woes of koosam episode 4
WOES OF KOOSAM
EPISODE 4
By Cobby Grant
Koosam raised his arm high, bade goodbye to Mr Mireku and watched till he disappeared from sight. Then he walked steadily towards the Boy’s Quarters clutching the polythene bag the kind man had given to him.
He saw Uncle George and greeted him but he pretended he hadn’t heard him. Unfazed, he went indoors, presuming it could be due to the slow progress of the grass cutting, but he was too elated to allow the man’s attitude to get to him.
Hurriedly, he dumped the bag unto the bed and left to have his bath. It had always been like this. He freshened up as soon as he got home from town before anything else. That out of the way, he went back in, locked the door and switched on the TV, which was another daily ritual, before emptying the contents of the bag unto the bed.
There were tins of sardines, tomato paste, milk, milo, sugar, rice, cooking oil and a white envelope that contained 100 ghana cedis.
His euphoria knew no bounds as he sang praises to the Most High God and prayed for the life of Mr Mireku. He fervently prayed for the man who he felt was God sent. An Angel. Even the hundred Cedis alone could sustain him for more than twenty days.
He heard a loud bang on the door and he swiftly spread a cloth on the provisions and opened the door to be confronted by a fuming Uncle George.
“So you came here to laze about erh?” he charged “so up till now you haven’t cleared the whole area.”
“I’m on it, please,” he said timidly, confused at the man’s attack.
” You be there and keep saying that you are ‘on it’. You’ll come home one day to see your ‘two by four’ things thrown outside, and that is when you’ll know that ‘you’re on it,” he said and turned away angrily.
Koosam stared after him in despair, outraged at the man’s treatment of him. He felt he could not cope with the man’s uncouth behaviour. He heaved a sigh of misery, returned to his room and packed up the items into an empty box and pushed it to a corner.
Then he stretched himself on the bed with the satisfied demeanour of a man who was not thinking of where the next meal was going to come from.
It was a feeling he had not had for a while. His gaze was on the TV but his mind was on the job he had been offered. That was a done deal as far as he was concerned. He thought about how being gainfully employed was going to make his life comfortable and was determined to make his mother’s life so relaxed that she was going to beg him to stop spoiling her. His mind went to the dream he had had in Mr Mireku’s office and smiled.
“How can you ask for ‘akaw and abomu’ when you have all these sumptuous continental dishes right under your nose,” he said laughingly to himself as if his mother was in the room with him.
He lazed on the bed, daydreaming and it was only when the news jingle on the TV sounded that he realized that it was 7:00 pm. A gentle knock on the door got him to spring out of bed, his defences up as he thought it was Uncle George back to bother him again and he was mildly surprised to see Akosua, the Captain’s daughter at the door. She went in without being invited and slumped onto the bed.
He glanced at her warily and sat a bit farther from her.
“Where have you been the whole day? I have been looking for you,” she said with the signature pouting of the lips.
“I went job hunting,” he explained, apprehensive that she was also going to think that he was lazy.
She said nothing but allowed her eyes to roam around the room. She saw the various textbooks packed against the wall. She asked him who they were for and was surprised when he replied that they were his. She had absolutely no idea that he was that educated.
“I read Purchasing and Supply at TTU,” he elaborated and laughed at the surprised look on her face.
“You mean you are a graduate living here as if you are a nobody?” Akosua asked, her eyes popping out with amazement.
“Yes. Graduated with 1st Class honours,” he said proudly.
“Wow. Wow. Wow. I wouldn’t have believed it if someone else had told me or if I hadn’t seen these books myself,f” she said, her mouth wide open with amazement.
“It’s unemployment that has taken me this low o,” he said.
“Awwwww,” she sympathized with him and before he could say another word, she hugged him, her ample bosom pressed against his chest. He tried to pull away but she clung to him, holding him tightly in her arms.
