My sister narrated how she had one day seen what she had not seen before; a young man supposedly in his early 30’s go mad, right before her very eyes!
She was going home from work in a yellow cab when a black Corolla car drove past the cab she was in at a speed that was questionable. At first she thought the driver was drunk. Afterall it was 7:33pm on a Friday and 411 wasn’t too far.
She kept observing and noticed that the driver pulled over by the side of the road, powered down the roaring engine of his car, came out and neatly shut the door.
“He did all this whilst rhythmically nodding his head as a weird smile sat stretched across his face. All of a sudden, without warning, he hopped right into the centre of our lane of the express road, bringing the cab I was in and many other vehicles to a screeching halt; then, he began to dance” she said.
It was strange indeed how swiftly one could pass from sanity into insanity. A thin line seems to border the two realms.
“While dancing he sent the keys to his car flying alongside his belt; down went his trousers and off came his shirt” she continued
“A man once sane had successfully undressed himself down to his boxers in a matter of 3minutes- still with that weird stupid smile on his face.
Other observers had at first thought he was just “catching cruise” ; a slang used to describe actions that exhibit the highest degrees of craze and the lowest depths of manners all in the name of fun. This man’s case crossed another boundary when he laid his fingers on the waistband of his underwear attempting to strip himself butt-cheek naked. He succeeded.”
My hands instinctively latched onto my mouth at this point in the narration as I reinforced the restraint on the laughter that had been building up.
“The market women beside me vibrated, shouting “jesuuu,e mu… e mu!
“E ma je ko lo o!”
That was when I lost it.
It was funny but still not funny
Serious yet comical.
How on earth this fine young man became like that I had no idea. There was only one conclusion “owo aye” (wealth gotten through rituals)
That was what they called it.
When a wealthy person suddenly becomes a pauper; It’s “owo aye”
never “afowofa” (self invoked)
I withdrew to a quiet place after the day’s activities to organize my thoughts and then began to wonder. “Assuming he had a wife and kids; how would they react to such news”
I couldn’t hold back the sadness and sympathy that filled me as I shook my head.
Teddy barked just then as if to say “snap out of your thoughts young lady; give me food!”
I did just that and continued musing over the rest of the conversation I had with her.
We highlighted a similar case; people who are addicted to smoking.
Most times after smoking all manner of weeds, these addicts enter a sort of trance that they cannot awake from unaided.
A trance that could lead to full time madness.
In such cases buckets of water would be rained on them, heavy slaps would follow and a repeated yelling of their names would have to be done just so they can be recalled to the land of the sane.
For both cases I had one question,
Just one question kept tugging my mind
“How could they not be scared of the aftermath.
“Why risk their sanity for some minutes of pleasure?”
I had no answer.
What do you think?