Kojo's memoir

by Promise Udechukwu (Nigeria)

I didn't expect to find Niger

We had trekked for three days; myself and the boys. Past the desert and into more desert. We had lost all hopes of survival, the sun haunted us, casting searing rays on our dry souls, the ground felt like coals, but the shoes we wore reduced the intensity. Mama said we would find green lands just after the bight of Ikoh, there we would see dark clouds, heavy winds and rain. Rain! We never saw droplets of water dance idly on our roofs, immerse our souls and all it clamps, and assault our soil from the heavens. Our land was lost in a milky grey waste, and the only crops that grew hastened our journey to death. None of us thought of home, not me, not Sundry, not Rambo. We just trekked in silence, the burden of our past, moulding a light shadow on our path, to illuminate our hope for green as we walked on. Hundreds of times I had fainted, and the boys had to wake me up with their urine, I still know that tastedesperation. It was forced, redder in colour than yellow, salty, but I drank it to sustain myself, I doubt there would be urine in me to pour on the boys faces if they fainted. We should have stayed home. 100kilometers to the west we had walked, and finally we arrived at Osha town. I had not seen such a place before, green. Very green. The children had rounded stomachs, and perfectly shaped heads, the women had enormous breast, obviously, they had never starved or had their milks vehemently sucked by dry wind, as was the case in the North. The men were portly. Life was peaceful there, yet, the people denied us entrance into the place, ‘only one person they said could be accommodated, but a day later we sneaked into the town, ate, drank and stole as much food as we could. Who knows, we might have stayed longer if Sundry had not raped a girl, she said they hummed while they defiled her. The people caught us, they rounded us up, we did put up a good fight, but they had the numbers. They flogged us, stripped us of our clothes and surrendered us back to the heart of the desert with the aid of their motorcycles. The heart of the desert was terrible, especially as we had no coverings, sometimes we were caught up in the sandstorms; it was fiery, and unforgiving. We had to spend the day removing sand from literally every parts of our body. We had walked for a days, naked, ravenous, thirsty, devoid of the knowledge of time, or environment. I finally picked up a trail back to Osha town and from my calculations, it was a couple of days away, but we all had no strength to make it, best, we would be dead before the evening of the next day. Sundry was the weakest now, he had received more inhumane treatments from the people of Osha, yet I managed to convince him to walk a few mile with me just to see the stars, Rambo said we were sissies, so he stayed back, it was good. We had only gone a few miles when I clasped my hand onto his nose, he did not fight, yet he did not die, he just fell to the warm night sand, it was good enough for me. I clawed at his flesh, he only made weakened sounds, soon I was tasting his flesh, and his blood, and his salty liquid, and it was warm. I comforted myself with the knowledge that he had raped a girl, and worsened our situation, the closer truth was I was hungry, and I needed to survive. The journey had unfolded a version of us we didnt expect to find–the beastly one. I did not return to Rambo either, I suppose hed die the next evening, I walked alone, past red thick sand, to dampen ones, then to green again. To land. I will survive, I do not fear the dead, they are dead. I only fear the living, they still have the luxury to deny me green lands.