Gods and Soldiers by Rob Spillman Page A

kwu ana nkwu was so sweet and melodious it was like listening to a canary singing.”
    â€œShe was probably a volunteer schoolteacher in one of the girls’ secondary schools around Onitsha and has lived here for so long she does not count as an American. We are talking of a real American girl living on American soil.” Jekwu, who said this, was Ambo’s adversary as a result of a dispute over an old debt and was permanently on the opposite side of any argument with Ambo.
    â€œWell, what I was trying to say was that she may be interested in a village boy. Like the one I saw in Onitsha who was wearing a local dress and spoke Hausa, I am sure she will be interested in a village boy,” Ambo said and buried his head in his Daily Reckoner.
    Someone ordered another round of ogogoro and Coke and we all began to drink and became silent as we thought our own thoughts. The moon dipped and everywhere suddenly became dark. One by one we rose and left for our homes.
2.
    We were sitting in Ambo’s shop one evening when Onwordi swaggered in holding a white envelope with a small American stamp which had an eagle painted on it on its side. He waved it in our faces and was smiling. He called for drinks and we all rushed to him trying to snatch the envelope from his hands.
    â€œShe has replied,” he said, looking very proud like a man who had unexpectedly caught a big fish with a hook in the small village river. The truth was that we had all forgotten about the announcement on the radio program and I had actually washed the shorts in whose back pocket I had put the paper where I jotted down the address.
    Onwordi began to read from the letter to us. The girl’s name was Laura Williams. She had recently moved with her parents to a farm in Iowa from a much larger city. She had one more year before finishing high school. She was going to take a class on Africa, Its People and Culture in the fall and was curious to know more about African culture. She wanted to know whether Onwordi lived in the city or in a village. She also wanted to know if he lived close to lots of wild animals like giraffes, lions and chimpanzees. And what kind of food did he generally eat, were they spicy? and how were they prepared? She also wanted to know if he came from a large family. She ended the letter with the phrase “Yours Laura.”
    â€œOh my God,” Lucky said, “this is a love letter. The American lady is searching for an African husband.”
    â€œEehen, why do you say that?” Onwordi said, clearly very excited about such a prospect. Though he had read the letter over a hundred times and was hoping for such a stroke of good fortune, he had not seen any hint of such in the letter.
    â€œSee the way she ended the letter, she was practically telling you that she was yours from now on.”
    â€œI think that is the American way of ending letters,” Dennis said. He was the most well read amongst us, having read the entire oeuvre of James Hadley Chase and Nick Carter. He used big words and would occasionally refer to some girl in the village as a doll and some other as a dead beat floozy.
    â€œBut that is not even the main issue; she can become your girlfriend in due course if you know how to play your game very well. You could tell her that you have a giraffe farm and that you ride on the back of a tiger to your farm,” he continued.
    â€œBut she is soon going to ask for your photograph and you know we have no giraffes here and the last we heard of a lion was when one was said to have been sighted by a hunter well over ten years ago,” Jekwu said. “You should ask her to send you a ten dollar bill, tell her you want to see what it looks like and when she sends it we can change it in the ‘black market’ at Onitsha for one thousand naira and use the money for ogogoro. ” Jekwu took a drink and wiped his eyes, which were misting over from the drink.
    â€œIf you ask her for