He allowed her and began to feel a tingling sensation in his body. He looked into her eyes and as if by mutual consent, their lips inched closer and closer for the inevitable fusing of their lips when another knocking on the door got them to quickly jerk apart.
“Akosua, come out. I want to talk to you,” a female voice said from behind the door.
Kobina’s heart missed a beat.
“That’s Asantewaa, my sister” she whispered, composed herself, walked out and breezed past without saying anything to her sister who followed her back into the main house.
The next day, as usual, he woke up early but stayed indoors till after Uncle George had left before he went out to clean his teeth. He wasn’t ready for any caustic remarks that could mar his exuberant mood.
He quickly got out as soon as he heard the unmistakable sound of a door locking and he washed his face, broke a twig from a nearby Nim tree to chew on and proceeded to cut the ever-present grass against which he wanted to persevere against all odds. He found it shameful that his best efforts were not enough. He had noticed that even though he wasn’t done with the whole area, the areas he had already cut were beginning to sprout up. That distressed him immensely.
Nevertheless, he forced himself to continue. He weeded, rested and weeded again, his eyes on the finished line that was still a little bit farther away. He pushed himself, happy that his palms weren’t hurting as much as they did before as he had mastered the art of cutlass handling.
Wanting to reciprocate the kind gesture of Captain Omar by giving him free accommodation, he pushed on in a bid to keep his part of the bargain.
Around midday, he measured a small quantity of rice and placed it on the gas stove, regulated it to a low level when it began to boil and left to continue with the job at hand. He took another break at 2:00 pm, inspected the rice and saw that it was almost done.
Happy, he smiled in anticipation and opened a tin of sardine and poured its contents on the almost cooked rice and continued with the job. He went back to the job as if possessed until he rounded the corner and saw the end in sight.
Feeling tired, he stopped for the day, opened the pan of rice and his nostrils were instantly assailed by the sweet aroma of the food he had prepared. He had a refreshing bath, and took the food indoors to eat, making satisfactorily noises as he spooned the delicious food in his mouth.
Asantewaa, the older of the two daughters of Captain Omar, who had been observing him from her bedroom window the whole day entered his room, wearing a transparent dress without knocking and exclaimed when she saw what he was eating.
“Eeiii, enti, wo nkoa wo hyɛ ha na wodi eduane wei nyinara a,” she said in the local dialect playfully at the fact that he was eating alone without inviting anyone.
“You are invited,” he said good-naturedly, laughing.
“I have already invited myself,” she said and picked up a spoon from a bowl and joined in eating, her thighs wide open as she sat on the floor, opposite of him.
She was a happy-go-lucky person, and she ate as much as he did, and joked about almost everything and that got him laughing so hard that he almost choked on the food.
They ate everything but when it got to the burnt part, she dragged the aluminium pan to herself and began to scrape the bottom to eat alone. When she saw the amused expression on his face, she spoon-fed him some of the “Bible’ as it’s normally referred to despite his protestations.
He tried not to stare at her unrestrained breasts which quavered anytime she made any sudden movements and also tried not to stare into her open thighs but his eyes kept straying to them.
She chattered unceasingly, and asked him personal questions, her whole posture, one of boldness.
In a bid to calm himself, he picked up the empty pan and went out to wash it as he was feeling uncomfortable with her presence. The free show was too much for him.
It was worse when he went back in. She was lying on her stomach, moving her body in tune with the music she was listening to through the earphones on her phone.
Koosam paused, stared at how her buttocks vibrated in tune with the music she was listening to with her head bobbing up and down, and as if in fear, he went back out to sit on the steps to enjoy the cool evening breeze that caressed his skin.
After a while, when the mosquitoes had become braver and were giving him uncomfortable bites, he went back into the room and saw that she had fallen asleep, her posture much more alluring than before. He shook her to awaken her and she left with a strange look which he couldn’t readily fathom.
