The journey is beginning to get
endless for Laibe, sitting almost
off the seat with this old and torn
at the sides ‘Ghana must go’ bag
firmly held to her chest in the
rickety, once white now the colour
of dry clay, Peugeot 504 that had
already become filled with dust
from the untarred road leading
out of Ofabo.
Her eyes looked stoned from
eagerness, or was it anxiety?
She came down some minutes
ago to bring a fairly huge stone
from the bush just beside the
road. The stone was almost
becoming unbearable for her to
carry because her fingers were
shivering and that made her
weaker at the ankles so much so
that she almost fell over with it
when her legs stepped on a
slippery grass. She decided to
hold it more firmly to herself but
this time the poor stone was
dragging for movement space with
her flowery flare over-sized gown
and her legs. It didn’t go well in
her head that the large stone,
after laying drenched in the red
mud for God knows how long,
was altering the cleanliness of
her most cherished dress. She
bought this dress at Ofabo central
market four years ago with the
little profit she made from sales
of garri- some sort of flakes made
from cassava flour. That day was
so memorable for her because it
was her first attempt at buying
clothes aside that it was also her
first time of having a new dress
anytime earlier than December.
Was it even December? Not just
December but Christmas.
Her Christmas clothes, for all
she’s been aware of, were always
sent down by her aunty- her
father’s younger sister- who lives
in Ankpa, or better still who lives
‘in the city’ as her aged
grandfather would always say.
Aunty Udale also sends alongside
a medium-sized bag of rice a medium-sized bag of rice and
two three-litre cans of groundnut
oil, especially any year she wasn’t
ready to come home herself.
Grandfather told her that her
aunty works as a nurse in the
Ankpa Local Government Area
General hospital and hence very
busy most of the times.
Laibe had been eagerly, yet
silently awaiting this trip for over
a week now. It sounded like the
best thing that could happen to
her in a lifetime when her aunty
mentioned ‘taking her away from
the village soon’, the last
Christmas they all had together.
Though Laibe has never been
given any opportunities or options
to choose from, she definitely
knew she would jump at any
chance to leave Ofabo, the place
of her birth and the village of her
growing up for the very first time
ever. That was why she went
under her mother’s bamboo bed
to look for this bag she is holding
firmly to her chest now. It was
what her mother came to the
house with, over a decade ago,
after marriage and the poor bag
has since then been tied carefully
and kept in a place ‘out of
children’s reach’ according to her
mother. It took Laibe almost an
hour to bring it out when she
finally did, partly because
underneath the bed was so dark
and dusty.
Of course, it would be.
Virtually no one was permitted to
look for anything there except her
mother who used to clean the
place up once in a blue moon;
maybe days she is just recovering
from malaria, as that has been the
only known thing potent enough
to stop her from going about her
business of selling cooked food
at the market square, or days she
needed to use one of those
‘special’ plates she also hid
carefully in the same place.
Unlike the houses of her friends’
mothers, there was no cupboard
in her mother’s hut. In fact, the
hut was built in such a way that
two rooms were narrowly carved
out of it. By narrowly, it means
that an average size woman would
not conveniently pass through the
entrance door without turning
through her sides. The thatch roof
over the hut started leaking some
months ago and there has been
no money to fix it yet so it’s
always a muddy house whenever
it rains, regardless of the white
paint bucket placed underneath
the area of leakage.
Yesterday afternoon, Laibe was
happy when she finally la!d her
hands on the black nylon in which
her mother told her the ‘Ghana
must go’ bag was tied. She went
out to bring in her clothes, the
three special ones amongst them.
Her friends, Ebi and Umali, told
her three days earlier that only
educated rich men live in Ankpa.
They further told her not to carry
any of the rags she wore as
clothes there, so no one would
think she was a mad girl. She
compulsorily took out time
yesterday, even though it was
market day and she had made
garri in anticipation as usual, she
needed much more than anything
else to wash her ‘travelling’
clothes. The weather
contemplated remaining sunny or
raining from the morning she
washed so the clothes were not
completely dried. It was her third
time of going out to the line and
rubbing the back of her palm
lightly against the clothes to
check if they were fully dried or
not but this time, she concluded
she would pack them in, no
matter what.
