Light

One day while she was weeding her farm, a ray of blue light from the sky fell on Bukwu. After Bukwu saw the blue light she became a totally different person. She was tilling the soil when the blue light came down from outer space and enveloped her. She said the light had been so bright it was like every other thing around her was in darkness—though it happened in the afternoon—as the light zeroed in on her and she could feel its rays on even the littlest strand of hair on her neck. She said the effect of the light on her was refreshing—like dipping into a cool stream on a muggy day. The way she described the light—she did not use the word alien, neither did she say the light was from a different planet—she simply said that the light that fell on her was not of this world.

When she was questioned by the village Elders, she said that she had not heard any voices when the light enveloped her, but that she had felt a beautiful warm glow as if someone had poured something sweet all over her.

The question about hearing voices had been a trick question by the village Elders to actually confirm if she had lost her mind. As everyone in the village probably knew, to hear voices was to go mad. But nobody in their living memory had ever reported seeing a strobe of light descend directly on them from outer space.

Bukwu said that after the light had ascended she had seen a shiny piece of brown rock on the ground where the light had touched. This turned out to be a problem because, when the Elders of the village went back with her to where she said the incident had happened, there was no piece of rock of any color, shape, or size to be found. This made the village Elders raise their eyebrows skeptically, but they had not said a word and had instead nodded sagely as if they agreed with her.

It was not uncommon for people in the village to claim to see things. Some had even claimed to have seen ghosts in the past, but to say one had seen blue light descend from the sky on a person who was busy working in their farm was unheard of and deserved some attention.

Why Bukwu, of all people, was the most often repeatedly asked question.

Bukwu who was known to be the most quarrelsome person in the village? Was there a man, woman, or child that she had not had a quarrel with?

Everyone in the village knew it was time to go to bed when Bukwu served her husband dinner. She was the last person to finish preparing the evening meal and by the time she was done it was close to bedtime. Her husband would be sitting on his easy chair shaking his feet, nodding and hissing and fuming as she went about leisurely making the meal. When she was done cooking, she would serve him the food casually.

“Your food is here. You better eat quickly I need to go to sleep,” she would add.

She did not bother to eat because she was in the habit of nibbling at whatever she wanted as she cooked, so by the time the meal was ready she was already full.

“Is this food my evening meal or my breakfast?” her husband would ask.

“Please eat so I can clear the plates and go and rest. Stop asking me questions for which I have no answers.”

As they argued their voices would rise. Everyone in the village would know that Bukwu and her husband were quarreling once again about her late preparation of his evening meal and they would get ready for bed because it meant the night was already far spent.

Her late night cooking and the subsequent quarrel that followed was the first thing to cease after Bukwu saw the blue light from space in the farm.

Surprised by this change, people began asking questions. They listened in vain every night to hear Bukwu’s querulous voice scolding her husband, but all they heard from their compound was silence.

To questions from surprised villagers—for, as it is well known in the village, one person’s business is everyone’s business—why she had stopped her late night cooking and quarreling with her husband, Bukwu responded with a series of profound-sounding koans.

“Quarreling and fighting is not food. No amount of quarreling can fill the stomach,” she said. At another time she responded with: “No dead person was ever eulogized on their dying day for being the most quarrelsome person who ever lived.”

“Every couple has disagreements; it is those who bring theirs out in the open that the world laughs at,” she told another inquirer.

Many in the village were lost for words about Bukwu’s transformation. There had never been anything like it before. The closest thing to it was when the village drunkard’s father gave him a haircut and dressed him in new clothes and found a wife for him. The drunkard had hibernated and acted sober for a couple of weeks and had then gone back to his old drinking and falling-down ways.

Bukwu was the leader of the Npotompo dancing group. They met every week to rehearse. It was a group made up of young women and men. Some of the men were still single. Ordinarily, single men dancing with married women was frowned on but a little less so if they were members of a dancing group. It definitely meant that at some point they would have to present their dance to entertain the entire community and this would suggest that there could be nothing clandestine about their dancing. Bukwu had quarreled with her husband over her membership of the dancing group and how on days when they met to rehearse she prepared dinner early to enable her to go on time.

After Bukwu saw the light she called her group together and told them that she no longer wished to be a part of the dancing group.

“My heart is no longer in it. I do not want to waste what is left of my life on earth dancing. I plan to do some more important things as long as I am still breathing,” she said.

“Are you saying we are idle and that is why we dance? What has come over you? Is dancing not a way of taking a break from the stress and worries of day-to-day work?” they asked her.

“Nothing wrong with doing what your heart tells you is right,” Bukwu said. “As for my own heart, it has told me different, and I will do exactly as it says,” Bukwu added. She was not speaking in an angry tone. None of the women or men in the group would have dared engage the old Bukwu in an argument.

“But what is wrong with dancing?” they asked. “Even in one of the holy books a man danced so energetically until his clothes tore into two.”

“Some things are not bad strictly speaking, the only problem is that there is no profit in them,” Bukwu responded.

Even her new manner of speaking was somewhat strange. People did not speak that way to each other in the village. She was beginning to sound like an oracle.

“But you can at least watch us practice our dance. You have been a part of Npotompo since it started,” they begged her.

“What one does not eat one must not use one’s teeth to share for one’s children to eat,” she said and turned her back to them.

The question that everyone in the village continued to ask was—where was the old Bukwu? Where had she gone? Where was she hiding? Who took her away and brought us this faded, fake, inauthentic replacement? Who took her away? Who took her away we are asking a second time? Who is this person that you have given to us that tastes bland like unsalted soup?

