Running Mouth

Cool countryside village of about a hundred families of which about 60% live in the city and only come back en mass during mass return holidays mainly New Yam festival and Christmas. No nonsense story of any kind was ever on in there, let alone dangerous one. Those mass return time always last for two or three weeks and everybody face the city again in preparation for school resumption. But the problem was in the offing this past Christmas for the city problem went home to the village with some people. Chinwe and his fellow heapers as those plotters are known were determined to heap their problems on the head of a family who isn't lying low and accepting it as they were given.

This particular state, politics, and religious problem was even imported from the Far East back to the Far Sahara depending on the side of the continent you are hearing it from. It has been ongoing since Covid-19 year. There had been no break-through though many believed it to be man-made but the key runners were tired of the problem and had been pointing fingers at each other as the importers of the problem while their activities on the accusation front spoke different things from their words. They had decided that Clock was not their friend they believed that time was their number one enemy and decided that this family they accused of bribery to the officer would have to be the one carrying this blame. But one field worker who is on the side of the religion, state, tribe, politics, and even citizens of the Far East was trying hard to show the city people how religious he is and for three days before the Christmas travels period, normally between 20 to 24 December. He kept repeating one message in his early morning sermons for three days.

    " This is a prophet of God talking and if you doubt it, you will see soon, very soon how I am a prophet of God. This family is as guilty as I pronounced them"

The family they plotted against was reading meanings into his words. They had been following what the guy that call himself preacher and prophet had been saying for long. His words kept pointing at the family for three years, anything from him had been first analyzed with their family in mind to see if he was talking or plotting for he was never free of both. They had calculated well that this past Christmas holiday wasn't going to be a jolly one for the family back in the village so, nothing surprised them when it started happening in the village for they were expecting it even though they didn't know the format it will take till it started happening. Till accusers started trooping in, in the name of a pretense of greeting or saying one thing or another in the spirit of the season. The family made sure that none that entered that family in whatever pretense never left without carrying away whatever they came with. Seen and unseen.

Chinwe heard the stand of some villagers and entered to lay her heap just like others and that was the last straw that broke the proverbial camel's back with the patient of the accused family. "How can she?" screamed the family. To them, it was like what Caesar said to Brutus. "Even you Chinwe?" 

But the family seems to be in the advantage of being the accusation receivers meaning that they are the ones to encounter anything last. And like they advised in the military, " Always follow the last command" So even when you are smart enough to accuse now and it took them a week to figure it out, they would encounter it. But Chinwe received immediate encounter the moment she left and another in the morning to solidify it. She was the one working from day one with the morning preachers and the officers trying to fix the family. Even though people believe that the officer and those far easterners on the ground did to her as they did to many others. Deceiving her and poisoning her mind against the family as they did to other hundreds to force them to hate and act against the family. Where they get the information and what they use on those people kept surprising many. There must be something personal they say to those people to annoy them into action against the family. "Where are they getting the information?"

Chinwe came to put the final nail in the coffin of the accused family and ended up receiving a significant lion's share of what she dumped. She came to wash her hands off the whole incident believing that it would all end with the Christmas on 31st of December. It did not. It flowed into January. Almost all the villagers were in a kind of frenzy this past holiday. They chose the wrong period that looked like the perfect time. There was a kind of fire on the mountain in the village and most of the people were trying to escape through any open space they found. The front and back of the accused house would do. Showing the accused your white teeth or coming to see them with a basket full of gifts and talking about any other thing did not free you from being encountered, canceled, and sending imagined or real accusations towards you once you turned your back. Prevention is always better than cure. No one is running anywhere in the name of smartness. 

But you know as the saying goes, there is always no honor among thieves even though many believe there is. When push comes to shove, that is when you see them singing and running their mouths like parrots. Where's that honor? Eh! There is none. Even their profession made sure of that. It was that way with some other professions. When push comes to shove, your ear will be full of stories you never anticipated. That is what we are seeing in this January. Officers and their hangers-on which the preacher and Chinwe belonged to don't realize that when you make December your deadline, January must belong to your opponent if December fails you, pray January fails your opponent too or you're in a fix. 

A few days ago, one officer, the one they pointed the finger at as receiving bribes from the accused family was pissed while trying to nonsense the accused family of what they do to earn little bread by denting with demonic stories that originate from their camp only. But, there is no honor as far as these plotters were concerned. Despite being after the same family, they kept trying to stop each other or trying to be the one to earn all the adoration or whatever they were after. The officer believed that the preacher was sending a secret message to the accused family telling them what was being said against them just to stop the officer from earning the credit. Despite nothing like that happening, the officer threatened the preacher of telling the world that the stealing they were accusing the family of was staged by the preacher if he didn't behave. 

 The preacher behaved. Two days into that threat, the preacher is still behaving unlike him to the surprise of no one. Many knew that something was amiss with the police and the relationship they had for years with the preacher who had been accusing himself and confessing the same sin since three years ago on many occasions and officers ignored them all. He even said he was remoted diabolically into certain utterances. By who? by the accused family he was asked to say by the police that did the accusing three years later. 

Meanwhile, Chinwe got married in early January and decided to hurry things up and fade from the country. She was heard telling herself that only a fool questions the will of God. "The earlier I joined my husband in the Western world the better" she was heard murmuring.