CHAPTER ONE
Kolumi's existence as an abandoned nasty village boy was not his egoic cause but the influence of his father who rejected him as his blood child, a fact that almost caused him into commiting suicide when he first heard about the truth of his solitary life from his elder brother. His birth was a God's given chance; more of a fortune unlike the normal birth of his elder brother and sister, as often narrated by his mother.
Rarely seen among the newborn babies, Kolumi cried for over three consecutive days, from the time when he had just been pushed out of his mother's womb until the last day of his birthday celebration; the time when he was finally brought out from the house to see the sunlight for the first time, and his endless streams of tears was the first sign that his typical traits were to differ from others who saw the twilights and the morning sunlight before him..
subsequently, after one week, from the day when he first saw the sunrays, he began sliming like a malnourished child. No one could explain the clear cause of his etiolation, not even his parents, but his elder brother surely had an inner sight. He began complaining to his mother from the first day when Kolumi's health began deteriorating, pleading for his young brother to be taken to the hospital so as to receive a better medical attention from the qualified nurses and doctors, but no one listened to him. If he had money and allowed to take care of his younger brother, he would have by no doubt intervened, but he wasn't given such a chance and perhaps, he had no money.
Kolumi's mother and father were far much inclined to the usage of herbal medicines and the worshipping of demi gods, so they could not accept to listen to their son's notion of taking the nearly dying baby boy to the hospital. The modern preaching by the church pastors, daecons, bishops and some annointed men of God could not pull their beliefs towards the bible like any other coverts within their village, since for many times, they had often been surprised by the immediate response of their family totems. Intentionally, they abandoned Kolumi for five days, feeding on nothing. The young boy remained locked inside the small hut for all those days, continuously crying with a high tone just as children always did once secluded from their mothers, eating the scattered fine layer of the sand on the floor. For the first three days, Kolumi ceaselessly cried, and everyone who either passed near their compound or came to pay a visit to his parents heard his voice, but in the fourth and fifth days, the hut broke into a hush and his elder brother almost lost temper on his mother when he could nolonger hear Kolumi's voice. As an elder son whose control of the family would at one point remain in his hand after the death of his father, he did not fear to confront them about the timid treatment they had been giving to Kolumi. After pleading for them to take Kolumi to a better hospital, remove him from the abandoned hut and provide him with essentially nutritious food: and not listened to, he bore no more lasting respect for them, continuously quarreled and refused to eat food.
On the heave of Kolumi's release from the dilapidated hut, he confidently cautioned his parents to end showing impartiality among children, regardless of how unworthy one might be. Without fear of the unknowns, he further reminded them of how hard it had been for them to bear another male child, and now that the gods had listened to their prayers, they had forgotten of how much they craved for such and the sacrifices offered in death's dark vale. Despite of his wisdom, strength and values as the first born, his parents didn't treat him with respect and rarely could they allot him moral values as an elder child. They didn't listen to his plea, advice and prophecy as a young child. Before hiding Kolumi inside the hut that stood lonely in despair, he foretold them that, their plan of sacrifing the newly born child would not be met if he still existed and that if they refused to understand him and only concur to the orders of the ghosts, then the fate of their actions would be judged on the fifth day. Indeed the elder son had been revealed the exact motive of his parents for dispatching the child from their disposal. His spirits were divine, and as a God's fearing young boy, he tirelessly prayed; crying days and nights to the heavenly father to forgive his ignorant parents and relieve his only brother, Kolumi from the unknown sickness that had caught him into destructive pains.
As his parents kept having private talks between themselves, trying to hide their evil plans from him, his spirits had already revealed him everything that they had been planning against the life of innocent Kolumi. Though he knew exactly what was going on between his father and mother, he didn't bear pride of his divine gift to devour their acts, but rather kept a close watch of their actions. When his father heard him professing of what would happen after the fifth day of Kolumi's survival in the dark corner of the abandoned hut, he ignored and while talking under his armpit, he rebuked the disparaging works of the godly spirits that might come against his plans. His elder son however didn't hear him, but wisely sensed how disgusted he was about his words. He perfectly knew, that even though he was to continuously engage his parents on the wise sayings from the bible, they wouldn't still listen to him. The memory of how he forced himself into salvation, something that made his parents to reject him for over a year, having been chased from home and denied all the essential needs as a child. He wouldn't forget how he rambled to come back home from the unknown land where he spent the entire one year, wandering in people's homes, seeking for food and shelter. So even though he still didn't support his father's ways of life, he had now minimized his reactions, and that was the moment when he gradually began to learn that the coexistence of demi gods and heavenly God is Paramount in all aspects of life.
Slowly, through the teaching of his mother, who partially loved him, he began adopting and understanding why the family totem existed and what spurred his understanding exceptionally, was when he heard his mother telling him the cause of his excessive intelligence.
Having heard her explanation which fully oriented him towards the benefits of the traditional life, he argued no more, but rather began to account for the benefits of prayers that he had accustomed himself to, since he resisted the traditional ways and changed into the modern ways of worshipping.
Without being convinced further, he summatively derived much from his parents' ways of belief, and that was the time when he accepted to renew his cordial relationship with them, and left them to offer traditionally based treatments to Kolumi, whose departure from life was counting no more days but less hours of the nights.
Kolumi was now three weeks old when his elder brother's struggle for his safety began to bear fruits. At this point, he neither spoke nor understood what he heard from his parents and fellow children around him. After his parents'attempt to sacrifice him had failed, he began to receive immediate treatment against diarrhea with drugs of both modern and herbal types. As young as he was, he didn't fear drugs like other children did. Funny enough, he demanded for drugs more than his interest for food, and ignorantly, his parents, especially the mother, did not deny his request for excess tablets regardless of how much doze he took. On seeing how Kolumi was being cared for amidst his health defect, Okuti the first born child didn't remain absorbed in discontention for long, he rebuked his mother over the excess doze of drugs and ordered her to leave him to take care of his younger brother till the time when God would listen, wipe his tears and let Kolumi recover from the ill state of his life.
As lovely as she had become to her child; in whose life with her husband all centered on him and in his absence, she wouldn't be at peace in that family, she did not refuse Okuti to assume the responsibility of caring for Kolumi as he requested. Though the tone he used wasn't friendly, she didn't bother about that, and for several occasions Okuti didn't use a humble voice while requesting for anything, so she had gotten used to the vigorous ways of her son.