It took a few days of strenuous efforts to get to the end of the grass cutting. Even as he heaved a great sigh of relief, he saw that the earlier portion had grown high enough for cutting.
“What a life,” he mused feeling that there wasn’t going to be any breathing space for him.
Without fail, the daughters of Captain Omar continued popping into his room as if they were on a shift system. They alternated in visiting him, a visit today for one, and a visit for the other the next day. Their parents were in Accra as the Captain was on special duties at the Ministry of Defence. That gave them the chance to come and go as they pleased.
As for Uncle George, he was sometimes nice and another time rude. He blew hot and cold air regardless of whose feeling he was hurting. But by and large, he was an easygoing person who liked his Akpeteshie and his women.
Kobina occasionally checked on his former landlady who dotted on him. He also checked on Mr Mireku, and vice versa. He knew Kobina was worried about the job so he constantly gave him assurances that everything was going to fall in place very soon.
Kobina bided his time, continued to pray, and patiently waited on the Lord.
But as his resources dwindled, the strength of his faith took a dive. Akosua and Asantewaa continued to try all manner of antics and subterfuges but he refused to take the bait.
The only thing he loved about their presence was that they served him anytime they cooked, with one endeavouring to please him more than the other; be it fufu, ampesi, or any other local dish.
He resorted to staying out till late at night in order for him to sneak into bed.
Luckily for him, he secured a part-time teaching job in Sawmill, a nearby community that was closer to both Airport Ridge and Lagos Town.
It also gave him a very good reason to continue avoiding the two sisters.
He found Kofi, his new student, a good student. The boy picked up well and before long, his parents saw how improved he was since he started the extra classes. But that also came with its own problems. He saw that the boy’s mother Auntie Ama, had taken to behaving amorously towards him anytime he went there in the absence of both her husband and her son. She touched him on the biceps and other parts of his upper body with suggestive and complimentary comments. She used the good job he was doing with her son to heap praises on him.
Being in her presence proved to be uncomfortable. He had no intention of sleeping with a married woman if that was what she wanted him to do.
It got to a point where he thought of stopping with the tuition but he didn’t want to abandon the boy who had become like a younger brother to him. The matter was taken out of his hands when Auntie Ama called him one afternoon to go for his paycheck as she wasn’t going to be at home in the evening when he went to teach.
He was already done with the day’s duties so he quickly freshened up and made his way to the house of his student.
He knocked when he got there.
“Come in, the door’s not locked,” she said from within the house.
He opened the door gingerly and stepped in, but she wasn’t in there. He waited awhile, wondering where she might have gotten to.
“Don’t keep me waiting. Come right in,” she called from an inner room.
He turned to the direction of her voice, went forward, and saw through the slightly opened door of her bedroom that she was sitting on the bed, sipping something from a tumbler, and hesitated.
“Come in, I haven’t got all day,” she called impatiently but softly to him.
He went in slowly, his heart pounding with the fear of Biblical Joseph entering the royal chambers of Potiphar’s wife and saw a bottle of Black Label by her side on a side table.
She put the tumbler down beside it and took a white envelope from under the pillow, walked lazily towards him as he had stopped just inside the room.
Soon she got to him and proffered the envelope his mind already in overdrive on the things he was going to buy at the nearby Supermarket as soon as he left the house but she drew her hand back when he stretched his hand for it.
She stepped back and discarded the night robe she had on revealing matching lacy panties and a bra that could hardly contain her ample boobs which she pushed into his chest.
Koosam was shocked into immobility.
Auntie Ama all the while did not break eye contact with him, tucked the envelope into the back of her panties and embraced him, kissing him forcefully. His arms went around her involuntarily and landed on her voluminous buttocks, fondled them and a moan escaped from her lips.
We may also like The Truck Driver by Cobby Grant: http://aaron-ansah-agyeman.com/2020/09/23/guest-writer-samuel-cobby-grant-the-truck-driver-episode-1/
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