“Mà chè gbè mè kocho”, she
convinced herself that the clothes
were already dried when she saw
the clouds gathering more
intensely. She didn’t take chances
of letting the rain beat her
clothes. Not then. Not when her
journey was the next day. It was
when she attempted pushing in
the semi-dried clothes into the
bag that she noticed the large
hole at the bottom. There must be
a rat somewhere around, enjoying
some feasting festivals from this
precious bag kept under the bed
for so-called ‘safety’. She checked
everywhere around the house in
vain; she remembered having a
needle and thread sometimes ago
when she needed to sew back a
part of one of her dresses that
got stuck with the handle of the
wheelbarrow in which she convey
her garri to the market.
The handle tore the dress at her
stomach level and all through that
day at the market she sold with
her slightly bulging navel popping
out through the hole. She felt
really embarrassed. The women
must not see her like this,
especially the older women who
knew her mother, father and
grandfather, else they would start
gossiping amongst themselves
that she has also joined the other
group of ladies that Ebilì, who is
the devil, infiltrated and degraded
into wearing clothes that exposed
all their bodies. Thankfully, she
managed with her sales
throughout, without anyone
getting to see her bulging navel.
Maybe it wasn’t noticed becausMaybe it wasn’t noticed because
she was a little too short so much
so that the height of the bowl
containing the cone-shape
arranged garri on the table,
swallowed up almost all of her
height. That’s alongside the fact
that her sunburnt skin colour was
like that of light clay which
fortunately blended perfectly with
the torn part of the dress. She
was thankful anyways, bearing in
mind she must get a needle and
thread on her way back home
from the little profit made that
day, no matter what. The place
she eventually bought the needle
and thread was the same point
she turned in the market with her
wheelbarrow on her way home
two years earlier and heard an
Igbo man screaming and
persuading customers to come
buy imported clothes.
The clothes of different forms and
sizes were la!d on a sack that
was torn and joined to form
perfect carpeting on the red mud
ground. Laibe bent down to select
from the attractive ones she saw,
picked about three different types
to show the very tall trader with
potbelly. The average aged man,
having a dense Igbo intonation
said one of the dresses was for
two hundred naira, the remaining
two were a hundred and fifty naira
each. She looked at the money in
her hand while calculating the
consequences of buying any or
all of the dresses and her wise
brains eventually admonished her
to go with one of the two that was
for a hundred and fifty naira
instead. That was how she bought
her first-ever dress with her hard
earned money, the same she is
wearing today.
Meanwhile, non-living things, she
believed, had their ways of hiding
whenever you are in dear need of
using them and that was exactly
what the needle and thread did to
her. She had to run out to Ebi’s
house but unfortunately the fat
dark girl didn’t have what Laibe
was looking for. Laibe later got it
at Umali’s house anyway. Well,
what she actually got was a
needle that appeared to be almost
rusting and few strands of thread.
Half bread to her was better than
none right there as she hurried
back home with her bare feet
dipping deep into the red mud
and the shallow flowing water on
the grassy foot path. The three of
them, she and her friends that is,
though born in different months,
are of same age and formed a
kind of unbreakable triad; very
famous in the village. It had
rained some minutes earlier,
almost immediately after she got
into Ebi’s house so she waited for
it to mellow down before leaving
for Umali’s. The clouds weren’t
still satisfied and the faster she
ran, the better her chances of
getting into her house would be,
before the threatening rain would
pour, but she wasn’t lucky after
all. The rain caught her and beat
her mercilessly down the whole
length of the road. She even
slipped somewhere while running
but got up immediately and
continued again.
Her drive was from within.
She was feeling happy, feeling
grateful, feeling fulfilled already.
None of the out turns of event
were potent enough to put her
down right there. Not when her
long awaited journey to Ankpa
was finally here. She noticed she
had lost some strands of the
thread when she slipped on her
way home and with the remaining
left, she partly patched wherever
she could on the bag. So long as
her clothes won’t get to drop
down on the way, moreover, her
aunty should come pick up her in
a car tomorrow.
The night felt so unusually long
and she couldn’t sleep
continuously for an hour without
jerking up to a sound only her
seem to be hearing. Some hours
before dawn, she couldn’t shut
her eyes anymore while waiting
anxiously for the c--k in their
neighbourhood to signify day
break. When it finally did, she
already had her bath and gotten
ready. She was careful not to
stain herself while getting the fire
from her neighbour’s thatch-
proofed kitchen to use. After
gathering the few fire woods
around and fanning the coals, she
got fire kindled in her own kitchen
as well, before placing the pot
that served as frying pan- with
back as completely dark as the
colour of coal tar- on the three
stones that formed the pot-stand.
