Jejere is at it again. In recent times, his father complains a lot about almost everything he does. He openly blames his son for his problems despite admitting in confidence to his wife that Jejere did nothing to warrant their troubles. Everything changed in the village since the day Temi fell off his bicycle on the hilltop and into the ravine, almost drowning. The ravine is no longer the veritable village weekend rendezvous, where just months earlier, people fetched water, swam, and bathed, and goats and sheep grazed nearby.
Children cannot now ferret from its muddy burrows unwary king crabs or fish with their bare hands in its shallow edges, or simply run around and dive into its deeper fringes, their playful mien a clear delight to all. Nor can women launder, and everyone catch up on local news. In fact, no one beside guard dogs now has access to the ravine. Everyone in the village has to trek two miles to its nearest tributary even for drinking water.
The villagers are no doubt resilient. The consensus at every meeting of village elders is to fortify the feeble, and support the stoic. With threats of more pain ominous even as illness and hunger hold, with children and the elderly hit hardest, the meetings heat up with time, and divisions imminently render capitulation. Yet, the shared will often triumphs. They reiterate their belief in the innocence of a lad who apparently now symbolizes their very survival in the face of tyranny masquerading.
Even children now go to work, rummaging refuse dumps, that is, as their relatives work on the farms now for just a third of their usual pays, which the owner blames on a deathbed spell years ago by a village elder that continues to ravage the crops. Now that the farm owner sees Jejere as the reincarnation of the village elder, and his son being only the first victim in a master plan to eradicate his lineage, which he asserts at every opportunity, he has all but declared war on the villagers, who in turn do not disguise their resolve to survive, regardless.
Deep inside the woods the thick shrubs hide Jejere from view. At sundown every evening, with whatever edible he finds tucked in his little plastic bowl, he makes his way to the same spot, clearing spiky ferns with sticks in both hands at once meandering through undergrowth laden with rabbit traps and venomous reptiles. On one occasion, he narrowly missed being hit by a chunky tree branch shaved off by momentary ferocious winds. Often, he trips into dugout pits, punctures his soles, sprains his ankles, and rats nibble his fingers for food crumps as he naps near the ubiquitous moth-swarmed casuarinas.
Jejere knows that he would be in trouble if anyone in the village found out he is anywhere near the trees. He has heard his father talk so much about how the villagers deem them a curse, and how they blame the farm owner’s parents for bringing them to the village. In fact, that they attribute the alleged spell to retaliation for planting the trees. Yet, he keeps going back to that spot, even as his father routinely smacks him for coming back home too late. Besides not being fazed that his father does not buy his complaints of sporadic critical glances from some villagers, the youngster seems to like the trees, and the moths. Sometimes he even talks to them, and he takes some moths back home in a tin-can on whose cover he had punched numerous holes.
Lately, Jejere notices a new set of moths in the woods, and they seem to be growing in numbers. He soon replaces his older moths with these new ones, which seem more active than the previous moths. His father now also tells him to come to the farm sometimes. One day, he forgets his tin-can on the farm, the very day his ailing father retires and offers his son to replace him. After repeated pleas by the village elders, who assure the farm owner of Jejere’s ablution, he gets the job.
Barely a teenager and now a fulltime farmhand and his family’s breadwinner, Jejere is no longer able to roam the woods. Before long, he starts to see a few of the moths in his lost tin-can on the farm, and more by the day, swarming casuarinas and lights. Within months the farm owner calls Jejere to his office. Jejere first sits on the bench outside the barn and prepares his mind for his final pay although his knows he has not done anything wrong. He is awash with memories of his childhood days with his friend he now no longer sees, and blame for whose disability he now endures.
He soon gets up and slowly walks toward the farm office in an aberrant stoop. He recalls falling off Temi’s bicycle a few times too as they both learned to ride it, and how Temi was upset about his father scolding him earlier that day for coming to the village. “He wanted to get back home as soon as possible. He was scared of you. I didn’t push him off the bike. I pulled him from the river. I saved him.” Jejere continues to mutter as he walks toward the office.
The farm owner awaits him at its entrance, a broad grin splattered on his face. Jejere at first does not appear to know what to do with the man’s outstretched hand, perhaps uncertain where it is destined. He takes his chance. Its warmth transmits through him in a flash. He is then able to relax even if for a moment as he enters the office.
“Temi spoke for the first time this morning.”Jejere’s lingering unease vividly turns into elation, the man’s grin into an infective smile. What follows the deluge of apologies confounds Jejere even more. “The bad plants are all gone. The crops are growing again….since you joined us.” The man’s realness is undeniable, his ebullience, lush. As he heads home afterward, Jejere ponders the moths and the casuarinas, and in a rapturous epiphany screams, “Good Lord. They are all gone. Gone, gone, gone”
