Onwuadinma: A Shortstory (PT 1)

Close to the main road leading to the village is a church. Not that anything about the structure is similar to what we know as church buildings. For the visible part, it is just a structure made of bamboo sticks roofed with corrugated iron sheets. The inside of the church does not look similar to the popular image of the inside of a church building—no glass lecterns, executive chairs for the Men of God, the floor was not tiled nor was it German-floored, no extended stages with rugs and high power speakers. Seen is only a wooden lectern and the pews are made of plastic seats, where the members of the congregation of a relatively higher class such as the pastor's family stay and the wooden benches, with the feet of some of the benches sinking into the soil, making them sloppy. The wooden benches there are actually for every other member of the congregation. Different colours of dirty, sagging ribbons which are remnants of the Easter decoration could be seen running from the pulpit to the back of the church. 

Outside is the pastor’s car packed under the gmelina tree few meters outside the church building, or the structure that serves as the church. The pastor himself comes from Nsukka, a quasi-urban area where the main branch of the church is located. Pastor Peter is one of those men of God who always sound idealistic. He knows how to tell the congregation what they want to hear. Not that personally he would not want to tell his congregation that Christianity is as much about endurance and long-suffering as it is about earthly prosperity or tell them how Job really suffered for his trust in God, but not after the mandate they got from the General Overseer after a Regional Pastors’ meeting. The meeting was actually going well until the Pastor in-charge of the GRA branch noted that some of the members of his congregation had left to other churches where earthly prosperity was emphasised. Because of this, the GO advised that preaching should be based on the prosperity that is the heritage of Christians, and, to prosper, they must give generously to the church. And this has yielded results in his branch! After all,  some people in his congregation who had seen the tithe as a heavenly lottery or bet now regularly pay their tithes, some of whom do not even have enough money to send their children to school.

It was a Sunday and as characteristic of Sunday mornings the members of the congregation are already seated after exchanging pleasantries like they had not seen each other for months; but quite uncharacteristic of Sunday mornings in the church, where people especially children are usually cheerful and beside themselves with excitement for the thought of, as the pastor usually puts it, their divine encounter with God, their source of prosperity, they wore a gloomy countenance. Children seem to have suddenly recognised the need to be quiet in the ‘house of God’, and the parents themselves seem not to recognise that someone was sitting next to them nor recognise who that person is. Everybody looked like they were forced to be somewhere. Even the weather seems to have been caught in this game of gloom as the cloud wore a sad face, as if ready to open its belly soon. The church members literally dragged their feet to church. Today, they are not interested in the divine encounter, rather they came to seek solace and comfort from Him that knoweth all things and the repose of the souls of their loved ones. Why wouldn't they look sad and gloomy after the event of a few days ago?

After the opening rites the pastor finally mounts the pulpit.
'Today's reading will be taken from the book of Luke,' the pastor began, 'Luke chapter 6 from verse one.'  He beckons on his wife to read, who stands and reads the whole chapter, with intermittent interruptions from the pastor who interpreted the word to the gaping congregation.
'Brothers and sisters praise The Lord!' the pastor began after his wife read the last verse of the chapter. 'As we have seen, our God detests violence...'

Onwuadinma, a man in his late fifties, has been sitting quietly at the right side of the church, close to the door. All the while, his hand held his head which had suddenly become too heavy for his neck to carry alone. His eyes were sunken and bloodshot. From time to time he looked around the faces in the church like one looking for someone in a crowd.  He looked around with a pair of eyes that seemed to not just be searching the physical bodies but also the souls. His eyes pierced through the body of people as if they were trying to find out what the person was thinking. After such routine checks, he would sigh and quietly place his head on his palm. Then his mind would travel far beyond his immediate environment. Looking at the tree outside he remembered how there used to be a playground when he was a young boy. It was there he was stung by a scorpion while putting his fingers in a hole. He had run home that day screaming ‘Mma! Mma!’ like a mad person. He thought about those days with some nostalgia, when things were actually good, not now...! 

A woman adjusting her hair tie brought him back to consciousness. Looking at the woman he remembered his days as a proud husband, when his wife, Nnedi, was still alive. How he always bought her the newest designs because he had the money. His mind quickly moved to his business that flourished in the North before tragedy struck three years ago. 

His travelling mind was usually cut short by what happened in the church. This time it was when the pastor said '...our God detests violence.' Actually, it was the word 'violence' that struck him. His life has become suddenly defined by that satanic word.
His face has been positioned to where the pastor was, but the truth is he had not been seeing him until he said 'our God detests violence.' Onwuadinma took a profound look at the pastor, his shining suit and shoes, and then to the pastor's wife and children who are all looking hale and hearty. 'What does he know about violence?' he muttered to himself. His face became contorted. He took his routine look at the faces in the church like one looking for someone in the crowd once more. He sighed. Truth is, Onwuadinma was actually looking for not just anyone but his children. 'Our God detests violence' was almost exactly the same thing he was told some time ago.
Yes. Those were the words the pastor in Maiduguri used when shops were burnt and people killed in an uprising by a group that decided to mete out violence on those they called the unbelievers. Indeed, Onwuadinma was one of those flourishing Igbo men who not only lost the lives of friends and relatives but also properties with the rise of insurgency and extremism in Maiduguri. That fateful day, he had gone to his shop on Constitution Road only to see that it had been torched. He was not really shocked because there are friends of his who have been victims already, but he never thought it would get to him. So even before the attack, Igbo businessmen had decided to under-stock their shops in case the situation went out of hand. In fact, he had thought it was one of those politically motivated actions by Alhajis that felt the Igbo businessmen were throwing them out of business and would at regular intervals ensure they recorded a loss. But today, he was staring at the ash that used to be his shop totally razed with those of his other tribesmen housed in the same building.

....to be contd.