She needed to pour red oil in the
pot and fry akara for her
grandfather, alongside boil some
water for ‘akamu’. Akara are cakes
made from beans flour while
akamu is the pap she usually
made from millet corn. Baba, as
everyone calls her grandfather,
likes it whenever she prepared
this great recipe for him as
breakfast. For the old man, it felt
like crushing down a Chinese
recipe in a 5-star hotel once in a
while because that’s exactly how
the meal comes to him; once in a
while. Laibe his granddaughter
doesn’t prepare this all the time.
Apart from the fact that she does
this anytime she gets some
money enough to fund the
ingredients needed, she will also
always do it anytime she is in a
very elated mood as he observed
in times past.
[/b]
“Ójó àbènè ómàmì”,[/b] the old
man prayed that God would keep
her as Laibe came over to pick
the plates her grandfather just
finished eating from. He started,
as she always expect whenever
he eats to his fill, his endless
rounds of showering prayers of
blessings on her again and again
this morning. The prayers were so
intense that they both didn’t hear
a car drive into the space in front
of their house till a voice came at
the entrance door.
Laibe’s heart leaped for joy when
she was asked to bring her bag
into the car. She hugged her
grandfather tightly, seeing the old
man was at the brink of tears.
They’ve had this conversation
over and over again. At this point
she must leave nonetheless.
Though she wishes to go say
proper farewell to her two friends
as well before leaving, the hasty
pressure made her reel off that
idea. The girls planned coming
over to see her off but they can’t
leave their parents homes this
early, definitely. Well, Baba would
do the narrating and give the
explanations on her behalf when
they eventually show up, she
thought, taking her seat at the
back of the car just as the journey
was about to begin.
[/b]
“Tàné wà”[/b] Ocholi told her to
come down again. He struggled
hard to finally bring the car to a
halt somewhere beside the road
this time before stepping down
and opening the car’s engine for
the fourth time today. It was a
wise decision they had put that
heavy stone, she went to bring the
other time, in the trunk just
perhaps the car broke down much
later.
And yeah! It just did.
Ocholi went over to the trunk,
opened it, lifted up the stone that
would be serving as wedge for the
second time and placed it
underneath the front tire.
Laibe looked around; the road
was too lonely and deserted. The
son of one of their village chiefs
became a very senior special
adviser to the state governor in
the last administration and the
young man decided to serve the
people of his fatherland by linking
a road through his village into
Enugu. This way, civilisation
would come and business growth
could be empowered. She
remembered the screams and
dances in their local church when
the elder taking the church
announcements that Sunday
announced that huge amounts of
money has been released by their
illustrious son to sponsor the
project which was to last for
maximum of eight months. It’s
been a year and two months today
since the contractors started the
work and stopped midway and as
if that was not enough, the road
that was said to be tarred is
getting to disassemble within the
space of just six months. Laibe
heard the men who sat to take
palm wine at the market square
saying sometimes ago that
contractors always eat up the bulk
of the money released for any
massive project and deliver a job
that is not up to two percent of
what was budgeted.
That was quite true. And of
course, she had plans, massive
ones at that.
Even though it practically dashed
all her hopes; she had envisaged
being able to carry her sweet and
soft garri to sell as far as Enugu,
which would then become lesser
than two hours drive from Ofabo,
and getting extremely rich in the
process. She also envisaged
being able to do all she had ever
dreamt of doing all her life but
the contractors, who didn’t deliver
what they were meant to deliver,
dashed it all- the hopes and
aspirations of a poor thirteen year
old amongst others.
She looked down the whole length
of the empty road in front of her.
Here seem like a road in the
valley of the shadow of death; no
human in sight, no animal as well,
except the chirpings of the birds
and squirrels in the thick forest
flanking the side walls of the
road.
Ocholi had used a stone to hit the
engine over and over again to no
avail and even if she wanted, she
cannot push this car all by
herself. Thoughts popped within
her as Ocholi wiped off the sweat
dripping down his forehead with
the back of his dirty palm. He
turned to look at her tiredly but
she bent her head to avoid eye
contact with him and just then she
saw the red mud stains from the
heavy stone that added to her
already multiple-coloured dress.
Ankpa, as her friends who had
been there over and over
explained, was to take barely forty
five minutes’ drive from the
village but Ocholi and her had
spent the last two hours of the
morning on this road.
Was her decision wrong now?
Or were her grandfather’s words
true?
When would she finally get to the
Ankpa of her dreams?
She dragged in a much needed
calming breath and held it.