THE AUGUST VISITOR(Delivered in a Middle Belt dialect)
VOICE: It is tradition in certain parts of our country that when a guest comes to the house, the wife or daughter of the host is given to the friend of the house to give him pleasure for the duration of the visit.
The song, ‘Kerewa’ plays
WOMAN: My husband brought home his fat friend again yesterday.
The one with the protruding stomach and beer-stained breath.
The one with the fat fat arms, who wheezes as he walks,
Clothes smoked with camphor to stay the lice that thrive on him
He looks you up and down as if measuring the worth of cattle
Papa Adele, my husband and I call him.
‘Papa Adele, Papa Adele, please don’t stay,’ the children would sing behind his back.
The household is already asleep
My husband wakes me to make food for his friend.
‘Papa Adele is important,’ he says to me.
A man who can steer the family business the right way,
who can make us hold our heads high
as we seek a path through life’s maze,
to make a better life for the children.
We need a television, my husband says to me
And a small generator for electricity
the kind they call ‘I better pass my neighbour’
Papa Adele will help us.
I make the food,
Eyes tired, hands weak,
And my husband and he,
They eat, drink and laugh
Long into the night as I return to bed.
Then my husband comes,
That dark hour before dawn
Tapping my feet where I lie,
Stinking of our local brew.
‘Wake Terlumun,’ he says to me.
‘Tell her to go to our visitor’s room
And see that he lacks nothing through the night.’
‘Our child sleeps,’ I tell him,
‘Her day was hard and she is not yet rested. She would be of little use to our friend.’
‘Then you must go, he says to me
Tonight, our friend must not lie alone.’
So, I gather myself and go out of my husband’s room,
Down the dark corridor, into our visitor’s room.
He lies on the bed, belly up in the sky,
This bleached whale like a dead, dead fish with his fat fat arms.
He winks as I come through the door
And he rolls to one side, arm under heavy-jawed chin-
Striving to look young.
And then he says to me with a leer on his face,
‘I thought the young one would come tonight.
Still, what can beat experience?’
I nod in weariness, in acceptance, as I settle by his side.
Calloused hands cup my buttocks,
Teeth eroded with cavities clamp on my breasts,
Sweat-laden armpit brushes against my face
as he comports, gathers himself,
And then weight is lowered onto me.
My husband,
Pretending sleep in the next room
Does not hear the wheezing of his friend, Papa Adele,
As he thrusts into the borrowed vagina.
It is a sign of hospitality.
A sign of our friendliness.
If you enjoyed this, then be at one of the performances, there are more!
Thanks for the info. Will surely attend. I didn't miss the last one. Will surely attend. I did a review of it on my blog.
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cool blog. just went through the whole content and earler post. love this alot. welldone
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