Hunting for love with gun powder formula

Hunting for love with gun powder formula

By Clem Oluwole

“A misogynist is a man who hates women as much as women hate one another.”- N.L. Mencken

If you knew me well as a kid, you would confidently pound your chest like a gorilla and declare that I was not only a monk in the making but also a potential hegumen. You see, I had an early exposure to the Holy Bible. My old man in faraway Kumasi, Ghana, was always with the Book. And because I made him my role model, I got myself interested in reading the Bible by the time I was 10. At times, I would approach my dad to help break down some hard words or phrases that were associated with the King James Version. And while my old man read the Book for spiritual rearmament, I ploughed through for pleasure. I just enjoyed reading the Bible stories and by my 14th birthday, I had read the Bible from Genesis to Revelation, skipping passages like Deuteronomy, Leviticus, and the Book of Psalms which offered no story lines.

At a point, my old man and I began to struggle for ownership of the Book. In those days, there were no children’s Bibles. There was this particular day I will never forget. I got so fascinated by the account of the near annihilation of the human and animal race in the book of Genesis. And to avoid any interruption from my old man, I sneaked out of the house to an unknown location with his Bible. I wanted to know how Noah and his household managed to co-habit with man-eating animals like lions, tigers, leopards, etc, in the ark during the period that the flood lasted. When I emerged with the Bible tucked under my armpit, my dad gave me a look that could ignite fire if the Bible were to be petrol. He, however, warned me to stop being a bible thief and that it was sinful to take something that did not belong to me or without permission.

Well, that Bible-carrying habit was a trait that could make anyone swear that I would end up in a monastery later in life. The monkish attitudinal traits arose from my disposition toward the opposite sex. Misogyny would have been the most appropriate description of my nature. My unfriendly attitude to the opposite sex, save my old mum, was a creation of the Bible. I am not saying that the Holy Writ teaches us to be hostile to women. No. well, all that has since changed. The problem I had was that after reading the account of how Eve got Adam to commit high treason by eating the forbidden fruit and they both fell out of favour with their creator, I began to dread anything in skirts. In those days, women hardly wore trousers. And by the time I read about the betrayal of the strongman Samson by Delilah, my heart became more hardened. The first time I read the passage on Samson, I wept until I lost appetite for dinner. There was nothing my mum did not do to get me to eat. She failed. What endeared Samson to me was his extraordinary power. He even killed a young lion with his bare hands. And I desired that kind of strength. I told my mum that if Samson had not been betrayed, he would have lived to teach me the art of subduing such dangerous bush meat with bare hands!

One day, I carried the hatred for an Eve or a Delilah too far when I went to visit my elder sister who was a final year student of the Baptist Women’s Teacher’s College, Idi-Araba, Abeokuta.on arriving the college compound; I met her in company of one of her classmates. I greeted my sister and deliberately ignored her friend. She called me by my local name and wondered whether I had lost my manners. She ordered me to genuflect to her friend. A kind of anger welled up in my stomach. Genuflect to a Delilah? No way! My stubborn posture then set the stage for a replication of the duel between David and Goliath. She brought me between her legs and began to spank me. I fought back, praying for the strength of Samson to come upon me. She was quite behemoth. When I realized the folly of trying to tip her over, this David desperately wriggled out of her grip and fled.

During my secondary school days, I had a friend who found my attitude towards the opposite sex most unusual at my age. There was this charming girl in his village he was head over heels in love with. The poor guy was almost dying of unreturned love. One afternoon, he came to my place grinning from ear to ear. He told me he had found a solution to his problem. Someone had got him a charm which he could apply to charm the charming girl. I laughed for a long time, wondering why he should go to that just to court trouble which the opposite sex exemplified. Nevertheless, I agreed to play along with him to satisfy my curiosity. So, I took permission from my grandpa with whom I was holidaying to spend the night at my friend’s place. The charm was prepared with gun powder. He was asked to get broken earthenware to make charcoal fire at midnight when his target will be in her second sleep. He would then express his heart desire in the powder and empty it in the fire.

By 12 midnight, my friend was set for the ritual. He made the charcoal fire and brought it to his room. After expressing his desire, he poured the powder in the fire. A huge ball of fire climbed into the ceiling. We could have set the family house ablaze. We panicked and there was a stampede. My friend rushed out with the flaming earthenware and got his palms burnt in the process. His uncle who was sleeping in the opposite room rushed out and demanded to know what happened. He told him there was no cause for alarm and that we were just trying to fry some eggs. That story sounded unbelievable to him, but he left us alone all the same. My friend assured me that the explosion would cause the girl to wake up from her sleep and thereafter, she would dream of him for the rest of the night. The anti-climax of this would be her emergence at his doorstep at the wee hours of the morning. By 6 a.m., my friend was seated in front of the house, waiting for his girl to come whining for love.

To shorten a long story, the girl did not show up. By 12 noon, my friend began to feel uncomfortable. I then suggested that we should take a stroll to the girl’s neighborhood. Peradventure, something could snap if she sighted him. He jumped at the idea. Fortunately for him, the girl was sitting in front of her house when we walked past. She sighted us alright and all we got was a casual glance. The formula did not work. Poor boy!

Well, those were the days when boys and men ran after the opposite sex. Nowadays, it is the other way round. It is the hunters that have become the hunted. Women now chase after men. Some women even resort to guerilla warfare to deal with their rivals referred to as husband snatchers or boyfriend grabbers. They do so by sending hired thugs after their rivals. Some others employ chemical warfare to settle scores, acid being the readily available weapon.


Be that as it may, I should not forget to tell you how elated my mother felt the day she discovered that her favorite son, and an admirer of Samson , had forgiven the Delilahs of this world and agreed to settle down to a married life rather than monking around in a monastery.