Chief Tjiruru was 107 years old when the Odendaal Plan brought oil-soaked poles to Omusarakuumba. However, he refused the electrification of the oil-sand village. The magician feared that the streetlights would stop him from practising his charms in an eclipsing darkness. 

Last year, a flashlight between the clouds revealed his charm bracelet. Soon, the blue oilcloth men started digging pits for the skyward poles. The wizard whined about the grave-like pits wishing death upon the villagers. 

“I’m the only person who cheated death,” he joked. He was talking about the day he was buried alive after fainting for two minutes. 

Luckily, he crawled his way out of the blackened tomb. A band of light crossing the night sky guided the onion-smelling chief home.  

The chief’s plate-size eyes spotted the funeral-goers dividing his cows and three widows among his best enemies.  The mourners were caught red-handed. 

“The hanging wires look like snakes’ spoors,” he complained about the copper ropes looking like spider threads. 

“Why are you bringing oily poles?” Tjiruru quizzed, suggesting that the oil palm Makalani trees should be chopped for the electrical poles. 

“Why should the cow-staining poles be in a straight line?” he asked. 

He advised that the copper chains must be knotted onto the forest of Makalani palms. The chief complained that the straight-line grid would bypass the cow-dung plastered huts. “The streetlights are too close to the graveyard,” the century-old chief complained. 

“The dead must not be awakened by the dazzling streetlights,” whined the cow-lick hair chief.  His remarks tickled the tenderpreneur screwing up the red and yellow bulbs. It was not long after the greasy poles had been framed, a plague of spoonbill birds began pecking the poles. The birds drilled big holes in each pole. Afterwards, the ticks-ridden cows rubbed against the oil-smeared poles, and broke the hollow poles. 

A day after, the poles gave in to the whirlwind. The multimillion-rand cables fell on the thatch-roofed huts. 100 villagers were electrocuted, and Tjiruru slaughtered 200 cows for the mass funeral. 

In the end, the Omakara Ltd fastened electrical wires to the scattered Makalani palms, and the streetlights looked like pagan festivals. 

Happy that the spirits had brought back the pre-genocide mood to his ghost village, Chief Tjiruru crossed over to the ancestors’ world. 

The bright streetlights lit up the mountain-top village even up to this day.