As soon as Okuti drew close to his younger brother whom for a long time been denied to interact with, he changed all modes of treatment that were rendered to him by his parents, and with the spirit of brotherhood, offered all that his younger brother needed, especially giving him the right meals, exact quantity of medically prescribed amount of drugs and full embracement of his being. He never nodded at the demand of his brother, and before giving him anything to swallow, be it drugs or food, he first blessed it with a prolonged prayer that often captured the attention of whoever passed or stood around him. Hearing his prayers became a joy of his mother whom at the advent of his salvation refused to talk to him. Seeing his brother snoring and breathing with complexity always induced tears on his face, but with grim energy as an average old boy, he didn't allow Kolumi; the deceased-like young brother to see his tears. As soon as he sensed that he was about to eject streams of tears out of his eyes, he immediately wiped and continued attending to Kolumi, silently challenged of what misfortune could have abounded on Kolumi to suffer from such an unknown sickness whose cause was clearly known by his parents, but wouldn't reveal it to him. After four days of endless prayers and proper care, Kolumi started playing and living normally as other babies at their breastfeeding stages did.
For whoever knew how ill Kolumi was before Okuti had taken over as a caretaker would not doubt the copious works of God and how faithful Okuti was. His prayers and not the herbal medicines did the healing. For the first two days, he partially followed his mother's ways of giving drugs to Kolumi, but after seeing no change within fourty eight hours, he derived his own ways and that seemed to have deprived the Satan of its strength. Amidst the dark hours of the night when he had been in charge of his brother, he silently prayed and worshipped the God in heaven; continuously seeking forgiveness for his parents, elders and the entire land of Ladigo, Aleda and Kilokoitio upon their sinful acts which had deviated them from the ways of the most high God. After holding two days of dry fasting, Kolumi's pains became a history and without finishing his dosages, his relief divinely descended upon him.
As humble as he was, Okuti didn't show pride of his faith, but rather admitted that it's the treatment that Kolumi had been subjected to, that made him got healed. He feared that if he was to insist that it was prayers that delivered his young brother, then he would cause another agony to his father and mother who still remained inclined to the ways of the tradition after series of testimonies that they had heard and seen from among the few saved members of Ladigo.
The few villagemates who keenly knew how ill Kolumi was didn't believe that the baby would survive death, and the only news they longed for, was to hear about his demise.
To his father, he perceived Kolumi's birth as a mistake and didn't bother to care for him throughout the period of his sickness. He claimed that his wife must have cheated on him before her pregnancy that led to Kolumi's emergency. Conceived from the traditional motive, his continuous quarrels and arguments against the foetus seemed to have been the super cause of the unknown sickness on Kolumi that appeared at first as diarrhea, and later began to drag him into different ways. Okuti's father shouted both days and nights against the wife who kept insisting that he should take an active participation of another strategy after his first attempt had totally failed to yield any positive result. She didn't give him any gap after seeing that he was drawing far from her, especially at the time when Okuti had assumed the responsibility over the sick baby.
By virtue of perception, he knew things had defeated his wife and that before seeing the twilight twice from the time she abandoned Kolumi into the hands of Okuti, he would surely die. Little did he know that their total withdrawal would mark a new beginning of hope in Kolumi's life. Not even his mother believed that her child would come back to normal; having tried in vain to seek for the intervention of the ghosts through the family totem that stood in the center of the small compound. Within four days that Okuti had taken control of Kolumi's health, his father's strength in the garden increasingly became higher; he began spending all the daylights in the garden and would trace his way back home during dim hours of the evening, the time when he could only see the yellowish rays of the sun flashing on the earth. This, according to him, was to avoid answering what he didn't know from his wife and other people, especially the questions related to the suppressed health of his child, whom he had doubts whether he was the real father.
Now Okuti had struggled as much as he could, in his capacity as an elder son, and now that he had rescued his brother from an early and unknown death, he expected his parents to continue performing their duties in helping Kolumi to grow with happiness, but to his surprise, they didn't appreciate his efforts. Even his mother whom he trusted and whom sometimes showed him much love than his father, did not congratulate him over his influence towards the life of his brother. Consequently, after two months of unbroken heart and a continuous happiness in the life of baby Kolumi, his father gradually began changing into an unruly man. He would jokingly say a word that sounded bitter and unfriendly to both his wife and Okuti, but as funny as he had always been, they didn't bother to care about his mortaling utterances. As time went by, they started becoming overwhelmed by his disputing behaviors; the time when he wouldn't respect anyone with nasty words out of his mouth, randomly abusing whoever came to his home, regardless of the age and continuously insisted to kill his wife in case she didn't reveal the true father of Kolumi. That was the period when, there existed no peace at home and it worsened when he came back one evening from the garden and ordered for the immediate exile of Kolumi, else he would kill him before the sun rose in the following morning.
Kolumi's mother feared less and she was always bold at whatever situation she faced, so her husband's words didn't impose fear on her, rather it made her more careful and watchful about the harvock soon to be caused on Kolumi by his father. The tied relationship that previously existed between them weaken and the only hope she had at her family was Okuti's presence. Before Kolumi's birth, when she was six months pregnant, she totally denied that the pregnancy belonged to her husband and promised that whoever supported her husband's suspicion, should wait and confirm at the point of birth. Her words seemed to have costed her as what she vowed for didn't manifest. At birth, her husband didn't move far from the midwife who attended to her birth; he wanted to confirm at the instant of birth whether the baby would come out in his image, just as his first born, Okuti appeared. With a fixed mindset that every child resembled his or her father, he didn't think further that children on the other hand might adumbrate their relatives, and not necessarily their parents. As soon as the midwife pulled out the baby, before the woman had seen the child, he crouched towards the surface where the baby had been laid and with his sight fixed, critically observed at all the body parts while caressing his body with his right fingers. Without saying a word, he stood up and stumped on the ground, while following the direction of the main door, crossed the compound laterally and without looking back, entered inside the kitchen where Okuti sat on the black painted three legged stool, peeling the sweet potatoes.
