They said…
May 27th, 2008‘They said a witch was caught this afternoon close to Garrison,’ my cousin Bukky informed me breathlessly.
Who are they? I wondered. It took me about ten seconds before it registered.
They — that quaint Nigerian way of using the pronoun such that it meant no one, anyone, some people or everyone without any specifics as to what was being said about what.
Apparently, three cats moving in a group had been trying to cross the road. One got hit by a speeding car and turned into a woman in her birthday suit. Evidently, getting her clothes or treating the gash on her face were secondary matters in the minds of onlookers.
‘People gathered and started beating her,’ Bukky was quite excited as she reported the incident. ‘Then two men put her on a bike and took her to the police station. After the police beat her some more, she “confessed” she had come from Abuja on a mission with two other witches to kill some people in Port Harcourt.”
Part of the mission had been completed because they had just one target left.
I think the response she expected wasn’t anything like the look of amusement on my face. I was thinking, ‘This is Nigeria. It’s never boring here,’ and wondering how long it’d been since I heard such a story. Two years and some.
I’ve reported it as they said, and duly done my part in spreading the rumor :-D.
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I’ll be in Port Harcourt till August, learning how to drive, getting used to the heat, and well, trying to fit in. Any PH bloggers interested in meeting up?
May 28th, 2008 at 2:19 am
Azuka.. you’re having fun oh… Nice..
LOL@ they said.. I can imagine how much you missed it.. Im glad you visited.. I am coming soon
May 28th, 2008 at 5:45 am
hehehe funnny…buh mayn azuks am in lagos o…sorry woulda really loved to meet a fellow blogger
May 28th, 2008 at 9:37 am
Enjoy your holiday!
May 28th, 2008 at 9:37 am
Enjoy your holiday
May 28th, 2008 at 5:21 pm
LOL. That’s definitely funny. ‘They’ can mean anything or anyone. It’s funny. So they still have such funny stories in Naija? LOL.
May 29th, 2008 at 7:46 am
I’ve never been to PH, how is it? I heard that story oh! I don’t even know what to say to that lol.
May 30th, 2008 at 3:38 am
Ahhh, the joys of ‘They’..
Sorry for not checking blog lately.. absolutely crazy down my end. God Bless.:-)
May 30th, 2008 at 7:17 am
It’s not funny at all. Just a couple of weeks ago 11 elderly men and women in Kisii district in Kenya were burned and their houses and possessions torched. Their families have been forced to go into hiding because they are afraid of being targeted next. And all this because ‘THEY’ found a notebook detailing minutes of a ‘witches meeting’ in a local primary school.
Can I just say that the notebook has never been found.
Now put yourself in my shoes. As I child I had an active imagination. A VERY ACTIVE IMAGINATION. I didn’t tell outright fibs but I could imagine the most outrageous scenarious which I loved to weave in and out, expand, diversify and scribble down. People used to like to read them. Now, how impossible would it have been to write a character for witch, underline it and under the word write the most-hated teacher’s name?
And how impossible could it be for said list to fall into the hands of another teacher with dangerously religious beliefs? You see where I am going with this.
While I don’t want to stop anyone guffawing over the ridiculous ‘THEY’, let’s spare a little thought to the sheer force and utter destruction ‘THEY’ have the ability to wreak.
Sorry Azuka for going on.