Tussles. Collected Plays: Collected Plays

Scene 2. On Ewang’s farm.

137 Tussles: Collected Plays Scene 2 On Ewang’s farm. (Workers, four in number, three men and a woman, enjoying conversation break) Nonobit (Laughing) She thought she was clever. Bine Like all of them! Enegembole We are oh! Ewang His energy. Nonobit My energy. Can you work harder than me? Bine The money. That’s my own cry. Nonobit Money? No anini. Enegembole Like all of you … hmm! Nonobit Only my head. Thirty minutes just before her fat oga. Bine (Laughing) I know that one. With his tattered buttocks and belle like Mbakwa Supe. Nonobit She pushed me out through the back door and he came in through the front door. Ewang But you had taken no? Nonobit Ah ah! You are saying it again? 138 The Imprisonment of Sende Ghandi Enegembole Thieves you two. Take here, take there. One day… one day you will take from your own mother! Nonobit and Ewang God forbid! Enegembole God forbid. God cannot forbid. Did you pay? But see: the sun is cleaning its hoe. Bine Nonobit, you fool us with woman talk. Ewang Let him continue. We will be in his farm tomorrow. Nonobit Ah! You too! This clearing season is the ripe time for storytelling. Lightens the work. Ewang I prefer the harvest season. Bine When the money caresses our hands. Enegembole But can you harvest without planting? Ewang To your question I give this answer: some plant, some harvest. You plant today and weed. Weed and weed. Your palms tear and blood flows. Nonobit And sweat dances on your forehead. Ewang Sweat sits on your forehead like the cock’s dewlap. But others harvest. Nonobit Have you heard? (All stop working and stare at him). Sende Ghandi. Yesterday in the marketplace. They wore a tyre round his neck to kill him. It was bad. Then the police came. Ewang Sende Ghandi’s neck? 139 Tussles: Collected Plays Nonobit As you hear. Kum & co. That he was a thief. Enegembole Kum & co.! Justice tried! Ewang Tyre on the wrong neck ! Not Sende Ghandi. I know his cross. Women. Aita… Sofikoto… Enanga… Sirri…Fat buttocks, thin legs, koni eyes…he is there. Enegembole That was before his marriage. Today he has only one cross: our Co-operative Scheme. That tyre round his neck troubles me a lot. Does justice have eyes? Does it see? Bine Does it at all? If I am a struggling farmer today, I hold justice responsible. Nonobit Yes, Bine, I’ve not always known you to be a farmer. Bine Farming was not in my blood. I’m a supplier. Nonobit All the big schools, all the training centres were yours. Bine I supplied them food: plantains, meat, okro, ekomobong, congo meat, rice. Then the prisons came. I took all my money and supplied them. You think they paid me any anini? One superintendent after the other, they threatened to lock me up if I continued to ask them for my money. I had to choose between my head and my money. Not even their big oga in the capital could help. In fact he told me all his men in the field were honest people, that I was lying. Enegembole You are lucky they even spared you your life. Ghandi is in jail for no crime, and if we are not fast they will silence him for always. The pact. Now. (They all come together and pile right hands, one on the other, then throw the pile outwards to a thundering hurrah) Curtain ...