In growing up in my vicinity, I was an architect of all evil acts and a Machiavellian of ugly events. It was like a portion of my brains were dedicated to a research in unravelling new ideas of childhood criminological tactics. My mind was a fertile ground for breeding amazing atrocities against humanity and inflicting uneasiness in the lives of completely innocent people. I was always the ring leader.
However, there were times ring fellas proved to me that the cub could be braver than its father. Other showed me that bad thoughts were not in the head of an individual. Our membership increased at all times because our baits were irresistible and the fringe benefits tremendous. Collectively, we brewed vile and indecent ideas yet all profits and losses of all executed ideas were mine.
One Friday morning, we decided to put to test one of our noble inventions. I had assigned everyone to go and look for the accoutrements required to carry out the task. We needed a live frog or lizard, pieces of broken bottles, faeces, breakable tiny sticks, broad black polythene bag et al. We needed a live frog or lizard because we couldn’t possible catch a live snake – but snake was the best alternative.
On the main path just in front of my house we dug a very big hole. Every responsible adult went to observe the Friday Jummah Prayers. So, the number of people who ply that path within that Jummah period had reduced drastically. We took our time to make the hole deep enough to scare. The diameter of the hole was just little more than a standard foot. We made a human chain around the diggers as if we were playing. We employed all the possible disguise tactics to divert the attention of few passers-by.
I sank my leg into the hole to measure the depth. It covered almost my whole leg. I removed my leg and started to dress the hole beautifully. We firmly stuck the broken bottles in the hole with rugged ends pointing upwards. We dotted the hole with smelly faeces and released a live lizard we had imprisoned in a milo tin for hours into it. The lizard looked restless and inactive. The lid of the milo tin was tightly closed. We were very unknowledgeable about oxygen. We didn’t know why a lizard with ebullient energy at catch point became dull afterwards. But the lizard at least was still alive to meet the requirement.
We arranged the tiny sticks across the mouth of the hole and spread the black polythene bag over the sticks. Then, we sprinkled sand all over the polythene until every part of it got completely covered. The heap of sand dug out from the hole was collected and thrown away from the dangerous hole. We replaced all wet sand around the evil hole with dry sand. We didn’t want to leave marks for our victims to be careful when approaching the trap.
We had very good reasons for our actions – God doesn’t like bad people and will always make them to fall into traps like ours. Let’s wait and see the bad person. We were lurking around the trap waiting anxiously for a catch. Known and unknown faces walked pass the trap but didn’t get trapped.
From afar, we saw a woman coming with two big basins on the head. The first basin was full to the brim with soaked corn. The second basin sits highly on the apex of the soaked corn. Typical of an African woman, she carried the neck-breaking load walking effortlessly with the arms dangling by the sides.
“It is kokolana, the porridge seller”, a ring member screamed. “Shut up, do you want people to know that we are in this lotto kiosk!”, I ordered with sshhh. “She will fall into the trap. Yesterday, I bought koko (porridge) from her and the quantity was too small”, the screamed ring member prophesied.
“Wa yooo”, kokolana screamed as she dives helplessly with her basins of corn. She has stepped just right on the mouth of our evil hole with the right leg up to the sheen level. In an attempt to save her corn standing on one leg, the small basin on top fell off her back and landed on her head. She was lying flatly on her tummy whiles wailing for help. Our cheeks were full of laughter but we couldn’t laugh. Her fall was too scary to claim responsibility for.
In no time, good Samaritans gathered to rescue kokolana from the trap. At this time, there was dead silence in our hideout. Our victim suffered multiple broken bottle injury: a piece of broken bottle had pierce generously into her leg and another piece cutting the flesh around the ankle. The women rescuers helped in collection of the corn heap on the ground back to the basins – they were able to collect a third.
The men lifted her up from the ground and helped her to limp back home. She was going to the grinning mill to mill the corn for porridge the next day.
Later in the day, one of the ring members came and informed me that he saw kokolana with one of her legs smeared with black sooth – a very traditional way of treating fractures and dislocations. I was not frightened because I knew it was well-executed plan and none will know the perpetrators.
The following morning, I was snoring restfully after the previous day hard work. It was harmattan season and the weather was freaking cold. I had collected more clothes to bury my shivering body. I didn’t want to wake up. I was sleeping on a mat in my father’s room.
