In a blink, a 100-year-old man fainted, and villagers clothed him in a cow’s skin. Thereafter, mourners waved their arms forward and backwards towards the bush-fenced cemetery. A minute later, his enemy giggled next to the yawning pit. 

Then he stuttered, “May Kariamata’s knife-sharp soul stabs the rainclouds.” 

The enemy’s chuckling about Kariamata’s death triggered him to peel off the skin’s coffin. The crowd gossiped that he’s older than the cloud-kissing trees. A tickling obituary about how he missed dragonflies and accidentally stoning hunters with sandy rocks spread like a bushfire. 

Apparently, he refused to touch the farting sticks but stole bags of rusty bullets, which he changed into jingling wristbands. Lately, a chief waving a bronze stick anointed himself because the old man was playing hide-and-seek with death. The chief-in-waiting brought orange overalls men to erect telephone poles. 

In response, Kariamata asked the spirits to send woodpeckers, and within seconds, the birds drilled holes into the poles. Afterwards, an army of purple ants chewed up the greasy poles. This time, Kariamata gnashed his tooth at the milk-teeth chief and swore that there wouldn’t be web-like wires so long as he lived. 

The next day, the silver stick chief brought wireless phones. 

Soon, the young chief brought a solar-powered jukebox and played ear-bursting music. The century-old man blocked the sun with a blanket of clouds, making the music box dead. 

Days later, the gold-plaited stick chief handed out earphones to the youth, and they stomped their feet. The noisy guitars and flutes invited the haunting dead to a live disco. One day, the gold stick chief paddled on the snake-rippled well, and Kariamata begged the gods to drain the water. 

This time, the aluminium stick chief bribed every household with 200l drums of water. 

The hobbling chief waved a juju finger at the young chief who brought yellow graders for the gravel road. The grey-haired chief whined that the road was a white python, blaming it for swallowing his missing goats. 

Again, Kariamata tipped off the ancestors, and the yellow graders ran out of diesel near the manmade python. Immediately, the gold stick chief straightened the snaking road and added a bridge. 

Finally, the old chief called a finger-pointing meeting under this bridge. Soon, tearstained cows found the shade under the bridge more cooling than their fly-waving tails. However, the old chief blocked ordinary children from milking cows. In response, the teen chief bought cartons of 50% milk for the commoners. 

Later, a one-man, one-vote election was held. 

That morning, the birds chatted about the heartbreaking results to Kariamata in a waking dream. This time, the bitter old man hiked a spooky ladder towards the twinkling stars. 

-Mungambue@gmail.com