When the Leopard Is Butchered to the Bone

By

Obododimma Oha

When the leopard is butchered to the bone, it stirs. The leopard may pretend all along to be in a slumber or that what they are cutting is not its skin. That encourages the butchers to continue cutting. But there is a limit to everything. There is a limit to the deception one can subject oneself to. Beyond that limit, it becomes something else. It becomes something else? At least, it becomes something. At least, it becomes self-deception. It becomes taking one for granted. It becomes that nobody is in this  house behind which other people are freely cutting stakes and doing as they like. But somebody is in that house. Somebody’s home! That somebody will, at a point, come out and wrestle for the closure of the footpath passing through his backyard.

An elderly person cannot just be at home and the pregnant goat would be in labour, still tethered. Isn’t that enough reason for the leopard that they are butchering to stir? At least, it has to show that it is still alive.

 If you ask mbe nwa aniga, he would tell you from personal experience. They once came to his compound to carry away the shelled thing, freely carry him away! Mbe nwa aniga got annoyed because they were arrogant and showed that they were unchallenged. They behaved as if he did not have kinsmen that could intervene or that his home has no ofo guarding it. So mbe nwa aniga asked them to put him down. They agreed, believing that, after all, that shelled thing won’t break into a run and escape. So, they put him down. But mbe scratched the ground here and scratched the ground there. They asked him what that was; a magic? For the shelled thing to disappear?  Mbe nwa aniga said No; that he was not running, that he could not run; but that, whenever people came to the scene, they would say, “Oh, what a struggle! What a tough fight between power and power! What a resistance power must have put up to power, before one power mightier lifted the other up and took it away!” You cannot just come to a man’s home and behave as if there is no man there! “So, carry me away now,” mbe told them. At least, they thought for once, and all the arrogance disappeared. Oh, so they came to another man’s home? Oh, he was at home? Oh, this luggage that they wanted to carry was the man; was that he? They thought and thought, and later carried mbe along with a lot of worries. Do you see why the leopard should not behave as if it is slumbering when they are butchering and repossessing it limb-by-limb. Is that piece of clothing being eaten by the goats not somebody’s possession?

I am with you, mbe nwa aniga; with you in this. They could ask the he-goat, too, if they can use the paradigm of dance to understand it. After all, the way of the rat is not the way of the lizard. The he-goat does not know how to dance; we all know that. But the soldier ants came to beat drums for it in his courtyard, his own courtyard, and to turn its courtyard to an ilo. Well, since it doesn’t know how to dance, it danced like one who doesn’t know how to dance. I hope the soldier ants enjoyed watching him dance.

Do you see why the leopard should not behave as if the butchering is the same as basking in the sun: he turns this way and turns that way, to get the best of the sunshine. No; it is not the same as basking in the sun! The butchering and repossession are annoying: they simply claim that the skin of the leopard does not belong to the leopard, that the leopard is even someone else's possession. How can a mere visitor come to and tell the leopard that he owns it? Does the visitor with the butcher’s knife know how long and what terrible experiences gave the leopard its many spots?

If you are butchering the leopard, are you sure it is dead? From where, from whom, did you get the carcass? Is the carcass of the leopard the same as the carcass of the sheep? Don’t you know that you cannot treat both the same? Watch this claw! Watch that sharp tooth! You cannot butcher a living leopard, what more, to the bone!