DR FIXIT (NEW VERSION)

261 my friendship with other kids and the trust  grandma had of me would wear rust  if suddenly I was found to be loose  of tongue. 'But what exactly is the truth?' I secretly wondered. Why were all the tales not in alignment, weighing on same scales  all the arguments? In Antburg, there was big and small sins. If a bug bit you, you were free to hit that bug real hard. But if someone stole from your hut, 262 which was a big sin, and wouldn't own up, you took such a person to face the gods and immediately the consequences would be known though not all the times. Some ants had grown, it was speculated, wings and could fly quite high  to evade justice. And though hard the clan did try to curtail these tales, they were gaining ground  and prompted some their feet to pound to embrace the new way. The tale was rife  that some fellows could robustly bribe  263 the gods and taken to the shrine, they would escape harm as no grime on them would be found tho...

251 also to him. The race was a ding-dong. There is doom for the flippant tongue. I remembered that little tale and shut  my mouth. After the play, each child to their hut did return and hug his or her sleeping space. Where the kids were many and a common space  would share, they huddled together, limbs crossing. With grandma, I had the freedom sleeping  on a mat on the ground if hot was the room or jumping to the bed if the temperature did zoom  252 to zero as it happened in intense rain and also in the harmattan months. My train of thoughts shifted from the play in the moonlight  and I slept off. The cocks crowed and I opened wide  my eyes to see the shaft of sunlight piercing  through a crack in the roof mats. Stirring,  I looked around and listened attentively. I could perceive my grandma was actively  working in the rear yard. The machete  was hewing something. The branches of an orange tree  253 which stood near the kitchen sh...

241 in the new setting was the female gender. Their freedom was robustly hampered  with what it strapped on its back like a new mother. The girls tried everything this to scupper. There was a prominent case in our neighbourhood. After the boyfriend's parents became rude the teenage girl had gone to abort as the boyfriend said he was not the only one responsible for the pregnancy. Fate too failed to show any leniency.  242 She died and was dumped by the roadside  by her friends who didn't want to be on the side  of the law quite wrong for trying to help out. It remained an eternal model throughout  the clans as who wanted to rebel would be told the tale for her father did level, out of rage, the boy's family house  to the ground and if not that the boy like a louse sneaked into the thicket to hide, the witnesses said, with the tide 243 of the fury of the girl's father he would, just like their home, have been swept off too. What did boys do to make girls pre...

 231 and then made us imbibe the notion  that seven days make a week. In our tuition, our teachers made this their core instruction  and gradually, the old underwent deletion. Our town was full of artisans  and apprentices. Most were from clans outside our own and every weekend  you'd see them on conveyances bend their legs as they wheeled their bikes or would pay  the commercial ones who would find the way  232 to their ancestral homes in the outskirts. They littered our streets with fine shirts, gowns, trousers and skirts. Afro hair was in and everyone seemed to wear it. It was a din along the main roads and parks. Somehow, the kite went real high and far that we suffered our sights  to have it in focus and then downwards it did spin. The thread hooked on a branch. Its fate did dim when the kite-flyer pulled and pulled on it  and then it broke. From street to street  233 we suspected could lead us near  the lost kite, the owner an...

 221 'hekay ehkpo'. I'd noticed that if Ma Moneyit  was telling tales, she'd end up buying on credit. If she had the cash with her, the bumble bee wasn't half as noisy and busy like her. 'Ah, Ahfeah ma. Sell me things quickly. My cool man friend has come. I need to hurry. I want to cook him a super dish before he travels back to the creek to fish. Sell me this, sell me that.' Where slow Big Mama appeared, Ma Moneyit would throw 222 herself into helping in some of the tasks. One time, she'd talk of a guy who worked on rail tracks; the next, it could be an oil merchant, the fishmonger  or she'd even give subtle details of a mugger. The war had taken so many lives and many were males who had wives. The women had returned with their progeny  and were now sole breadwinners. Many a family  was fended for by women who turned prostitutes and Ma Moneyit was one of them. The magnitude  223 of the crises was huge. Big Mama had walked round the table which had c...

211 of the clans but the baddies in the name  of trade were busy playing the game  called 'divide and rule' as they pitched  one clan against the other so they couldn't be ditched  by their subjects soon. Well, during their rule  we had education in a formal setting called school, motorcars were inching out rat-drawn carts  and the killing of twins was dead in all parts  of Antburg that practise it. Open-minded army ants couldn't help but acknowledged all across the clans 212 the rule of the foreign army ants as 'uhkara mbakara'. 'Uhkara' here stands as rule and you already know the meaning  of 'mbakara'. We would keep applauding  everything good and condemn what is bad. The core evil of colonial rule had to do with how they treated their subjects. They saw them as mere objects  that should be seen and not heard  and which should be goaded around like a herd. 213 The colonial masters treated their subjects as mere servants and slave...