INNOCENT NEBA (And The Guilty Sorcerer)

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INNOCENT NEBA (And The Guilty Sorcerer)



Eric Kombey W.



19 years of age: Neba lived happily with his aunt Kering, until when one day trouble scattered the peace that had settled in the house for years. Since high school he had been under the tutelage of Kering, who opted to take care of him after the death of his parents in a ghastly motor accident.

Kering worked with an international corporate body as a Mail Clerk. She made a happy home with her husband, Mr. Tamcho. Mr. Tamcho was a prosperous business man who toured the globe as his business demanded. Like him, Kering too knew every single corner of the five continents. Both were shareholders of the mansion they themselves cohabitated with foreigners.

Neba lived with them as the only child. The housemaid, the driver, and Mr. Tamcho’s clerical workers came every morning, and worked for eight hours like Civil Servants. Each extra time of work was compensated with a supplementary pay. Money was not a problem! The fourth person I almost forgot who also lived in the two luxurious floors Kering and her husband occupied was Spark. Spark guarded the apartments from intruders and wanton visitors. He was still wild though aged in his 13 of the 15years lifespan he had. He ate more than all other dogs; 4kg of food and meat and half glass of whisky everyday.

As of the compound of the mansion, two yard-boys took regular care and control in terms of keeping it clean and the entry and exit of visitors. Two night watchmen guarded it at night, though they spent most of the time sleeping or chatting with young girls. But at the end of the month, they still received their monthly packages. Who cared! If not of those foreigners who came back late, from nightclubs, drunk, and who needed them to open the gate, their nights should have been full with complete dreams.

Virtually, Neba hadn’t much work to do. At 6:30a.m every working day, he either washed or dusted his aunt’s car, and then at 7a.m., she escorted him to school before going for work. Some days, his aunt picked him up from school to the house. But this was rare because she often had different schedules after she closed from work.

Friday was the day: After long tiring hours of classroom lectures, Neba came back from school exhausted. His stomach bulging downward from a heavy meal, he stretched out himself on the floor like a snake and watched a television programme. Coming later, his aunt sat on a sofa by and said;

“Please tell me Neba, did you take your uncle’s phone on the table?”

He smiled. Neba loved smiling. Nothing seemed to embarrass him. He didn’t take the phone so he didn’t worry. It was purported he had stolen (or taken) the phone and taken it to school. In school, he had received countless calls asking him of the whereabouts of the same phone. But stealing was neither his habit nor hobby. He looked up at her and replied;

“No aunty, I didn’t take the phone. I know nothing about the phone you are talking about.”

“I know you don’t have the habit of taking what doesn’t belong to you. But at times, we may fall into temptation and then do otherwise—please tell me Neba, I am your aunt, do you know where uncle Tamcho’s phone is?”

Neba twirled on the multi-coloured stripped wool carpet and sitting on his buttocks said; “Aunty I don’t even know the phone you are talking about.”

“You don’t know! You say you don’t know. But let me tell you that Uncle Tamcho has told his brother to do everything to know who took his phone from the table. And you know he might just result to consulting a sorcerer and we don’t know what the sorcerer would do to know who took the phone. We have to be sure that you are innocent.”

“Aunty I am innocent. I don’t know anything about the phone.”

“So you are sure if they go anywhere you’ll be found innocent.”

“I am very sure aunty. They can go anywhere.”

The story behind the missing phone: Mr. Tamcho had returned from the country the previous day with a new brand multimedia mobile phone which he believed would serve him enormously. Before sleeping, he had been manipulating the phone until 2a.m. when he left it on the table, together with his laptop and went to bed.

Neba didn’t have the opportunity to see the phone. Though he slept after his uncle, he spent time in his room wearing, re-wearing and trying if the new pair of shoe and suit his uncle brought for him from Italy actually sized him. Excitedly, he sat on his reading desk to compose a poem. And when he finished, he read two chapters of his world history notes before he finally fell asleep.

As usual, he got up early in the morning and dusted his aunt’s car, bathed and at 7a.m., she escorted him to school. But before midday he had started receiving pestering calls about the whereabouts of his uncle’s phone. Funny enough, Neba said he had not even seen the said phone which Mr. Tamcho believed lay on the table until 7a.m. when he left to school.

Obviously Kering couldn’t hide her husband’s phone. She had all the money it took to buy several of such. And Mr. Tamcho too was so responsible to play ugly games. He could play only the game of disillusionment whose victims would pay so dearly. Those victims who made him look at a mobile phone as a sophisticated machine with a magic-tech; who made him to think that a mobile phone was a robot that could auto-command itself and disappear overnight between 2a.m. and 7a.m. But he was sure of one thing. The housemaid he’d known for fifteen years, and who only came at 8a.m. would not be one of the victims. Neba was the only child in the house. He stood as the prime suspect even though he swore he didn’t take the phone.

It pained Mr. Tamcho that his new brand phone in which he had spent all night storing his personal and business contacts, disappeared in his house in an incredible time. He conferred the matter to his brother.

