Desperation exhumed strength in me – I paddled with all the energy I could muster. They were some way behind me in pursuit in another boat. For a while I gained the advantage but soon the distance between us began to decrease. Eight palace guards paddling behind me like demons. It was just a matter of time. Their boat nudged mine as they came abreast. I swung my paddle catching one of them on the temple – he tumbled into the water. One of them clutched at my paddle and yanked it from me. Two others tumbled into the boat and held unto me pinning me to the floor. The boat was as restless as a hen perched on a clothes-line.

It swung this way and that I wrestled with my captors trying to beat them away. Another held on to Ifeoma who was fighting him off to no avail. Then as quick as a flash her head came down and she sank her teeth into the guard's arm. He screamed in pain and struck out in anger with the back of his hands. She went falling into the river. A cry of anguish rose from by throat. I renewed my struggled but more powerful hands pinned me down. I called out to the other guards to save her but they did not heed. I yelled, I threatened, I pleaded, but my appeals were to a stone wall. I heard her splashing about trying to keep afloat. What agony filled my heart at that moment in time. Every splash was a dagger than ran my heart through. Then they became feeble and finally stopped.

***

A shiver ripples through me at this recollection. It is night now and I am still here. The moon, brilliant and bright filters its ghostly light through the woods. Night's creatures broke the silence with a creek, a croak, and a chirrup. And I am still here.

I was captured. Ifeoma was dead. For days thereafter I prayed for death but the dark One would not heed. I was locked up in an empty room to keep me from "harming myself" as my father put it. For days I went without food or a drink though I was adequately provided with both.

My heart had eaten to its full, how could my bowels know hunger. My sanity was brought to the brink; for a while I thought I would lose my mind – Insanity would have been a welcome relief from this torture of my soul – that could not forget.

I woke from a troubled sleep, my head aching. Sleep must have washed over me at the height of exhaustion;

I dreamt that I died.

To dream that one dies is nota dream that would not come true some day. I wish it would be sooner than later.

So the days turned into weeks, the weeks into months. And now a whole year has rolled by but the events are still as pungent as ever in my mind. After a while I was allowed my freedom. But I knew I was a changed man. I was still alive, true, but I knew that for me "living" was gone…forever.

I recall this bitter memory in the silence of this dark woods, beside the river that holds a jewel I loved but could not save –Ifeoma.

When I look down the rungs of the past one year, down the short vista of twelve vanished months it has become clear to me that man in all his pride, his hunger for titles and appellation; in all the certainty which he assumes to possess concerning the workings of life and living is almost always afraid. Fear is the common thread that runs through the seams of human affairs.

We are not too busy, we are not too big. We are not too knowledgeable or too sure of ourselves – we are only afraid. Everyman has a great capacity for love – to love his neighbours and every one he comes across. He also has a great capacity to want to share that love – but fear will not let him – for fear breeds suspicion, breeds doubt – two enemies that makes a man unsure of himself and his neighbours. Caught between these two foes he attempts to gain control over his predicament by boxing himself in with a set of instructions as terms upon which to live his life. These instructions after long use become entrenched as traditions.

So many, many, many, years ago there was a crisis in the lands (lets say famine). And men in their fear were looking for answers which were not forth coming. Their crops were dying – they were not far off themselves. In their fear they sought foranswers desperately. The gods must be angry, they concluded – the oracle man confirms their fears.

Atonement must be made!

They would need victims – human victims. But they cannot shed the blood of a clansman (because tradition says the earth forbids it) so they decided to dedicate the victims to the gods to appease them. Over time in order to preserve the originality of those dedicated they came up with rules that none should marry them except themselves.

But they are aware that marriage could more easily arise if other associations were maintained, so they made the rules more stringent – do not marry them, do not eat with them, do not trade with them.

They became outcasts. They became Osu.

All because it did not rain.

And many years later I am to suffer the consequence of my ancestors fears.

The night races on. Soon the light of dawn will pierce this turbid darkness. Day would be reborn.

In the light of day nothing is hidden. For light is love.

And there is no fear in love.