When Blood Is Thicker Than Water

It sounds and seems that everything has spiritual meanings these days. Things that used to be normal to greater percentage of people has spiritual meanings to the same percentage nowadays. Could you imagine attaching spiritual interpretation to an ordinary act of pen slipping from someone’s hand to the floor?

That is the situation we found ourselves in my community nowadays. I said my community in order not to confuse you. If you had been observant enough, you would have noticed the same in yours.

Pen slipping to the floor is an indicator of bad news to follow. Infect, if you’re writing anything serious like applying for job or writing exam, in order not to take stupid risk, the person would change the pen in order to avoid wondering if it was due to that slip that led to failure or rejection. 

If you stumble on a stone, stubs, or any other objects from 11:25am, it connotes two things;

Someone is calling you from your village or family.

It is a sign of awaiting bad news from whatever assignment you are headed to.

So, you need in both occasions and to say quick and short prayers before proceeding. Just to be sure.

If the winds start blowing as if there was no tomorrow, it’s sign that some people were about to go bonkers. If it’s coming from northern pole, nature is about to distribute karma from their religious bags. Northern indigenes were usually viewed from the religious angle before tribe vice versa.

There are some certain foods one is not expected to eat at certain times of the year, even though those foods were in season. Yet, some that ate those foods were even more healthier than those that don’t. Still, among those that out of necessity eat them would carry along with them throughout the season the guilt of not being sure.

If their wards fail in school or has small set backs in business, it might be because of the food he ate one million years ago. Yet, those that sell the foods in the market is not asking who is buying those foods, or sometimes even feel guilty of putting their neighbors in harms way. 

To the sellers, no repercussions after all, nothing is poisonous about the food only that the legends has it that bad luck follows the eaters not the sellers around.

    Why cultivate it in the first place?

That was the attitudes of our forefathers they gleamed from observing the whites that came to colonize them in early 1893 and passed the story down to us.

For clarity sake, it would be interesting to let you in into the incident that happened in that period in 1893. That very year, the English came to view ground before coming with their colonial apparatus to stay.

Their leader by name Mr. winterbottom landed on the shores of Onitsha's River Niger with his 16 men entourage.

After scaring the ‘Amadioha’ out of the locals with their bazookas, they shot one or two locals under flimsy excuse to pass message across to the local high chiefs and their subjects in case anyone has any nonsense ideas in his heads. They then bribed the local chiefs with bottles of hot drinks they came with to let them know they came in peace.

The local chiefs was mesmerized after drinking the hot drinks that they laughed and chuckled non stop as if they understood what was being said.

Well, they agreed to everything as the hots drinks agreed with them. They were never interested in what the whites were demonstrating as they were on the liquor bottles before them.

When the breads, biscuits and noodles the whites came with ran out, they needed to teach the locals how to put cassavas, corns and yams into use to come out with floors to produce breads locally. The whites were into tasting local delicacies too.

Not long after that, the locals started telling accurately what any white took by simply analyzing the smell of their farts. If the fart has mild odours, it’s foreign food, if it’s odious and sticks to the tables, chairs and mud walls for few days, it is local food.

After being able to tell which smell is which, and the bottles of hot drinks were not appearing as before, they turned their attention for the first time fully to the people that had been with them for almost a year then.

They started debating seriously whether their visitors has toes or not. Why do they always cover their foot with those funny thing they call socks and hide them inside the one they call shoes. On many occasions the foot left the shoes, it failed to leave the socks.

So, Chief Awai and his subjects concluded that their visitors don’t have toes. Those that claimed to be village philosophers started coming out with theories on how spirits in human form had been with them for almost a year without their knowledge.

The whites seems to be reading their thoughts verbatim which heightened their beliefs.

“ How come I will not open my mouth, yet, they know exactly what’s in my mind?” Chief Awai blurted out one evening after meeting with the whites. 

The high Chief don’t even realized that his face, body and hands speaks louder than his mouths. When hot drinks is added as inducement, his smiles spoke the loudest.

To cut the story short, before Winterbottom and his entourage left to return fully to stay after absence of six months, they fathered about 50-something bastards that nearly look like them. Observing the babies with their foots and hands in tact, the villagers Confusions heightened.

Before they were able to master somehow the names whites gave the babies, Winterbottom and much larger entourage returned this time for good. 

Since that 1893 incident, the babies was even the first to learn the language of the whites and had been reproducing those that look like them down to my generation. 

One of those half cast by name John was in my village. Observing him in action, you will come to believe that truly, blood is thicker than water. The guy is just like his forefathers. His only occupation is everything on skirts.

Young and old. 

One Saturday around 8:45am, Mrs. okoro was going to the farm when she noticed her daughter lagging behind and behaving funny. She was turning some leaves under a particular tree with her foot that made her to wonder if she has gone crazy when wind wasn’t blowing. She became interested. 

When she focused on one she just upturned, Mrs. okoro went near to see for herself. She picked it up and on the dry leave was written 1:15pm, class three.

When no explanation was forthcoming from her daughter, she turned around and went home to meet her husband. Village vigilant was contacted who in turn took cover at the classroom before 1pm and around 1:10, there was John heading towards the classroom hurling along plastic bags full of provision.