Firewood Meals & A Shaky Bamboo Bridge
Oluchi Akam@oluchiakam
11 months ago
Xmas holds different meaning for different people. To children it is the season for new dresses and new hair makes; an avenue to collect something usually squeezed from uncles. To trading mothers- it is Season: Best time for turning up fast while buying and selling. And to most Fathers- its time to take the family to their ancestral home.
For me, it has been to know how well I can survive in a land of dust and rivers, a world of crude farming tools, shaky bamboo bridges, firewood meals, night meals, palm frond bathrooms and drinking water fetched from new dug small holes.
This particular Christmas was to be a world of Firewood meals but the world of Shaky bamboo bridges posed as an obstacle.
I was going to see my cousin and alone. I stepped out not knowing it was going to take a bamboo bridge to cross over. on the way to cousin's house I had met a fair boy of probably same age. He was not just fair; He was also handsome. we exchanged pleasantries and I told him where I was headed for not until I saw the bridge made of dry bamboo logs and old ropes. A local bridge had been constructed to make way to my cousins house on the outskirts of the village.
I hated bridges and one made of bamboos and ropes was far from appealing. It seemed a local bridge stood before me and a locally made Agbugbu and Achicha.
"I had not come this far to go back." I thought to myself. "Give me your hands." "No don't worry, I can walk through it." I said. How do I let go of my hands to the palms of a boy I liked, on a shaky bamboo bridge. "It would be madness" I wondered to myself.
Then, it was one of two things. Either I mustered an unseen courage or I went back home. How could a shaky bamboo bridge bridge the joy of eating a local meal in a local home. As I put forth my right leg to take on this journey on the bridge I couldn't dare think of the impossibility. I chose to see myself at the end of the bridge and I did see myself at the end of the bamboo bridge. I did see myself eating a firewood meal ; locally made Agbugbu and Achicha.
#xmasonnircle #giveaway
