Under the stairs

Ajibuusu

               Photo credit: The Leader News Online

Festive periods were always quite exciting in Enugu; celebrations like the Independence day, Easter Sunday, Easter Monday, Christmas day and the days that follow it New year's day inclusive.

During such days, the boys would go to the streets with their masquerades holding canes, scaring and chasing the girls. They would also stop cars and will not leave till the occupants of the car pacified them, with money of course. The ajibuusu was the most popular then. 

The girls would tie wrappers barely covering their flat chests and hit the streets as well. I was one of those girls. We would dance from street to street and in people's compounds who invited us. They would give us money in return for entertaining them.

Typical street dancers
Photo credit:jujufilms.tv

Most people just invited us to dance just for the sake of it and not because we were professional dancers. It was a way of appreciating our efforts at entertaining them.

Life was so good then. We had no fears of people, everyone was friendly and knew each other. We would kneel and sing a special song to the masquerades when they blocked us the dancers. The song exonerated us because we praised the masquerade and called him or it (they wanted us to believe it was really a spirit.lol)"mmanwu eze" which means the "masquerade of the king" 

Sometimes we would meet another dance group and challenged them to a competition bringing out the best dancers from the two groups. The interesting thing there was the challenge song that we sang almost like a war song indicating our readiness for a dance challenge.

Another remarkable thing was the "okoko mmiri" which literally means to dance in the rain. Sometimes when it rained, little children were allowed to go outside in their underwears and danced in the rain. We would open our mouths to have a taste of the rain and in extreme weather we picked little hail stones and licked them. Our parents knew when to call for us to come inside for a hot bath.

There was no fear of sickness just because we danced in the rain. Life was good indeed!

Children were mischievous in those days as well so it wasn't all pure and happy. There were a lot of incidents where girls and boys were caught in odd places getting intimate. This infamous act usually happened in "okwulu step" (under the stairs).

It was always a big scandal and you wouldn't believe that the poor little ones were just kissing or showing each other what the privates of the opposite sex looked like. Such kids were tagged corrupt and spoilt for a long time.

Fighting was also something that happened a lot among the kids. Sometimes they wrestled just for the fun of it other times they fought because they had real scores to settle.

Big brother Ifeanyi once told me of how his mate Ejiofor always intimidated him. He threatened him at the slightest chance with a fight which terrified Ifeanyi a great deal.

On one occasion Ejiofor challenged him to a fight and he ran all the way home. He ran upstairs and pressed the bell hysterically. 

Father got to the door, opened it and asked what he was he was running from and he told father.

He was left dumbfounded by what father did next. Without saying a word he shut the door on Ifeanyi who was then left with just one option. 

He went back to the battleground and when Ejiofor came to him to continue taunting him Ifeanyi lifted him and threw him on the ground. The other children  were still chanting praises when he took to his heels a second time.

This time dad who had been watching from the balcony let him into the house. Ifeanyi never feared Ejiofor again as Ejiofor began to give him the respect that he had earned.

To be continued.....