Arrogance of Destiny Ep.2 by XBX
ARROGANCE OF DESTINY
EPISODE 2
UDO COMMINUTY, EDO STATE IN NIGERIA
Year 1998
“Mama, this rain looks like something that will fall,” Esohe said to her mother that was at her back; They were coming back from the farm.
They carried big woods on their head, using circularly wrapped, dried plantain-leaves to cushion the weight of the woods.
“Yes. Your father is still in the farm. I had told him to return with us, he said he isn’t salt to be afraid of rain…that man. Let’s hurry home and prepare food, at least when he comes there will be hot food for him to put in his stomach.” The mother used the tuft of cassava leaves to whip herself severally, to drive away tsetse flies.
The winds blew, directionless. Before they left the farm, their shadows were already elongated; time was far spent. They were able to finish planting corn throughout the full length of the new farm; one thing she was glad for.
Now, they were passing the Odighi lake, there is always a sinister atmosphere here and they automatically hasten their paces.
“Mama, I hear that Osakpolor is, still, not yet back….that boy never hears words.” Osakpolor was the boy that had shot a bird around the Odighi Lake; he was rushed to the hospital in the city the next day.
Everyone knows killing or hunting around the lake is forbidding but Osakpolor, popularly known as Osakpi dodo, thought it wise to go there with his catapult.
“Do you know that the night I was born, I didn’t cry like the giant prince of Benin, Arhuan, who drown himself inside this lake. But that night it was said that the giant prince came out from under the lake the way he always did. All the suckling in the village started crying, their mother begged for mercy. After a while though, the children stopped crying; Arhuan had gone back into the water. It was then cry came out of my mouth. They use to call me the wife of Arhuan ne kemezi.”
Esohe, like every other person in Udo community, had heard the story of the giant that tried to drown himself in the lake. He did not die, they were told.
The trading tray does not lose in the market; all royal blood must receive burial rites no matter the offence committed. But the giant prince remained unburied, for it is believed he is not dead, but lives under the lake.
She remembered how their father had recounted the story under the huge mango tree in their compound, those beautiful, mooned nights. The story was too long ago now, all she wanted now was to go and search under the cherry tree for fallen cherry fruits.
But it was going to rain soon, and suggesting it will earn her some sharp reprimands from her mother.
“I just hope Osakpolor doesn’t die.”
“God should carry bad things far away from us ooo. He that is cutting to pieces a cow does not see hand to scratch his itches. When the rubber-tree tapper blows his nose, he pours on himself. May our enemies not see chance to send us where will kill us.”
XbX
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