Silently, he sat on the floor and while looking at Okuti, he continuously shook his head, wondering of what kind of misfortune his wife had awakened in his family. Okuti as a young boy didn't Know what had stressed his father that had turned him into a humble father than he had been before. All he could guess was that his mother was in labor and by God's grace, would give birth soon. Seeing his father possessed with unrest, he slowly realized that there was something unusual taking place, but at that time, he could not ask. After all these strong pretexts, there came tears on Okuti's face that signified something that he couldn't explain, but could surely predict its impact, and not the cause. The young boy would delay with peeling if he was to monitor and investigate the cause of his father's unrest, so he ignored everything that he saw and sensed at the moment, and focussed on what he was doing, not forgetting that he would soon be called to attend to his mother. On finishing the peeling process, he hurriedly cleaned the saucepans and lit the fire on the usual hearth positioned at the right corner of the kitchen, immediately after the doorside. At only six years of age, Okuti worked like someone of fifteen years, full of energy and eagerness towards doing any form of work. He did not complain of the heavy domestic works that his mother sometimes gave him, even when she was not occupied, but silently and without haste, he always preformed it to his best.
Now as the potatoes remained boiling on the fire, he quickly picked a ten liter jerrican and rushed to the nearby water station that was commonly known as Aloori. Good that it was still mid morning and people were not many at the water saurce except the two young boys of his age bracket who had been sent by their parents to fetch some drinking water for those who had been weeding in their garden. So he didn't hesitate to ask them to first allow him fetch the water before they could, so as to rush and check of what he had left on the fire. As old village friends, the boys didn't argue, but instead, helped him to fill the ten liter using their small jerricans and warned him to rush else, he would not survive punishment from his father in case the food on the fire got burnt. The boys spoke as if they perfectly knew how tough Okuti's father was. With deep sympathy, they consoled him to bear with such a situation and that, one day he will be out of it and never go back again if his sister matured. The boys' words were full of sorrows and Okuti would wait no more than leaving them at the water point and treading back home.
On reaching at home, the midwife ran and quickly removed the jerrican from his head, and while holding his hand, directed him to the house where his mother laid half dead. With the trembling lips and qualm in her look, Okuti sensed something wrong, but he didn't mutter. The unprofessional traditional birth attendant only had her celebrated moment at the time when the baby had just been pushed out of the mother's womb, and that was when Okuti's father was still inside the house, trying to strain his eyes to closely and clearly ascertain the outlook of the newly born baby. At that time, both her and Okuti's father looked at each other with joy and shook hands for yet another blessing, the gift of another male child whom both parents had been longing for. That was when they were behind the curtain, off view from the mother's body, and as soon as the man left, she laid the baby down on the mat and turned back to cleanse the woman's intestical cod, that was when she realized she had fainted, unable to allocate herself and identify what laid beside her. The midwife's name was Alice and since her inception into midwifery, neither a baby nor a woman had ever died from her hand, so such experience strengthened her and though Okuti's mother breathed with complexion, Alice still had an unsurpassed belief that she would be well.
While she laid unconsciously, Alice performed her duty as an experienced local midwife, while in her heart, she kept praying to the gods of Omara and Oming to look down with mercy upon the innocent young woman and let their miracle descend upon her so that she recovered from the pain. Left alone in the house, only with the half dead woman, Alice silently cried with fine tears that uniformly rolled down her cheeks. Though she consoled herself amidst the woman's despair of existence, the incident had taken longer than she thought for her to get back to her normal perspiration, and besides, it was coming to noon, the time when many villagers would begin coming back from their respective gardens. So her confidence gradually began to reduce to morbid fear, characterized with tears and eratic movements on the compound.
While Okuti entered inside the house as directed by Alice, he got his mother struggling to wake up from the bed; calling her late father's name, and hardly choking back her tears. "You cannot die at this early time," Okuti politely said as he held his mother by her two hands, slowly pulling her off the ground. For about one minute, he silently knelt before her while pointing his right middle finger on her forehead. As soon as he removed his fingers, her mother burst out with tears for microseconds and suddenly kept quiet. That was when she began speaking normally and with divine perception, Okuti understood it was the ancestral evil spirits which had sizzled his mother. From such occurrence at Kolumi's birth point, his subsequent sufferings and health complications would not be questioned by whoever saw or heard what Alice narrated. From some wise aspects, one would blame the strange appearance of the baby to the defects of its mother's poor health condition, that could have caused mutative effect, but could Okuti's father think up to this extent? For he didn't want to know anything related to sickness or any related explanation towards Kolumi's mutation, but only insisted on knowing who was responsible for his wife's pregnancy. And now that he had started threatening to kill the child and his mother if she exceeded one week without answering his deemed hurting question, Okuti's mother had to begin planning to look for a way of hiding Kolumi from his father's sight, else she would lose him soon. Ever since her first time of giving birth, she had never experienced such pains not until now in her third born baby, so it would be a great loss to her if she lost him in such a cheap way. She heeded to the false belief that, 'a child that gives much pain to its mother is borne to be successful and destined to lead the family to the right direction.' So amongst all her three children, Kolumi, though young, became a child after her heart. She valued him more than Okuti and Akumu whom at their young ages, helped their mother in all aspects of life, especially within the limits of work that weighed below their capacities. When their mother had just conceived Kolumi, Akumu had just been weaned, so in an attempt to keep her away from her mother, she was taken to her aunty's home in the far village of Ladigo in the western outskirt of Aleda. Thus for all these periods that Okuti had been struggling with his brother's sickness, she was away from home and unaware of what had been taking place. Before taking her to Ladigo, her father refused that proposal and promised that he would ceased to render any help to Akumu if her mother took her away from home, but all these didn't scare her. "When you weaned Okuti and conceived Akumu, you didn't send him to your sister's home, and he didn't disturb you either. You delivered peacefully and did everything normally, but now you claim to be disrupted by Akumu if she stays here amidst your pregnancy. Tell me, am I the real father or someone else?" Okuti's father bitterly reminded her but she was too used to his funny ways that even if he seriously spoke something, she didn't value it. All their interactions and lives were full of jokes and hilarity, something that made them often behave like children from the same womb.
