully, it was the god that tells her that she had a visitor.

She got out in a beautiful red cloth, a fluffy round transparent material was on her head enclosing her dark air. She ushered him in immediately.

He groaned as he sat on one of her soft and big chairs.

“Ohh, this year's harmattan is worse than last year's.”

“Would you like an hot tea,” she said. Baale nodded a yes. He was the only one in the village who knew what tea was and could drink tea.

He heaved a sign of relief as he drank all the hot tea in a gulp while Ogbon was still sipping hers.

“Doesn't it burn your throat,” she said in their dialect which she was still learning.

“Tee?”

“Yes.”

“Tee doesn't burn my throat, Tee warm my body,” he said as he took off his cover cloth and neatly folded it on his lap.

“So what made you come to my house at this early hours?”

“Ogbon, it is serious and hard to say.”

“Nothing is hard to say, just say it the way you think it.”

Baale stretched his hand towards her mug which still steamed of the hot tea, “Do you mind if i—”

She smiled. “You can take it.”

He gulped it down again.

“I don't know how but I am sure that one of your gods might be able to help me.”

“What about your gods?” she asked .

“If it was something our gods could do, I wouldn't have come here first. It is something everyone will find unreasonable except you. You know the world so well and you have seen a lot.”

He thought of the right words and breathe loudly.

“How..how. How can one see someone who is already dead?” Ogbon looked at him ridiculously but used her palm to support her mouth so that it wouldn't seem so.

“Not in flesh,” Baale chirped.

“Dead people can't be seen except maybe— if ghost truly exists or maybe their spirit came back to hunt someone.”

“No. Not ghost not spirits. Like..like.” He hissed. “This is hard.”

“When people die, they are gone forever, we can see them no more,” she said.

“Ogbon, you don't understand. I know we can see them no more but something to remember them, something that…looks like them not rings, clothes, farms or houses.”

“Something we can use to remember them,” she reiterated.

Baale stood up and strolled back and forth to the door, hands on the waist; racking his brain.

“Yes!” he jumped back to his seat.

“You know that thing, I have seen it a few times attached to that flat god you carry around.”

She exhaled, “they are gadgets not gods.”

“The same thing.”

“No, they are not. The only God is this one on my neck,” she said pointing to the rosary on her neck.

“The rest are gadgets.”

Baale frowned, “but that one has no power, it is even small, if not the smallest of all your gods.”

She chuckled “That is because he is the God of all my gadgets, the God of all my gods. He is the king—”

“Ok, ok, ok. Do you understand what I meant now?”

“You mean this?” she said as she took a small picture from the back of her phone.

“Noo! How can you break your god?” he jumped as she pointed the picture to him.

“I didn't break it or him, I removed the case,” she said picking her piecemealed words.

“But I can't collect something that came directly from inside your god, it might kill me,” he said still reluctant to sit.

She laughed. “I promise you, it won't because they are not gods.”

“Ok,” Baale grinned as he collected the picture and examined it.

“What is it called? Can it be bigger?”

“It is called Picture and it could be bigger.”

“Pishaw.”

“Pic-ture.”

“The same thing,” he said looking at it picture intensely.

“Can you help me to do it?”

“Hmm, yes. I can.”

“Do you mind coming to my house to do it tomorrow? For my family also then later for all the villagers.”

“Deal.”

—

The news reached all ears that Baale was doing the abominable; the Stranger would be at his home the next day to help him do an abomination.

Everyone except Baale and the fascinated children never liked Ogbon who came on a certain day and settled herself down at the village. Even though she told them that she would only be inhabiting with them for a year, they wished to chase her away as soon as they saw her but her numerous gods wouldn't let them.

They had never seen a person with such plenty gods and the gods were always helping her. She didn't have to fetch firewood before she cook and they have her a lot of food with which she entices their children. They warned their children from her but some belligerent and curious ones couldn't stop themselves from visiting her. The villagers anger reach its climax the day they saw a friend of hers from GOD knows where they both came from to fix something on her newly but hurriedly built house.

When asked, she had said that the object was going to trap the sun and give her its light at night.

The villagers had marched to Baale to report her.

“She is going to finish the Sun, if she uses that thing on her roof for a year— stealing the sun, by the time she would leave there would be no more sunlight left for us,” a man had shouted.

“The sun is set naturally to give it light at the day but when someone steals some part of the sun to use it selfishly for her self at night means going against nature.”

“And you know that spells doom,” a woman concluded.

Baale had a hard time appealing to them after promising them that he would meet with her fist before they decided what they would do with her.

But Baale experience at her house was beyond his imagination, he fell in love with it all and even became defensive for her.

Even though she was loathed by the villagers, they held her in awe. She seemed to them to have supernatural powers. The one they seem to know most was the flat god that she carries with her everywhere, she called him pone. Sometimes she talks to him and he would answers her—loudly. She also speak to invisible people through him too. Once the children had crept behind her in her patio and caught her watching several other people in her pone fighting, singing and dancing for her. They were very small people. It was then that the people stated calling her witch who enjoys entrapping people in her gods. Even though she had helped some villagers in several discreet ways, they all stoped calling her Ogbon except for Baale.

—

The people gathered at the Baale's house before the arrival of Ogbon. Baale and his family were dressed up in their best as if they were going for a large ceremony. Several elders had warned him against his decision but he had talked to them about immortality.

“Her gods can make us immortal.”

“We could be easily remembered the way we are instead of by a farm, or rings or clothes.”

He was able to convince them but not bring them on board. Nevertheless,he wanted a trial for his family first so that he would be able to do the same for all other villagers.

Ogbon showed up with a circular object tied with a long ripe to her neck the next day, she set them up the right way, and helped them pose well. The villagers laughed and teased as she told Baale to put his chin up, and then came back to tilt his head to look straight.

“Look into the circle,” she said—the understandable way pointing to the lenses.

“Ready!”

“Say cheeeeeesssseeee.”

“Which one is cheeee—”

The camera flashed strangely and before the shot was registered, dust rose and diffused in the air from the uproar which the flash had caused. When the dust settled, Baale and Ogbon were the only persons left at the arena.

Baale was dumbfounded, he was scared by the artificial lightning too but he refused to run and finally released a breath when he confirmed that he wasn't dead. He wouldn't move closer to her at all.

“What did you do?”

“The picture—”

“You just tried to kill us,” he accused.

“It is just a light,” she said loudly.

“Leave, please leave now. I should have listened but my folly blinded me,” he said pointing to the road—still keeping his distance from her.

She chuckled.

“Baale, they—”

“Go away with your gods!”

“Baale—”

“Go!”

Baale couldn't eat or sleep that night, he pondered on what had happened but was curious to see the pishaw. There had been deliberations by the elders maybe he would be removed from his inherited chieftaincy since he permitted evil to dwell in the village. He had let everyone in the village down but his desire to be remembered still linger in his heart. He couldn't phantom what it would look like but early in the morning under the cloak of the early clouds; he made his way to Ogbon's house again.

The latter was surprised to see him.

“Ogbon, I am really sorry for yesterday but—”

“But you want to see the picture.”

He swallowed a morsel of saliva before he nodded.

“But I have tore it up and burn it yesterday!”

“Well,” he said trying not to look disappointed.

“Well, this is it,” she said and took it out from nowhere.

He jumped back as she pointed it to him, he tried to overlook the thought of the warnings that popped in his mind.

He took a deep breath, looked at the picture closely but wouldn't collect it.

He however hugged her before he left.