Four Days With Grandpa

By Peter Lumba

Grandpa tells his grand children how failure to learn their native language could destroy their identity and make them slaves of the other communities. He then tells them a story of how two piglets from a wealthy pig family who failed to learn their language finally found themselves in trouble when crisis hit the land.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Peter Lumba
• Release date: Dec 14, 2011
• ISBN: 9781466147249

Peter Lumba

The author runs a Public Benefit Organization (PBO) for disadvantaged children. Has special interest in youth development, especially teenagers.

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Four Days With Grandpa

Published by Peter Lumba at Smashwords

Copyright 2011 Peter Lumba

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CHAPTER 1: DAY ONE

In an African village called Shago, everything seemed peaceful in a disturbing way. The time was 4.45 pm, one of those quiet cloudless warm evenings most old people like whiling away either outside their houses or at the verandas of the local trading centres, basking in the sunshine. The August vegetation was dusty and unsightly and the shambas were bare, for the rains had failed for two seasons in a row. The occasional laboured cries of skinny cows, scraggy donkeys and scrawny roosters added to the anxiety. Fifteen-year-old Tara, a Form 2 student, and her brother, Twelve-year-old Rafa, a class eight pupil, had just arrived home together from school. Their faces lit with delight as they watched their grandfather, Kefa, lowering himself slowly into a chair just outside his grass-thatched mud hut. His hut was about twenty-five metres away to the left of their father’s brick hut. Clad in a red long sleeved shirt, a dark blue sleeveless sweater, a pair of black trousers and rubber sandals made from an old car tyre, the old man settled down to enjoy the warmth of the evening sun. After a long violent cough, he looked up into the sky to search for the moon and ascertain its position in relation to the sun. Placing his frail looking hand above his strained narrowed eyes to shelter them from the direct rays of the sun, he finally sighted the pale crescent moon that he supposed to be about thirty degrees below the sun. The rain that washes the new moon is only a few days away, thought the old man. It would reduce the effects of the dusty sunny weather.

Rafa, called Tara.

Yes, answered Rafa promptly.

You remember Grandpa promised to tell us a story today after school.

Right, agreed Rafa, a story about the origin of the crocodile, the hippopotamus and the wild pig. Let us take our schoolbags inside the house and then join him outside.

The two children broke into a run towards their father’s hut. They put away their bags, took a stool each and rushed outside again.

As they ran towards him, the seventy-five-year-old gaunt faced grandfather gave them a modest smile that hardly reached his deep-set eyes. Their tacit racing contest had no clear winner.

Grandpa… you pro …promised to tell us the…the story about the origin of the… the crocodile, the hippopotamus… and the wild pig today after school, said Tara, gasping for air.

That is right, agreed their grandfather, do sit down both of you.

Tara and Rafa still clad in their school uniforms sat on their stools facing their grandfather. Tara was dressed in a grey skirt, a white blouse, a maroon cardigan and black dusty shoes, while Rafa was dressed in a green pair of shorts and a pink shirt. Rafa’s dusty feet were bare.

"Okay, we are…a