Okuti's father seemed to have been more serious on his decision of letting Kolumi grow up in an exile though his wife still insisted to remain with her baby boy. Since the time he declared his decision of chasing the duo from his home, he totally began showing wild characters to his wife, and most of the time, refused to share the bed with her. That was still soon before his annoyance had intensified, but after a period of one month, when Kolumi had attained the age of one month and three weeks, he stopped pleading to his wife and what he did, was to begin planning for how could stay away from home for one full week, without appearing at home. While listening to his scrappy radio; playing cultural songs of lango clique, he kept shaking his head joyously while slowly but selectively picking his clothes from the wire that hang horizontally above the roof. With mixed feelings of nervousness and ex-nervousness, he stepped outside from the room and walked around the house, pointing the aerial of the radio towards the ground. Here he seemed to have been remembering something that he long hid on the roof and that wasn't far from cowry shells. For about one hour of search, he didn't get what he had been looking for, but that didn't stop him from devising another means finding what he needed to leave with. For this, he had to be careful because if he did it fulfill his biased interest without the acknowledgement of his wife and Okuti's whose understanding had developed beyond his real age, the he would merely be driving himself towards the punishment of the cultural leader, who had the full rights to decide on any kind of punishment to be given to anybody who acted against the cultural norms. For it was still early morning and his wife and the elder son were still in the garden, so he had remained alone at home. Before Okuti left for the garden, his father announced to him that he would soon be following them with a bowel of clean drinking water, and so there would be no need for Okuti to bother hovering with baby Kolumi, hoe and water on his hands. On hearing thy father's kind words, he felt happy and immediately followed his mother who had already walked a little distance further.
"Mom!" Okuti shouted while quickly pacing to reach his mother. With the baby on his back, he still strived to quicken his journey, and after reaching to his mother's shadow, he silently turned his back and carefully descended the baby, and by virtue of motherhood, Piranok, Okuti's mother instinctively understood that she needed to breastfeed the baby. So without saying anything, she politely received the baby and kept breastfeeding him while moving. Okuti then carried all that she had; panga, a basin and baby garments, on top of what he had before.
The several routes that led to Piranok's garden had no difference since all of them had narrow paths with long etiolated grasses which curved on the clear ground, and that caused difficulties to those who feared to be immersed in dews. This was rainy season and most of the roads were miry with mud everywhere, worst with the village routes where footsteps were always like the ones of freely straying cattle. Okuti and his mother were following such trails so their movement was bit slow, and the fact that they left home a little late, after being hurt by the lion of the family, they would by no means reach late to the garden.
Ten kilometers was the distance of the garden from Aleda village where Piranok had been married. That was too much for the young boy, Okuti to be covering everyday, but as lonely as he was besides his mother, he had to. Usually, Piranok rode the bicycle whenever she was to be going to the garden, but that was months back before colliding with her husband over the issue of Kolumi. And now that there existed no strong pretexts between them, her husband denied her the bicycle, not only for garden trip but to be used on any occasion. On his way to the far land where he had to shrug his shoulders to prove his strength as the first born, Okuti persevered without complaints, and he often showed no sides whenever assigned duties by his two parents, he equally listened to them. After a long walk marked with excess tiredness and disturbances from the baby, they finally arrived. The garden's size was half an acre and it had beans wallowing with green leaves, thriving with weeds for nutrients. The whole field looked greenish, glamorous not only to the owner, but to whoever saw the beans. With slight wind, they uniformly swayed in alternate directions, quietly inducing a fresh air to whoever stood inside the field.
Now the next step was to decide on how much they were to dig. Not withstanding the time wasted while going, Piranok marked a space that measured three by twenty, using a ten feet rod that was to be finished before they could return home. While smiling, she looked at her son with an appealing face and calmly asked, "Is this okay for today?" Covered with hidden fear of being under rated, Okuti duly answered yes. Behind him was his mother's hoe,. and while turning to lay baby Kolumi in the shade, he terribly knocked himself with the hoe, but fortunately, he neither felt down nor injured himself. The young baby too, remained hardly caught between his hands and didn't slide off from the comfort zone of his double palms. For the time being, Piranok was still collecting some dry pieces of firewood that were scattered on top of the beans' leaves. So as Okuti staggered with the baby after blindly knocking himself, she didn't see them and wasn't aware of what was taking place behind her. Had it been a fatal accident that Okuti and Kolumi were involved in,then she would have got when they were laid apart and unconscious of themselves, but glory to Jah that it wasn't a devilish plan. Already they had wasted almost thirty minutes on the relevant but not the main theme which had taken them to the garden, and since it was chilly with no sun heat, thy didn't bother to hurry with what had blocked them from starting the weeding process. As Piranok sat down to rebreastfeed the baby before bending her chest on the hoe, she heard the crowing sound of a rooster from the nearby home, she quickly laid the baby back on the garments and silently stood up with the hoe on her left hand. Without asking, she picked Okuti's hoe from the ground sharpen her blunt edge of the hoe before starting to dig. "Okuti..." She shouted three times with Okuti's name, and each time she sounded, Okuti waited with a keen attention to listen to her message but
in vain. That was always her usual character when she instantly wanted someone's help, and Okuti without being told, he hurried to her while expecting to be sent somewhere, but his mother was too numbed to say a word. So she just gave him the hoe while she continued digging. Okuti, looking at her quiet mother, lacked what to say, but as a boy who had taken time with her mother and used to her mother's unique ways of Inquisition, he thought with a wise reflexion and without wasting time, began digging parallel to the side where his mother dug.
The boy's energy was smaller compared to her mum's. He weakly hit the ground with less force, and couldn't bend for more than one minute without stretching himself. The crops needed patience and endurance, not quark and hurried digging like most lazy people did, so as to avoid accidental cutting of the premature stems, which in most cases caused crops into wilting. Slowly, and surely, Okuti dug and dug; streaming both sweats and tears as if his body had been immersed in a steam. Not looking behind and ex-nervousness of how the young boy staggered will the how, hardly breathing and silently professing negativities, Piranok didn't bother of asking him what had gone wrong. Silent and lonely tears continuously rolled through his face and he didn't allow his mother to notice it. He kept wiping them off each time they flew down his cheeks. With the fear that his mother would leave him in the garden in case he remained behind as she had been mercilessly doing it in the previous day, Okuti decided to hurt himself with the sharp edge of the how that left his two right feet incessantly bleeding.
While crying aloud to the tune of his mother's ears, he randomly rolled on the ground as if he had been attacked by something strange and mysterious. On hearing Okuti's voice, Piranok quickly turned her back to see what was happening behind her, and on seeing Okuti meanderingly motioning on the ground like a drunk snake, she took a whirlwind pace to check on him. Handling his left hand and the collar of the black t-shirt that the boy had put on, she concisely asked, "What happened?"
