A GIRL'S MIND[CHAPTER SIX]

Dave and Eddy put down their machetes and sacks[Eddy's holding soap and a small quantity of food items and snails he had garnered along the way];shed and squeezed their wet clothes and spread them on a line by the fireside.They drew together the smouldering thick logs in the fireplace and squatted as nude as they were,warming themselves.1

Eddy suddenly started laughing.2

'What's that?'Dave asked,surprised.3

'Which college student would see me now and believe I'm the one here?'4

'Oh,that!'Dave said,turning his hands by the growing fire.'Yours is pure picnic.What of me?You know,back in the campus I sometimes wonder what's in the heads of some young people - water or brain?You'll see students whose every need is taken care of by rich relations holding guns and hunting themselves like animals.I get baffled if too much money makes one silly.People who should be quietly enjoying their relations' wealth and facing their studies but rather they're chasing and killing themselves in the name of trying to show off who is the hardest.Maybe if they'd walked a hard path like this once they would readily appreciate what they're getting so cheaply.Just to have a change of diet for once,see the distance I've come...'5

Eddy laughed at what Dave was saying - if only he knew the hard road he,Eddy,had trekked to the college;then he would have known how right he was in using the term 'picnic' for his coming into the jungle!'Maybe a little bit of hardship is good for a proper development of the mind.It helps you to think right.You learn to appreciate certain things you would otherwise have taken for granted and it makes you serious with life,'Eddy said.6

'I agree with you,man,'Dave responded,'but just a little bit of it.Prolonged hardship can break a man - and very often does!'7

'It's true!But one thing I know - He who makes the owl fly in the night would also give it the sight to see its path.'Again here Eddy referred to himself.If prolonged hardship breaks a man,then he should have been a sure candidate.But he realized in the darkest moment of his life an unseen Hand guides and guards from the seething cauldron of hardship to the mellowing realm of wisdom.It was through the grace of that unseen Hand he came to the college.8

'Of course,of course!'Dave agreed wholeheartedly.9

As the flames grew intense,they got up and retrieved their boxer shorts from the line and wore them.With a four-litre gallon Dave left for the stream as Eddy sat at the foot of the row of six twelve-inch-wide sleeping boards and dangled his legs near the fire.10

Dave returned with the water and they soaked and drank garri with fried groundnuts,sachet milk and sugar.Then they moved into the stream with the conical fishing basket Dave retrieved from the nearby undergrowth where he hid it,and dropped in it ripe palm nuts as bait for fish.They placed it in a pool upstream and returned to cook.Just before they could leave the stream Dave skewered a large-size crab with his long machete.11

Not very long the steaming pot of soup was brought down.A  whole lot of ingredients had gone into making it.Bitter leaves and aromatic pepper were plucked around the tent.Added to these were ground melon seeds,dry fish and snails - more than a dozen of them,which Dave had picked along the way and the crab.Then the basics - salt,palm oil and cooking cubes.12

They ate and barely missed being surfeited.Then they sprawled on the boards to let their meal be gradually digested.13

The sun in its increased intensity mopped water from the jungle leafage just as the tent too was getting warmer.Bees and flies buzzed around the tent as diverse birds' and animals' calls rocked the entire forest.14

'That's another red fly,'Dave said.'Steel yourself - I must get this one.'15

The fly had flown down on the boards a little distance from Eddy's leg.Then stealthily had crawled close.Dave raised himself up and with the sack,neatly folded,hit fast at the fly.That caught it.Dave dropped the sack,quickly picked the dazed fly up and peeled its wings;then threw it to the ground.16

'These things worry a lot here,'Dave said.17

And Eddy was the witness.In the few hours he had been here he realized the nuisances were many : dozens of diverse flies and the ubiquitous bees.As one went after the flies,one was careful not to beat the bees on your skin - their stings were worst than all the disturbance of all the flies put together.18

'And now the little story about truth,'Dave said,falling back on the boards.'The rear building was one large hall,which served as the kitchen before it was partitioned into the four rooms we are using now as my father decided to rent out the entire rooms in the main building to students after the lorry accident which crumbled his cattle business.Mama Kunam [or Mama K as we fondly called her] was the envy of all the women in the compound as the men praised her industry.When Mama K harvested her cassava - she didn't look for basins because there weren't just enough basins for her to put her garri in.On large polythene sheets she would spread her fried cassava flour and the mound was always higher than the roof of the building.19

'When she was bringing the melon seeds in,every other farmer's own would have finished but Mama K's melon seeds were ceaseless,so was her corn,pumpkin leaves and every other produce.Everyone was  saying what a blessed farmer!Then one day Mama K had a quarrel with her eldest daughter - a teenager then.20

'Kunam,the daughter,we learnt from Mama K had tampered with Mama K's basin of melon seeds.The mother was irked for days she'd been quarrelling over this - how Kunam had stolen her melon seeds.That morning Mama K picked the quarrel afresh.Saturday morning and everyone was busy in the kitchen.21

'"You stupid thing!You goon!Nothing I'd leave in the house and you'd let me come back and see it where I kept it.Who pinched this?It's Kunam!Who peeled this?It's Kunam!Who bit this?It's Kunam!Kunam,are you the only child I've got in the house?"Kunam was quiet,still peeling the yam she held.22

'Mama K moved in,punched her daughter on the head:"Tell me,where have you kept my melon seeds?'23

'Kunam grew angry,threw the yam and the knife on the floor and got up."It's your melon seeds now,it's your melon seeds now - is it not the melon seeds we jointly packed  from others' farms?"24

'Mama k lost composure but quickly recovered."I'd been saying you're a goon and you're no different!"she said.Then she mellowed,left her daughter alone and walked away.But to the numerous ears around the story of the successful farmer had come to the open!'Dave concluded.25

Eddy laughed.'That's one thing about those little things we do secretly.The day the lid is blown off them - boy o'  boy you'd be thinking where to run to and hide,'he said.26

'That's the truth,'Dave said,'that's how Mama K - without being asked to - left the compound.But above all,this story is for you.'Dave laughed.'You said you have nothing doing with Titi,isn't it?'27

'No!I said what we have,'Eddy corrected,'is more profound than what you think deep down in your mind.'28

Dave cackled.'Our people say it - lies sound sweet with big "grammar".And I'm seeing every reason now why I should agree with them.Profundity indeed in college love!'29

'Well,at least I know what I have with her is not what you are thinking of,'Eddy defended.30

'That's very good then,'Dave said,'it's always not what we're thinking of!But I'm glad you've accepted something is crawling under.Only,no protruding tummy,gentleman,for there won't be any room for denial.'31

'No creepy-crawly anywhere,Sir!And if you're waiting for this,'Eddy gestured a protruding tummy with his hands,'then you would wait till kingdom come!'32

'Amen o!'Dave said and sat up.Then he leaned outside and looked at the sun.'Time we go foraging.Let's tidy this place and leave,'he said and got to his feet.33

'What of the fishing basket?'Eddy asked,sitting up.34

'I'd come for it tomorrow,'Dave answered.35

Then they washed the utensils,replaced them and swept the tent clean.Making ropes from the bark of the uforo tree,Dave converted the sacks to backpacks and then,with their complete paraphernalia,they left for the snail hunt.36

END>>>Chapter Six.     37

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