People of the City by Cyprian Ekwensi

Author:Cyprian Ekwensi
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: New York Review Books
Published: 2020-06-09T00:00:00+00:00

‘You going back?’ Nekam said.

‘The job is done, isn’t it?’

•

Daybreak found Sango and Nekam at the lorry station. Knowing how ‘fast’ the lorry service could be from the Eastern Greens, Sango made sure that the driver of Jikan Transport would stop in the village near the convent where Elina was. It would be a good opportunity to see her.

While the lorry was being loaded up with passengers, dried fish, yams and oil, Nekam talked of his ambitions to see the country progress as a whole till it took its place in the front rank of self-governing countries within the British Commonwealth. There was still a lot to be done, but this crisis was only the beginning of national unity.

‘Keep up the struggle, Sango. We workers at this end will never give up.’

Sango had listened to this kind of serious talk once before: that bright day when he had been at an identical motor station, and his father, an old man, now no more, had come to see him off. The hairy Nekam was less gentle, more full of fire.

The lorry horned. ‘That’s the signal to go aboard, Nekam. Thank you for your hospitality. You’ve made me see the whole business from the inside as a real reporter should. I’d like you to be a little patient. I’m sure the National Committee for Justice which the politicians have formed will do something. The bereaved will get full social compensation. And when the Commission of Inquiry arrives from Britain, I hope I shall be here again to listen to the evidence.’

Nekam stood back, while Sango walked towards the lorry and took a seat in the second class – a little partition shielded from the driver. He sat with his knees bunched up, counting the miles between him and the village where Elina was.

The lorry backed away and there stood Nekam under a tree, his arm raised. Sango waved back. It had taken a national disaster of the magnitude of shooting down twenty-one unarmed men to bring together leaders from north, east and west, to make the country realize as never before where its real destiny lay. What catastrophe, Sango wondered, would crystallize for him the direction of his own life? Soon – perhaps in another twelve months – he might be called upon to marry Elina; certainly his mother would insist on this to protect him from the gold-digging women of the city. But would he be ready?

A fat woman sitting on his right sighed. He turned and looked at her face, radiant and attractive. Before the lorry had moved three miles, she was fast asleep, using Sango’s back as a pillow.

When the lorry at last pulled up at the little village, Sango found that his second-class seat had been worth having after all. The other passengers in the third class were covered from head to foot in red dust.

•

The convent was beautifully situated: about a mile or two from the main motor-road, it overlooked an arm of the river. Sango walked across the village and beyond the market-place till he was well out in the woods.

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