"How did you hurt yourself?" she added, touching on the injured feet. Okuti remained lying down and refused to respond to his mother's kindling questions, and since he was just pretending, he needed to logically intensify the pain so as to induce the maximum attention of his mother.
Looking at how Okuti cried for a help, Piranok took heart and philanthropically removed him from the ground, cleansed mud from his legs and the clothes. She hurried to the nearby neighbor's home and borrowed a bowel of water to cool Kolumi's body. When she had just returned from where she had gone, with water clamped on her head, she found Okuti cajoling the baby not to cry yet on his face, there ran several lines of tears that looked to be fresh. She didn't bother to ask him again why such traces of tears existed, instead, she sat with her legs stretched before her, slowly pulled the baby from the garment, first breastfed him before turpid sponging him. She did it while sitting on the ground, swaying the baby on air; between her legs. With Kolumi smiling, widely opening his toothless gum, Piranok too, began laughing while Okuti instead of showing the same conviviality just like his mother so as to induce a prolonged smile on the baby's face, he instead started whimpering explicitly. Confused in her thoughts, she rudely asked Okuti, "What is the problem? You have been nervous and desperate since morning. Are you worried of your father?" The boy still had no answer to her mother because he feared to be told the untold, but when his mother slipped and said, "Go and collect all the hoes, take them to the neighbor's home and hurry and we go back home." Okuti produced the first smile and that remained the smile of the day, as long as a love symphony.
Now the journey back home wouldn't be as hard as the previous one since all that they had come with to the garden had been left at neighbor's home. The only buggage this time would be the young Kolumi of whom his mother feared most to carry, but since Okuti had an injury on his feet, she would be forced to carry the baby solitarily till home. What Okuti could carry was the light garments which were unused to cover Kolumi while on his mother's back. However, before starting to walk back home, Okuti reminded his mother about his father's promise of following them with a bowel of water, boldly insisting that they should wait for him. Not imagining what time it was and how far they had to travel, Okuti childishly begged his mother to move from the garden through the feeder roads and that if they reached on the main road that linked to Aleda, they should not rush, but to first sit in some nearby shade and await for his father. He sounded candidly as if there was something he had perceived from his father's promise that his mother either did not or could have forgotten. The angry and tired mother could barely give Okuti a podium of stupid argument now that they had already left the garden. From some deep perspective, it looked as if Okuti's day had been wholly characterized with indecisiveness and confusion, unable to allocate himself a better place. Instead of supporting his mother's decision, he instead manipulated his or totally refused to listen to it, something that kept creating moral disjoint between them, since the time they left home for the garden till now that they were on their way back home.
Yet another fatigue hovering on Piranok having found her husband steadily sitting on the verandah of the main house, rudely waiting for her with a newly sharpened knife inside his palm that wasn't openly exposed and not easily seen by everyone, but by only few who knew how to characterize silent notions and look. As usual, a wise child would not fail to greet his or her mother or father whenever they had longed from each other's presence for a while, regardless of how many days, weeks, months or years they had spent away from one's disposal. So immediately when Okuti had just stepped on the compound, he swiftly walked to the main house where his father sat, supporting his chin with his knuckles. "Good afternoon father!" Okuti calmly greeted, his eyes staring widely on the wall. "How are you my son?" His father replied with a question, gloomily looking at him, but subsidedly. The goats and sheep were still in their respective houses and Okuti didn't wait after greeting his father, he rushed and began pulling the goats before he could begin untying the sheep. His father liked goats more than any other animals, so he reared many of them than sheep that were only five in number. With his father comfortably enjoying the fresh air on the verandah, Okuti struggled with the animals alone, handling two at a time and taking them to the grazing field that vastly laid around the home promises. His father constantly looking at him yelled, "Make sure you hardly tie those goats. I don't want don't want to hear any complain that my goats have caused damages on neighbors' plants. If I happen to hear so, then you will pay with your mother."
Inside the kitchen, sat Piranok, depressed of the clumsy spirits that had developed in her husband, a ghost spirit which had struck him into roaming and seeking for only what to fill with stomach. She sat with her two legs stretched straight infront of her, Kolumi seated in the small space between her legs, easing himself. Seeing how disorganized the kitchen was, with all the saucepans, plates and cups disorderly dumped inside the house, Piranok looked more worried. Before leaving home, everything; ranging from kitchen ware to clothes in the wardrobe were in a systematic order and now she could only see the reverse of what she had left behind. Confused of where to begin from, she laid baby Kolumi on the mart and drew closer to the hearth, removed the ash, and went outside the rubbish pit to collect some pieces of dry wood to help her set the fire. After stepping house, she saw her husband sleeping on the verandah with his chest pointing upwards and his left leg twisted over the right leg. Jokingly, she said, "Kolumi's father, today seems to be a lean one." Pretending that he hadn't heard his wife's voice,he continued snoring loudly. This time, he had already hidden the knife inside his back pocket, so he slept with his hands spread apart, opened palms and curved behind his head. Piranok on hearing no reaction and seeing no body displacement, stepped off her shadow and continued to the garbage point. Under the mango tree, sat Okuti, looking exhausted. Though she always cooked with Okuti beside her, this time we didn't want to disturb him since he overworked, and done what weighed beyond him. She felt sympathetic with him and while thinking of what had gone wrong with her husband who had rejected to offer her any support that day, her eyes accidentally glimpsed on an egg with a whitishly shinning shell, placed on the edge of the top wall, vertically positioned to the hearth. Not scared of what she saw, Piranok ignored the egg and continued with what she had been doing.
