4-2-17
The messiah was coming, but not riding on a colt.
I had just concluded frying my locusts and was about to start drinking garri before SistOghene screamed my name from inside the room. I had already set my mat right beside mama’s grave under the tree and as you can see, my Saturday was going great before she interrupted me.
“Cut me some branches from the orange tree” she said, as I entered the room, and I wondered why she didn’t just scream the message along with my name while I was right under the very tree.
She asked me to cut a branch or two each for myself, Elohor and herself, to welcome him and to spread on the road. My own elder sister told me that if I didn’t join in the carnival, I should forget about going back to school this semester.
Let me spare you the gory details of mama’s death. All I can say is that the heap of red sand in the compound is practically empty, as we could only bury her favorite lappa with a picture of her in it. There is no body. The orange tree that rests partly over it is what we remember her by.
Ever since that day nine years ago, SistOghene has been taking care of me and papa. She continued mama’s palm oil business so she could afford to pay my fees at Ogharaki Model college, not minding dropping out of there herself. At this point I wished that she had been educated, so that she would not be as ignorant as she is right now.
My sister, like hundreds of others in Oghara are deluded, brain-washed and blind.
“Oya Oya paint your face with chalk”, she said, whisking me back to reality. She had adorned herself with her best things: her yellow patterned scarf doing “to-match” with her bag and shoe, reminding me about the other things she is illiterate about.
We took to the streets and people had already started singing and dancing. They were waiting for their king. The looks on these people’s faces and you could tell that they could die for him. Why? I do not know. How ignorant could we as a nation be? A king who sold his people, still worshipped by them. It will definitely get worse if we don’t wise up. All my mind was my locust and popo garri waiting for me at home.
At about 3:30pm he arrived Oghara, and the carnival took off. See people in their numbers. They were dying to touch the hem of his shirt, to shake him, or just to breathe the same air that he did. The people raised their branches high in praise and cheer as he made his way through the crowd – his A1 security aides getting rid of anything in sight.
Almighty James Onanefe Ibori, back from the United Kingdom after serving almost seven years for fraud came back a son, a messiah, a king in the eyes of the very people he rendered jobless and poverty-stricken as a result of his looting. Their eyes mirrored a hero – and the reflected, triumphant.
I looked around and saw that my people perish from poverty of the mind. Oh but then I realized… Right there in the crowd was me, with an orange tree branch in my hand and chalk on my face, just because I needed some money from my sister to go back to school. I realized… that change begins with me.
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