My father woke me up with plastic insulated intertwined wires. The first whip made me developed express rabies. The pain had melted throughout my body and I didn’t know where exactly to scratch or pad. He continued to whip me like a thief of a golden watch. I could see he was distraught with anger.
At a point I gave in to tears and wailed cowly for help. As if the wires were not doing the beatings satisfactorily for him, he complemented what I felt was child abuse with dirty slaps. I couldn’t run to anywhere because he locked the room. I saw the disfiguring of my very skin with every effortful stroke with the wires. I began to sweat and it made matters worse as the sweat trickles into the crevices of my battered body.
My body after countless whips of the wire became temple of pain. At a point I couldn’t tell whether the pain was in my body or my body was in pain. It was just inexplicably excruciating and every nerve under my skin even lost its sensation to the repeated ignitions. I became lethargic to block with vim other accompanying strokes and slaps.
At long last, a neighbour came to my rescue. He was beating at the door and shouting “Afa Abdulai chelo Naawuni zugu” to wit “Afa Abdulai leave him for God’s sake”. After several futile attempts by our neighbour, he pulled the gate forcefully and ripped off the hinges to open it. “Aba Afa Abdulai, a y3n ku’o mi?” literally meaning “Why Afa Abdulai, do you want to kill him?”
My dad started relaying the crime I committed yesterday. All along the beatings I didn’t know the reason for which he was subjecting me to these biblical whippings. “Ah, how did he get to know”, I asked myself. I thought no one saw us. Our neighbour was shocked to hear my crime. He asked me if indeed I carried out such an act. I confessed but mentioned emphatically that I was not the only one. My father shouted, “If you are not the only one and so what? You are mine and that is my business”. He added, “I will tell Mr Baba to beat his children as well”.
My mother went to fetch water early in the morning. She returned and couldn’t come to terms with my bloodied body. She was utterly upset and furious. The whole situation almost degenerated into a heated fracas between a husband and a wife. At a point, my father nearly almost summed up my mother in the early morning showdown. I felt proud in the tussle between a loving mother and a “hating” father.
“Wow, this woman is truly my mother but this man I am afraid he is not my father. He beats me mercilessly always in the name of correction”, a thought crossed my mind. Out of anger, my father said whiles calling my mother’s name, “Anti, Anti, if you think you love Hanan more than me, then never complain of his bad conduct to me. Are you not the same person who mentioned to me that he was the protagonist of the clique who masterminded the evil hole?”
“Yes, but this way of disciplining a child is just too heart-breaking”, my mother replied with flush face whiles pouring charcoal into the coal pot. She was heating water to attend to my badly bruised body.
In growing up, I had the best combination of parents – a mother who will “open your anus” before my father for the shit to be cleaned. And a father who will show you love by beating out every demon that strays into me. But for my mother’s love I would have ran out of the house into the wilderness. However, absence of my father’s beatings would have accumulated troublesome demons in me beyond exorcism.
As a child I supposed my actions and deeds as mark of bravery but now I know it was out foolhardiness and ignorance of the possible dangers inherent in them.
As a fully grown man now, I believe if my mother could beat me as my father, she would not waste time reporting my bad conducts to my father. She will just beat the living hell out of me.
I was a record holder in school attendance obviously not out of love for school but my father so hard to convince. I had better be in school rather than finding a reason to stay at home.
Every day, my love for my father is increasing even though I felt some of the beatings were not professional. Sometimes, I feel I have been ungrateful to my mother because I side with my father in most family issues. The sensationalism my mother showed me as a child is still in her – I have no problem about it. That is a true definition of a woman – making judgements based on emotions.
But make no mistake, it will take my father a hell of effort to gain the biased love I have for my mother – he almost scared me out of the house.
On this special day, I will say Happy Father’s Day to my mother. But I believe my mother owes my father Happy Husband’s Day.
And to my father, thank you for your wicked love!
Note: This is just tip of the iceberg. My childhood mischiefs and misdemeanours are so exhilarating and harrowing whenever I recall them. I am imagining how a chapter of my childhood days in an autobiography will look like: the ugly, the bad, the joys, the sorrows, the hustles, the pranks – OMG, let me stop imagining!
