When Dibia Ndem left our home that evening, I wanted to follow him outside my father’s compound. I wanted answers; I needed to ask how he knew it was my leopard that destroyed the boar that almost wrecked my Uncle’s farm.
Yesterday’s nightmare was the worst I ever had. I dreamt of a long fight that ended with a boar’s death. In that dream, the leopard attacked a boar that was busy digging up newly planted yam seedlings. In the morning, my bones felt broken, and I could barely move my legs and arms. When Nene served my breakfast of warm oil soup and boiled cocoyam, I asked her if she witnessed any events the night before.
“Dede, I once thought you had a convulsion or epilepsy,” she replied. “You grunted like a buffalo, twisted here and there like a string in the wind, and Mama said you were possessed…” It was common for Nene to call me bighead, but this time, she chose not to. Maybe she felt pity for my pain.
“Thank you, Nene, that will be all,” I cut her off.
But eloquent Nene would not listen; she recounted how Dibia Ndem held my palms and squeezed crushed Alligator pepper mixed with chalk and other substances into my eyes to keep me awake throughout the night. She walked away when I insisted she stop talking. She was too young to understand that Grandfather’s spirit animal possessed me. Dibia Ndem revealed that the initiation happened long before I was born. I now bear the burden of another — a deceased grandfather who, without consulting me or anyone, transferred his powers to me.
It was the talk of the clan. I overheard people discussing the big wild cat that bothered the surrounding villages. Each time they mentioned it was a leopard, I shrugged and hoped it wasn’t my spirit animal. People around Nkilije had special powers to conjure and use spirits of animals for protection, control, or even revenge.
Father had brought several concoctions and charms for me, and when Dibia Ndem advised him not to send me to college yet, he shook his head like a lizard stuck in a bottle. He has always bragged about his intelligent boy and how I will someday return to help build a school in my village. I never even considered finishing school, let alone building one in my town. Those are my father’s ideas, not mine. The person who got me interested in attending school was Fata, the young girl from my village who also wrote and passed the entrance exam. She received her admission letter to City College, Mbammam, even before I did. She was fair, with red cheeks that looked like roses in the noon sun.
***
Mother was light-hearted; she cried herself to sleep each time the spirit animal was on a mission and took possession of me…
To be continued