Inside the big saucepan, there was some small seasoned vegetable that she cooked the previous night and didn't serve. Alongside, was a dish of fried peas that was served to her husband and Okuti. So she just needed to warm the vegetable meal and mingle the sorghum, something that would not waste time. Without pausing and not minding at how intense the baby had been crying on the mart, she continued with the cooking process until she finished. After serving Okuti, she then left him eating next to the baby who had now cooled from temperament and soothed into total asleep. Still dressed on her dirty woolen dress Wich she had gone with to the garden, she paradoxically moved on the compound, crossing from the kitchen to the main house which acted as the store and the bedroom. Now her husband had already shifted from the verandah to inside the main house, so when she approached the door, she directly entered without knocking. "Kolumi's father," she calmed called out, standing behind the curtain with the food in her hands. "What?" her husband bitterly retorted, removing the curtain before him to have a clear view of his wife. "How have you called me?" he repeatedly asked, pointing his right hand at her as if he wanted to slap her. Having seen her husband wildly responding to her with a practical threat of bitting her, she immediately placed the food on the bare floor and stood firmly unshaken beside the dish. With the whole house broken into total silence and only body languages in use, Piranok joyfully handled her husband's hand and quietly matched with him to the bed. "My dear husband, you have been acting very indifferent since yesterday. You even refused to go to the garden with us. Nothing you have done since morning. Is there anything hurting you? Or you are still inclined to the misconception that this is not your child? If that is the case, just go to the elders and let me take the oath so that you believe that Kolumi is your blood child." she humbly said while kneeling before him, directly looking in his eyes while her hands caressed through his thighs. Caught in a deep sensation of disgust, he replied nothing and while Piranok still continued to kneel, he slowly removed his legs from the ground and got himself back on the bed while the curtain remained halfway hunging. "Are you not going to eat?" Piranok asked, toning with romanticization. After hearing her melodious preamble, he tilted his head slightly above the pillow and with a deep voice said, "I am not hungry, and even if I was to be hungry, I wouldn't afford to eat the food of a lier, concubine and a double strickery practitioner. Let it be your last time to stagger with food before me. From today and onwards, never call me your husband and very soon I will let what I promised come to pass." After hearing her husband's warning that ended with a prolonged geering, Piranok responded with tears that streamed continuously as she sat by the doorside. Silently weeping, she kept reiterating why she married such a man whose morals and integrity were of no values.
Back in the kitchen, Okuti had earlier finished eating and just waiting for his mother to attend to the child so that he could get out and relax, but after waiting for his mother's return for so long, he decided to follow her. Fearfully but carefully, he crossed from behind the main house and first stood for a moment, silently hearing what his parents had been involved in, that had kept his mother off the kitchen work. The house was in silence and neither the hilarious voice from Piranok nor her husband would be heard. Wisely as he had been, he maturely suggested something important might be going on from inside the house, he made a U-turn to the kitchen and continued soothing baby Kolumi, feeding him with soup. Before sitting for long Okuti saw his mother coming back to the kitchen, muttering. He didn't take concern of her trembling lips either, even when her mood physically looked gloomy. For many times, before Okuti had attained the age of six, the time when he was still five years and below, she had been roughly warning her against unnecessary questions, something that had made him become too inquisitive on both minor and major family issues that didn't require his concern as a young boy; a unique trait that typically distinquished Okuti from all the village children. So, having thought holistically of how to approach his mother to allow him join the group of fellow village mates who were playing football in the nearby home, he failed to derive the best way to convince her. Now as he picked up the empty plate before Kolumi to return to the bucket where other plates had been stocked, his mind swiftly rung that the pot inside main house had been lacking water for now three days and it needed to be filled. So without thinking further, he said, "I have to go and fetch the clean water from the borehole to fill the pot inside the bedroom. Without hesitation, Piranok support and said, "Good idea! Go but don't delay. Remember that pot is big and takes four twenty liter jerricans to be fully filled. With the ten liter that you will be using, you then need to rotate for eight times, so try to be quiet because you need to go and collect cassava in the garden before evening."
Pretending to be very serious, Okuti removed two empty ten liter jerricans, holding one on his left hand and one on the right hand side. Without looking back, he slid passed the the edge of the compound and quickly ran towards the direction of the water saurce, shouting with joy. " If I am to be beaten up to death, let me be. I can't fail to go and play football today," Okuti proclaimed, happily jumping and knocking the two jerricans against each other. Before branching to the field where his fellows were playing football, he first stood and redecided on what to prioritize; whether to first continue to the borehole and fetch the water or to first play for a while before heading for water. But as curious as he had been to feel the touch of such colorfully designed local ball which had green, white and black kaveras uniformly tied on the alternate sides, he paused and hid his jerricans unmindly along the way, rushed and joined the few boys who were already in the field. As unfortunate as he had always been on several occasions, he was chased as soon as he entered the field by his fellow village mates. "Who has permitted you? This ball is not for Arak clan," a boy of Okuti's age poignantly asked as he drew towards Okuti as if he wanted to slap him. Seeing how serious the boy was at him, Okuti didn't fear to be criticized; he quickly left the field and shortly stood from the touchline while spectating those playing. For he was the youngest among the boys and though his rival had showed him the negative spirit of segregation, he didn't think so deep about it. After taking sometimes from where he had been standing, he left and continued to the borehole. "Have I just been born unlucky?" Okuti asked himself, wondering of how he could be chased by a familiar face whom he had always played and shared the same plate with. Perhaps that day was cursed and all that he planned did not bear fruit.
He saw nothing yielding than concentrating on what he had been instructed to do, after being denied a position in the pitch. So from the pitch,he didn't waste time anymore on the way, he rushed to the water saurce and with an enormous luck, found when there was no one at the borehole. That again challenged him since on daily basis, the borehole used to be congested with fetchers from different corners of Aleda village as the only supplier of safe water; unlike Aloori whose water was only used for bathing, washing clothes, irrigation, and for mixing animal feeds. That was also his luck and even though he would reach late at home, Piranok too, knew how busy the borehole used to be, so he would not be challenged and stumbled in answering the unfriendly questions. Okuti with the two jerricans on his hands, each on the either side, hurried back home in fear of the unknowns. Piranok gone asleep on the mart with baby Kolumi, Okuti reached on the compound and found home in total silence; not even the noise of a blowing wind would be heard. He remained standing in the shade of the mango tree for a while, and not so long when he had been there, he heard the sneezing sound of Kolumi inside the kitchen. With the jerricans left behind, entered inside the kitchen and found the duo asleep. Vividly, he remembered his mother telling him, "Make sure you hurry so that you catch up with the time of collecting cassava from the garden." That was after seeing an old basin placed together with a hoe. He substantially understood that he needed to continue to the cassava garden though he hadn't yet filled the pot since the sun had already gone down and very soon the darkness would cover the atmosphere.
