HOME

 If you must tell a story, then you should tell the story from the start to finish. But this time it was i who was telling such stories to my children at bedtime, a story which is not meant to be told at such a bed time rest, but this is not a story as it ought to be. Do you call History of one a story? In general stories could be anything fake or real but to me it was not. To me the History of my people was never a story. No it should be called the way it was... a History. This was going to be me in that story, pardon me i have made error calling the History of my home a story. Again i seek for remission of sin from the gods of my home land if it be an atrocity to tell the younger ones such a History at night time.

Before i begin the story of my life i would like to let us know that everybody has a home.

"Everybody has a home."

Irrespective of our separate gems, attitude, race, culture, tradition and kinds - when it is time to unite, home calls. If only i had somewhere i could call a home.

                                               TUESDAY 19TH, MARCH.

The time was fifteen minutes past hand the hour of nine 9:15pm. In my house it was already bedtime and everyone knew that , that was how i raised my children to be therefore i need no soothsayer to reveal to them what time it was and what they should be doing and where to be. They were all laid in their beds. The beds were well tucked neatly before hand. 

I am survived by five kids_ Aka  the eldest son, Morris, Olivera, Fejiro and my last sweet push was Saint.

Saint as i called him was my last begotten and only the Heavens knew how it had happened. Well it had happened later when i was christened.

In  my house bed time stories was a routine and i, Thelma as my children called me told them interesting bedtime stories.

My name is Thelma and you can call me a Story teller or whatever simple phrase suits.

At one time i convey messages to them through story tales, i mean i would use stories to teach and at seldom i could use stories of Harvey the Graveyard janitor to scare and scold them at their ill- manners. That was my house.

On this Tuesday night it was all going to be different from what they used to hear from their famous Rufous the Nightingale stories and not the usual fairy tales, or lazy tortoise stories neither was it going to be Harvey but a story i had decided to tell them ... my story... pardon me OUR STORY i meant.

I cannot finish this story, the story of my life without mentioning to them each in the scene where they were birthed and whom their fathers were...

The story i am about to tell is not a story but a History , my History , our heritage, history is the highest form of story ....the highest story of my home.

"Hey Thelma when would you start the story?"  My little princess Fejiro asked courteously

"Thelma's still up with 'em chores." Morrison replied her in his accent.

He was a half caste. Just a glance at his looks you could tell an alien could have birthed the elegant young lad. He was in his early teens and his sister Olivera they had both came from the same father. Their father i never thought that we would be separated despite the fact that he was a citizen and i was not. I needed him so that i could survive the weather here in Britain... i never loved him but we made babies.

Morrison was just a replica of his father same height as the English man at his own young age, the long pointing nose standing , haha! reminded me of when we had first met , i did address him and his people as the kinds who talked through the nose. I feared that any of my children would portray traits from their fathers except for Aka's father, he was my first man, till date i wept for his death because he meant the universe to me, i could testify that among all men who had flowed through my life like blood flowing in the plenary vein stream, Aka's old man was a different man and i loved him so much just like he loved me too then  when we had given all our vigor to be together that was as much as i could remember in the scene of our struggle... we gave our last breath... but he died and i lived.

The night was getting deeply quiet, it was as though the Abbey had instructed a 'maximum silencia'. Boldly written on the walls of my house. It was the children  being optimistic as they await upon my approach into their room. All eyes were fixed gazing at the door waiting for the door handle to swung into eject of its hold to let the wooden structure open ajar.

They seemed  to be waiting patiently but nothing usual as expected from me happened as the time i made way into their boredom voyage.

 I had lived so that i could tell you this that everyone has a time: A time which we'd pledged and advocated for events to kick play, that is to say that there is no betting in life game but natures code thereof which some may call it luck.

If i was lucky enough i would not have been with serial number counts of this opposite gender called man. A man comes with different values in your life, one can be supporting and to another you had become his opponent just like the games of football until he had lift the trophy and becomes the champ then you are welcomed, while some men could sting you up until you had run up on yourself and become self destructive, extremely dangerous to those around you having the court pronounce a verdict making you incompetent and incapable of having your own children around you.

I had always lived my life with no choice never knew that i had one though. It was one thing to gain freedom and independence and another is to be completely  free from your master and such was the case with my people.

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Just right on time, when Aka  came into the kitchen, he had come to help me  finish the chores i was doing. That was just sweet as honey he was and extremely the chip of the old block. He saw me making cups ready for tea for the cold night weather and at the same time i needed to do the dishes i was actually multitasking. I had not bothered calling upon the children to help me out especially now that it was late at night and they were duly tucked up in their bed, it would be morally proven to call them out of the bed to take out one task or another in my home where i was born but such was not the case here where we lived... Come on this is the English land and i am a foreigner and a citizen by naturalization and marriages.

