The Village Witch Doctor and Other Stories (7 page)

Hundreds of years ago, there lived in a famous village, a middle-aged man. He was a very rich husbandman – a landowner and farmer – who had a lot of farms, many children, many pawned men, and estates of several kinds. His eldest son, whose name was Tolu, used to lead the pawned men to his farms every day.

One night, in the dry season of the year, as the
husbandman
sat on his easy chair and his friends sat with him on the mats, one odd-looking man with horrible stature walked through the dark into his house.

‘Good evening,’ the odd-looking man said, prostrating himself in front of the husbandman and his friends, and saluting them.

The husbandman raised his head up, turned his eyes to the odd-looking man and said, ‘Yes, good evening, my man. But what kind of help do you want from me?’

‘My purpose in coming to you is to pawn myself to you for five
naira.
And I shall work for you till when I shall be able to refund the five
naira
to you.’ The odd-looking man spoke sluggishly as he squatted in front of the
husbandman
and his friends.

‘Are you a hard-working man, though you look odd?’ The husbandman, having cleared his throat, inquired doubtfully, with the voice of business, as he looked at the strange man from head to foot.

The odd-looking man recommended himself with a proverb: ‘I promise that you will be impressed when I start
to work on your farms; I say so even though salt does not boast that it sweetens the soup.’

The husbandman doubted the odd-looking man’s
integrity
, so he said, ‘Well, I agree to lend you the money, but who will take your six
kobo
?’
–
by which he meant, who would stand as surety for him?

‘I have nobody here who can take my six
kobo,
but as I have said, you will be impressed as soon as you see my work,’ the odd-looking man said, strengthening his promise.

‘All right, you have no surety, but you have promised to impress me by working hard. Take the five
naira.’
The husbandman took out five
naira
from his pocket and gave it to the odd-looking man.

‘I thank you very much.’ The odd-looking man stretched out his right hand and took the money from the husbandman, kneeling down with respect. ‘And now,’ he said, ‘I believe that you are an open-handed rich farmer, just as many people have told me.’

As the odd-looking man moved his feet to walk from the sitting room to the outside, the husbandman remembered to ask him his name and his place of abode. ‘But Mr Man, wait. Please, what is your name and where do you live?’

‘My name? My name is Sunkun and my nickname is the Taskmaster and I live lonely in a calm bush which is near the path leading to your farms. Though the calm bush is hidden from the eyes of human beings, when your children and your pawns are going to farm tomorrow morning please tell them to stop at the junction which is near the Iroko tree, and then call my name loudly three times. And that is all the information I can give you.’ As soon as the husbandman had nodded, Sunkun walked to the outside and went alone in the dark.

As Sunkun, the Taskmaster or odd-looking man, went direct to the edge of the village, the husbandman still followed him with eyes. He saw that his new pawn,
Sunkun, all of a sudden had one big arm, one long and thick foot, one large ear, and one large eye, instead of the two of each with which he came to the husbandman’s house.

Having seen these sudden changes on Sunkun the Taskmaster, the husbandman was so shocked with fear that without knowing he was doing so, he stood up and he sat down unexpectedly; then he screamed in great fear.

While he was in this frenzied state, all his astonished friends rushed over and asked him ‘What are you screaming for?’

‘Nothing serious: I have just remembered my hat which I have forgotten at the farm,’ he said, lying to his friends.

The following morning, when his sons and pawns got ready to go to farm, he told them that when they reached the junction which was near the Iroko tree, they should call out loudly three times the name, ‘Sunkun the Taskmaster!’

With this instruction, his sons and pawns left the village. And when they got to the junction, they called loudly three times, ‘Sunkun the Taskmaster! Sunkun the Taskmaster! Sunkun the Taskmaster!’

Sunkun answered loudly immediately with a song, singing:

They answered:

Sunkun replied:

When Sunkun the Taskmaster had told the children and pawns of the husbandman that he would go to the farm in the night and till his portion of the ground, they went to the farm and tilled as much as they could of the ground which they were preparing for new crops. Then they returned to the village in the evening.

When they were going to the farm again the following day, they stopped at the same junction. They called
Sunkun
loudly, and he answered loudly with song as before. They told him that the day’s work was to clear the forest. After that they went direct to the farm.

When they got to the farm, they were overwhelmed with surprise when they saw that the farm which belonged to the husbandman, and those which did not belong to him, had been tilled altogether by Sunkun before day-break.

‘Was it Sunkun alone who cleared all these farms at night? No! This is not one person’s work!’ the eldest son, Tolu, uttered in surprise.

‘Surely, Sunkun is not an ordinary person at all!’ one of the pawns shouted.

‘I believe Sunkun is one of the immortal spirits of the jungle,’ another of the pawns remarked, and he was right.

When the men came to the farm again, they saw again that Sunkun had cleared the forest up to ten kilometres square. They were so afraid that they could not wait and work on the farm that morning. They all ran back to the village. They told the husbandman that Sunkun had cleared all the forests before day-break. To see if the information which his children and pawns gave to him was true or not, without hesitation, the husbandman ran to his farm.

‘What?’ the husbandman was shocked with surprise when he saw that Sunkun had cleared the whole forest of that area. ‘It is quite a long time that I have been pawning, but Sunkun is the first of his kind!’ he remarked loudly with surprise, and then he ran back to the village with throbbing heart.