Bukwu was the only woman in the village that whistled. Not that whistling by women was forbidden, but it was frowned at. A woman whistling was viewed as somewhat wanton. Bukwu was famous for her ability with a kind of song known as ikpe. Ikpe was a song composed in the moment to mock your enemies. The only unwritten rule about ikpe was that you must never mention your enemy’s name in the song. Bukwu’s ikpe was usually hilarious and entertaining as she switched from singing it to whistling. People would often gather to listen to her even as they tried to decode which of her many enemies she was now mocking. But as soon as she saw the light, her singing and whistling stopped.

When she was asked she said it was better to have lots of friends than to have lots of enemies. And that was all she was going to say about the matter.

For the longest time, speculation had been rife about Bukwu’s relationship with Lucky, the chief baker of the village bakery. Lucky was a bachelor. He was muscular, always smiling. He had a radio which he carried around on his shoulder all the time. Bukwu worked the night shift at the bakery. She was one of those who cleaned up the bread when it came out of the bakery and put them in a plastic wrap with a label and deposited the bread in dozens on a palette. It was considered a stroke of good fortune to have an alternative means of income in the village. On many occasions Bukwu had been seen emerging from Lucky’s room with a cup of tea. When asked, she said that she had gone there to get herself a cup of tea to go with the free loaf of bread every bakery worker received when the bread was baked.

On another occasion she said she had gone to rest her feet after working through the night. When Lucky was asked, he laughed out loud the way he always did and said he had an open door policy and that everyone was welcome to come to his room.

After Bukwu saw the light, she resigned from her job at the bakery. Not that she put in a resignation formally; she simply stopped showing up at the bakery. She also stopped seeing Lucky.

Now that Bukwu had become a different person, what about Lucky?

Was Lucky going to stop laughing out loud as was his habit?

Was Lucky going to start closing his door?

Was the number of female slippers in front of Lucky’s door going to be fewer in number?

Was Lucky going to stop cradling his radio on his chest with its volume cranked up high?

Lucky laughed out loud when he heard these questions. He said that he was not the one who had seen something and that he was happy with his life the way it was and did not see the need to change.

What about Bukwu’s long-suffering husband who was used to eating his dinner late at night?

Did he miss their frequent quarrels when Bukwu would curse him out and tell him to try and be a real man instead of an imitation?

Did he miss the old Bukwu whom he once described as a vehicle driving through a thicket pulling at shrubs and ropes and grasses?

When he was asked, he responded in the riddles and parables which also made everyone in the village remember the saying that a piece of soap wrapped in a leaf soon becomes one with the leaf.

He had said to those who asked that it was a difficult thing to adjust to having one’s bath with cold water after years of using hot water, but that it was also interesting to discover that having a bath with cold water was not such an unpleasant experience after all.

He also said that it was a totally different experience for someone who once had a pet tiger to adjusting to living with a cat, but that one soon discovered that the tiger and the cat are both animals and had their uses.

For anyone familiar or unfamiliar with village life, the question now was what did Bukwu do with herself now that she was no longer the Bukwu we all used to know?

There is of course no need to ask what the old Bukwu did with herself. Or do we need to be reminded about all that the old Bukwu did. In that case here goes.

The old Bukwu cursed.

The old Bukwu fought.

The old Bukwu cursed her enemies in song and whistling.

The old Bukwu quarreled with her husband, cooked late dinners, and called him a poor excuse of a man.

The old Bukwu cursed her Maker every day and wondered why she had been brought into this miserable world only to suffer and to die without knowing what it was like to enjoy life.

The old Bukwu went to her farm to work. She tilled. She planted. She weeded. She harvested.

She told stories about other people and spread gossip around the village, which was why behind her back she was nicknamed Radio Without Battery.

The old Bukwu danced with men in her dancing group.

The old Bukwu was always seen going in and out of the room of the chief baker Lucky.

The old Bukwu talked even when she had nothing to say.

The old Bukwu moved around like a bolt of lightning. Never pausing except to strike.

What can we say about the new Bukwu?

She was everything that the Old Bukwu was not. You could hardly hear her footsteps when she walked.

She barely spoke above a whisper.

But she was still the worker that she was. If a woman’s work is never done, a village woman’s work was often never even started. Life in the village was difficult, and farming required labor and patience even though in return one got just enough to sustain oneself. She still went to the farm to plant and weed and hoe and harvest. The same kind of crops that had left her ancestors poor was still the same thing she planted. Corn, cassava, sweet potatoes, and yams. Crops that yielded little, but wrung a lot of sweat from the brows of those who planted them.

It would have been good to say that things around Bukwu’s life began to change thereafter. For instance, that she became rich or found great fame and that her life began to shine in new ways. None of those things happened.

One day Bukwu woke up as if startled awake and began to murmur to herself.

It was her husband who was sleeping on a separate bed in the same room who first heard her. It must be mentioned that they had ceased to sleep as man and wife a long time ago and shared the same room as siblings would.

Bukwu was restless and quickly began to get ready in a hurry like someone who must get to somewhere fast.

“What is the matter?” her husband asked.

“I must go to the farm fast. My light is fading,” Bukwu said.

Her husband who was already getting used to her strange ways tried to decode what she meant by this. It was not yet fully morning but he was sure the sun would soon be out.

“The light that touched me. Yes, that light. It is beginning to fade and I must not let it fade out. I must return to where it first touched me so that it can touch me again,” Bukwu said.

From that day onwards Bukwu would wake up early to leave for the farm. To those who asked she would say that she was going to wait for the light to touch her once again.

She would usually leave for the farm at the same time every day and just as people had been able to tell that it was time to go to bed by way of her late dinners they could now tell that it was time to begin their day whenever Bukwu set out for the farm to wait for the light to fall on her, again.