Dial - Season 2 - Episode 78

Episode 4 years ago

Dial - Season 2 - Episode 78

“But why, Dede, why?” I cried bitterly. “Why was it so necessary to make me go through all this torture, all this heartache? Making you look like a younger woman and coming into my life, making me love you, and then leaving me! He passed himself off as a Fetish Priest, for crissakes! I could have died in that village with the stupid name! He put a d--n humiliating curse on me! Look at me now, an old man in my twenties! Why? Why, Dede, for the love of God, why? I simply can’t fathom it out! Why did you people do this to me?”

“Because he wanted to change you into a responsible, God-fearing man, Yao!” Mansa cried earnestly. “When Akos died we were all so devastated, and my brother was in much pain, so inconsolable! And when he found out what you did to Akos, and had been doing to other girls, he decided to make a good man out of you, Yao! And so he came for you in the guise of a fetish priest.”
“Well, I understand if he was angry and hurt after Akos died!” I cried. “I understand if he wanted me to come here and weep on Akos’ grave to make her earn a better funeral and burial! Yes, I understand all that! But for a man of God, he had no right to make me suffer like this! Surely, there are other ways he could’ve used to achieve the same purpose!”

“No, there wasn’t,” came the calm voice of the Holy Man behind me, and I turned round in my seat.

He had come to stand behind the bench, and then he put his hand gently on my shoulder.
“There was a time, Yao, a very long time ago, in a hospital call Adom Clinic,” he said gently. “My mother had just given birth to my sister Mansa, and we had no money to pay for her hospital bill. My father was dead, and I was then a student at a theological seminary, and I had absolutely no money. The hospital administration refused to let my mother leave until her bill was settled. They therefore tossed her out and imprisoned her, sort of, in a narrow corridor. A young man who had delivered some chairs and beds to the hospital was waiting for his money when the incident happened.”

The Holy Man came round the bench and sat down beside me, and then he smiled as his eyes took on a reminiscent light.