The Bad Samaritan

Chapter Twenty One

109 The Bad Samaritan Chapter Twenty One T he villagers stood gasping in disbelief, completely distraught by what they considered Esole’s heartlessness in human suffering. About thirty minutes after he had left, the woman died. Her husband sent his younger brother to Nidong to tell her parents that she had died in childbirth. When the boy got to Nekom, he met a village in suppressed mourning. The chief’s son had died about an hour after Esole’s departure. Since it was a violent death, no overt manifestation of mourning was allowed. No crying, no sobbing. But when the boy broke the news of the death of his elder brother’s wife and the circumstances in which she died, especially when he mentioned Esole’s untoward behaviour, the whole village used that as a pretext to cry and wail for the chief’s son. The chief ’s immediate family threw themselves on the ground, wallowed in mud and cried as they had never cried before. As the news spread, all the people of West Bassiland vowed to revenge the deaths of the two loved ones on Esole. They called him, The BS. The chief’s son was buried without ceremony under the palm tree, and for nine days the villagers carried out rituals of purification. Coincidentally, on that day, Esole happened to pass by at the end of the ceremonies on his way to Nidong. He stopped for a brief while to enquire about the boy. “He died shortly after you had left,” an old man responded. “Sorry. That’s too bad,” Esole said casually and drove off. 110 Charles Alobwed’Epie The young men of Nekom got enraged. “That fellow shows no remorse for what he did. He values his vehicle and firewood more than human life. What a heartless fellow! He must pay with his life.” Ejole said, entered his house and got a cutlass. “A Mue,” Kome called his friend. “We have just gone through excruciating and expensive series of purification rites. I don’t want us to get into another violent death that would lead us into other agonizing rites. Leave your cutlass. My suggestion is that, as that man-pass-man has gone to Nidong, he should be made to trek from here to Tonye. He thinks he has a supper vehicle but we should show him that the vehicle cannot solve all his problems. We should make the road impassable even to his vehicle. We should deepen the potholes and put broken bottles and nails in them so that when he gets stuck and accelerates, the nails will puncture the tyres. When that happens, he will be forced to trek. I am sure that a merciless man like that will not have the courage to ask for help from us. That is my suggestion.” “A Mue, you are right. That is going to show him pepper. If we do that, he will never forget. Tell all the boys. Let’s start deepening the holes. We should not wait. We don’t know when he will come back. Let’s deepen the holes in front of the chief’s compound so that when he gets stuck there, we can jump out and jeer at him.” “No. Our people are too sympathetic and unpredictable. They are too soft-hearted. I want him to get stuck where he will be exposed to insect bites – where nobody will feel guilty for not helping him, where he will have only himself to blame. We must move away from the village. Let’s go to the hills midway to Kole village. When we deepen the holes there and he gets stuck, mosquitoes, tsetse flies and midges will feast on him, and that will teach him sense.” With that, all the young men and some elders left for the hills and deepened the holes along a two kilometre stretch of hilly road. On their way home, they sang victory songs. 111 The Bad Samaritan About half a kilometre from the village they heard the revving of a vehicle. They knew it was The BS. They dived into the forest to avoid his seeing them. The people of Nekom had deepened the potholes methodically – deep, deeper, deepest, deepest, deeper, deep and so on, along the steepest part of the hill. This made it impossible for Ngwa to predict the appropriate manoeuvring driving skill to apply. In certain potholes, he...