Abundance

Every time I see the fruit trees, I marvel at what they did to us. It is not something I will be able to say in a few words so I will tell you the story as it once was, as it is now and I hope, as it would be long after we are gone.

As it was at that time, we had only a few rich people in our community. They rode big cars that blew dust in our faces when they sped past and we hated them. Not for the dust they powdered us with during the dry harmattans but the contrast they were in our community of very poor people. We hated them as much as we hated the sun that scorched our balding heads and the hunger that ravaged our bodies.

We were a very angry people and daily we cursed the hunger, cursed the sun and cursed the rich people and their trail of dust as they sped through our homes. Our entire lives was an episode of hate, mostly for the People on the hill (for that was what we called those few rich people) who lived in big houses beyond the hills. They wore big Agbadas that required fifteen yards of clothing to sew while we barely had enough clothe to cover our nakedness; we never saw their faces and they never saw ours and no matter how hard we tried, we never found a way to become one of them. With time, the young men in our community started to plot ways of taking from them. They singled out their houses and began to steal from them. Gangs of young men started to mount raids and terrorize the People on the hill and unfortunately, because we believed that their wealth was responsible for our ill luck, we did not see robbing them as evil. It was ‘just taking from the rich to give to the poor’. So every time one of them was robbed successfully, we held feasts down in the community and praised evil as if it was good.

With time, the rich men raised their fences and mounted guards and they began to shoot our young men in the head if ever they came a mile close to the Reserved Areas where they lived. Many ambitious young men died in those days and it was only a matter of time before their lonely guns started to turn on us. They began to rob us- forgetting that we were like them and chaos began to breed in worm-like duplicity among us, growing a new head everywhere we cut it. As such we conducted our daily affairs in fear and the rich few were not left out of our fears too. They stayed within their high fences- prisoners in their own homes. And when they came out, they came out in black cars and police escorts and sped like crazy, prisoners in Black Marias- pouring more dust on our ashen skin and taking it back to where we all started.

Then began to grow the fruit trees

At first, they grew in little buds propagated by the parish priest of the local church where the poor worshiped. It was first a little orange tree with strongly scented green leaves that began to take on the scent of holiness; because every time one thought of church or God or anything in that realm, the scent of oranges filled your subconscious mind and you could smell it anywhere you were. That orange tree was the first of the fruit trees that blossomed and that strong scent was the beginning of it all. With time more trees were planted; mangoes, papayas, almonds and guava trees, pineapple heads and tomatoes and the air around the parish church began to feel like heaven. In rain it smelled like orange groves and tomato fields and in hamarttan it took on the scent of mangoes and almonds. Soon enough, the church barn filled out and became the watering hole for the community for we all ate there when the various fruits were in season and indeed it drew us to Christ and the mock cross at the entrance to its wooden gates.

Children would play among the boughs and adults would discuss under the shades, love birds would pick the leaves as they talked of things of love while birds nested at its top picked worms from its branches to feed their young. With time, we could not all fit in into the church yard so everyone started to plant little fruit trees of various kinds as would fit in into their compounds taking buds and twigs from the parish church ‘from whence shone the light’ as the parish priest would say. And whenever the cars sped past in the harmattan, we did not feel the dust as badly as we used to because the fruit trees prevented the dispersion. Not long after we started to plant in our yards, our trees started to fruit and whenever it fruited, we had more than enough to eat. We would watch mangoes ripen and fall because we had taken our fill and needed no more. Birds would eat after we did and lizards would eat after the birds did and ants would eat after the lizards did, and worms would finish it off. There was food enough for all.

Soon enough, we totally forgot about the grievances we held against the People on the hill, their high fences, parading guards and their speeding cars. We totally forgot about the scorching sun and the dust as it had become a thing of the past. Before long, the People on the hill left the enclosures of their high fences to buy our fruits and we began to have some money in our pockets though little it was. Soon our young men began to scorn at thievery for it had become a thing of disgrace. Soon every inch of our community was covered in those fruit trees and a lot more crops than we began with. And then all of a sudden it did not matter so much that some were rich and some were poor for in all, our food became our wealth and we all had abundance of it.

Those fruit trees that had changed our community are still there for you to see today and if you pass by the parish church anytime, you’d still see the boughs spreading wider each year even though the soul of the parish priest that cultivated them had long departed. You would see people smiling as they walk and you will see the cars and the houses on the hill- a reminder of the old days, for the houses had not changed much neither had the people within them.

OIO
On abundance and how it changes a people.