Cherries

              Photo credit:EyeEm

I am worried about our children’s generation for a lot of reasons but particularly for the way that they are growing up. We cage them a lot indoors that they do not have an opportunity enjoy the outdoors.

The only outdoor activities they engage in are football (in their schools) and maybe basketball and in some occasions swimming. I'm happy when I see young children ride their bicycles these days because that is almost going out of fashion for fear of freak accidents. Only those who live in gated estates ride theor bicycles freely. In those days there were no gated estates. 

Our children may never get to play or even learn about “ikpo oga” or "tenten" as the Yorubas call it. They may never climb trees or roll wheels or tyres down the street. 

Some of our children have never walked to school or to church and many do not know what it means to stop by, find a long stick and hit on fruits (African almonds).

I remember stopping with friends to pluck cherries, the African type that I think are almost extinct now. They were so delicious and juicy and many young children could hardly resist plucking them from wherever we saw them even in the bushes.

Photo credit:dhgate.com

On a certain day Adaobi and I went on cherry picking in Enugu campus then, these cherries were often in open compounds but grew braches onto the roadsides. So on that day while we stood on the road in front of a house and plucked some very red cherries, we started to hear the voice of a woman who had an accent admonishing us go away. 

We were young and cherry hungry so we paid no mind; we just kept at it and would hide at intervals when we heard her voice. It wasn’t like we had a basket or anything we only plucked as much as our little hands could carry.

At some point when it was obvious that we wouldn’t leave, the middle aged Caucasian woman who was married to an Igbo man and whose children were in the same school as Adaobi and I stepped out of her house. She ordered to leave her cherries and get away from her place. 

We remained in our hiding place behind the flower hedge on the other side, she couldn’t see us but we could see her and she knew that we were still there.

When she couldn’t take it anymore, she lost her temper and screamed at us, “you crazy kids” and threatened to report us to the school’s authority. 

At that point I got scared and made up my mind that she would never see my face. I just had to wait for her to go back inside so I could run away. 

Those were my thoughts but not the same for my friend Adaobi, she got very upset in our hiding place and as she made to stand up I held her hand but she hit my own hand off and stood up, I stared at her in shock.

Adaobi should know better! The foreigners who were married to the Igbo men in Enugu had an association called the Niger wives which Adaobi’s mother who is from Poland belonged to. All the "half-castes" like we called them then in Enugu knew themselves and it meant trouble for us because Adaobi had revealed her identity and if the woman ever came to report in school we would both be in trouble.

From my hiding place I watched her tell her mother's friend that she was not a crazy child and that she had the right to pluck those cherries. Hahaha! Adaobi had guts in those days.

After our little adventure, you would think that we would go back to school; we still had about thirty minutes before classes started, we got to school quite early on that day and so we went on a second cherry picking adventure. 

When we saw our classmate coming out of the home where the cherry was we realised it was a teacher’s house, our classmate’s mother was a teacher in our school. 

We quickly left with the little we picked and It was almost time for the morning assembly anyway.  

After the morning assembly our friend Ebere approached us and said that her mother used those cherries for cherry juice and pleaded with us not to pick them again. 

Photo credit: depositphotos

We looked at her like she was joking and it was Adaobi who spoke first, “cherry juice?” which was followed by a long hiss. We just walked away but never went on a cherry picking adventure after that day, we only picked the ones we had legal access to.lol.