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2.45 pm.
Chii skirted the pool of water in the middle of the muddy road.
She had gone to bed with a burden, but immediately she woke in
the morning, she had gently pushed the boulder of her burden
down a dirt track, and watched as the boulder crashed into a
thicket of crowded thoughts and was lost. She wanted her mind
free – today was election day. The first after so many years of
military rule.
It was an inviolate moment, an opportunity to have a hand in
choosing who manages your affair, who orders and re-orders your
life like an item on a shelf in her store down town. With the
black-goggled boys in green khaki, there was no such chance.
It was an inviolate moment – something she wanted to cherish in
the purest, innermost recesses of her mind – which was why she
had firmly pushed away the burden of how to pay her two sons’
school fees.
She skirted another pool of water. She had to be careful not to
stain her neatly ironed four-years old dress. She couldn’t
possibly forget the age of that dress. It was same age as her
second and last son. Four days younger than her son really. The
dress was her husband’s present to her for giving him a second
son. She sighed as sad memories flooded her mind, like murky
waters from the gutters flooding a room in Ajegunle after a hard
rain.
‘Good afternoon, Nne,’ she called out.
Nne had just come out of the room she occupied with a bricklayer
husband and six children to throw phlegm onto the road. Nne was
luckier. Her husband was still alive.
‘Afternoon to you,’ Nne responded. The phlegm was now on the
muddy road.
Chii watched as the red, wet mud quietly but resolutely
contaminated the whitish phlegm.
‘You’re going to try again?’
‘Yes,’ Chii answered. She had gone twice to the polling center,
but the electoral officers had not come. People were waiting,
gossiping. Word was passing from mouth to mouth like baton
passing from hand to hand in a relay race. Some said the
military administrator, who was also a gubernatorial candidate,
was having the cards thumb printed at the government house,
which explained the absence of electoral officers. When they
come they will merely go through the motions and announce their
own results.
Others said the administrator’s very vocal opponent, who was
evidently wanted by most people, had been arrested and taken to
an unknown destination, and that everybody else was in hiding –
even the electoral officers – for fear of being put away safely
until the election was over, or worse, being accidentally gunned
down, as has happened often enough in the past.
Yet others were convinced that the military were not ready to
relinquish power yet, that they, instead, would scuttle the
election and announce later that powerful politicians had
stopped the process and that the country was therefore not ready
for democracy yet.
She didn’t believe any of those, though. That’s why she was
going back a third time.
‘Do you think they would have come yet?’ Nne asked, adjusting
the wrapper on her big bosom. Lean Chii always admired plump
Nne’s big bosom.
‘I don’t know, Nne. It’s almost 3 pm, and they should stop at
4.’
‘My sister, I wonder O. This our country sef. Wait for me.’ Nne
dashed into the room, came out in a gown. Together, they walked
to the polling centre and joined the short queue that had formed
there. Voting had finally started. Nne stood before Chii. There
were policemen everywhere. In a short while it was Nne’s turn.
Then something happened.
Nne gave the officer the paper they were given when they were
registered some months back. The man took it and traced Nne’s
name in the big register before him. He found it, grunted and
called a policeman. The big book said Nne was sixteen and not
qualified to vote. Nne whom everybody knew was plump, big
bosomed and forty. Sixteen indeed! The next minute, Nne was in
the police van.
The officer snapped at Chii: ‘Your paper, woman. You no wan vote
again?’
Mechanically, she handed over her own paper. The man peered at
it. Peered into his big book. As it traced her name, she
followed his finger with her eyes, like a hawk a chick. There
was a mark against her name.
The man yelled, ‘You have voted before, woman. You wan vote
twice? When una cause trouble finish, una go say country spoil.
Na who spoil am? Officer, impersonation.’
She tried to explain that she had not voted before, that none of
her fingers was marked with indelible ink, but two policemen
were already whisking her to the van.
Then there were gunshots. And there was pandemonium. And she
looked back and saw the ballot boxes being carted away by
fierce-looking boys. She realized she was free: the policemen
holding her were running away. More gunshots. She ran like never
before.
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