Dial - Season 1 - Episode 129

4 years ago

Dial - Season 1 - Episode 129

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At first, as I walked through the village trying to get my bearings, I was too consumed with rage against that royal princess to pay particular attention to my surroundings. However, gradually, my fury simmered down, and then I began to notice the decay and squalor around me.

This was indeed an impoverished village. Most of the clay buildings were crumbling and severely dilapidated. The children looked malnourished, to say the least. The women were worn-out, and the men mostly despondent. They stared at me as I walked, most of them not holding my gaze for long.
These were the same people who had pelted me with rotten fruits and vegetables, and poured stinking water on me, but now they stared at me with various looks of uncertainty.
I came upon a group of boys playing football, and asked one to direct me to the riverside.
He called his friends, and then they began to take me through the narrow paths, their faces excited. Sometimes the path passed right through a household, or through the kitchen of somebody. It was a way of life I had never seen in my life.

Eventually, we came to the grassy plains and they showed me the path that led to the riverside.

I brought out my wallet, unzipped an inner compartment, pulled out some ten-cedi notes, and counted them. They were ten, and I gave each of them ten cedis. Watching the incredulity on their faces, their stunned disbelief and great pleasure, I felt a warm glow spreading through me.

Here was a place where the smallest coin was a fortune, where the least show of generosity invoked the most remarkable and powerful response of gratitude. I wondered, for the very first time in my life, the amount of money I had wasted in my life chasing the space between the thighs of women, simply to put them on a self-glorifying list.

I sighed sadly and turned away from them.
But they did an amazing thing: they came at me, each of them, and they took my right hand and bowed low, murmuring words in their language. All of them, without exception, and once again I was touched deep down in me.

I smiled sadly at them and then I walked on to the side of the river. There were canoes on the banks of the river, but they were mostly unmanned. No surprise there, though. Most of the men were probably around the palace, obviously a part of the mob that had almost lynched me.

As I stood helplessly on the bank of the river, wondering how I was going to get across to the witch, and I guess that was when a plan began to occur to me. I stood quietly looking at the huge river, which served as their source of water for everything, and slowly my eye for detail and maximization took over, but this time in a purely unselfish manner.

Eventually a man approached a canoe, and got in. He was further down the river, but he rowed toward me with his long pole, and when he was near enough he stopped and looked at me.

“Do you want to cross?”
I nodded gratefully, and he motioned me over. I waded into the river, and then clambered into the canoe. He rolled gently across the expanse of the serene river, and then I sat quietly as my mind raced, and I worked out the angles my mind was taking me.

When he got to the other side he rowed forward until the sand stopped further ingress of the canoe.

“Thank you,” I said as I jumped out of the canoe, extending folded ten-cedi notes to him, but he shook his head sadly, and for a moment his lips trembled.
“I beg of you, please, please, help me!” he said, and I noticed the tears in his eyes.