A Rare Touch of Nature

A very hearty good week to everybody. I don’t know how many times you have to hear my excuses for not putting up posts when I should but things just happen sometimes to upset the cart. Don’t worry, it’s not just you; Nkem’s been on my neck about my posts as well and I say I can’t get a good story sitting in my couch; I have to go out and get it. She’s so anal about me getting things done on time. She should give me some peace! Yeah right. Darn it! This means I have to tell a good enough story if I don’t want you guys eating me raw. Hm, let me see… Okay, here goes… Once upon a time two weeks past, when lizards had multiplied from ones and twos to hordes scurrying about scratching all over tin roofs and bobbying their heads over termite infested faggots for fuel, there was a young(ish) man who dared venture from his concrete hut in his concrete village screaming with mechanised wagons and bicycles to the much more serene and chirpy villages in the very borders of his living memory.

A tad melodramatic I know, so I’ll come down to earth in plain English. We went to shoot the bulk of a movie in the rural parts of Ogun state. It was supposed to be a sort of fantasy horror movie and we were looking for a very lonely derelict hut in the middle of nowhere. The director, Moses Iwang, whom we fondly call Sneeze – don’t ask me why – who, gladly, takes his work seriously, had insisted on a really spooky location to generate the eerie feel and to make the ‘crappy’ actors’ (us) work easier. The bloody nerve of him! This ‘aesthetic’ feel drove us from the comfort of our homes in Lagos to this remote village four hours away in our own cars! The upstart even had the nerve to leave his own car behind – it was too posh to go – and ride in Uche Jombo’s. The good thing is she made him drive for the entire duration of the shoot. Funny how much liberties people take when they know they are loved – and it does irk me to admit that he is good people.

We got there at about four in the evening, disembarked and looked around us. It was a peaceful village. There were no electric poles in sight and it was refreshing to see chickens pecking for food all over the place. I watched in amusement as a hen with her brood of chicks ‘snarled’ at one of the local dogs that ventured too near one of her errant children. It tucked its tail and slunk away and I couldn’t help wondering what the dog was thinking at the time. “Time was when you wouldn’t dare try that with me if not for these meddlesome humans who force this anomaly upon us.” Not too far away a large she-goat butted a much younger he-goat (probably her grandson) that had been amorously sniffing at her rear end. Half naked children played with wild abandon with one another while some older ones of ages nine to twelve herded docile looking cows to juicier pastures on the outskirts of the village. There weren’t many adults to be seen except for the nursing mothers and the aged men and women. It was quite easy to spot the aged women on account of the fact that they walked about topless, stretched triangular folds of skin flapping over their ribcages as they walked with still very sturdy legs. We stared bemused at them wondering why it took them so long to get their kits off. I guess they followed the maxim of exclusivity being the key to increasing demand. Perhaps they chose to bare their spent reserves as a reminder to the much younger ones of what fate had in store for them and for the discerning ones among them to make hay while the sun still shone.

After taking in our fill of the environment and making jokes (the silly Sneeze asked me to take a chance with one of the rare topless beauties and maybe I’d get lucky – idiot!), Chioma Akpotha even twitted about us time travelling back to 1935, we went off into the spooky grove to commence work. Sadly I have run out of the space allotted to me in this post so maybe I’ll talk about the rest next week so until then, do have a great week ahead guys! A bientot!