MUSTARD I – Ch. 19 | KT OLLA

RUMOURS broke out about a looming war. Yet it was no war between nations of Yoruba people; it was a war among other peoples.

This was the Year 1914 and the Fourteen Years War across Yorubaland had come to an end.

Even then, it was the season of darkness across nations scattered all over earth...

For by the mid-summer of 1914, a  war had broken out in Europe which would touch down to Africa.

It was the First World War.

‘Please tell us, are the rumours true? Is the Whiteman at war now?’

‘Will our men fight for his land?’

Everybody talked about these things. In the north and south protectorates called Nigeria.

People asked questions and answered their matters themselves. They asked those things from the colonial offices—the educated class among them.

Then they shared the news with the people in the markets and the town halls.

‘The Whitemen are presently at war,’ they explained. ‘And many nations are fighting this war.

‘Now you know we didn’t bring ourselves together. It is the Englishman who did it.

‘And he says we are still his colony. So we were told we must fight with him.

‘So they say every able man will be drafted into the army. Then they’d be taken across the sea to defend his land.

‘That is where things stand now!’

Therefore people stood together in small groups and clusters. They talked and chew the burning matters.

They said, ‘If the war of Yoruba people went so large, then how vast will the war of across nations be!’

Well, those rumours stirred quite a deal of fear for people. So much everyone began to find ways out.

The women wanted their husbands and sons to stay with them. While the men didn’t want to leave their land.

Everyone wanted to escape the war. So men fled to farms and forests.

Still, the news about war reached the people late. For the British soldiers were already going round, forcing men into their army.

Even so, Moro hadn’t found a reason to run. He was at his home in town in the land of Ede. And he didn’t think to flee.

Now the gentleman looked several years younger. He was agile and strong.

Yet the British force needed everyone able. So they sighted the father-of-two and told themselves he was able.

They stacked men in trucks – the first models of wagon-cars. They bound the conscripts too, so that they wouldn’t run.

Then they drove those trucks to their station. And Moro was in the fleet.