Renegadetalks

Odili never heard the tall lanky man  walk into their compound that cold December morning. It was Christmas afterall and it was normal for people to  visit  them  in the morning sometimes in twos and threes , with the chewing sticks dangling from their mouths He had woken up and heard his father discussing with a familiar voice before he cupped his hands,peered through the opaque glass window and saw them in the verandah, a bottle of Lords dry gin and two glasses sitting gallantly on a stool between them like a trophy of war. He didn't know much about the lanky man  except that he ran a scanty kiosk  at the junction where he always smoked hemp and everytime his mother drove him and Nwamaka around during the yuletide,  they would always see the man and  his friends at the junction drinking and smoking their joints . Whenever they passed the kiosk his mother would always say "tufiakwa", "ndi igbo!"   snapping her fingers noisily before she returned them to the ste

OLISAEMEKA! I don't quite remember whether it was the sound of the crowing chickens or the desperate bleats of the ever hungry goats in the pen that woke me up that morning.       I opened my bloodshot eyes and stretched like a flying bird, clearly starved of sleep ,I had slept for just an hour or so.  Whoever made history the first paper in the Senior School Certificate Examination deserved death by flogging with a peppered cane.       I had read all through the night to the wee hours of the morning, the molten candle wax trickling all the way from the top of the locker to the cracked floor,a white evidence.          I and my friend Olisa were the only candidates that offered history from St Patrick's.             Widespread  complaints about the collosal history notes, hatred for Mr Iwuchukwu our history teacher and the legend that it was impossible to pass history in the SSCE had generated a strong opprobrium for the subject and offering it was  considered a fools errand.