(A bungalow. On the wide, spacious compound littered with plates from a just-eaten dinner are stools spread around in a circle. Seated on these stools are children shifting their tiny bodies restlessly, teens pinching themselves and whispering mischievously under the dim light, and grinning adult observers swatting mosquitoes from their backs. There is a woman too, not too old but not too young, having just about the right amount of years on her side to find acceptance among others as a griot. Next to the griot is another woman who seems to be the same age. She is talking to the griot and laughing from the seemingly interesting rapport they are having. The golden moonshine adds color to this already bubbly open-space gathering and provides a good ambiance to what is surely about to be one of many nightly storytelling sessions).
Narrator: Okay, em… Let us do and listen. Alo oo
Answerer (to Audience): Alo
Narrator: Story story
Answerer (to Audience): Story
Narrator: Alo oo
Answerer (and Audience): Alo
Narrator: My story came and captured me, my Self, my own spirit,
(Answerer eye-rolls at Narrator in a taunting manner)
Narrator: captured me into the deep bush where animals speak fluent Igbo and yams eat the soil… captured me, captured two birds with beautiful scaly feathers and cutting beaks. Two birds, Eze and Lolo.
Answerer: Hmm! Two birds eh, husband and wife.
Narrator: Yes, Husband and wife, captured them in a deep bush together…
Answerer: You have said that beforeā¦
Narrator: ah ah let me finish. No matter what the stories say, a tortoise does not run ahead of the hare. So, I captured them doing it, openly, right there in the middle of nowhere.
Answerer: Doing what na?
Narrator: (ignores) they were at it, stacked on top themselves like… (stops). Never mind
Answerer: (grumbles) we are no longer kids oo
Narrator: Where was I supposed to turn my eyes, to the dark trees with branches like claws or the slimy shit that filled the ground on which I stood? So I looked on. It was a bad sight for my good eyes.
(Answerer coughs on purpose).
Narrator: When Eze and Lolo finished getting some action, their bodies were kule… I saw smiles on their faces, radiant, radiant smiles.
Answerer: Smile ke? On the faces of birds? Na wa oo. This your story is not following oo
(Narrator gives Answerer a bad look)
Narrator: Not even up to five seconds, I looked and saw. Lolo had dropped an egg on the floor, tolom, just like that. Oh, if our women were like those birds, how wonderful the world would be… or so I thought. When Eze saw the egg on the floor, he did cukoo cukoo, shifted back a little, looked left…
Answerer: (to Audience): left
Narrator: and right
Answerer (to Audience): right
Narrator: … and he flew into the great blues above, flew away as if nothing had happened…
Answerer (to Audience): Irresponsible… heartless… flew off, just like that, no dropping money for a big pot of soup to celebrate or money to take care of waiting mother?
Narrator: So where you come from, birds spend money ehn?
Answerer: The Bible says, “Money answereth all things.”
Narrator: It is your Bible that says that, not mine. (hisses). As I was saying, after Lolo dropped her egg, Eze disappeared just like that. Lolo looked here and there, opened her beak and screamed – ka kau ka kau. She didn’t even see me standing nearby. I am not a bird person but I saw pain, live on her tiny head.
Answerer: Didn’t he come back?
Narrator: Don’t interrupt
Answerer: But did he come back?
Narrator: No
Answerer: To think that even birds can be irresponsible husbands. I used to look at that useless Baba Ireti in the next compound, and wish that he would turn into a crow.
Narrator: shut up, you talk too much, even the elephant knows when to sound its trumpet. trunk, trumpet, whatever.
Answerer: (pretends not to hear) …now I see he would have done worse even as a bird…
Narrator: your mouth, it will not kill you. As I was saying, Lolo looked here and there and when she did not find her Eze, she carried her big egg with her legs…
Answerer: those sharp, claw legs
Narrator: yes, those sharp claw legs. She flew for a long time over the sky. I was watching her, my eyes following her everywhere. Then, she stopped when she saw one fine nest on the top of a high, high Iroko. She looked left
Answerer (to Audience): left
Narrator: …looked right
Answerer (to Audience): right
Narrator: she saw no one
Answerer: not even our old griot looking right into her eyes
Narrator: not even I. Then she dropped her big egg into the nest and flew away like a chased antelope.
