FROSTBITTEN

April 24th 1993.

A newborn child is a thing of beauty, This one is beautifully crafted by the gods,many will think he is a girl.Only girls were allowed to be this beautiful as babies, in these parts.

His mother, Nkem, De Ochukos only child owed it to the gods to produce an offspring just like she did. The round smiles on De Ochukos face, is testament.

This child is the son he has always wanted,stories of the day would be all joyous, yet incomplete without mention of the part where he tells Achine, Nkems ex husband and the baby’s father not to show himself at the ceremony, he was not even allowed to see his newborn son.

Achine Obiajulu is mentally unstable.Apart from him, De ochuko will have only pleasantries to share with everyone else at his grandsons naming ceremony.

Most guests today don’t want others to know that they are having this conversation with each other.

Achine going against all the warnings he was given is very present at the party, he is at the backyard, soaked in drunken revelry.

De Ochuko had earlier ordered the cooks to keep him well fed , happy, and away from the public if he decides to show up.

From the gate, Achine announced his arrival, getting into a quarrel with the gateman,and banging the gate as loud as he could after he entered. It took three security personnel to get him to the backyard, and a large bowl of Nkwobi to get him to stay put, in one place.

He was not always this way.
Achine at some point in his life was the pride of the entire Idekin community, a tall soft spoken man, who listens a lot more than he speaks, he was not formally educated,yet his wisdom transcended any. A polymath of some sorts, very resourceful and would quickly seek to find solutions to any problem.

All of that changed after he lost his only sister.

Some say he died with her, because the conditions surrounding her death are too mysterious to decipher, it sent a shock wave through the entire community. A very tragic event.

She was pregnant when she died , drowned in the river that flowed through their hometown. A place she was only visiting for the first time since she returned back home.

To be continued.