While our parents stood in reverential mood with tightly closed eyes, humming into realms we were too short and too shallow to ascend into, we roamed about the church premises giggling, chasing girls.
Joy in the Lord might be the driving force that took our parents constantly to the Lord’s presence. But for us kids, it was the possibility of meeting a girl we’ve been eyeing for long.
I used to go to church mainly to meet a girl. And if for some reasons she couldn’t show up, too bad. The rest of the service might as well go on in some forgotten language.
My crush was my cousin Margaret. I think she was older than me, and probably didn’t know that I was in love with her. If she did, she didn’t care. But seeing her and getting to tease and play with her was enough fulfillment for me.
Every time I made the mistake of professing my love for her, she would scold and whip me, her left hand doing most of the whipping because she was a lefty. There was always that frown on her face that would linger for days, her mother wondering why she squinted her eyes and tightened her lips whenever she bumped into me.
My response to such threats was a cool smile. There were plenty of local girls to occupy my mind and time until I thought of a perfect response.
And such opportunities weren’t far away. It came whenever the woman she lived with, the wife of our local pastor, sent her to bring us food. Our parents had traveled, and out of pity for us little children left to fend for ourselves, the kind woman send Margaret to bring us some food.
We were used to eating meagre meals, and the food of the local pastor’s wife tasted rich with chunks of meat and spices that we ate to our satisfaction.
Whenever Margaret came on such occasions, she would forget our old quarrels, and join us in the hide and seek games we played on our large compound.
But Maggie never stayed for long. It seems her mistress gave her a short window to be away, and she wasn’t the kind that loved to break rules, like the rest of us that our village was too small to contain.
So much went on in our little lives that our parents had no idea about, while they were preoccupied with our next meal, clothes, marital issues or some relative that had turned a pest beyond the pesticides in their arsenal.
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