ALL through night and day, past events kept on tugging at Adeola’s mind. Her sleeping room remained still in the late of the night. The hurricane lantern that was hanging on the wall sent out a drab light, now slowly burning away.
Chapter 1 – The Lonely Days of Adeola
Adeola opened her eyes and began to count the wooden rafters one after the other.
Altogether thirty-nine. No, forty-two rafters! Later, her eyes caught a moth challenging the light of her hurricane lantern, making futile attempts to put the light out.
The light in the room finally went off, and Adeola lay quietly on her bed listening, with closed eyes, to the echoes of her memory, turning over and over in her mind, the predicaments facing her in the execution of her numerous daily life activities.
Adeola had become the beginning and the end of all issues, in her own private little world. Her liberty was perfectly intact. Nobody governed her anymore on anything. She retired to bed when she liked, and needed no hurry again to return to the village from the brook.
These days, nobody sat her down to give lectures to, on what should be done or what should not be done. There was no more that strong-arm rule of the man to keep her on her toes, to check her excesses, and to enforce obedience.
Adeola was now completely on her own, and she was so unhappy about it! There seemed to be no sweetness and no comfort in this her position of a woman almighty! She, very much, wanted to feel loved again; to feel supported, protected and looked after.
There really should be some man close by to lean on all the time; a man to pester with demands, to urge with requests, to provoke with expensive jokes, and to issue threats and ultimatums to; a man who would forcefully take over the absolute control of the matrimonial home.
But there was no such man anymore, and here now was Adeola, alone in this world, making resolutions and taking decisions, without reference to anybody.
On daily basis she faced the problems of life, with no one experienced enough to share them with. And she had to put up with the agony of the constant remembrance of her man who had quietly left her, who had disappeared like a puff of tobacco smoke inside an old man’s pipe.
The Weight of Loneliness
Everything at home served to keep Ajumobi’s memory alive: the sitting room, the sleeping room, the garden, and the backyard – all echoed with memories of Ajumobi’s conspicuous absence. At a corner of their sitting room, on the nail, was Ajumobi’s weather-beaten khaki shorts, patched in several places at the bottom, and his old smock oozing a familiar odour which now filtered through Adeola’s nostrils, to renind her of the happy days she had shared with her man.
There also was Ajumobi’s hunting lamp and his dane gun hanging delicately on the wall.
Ajumobi had never been in a hurry while loading his gun, in preparation for night-time expeditions. That was the time he needed maximum concentration and would not want to see anybody near him. Not even Adeola. Loading the gun was purely a man’s private business.
Women could only stare in wonder from a respectable distance and watch the miracle of gun-loading unfolding. Ajumobi would sit alone with both legs stretched out on the ground at the back of the house tending his gun, fondling with it, and speaking lovingly to it like a baby.
Cautiously, he would begin to feed the mouth of the gun with powder, then ram down the wad with the ram-rod and finally close up the nipple of the gun with the percussion cap. He would slip out of the compound quietly; and the next thing to hear would be the sound of his gun booming in the distance, inside the deep forest.
It was never easy getting game to shoot. For Ajumobi, it involved tracking for hours, maneuvering through the thorny bush, in complete silence, eyes darting left and right in perfect object focus, crouching on the tree branches, completely motionless, listening to the noises of nightfall, trying to discern the shadows of the various animals coming to the brook to drink water. Ajumobi used to be a boastful hunter:
“Look, Adeola,” he would say, his eyes gleaming like the sun on a river, his deep arrogant voice reverberating, “I rule the animal world. With my razor-sharp eyes, I catch movements of all creatures nibbling in the forest of Kufi. I am familiar with the voices of the wind and the storm, the sigh of the night, and the whispers of dawn.
“I know the wailings of the bush rat caught in a trap, and the chatter of the talkative parrot reposing on the tall tree. I am acquainted with the haphazard motion of the dancing impala in woods. Very conversant with the gliding thrust of the wild wolf in the grey shadows of darkness and twilight.
“In my career, Adeola, I have shot over twenty hyenas – these bandy-legged animals in the night – as they roamed the clumps of the dry camphor woods, in the forest of Kelebe and Akokura. I have the power to sit on the skin of an ant, and the power to squeeze my body under the finger nails of my adversaries. I can pitch tents on the eyeballs of foes and consume the burning ember inside the enemies furnace in one gulp!
I can fry the meat of an antelope with the smoke of a pipe, to feed five hundred guests during the Ogun festival. It is easy for me to dig a deep trench round Kufi village with the point of a needle.
I can swallow the sap of jokoje and chew the bitter leaf of iparada, to make myself invisible before my opponents. Yes, I can transform into invisibility, in one minute, and remain undetectable, like a chameleon, in the canopy of green leaves. Nobody knows the secret of the hoe. Nobody knows what the cutlass conceals.
No one can unravel the mystery of monigedegede. It will perch today, it will perch tomorrow. Finally the butterfly escapes from its enemies with its mesmerizing moves – that’s me, Adeola!
Ajumobi the Hunter
I wear a live python round my shoulders with no fear of danger, like a pretty ornament on the graceful neck of a young bride. I am the lightning flash, wrapped in the cloak of death; the huge morsel, undigested, coming out like hot iron through the anus of the enemies.”
At another corner of the sitting room were the hoofs of an antelope, and the twisted horns of a buffalo, all stained red with animal blood and the serum of an eagle bird, which Ajumobi had kept as relic on the rack, untouched by anybody since he passed. His amulet dangled protectively on the ceiling, helping to keep danger away from the household;
For instance, the torments witches and the menace of ghosts; the mischief of evil spirits, and the afflictions of wizards. There also was Ajumobi’s grinding stone, firmly fixed on the ground at the foot of the shade tree behind the house.
Adeola closed her eyes briefly and imagined her man standing up from the grinding stone, holding his cutlass up to the rays of the sun, as of old, feeling its sharp glittering edge with the tip of his forefinger; ready now to go into the bush to cut firewood to warm the house on this rainy day.
The muscles of Ajumobi’s strong arms were massive. It was his habit to display the lump, to the admiration of Adeola, who would stroke the lump lovingly, as many times as she had helped him down with the heavy load of wood from his broad shoulders.
Then, pretending to wipe off the lines of sweat from his bare chest, and the crumbs of wood over his singlet, Adeola had had several opportunities of holding her husband’s impressive biceps. And how very much she loved it.
Ahmad Nwabuzor is a Nigerian author and storyteller with a strong passion for writing and sharing meaningful stories. He is a graduate of the University of Nigeria, Nsukka (UNN), where he studied English and Literary Studies.
He writes across different forms of storytelling, including cultural narratives, emotional fiction, and moral stories that teach life lessons. His storytelling style is rooted in African life and shaped by a deep interest in how traditions influence people’s choices and emotions.