The story I am about to tell has something to do with a monkey or at least of a monkey.
Growing up in the rural part of Nigeria leaves out a lot of fun things to do. Or so people living in the cities liked to think. There were no children's park and no satellite TV churning out endless streams of brain-distorting images if I could borrow my grandmother's definition of television.
My grandma's opinion was that all that metal would contaminate her food causing all those oyibo sicknesses that people suffer these days. Well, that was that! Arguing with her was pointless. The absence of these gadgets does not mean our lives were boring. But on the contrary, our lives were just as exciting or even more so than our mates in the cities. We had a plethora of activities lined up after school. Few were just harmless fun while others bothered on the insane.
As I mentioned earlier, I have a sweet tooth. Then, that sickness apparently affected a lot of my friends too. We all had an insatiable quest for everything sweet. Things like fruits, candies, and nectar were delicacies we could eat all day. Yes, we used to lick nectars of hibiscus flowers. How we escaped being poisoned, by all sorts of nectar, is something I can only ascribe to Providence.
We were four friends that always hung out and could be said to have been as thick as thieves but we were competitive too. We always engaged in games and sports to prove who was faster, stronger, smarter and so on. Our fun sometimes ended in a fight which would signal the end of the day's activities. Funny enough the very next day everyone would converge at our usual spot under the udara or agbaluma tree to begin another day of fun. These days people fight and hold grudges thereafter, sometimes for months. I sometimes wish that way of dealing with friends endured and I wish the world had remained that way.
One evening we were in the school's football field, our favorite rendezvous, Foti, one of us, suggested we play a game of cashew nuts. That was a simple game which involved cashew nuts placed on the ground in a circle drawn with chalk. The player would stand some feet away and attempt to knock the cashew-nuts off the circle with a pebble. Any cashew nut knocked off that chalk circle on your turn became yours.
These cashew-nuts were still freshly plucked from its tree. At the end of the game, everyone would go home with whatever they were able to knock off the circle. At home, it would be roasted on a charcoal fire, giving the biggest winner more cashew nuts to relish.
Foti was a bad loser that day, he was able to get only three cashew-nuts out of over two hundred cashews nuts. When the last cashew-nut was knocked off the circle, the game ended. He suggested that we all go climbing knowing he was the best climber of all.
He wanted to win on something and we sensing his rising temper obliged.
He said we should climb a big mango tree very close to the football field. The first to get to the tree's apex won. We converged on the base of that mango tree and Foti shouted: "Go!" Within seconds Foti was more than halfway up the tree. He was born to climb, I marveled. It was going to be an easy win for him, so I resigned to watch from further down. A few moments I heard his shout of triumph. He made it before any of us. I heaved a sigh of relief, at the very least we can all go home without a fight today.
Foti was climbing down when he stepped on a dead branch and we heard the sound that no climber wants to hear: "Piam!". He hurtled to the ground as we watched transfixed in fear. I subconsciously braced myself for the impact that was imminent as he was seconds away from smashing into the ground. But then he was caught on some branches and managed to hang onto one. He climbed down safely from there. We all started clapping and cheering which was more out of relief than any other thing. Foti later claimed that it was not an accident and he wanted to show us a monkey trick. That earned him the nickname yellow monkey as he was very fair in complexion.
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