WELCOME TO THE KINGDOMOFWITNESSES

WELCOME TO THE KINGDOM OF WITNESSES

LIAR, LIAR, YOUR PANTS’ ON FIRE, AND NOW YOU ARE GOING TO BURN IN HELL, EVEN AS YOUR PANTS ARE ON FIRE

But where am I going with this? Once, upon a time, there lived a man who had witnessed a kingdom. All the days of his life had summed up to a moment wherein he found himself testifying of this kingdom to a two-day old stranger.

“I want to get to know you,” he heard himself say under the guise of crossing his fingers in hopes that this stranger would be the perfect one, the one dreamt about, fantasised about, under creamed sheets, under shame and under sexual liberation. To be sexually liberated is to be open minded. He would think.

But before he would get to know anyone, he would come to testify.

However old he was it would not matter, “I think I am an Ogbanje.” Ogbanjes are believed to be beings which have a force of life so strong that they can determine their time of deaths and their time of rebirths. Almost like Abikus, just different. This narrative however had doubt glittering over it, for he thought he was an Ogbanje. There were no clues except for what his mind had fed him. Ogbanjes are believed to have a strong memory of a mark on the Earth beneath which they had sowed a seed of remembrance; beneath which they had dug a hole and buried a stone. It is this stone that reminds the Ogbanje of who it is, what it is and what it has done. There were no clues, even in his mind, of where he buried his memory.

“Are you a Christian?” He would ask, and when the stranger had responded in the negative he did so too. “I used to be a pastor but I don’t believe in God, I believe in a supreme being, and I believe she is feminine.” What was it about his mind that he had come to accept these things as truthful? It was nothing more than his mind. See, they say: seeing is believing. And there is an acceptance of this as a truth. But remember, some of us see with our minds too. What he had seen, he believed. So that it was easy for him to say: “When a woman walks past me, I can look at her ass, she might walk away but I would do things to her in my mind and no one here will know.”

What was it about his mind that he had come to accept these things as truthful? It was nothing more than his mind.

“See, I’m a feminist, I love strong women.”

A moment of recline and decline passed, and the stranger became a curious cat: “You used to be a pastor?”

It was a never ending paradox. “I used to be a pastor, why is everyone always surprised when I say this?” He told a tale of how the ones that used to be his brethren thought he had run mad; they were praying for him. To run mad is to lose one’s mind, but to lose one’s mind does not restrain you from gaining another. He indeed was once a mad man.

He told a tale of how he would sin: “When a sister says she wants to have sex with me, how can I turn her down when I want to have sex with her too?”

He told a tale of how God will forgive: “The Bible told us that Jesus came to die for our sins even before I was born, so why then will I not sin knowing that God will forgive?” It was tempting, for the stranger not to rupture a vein open knowing that it will heal in time; it was very much like the tales he told of forgiveness and sin.

And another moment of recline passed. “This is the perfect paradox,” the stranger would say. But the stranger would think: how is it that he is not a witness of the kingdom of God?