In those dear days of the ceramic century when cultism was at the desert and indiscipline was also at the Indian ocean, sociocultural events were celebrated cheerfully in our rural communities without tension and nuisances. At then, everybody was somebody and nobody was nobody in social significance as merit of man was not measured by pecuniary possessions.

In those days, elders were elders with sense of sincerity who could see white and would call it white and when they saw black, they would call it black without water in their mouths hence respect boldly belonged to them and royalty was equal to divinity. So society was surely simple, free and safe for everyone and people were living in peace and comfort of mind without fricative feelings.

Frankly speaking, in those dear days, a community would not have more than one thief whose identity was nakedly known by generality of the people. The loss of any property would be traced directly to him and the item would be recovered without much stresses if not yet used by the thief. Yes, at then, Europe was not in Africa but Europe was in Europe so life in the villages was locally legal to humanity in total trend. 

But after many years from those primitive periods, London came to our villages who was followed by Washington and their arrival brought roughness and robbery to our once peaceful places of residence. Since then, we were sleeping with fullness of fear as thieves, cultists and even ritualists as well as head hunters became abundant in our vegetable villages. 

In my father's days when I was in crawling capacity, a missing item was easy to find because everyone knew where to go when an item was nowhere to be found in one's home. Yes at then, Otokolo was the only thief in our villages hence a victim of missing item would approach him with words of endearment in addition to a raw ransom and within the next five minutes, your missing jewels would be returned from its destination in the desert and you would go home in smiling cheerfulness and Otokolo himself would be smiling home with his tokens. He did not steal with heart of Herod but perhaps it was his habit or as a result of distorted destiny so stealing was just like a function of funs in that sorry sense.

Nowadays there are twenty thousand thieves in our vegetable villages so a missing merchandise is not easy to find. Even if someone is highly suspected as a recipient of my missing merchandise, I have no hope of recovering my own property because some nonsense norms of modernity are in his or her favour since the Book of Biasness said that " a Thief is not a Thief until he or she becomes a Thief ". By such a bias bargain in practice, it is not easy to catch criminals so thieves are now in abundance in our sinful society.

However when King Akaraka lost his box of blessings, he could not take it kindly with anyone hence ordered his grenade guards to block the motorable points of exit in the kingdom. He sent for a popular previous priest whose works were worthy for reminiscences in the out-going system of our society. So when the Boro-owei arrived with his bag of barbarism, many were happy that thieves in our mist must be made known to all in the kingdom.

On the arrival of the priest, all sons and daughters of Tara-ama kingdom were commanded to gather at the community compound. Then the priest appealed to the people that as he had not started his exercise, the thieves should kindly surrender themselves to the King as such persons would be granted priestly pardon but none was ready for such a simple situation.

At expiration of his moment of mercy, the priest started his means of mesmerism. He brought out three terrible broom sticks from his antiquated Babylon bag and placed a drum of deity at the centre of the field. He also poured a purely peppery powdery content into a basin full of water and as he played his drum of deity, the content of water in the basin began boiling broadly without any flaming fire attached to the basin. 

As he continued playing his drum of deity, three young youths who were recent arrivals from the city and were princes to daughters of desire in our vicinity, started screaming and danced out to the centre of the field with shouts of pepper ooo, pepper ooo, pepper ooo! So without waiting for Washington ways, the thieves in our midst were identified and primitively punished according to the tenets of our tradition.

Okoi Amadiowei Jacob (A Prince of Pen)

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