Night arrives swiftly in equatorial West Africa.  One moment the sun is bright, and over the course of a half hour or less it sets in a spectacular array of colors of bright orange and yellow.  What follows is an intense and impenetrable darkness, rivaling in the opposite direction the brightness of the mid day sun. This is a stark contrast to the magnificent equatorial sun.

 In many ways the setting of the sun brings a sense of imminent yet uncomfortable relief.  There is the relief of shade and hopefully of somewhat lower and more bearable temperatures; accompanying this is a gnawing discomfiture of the mystery of the African night.  For it is in the night that the spirits play havoc with the dreams of man, in so far as the imagination allows them free reign. 

Every sound undergoes a magical amplification to torture the listener and awaken primordial fears. For in the sphere of the imagination the scratching sounds of rats in the backyard sound like the claws of a witch dancing on the tin roof.

 A dropped clay pot shattering on the cement floor next door makes everyone in the neighboring compound jump.

When a neighbor in need bangs on his friends door in the night to solicit perhaps aid, the immediate reaction in the rooms is one of sheer terror.  Could this be their fate, they think, to die a death of ignominy at the hands of the desperate?  The occupants of the room had little experience with the meaning of life.  Their very existence was a complicated drama of trying to elude death.  It cannot be denied that it was life that they desired and ardently sought after, yet it was only too often that they found the opposite.

“Mama Obiora, kedu? I have not seen you in a long time.”  “ What makes you so busy and so occupied that you never come to see us anymore?”

 Eya! Don’t say that! Was it not I who visited you last in your own stall at the market?”

 “Business na business; I never mix socials with business.  Was it not cloth you came to buy?”

“Eee, it was cloth.  I am always buying cloth, cloth for this and cloth for that.  There is no end to the cloths I must buy.”

“When children are growing they need new clothes and sandals.  For that I thank God almighty because it is the very basis of my business.”

“I do not mind the buying so much, it is to find the money to buy it.  We are constantly stretching our “budget” as my husband calls it.  To me it really means we have no money each time he says it.”

“My sister, why do you think the first thing I did was to reopen my stall after Ogbete reopened? Every time you are asking someone for money, they never have any for anything beside their own needs. ‘ Chief the water don finish’. ‘ Chief the food has finished’. Yet every time it comes as a surprise, I don tire.”

“ I am sure if you ask chief he will say that he is tired too.”

“ yes, he will say that he is tired of spending, that the money never stretches long enough.  It sounds like an elastic band that if you pull it hard enough it can go far! Then I said, ‘Chief, even the elastic in my pant if you stretch am long enough he go break.’ But I don’t think he got the gist of that .  So now, I am my own Madam with money from my shop, and I buy food when I want.So now he gives me no money at all; and I feed the house, clothe the children.