"Where should i come in?" He asked gently and watched me and i returned the look at him  staring straight into my son's eyes deeply ....i was lost into the trailing echoes of the  trance shipping me gradually a memory of my first husband...his father. The memories had came back live into my eyes alive just like a flash i felt a slight pain in my cerebral and it was  my head  aching as i recollect the lovely memories from the good old days.

I had wished that we had lived together and forever young, i did wished that our souls had not a touch of mortality. Where could he be right now? Could he be right where he was and be watching us from there but could not talk to us? Could he be watching and smiling and talking to us but we are unable to hear him?

 Maybe he had frowned at many explanations i owed to him after his death. Or maybe is still suffering there after his death in the under world where no one knew and where no one had ever gone and came back to tell. Was he in the place called hell as i was taught  by the men from the strange land who said they came forth with priceless gifts. Where could he be right now because my Kuma knew no Christ and no Lord, he knew no Jehovah and Messiah. The only thing we knew together was our chi which i was told was a small god compared to the bigger God just then when my Kuma had been taken away from me. I was also taught that my chi was not real and does not exist.

As i reminisced the past, events after event, tears strolled down from my eyes to my cheek even though i had suppressed them continuously from falling but i am only a human. My emotions had uncontrollably let itself out in packs of tears despite the sessions i had trained myself to be emotionally strong, after all i am a woman, a woman sometimes should let herself out of her shells...i thought to myself.

I resuscitated myself and took up a pile of courage on my face when i had seen the sympathetic look on my sons face, a simple feeling telling me that he knew the reasons i shed tears often whenever i look at him.

Aka had shown concern whenever i wanted someone to be there for me, he was always there, always right on time. I often teased him that i am jealous of his future soul mate when we had made some jokes.

 Indeed, he was my first son, my very own first fruit of the womb and my pride i would do anything in my power to resist any bad woman from seeing my son. Do not be shocked to hear this from a woman because i am one of their kind, i am not just a woman but a mother, not just an ordinary mother but one with courage to bear and forebear the worst things in our planet and a good mother  and i am an African woman, i beat with my hands to my chest i am a proud African woman...

Do you remember how i talked about the other gender that they call man? So also i should have to talk about my own gender and kind. Many folks thought that a woman is fragile but i reprimand you, a woman is never fragile and is ever unbroken, do not misinterpret my very words, the only part of a woman that is most fragile is the heart of a woman...and please do not break it. Do you hear me well? Do not ever try to break the heart of a woman because that same gloaming and blossom red heart if broken could turn into a poison and deadly viper's spat just as the red blood vessels turns black once it had been spilled out from its realm of flow in the blood contained artillery from their capillaries. A woman could be tender, soft and kind hear-ted when she had found love from her world and she could do whatever it takes to protect it when she she'd found a future ties within. She would suspect a floppy man and serves justice to the adulterous man whose pants are never firmly held to his waist.

As an African mother who had known all of these things the very best i could do for my male children was to stand by them until they find the right person, one of my kind of heart appraisal, one who could serve to them as their better half. And to my two beautiful daughters  Olivera and her younger sister Fejiro, i am obliged to raise  them up in the African standard of raising children and not these ways i had seen over here from my different home where they called paradise...A place where African superiors lived.

Do not nail me to a wooden structure yet, nevertheless, i am not in any manner condemning the cultural lives of a place or the traditions of its people as educated i had become basically i appreciate if not for so many but for the possibilities of what it may seem now, the advantages of what we have now than then. The new life and the new world they promised and now a new home; thereafter there was a possibility in a changing world. But before we stand as the judges on the court yard of jury, Heaven in which i never heard of before now could bore me witness that nothing was impossible back then in our home.

When i say my home i meant my heritage, the place where i was birthed , i am black skinned African woman or whatever name they called the blacks . My home was a practical population of people who were the same , alike in kinds and physique as well as our skins colors replicating gems inhabiting at a particular geographical location where only science generated technologies could determine its equator.

We had our own language but they could not understand us, we had our own foods in  what they found and jerked at tables and called it poison. We also had our tribal games and seasons of laughter and merriment. We had everything we wanted to live as a human beings but they had called us Barbaric, Bush kinds, Monkeys, Beasts of no nation. Ad-mist all these predicaments they stoned at us with our own earth and at their tables they now eat a refined poison.

