I am presently developing a story here, (a novel, to be precise) and I would be most obliged to get your feed backs (constructive ones, though) and how or what you suppose I could add/remove to make the plot and characterization more interesting.
My first story will be posted here. It is set in pre-colonial Nigeria, and will be about an indolent character (Omogo) who is already perfecting plans to marry off his young daughter for pecuniary gains (Ene, the daughter, is barely thirteen years as at the time of this story).
Please, do come with me and enjoy the read:
ONE
The old man sighed, shook his head and
said, “When a foolish person is doing something he is not ashamed of, it is
always a difficult task to talk any sense into him.”
“Okwu‘ye,”
the other men sitting with him under the large Afugwu tree near the centre of the village said and nodded their
heads in agreement, as they drank palm wine from a big gourd. Omogo was the subject of discussion, a man
who thought little of how the entire village saw him.
Apa was blessed as a village, with very
fertile soil; there was hardly any household that did not feed of its soil. A
joke said to have originated from traders who trouped into the village on
market days had it that its soil was so productive that even dried bones, if
planted, would eventually grow and transform into lush fruit-bearing trees.
Most men in Apa were skilled and
assiduous farmers even as many others took to hunting. But Omogo was not most
men; he was not known to have any reliable source of livelihood. His wife,
Oganya, was his saving grace. After repeated complaints to her father, he gave
her a parcel of land which she cultivated with the help of her children.
The villagers were indeed quite
disappointed that Oganya agreed to marry an indolent man like Omogo, given that
she came from a family that upheld hard work as an important virtue.
A handsome man in every sense, Omogo
in his youth dazzled Oganya with a combination of his looks and sugar-coated
tongue. While they were courting, Omogo shared with Oganya his grandiose plans,
and it seemed to her that a great future was before them.
As she fell for his posturing, all entreaties from Oganya’s
parents to dissuade her from her course failed. In her youthful mind, Omogo was
the perfect Okorobia any young maiden
would do anything to have for a husband.
Everything happened so fast from
there that by the time Oganya realized her mistake, years had gone by, and she
was already deep in a marriage nowhere near the grandeur Omogo had painted for
her. Either he had been a fraud all along, or his grandiose plans for their
future had derailed for reasons best known to the gods.
Omogo was not the one to show remorse
for any inadequacies. Instead, the blame for his shortcomings always had to be
hung on the neck of some other person or the gods.
“I have too many enemies who don’t
want me to succeed in this village,” was one of his common refrains.
As he ranted away, Oganya would feel
like hitting him on the jaw with the Otu
she used to pound Ona’Ibe. The poor
woman had now found herself crying back to her parents for counsel and possible
support. Her parents only told her to learn to live with the man she had chosen
of her own free will.
Omogo’s case was such that other men
in the village mockingly referred to him as the man whose heart was asleep. As
if under a curse from the gods, he refused to commit himself to a particular
craft or to acquire any skill to add value to his life. Worse still, he cared
less about what people thought of him. “After all, they are the same people who
are bewitching me and preventing my star from shining,” he would conclude
nonchalantly.
The situation got from bad to worse when Omogo became
friends with Akilozi, a much older man than him. Akilozi was unashamedly given
to pursuing the pleasurable things of life, even in old age. Married at six
different times, he had chased away each of the six women for very flimsy
reasons before they ever settle properly in his house. In fact, the villagers
commended the sixth and last wife as a woman of incredible patience; that she
was able to live with him for seven years was quite remarkable. The villagers
woke up one certain morning to find him throwing her things out. As he threw
her belongings out, he described her as a stupid and useless woman who was not
even capable of bearing male children for him. “I need male children to carry
on with my name so that I can equally teach them the secret of my successes in
trade, and not those worthless females you have borne in my house!”
He sent the weeping woman back to her
parents’ compound with a stern warning for her never to come near his house.
That was the man, Akilozi. However,
he was equally known to be a crafty trader; he travels to the neighbouring
villages to buy earthen pots, onagwagwu
cloths, mirrors, beads and other such wares, which he would then resell to the
villagers at cut-throat prices on Ukwo
market days either in exchange for large tubers of yam or other such commodity
that caught his attention.
It was this same Akilozi that Omogo
was spending more time with now than with his family. There were evenings he
would stay so late at Akilozi’s place and drink himself to near stupor then
stagger home to the waiting arms of his very unhappy wife and children. He was
a big shame to Oganya. She pleaded with him to stop going to spend so much time
at Akilozi’s place and instead try to do something worthwhile with his life.
But Omogo would not hear any of it.
The poor woman swore she would have
walked out of the marriage if not for her endearing and innocent children.
Moreover, she feared that the villagers might come to see her in bad light.
“Akilozi is the only person that
understands me in the whole of this village,” Omogo would mutter in his drunken
state as Oganya helped him undress. “Every other person in this village is a
witch, including you, Oganya.”
“Look at what you’re doing to
yourself, Omogo my husband. Look at what you have turned into. You have become
a slave to that wicked old man,” Oganya would say to her unrepentant husband.
“Are you happy with your life like this?”
“Yes I am happy with my life!” he
retorted with a wild gesticulation, his voice slurred and heavy, “For your
information, my life is beginning to make sense to me now that Akilozi has
become my good friend; he is the only friend I have who does not see me as a
failure. He buys palm wine for me without complaining and he encourages me to
forget the problems of life and be happy, see? He is a good man.”
“I am sure Akilozi is only doing this
to take advantage of you sooner or later, my husband.”
“Let him take advantage of me. It is
nobody’s toro.” Omogo replied and
chuckled in drunken amusement.
