The Feather of Glory (a Novella)
By David Aoloch Bion
Chapter Seven
The sun was reddening down at six O’clock on 11-7-7046 R.C.P. the crowd of dancers and spectators had been singing, murmuring and dispersing to different directions, it was the last day of the three day of elaborate celebration of Awak festival of Ariar shrine cattle camp. Awak is one of the solemn festival celebrations yearly in Akoi village.
At the opening ceremony, the youth of the same set of age or madding (madding as they were called to according to the last bull killed at their initiations ceremony) speared to death nearly four hundred and twenty cattle at the dawn of the spearing day.
The night was darkening in, the darkness was rising up every where from no where, closing the silver eyes of the silver day. The moon was crawling up. He was waving his hands. He was saying good bye to his children (the stars). He was leaving the East, his first wife house, where he had already spent fifteen days of light for West, his second wife’s house where he will have spent the next fifteen days.
It was rainy season, which has been always the happiest time, the happiest season of the year in Akoi village. It was a season of harvest, much food, plenty of milk, of which the living people wish their dead people would come back and ear meals and drink milk with them. Season of: – wrestling, wedding, sacrifice at holy shrines, initiation to adulthood, dancing where gentlemen come to choose young ladies as wives.
In the course of dancing, a girl was towered above the spectators and dancers. She was a girl ten times. She had seraph’s body exact her wings; seraph has her body except her breasts. Young men gnash their teeth when she passed. They almost urinated. If they see her dancing or walking, most people asked whose daughter she was. A man who would marry her would have married a wife a woman of admiration they commented.
No sooner had this charming girl taken the path to her home, than Madut Kuol ran after her that he could shake her hands. He started in a cultural way by chanting his colorful metaphors in your greatest songs to draw the attention of the girl first. However, the girl never paid any attention to him. He just continued walking feeling as though no one was chanting behind. Madut went to her and grabbed her hands.
“Why do I call you and not stopping?’
“Oooo okay, were you calling me?” the girl asked.
“Yes”
“I didn’t know that people are many girls”
“What is your name?”
“Do you know all these people’s names?’ the girl asked
“I don’t know but I want to know yours”
“My name is no name”
“Why are you fooling me?”
“I am not fooling; you’re the one who is fooling me. This is past; I can’t tell you my name. “It is our home, that’s when I will tell you my name” the girl argued. The girl told Madut that her home is near the sausage tree in the centre of Gieer village. From that point they made an appointment that they should meet after three days at the girl’s home. After three days Madut had returned. The girl didn’t show up nevertheless sent a small girl who had told Madut the person he was looking for was not around. The small girl made a second appointment for seven days. Seven days finished and Madut came but the girl herself came and postponed it with an excuse that there were guests at her home. Madut became annoyed and cursed the girl.
The girl doesn’t want to show her love for the man at first sight. She talked to him rudely. She was testing him whether the man really loved her or not. She knew that should she make the mistake of admitting him within a day, the man should abuse her in future that he won her love within a day and that she was a prostitute. The girl would like to show the man her love after four or five times and they met and talked to each other for a year of an engagement. She didn’t expose herself to men like a dog’s tail. She was always careful on the soil stepped on, and always careful on a word to say in public. She did not talk to men on the path. She was reared and protected from useless men by her cousins and brothers and she was proud of them. She knew that she was a precious stone worthy of a hundred cattle. She was an unbroken egg of rightful man who will be chosen by her family and lineage because of his family background and his behaviour and the cattle he has. She was to be given to the man and there would be a family banquet of wine, meat, dance and jubilation. She didn’t eat outside the hut like a disgrace or a bastard. She always woke up at cockcrow to homogenize the milk, fetch water from the well, swept the homestead compound, ground the grain, and pounded the maize. She mended the broken calabashes. She milked cows, cleaned the kraal floor and fetched firewood.
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