Nature had blessed our planet with minerals and natural resources which had kept us happy together in our own manner and segment of life spring. Knowledge they say is " power". Power  itself is self destructive . I warn again do not cast stones upon me for i am an elite just as you today but the difference between us is the space and in those space you would find the lines of the words. Listen carefully this was the story of my life and not the story of someone which i was told, it was mine...having me in the picture in every scene. Therefore level those stones you are holding in your hands.

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Aka had left the tea cups he was helping me to sort out  on the table in the kitchen.

The wooden table was made from a thick wood, well furnished and equipped. The table was six feet width and thirty three meters high, it had lockers and cabinets below, fine brown wooden table cupboard. I had paid a carpenter Ephraim who lived a stone throw from the neighbourhood.

Ephraim is a gentle man in his forties married to an African woman just like me, her name is Abike. They had two children Dave and Maria. I called them Taiwo and Kehinde hence they were twin and a particular name given to twin from the west. Abike was from the west and was married to Ephraim just like me but she loved her husband and they had both lived happily.

Abike was also a good mother just as how i had told you about how a good and virtuous woman should be, one good thing was that she had raised her children in the African way not minding what was trending. Of course to us who were Africans who valued our homeland we were classified as old fashioned and primitive. And yes! you can say that of me because i Thelma loved the old fashioned and primitive ways of living as long as i am happy and completely healthy while living primitively.

Abike and i had become close friends when i was delivered of my darling Fejiro and it was  four months later that she had Taiwo and Kehinde. She had often teased me and had given credits to me for her conception of her baby twins which turned to be different gender.  She had said it  was because whenever i went visiting i took alongside with me Morrison and Olivera to see her. She was fond of them.

Morrison and Olivera looked just exactly like the alien kind and they spoke from their nostrils likewise. When they speak the Africans would have to pay attention so as to understand what they were saying, if you do not pay close attention to them you will never be able to assimilate. I had tried teaching them the African language which was foreign to them and to the best of my knowledge they understand but could not just speak it. I do not blame them and neither had i forsake my own children , never, i would never do that, they were my children, i had carried them in my womb sac for a period of nine months calender system and all my children were so precious to me. 

After Abike had been delivered of her own babies i had helped her in the preparations of the after birth rites as African traditions demanded.

After few months we had started to get along side each other she would call over the mobile gadget to request for any assistance she wanted from me and to check on her young friends...my kids. As an appreciation for the gestures i had shown to the family when i needed to make chairs and the kitchen cupboard with locks Mrs. Abike had told her husband to make one for me and i only had to give to the family a token of stipend and hence thereafter we had been so good to each other.

He  stood beside me and i felt this cold temperature running through my system, it was not sign of fever, i was not running high on temperature...And all of a sudden the gentle glimpse of his cold hands resuscitated me and brought me back to consciousness and i could feel his prints on my epidermis and those were the touches of my Aquila. 

Kuma was a good man with a pure heart, if not for the fact that i knew he was not christened before death i had always believed that my Kuma knew no sin and he was my own saint. He lives in my heart now and may his gentle soul rest in the bosom of our chi in what we had believed in long time ago before i was given a book called the Big Book.

 I was taught the stories that were contained in this book and i was taught to believe in everything i was taught. I was taught to hold my hands together and recite the Lords prayer; A prayer to our father who lived in the Heaven. Not the very Heaven of these aliens but another Heaven, another paradise. If each one of these aliens could call their planet where they came from paradise and where their own chi lived Heaven then i am equal and reserved the right to say that my African home was another paradise and where ever our chi lived was also another Heaven.

Do not throw stones at me yet i am not saint Stephen from the Big Book stories i was taught. This may not be one of those Big Book stories we had read about men who were like our kinds doing impossibles and we were taught to believe in everything.

Joseph and his coat of many colors and the Samson of the strongest and the rest of the stories. Not withstanding i was taught well in the powers of story telling, i had understood that one could actually change people, humans, you could take away their faith and beliefs and captivate their mental thoughts through story telling. That was the case of me and my people and for many years now i had believed in the sorcery of words. Words counts, words are magical essence of living with people in unity, teaching and bending people with the gift of my story telling. 

Did i call  mental possession of peoples mind a gift...just a moment! Of course... yes what ever that was not yours and by talent or skills merited and it became yours is a present of skills and should be accorded. I would at last give credit to whosoever knew these stories from its start to its finish and can as well write in accord all the things which had been scripted in the bible that some were called scriptures ; that was what i was taught that these scriptures were words that were made flesh and was meant to dwell among us mankind. But these words were not said by man like you and i but these were the words of logic and parables pronounced by their chi

Many at times i dropping sit and thought oh! maybe our African chi did made some certain pronouncements. Maybe? Ha ha! Ha ha!!... I am not in thigh rest resting such claims, nor am i here to argue about the aliens' chi nor am i trying to prove my African's chi to be alive and breathing. I am not a  theologian.

