L’ábẹ́ igi òrómbó

L’ábẹ́ igi òrómbó
by Kunle Ojeleye

I sat travelling back in time.
To 40 years ago, when we toiled for many days, digging and cracking the rocks underneath the soil, to plant tens of citrus trees out of which less than five survived.

I remembered the days gone by, when the gate gets opened voluntarily by us, or compulsorily by early morning visitors at 530 am.
It would remain open until 10 pm, with the occasional late and night-keeping arrival, forcing it to be re-opened with their incessant banging or unrelenting cacophony of vehicular horn.

I saw the numerous occupants of the compound as they go back and forth in their daily routines – my parents, me and my siblings, and numerous wards whose education as well as sustenance Dad and Mum took responsibility for without complaining. How my parents managed on such a meagre resource of a teacher’s salary, backed with subsistence farming beats my imagination.

The manual farming season overtook my memory. Learning at a very young age, how to till, prepare the ground and grow maize, yam, sweet potato, and cassava. By age seven, I already knew poultry management, raising day old chicks as well as turkeys into adult birds for sale and consumption.

Early years knowledge of car maintenance did not elude my memory. Daily wash; weekly engine oil, brake oil and water level checks; routine garage servicing and tire rotations; the right pressure inside the tires, sometimes slightly lowered when travelling a very long distance in extremely hot weather; etc.

I chuckled at my naivety at age eleven when I started driving the car in my parent’s absence, sweeping the tire marks thereafter, thinking Dad would not know his car had been out of the garage.

I reflected on how my parents could hardly stay out of Nigeria for more than four weeks once we were able to facilitate their travelling overseas.
By the end of two weeks, they felt like fish out of the water having no one knocking on their gate, folks coming in through their door shouting ‘ẹ kásán o’, with messages that they are needed to help sort out one matter or the other or give guidance on community and religious issues.

Then I remembered Mummy’s transition, and how it changed the dynamics of the compound.
Even then, the retinue of visitors did not decrease, adding in strange human traffic taking advantage of the generosity of an old man.

Then the music stopped.
Baba Kunle left.
And the compound became an extremely quiet shadow of itself.

Underneath the orange/citrus tree.
Where my family life over forty-one years, flashed through my eyes and mind.

Facebook Post: 2022-05-10 T11:23:15