The stakes were on Neba: Kering was scared. The stakes were on Neba’s life. She didn’t imagine anyone else than Neba though he refused being responsible categorically. Confused and perhaps over concerned, Kering rushed to her sister and her manly cousin (Cablet) and discussed the matter with them.

And on the morning of Saturday, they convoked Neba and after he again emphasized his innocence, they resorted to go with him to a sorcerer to be liberated with the suspense of what may be done and whether or not Neba was innocent.

After several miles of drive within the town, five of them, who included Cablet’s wife, got into the hideout of a sorcerer. The sorcerer was a short young man full of confidence.

Following a lot of incantations, the sorcerer revealed that the person who took the phone was Cablet’s wife. Everybody was shocked, including Neba who stood as the prime suspect. What Neba wanted to know was whether she got it from the house or it disappeared to meet her.

Some sorcerers can chew their tongues. When Cablet made the sorcerer to know that only Neba and Kering who were present there were members of the house of the lost phone, the sorcerer panicked. He was shocked to learn that for over two months Cablet’s wife had not visited Kering or her husband in their house. And of course she worked with the Pedagogic Ministry as a tutor, and obviously a big woman to bend down so low. Coming to his knowledge that Neba was the suspect, the sorcerer told everybody to calm down, spoke incomprehensibly, perhaps to his chief priest, and then said Neba stole the phone.

Guilty or innocent, poor little Neba fearlessly grasped the sorcerer round his neck and hit him hard on his own wall before falling down like a squirrel. The house trembled as if there was an earthquake. But Mr. Cablet was just man enough to hold back Neba. Neba shouted, he cried, he repeated the same words of innocence, but they still begged him to accept he took the phone and nothing else would be done to him.

The three women concluded so rapidly that Neba took (or stole) the phone. Calbet explained that what the sorcerer did was simply an elementary school trick he was familiar with in his school days. He believed the method the sorcerer used was subjected to doubts. And so while Neba went back to the house with tears, he conveyed the three women to enlighten them on the trick the sorcerer used and a better means to prove Neba’s innocence or guilt.

Food couldn’t go down his wounded oesophagus though his stomach boiled with hunger. He had eaten only a piece of bread in the morning, yet everything was unappetizing; even the screen images. He watched the television images but he heard only what came out from his mind. He lay on his bed, closed his eyes but he still saw as things happened around him. His night was long.

Not ordinary: A knock at his room door on Sunday morning wake him to complete consciousness. Kering got in and told him to get set for them to go to her sister’s house. She had the habit of going to church on Sundays but Neba was in her list of preference today. “God’s time is the best” they say, but today she said “Neba’s time is the first.” They hardly had time to eat before they left.

The visit was not sisterly when they arrived. Cablet and his wife were already there waiting. Without telling Neba where they drove too, the crossed the entire town into one small ghetto, and then swerved their way in into a sorcerer’s dwelling. Cablet presented the matter to the youngest sorcerer any of them had ever seen.

The young sorcerer told them the amount of money per person on whom the spell would be performed. The problem wasn’t money, but Neba. They wanted to assure his innocence before Mr. Tamcho’s brother went to ask one witch doctor to make the person who stole the phone mad, blind, deaf or something of the sort, from which they would deduce who stole the phone.

When they told the young man that they wanted to know only about Neba, he asked him to take off anything metallic he wore (Chain, wristwatch, ring, bracelet etc some of which Neba had on). And then he said;

“If you know you are innocent say it at once.”

Neba was tensed. People around who knew how reliable the sorcerer’s revelations were already gathered. His revelations had never been subjected to doubt. And whenever he performed and the persons were guilty, they always confessed after the fire had burnt them.

Angrily, Neba replied, “You better do what you are doing.”

Then he asked him to stand in-between two lighted candles, his right leg on a red buddle in front of him. His right hand which contained some concoctions was stretched out directly in front of him and closed. The principle was simple. If Neba was guilty, fire would crop up and burn him, starting with his right hand to his entire body. It also depended on how quick the victim confessed and how quick the sorcerer stopped the fire. But if the person brought to the temple of fire was innocent, nothing happened to him.

Then as Neba stood there, the young sorcerer got into a room by and asked him to call his names and say, “If I took the phone complained to be missing, let fire burn me”.

Kering and her sister trembled on their seats, their hearts pounded. Cablet and his wife held their hands as if it were their wedding day. But all were looking at the same direction; Neba’s direction and the direction from which the truth would come. The direction of the fire. Seeing that fire was what they desired most. But astonishingly, the fire had to burn but Neba their own son.

But Neba said exactly what he was asked to, and nothing happened to him. And in a second moment the sorcerer asked him to call his names again and say that if he knew anything about the phone, or if he was even an accomplice to it disappearance let fire burn him.

Neba even went an extra mile by saying all those things and adding that if he even saw the phone, let fire deal with him. But not even the slightest gleam of fire showed up.

And before the sorcerer himself came out, and old man who sat at one corner of the house unnoticed pre-proclaimed the result by saying, “de pikin innocent.” And indeed Neba was innocent when the man himself proclaimed.

Who then stole the phone?



(Watch out for part II)



Eric Kombey W.



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