Soliloquy Gone Sour

It's rainy season not the dry one so, tales by the moonlight at the village squares in Africa are off until the next dry season. 

 These tales that comes in the nights after the days work are usually told at the village squares by the elders when clans or villages are not staging one singing, quasi fashion shows or wrestling competitions. That’s the life Africans live in our interior villages. Yes, there is fashion and beauty shows even before colonial masters came in our little known way. Young Women paint faces with local dye fruit mixed with water and hands and adorn themselves with all manners of local necklace and hands wears and on their locally made milk colored wrapper and parade during these shows seeking for able bodied young men as husbands.

The young men on their part show that they are normal and able to protect and provide for his family through wrestling, cooking or hunting competition organized during the dry seasons under the moonlights and in most communities in Igbo lands, this culture was still on even in late 80s. 

It was the highlight of the dry seasons in the land after the cultivating and harvest season, and staging of nightly shows at the squares are the ways to wind ups in most evenings. The rewards are not only opportunity to make names and influence or position oneself favorably for beautiful wife or able husband, there are at times sizeable material rewards that goes with it.

Didn’t it surprise you that even our ancestors knew the importance of winding up in squares like parks each day under the trusted African moon lights than their present offspring that are selling off those open spaces and building unsupervised houses on them?

There is even talk that the rise of crimes of every sort, mental illnesses, unwanted pregnancies and negatives behavior of the youths stems from the closures of these open gathering spaces.

  But village squares are still intact, the act of gathering in them each night during dry seasons are gone. History but tales from them remains indelible in the youths minds. In my village, one of those tales has it that the house or rather the what used to be someone’s house that stood on the route to the village square that had been in dilapidation form since I can move far away from home alone and still in that form as I write this work was once a revered property of a man that was one of the most wealthy in the local government(if not whole state) in the early 1950s. 

 There is still untouched evidence that truly the man must have been very indeed wealthy judging by the standards of the houses all over-the-villages even today. 90 percent mud houses and for you to have had six bedroom cement house then, you must have been a stinky wealthy person.

  The story had it that as elders controls events in the squares at night during dry season, they do also all season settling cases of every kind and apportioning punishments of every kind as seen feat. There are also inevitable stories of envy, jealousy, threats, subtle blackmails and anomalies of every kind on the parts of the elders too. Prizes they awards in competitions of every kinds, and justice and punishment they deliver. Like Judas in every twelve, corruption is Hallmark of their administration. 

   That abandoned building, has such sad anomaly tales attached to it that it is turning into tourist and research must visit spot. 

The story has it that the man living in that compound with his family, a wife and four kids were found dead one morning four months after his dispute with his neighbor being settled by the elders went sour and he decided to shun their invitations. 

The neighbor had accused the man of overhearing him in his farm murmuring to himself that he is going to change the king of the town. “not only that he had started bribing some high chiefs for the job, he was over heard murmuring to himself in his farm without realizing that he wasn’t alone that his neighbor was in his own farm nearby observing and overhearing him talk to himself.

    The story claims that the man was saying, that he will start from the village high chief to remove them from their post and install all those loyal to him. This was in early 50s. The towns that made up the whole local government the man town belonged in, not a single person has a car. Not a single motor road passed that area. In fact people with claims to any mechanical anything is not up to five in sixteen towns that made up the local government area. Two motorcycles and three bicycles. Paving motor road was what the man was into talks with the authorities when he death happened.

The elders invited the man to defend himself. According to the story, he sent emissary asking to know if they believed him to have mental illness or something?

    “why should i be talking to myself in my farm, as what?- fully mad or half mad?” 

He had told them he has something important to do with his times and will see them when he had free times. They claimed he insulted them. Some with little understanding of the man and his stand were asking intelligent questions of the man that came with the accusation.

  “ you said you heard him in his farm talking to himself few weeks ago, why haven’t he done anything since them and why would he be talking to himself in his farm instead of his house or even city he came from?”

“ He must have believed that he was alone or even frustrated and that was reason he was murmuring to himself without knowing I was around”

“ well, the man seems not to be interested in anyone's personal affairs since we know him and above all, he is yet to make any move if truly what you are saying is true. Why should we be worried about what is going on in his heart and mind, let his thoughts and contemplations remains what they were if true until he makes a move. After all, we are the ones with authority to remove or install any chief in this village?”

“ How do you mean?- are suggesting we keep quiet until too late before acting?- thoughts are more dangerous than actions, it's thought that counts. If we don’t move, if he is ready, it might be too late to stop him”

“Are you suggesting that there are Judas among us chiefs here?- who is he among us that is going to be the instruments of this coup you said you overheard?”

After about two more hours of bickering among themselves, they concluded that the accuser heard fake and all the chiefs has faith in themselves and their village high chief so, there’s no cause for alarm. 

The village high chief who had been shaking his legs for almost three and half hours that meeting was on was eyeing each of his  fellow chiefs askance without opening his mouth. He later concurred with his fellow chiefs.

Four months later, the rich man was found murdered with his family in his house one early morning. Colonial Police don’t operate inside the interior villages then unless invited. No one did that.