Hi Friends,
If you noticed well enough, today has been a very breezy day, with @harbecity's picture contest and the unveiled ndjt contest (episode 2) by @mimy and the whole Genesisproject fans club.😁
So honestly, I have been trying to pull this particular story out of my head. But I have not been able to successfully do that. However, I was able to find a modern folktale I wrote a while back. It was to commemorate the memory of an Igbo traditional folk tale storyteller, Charles Simayi, as well as his literate translator who died a year or two ago (Isidore Okpewho). This piece is funny, old yet new. Trust me, you will enjoy this.
So let the curtains roll...
CUCKOOS
Image Source: Figge Art Museum
(A bungalow. On the wide, spacious compound littered with wily weeds are mats spread in a circumference. Seated on these mats are curious young minds, grinning adult observers and an old man, the narrator with white, tangled hairs scattered all over his head and jaw. Nothing else adds colour to this gathering, except the moon that graces the occasion and comes down from its high tower in form of a strong wind that rustles benign leaves.)
Narrator: Okay, em...My story came and captured my very self, my own spirit, into the deep bush where gazelles speak fluent Igbo and yams eat the soil...and captured two birds, black as charcoal, with cutting beaks...two birds, Eze and Lolo.
Answerer: Hmm! Two birds, eh, Husband and Wife.
Narrator: Yes, Husband and wife, captured them in a deep bush together...
Audience: You have said that before…
Narrator: let me finish, no matter what they say, a tortoise does not run ahead of the hare. I captured them doing it, openly, right there in the middle of nowhere.
Answerer: Doing what, na?
Narrator: (ignores) they were at it, wrapped around...
Audience: (grumbles) we are no longer kids ooo
Narrator: ...where was I supposed to turn my eyes, to the dark trees with branches like claws or the slimy shit that filled the ground on which I stood? So I looked on, it was a bad sight for my good eyes (Answerer coughs on purpose).
(Five seconds pause)
What! I looked and saw that Lolo had dropped an egg...tolom tolom, just like that...oh, if our women were like those birds, how wonderful the world would be...or so I thought...When Eze saw these, he did cukoo cukoo, withdrew a little, looked left...
Answerer: left
Narrator: and right
Answerer: right
Narrator: ...and he flew into the great blues above, like nothing had happened...
Audience: (murmurs) Irresponsible...heartless...
Answerer: (shakes his head) flew off, just like that, no dropping money for a big pot of soup to celebrate or money to take care of Waiting mother?
Narrator: So in Ubulu Uno where you come from, birds spend money, eh?
Audience: (loud laughter
Narrator: (hisses) then Lolo looked here and there, opened her beak, shouted cukoo cukoo. She didn't even see me standing nearby. I am not a bird person but I saw pain, live on her tiny head.
Answerer: didn't he come back?
Narrator: don't interrupt
Answerer: but he did come back?
Narrator: no
Answerer: to think that even birds can be irresponsible husbands, i used to look at Baba Ireti in the next compound, and wish that he would...
Narrator: shut up, you talk too much, the elephant knows when to sound a trumpet.
Answerer: (pretends not to hear) ...now I see he would have done worse were he a bird...
Narrator: your mouth. As I was saying, Lolo looked here and there and when she did not find her Eze, she carried her fat egg with her legs...
Answerer: those sharp, claw legs
Narrator: yes, those sharp claw legs. She flew for a long time over the sky. I was watching her, my eyes following her everywhere. Then, she stopped when she saw a nice nest on the top of a high, high tree. She looked left
Answerer: left
Narrator: ...looked right
Answerer: right
Narrator: she saw no one
Answerer: not even old one looking right into her eyes
Narrator: not even I, then, she dropped her fat egg into the nest and flew away like a chased antelope.
Audience: (collective murmurs) ...ah...terrible... evil
Answerer: she is not a mother
Narrator: (stops the chatter with his voice) mother or not, she left her fat egg in the nest amidst the other thin eggs. The woman bird of the many thin eggs came from her travels...
Answerer: and she noticed the fat..
Narrator: (gives the answerer a malign stare and hisses) she noticed the fat egg and shrugged it off as her own mistake- you know- like she beat herself hard for not knowing how many eggs she laid. My curious eyes stayed on that nest to see...
Answerer: wonders
Narrator:...days past...weeks past... even months, but my eyes stayed...
Audience: ah ah, were you not tired? Where were you sleeping? What were you eating?
Answerer: your mouth. Don't you know spirits don't eat or sleep?
Narrator: (feels vindicated) abi ooo. Soon the eggs began to break, and chicken heads jumped out, hatch hatch hatch, just like that. Even Fat egg hatched at the same time. Good mother was happy, she began to take long journeys to feed her chickens. Because the nest was too small to contain her chickens and her, she usually stayed a top the nest and throw meat from her beak into theirs.
Answerer: Fat egg will always get more, for sure
Narrator: (does not pick offence) then she goes off, on and on like that. Fat egg began to notice he was bigger and different from others. I don't know who teaches children bad things, but Fat egg began to bully the small chicken, then one day, he used his heavy claws to push one chicken off the nest from high on top, wa wa wa, and the chicken died.
Answerer: Just like that
Audience: wicked...bad child
Narrator: and just like that, Good mother saw her dead child, but she shrugged it off with her wings. Maybe it is bad weather...she went off, came again, found another dead, shrugged it off...
Answerer: maybe it is cholera...from poisoned meat
Narrator: she went, came, saw another...dead
Audience: now it is syphilis
Audience: No, HIV
Narrator: Again, she...
Answerer: went, came, saw
Audience: kwashiorkor
Answerer: went, came, saw
Audience: beri beri
Answerer: went, came, saw
Audience: polio
Answerer: went, came, saw
Audience: Obanje
Answerer: went, came, saw
Audience:Bad economy... Bad government... Bad deep bush
Narrator: (laughing) ok...enough.She only had this much(draws a medium circle on the ground)...and they all died except Fat egg.
Audience: Bad child
Narrator: yes, Bad child, but by now, Bad child was now grown and big just like Irresponsible father and Evil mother. One day, Good mother goes to a short trip. She came back and could not find anything on her nice nest- bad child had flown away from the nest into the great blues above.
Answerer: Her tears must have made a river...
Audience: Irresponsible... Evil...Bad
Narrator: my puzzled mind wandered the deep bush asking around to know this...family. A gazelle on a thorny crossroad told me they are called Cuckoos. I nodded sadly and concluded that eggs and metal should not be put in same sack. This is where I returned...
Audience: WELCOME.
The voice of Simayi,
Funmi-akinpelu
So guys, what do you think? Do I qualify as a moonlight storyteller?😆