By Dipita Kwa
Edimo, the twenty-four-year-old president of Mukunda Vigilant Youth Group loved to dance after a heavy meal of roasted fresh sea fish accompanied by at least two cold bottles of castle beer in the company of a new girl. He couldn’t see himself staying in Mukunda this weekend while preparations for the Mt Cameroon Race of Hope were steaming out there in Buea. His only hindrance as usual was that he was broke. And whenever his pockets were dry of money, especially when a weekend like this one was around the corner and the strong memories of nightclub ambience in Tiko, Buea and Limbe were beckoning seductively at him, he must do something.
As was the custom, he organized his group to hunt down stray goats and pigs throughout the village of Mukunda. Goats were caught, tied, dragged away and locked up in a small plank hut roofed with thatch across from the village traditional court house at the chief’s palace. Edimo kept the keys and often secretly released some of the animals after receiving money from their owners. This was not the customary fine that went into the village council’s coffers. It was his money.
During his raids, all the pigs killed were carried to the palace and deposited on dry plantain leaves from where their owners claimed the carcass upon payment of a fine of five thousand francs if they couldn’t or didn’t want to negotiate with Edimo in private. But if the farmers did not show up two hours after the kill, the animal was slaughtered; part of the meat auctioned and the rest shared among the raiders and the village authorities who mattered.
In order then to guarantee a fruitful raid this morning, Edimo and one of his friends, Fosi, had gone round the village when everyone else was still asleep, sneaking into people’s backyard and quietly opening the doors to pigsty and goat pens, letting out the animals.
At exactly six o’clock, young men armed with ropes, sharp machetes and spears were let loose over the village from the banks of the Mongo River to the edge of the CDC palm plantation. Breeders were plucked from their beds as they heard the stamping of feet around their houses and the last desperate squeals of pigs as spears went through their hearts. People begged, wept, and cursed. But nothing could be done. Those whose protests could make a mark were benefiting from this activity and therefore found no reason to speak out. Edimo always ensured that all councillors had their small packages of meat and money, an effective and most reliable seal to a quick tongue. Even the chief of the village had his parcel after every raid.
Today, Edimo was working with Ngody who was the group’s Financial Secretary. Ngody’s main task was to record the kill and catch during each raid and to present a report to the council at the end of the month. For that purpose, he had a new notebook and a pen in his hand and was about to add a tick to the column titled He-Goat when he heard Edimo shouting his name.
‘Hurry here with that spear,’ Edimo was screaming at him.
Ngody reluctantly stuffed the book into the pocket of his jean trousers, picked up his spear and machete and strolled tiredly into the next compound from which Edimo was calling.
He found Edimo bent like a goalkeeper with his legs wide apart and an eager right arm stretched sideways towards Ngody while his left hand held his machete in the ready. He was guardedly watching a huge sow lying beside a kitchen door, suckling its six young ones.
Ngody couldn’t remember knowing any other person so devoted and extremely passionate in the destruction of life like Edimo. Edimo seemed to glow with a barbaric vigour whenever he inflicted pain.
‘Hurry,’ Edimo shouted at him now, his voice thick as though he was close to tears.
Ngody pretended not to have heard. He turned his gaze towards the kitchen wall and began to mentally count the planks, beginning from the ground and up to the rafters on which rusty aluminium roof sheets rested awkwardly after a lifetime of battling with the September breeze.
‘Be quick before it goes away,’ he heard Edimo shout at him and his eager tone made Ngody’s stomach churn.
Ngody sighed and looked up at the sky. A fresh wave of anger beat hard against his chest as he watched the dark clouds steadily gathering. What in his father’s name was he doing out here? He asked himself and wished he could be in the safety of his room before it began to rain.
‘Let’s close. I’m tired,’ he said feebly.
‘What are you tired of doing?’ Edimo shouted over his shoulder. ‘I say give me that spear.’
From their primary school days Ngody had known Edimo to be very stubborn and categorically unreasonable yet he tried now to dissuade him from going further with his intention.
‘Can’t you see that the pig is right beside its owner’s kitchen?’ Ngody asked.
