Lite[r]

© Jodekss Gloatkenf

Characterisation:
Deglede
Fedeh
Geledh.
Ifa priestess(Iya Eleh)
Meisy's daughter.

Fedeh:
Where would we get a head for the sacrifice as arranged Deglede? If we fail to do what ought to be done at the right time the village would start to suffer the consequence soon, starting with my son.

Geledh:
It is all my fault, I shouldn't have troubled the gods where they rest. All I was looking for was fun, not for everything to be in kilter this way. This thing we do just like that back in the city, we take shots of anything and have 'em, you know, uploaded on social networks. Why worrying myself telling you all this! Nobody knows about civilisation or internet here, too bad!

Fadeh:
Shut up, I said shut up, you still have the guts to talk ehn! You still have the guts to talk about civilisation when the gods are all ready mad at you. Your mouth would rotten first, then your manhood, each part one after the other would spoil, till you leave this world behind bad to the gods for further punishments.

Read more from Jodekss Gloatkenf 

Geledh:
Don't scare me papua, I am no kid, there's nothing like gods, those statute are just some artful works only and...

Fadeh:
Ah, artful works! I said shut up, I am your father and I command you to shut your mouth. I knew by your mouth, you would one day cause me trouble the day you were born, it looked long and coarse like a cassava stem. Be quiet ehn, shut it up, keep it all quiet... Keep... it quiet!

Geledh:
Ah ah! Papa, leave my mouth ah! Let me talk, I am telling the fact Papa!

Fadeh:
What fact? Deglede, you know am in boiling soup, this city son doesn't know how furious these gods could be when sinned against and not appeased at the appropriate time. He is my only son, others are females! Help me out friend. You remember what happened with Meisy's daughter two moons ago!

Deglede:
...

Fadeh:
Why, looking at me like that?

Deglede:
I know the number of sacrifices you made to have him, I am aware of everything. However, I have been to the city before and I have seen how life is there, so social, so much of interesting activities. I would always tell you to come with me to the city but you'd say no, this is a civilised world Papa Geledh.

Fadeh:
What! I can't believe this, what are you now implying ehn! I should go back home and go and take Iyan and Egusi, top up Emu and take one of my wives to bed, pretending all is fine right!

Deglede:
Be at peace! All is fine! I do not see anything wrong with the pictures your son took. Moreover, he'd deleted them. To be honest and to be blunt, I hate the blabbing part of your attitude Geledh, you don't just know when to stop talking. You are hopeless!

Geledh:
Not really, the...

Deglede:
Shut up, I said shut up, you see... Ahem! Listen, the two of you, be very attentive. I went to Iya Eleh's - the Ifa priestess's. I discussed everything with her, she asked Ifa severally, on what to use to appease the gods you said are mad with your son. She came with another thing entirely. She said, "nothing". "Nothing only", "the gods have seen how good life is in the cities and how pictures are been taken there", she added. I guess now, "the gods are not mad but want more pictures", she concluded.

Geledh:
Wow! That is what I am saying!

Fadeh:
Ah ah! Be quiet. Ah, this is madness! Deglede, seriously, on this one, I distrust you, it doesn't make any sense.

Deglede:
Well, I saw that coming! What do you plan we do now?

Geledh:
Yes, I have one...

Fadeh:
Shut up! Let us all go back to our Ifa priestess, I want to hear it with my own
ears!

Exeunt:
Deglede and Fadeh.

Geledh:
These people are so Barbados! And papa's own is worse, eh!

Exeunt:
Geledh.

Entered:
Ifa priestess, Deglede, Fadeh and Geledh.

Ifa priestess:
Deglede, I hope all is fine with you!

Deglede:
It is about the issue you helped me to ask Ifa about yesterday. This is the friend I was talking about.

Ifa Priestess:
May Ifa bless you! But I have told you everything Ifa revealed to me yesterday, haven't I? I told you Ifa said the gods are not mad but that they want more pictures. I don't, unnecessarily ask Ifa the same question over and over again.

Geledh:
Oooh! That is simple, I would go and take more when we leave here!

Ifa priestess:
And who on earth are you, who is that young man Deglede?

Fadeh:
He is the youngest of my children and my only surviving son, Geledh. He is the one who did what ought not to be done!

Ifa priestess:
May Ifa forgive you and bless you.

Geledh:
Amen ma!

Ifa priestess:
Ifa is not like us man, he talks in parable, meaning, in unearthly language or words, that he said the gods want more pictures doesn't mean you'd go there and take more shots, understood? Are you from the city young man?

Geledh:
Yes ma'am!

Fadeh:
Education has spoilt him, if I had known I would've pinned him down here from birth to farm beside me here.

