Where Have All the Parents Gone (Ebe Ka Nne na Nna No) by Ifeanyichukwu Onyewuchi The wind whistled, its sound like the rumbling of tea as it moved easterly, gathering dry sand along the way. A silhouette of a mountain danced on the desert ground as the sun burned irreproachably through the cloudless sky. In the distance, dots glided through the blue backdrop like buoyant specks of dirt in an ocean. Even as they started their slow descent, the wake of vultures that hovered overhead maintained the pall of the desert village. Suddenly they closed in, tearing downwards with aquiline precision. On the ground, a lone chameleon stalked through the brushes, approaching the cricket slowly. The untrained talons of a vulture snatched it just as its tongue flicked out for the kill. The chameleon slipped free, but only for a second. A hasty claw caught it in the head and ended its struggle, its left forelimb rent in the ensuing flurry of feathers and claws that followed. The vultures tore it apart. The most dogged vulture flew off with most of the transmogrified lizard caught in its talons. The others gave chase, breaking up what had been an uncommon hunt. And once again, all was silent. In just a few hours, the slight breeze had grown into a gust as it traveled, carrying with it the sound of a persistent cough from the eastern direction. She coughed again, a searing sound that ate into the barren air. As she continued to cough, a rheumatic pain triggered in her back as she bent over and discharged blood-lined mucus from her mouth, the wind arriving just in time to shove the phlegm back into her face. She reached up reflexively to wipe off the reddish green glob but was unbalanced by another cough spasm. When it ended, she slowly picked herself up, and generously applied the snot as a balm for the graze that had appeared on her left leg from the fall. It would prevent any bleeding and she knew she could not afford to lose any blood. She sighed as she limped back home, The children should not be living here. Her home was a tiny hut which could barely withstand the ravenous appetite of the weather. Constructed out of thatch and unhealthy wood, it leaned tiredly to the left, as though on its last foot. In the hut’s sun-beaten enclosure, a rag lay abandoned on the floor of beaten earth. How many times do I have to remind them not to leave their clothes lying around, she asked herself, dropping the ragged shirt on a mat lying in the corner. As she bent over, the white wrapper around her narrow waist, now flecked with dried mucus and blood, came undone. With an expert hand of habit, she retied the wrapper as she simultaneously tried 80 theMeadow
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