Edimo turned around and glared at him.
‘Am I blind?’ he demanded. ‘What do you know about stray animals?’
At this moment, Ngody saw the owner of the pig, Engome, commonly known as Mami Tiako, with the hunchback and a bad leg that left her permanently bent like a bow, drag herself painfully from the kitchen. He told himself once again that he had no business being in this woman’s compound and started retreating quietly towards the fence of hedges separating the compound from the road.
‘What is wrong, my son?’ he heard the woman ask Edimo.
‘Nothing that concerns you,’ Edimo snapped. ‘Ngody, come back here with that spear!’
Ngody stopped beside the fence and stooped and began imagining himself sinking into the solid brown earth and appearing somewhere along the way to his farm instead of standing here partaking in what he thought was a disgraceful scene – a scandal to any youth with a grain of self-esteem and an active conscience.
‘Please, if not for her sake, spare that animal for the sake of her late husband’s memory,’ Ngody said, trying to evoke the image of Kumbe Ngom, known in his days as the Spartan, who had been the sports master and coach of their school football team back in 1981. There wasn’t a soul in Mukunda who didn’t know or hadn’t heard of the Spartan. Maybe, his memory might penetrate into Edimo’s heavily shielded heart and turn him away from this pathetic and abominable act.
But he was wrong.
‘You can call angel Gabriel if you want,’ Edimo instead shouted at him, sputum of rage lining his thick lips.
All this while Mami Tiako had been looking from Ngody to Edimo and down at the pig grunting ignorantly and shaking its ears to keep away the flies.
‘My son, what has Bema done?’ she asked, walking almost in a crawl towards Edimo. ‘I make sure she eats well so that she doesn’t go out looking for trouble. And you know that they are my only companion, my magi and salt …’
‘That’s why I want to kill it,’ Edimo spat out and shifted to one side to avoid her hand touching him.
‘My son, please...’ The woman went down on her knees and crept clumsily towards Edimo’s feet in supplication.
Edimo kicked as she grasped his calves. The woman lost her balance and fell. Edimo stepped over her, took seven long strides and snatched the spear from Ngody’s hand.
‘Please, don’t do it,’ Ngody whispered and attempted to hold his hand. Edimo pushed him aside with the wooden handle of his machete and strode back to where the sow was grunting happily with its eyes closed, unaware of the case being pleaded on its life.
‘I beg you in the name of…’ the woman didn’t finish her words. Instead she screamed and clasped her chest as Edimo lifted the spear. But nothing could stop Edimo. The sow squealed as the spear went through its ribs. All the piglets scurried into the kitchen. With one swift strike of his machete, Edimo severed the pig’s head from its body.
Ngody covered his face with both hands and cursed under his breath as he heard the woman saying: ‘It tears my heart to see that you took after your father.’ She was talking to Edimo from the floor where she lay prostrate like a lizard. ‘It is a big shame and a cause for weeping that even you didn’t turn out to be the lone light in Jembe’s house of darkness,’ she went on.
‘It is your home that is buried in darkness, old witch!’ Edimo retorted. ‘You and your good-for-nothing son, Tiako.’
Ngody gasped, turned and walked away, this time right out of the compound to the other side of the main road.
He too thought that Tiako was a good-for-nothing son but there was no point saying so to his mother especially the way Edimo just did. Engome was living in permanent grieve over a son who never slept in the house and who didn’t care whether she was ill or well except when he came after every fortnight to demand for money which she had earned from the sale of cassava dug and carried on her head all the way from a farm nine kilometres from the village.
‘Come and carry it,’ Ngody heard Edimo calling after him.
‘Take it and eat it,’ he heard the woman saying to Edimo. ‘Maybe you will grow to live longer than myself.’
‘Did I ever tell you that I intend to live as old as you?’ Edimo asked sharply, grabbed the carcass by the hind legs, leaving behind the head, and dragged it away from the compound, with the blood trailing behind him.
‘A generation of pain!’ Engome quacked like an angry goose as she picked herself up with difficulty. She wiped the dust from her kaba and went back into the kitchen, mouthing curses as she did so.
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