Instead of taking the water to the main house, he packed the two jerricans of water in the kitchen and immediately continued to the cassava garden while carrying the hoe on his left shoulder. The garden was near home and though he was tired from the series of works he had been exposed to, since morning, , he felt he had to do this, since they could easily sleep on empty stomach if he didn't. Her mother's instruction to him was to use the hoe and selectively dig out the mature casava tuber, leaving behind the premature ones, but Okuti as tired as he was, could not follow his mother's idea. He just carried the hoe for the sake, but on reaching the garden, he did his own wish. He rendered the hoe useless by randomly uprooting the casava tubers using his hand, and with four steps already off their holes, he counted and found seven big sized ones and four more small ones. This was more than enough for them, and if his mother cared to preserve, then it would last for over three days. Without delaying, he collected them inside the scrappy basins and and with his face directed towards home, he lifted up the basins on his head and while squatted, he picked the how from the ground and held it with his left hand, while the right hand caught on side of the basin. Slowly but carefully, he went up to home without any slight stagger.
On the verandah of the kitchen, there sat Piranok with Kolumi on her thighs, breastfeeding. Having found that the basin and the hoe were no more at the position where she had placed them and besides, the two two jerricans filled with water placed inside the house, she didn't worry and remained candid. She knew distinctively that it was Okuti, her son who could have gone with the hoe and the basin to the garden. And indeed her thoughts didn't lie her. After seeing Okuti, she quickly rose up and removed the basin from his head, and with sympathy, she said, "Please my son, I am sorry for this. I have overworked you since morning. Go and sit down. Take a rest as you wait to take a bath." Piranok in her mind, thought that the goats and the sheep had already been brought back from the bush by her husband since she saw him roaming around the grazing field for sometimes when she had been breastfeeding Kolumi, before Okuti had returned from the cassava garden. But when Okuti had just bent his back to sit down on the verandah, a voracious voice sounded from behind the main house, saying, "If these contract diseases, you will be the one to treat them." Though slightly different from the usual voice of his father, that was exactly him, implicitly ordering Okuti and his mother to hurry and untie the goats from the bush. "Another disaster again!" Okuti exclaimed, keenly hearing his father, yelling. "Let me go for goats and sheep before I take a bath," Okuti informed. Piranok became speechless when she saw the young boy solitarily running to the grazing field, weeping. She tried to rotate her sight all over the compound, thinking that she could see her husband, but the monkey had sat behind the main house, silently planning for where he would seek refuge from, when he succeeded in killing his wife and Kolumi, his last born.
Alone inside the kitchen, the woman wept, deeply in thought of the misfortune that had arose in the family, which had made her husband to avenge the birth of Kolumi on unknown reasons. sceptical about her safety and Kolumi, she closed the door as she continued to cook, not minding of how the heaving smoke could affect the health of her child. In Okuti's presence, she always remained brave and would boldly confront her husband in case of any unnecessary uprising, because she knew how measured and brave Okuti was, in rebuking his father's partite spirit.
It was already dark but Okuti still struggled with the goats from the bush. After her mother had completed with putting the cassava on the fire, she opened the door and followed him in the bush, handling a small bunch of lit dry grass with her right hand that acted as a source of light.
This was another sign that the family would part and by disgrace caused by Okuti's father, Piranok would profess false deeds about herself if she wanted to maintain her position as a fully married woman in such a family. At that time, Okuti had untied all the goats and brought them home, but there was still one female sheep that had remained untied, whose rope had gotten whirled on the two back legs. So she found when Okuti was still struggling to remove it so that he would easily pull the sheep would back home. With her light carefully hung on one of the leafless tree branches beside her, she bent passed Okuti's knees and forcefully pulled the sheep towards her. Okuti, on seeing her mother actively intervening, he stood up and held the burning grass so as to provide a clear view to his mother. At the pace of a destructively blowing wind, she stumped back home while Okuti remained behind, chasing the sheep.
Piranok, with only a one day of total solitude from her husband's company, had become thin with scary looking face. The pain of carrying Kolumi for nine months in her womb and after overcoming all the hardships that had sizzled her, having been disgusted by her husband, just at the advent of her child's growth almost made her insane.
Okuti's father in his unique wisdom had removed three pieces of half cooked cassava from the fire, at the time when his wife had left to help Okuti with the pregnant sheep in bush. In his myopic thought, he didn't expect either Piranok or Okuti to realize that, but when Piranok had just returned with the sheep, she smelled the burning cassava, and instead of first tying the sheep, she handed it to Okuti's hand and reluctantly instructed him to go and tie in a balcony, behind the main house. She then hurried and pushed the kitchen's door to get herself inside. While stepping on the white polythene bag, she steeply bent and quickly removed the saucepan of cassava from the fire. On putting down, she cowardly pushed the cover so as to allow it to whirlwindly cool down. That was when she surprisingly realized that some pieces of cassava were missing, having noticed that the arrangement in which she had made before subjecting the cassava to heat had been disorganized.
That wasn't the first time for such a shameful experience; before Okuti's birth, when she had just been married at her husband's family, she always suffered from such, and since they were only two by then, there was no one to suspect except her husband. And for this case, it was only him and baby Kolumi who had remained at home, so she would think nomore, except to acknowledge that it was the long hands of her husband which had slipped into her saucepan. That however could not stop her from serving the food, and since her husband had already warned her to stop crossing his sight with food, there was nothing to worry of, but through circumspection, she would worry of how her husband would survive in the absence of food. If he had either his mother or father, then he would have more chances to eat from them, but since all of them were now memories; documented in the history of the dead, there was nowhere he could secure survival from, except from his home.
"How could he have possibly launched such an attack to himself, yet he perfectly knew it was only his wife, Piranok who had been standing by his side under all circumstances; during the time when he first lost his mother, just two weeks after marrying Piranok, and in the subsequent death of his father, that happened on the same day with Okuti's birth.
After two months of silent anger and discontent between Piranok and her husband, she decided to leave home after reaching at the point that she could not withstand the daily pressure from her husband. As patient as she had always been, she would have still managed to stay, but when her husband decided to burn the main house, that depicted to her how angered her husband was, so she could not stay anymore. Not caring about the kind of hardships that his family was exposed to, he burnt everything, including his own clothes. If he had allowed Piranok and Okuti to rescue the luggages, then she might still be having a starting point, but with only the utensils that had remained in the kitchen, she could not afford to remain naked. For seven years that she had been married to her husband, she had never been bought any new cloth, except the old ones that she carried from her parents' home.