He hardly sat down when he called all his sons and pawns. As all of them knelt down before him, he told them, ‘When you go to the farm tomorrow morning, tell Sunkun that his work for that day is to make heaps on the cleared ground.’

And according to the instruction given to them, when they were going to the farm in the following morning, they stopped at the usual junction. They told Sunkun that his work for that day was to make heaps. Then they went straight to the farm.

When they got to the farm and saw that Sunkun had left
nothing on it for them to do, they returned to the village. They told their rich husbandman that Sunkun had left nothing for them to do.

Then, from that day, the husbandman started to think about how he could see Sunkun personally when he was working. For he wondered how Sunkun alone could do the work which not even four thousand men could do even in six months’ time.

Again, when the sons and pawns went to the farm the following day, they saw that Sunkun had made heaps on the whole land which he had cleared a few nights ago. When they brought this information to the husbandman, it made his desire stronger to find how he could see Sunkun personally when he was working.

One day, a thought came to his mind to tell Sunkun that his work for the night was to come to the village to cut hair for his sons, his pawns and himself. The husbandman thought that he would be able to see Sunkun work when he came to cut his hair for him.

The husbandman did not know that just as he was thinking in mind how to see Sunkun when working, so too it was for his eldest son, Tolu. He too wanted to see how Sunkun was doing the work in one night which four thousand men could not do in six months’ time.

When the sons and pawns of the husbandman were going to the farm in the following morning, they stopped at the usual junction which was near Sunkun’s place of abode in the calm bush. They delivered the message of the husbandman to him that his work for the night was to cut hair for the sons and pawns, and for the husbandman himself.

Sunkun the Taskmaster never worked in the daytime, but only at night. Therefore, he and his followers came to the village only after Sunkun had mesmerized (or put to sleep) all the people and their domestic animals as well. He and his followers cut all the hair off the heads of all the
people, including women, and off domestic animals of the village as well, within a few minutes. And then they returned to the places of their abode before daybreak.

So it was that Sunkun and his followers cut the hair for all the people and domestic animals of the village instead of only cutting the hair of his master the husbandman, his sons, and his pawns. And none of the people or their domestic animals woke when Sunkun and his followers did the hair-cutting.

When the people woke in the morning and saw that the hair on their heads had been cut, they were so worried that they began to shout angrily about in the village. But the husbandman kept quiet. He did not tell the people that it was his pawn, Sunkun, who had cut their hair. He was afraid of being mobbed by the people.

Now, when the husbandman had failed to see how Sunkun could work as he did, he stopped worrying about Sunkun’s wonderful work.

Thus, Sunkun continued to work miraculously on the farm until the yams and maize were ripe. One morning, because the husbandman was much impressed with the work which Sunkun was doing on his farm, he told his eldest son, Tolu, to tell Sunkun that when he had finished his work that night, he should take a yam and a cob of maize from the farm to eat them in his house.

Tolu delivered his father’s message at the usual junction, but Tolu and the pawns were extremely shocked when they got to the farm the following morning and found that Sunkun had taken all the yams and maize of the farm away instead of one yam and one cob of maize. He took also away all the yams and maize which were on those farms which were near the husbandman’s farm.

Having seen that Sunkun had left nothing on the farm, they could not stay and work that morning. Instead, they ran back to the village. And when they told the
husbandman
that Sunkun had taken all the yams and maize
away, he was so annoyed that he told Tolu to go and warn him not to work on his farm as from that day.

Now, as Tolu had also determined to see how Sunkun was working like four thousand persons, he advised his father the husbandman to allow Sunkun to make heaps for other kinds of crops before they stopped his work on the farm. Unfortunately, his father agreed.

But Tolu, the other sons, the pawns and the
husbandman
himself were not aware that Sunkun, the Taskmaster or odd-looking man, was the leader of the immortal spirits of the forest. All his followers were joining him to work on the farms. And that was why the work which they supposed he did alone was much more than that of four thousand persons. And that was the reason that when each of his followers and himself took one yam and one cob of maize, all the yams and cobs of maize were finished on the farm.

So the rich husbandman, his sons and his pawns did not yet understand that the more many people worked, the more they ate plenty of food.

Tolu still insisted on seeing how Sunkun was doing the work of four thousand men or even more. When he and the others got to the usual junction the following morning, they stopped there, and he told Sunkun that his work for that night was to make heaps on the cleared land. After, they went to the farm and, having worked hard, they returned to the village in the evening.

As soon as Tolu and his father’s other sons and his pawns had returned from the farm, he told his father that he would go back to the farm in the night.

‘What are you going to do on the farm in the night?’ his father asked with wonder.

‘I am going there just to watch how Sunkun does the work of so many men,’ Tolu explained, briefly.

His father warned him: ‘Don’t try to watch Sunkun at work. You know, he is not an ordinary man.’

Then Tolu left his father for another part of the house, as he pretended to be an obedient son. But when it was about eight o’clock at night, Tolu, without telling anybody in the house, went back to the farm in the dark. He entered inside a big, tall ant-hill, which was at the third corner of the farm.

He hid inside the ant-hill and then waited for Sunkun to come and do his wonderful work that night. Thus Tolu disobeyed his father in order to see how Sunkun, his father’s pawn, worked.

When Tolu had waited quietly in the ant-hill for about two hours, Sunkun emerged suddenly on the cleared land. Now Tolu, having readjusted himself, peeped out from the ant-hill with the hope to satisfy his ambition that night.