Split The Eye (1)

THE LOST FEATHER.

By Clifford Oluoch

The flame-red feather twirled against the raging winds, a unique and conspicuous colour dancing wildly and erratically to the furious and uncontrolled raging winds of change.

“Auuuuuuuuuuuuui!” a scream shattered the stillness and tranquillity of the starry African night. From their wooden coops, hens stirred, cows twitched from their round fenced bomas and from the various mud-walled, grass-thatched houses around, children fidgeted nervously while women shuddered in great fear.

The scream came again, louder, sharper and clearer this time. From a nearby grass-thatched hut another scream answered it, the uneasy and uncoordinated symphony sending an eerie message across the settling Lotok village.

Tonight, however, one of the women being disciplined was Kolo, the chief’s eldest wife. She was a matronly woman who had over the years learnt how to avoid the wrath of her aggressive and imposing husband, Chief Adera. But tonight luck had eluded her, and she had, after many dodging, landed on the wrong hands of the Chief.

After placing the food at the feet of her husband, Kolo retreated a few steps back. She remained on her knees, bowed, awaiting her husband to complete his meal. Only then would she move. A woman’s role during meal times ended when the husband finished his meal.

Chief Adera twitched his nose trying to smell something. He stood up abruptly, his stature hardly imposing but his anger scaring. He exploded with emotions and kicked the clay bowl that was at his feet. He watched gleefully as the bowl and its contents flew across the room, missing Kolo by inches. The bowl smashed onto the nut-brown walls of the house, smearing the wall and making an uneven map on it.

“How can you bring me burnt food?” the chief roared. He moved towards his wife, his eyes blazing with fury and his fists clenched ready for a fight.

Kolo, who had been kneeling down serving her husband the evening meal, ducked as the bowl came hurtling towards her. Having missed his target, the Chief responded by landing on his wife with venom and violence. Kolo shortly found herself on the floor, kicks, blows and insults being rained mercilessly and endlessly on her. The damage would have been far more extensive, if not fatal, had some elders not interrupted the early evening debacle. The chief heard the knock on the oak door and reluctantly stopped his ritual to attend to the intruders.

“Some donkey had the audacity of bringing me burnt and smelly food,” Chief Adera was heard saying, as he opened the door, excused himself from his first wife’s abode and went out to join his fellow elders in traditional beer drinking at the Elders’ Courtyard. He was still seething in anger.

Kolo was left lying down breathing slowly and unevenly, her left side aching greatly. Each breath she took was painful and reminded her of death. With each intake ruddy flames and thick black smoke flashed through her mind. She heard the distinctive crackling sound of the firewood, the flying sparks and the dancing flames. The medicine-man’s out of tune prayers and intonation came back freshly loud and intimidating. Finally, unable to bear the pain any longer, she passed out.

Kolo was awakened by something extremely cold and wet. It was water being poured on her. “Get up, lazy goat and go to sleep. You are neither decorating the doorway nor doing any one any good by lying there,” said the rough and unsympathetic voice of her husband. Kolo dragged her bruised body and very slowly went and coiled herself on the mat at the corner of her one-bedroom hut. She tried to coax sleep but none came, and she just lay on the mat listening to the chirping of the crickets at night. Her husband did not spend the night in her hut; he must have gone to one of his two younger wives.

Eluded by sleep and peace at night, Kolo found herself playing games with her imagination. She let it run wild and loose, moving from one corner of the expansive sixteen-boma Lotok village to the extreme end of the Oroma forest, the dwelling place of Otia, the god of hunters. Otia seemed to protect and favour men who hunted in the forest, yet the women who stayed home to wait for the meat from the forests always seemed to get a raw deal.

“Tell me Otia, when all the women in the village are dead, who shall bear children?” Kolo found herself in conversation with a god she could not see but only feel his effects. The forest leaves rustled violently a sudden wind tore through the trees. A wild laughter escaped Otia’s lips. Kolo looked hard trying to make out the form of the god, but she was unsuccessful.

Kolo’s images and visions took her to Wuate, the god and protector of the waters, rivers and lakes. She heard the roaring sounds of waves buffeting against the riverbanks and smashing into wayward logs. River Yando made its presence known. Kolo swam with Wuate. She journeyed to the sacred and forbidden mountains, Got Agulu, where the gods of life and death dwelt. Kolo found herself holding conversations with these gods, her argument with them taking a turn she had not expected.

