Behind the Eclipse

I still remember the days when Oldman was strong, he used to go to the bush almost every day to set his snare for bush-meat. When he returned, he used to bring home a monkey, cane-rat, porcupine, python or at least a big rodent. Cleaning used to be my grand-mother`s speciality and the other wives of my grandfather used to support her. He had eleven wives, all were old friends of my grandmother. She often said that without their support her life would not have been the same. The day he did not return from the bush was a full moon and everyone except my grandmother was silent in the huts. All of his wives were pleading to the moon to send him back home from where he had been hiding. My grandmother started boiling palm oil when the moon mounted right on her head. It was midnight and she started whispering something which I later learnt that those were ‘phrases of power’ from the secret societies. Once oil started bubbling, she added some herbs which one old woman had brought home when the villagers got to know that Oldman was missing in the bush. She took the pot out of the fire and took it to an open area in the front-yard of our cluster of mud-huts. The wives, pleading to the moon at the doorsteps of their huts, started to move towards my grand-mother silently with very careful steps still looking at the moon. I was looking at them though I did not have a clue about what was going on. I had a very strange feeling about Oldman. My instinct hinted me that we would not see him again. All the wives made a circle around the pot and sat on knees bending towards the inside of the pot as if they had been trying to find something inside the boiling oil. A silence that was mystic swallowed the surroundings when an old lady brought a rooster into the cycle of women.