Ted Malanda
Last year, I was horrified to find my father hobbling around on a walking stick. "It's my knee," he cursed, blaming the years he spent keeping the peace as a police officer.
"In my time," he narrated, "we (African cops) didn’t have boots. We wore akala sandals and the only means of transport available was our dusty feet. We would walk for miles to apprehend very dangerous criminals. I remember one that was armed with six swords." Here, he felt his knee and winced.
Cops’ demands
"There were no shops or hotels back then and Africans were frightened of policemen," he continued. "If you walked to someone’s homestead looking for a calabash of water, everyone even the men quickly scattered! We never ate or drunk a thing as we walked from ridge to ridge apprehending criminals."
Well, he only has himself to blame for getting born in an era when cops were begging for water to drink, unlike now when they demand and get soda and tea. But I digress.
What happened is that all that thankless work and age have taken their toll and now the old warrior can only hobble on a walking stick. His old, trusted Peugeot has been long retired because his eyesight and the aforementioned knee mean he can neither see cows dozing on roads nor hit the brakes when he should.
New judge
What’s more alarming is that his cousins and brothers - men who were tough and spritely just the other day - are hobbling around on walking sticks, too.
"My son, shun cooking fat, especially the yellow one. It’s cooking fat and prostitution that is finishing men," my uncle announced in manner of advice before spitting for effect and hobbling away on his walking stick.
What this means is that the old geezers have been compelled to organise a crash course for me in a bid to hasten my accreditation as a judge to the local tribunal, just in case. Consequently, I have been invited as an observer to several serious cases to learn first-hand how the village criminal court functions. The matters that get deliberated here are way beyond the capacities of Luis Moreno-Ocampo.
My first case as a member of the jury was a cracker. A newly married maiden – on her first night no less, voided her bowels in the throes of passion.
While I imagined that that case was unconstitutional and had no basis before the village court, elders decreed an immediate divorce and fined her father a white, fat ram.
Another who broke wind in similar circumstances had her father ordered to pay a black goat. And in the meantime, the jury is out in a case involving one rascal whose dogs have been accused of eating the neighbour’s maize as we mull over the serious case of a negligent husband who stands accused by his wife of not eating the food that she dutifully prepares every, uh, night.
Forget crimes against humanity. This is serious stuff Bwana Ocampo, very serious stuff, my learned friend.