“What place is this?” she asked Wuate, a cloudy form in the mountains making the image of the god. Kolo did not hear the reply, but she thought she understood what the god meant.

“Your new dwelling place! Follow the bird.” This was repeated severally, the sound getting fainter and fainter by the minute. Kolo’s dream did not reveal any bird and she frantically turned round to look for the bird to follow.

Then she saw the bird. The image was clear. The features were unmistakable. Otenga!

Impeccable white with the easily recognisable red tail, the big furry bird was perched majestically on a low branch on the bank of River Yando. It looked around, a glint of fear and concern in its eyes. It rose quickly and urgently and flew away, its wings flapping loudly and gracefully against the furiously blowing wind.

As fast as it had come, the vision disappeared. But Kolo was positive that it was Otenga, the legendary bird that only those with the gift of ‘The Eye’ could see. This time the features were clear. No mistaken identity.

The escapades took Kolo till early morning when she heard the first cockcrow. A strong wind blew outside against the trees outside the village. Kolo knew it was time to get ready for another eventful day in the village. Strangely enough, she felt no trace of fatigue due to any lack of sleep.

The morning saw nearly half the married women with swollen eyes, battered limbs and bruised bodies. They looked miserable, talked minimally and walked disproportionately as they carried pots on their way to the river to fetch water for the day. The river was quite far, so the women had to wake up early, normally before the second cockcrow. They had to be back early enough to prepare porridge for their husbands and sons, who also woke up early to go and till the land or take the animals for grazing. The younger girls, who knew about the prevailing situation, walked glumly, accompanying their mothers and aunts to the river.

The early morning silence tormented the women as they dragged their limbs slowly to the Yando river. They were too hurt to sing, the energy in them clear lacking. The uneven plodding of their feet and the early morning silence served to churn their thoughts towards the battering most of them had received the previous night. They lived in mortal fear.

When they reached the river and settled to start drawing water, someone at last broke the long and tormenting silence. It was Kolo, the one who always led them in songs and dances. She was not her usual cheerful self. She looked smaller, darker, and her left eye was completely shut. Her characteristic beauty was evidently absent; instead an ugly mask of scars covered her otherwise black smooth skin. She was ghastly.

“Women of Lotok village, open your eyes and see the light of the world,” she started in a whisper, choosing one of the resting stones to make herself seen to the thirty or so women and girls who had accompanied her to the river.

“Open your ears and hear what the ancestors have to say. Open your hands and feel the warmth of the sun. Allow your minds to wander freely, and mingle with roaring yet sometimes quiet waves of the rivers, the gushing yet aloof winds of the north, the rustling yet sometimes still leaves of the trees. Think my fellow women. Think women. Think!” she almost screamed, the pain in her head searing again, as the Otenga bird flashed by. Kolo could not make out where the bird was heading to, but its journey fascinated her.

All the women, except Nyangi, the widow, stirred and suddenly felt like talking and screaming at the same time. All the silence and patience that had been bottled up in them for so long suddenly found an avenue of being channelled. They felt like they had to strike back then, or hit at something to get back at the people who had made life one continuous nightmare. The dam had finally been broken. Decades of accumulated silence and frustration had finally been let out by one word from one person. They murmured loudly amongst themselves about a subject that had never been broached before. Kolo’s voice drew their attention once more.

Nyangi, the widow, stood stoically gazing directly at Kolo. “What do you want us to think about, Kolo?” Nyangi asked cheekily.

Kolo ignored the question and continued with her rhetoric. “For years our men have declared war on our humble beings and they have never shown any signs of stopping. Beatings have been the order of the day and even the deaths of our beloved sisters have not deterred them.”

Kolo smiled and as she did so her eyes seemed smaller, thus reminding the women of the beating she had received the previous night. “Even animals are better than our men. Cocks do not fight hens, bulls do not fight cows and even the wild male animals do not fight their females. This barbaric behaviour is only observed in men. In the animal kingdom, the strong and dominant males do not fight the weak and docile females. They do not!”

Otenga flew higher and higher to a vaguely familiar place that Kolo struggled to identify. Its wings flapped smoothly and impeccably against the gushing winds. There were a few scattered and unevenly spaced hills around, a forested area with no dwellings. The fear in the bird’s eyes seemed to have gone. The bird seemed to be looking for something, maybe company. Maybe. Maybe not.