The Epistle of Udume , livre ebook
184
pages
English
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2024
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184
pages
English
Ebook
2024
Obtenez un accès à la bibliothèque pour le consulter en ligne En savoir plus
Publié par
Date de parution
23 janvier 2024
Nombre de lectures
0
EAN13
9781779331557
Langue
English
Poids de l'ouvrage
7 Mo
The Epistle of Udume follows Udume’s journey from childhood to adulthood. Set in some recognizable Nigerian spaces, Udume is crucial to the novel where the other characters’ experience stems from his connection to them. Udume’s positioning as the narrator in the novel makes him central to its explorations of the themes that are connected to the happenings in Nigeria. Once again through this novel, Solomon Awuzie masterly weds his artistic vision in a creative matrimony.
Voir
Publié par
Date de parution
23 janvier 2024
Nombre de lectures
0
EAN13
9781779331557
Langue
English
Poids de l'ouvrage
7 Mo
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The Epistle of Udume
Solomon C A Awuze
The Epistle of Udume
Solomon C. A. Awuzie
Mwanaka Media and Publishing Pvt Ltd, Chitungwiza Zimbabwe * Creativity, Wisdom and Beauty
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Publisher:MmapMwanaka Media and Publishing Pvt Ltd 24 Svosve Road, Zengeza 1 Chitungwiza Zimbabwe mwanaka@yahoo.com mwanaka13@gmail.com https://www.mmapublishing.org www.africanbookscollective.com/publishers/mwanaka-media-and-publishing https://facebook.com/MwanakaMediaAndPublishing/ Distributed in and outside N. America by African Books Collective orders@africanbookscollective.com www.africanbookscollective.com ISBN: 978-1-77933-169-4 EAN: 9781779331694 ©Solomon C. A. Awuzie, 2023 All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, mechanical or electronic, including photocopying and recording, or be stored in any information storage or retrieval system, without written permission from the publisher DISCLAIMER All views expressed in this publication are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views ofMmap.
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Solomon C. A. Awuzie’sFiction Series The Born Again Devil(a play) The Last Revolution(a play) The Policeman Also Dies and Other Plays(a Play)The Sin of MotherOluyemi and the School Fees The Adventure of Udo Omenukor and the King of Umuele The Taunt of the Flesh(Collection of Poems)
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My brother, lateUche Awuzie, who died on the third of February, 1996; my father, late Mr.Anthony Ukonu Awuzie, who died on the twentieth of February 2015; and my wife, late MrsAugusta Amarachi Awuzie, who died on the seventh of January 2020: that their memories may remain fresh like fresh peppers.
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1 Child, This epistle is not for the soft-hearted because it tells the story of suffering and of pain. But it is an epistle that you must read so that you too may learn the shocking realities of this life. Let me tell you how I was born as well as about the realities of my past; the past that made me whom I have grown to become. I was born the day I woke-up and saw myself on earth, though mother told me another version of it. She said when she was burdened with me in her womb she was always feeling she was carrying a dead baby because I was never moving. Out of fear shefrequented the hospital to be sure the baby in her womb was living. At each visit, the doctor confirmed that the baby was alive and advised that she stop bothering herself. The feeling continued throughout the period of her pregnancy. And when she was to be delivered of the baby, it was almost without labour. She said it was during one of her frequent trips to the hospital for check-ups that the baby came down. Throughout my childhood, I was quiet—always seated, looking at people speak and never saying anything. Each time father saw me in my quiet disposition he wondered whether I was alright. “Udume,’ he would call out to me,‘are you alright?” After waiting for my response to no avail, he would say,“Go out and play with your mates.”And at that time I would mumble that I would go, but would remain in my position. Father always felt I was brooding over life when he saw me seated all by myself. Our
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neighbours also would wonder what was going on with me. But within myself I knew that I was ok, even though I was always unhappy for just no reason. ******* I was about two or three years old when I was enrolled into a nearby nursery school called Alpha and Omega Nursery School. One Tuesday morning we had barely settled down for classes, when we started hearing noise from the school backyard. Some of my classmates and I quickly climbed the desks and started peeping through the window to see what was happening. As we peeped, the noise became intense and drew the attention of more pupils including our teacher. What we saw sent ghost-pimples down our spines. We saw four men clutch a naked man to the ground, while the fifth man with a short knifefumbled with the man’s penis—as if he was going to chop it off. I have never seen a thing like it. I was so scared. Our teacher soon came to herself and scolded at us and we all took our seats. As she returned to her seat, she waved her head in disapproval. In my confusion, I wondered why our teacher returned to her seat instead of making attempts to rescue the man. I did not understand what I saw back then. I thought those men were trying to kill the naked man and that the man was probably shouting and crying for help. It was until recently I understood that the naked man was being circumcised. I stopped my nursery school education at nursery three and was immediately enrolled into primary school. My child, I did not attend the best primary school like others. I attended Oladipo Primary School, a public school located along Orile -Amukokoroad. The school had a common boundary with a brothel at the left and a very dirty lagoon at the back. The road before the school gate was not tarred and was usually dusty and dirty. Across the road were poorly built yards and lockup stores
