| DANGER AT DUSK. (PAGE 3) |
| It was like a dream. The robbers had kidnapped me. All I remembered was my whispering to Wani that one of the men looked a lot like our uncle Joshua. And then, all was black. I was now in a panel van, gagged, bound and enduring, albeit unsuccessfully, a throbbing headache, with an unknown driver and another. I could barely see the men in this moonless night. Everything seemed so dark. I could only hear them talking and arguing over what they were going to do to me. �We can just throw him in the forest�, one of them said. �No, oga (the boss) said we should finish him kpata kpata (completely)�, countered the other. I trembled with fear. As a child, stories were told about travelers who never made it to their destinations. I began to think I was going to be a part of those stories. What were they going to do with me? I shuddered to think about that. Instead, I thought of the last few days. I thought of my life from as far back as I could remember. Tears ran down my cheeks. I could not think anymore. All of the bravery in storybooks was meaningless � I had none of that audacity and courage in me � I was weak, outside and in. �If only father was here�� I thought. For me, father had always epitomized all of the features of inner-strength and courage. I was young and scared. Never again would I taunt Kimi or other girls for their fearfulness in the face of danger, for inside of me, I was a girl myself. Suddenly, the van came to a halt. The men came to the back of the vehicle and carried me out. We were in some sort of clearing now and there was a little pond nearby. I tried to speak but the dirty cloth they had tied over my mouth swallowed my words. I sat there wondering what they were going to do to me. I had thought of running away but it would have been foolish because the men were big and much stronger than I was. One of the men extracted a machete from the car. �My fate is sealed now�, I thought. It was typical of robbers from these parts to mutilate their victims with machetes. Father had explained �end of life� a number of times, but we all believed that it was something that came with old age alone. I was thus confused and scared. The tears ran afresh along the contours of my morose face. Just then, the man with the machete moved toward me. At that moment, I stared death in the face. I shut my eyes tight and said a little prayer. It was heard. Some seconds had elapsed. I opened my eyes and the man stood there frozen in his tracks. The man shook his little head in negation � as if to say, �this is not right�. He gave his accomplice a silent signal to leave. His partner tried to protest this change of heart. After a short heated dialogue, they got in the van and sped off into the night. Just as bizarrely as they had abducted me, I was free again. As I look back to those moments, I see all kinds of emotion. I saw and felt pain, fear, confusion and finally, the joy and relief of freedom. I felt weak and incapable inside. All I admired in men were absent in me when I probably needed it most. This was no fault of mine � I just didn�t have those traits in me. I believe that every human being can connect to each of those emotions and indeed, my experience, at one time or another � the feeling of helplessness and inadequacy in the face of need. That experience will always live within me for that wave of all the emotion that came over me. And also, because it made me realize how much people are afraid to reveal their inadequacies to others, and even themselves. I fall under that class of people. I also think that the significance of this experience lay solely in the fact that such emotion rarely comes to any human being at one time or in one instance as it did on me that queer night. I look back and remember how that experience has changed me as a person. It made me realize that no one can be who he is not. And that it is useless trying to be what you aren�t even if you admire it. We are all unique and it will always stay that way. It is sad when people try to be what they are not because it always ends in failure. I have learned to accept this, and I hope others will too. I can never fully describe it because words would fail me. However, I can say that it has helped me immensely in being a more confident individual � confident of who I am, and content with my unique personality. And so, the uniqueness of that experience, and its implications in how I see myself, is what brings me to share it with you, the reader. * * * � Selegha Michael Daukoru 2001. BACK TO HOMEPAGE BACK TO PAGE ONE(1) BACK TO PAGE TWO(2) |