With a look made of all sweet accord Aka looked sternly at me as if he could heal me of my bereft. He was some inches taller than me he was six feet and fifty one inches tall, slim figure as if he was nit feeding well and curves which exposed his masculine structure. Morrison and Olivera were quite taller with some measures of thirty two centimeters and fifteen centimeters respectively above the six feet structure, my first son.

Any stranger in my house would give certain concern as to how the genes transmitted in the hormone built in my children. Each one of them standing tall and weighing above fifty four pounds weight except for Saint, my last son who was just under teens, average tall resting on my breast level and weighing twenty eight pounds weight. An uneasy fellow who was very playful but intelligent at his tender age. He was four years and ten months old, fully invigorated and my the rule breaker... He breaks most of the house rules. He was one arm of the house that i may not had applied the Europeans theocracy tales ....what am i saying? The Padre from Paradise had also taught “us spare the rod and spoil the child “.

The men from paradise may not have practiced what they did taught and this proves me right of my ardent knowledge of using stories to mend people.

The African measures of training a lad seemed to be the perfect fit to bring up my last push as he tend to succumb whenever i had forcefully used Mama Africa's

palms on him. The spark of the lingering finger tips, sketching some drawings made from the wolverine's fist on the lad's skin left him burning in maternal made hell prepared to accommodate prejudice administered to anyone that had chosen to go through the naughty realm of his. Then after minutes of sobbing he would arise gently and tip toed into their quarter, inside his bed felling sorry or whatsoever he did felt for his  nonchalant attitude. 

I had cultivated the manner of bringing up my children with the awakening Mama Africa's palms unleashed. I had never failed to administer a percent of my strength in thrashing my toddler who had gone  off the rails. The act which i had condoled was to have them call me by my Thelma. It reminds me of my own mother...my mama.

They had been my pride and the cause of my joy from the day i gave birth to each one of them. Only my fellow women could attest to such a feeling which you derive when you have planted a seed, and watered and let God bring the increase. I had always been keen in reciting the very verses which i was taught by the christian fathers from paradise.

Casually as i wiped off the meander made from of what looked like a lake channeled to a dam in order to provide adequate supply for revolving agents. My palms were soft i could feel the softness from the fleshy part of my palm, it was dabbed with tears, my tears. I managed to wipe it off completely, after several attempts i had made with my palms to get rid of every stroll that had created path to the flow, right from my lower lids down to my cheeks and its drips had stored on my shoulder collars. 

My eyes were looking very pale , i could feel the very cold weird arms of fatigue wrapping around me, i struggled to fight it but it could not loose grip. I felt warmth under its presence as its warmth feeling saturated all over my body , i continued with the chores re-tarted and feeling sorry for myself hoping i could as well finish up as soon as possible so that i could retire the rest of the family to the mystic journey of the night. The night was a journey by train which i had thought that everyone had their own stations and stops to alight ; a lifeless journey through the mystery that let us be lifeless, an apparent diplomatic embark where some of us had a favor to seek the pilot face to face when we had crossed the boundary between reality and the divinity. The actual fact becomes the realistic nature of what we might had seen there after the dreadful night had passed away so deeply quiet and a reassurance of a seeming hope of reassembling back to the sinful world which we lived in. 

 A wicked world , a planet filled of no virtues but more vices. But where there was no commandment there should be no sin. Was it that my planet was ignorant of this or was it that this was another changing world which the Big Book had promised and that it shall all come to past at the hours when it was programmed by the Almighty.

I am yet to tell you all that you need to know, hear this from me because i was taught a whole lot so much that i had for once doubt if my medulla could contain what my oblongata had retained. I had always been in the doubt of what my cranial capacity could hold.

 Who should therefore earn the credit if a  student stunned the teacher by becoming smart, intelligent and wise? This was no hegemony, but could it be that the teacher had done well and had taught the student extremely well and sound or should the learner be applauded for hidden intellectual abilities. I was not one of them but i had become one of them even  much more better than them.

I was taught that there were supreme beings some where nobody knew where they existed. They came to our planet from time to time, I should be able to warn my children of their coming so they would be safe.

I was taught so many things from the Big Book. 

If i have to tell you about the Almighty one i may not have much to offer compared to the aliens who had taught me.

I was taken far away from home to be taught. I was also exposed to uncertainties and I would not want any woman of my kind to experience what I was made to become.

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