In the western part of Aleda, there lived her uncle in whose hands she could survive if she decided to quit her husband's home. Besides, she could also choose to go to her aunty's home where her young daughter, Akumu had been staying. So, it was then her wits to choose where she would find peace if she decided to leave. With the solid night that she spent outside with her children, she could not afford to spend the following broad daylight at her home. Having heard the awakening sound of a cock's crow, she immediately woke up from the bed. Not bothering of how the smoke had dirtied her dress, she carried Kolumi from the garment where he had been laid moved out quietly. At that time, Okuti was still snoring on the bed and his father too, still laid asleep behind the kitchen, on a mart that halfway covered the balcony where he slept.
In her mind, she wanted to escape without her husband's unanimity and indeed her timing saved her. As soon as she stepped outside from the kitchen, she directly continued with the journey to the direction of her aunty's home. It was still dawn and the weather was very cold, but she cared not. On her body, she dressed on a light citenge that could not defend her from the defects of the chilly weather. The same to the baby, but with the entangling manner with which she handled Kolumi, he didn't feel too much coldness that made him not to over cry like in the previous days when her mother would be moving with him to the garden in cold weather. Her aunt's home was relatively far from where she lived, but with the high pace with which she moved, the atmosphere broke into a daylight when she had already arrived at the nearest neighbor's home to her aunty's home. No one had come out of the house yet, not even her aunt, so she remained standing in the middle of the compound with Kolumi on her back, waiting for either Akumu or any family member to open the door. Afterp waiting patiently for a while, she suddenly heard someone sneezing from inside, and since she had been fearing to call out when she had just reached, she quickly regained the lost energy and confidently knocked the door. A familiar voice sounded in her ears after just a slight knock, asking about her identity. Without hesitation, she boldly replied, briefly introducing herself to the unseen face. "Push the door," a sad voice that sounded with a low pitch came from inside the house, and with a trembling hand, she slowly pushed the door and entered inside. "Oh mom!" Akumu, her daughter exclaimed after seeing her with a child horizontally lying on her chest. It was a surprise to Akumu since she left home before her mother had conceived and besides, she had often been quoted as the last born, so for two years that she had spent at her aunt's home, she still held the view that she had no any other brother except Okuti, with whom she shared the same womb.
Though she got immersed in surprise about the baby that her mother carried, she also sensed something strange with her mother's early visit, but since it was a little dark, her body language could not be easily defined by her mother.
On the second bed, there laid Piranok's sister who was still in deep asleep and hadn't yet known that she had a visitor. Akumu, instead of waking up her aunt, she just cajoled her mother and offered her a space on the pyparus mart to lay the baby and for to squeeze herself too. On top of Akumu's head was a thick cotton made bedsheet that acted as a pillow, so after seeing that among the few clothes that her mother carried were only garments for the baby, she stretched her hands and removed it, and with humility, gave to her mother as she whispered, "Please mom, it's too cold, cover yourself with this blanket." Without replying a word, Piranok received the blanket and immediately covered her body, carefully and quietly spreading it all over her body parts. Slowly whimpering, she turned her back to Akumu's face and closely drew towards the baby. Though the morning sun rays had already covered the atmosphere, and by the small openings on the roof, one would easily see the clarity of the atmosphere without coming outside. A hour later, Arac; Piranok's sister suddenly woke up from the bed, pandiculating. Not minding of what laid before her, she quickly moved outside and rushed to the latrine to ease herself. Her sight had not fallen on the extra two figures beside Akumu, so as she came back inside the house, she carelessly opened the door, exceeding its normal limit that slightly thrashed on Piranok's feet which had long straightened beyond Akumu's. "Eii...," Arac exclaimed. Her body shook on seeing Piranok inside the house, but as a sister and an experienced woman, she didn't allow the morbid fears to lead her into posing a mind wracking question to her young sister. For she was the elder sister and Piranok followed her third, while the second born was dead. It was a family of only ladies, so as an elder, she had been acting as Piranok's caretaker after their mother's death.
"What a surprise! How and when did you reach here?" Arac asked, producing a sad tone that varied with both low and high pitch. With her hands clamped on the ground, she woke up from the bed and sat, looking straight at her sister's eyes. With a sad voice, she said, "My husband has become a hyena and I can't afford to stay with him anymore. For two months now, since I gave birth to this baby, I have never had peace. He claims that this is not his child. I swore to him and told him to summon the clan elders so that I can take an oath, but he refused. Besides the humiliation he has caused exposed to both elders, lads, ladies and children in our community, he went on to burn everything inside the main house and as I talk now, there's nothing remaining at home except the utensils.
" What a stupid man!" Arac interrupted. "Where is our son, Okuti? she added. "He is his father's heart and I couldn't come with him. I woke up at dawn and they didn't know I was escaping, so I left him still sleeping." Piranok answered, covering her eyes with her fingers as if she was fearing her sister. "Take heart. I will do everything to ensure that he comes here." Arac assured. She then continued to her bed, slowly pacing and muttering as if she had been touched by her sister's testimony. With the blanket on her body, Piranok immediately left the room after having a brief discussion with her sister, and sat closely next to the door for a moment and after ten minutes of confusion, she stood up from where she had been sitting and sneeked behind the kitchen. Her intention was to get a hard broom that could help her in cleaning the compound. Looking keenly within the logs of trees and stumps that had been stocked on the kitchen's verandah, she didn't find any broom. Near the compound, was a small field where Arac used to host family meetings, but among the grass species, there were some species of hard brooms you hose leaves had changed yellowish, ready to be uprooted. After glancing at them, she looked no more, but just removed them without her sister's notice. Right from her feet, she bent down and began sweeping the spacious compound of her sister, while her daughter, Akumu and Arac still remained, enjoying the morning warmth of the bed.
Back at home, Okuti and his father had remained and for the whole week that Piranok's figure had not been seen at home, they bothered not. As if Okuti's father just wanted Piranok and Kolumi to move away from his home so that he could remain and retain the lost peace. Just within two days after Piranok left, Okuti's father struggled as a man and renovated the burnt house and within the same week, he bought everything which had gotten burnt, including some other new kitchen wares that had been missing. He subsequently began attending to garden works on daily basis, and all kinds of domestic activities, including cooking and fetching water. All these series of duties were seen in him at earliest moon of his marriage, and after Okuti's birth, he stopped. That was over six years when he had stopped performing such a mutually symbiotic work for his family and this was like the regeneration of the lost family love.