Free Ajaiyi and His Inherited Poverty by Amos Tutuola Page A

which had fetched me the two hundred pounds.
    Now, as the money had been stolen away by Ade, the traitor, and the juju-gourd or magic gourd had gone back to the terrible creature, the owner of it. I told Aina that we should leave this town in the following morning for our village. So in the following morning both of us left this town without even a half-penny in hand except the sword which I had taken from the shrine of the Chief Idol Worshipper who wanted to sacrifice us to his idol when the kidnapper sold us to him.
    Having travelled for some days, luckily we came to our village in the midnight. So we opened the doors and windows and we swept the whole house. In the morning, a number of our neighbours came in and greeted us. They gave us food and many yams as well. But when it was the third day that we had arived in the village. All my creditors came to me, they asked me to pay their money which I owed them before Aina and I were kidnapped away from the village. These my creditors thought that I brought money from our journey, they did not know that it was only sword that I brought. But when I begged them for many hours to give me some days to pay their money, luckily they agreed and then they went back to their houses.
    Within a few days that we had arrived in the village, Aina’s old friend, Babi, heard that she had arrived in the village. She came to greet her and then both of them continued their friendship. Because both of them were loved each other since when they were children. They were wearing the same kind of clothes and were going together to everywhere in the village and to severalother villages as well. They were doing everything so much together that many people who did not know their parents thought that they were twins.

DON’T PAY BAD FOR BAD
    When there is a quarrel the song becomes an allusion. It is the end that shows the winner.
    Excessive jealousy makes a woman to become a witch.
    Fretting precedes weeping; regret follows a mistake; all the brain men of the country assemble but they find no sacrifice which can stop a mistake.
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    Aina and Babi were still going about together until when they became old enough for marriage. But as they loved each other, they decided within themselves to marry to two men of the same family who lived together in the same house, so that they might be with each other always. Luckily, after a few days that they had thought to do so. They heard of two gentlemen who were born by the same mother and father and who lived in the same house as well. So Babi married to one of these two men while Aina, with my consent, married to the second one who was the senior. Now, Babi and Aina were extremely happy as they were together as well in their husbands’ house as when they had not married.
    A few days after their marriage, Aina cleared a part of the front of the house very neatly. She sowed one kola-nut on that spot. Within a few weeks this kola-nut shot out. Then Aina filled up one jar with water and putit in front of her new kola-nut tree. Every early in the morning she would go and kneel down before her tree and the jar. Then she would pray to the kola-nut tree and the jar to help her get baby in time. After the prayer, Aina would drink some of the water which was inside the jar, after that she would go back to her room before the rest people in the house woke. Aina was doing like that every early in the morning. Because she believed that there was a certain spirit who was coming and blessing the kola-nut tree and the water in the jar in the dead night.
    After some months, the kola-nut tree grew up to the height of about two feet. But this time, the animals of the village began to eat the leaves of this new tree and this hindered its growth. One morning Babi met Aina, her friend, as she knelt down quietly before the tree and the jar and she was praying quietly. After she prayed and stood up just to enter the house, Babi asked: “Aina, what were you telling your kola-nut