Voice of America by E.C. Osondu Read Free Book Online Page A

married a boy from a responsible family. They had their wedding in the church and the priest said that though her sins were like scarlet she has been washed clean by the blood of Jesus (after she made a huge donation for the repair of the church roof). She has gone on to bear a son and now nobody remembers that she was once a prostitute in Italy.
    Do you associate with other Africans so you can stillremember your roots? Do you still find African foods to eat? Because I fear the white man’s food will make you reason in the white man’s ways. My son, reconsider your ways and retrace your steps like the prodigal son, so I can bless you before I die.
    I spent too much sending Ngozi to the fattening room. I sent her there at my own expense so the women can teach her the ways to take care of her husband, and feed her, and fatten her up so she can be plump like a ripe melon. God forbid that a girl from a responsible family, like Ngozi, should be looking like dry
bonga
fish on her wedding day. Sending a bride-to-be to the fattening room costs a lot of money these days, because the women who run them are dying out and the younger generation consider it “bush.” The young prefer their women thin and dry like broomsticks. They seem not to know that men prefer to hold something ample when they reach out at night.
    My son, do not make me a laughingstock. I beg of you not to let those who borrowed chewing sticks from me end up with brighter teeth and cleaner breath. I am sure you remember Odili’s son (you were in primary school together). He used to be the neighborhood rascal who smoked marijuana and pinched young girls on their buttocks, and can you imagine, that
efuefu,
that idler, woke up one day and announced that he was going to Europe by road! We all thought that marijuana had finally crossed two wires in his brain, but how wrong we were. He joined a truck carrying tomatoes to the north and boarded a bus from there to Mali, where he joined a caravan of camels across the Sahara desert. Some of those he was traveling with died of thirst in the desert, but he survived. He found work in a construction site in Morocco and saved enough money to pay the Tuaregs, who helped him to cross by boat into Spain. Hetold the Spanish authorities he was a Liberian fleeing the Liberian war and was given a work permit. You should have been there the day he came back exactly five years later: he was loaded down with television sets, gold and trinkets, clothes, and lots of money, which he spent like water. For the few days that he was around, his father’s house was the place to be; it was where everyone went to eat and drink. In my heart I did not want to go there with the throng, but I did not want to be accused of not wishing him well. So I dragged my feet there and ate and drank and rejoiced with the family like everyone else. All eyes there upon me, and asking, “What about your son, when will he return with goodies, when will he invite us to come and eat and drink like the Odilis have done? You whose son flew to America. Look at Odili’s son who went on foot, he has come back with goodies.” Not that anyone said a word to me, but I could see it in their eyes. Their eyes never left me as I drank the Coca-Cola, and ate
jollof
rice and fried beef and danced foolishly like a headless chicken. The young man has gone back, by air this time, promising his father that when next he comes, he will demolish his father’s old house, and put up a mansion in its place.
    I have been tempted to give your young bride Ngozi to your younger cousin Azuka so she can produce a baby for me to rock on my knees before they become too rusty. But Ngozi’s mother will not hear of it. She clapped her hands cynically and hissed like a snake and asked if her daughter was now a piece of beef on the butcher’s table that people tossed and weighed and tossed aside for the next person. She spat derisively at me, narrowly missing my face, and told me that if her daughter