IT was the Year 1918 and the Trench War, later called First World War, came to its end. So the warring states sent their fighters back home.
Powers had crumbled and kingdoms fallen on the East and West fronts of Europe. And there were foreigners sailing back home, for they were paid fortunes who aided.
Moro was most fortunate among the survivors, as he fought in war without having to fight. Still the man was paid in full.
But it was 1918, a year thought as the end of cruel war and was start of all cold battle. For it was the season of dark minds when people dropped the bombshells in tabletalks and tea...
And Moro journeyed home to face household war. More daunting than all of gun battle.
[1918 – 1925]
Chapter 1
THERE went a new kind of parting tears and reunion at the dockland of Lagos, Nigeria – as large British sails poured into the peninsula ferrying soldiers home.
It was the brief season of harmattan in the African coastal city as freezing but dry torrents blew across the scape.
This was the end of warfare and the start of a new year. It was January 1919; so there were the thick fogs, with people waiting in the cold to see folks return.
Women had gathered from the coastal settlements round about, on hearing that ships were landing with returnees from the Whiteman’s war.
The numbers soared every breaking day as more people from afar joined, who had waited in their houses.
(They left their homes when they couldn’t see their men return, and took to the road crying all the way there.)
It was a strange kind of tears at the docks, as Moro got down from one of those schooner ships and trod the boardwalk.
He looked forth and back and all around the coast. There was a lineup of people looking through faces of those survivors...
They were calling out names, their voices pained and frail.
Then once in a while, people bolted out of the line, rushed at the line of those landing; and were often barred off by sea workers.
Yet once in every while, someone broke to tears suddenly, shouting a name and running to her man. Then hugging him till they both broke down in tears.
Now others only broke down seeing these. They’d called, too, but there’d been no response.
It was all double tears at the early arrivals of 1919 at the dockside of Lagos waters. And Moro was one of those who returned from a war that killed so many.
But there was none to receive this man.
Still this was Lagos Colony, headquarters of the colonial presence in Nigeria. And it was quite a long distance from Moro’s township in the hinterland.
So there was no way his family could have learned of his return. Let alone race there to welcome him.
Therefore the father-of-two hastened out of his docking ship, and sooner fell out of the long line that matched to shore.
He hurried to find a lorry home.
Moro felt certain that there was no way that Wura his wife would be in the crowd at sea. Then he was pretty sure she wouldn’t know he was returning.
So he laid his mind at rest when he raced to the lorry park. ‘I’ll surprise her first,’ he breathed.
Moro had got with him a baggage filled with new wears for his kids and fine dishware for his wife. He got souvenirs home from his voyage to Britain.
He bought a copy of King James Bible, even though he couldn’t read. Then he bought a large crucifix, something to explain his new faith.
He found a way to write his name. So he copied the form in his copy of Bible.
“Morrow” was the name he penned down. And he smiled, ‘I’ve been christened!’
Yes, Moro found a new faith in the experience he had. He wanted in everything to be apart from his past, so he stopped saying ‘Son of Dada’.
That he was Moro the son of Dada.
He called himself Moro, written Morrow.
And so, Morrow raced back home to start anew. He took a lorry going to Ibadan, being on his way home...
So that there on the byway he’d board the lorry going to Ede.
Now all through the long travel, the man thought about Wura and their children. And he didn’t know he still carried a seed called destiny.
For as he rode home, all hell broke loose. And it was a homecoming like no other.
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