MAKING LOVE

I wouldn’t have thought of a better subject today than the election of making love. Today I’m honouring two people in my life who taught me how to make love and which experience I’m going to share with everyone. These two only, albeit there exists a plethora of others equally special, went a little further respecting to the fact that under the circumstance, I was still innocent and naive in the trade.

Reminiscing several years back during my seventh year in life, and once upon a sunny day, I had skipped lunch after returning from school to join the company already at the Bank’s field. The Bank field was a narrow patch of grass the size of two swimming pools embedded to the former BDF Bank compound at the Burnley Street, Limbe.

It was the customary lieu to fellowship in a frenzy game of football. It was equally a Friday and I was excited that it was a weekend and so I could have my uniform as a jersey in the stead of getting home to change and possibly be chafed by lunch whilst the game was on.

On the field, I ran from one end of the field to the other, chasing and being pursued, possessing and fouling as I created new trends in my dribbling dexterities with the ball. At the close of the period, I joined the exhausted peer group to the conjoined Victoria Club compound to wash off our filth and thirst.

In the process, uncle Fergie, who was a regular member of the club stole a look and beckoned me to meet him. He hailed me on how I acquitted myself in the game and encouraged me to join the school team when I grew older. The waiter later brought me a quarter of a gingerly spiced chicken and potatoes chips. I had thanked him and left with the meal. It was only a matter of seconds before my selection of the peers and me had devoured the meal.

Subsequently, I had opted to play the game of football every single day and sometimes deliberately creating chances for uncle Fergie to see me. Every each time we had encountered at the Victoria club precinct, I had gone home with a barbecue or some dough to buy myself much candies to suit everyone. He seemed genuinely a good person.

Then one day, my father had me follow him to the magistrate court. I was very young to have fathomed the deliberations in the court. But the semantics of some of the utterances delivered between of the one hand my father and his counsel, and of the other, my uncle Fergie and his counsel were seemingly objectionable for siblings. Inferring from the proceedings I was elected to have guessed rightly that my father and his brother were in conflict over realty. It was so intense, I’d later learnt they hadn’t spoken to each other for years.

The next day, I went to the Bank field. I forfeited the game that day and tottered amid sheer astonishment directly to the club. I met uncle Fergie. He was sitting at his usual spot overseeing the Atlantic ocean and the bank field.. Upon my arrival, he knew immediately I had questions swirling in my mind. When I sat, I asked him why he was so benevolent to me at the same time he spited my father. I wasn’t finding that mainstream. Then he had drawn closer and told me these words softly.

“ See Karlz, your father and I are brothers and that stands for two things. Relationship and fellowship. I’ll explain.

“ relationship means, we have the same blood and are brothers and fellowship could imply whether or not we are in good communication and terms.”

When he saw that I didn’t follow well, he continued.

“relationship can never be broken, but fellowship is often. Your father, my brother is my blood and in spite of whatever, we would always remain that until our departure from this world. We presently have a difference of interest over a parcel of land. This could be only temporary. It would not be long before we become friends again, I assure you okay?

“You are his son, and I have nothing against you. I still love my brother although we are at loggerheads. So, do not mind us. We’ll fix the problem very soon.”

That evening, I’d confronted my father likewise and he had spoken very complimentary of uncle Fergie and even confided to me that he so loved him that he relinquished his succession to their father’s crown to him. He also told me he was loving uncle Fergie's children as uncle Fergie me and I found that truthful and cinch. My cousins and we, have lived over the years under the oblivion of the differences our parents were upholding.

Although I grew up seeing not much of these two as friends than foes, their love and affection to their nieces and nephews were steadfast and none ever promoted scaremongering and hatred down to their children against the other’s person in the domestic sense.

During the period, I gathered they made love more than they made hate. In pursuance of this, I have grown up with the contagion and I have been taught the simple love rule; when in the company of young ones do always express compliment and love to your estranged relatives and their privies respectively as long as they directly are not in pursuit of the foregoing dispute themselves.

Happy Valentine’s Day to you.

Karlz JBilz