As a teenager, it was quite
fashionable to perform activities that made an immense contribution to our
psyche, if not our gross domestic product, namely: loaf time in the shopping
centre. Not seeking to deviate from this behavior, I often left home in the
afternoons to idle in the shopping until such a time when I determined that
supper was ready at home, and then I’d slip out surreptitiously. Sometimes,
when in a good mood, I’d leave early in time to ensure all the domestic animals
had made it to their respective enclosures. Over time, this activity wore me out, save one
incident that’s indelibly etched in my mind.
The sun had deemed it fit to go
and shine in another world, paving way for people to take stock of their day
and make the following deductions: had breakfast, lunch and supper, yet I don’t
know where the food came from – so far so good, let’s do it again tomorrow. I
was walking gingerly home, trying to get there before darkness had a
dictatorial grip on the events that would follow. I took a short cut through an
idle farm. On reaching the road, I found an old man, seemingly confused. He
asked for a homestead of a retired teacher. I knew one barely three hundred
metres from where we were standing. He instructed me to take him there.
With complete disregard to my
personal conscience, we did set off to the homestead. The old man had had one
too many, and blubbered all the way to the designated destination. I personally
don’t have a problem listening a drunkard’s musing. But this one did faze me.
Perhaps it was due to my relative inexperience with such people. I was still in
high school at the time.
“I am lawyerist,” the old man
said boisterously.
He then went on to talk of having
been to Dar es Salaam University, upon which he benefitted from the teaching of
Mwalimu Julius Kambarage Nyerere. Or that he was a classmate of his. It doesn’t
matter. What matters is that he had a close encounter with Tanzania’s founding
father. The old man did not give me a chance to say anything, not that I had
anything. Maybe he was pleased to have such an attentive audience. I do not
know.
Before we reached our
destination, the old man saw it fit to scare the living daylights out of me. I
personally believe that no one can utter words they are not able to do. The old
man took his walking stick and balanced it horizontally on his open palm. He
then glanced at a fear-stricken teenager in me and dared me:
“AWALAGE? AWALEGE? (Can I
transform myself?)”
The words escaped his mouth,
sounding as though my consent was all it depended to come true or not. My mind
raced at the numerous things or creatures that this old man was capable of
changing himself into. It could only settle on one thing: snake. I cowed with
fright, and told him:
“NO!!” I repeated this response
each time he made the threat. I wasn’t about to be the first person to witness
a human being change himself into a snake. Lord knows what the snake could do.
Perhaps it could swallow me alive. Or bite me and inject venom that would
pre-digest my person, turning me into soup upon which it would just sip me. At
the time, I hadn’t discovered alcohol, so you can imagine how my body would
have been JUICY.
It turns out that the old man’s
threats were emptier than Uhunye’s promise of eradicating corruption as part of
his legacy. We reached the homestead and the old man shouted so loudly as though
he was calling out someone located in Pluto. A bulky man showed up. The old man
explained his problem. The bulky man said that were in the wrong homestead, and
gave us directions to another. He was generous enough to allow us to take a
short through ‘his’ farm. This form of generosity is quite rare, and even
rarer, when the homestead has a girl coming of age. Girls here are permanently
grounded. However, even under this stringent parental upbringing, plenty of
them still, quite mysteriously, manage to get pregnant. You could easily hunt
down and slay the Holy Spirit, if you are a father.
I walked the old man, darkness
slowly setting in. I hadn’t planned on being that late. I was still a novice on
this coveted teenage indulgence. Besides, my pool skills are comparable to a
diseased cockroach – or even worse, only that no one can coax a diseased
cockroach for a pool game with me.
We walked on the railway track,
then turned right after a few metres to join a road that led to the new
homestead. Apparently, the old man had been looking for a retired teacher with
one ‘bad leg.’ I knew him well, for he taught me to hate school, for two terms,
while in class three.
When we reached the gate, I
exhorted the old man to enter but he went straight, silent as the wind,
ignoring me as though I was absent. I looked on, bewildered, as his form got
swallowed by the darkness. I washed my hands, in a bid to absolve myself of any
blame should the man attempt his witchcraft on me, and walked home.
Although with a disturbed soul.
