Somewhere in the South, several decades ago.
Among all the seven villages that make up the clan, Igen was the most outstanding. It didn't have great farmers or fishermen like some of its neighbours nor great warriors like the village of Ukor had. What stood Igen out was its plantation. On the outskirts of Igen, about a kilometre before you get to the village from the Ukor side, the road dips down a little then opens up to a valley. It's here that the large banana and mango plantation that gave Igen its fame was located.
How the plantation came about is shrouded in mystery. Apart from a few oldies in the community, many did not know its origin. The few old men and some women who knew the story were tight-lipped about it. They would shake their heads whenever anyone became too nosy and asked questions about it.
What everyone knew though was that Igen's bananas and mangoes were the sweetest in the area and far beyond. They were so delicious that a myth grew around them.
"They must have put sugar in the roots when they were planting the trees," some of their neighbours often said in envy.
The people of Igen did not care. They were just too happy to reap the bounty from the plantation. Each harvest season, many buyers flocked to Igen from far and wide just to buy the mangoes and bananas. Middlemen from the cities came with trucks and vans which they filled with the fruits and resold in the city for huge profits. Igen people became prosperous from that sole crop. Many built new houses, replacing their old, mud houses with shiny concrete buildings. Others married new wives, thus adding to their harem of women.
The more forward thinking used their largesse to send their children to school in the city. There was no family that did not benefit from the bananas and mangoes as the plantation was communal property, a sweet gift from their ancestors. Igen continued to prosper from its plantation from one generation to the next and the people could not be happier… ***
Things continued that way for years until a series of events took place. It began with a visit from Chief J. Agbah. Chief was the richest and most prominent man in the community. He was not an indigene of Igen, though. It was his mother that hailed from the village. But Chief grew up in Igen as his mother lived there after she ran away from his father and abandoned her marital home many years before. He identified more with Igen than his father's hometown which was about twenty miles from Igen.
The villagers too accepted Chief Agbah as one of their own. That he was rich and influential helped them ignore the fact that he was not a 'true son of the soil.' Besides, he had done a lot for the community in the past by bringing much needed development. It was through his influence that the road leading to the community was paved (the first among the seven villages in the clan) and the tiny primary school expanded so that children from neighboring villages now converged in Igen for learning. Most weekends, he would visit the village from his city base and hold discussions with elders of the community. Most of the talks centred on bringing more development to the village.
Chief Agbah had done a lot for them, the villagers often said among themselves. He was one of their own. They trusted him.
One day, the town crier announced to the villagers that their prominent 'son', Chief Agbah was visiting them that weekend with some important personalities from the capital. There would be a town hall meeting and every son and daughter of Igen must attend, the crier said. There was general excitement among the villagers. What new goodies was their son bringing them this time, they wondered.
The meeting took place at the market square close to the house of Pa Okena, the oldest man in the community.
Chief Agbah arrived with some important looking government officials as well as a couple of white men. He spoke to the villagers briefly then dropped the bombshell: the reason for the meeting was to announce to the villagers that oil had been discovered in their land. Underneath the ground where their plantation was located, were huge deposits of oil, the 'black gold'. Government, he stated had given 'exploratory and exploitation rights' to a foreign company to exploit the oil. This new find, he added would bring immense wealth and benefits to the community and make Igen a shining light in the area…
The news was received with mixed feelings by the villagers. Though happy that they would become an oil producing community, the thought of losing their beloved plantation filled them with great sorrow. That plantation had sustained them for generations, how would they survive without it, they wondered. But at Chief Agbah's continued reassurance that the revenue that would come to the community from the oil would be far greater than what they made from the fruits, they relented.
Soon, the oil exploiters with their heavy drilling equipment came in and Igen was never the same again…
Present day…The rejected stone
Most families have a black sheep and Chief Agbah's was no exception. Lexie was his name. He was the son of Monica, the first woman Chief ever loved. It was way back when he was a struggling young man teaching in a primary school at a village many miles from Igen. Monica was the daughter of the headmaster of the school. She was 18, a great beauty and Chief who was simply known then as Johnson, was smitten. Believing he truly loved her, Monica fell for his sweet words.
She soon got pregnant. Her father, who didn't want a bastard child in his family insisted Johnson must marry her. Johnson had other ideas though. One night, he packed the few belongings he had and sneaked out of the village.
Some months after Monica delivered a baby boy, her father was able to trace the runaway lover boy to his mother's village Igen. Johnson had by this time migrated to the city but his mother agreed to be supporting the child as best she could.
The boy whom his mother named Alexander (but which he shortened to Lexie) did not see his father until he was 11 years old. He was about to attend secondary school then. His mother had taken him to see his grandmother at Igen to make arrangements for his school fees and other expenses. Johnson had been home on a visit that day and it was then father and son set eyes on each other for the first time.
While the boy was excited to meet his father, the latter was not. Johnson barely acknowledged the child who looked so much like him. This first confused the boy, then he grew sad and angry with his father. Over the years, the anger grew and festered until it became a consuming hatred, a resentment against the shabby way he had been treated by his own father throughout his young life.
As he grew older, his hatred for his father would evolve into a desire for revenge, to hit back at the man who had all but abandoned him.
Then, one day, a chance meeting with a lady called Selina changed the course of Lexie's life. He came up with a plan that triggered a series of events that would have a profound effect on the lives of those involved, some for good, most for bad…
•To be continued
•What was Lexie's plan? And what happened to Igen community after the discovery of oil and the destruction of their plantation? Join us next Saturday for the juicy details!
•Names have been changed to protect the identities of the individuals in the story.
