The Children from the City

By

Obododimma Oha

In those days, children from the city were our big problem. They came to the local area during Christmas or New Year celebrations and showed off a lot. Was it the ways that they spoke and what they spoke? Was it what they took and how they  took it? Was it the clothes that they wore? Even the ways that they walked! The children from the city deliberately went for us and against us. And we did not like it. So, they were a problem, a great problem.

I still remember how one held and drank from a bottle of "Mirinda." Obviously, he wanted me to watch, to die quietly, to see one child deal with precious liquid in a bottle, all alone! And when he gulped down the liquid, I, too, swallowed, but I swallowed no liquid, not to talk of a precious one.

Only one child drinking a whole bottle! They did not even dilute the drink with some water before he started taking it. Too bad. That's how the city spoils them.

It wasn't just that one child could drink a whole bottle, but even the way that child drank it and looked at the onlooker, as if to proclaim, "Yes. I did it. Can you also do it? Go and die!" That was clearly more than provocative  making one hate the city more.

As I said initially, they visited mainly during celebrations. Celebrations, indeed. They just ruined everything for us in the village and one secretly prayed that they won't be around. When one should be enjoying the carols and sharing the proceeds, they came to kill the joy. Celebration turned to bitterness and regret. I hated children from the city.

The children from the city were always arrogant. They are mainly interested in showing children from the village that the city children are different and better. They believed that they had better life, while one in the village had no life. Imagine children who could not climb trees! Imagine children who could not blow the fire! Imagine children who could not fetch fodder for goats, not to talk of knowing the names of the plants!

They did not eat cassava foofoo. No wonder they didn't have energy. It was only rice! Imagine feeding on bird's food. If one eats bird's food, what does one expect birds to eat? Yam and cocoyam?

What they uttered was also annoying. They spoke what they called English, "oybo sụprị sụprị." You need to see how those children from the city twisted their mouths as they spoke "oyibo," just to torment us. 

The children of the village knew proverbs and how to embellish speech in the local language. But, who cares? Who really cares for your embellishment in the speech of the past? We just envied the children from the city there.

Then, their clothes. They had better clothes with lots of pockets for things. I wished I had such. One pocket just for my treasured things. Another pocket for ropes. Another for bread labels. And so on. Well, their clothes had lots of pockets, which was important to me.

They were proud  very proud that they had better clothes and ours were just rags. How could one's clothes for Christmas, Easter, or New Year be called "rags"? I knew that most of them were "ekobe," which was ready-made and quickly done. But they were no rags and must have cost a lot of money obtained painfully through contributions at meetings and gifts at the carols. They were not rags. I knew that the children from the city must have said that to kill one's spirit.

How could one even forget the ways that the children from the city walked to show that they did not care? The same way that they carelessly widened the mouth while speaking, to show that they could talk rubbish or had no training on speaking. They deliberately walked as if they were drunk or want to take the entire space  as people coming in the opposite direction.

I know that the whole idea was to make an unthinking idiot dislike the village, a place where a child could explore every bush  eat every wild fruit with unwashed hands, walk barefooted and even naked. There was no way one was would prefer the city to the village.

The children from the city need to listen to us, watch us, and learn from  us.