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    welcome Home, Son
    welcome Home, Son
    welcome Home, Son
    Ebook97 pages1 hour

    welcome Home, Son

    By joe fx

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    About this ebook

    The novel, Welcome home, son, is a fictional portrayal of two inseparable friends, Ubok-udom and Usen-ima, who are eventually separated by women, when Usen-ima helps his friend to deflower his wife. The deflowered wife won't forgive her husband's friend. But Usen-ima eventually marries to a girl whom Ubok-udom impregnated out of wedlock, claiming the baby boy badly needed and set the ground and clan for a long drawn conflict. 

    The book also portrays largely the gender inequality in a typical African society in which women suffer the consequence.

    LanguageEnglish
    Publisherjoe fx
    Release dateOct 9, 2017
    ISBN9781386181156
    welcome Home, Son
    Author

    joe fx

    Joe Fx udoh is 45 years old Nigerian from Akwa Ibom State. 

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      Book preview

      welcome Home, Son - joe fx

      Table of Contents

      welcome Home, Son

      CHAPTER 2

      CHAPTER 3

      CHAPTER 4

      CHAPTER 5

      CHAPTER 6

      CHAPTER 7

      CHAPTER 8

      CHAPTER 9

      CHAPTER 10

      CHAPTER 11

      CHAPTER 1

      ––––––––

      Across the green borough in the tribe of Ibibio in Ikono, where the broad Itu River in rainy season watered the valley, the gaudy greeneries by the river stood with aplomb and mocked the shanties in the clan of Obot Anwana. The overflow hurried out when the November sun declared its insanity, harmattan in December and January gritted its fangs and assailed the vegetations with yellow and pale vegetation. Perched on the beautiful hill looking the river, up to date, is the lowly clan of Obot Anwana. Its ridges-like thatched huts and rusty corrugated roofs houses often awaited a wild wind to fly it in different directions. The owner would gather it to the fireplace like winnowed chaff and worked on a new thatch. The clan extends to a greater part of the basin bounded by the prosperous land of Ikot Ekpene that has its houses like mountains and giant rocks, for white, red and blue roofs and black painted gables adorned the houses on the streets of the township. This city too scoffs at the lowly houses in Obot Anwana. The clan however does not have crude oil, gold, copper, granite or columbine and therefore have no politics and pollution. But election campaigners often bring government to promise people places of protection, school gates designed with gold and roads designed with diamond if chosen as a leader. 

      In the household of Effiong Umo, which was the third compound on arrival in the clan, Ubok-udom, the only son, meant the whole world. Nestled in the midst of eight assiduous female siblings, his hands were perpetually clean, only soiled when he ate roasted yam as his people said in the local proverb that the hands of the blameless are soiled only when they eat roast palm fruits.

      Also in the home of Bassey Nkenta that situated on the way to the local stream was Usen-ima. If Usen-ima had brothers among his seven siblings, his parents who fervently prayed for his survival and rapid growth to maturity, to get a wife and bear many sons, might have redirected their attention some times. Female children in those days, the clan merely preserved; they likened them to ripen oil bean seeds that split out of its shell in hot afternoon sun and scattered in different direction to be picked by passersby. But boys were cherished as they were the buds that remained to grow and bear fruits and replenish the plain of the clan.

      Ubok-udom and Usen-ima were born the same day to their different parents. In each home, they were the fifth child and only male after long search for a son. The atypical incident between Ubok-udom and Usen-ima seemed to have betokened the inseparability of their friendship. That evening, Ubok-udom and Usen-ima sat opposite each other on the long bamboo bench in the compound of Effiong Umo. Their eyes focused keenly on the surface of draughts game they played. The giggle and whine of girls, who busied to keep the home going, did not distract them. Girls did not play games. Only spoil girls sat with boys and played games. Spoil girls protested against heavy household chores and asked why boys did not cook and wash. In Obo Anwana, such girls who wanted to compete with boys, people look at with curious eyes and serious doubt cast about their destiny. But in that late afternoon, the girls guardedly stopped in the course of their chores, flanking the duo of Ubok-udom and Usen-ima who excited each other with the game of draughts, though they did not know the rules. The girls wanted to know who led in the game and applauded him the champion, and know who lost in the match and boo him the loser too. Their mother hated to see girls in indolent gathering. In anger, she tiptoed from behind, like percussion drums, she thumped as many backs as she could reach and yelled.

      "Do you want to become boys, enh? Do you not want to bring together the firewood before ududu bird tweets and hastens people out of the bushes? When you rub shoulders with boys they will watch you lick your wounds at twilight of your life!" She berated them, her red eyes brimming with fire of anger.

      The girls whimpered like nsiak birds whose nests had been attacked by a hawk, scampering in different directions to continue their task. Girls go to the streams, five times, maybe ten times, in a day all depends on water need of the house. Girls carry on their heads, basins with rims as wide as the spread of their arms sideways. From the farm, they walk, their hands stretched upward, like those porcelains of crucifixion on Ubok-udom’s table, they hold onto the brim of basins over their heads. If from the stream, the basins over girls’ heads tipped, tossed, swayed, the water spill and soak their dresses, the cloth stuck on their bulge frame, they would gasp along undulating hills. Another time, girls hurry out of the bush, twigs, branches, limbs and trunk lumped in huge chunk and heap upon their heads, and they breathe like caterpillars ascending hills, their backs crook and rock, and their feet swift in the sandy roads. They are merely performing their duties as nature has bestowed upon them, Effiong Umo would explained to his son as he nurtured him to think and act like a man.  

      Boys do not carry loads on their heads; they carry cutlasses in their hands like Ibibio communal warriors, and emerged from the bushes giggling. They sit daily, after the routine help with the farm, where they felled big trees for women to farm and take home the dead logs for firewood. Men perhaps bear lineage like eggs round their groins with which they reassured the family another generation. The latter is superior in Obot Anwana world and a man must preserve his son as rare crops for another season planting.

      Another day, in the midst of hilarious taunt of opponent in victory and agonized sulk in defeat with the game of ludo between Ubok-udom and Usen-ima, a large undeveloped coconut off the apex of the lengthy tree, tumbled over the frond, plummeted and shattered the surface of the game in their midst. Ubok-udom sprang, with the speed of an antelope, he ran in the direction of his mother’s hut. Usen-ima scampered outside the compound facing the road to his home; he only suddenly recovered out of the confusion, shock and returned to the compound, away from under the coconut tree.

      Members of the household, who at the time consisted only of the female, for the father of the house had not come from the farm, rushed outside, stunned at the scene. Ubok-udom’s mother yelled and wailed. She bent with the hastiest determination and picked the green coconut. Both handed, she shook it and chanted:

      "Arrow on futile hunt dispatched,

      Stalking a shoot, the only in next planting season.

      If a task is hard, a carrier declines to run.

      Whoever sent you, tell him thus:

      The bush was hostile,

      The hound turned the hounded.

      The woman snatched a cutlass from her husband’s veranda, reinforcing her wrapper, she stooped with flurry, both hands, and she grabbed the machete and split the unripe coconut in one blow. Only limpid water poured out of the undeveloped shell, the ground absorbed it immediately, leaving a wet patch on the ground. They turned at once, directing at Ubok-udom, and heaved a sigh of relief, regarding Ubok-udom and Usen-ima

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