Ifa priestess:
Don't be worried old man, everything happens for a purpose. To my understanding, that is how they do in the cities these days, all my children are there too, I have forbidden them from taken pictures of anything the gods or Ifa wouldn't like to share with the outside world when they come home. As I was saying, Ifa is parabial, what Ifa implied was that we should encourage civilisation in our village here, to be in meetness with the outside world. You see, the gods and Ifa want what's best for us!

Fadeh:
Thank you Ifa priestess. I am now at peace, having known the gods are not mad with my son and with our peaceful village! Thank you my friend too!

Deglede:
Don't thank me, what are friends for! Let's just thank your son, his mistake has given us a go to begin the journey to be as civilised as the cities are down there! We are blind before but its a thing of the past from today henceforth. The message of Ifa shall reach our Oba and all the heads in this village. We should start from there.

Fadeh:
Hmmn! Everything works together for good really. It looks odd and it's good at the same time!

Geledh:
Aww... The gods are not mad but want more pictures!

Exeunt:
All.

The End.
By Jodekss Gloatkenf ©2015

Bats were chirping quiet loudly in the air that midnight. The silence that moment had had the semblance like none before. Not even one sound could be recorded I could remember very well; everything was dead as the cold hands of death himself. Except for the chirping of the those bad birds whose verses I averse so very well. And the continuous shout help help help that coupled the whir the of the birds. It was the tone of Siwu, Fijy's mother, who is as old as the worst tattered rag one could ever picture. Fijy had all ready awoken and the shout which continued was not a great shock to him, in spite it was in the midnight, so he sped down like a squirrel treated for maniacal plight to the area the shout was coming from to know what was going on. ''Fijy, Fijy, Fijy. It was..., It was... Ah... Ah... Ah...'' Suwa said crying, gasping and quivering right in her room. She was in the rest room where people rest of cause. The bed sheet, for covering the bed of cause, had fallen and the bed had shifted from its face to the back part. The stool, which receives food to be taken of cause, and all that that stood before the midnight had turned opposite. Even the pictures that were hung in the room had fallen again. The good food she was served she would not eat had developed maggots overnight again. Still screaming right on top of her loud voice, she was crying alongside with tear glands flocking up the floor of the room like the great ocean we were told in the tales. She was seated at the tip of the bed and it was the coming in of Fijy into the scene that quieted her. Fijy entered and was aggravated and saddened to the core in the heart. His countenance dropped having seen what the well set room had turned to again, weariness was what took him up next with its painful tusks, for that night was not her first night to scream right in the mid of the night since her arrival from the village. ''Mama, is it your usual dream again or something else this time?'' Fijy asked mellowly putting on the light from the switch at the entrance into the room. Suwa would not talk again, in the stead of telling her son what went wrong she went into her sleeping position with her back facing the face of the bed. Fijy left the room confused again for her mother would not tell him what she saw in her dreams that would always make her scream almost mid-nightly. He was so very tired of neighbours asking him questions he has no answers to when the day breaks, about the causes of the screaming from his house. All he would always do was to lie that it was his mother who has mental problem. He loves Suwa a lot no doubt about that, even the intervention of his wife to send her back to the village would not make him do that. In the following morny, the night guards that watch over their streets came to pay him a visit. ''Dr. Suwa, we have been contemplating whether to come over here to come and ask you why someone would always make a disturbing noise in your building for long. So yesterday we agreed to'' their leader said. One of them added, '' sir, am one of the night guards that watch over your affairs besides God when you have gone to the bed to sleep, the kind of noise that person makes would always make wake us up thinking may be thieves are on raid again. We have come really to urge you to tell that person to stop it, it is not helping, it disturbs and diverts attention, you are well read, am sure you would understand us''. After three days, the same thing repeated itself at the same time it did the last time. The next Saturday even was the day and time scheduled for the estate meeting that happens twice in two months, the issue was what was discussed on through out the meeting, Suwa lied that it was her mother who was mentally ill that would always give the disturbing noise. The street elders then urged him to take her to the appropriate hospital for appropriate care, they made him aware they live in estate filled with influential personalities, who have businesses they think about all day and the night's only when they rest but now her mother is denying them that. He promised he would do something soon and the meeting came to a close. Suwa bought a local daily paper, a week after the meeting held, it had it that some pinchers were caught around Visuwo Street, Bopruz Avenue, Degi Area Ilumodun State and have been jailed for the assassination of Mr Plater, a white man, who had come to invest in the country. Their pictures were at the front page of the paper, the max. were enough even for blind persons to see and identify. Out of disgust, Fijy soliloquised ''where exactly going to in this country?'' ''What has happened again my son?'' Suwa asked. Fijy picked up the paper and showed his mother, ''see, these young men killed this white man who have come to come and help this country up''. ''Ah Ah Ah, my son this is a good news this the reason I make noise usually in the midnight''. ''What?'' Fijy asked confusedly.

Jodekss Gloatkenf