Answerer (to Audience): …terrible… evil. She is not a mother. She reminds me of that witch in Super Story. You know Super Story na? (starts to sing)
This is Super Story
A Life of Strife and Sorrows
This is…
Narrator: Chai, issokay. Interruptor will interrupt, but narrator has to narrate. So, good Iye or not, Lolo left her big egg in the nest amidst other small eggs. The woman bird of the many small eggs came from her travels…
Answerer: and she noticed the big…
Narrator: (gives the answerer a malign stare and hisses) she noticed the big egg and shrugged it off. “Maybe she is just terrible at mathematics,” she thought. My curious eyes stayed on that nest to see…
Answerer: to see wonders
Narrator: (sighs and ignores) … what will happen next. days past…weeks past… even months, but my eyes stayed…
Answerer: Ah ah, were you not tired? Where were you sleeping? What were you eating?
Narrator: Chineke, if you don’t know before, know now. Spirits don’t eat or sleep.
Answerer: Ok na.
Narrator: Soon enough, all the eggs began to break and chicken heads began popping out, hatch hatch hatch, just like that. Even Big Egg hatched at the same time.
Answerer: That is what happens when you add more kerosene to one firewood.
Narrator: The woman bird of the small eggs was happy. She began to take long journeys to look for food to feed her chickens. Because the nest was too small to contain her chickens and herself, she always stayed on top of the nest and threw meat from her beak into theirs. Then off she went, on and on like that.
Answerer: Big egg will always get more of the food, for sure. But chai, this mother is good ooo. She reminds me of that song from Super Story (starts to sing)
Nne mu nne mu o [My mother, my mother]
Ezigbo nne mu eh [My good mother]
Nne mu nne mu o [My mother, my mother]
Ezigbo nne mu e wo [My very good mother]
Nne mu nne mu o [My mother, my mother]
Ezigbo nne mu eh [My good mother]
Chukwu biko nna m gozie nne mu o nye ya oganiru [God my Father, please bless my mother and make her prosperous]
(The Answerer can sing for as short or as long as she wants)
Narrator: (does not pick offence) Big Egg began to notice he was bigger and different from others.
Answerer: Strong like George of the Jungle abi?
Narrator: No, strong like the parrot beak inside the mouth. I don’t know who teaches children bad things, but Big egg began to beat up the small chickens. Then, one day, he used his powerful claws to push one chicken off the nest from high on top. Wa wa wa, and the chicken died.
Answerer: Dead, just like that. Hmm, life is a movie.
Narrator: Good mother saw her dead child, but she shrugged it off with her wings. Maybe it is bad weather. She went off to look for food, came again, saw another one dead, shrugged it off, and thought to herself…
Answerer (to Audience): maybe it is cholera… from poisoned meat
Narrator: she went, came, saw, another, dead
Answerer (to Audience): now it is syphilis
Narrator: Again, she went, came, saw
Answerer (to Audience): kwashiorkor
Narrator: went, came, saw
Answerer (to Audience): beriberi
Narrator: went, came, saw
Answerer (to Audience): polio
Narrator: went, came, saw
Answerer (to Audience): Abiku
Narrator: went, came, saw
Answerer (to Audience): Bad economy…
Narrator: went, came, saw
Answerer (to Audience): Bad government, Bubu and Baalablu
Narrator: (laughs) ok, that is enough. Good mother only had this much (draws a medium circle in the air) and they all died except Big Egg.
Answerer: Bad child
Narrator: Yes, bad child. But, by the time all the children had been killed, Bad Child was grown and big just like Irresponsible Father and Evil Mother. One day, Good mother went on a short trip. She came back and could not find anything on her pretty nest- Bad Chid had flown away from the nest into the great blues above.
Answerer: Her tears must have flooded River Benue. This is Super Story (in singing voice).
Narrator: My puzzled mind wandered the deep bush asking around to know more about Eze and Lolo. A vulture feasting on a dead lizard at the crossroad of life and death told me that Eze and Lolo are called Cuckoos. I nodded sadly and concluded that eggs and metal should not be put in the same sack. This is where I returned ooo.
Answerer (to Audience): WELCOME.