WERE YOU NOT THERE?

Should we all now gather at the market place and cry? Is it not all of us that stay in this village? Should all the members of this village, including those who believe that everybody is equal, and some are more equal than the others, gather together and eat? Even after the strife? The side talks? The forward talks? The backyard talks? The sky talks?

We were all in our huts when Papa Ebolo announced that we should join him and rejoice at the birth of Ebolo. We all gathered at his compound, shining teeth and rubbing powder. The children of all ages and heights scattered around the hut, while the infamous twins nicknamed 'mama' and 'papa' stood at the forefront with protruded bellies alike and oversized shorts hanging from their waists.

The children held various child-made instruments of music – covers of buckets for drums, pipes for flutes – and let their wide mouths and energetic spirits create music. "God don do am o! God don do am!!" they sang with effervescence.

Mama Oluka sprayed powder like a woman deranged, covering every bosom, neck, and head with that overly white look from the cheap powder Eze sold from his nearly-empty 'provision' store down the road.

The giddy children drank Fanta from glass bottles and dirty cups distributed by the older children, while the adults shared cans of malt. The sound was the same in every throat and resonant belly – 'turubum, turubum' – as the highly carbonated drinks went down. Don't look at me like that; you also drank Coke that day. I saw the foam above your lips, and now you want to lie as though you don't know that we don't lie on Thursdays here.

All of us drank Fanta and Coke and malt that day, even though the taste varied based on the side flavor of powder depending on the location of the powder on our bodies. We all drank.

Now, where is everybody?

Papa Ebolo had forgotten that it was not hunting season yet; he corked his gun, pointing solely at the same place Ebolo had suckled on at his birth, and shot.

Now, the people with black uniforms have come into our village and taken him away, and Ebolo has gone missing. Akuro, the village gossip, with his stubble legs and akpola head, has gone around the village saying that he saw Ebolo in the city suburbs, that Ebolo is now mad.

Should we all now gather at the market place and cry?