THOUGHTS OF FEMOLAD: AKO’GBA TU’GBA KA (The farmer who made two hundred heaps and scattered them all)
AKO’GBA TU’GBA KA
(The farmer who made two hundred heaps and scattered them all)
Farming has been the major occupation in Africa, south of the Sahara from time immemorial.
Before the advent of mechanization, and in some places up till now, the hoe has been a very important farm implement.
Farmers use the hoe to make mounds to soften up the soil before planting the seeds in them.
This stage is about the most tedious in the cultivation process.
The farmers wake up early to go to the farm.
The best part of the day’s work is done before midday when the sun reaches its peak.
Little work could be done in the scorching sun.
Every farmer tries as much as possible to maximize the period to make as many mounds as possible before the sun bites hard.
A good day’s work could yield between a hundred and two hundred mounds.
Ako’gba was a very strong farmer. There’s no day he would go to the farm and make less than two hundred heaps.
Ako’gba smoked the tobacco pipe.
Every morning, he would go to the farm with his pipe filled with tobacco, and a box of matches.
He would change into his work cloth and place the pipe and box of matches beside the cloths he wore from home.
After a hard day’s work, he would take a bath in the nearby stream, and come back to change to his fresh Buba and Sokoto.
One fateful day at the beginning of the planting season, he went to the farm and went through his normal routine,
He then started work in earnest.
By midday, Ako’gba had made two hundred mounds.
The stream water was refreshingly cold. The sun hadn’t heated it to warmth.
He had his usual change of clothes and reached for his tobacco pipe.
He placed it in his mouth, holding it stylishly with his lips.
But alas, Ako’gba couldn’t find the box of matches.
He searched the pockets of his work clothes and his Sokoto, and everywhere to no avail.
“I must have heaped soil on it”, he thought.
So, he started with the first heap. He scattered it but didn’t find the match box. Frantically he scattered all the two hundred heaps.
Frustrated, unhappy and distraught, he looked at the scattered heaps. He glanced up at the scorching sun threatening with billows of heat as if in anger.
The wind blew hot, as if conspiring with his brother, the sun, to make his life miserable.
Ako’gba embarked on his longest journey home. The distance from the farm to the village suddenly seemed so long and tortuous.
His wife was waiting at the door. Her smile with which she had welcomed her husband for decades disappeared when she saw the expression on his face.
A thousand questions streamed forth from Ako’gba’s loving wife.
He responded only with a grunt.
Leaving his wife at the door wondering what calamity had befallen him, he went into his room.
Ako’gba started undressing, and plop!!! The box of matches fell from the pocket of his Buba.
He felt a great pain well up inside him. Sweat ran down his head and joined the tears forming from his eyes, and like rivers Niger and Benue streamed down via his mouth leaving a sweet-sour salty taste on his lips and became drops at his chin.
So many things flashed through his tortured mind.
Things he should have done and the ones he shouldn’t have done.
There are many in Ako’gba’s shoes today.
- In politics
- In business
- In the houses of God
- In Communities, Associations and Societies
- All the structures and empires you have spent your whole life building;
- Your political and business brands that took all of your years to put together;
- All the reputation, goodwill and followership you have garnered;
- All the love and affection you have earned from family, friends and associates;
- All the respect, admiration and reverence you enjoy from people around you;
- All the people who see as next to the gods.
All frittered away.
Your Excellency
The CEO
Community Leader
Political Leader
Student Leader
Union Leader
Youth Leader
Women Leader
Association or Society Head
- A period of indiscretion
- Inability to restrain from an old habit
- Being inexctricably tied to an old lust
- Arrogance and a sense of entitlement
- Not waiting to critically appraise a situation before taking a decision
And you are wont to, like Ako’gba, scatter all the two hundred heaps you have made.
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| Femi Ladapo (Femolad) writes from Ibadan Nigeria |
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