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where petty things like biscuits, groundnuts, andchinchinswere sold. The school had a large compound hence the compound housed two different schools. While one was Sari-Iganmu primary school, the other was Oladipo Primary School- the school I attended. I need to tell you how I was enrolled into the school. The day mother took me to the school, many other children were brought for the same purpose. We queued up while our parents stood by us. The teachers-in-charge of admissions inspected us one after the other. They looked into our certificates and asked us to touch our left ears by crossing our right hands over our heads. Anybody whose right hand did not touch his ear was picked out of the line and possibly asked to go home. Of course, I stretched my hand and made sure it touched my ear. The following day, I started school. We were told that I was in primary one C and mother led me to the class. For the first time, I found myself in a very large class- a class of about one hundred and twenty pupils. Our teacher (a pregnant young woman with a tinny voice) would talk from morning to afternoon when we would close for the day. It was not something I was used to. When I was in nursery school, we were few and the teacher only taught for few hours. The following day, after my first day in school, I was very uncomfortable with the crowd of pupils in the class. This was because the class was unusually noisy. Some pupils would climb their desk and would fall on others. Pupils did not restrain themselves from throwing punches, especially when there were to be such falls. The class teacher did not bother herself most of the time. She ignored whatever was happening at the back seats and only reacted when the pupils that were seated beside her acted out their folly. I did not blame her for ignoring the pupils most of the time. This was because she could not have paid attention to all that was happening in the class unless she wanted to have herself killed. My seat was at the middle of the class and I was always trying to bear the follies of the pupils seated around me as well as strain
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my ears in order to hear what my tinny-voiced teacher was saying. Each time she taught, I would not hear her and could not help it. I only make do with what I saw her write on the board. I needed not worry most of the time because most of the things she tried to explain and wrote on the board were things that I already knew. Maybe because her voice could not be heard by those at the back, they usually showed no interest in what she taught. After each class, she would write the class work on the board and expect us to do it and submit it to her desk. Majority of the pupils were using slates. I was one of the few who were using the2A exercisebook. This was because I had already mastered how to draw figures and alphabets in my nursery school. My primary one days were protracted nightmares and I would not want to have them all replayed. During my primary two days, a male was our teacher. He was a chain smoker though he never smoked during classes. As soon as it was break time, he would walk to a corner of the school, bring out his packet of cigarette from his trouser pocket, fetch a stick of cigarette, lit it and start smoking it. His lips were as dark as charcoal; a mere look at him one would think he had a fire accident and had got his lips burnt. He was a very mean person. It was as if he enjoyed flogging the class than he enjoyed teaching it. There were occasions where one of the pupils did something bad and he flogged everyone. I did not blame him sometimes when he flogged us but other time I would be angry but would do nothing. There was a time, one of the pupils polluted the class and he flogged the whole of us without bothering to know who actually did it. While he flogged us after the fart had circulated the whole class and had settled a little, I wondered whether he was the only person who perceived it. Uncontrollable fart in class was one problem with our class in primary two and we could do nothing about it. Sometimes some pupils fart and the stench got everyone uncomfortable; at other times, the stench only circulated among us and did not get to where the teacher sat.
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The teacher had to flog the entire class maybe because, this time,the stench moved straight to the teacher’s deskand got his nostrils stuffed. When we noticed we were in for trouble was when he shouted, “These children have killed me!” and quicklyran out of the class. He did not return to the class until the stench died down. We were not permitted to leave our seats so we remained in the polluted place while waiting for the punishment that would accompany our teacher’s return. “Who do am!”,“Who do am!”“Whomess”!Were the questions we kept asking one another. I was sure the person who polluted the air would have also said the same thing because we were all afraid at that time. I had never blamed anybody for anything all my life. There were always reasons why they did what they did so I did not blame my class mates for farting—it escaped their anus. No human can claim to perhaps, have super control of it. And I kept wondering why people did not also understand: Why didn’t the teacher understand. Why? Why did he flog usfor one person’s folly? Let me also tell you that my primary two class was also an interesting one. I had some friends and they were really good. During break time, we engaged ourselves in all sorts of plays. Most times we played imitating the actions we watched on TV— the actions of the Hollywood movies, especially their martial arts and the act of gun shooting. Amidst these plays were other challenges, the challenges involved in trying to avoid being at loggerhead with other pupils. Pupils like fighting at this stage. Every pupil try to show that he was strong and that he could beat the other person and then feed him with sand. I was no coward but I hated fighting. Year-in, year-out some pupils were admitted from the back door. This made the class so crowded that some pupils sit on bare floor. And the teacher seemed not to be bothered or rather he didn’t care.Our primary four teacher was a little partial, she flogged all of us each time she felt the class was noisy, exempting one of our class mates. She said he was a very quiet person and was incapable of
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