MY FIRST VISIT TO THE VILLAGE

When we talk about communal life and hospitability, the village and its inhabitants is the first thing that comes to my mind. I don't know if people in the village are born different but there's something so different about them. I grew up in a semi urban area where it was permitted to mind each other's business to an extent, even though each family unit made it their primary business to care about their various households. I was privileged to visit my father's village only when I was about 12 years old. It was an awesome experience and I was greeted by totally new realities right from when I alighted from the vehicle in the popular village car park. Before I reached home, I was embraced with so much love, care and concern even by people who didn't know me and by those who were seeing me for the first time.

Several elements made my first visit to the village so memorable. In the mornings, before we woke up from bed, grandpa had hunted and made a tasty pot of "giant rat" with roasted unripe plantains. Grandma's specialty was fufu and an assortment of complements.  She would make a very hot bowl of fufu with vegetable soup using little or almost no oil but it was always very tasty. Fetching water from streams and springs was a completely new and amazing experience. The streams were clean and I was taught how to drink water from coco-yam leaves.

Ankup (A palm fruit)

Waking very early in the morning and going to fetch kola nuts and avocados for personal consumption made my first visit to the village more interesting and this was my favourite activity. Hunting for fruits and nuts was a popular activity for children. I can also remember falling into a pool of mud when I went to harvest "ankup" in a raffia palm swamp. This first visit to the village was loaded with adventure; it was a whole new experience and I was able to see life from another perspective. I waited for the last term of the school year to come to an end with impatience because that was the only time I could go to my father's village, Ngondzen.

 Mbiy Lucille Kemai