The big clock in the sitting room struck six. It was still dark outside but Taye had started to clean the living room and put the place in order.
The first thing he did was to gather the previous day's papers which were scattered all over the place and arrange them neatly on top of the heap of old papers at the store.
Taye leafed through some of the papers before putting them away though.
Alas, it was a big surprise to him to come face to face with his erstwhile sweet heart Bose on the page of the Sunday paper. In the photograph, Bose posed with one of her brothers who was among the conquering young Nigerians who made history by bringing the junior world cup to Nigeria having won the maiden edition of the FIFA organised competition in China.
He stared at her for a long time. Taye saw again the beautiful long black hair of Bose which almost reached down the middle of her back. She was wearing a skirt and blouse and a small hat. The picture showed Bose, all smiles, congratulating the Golden Eaglet in a warm handshake.
Bose was quoted in the story accompanying the picture saying, "What delighted me and a lot of fellow Nigerians, I'm sure, is the news that by being the first to win the cup, they have automatically qualified to enter the Guinness Book of Records. I'm not a soccer enthusiast but I know that each of their names and their coaches' names will be immortalised because of the team's record breaking achievement. What is more, my blood was part of those that brought the honour to my country".
Bose would surely be in Kano now holidaying, Taye reminded himself and the thought that he did not send a seasonal card to reciprocate the success card which she sent to him a couple of weeks back was now troubling him.
He picked the newspaper and returned to the bedroom he shared with his male siblings.
The voice of his old man and the knock on the door of the Boys' room snapped Taye from deep thought and he rushed to answer his father. Chief
Oluwole walked past Taye into the room and stopped by the double decker bed of the little ones still sleeping, before sitting on Taye's single bed.
"Today, you shall start to accompany me to Riga Chikun office again. Get ready in time and prepare for the harmattan".
As soon as his dad left the room, Taye entered the bathroom for his usual antidote against harmattan which is a cold shower. Back in his room, Taye applied a lot of cream to his face and hands.and the other parts including his head.
He put on a cotton singlet and pant, then, a silk long-sleeve shirt on top of which he wore a faded blue levi's long-sleeve jacket and trousers. The jeans once belonged to his old man but now they were his. Taye also wore a pair of thick cotton socks which reached almost his knees. He completed his dressing with a pair of shoes that had rubber soles, a sweater cap that covered up to his ears and he hung the pair of gloves his journalist uncle gave him with his trousers' belt.
Taye cut the picture of an Eskimo as he sat beside his father in the car. He waved to his mother, brothers and sister farewell as they stood in the doorway waving back as the car drove off while Chief and son immediately rolled up the side glasses to shut the chilly harmattan wind.
Riga Chikun, an outpost of Kaduna, a village which used to be a few kilometers outside the capital city of Kaduna State, on Zaria road but now it had become the outskirt of Kaduna. As they drove on, Taye noticed that it was not easy to distinguish which cars or even the trucks or trailers that had air conditioners, as they all rolled up their side glasses. He called his father's attention to this.
"Yes, everybody must roll up in this harsh weather because apart from the cold, the dust is dangerous to health", Chief educated him sort of.
"May be that's why flu and catarrh are common at this time of the year", Taye added. The old man nodded.
The car trafficated as it came to the Billboard announcing Oluwole Farm Enterprises.The road forked into two, the wider one branching off to the right goes to the dam while the other, narrowed towards the left sloping about two hundred meters towards the massive gate of Oluwole Farm Enterprises.
The farm had an aquatic orientation as it fell along the distribution channel of a nearby dam. Taye had not come to the farm since the incident which earned him a suspension.
"You are suspended from this farm forthwith", Chief had ordered. Taye had earned the suspension order during the second term holidays of the previous year when he insulted a labourer working on the farm and until this chilly morning it had been a year and seven months.
Taye called first at the piggery section and quickly asked the supervisor whether he had any of the day's papers. "Yes", answered the elderly man who stood up and called for the papers and one of the girls working under him came wiping something from the edge of the newspaper. She handed it over to her boss with courtesy.Taye was delighted because the man had the very newspaper he wanted and went along to join his father in the old man's office clogging to the daily..
" Is that you, Taye?", Chief said as his son came into the office. "Where have you being?", Taye's heartbeat began to race but managed a reply.
"Um um yes sir, in the piggery". The man did not hear him well before issuing orders to Taye
"Now, go and report at the ranch office, my dear or do you want to say something?" Allowing Taye to make a choice if he chose to but the boy gladly smiled all the way to the ranch office.
The cowshed as workers on the farm referred to the ranch office is actually, an abattoir. It is the place where the beef served at the elite clubs and major hotels and other hospitality facilities in Kaduna were slaughtered. Oluwole Farms supplied all the supermarkets in the town such as, the Kingsway stores situated within the Government Reservation Area and the Leventis Stores down in Kaduna South. Chief beef brand was well known around town.
From the books, Taye learnt that his old man had won more customers from outside Kaduna city. Names of Hotels, Guest Houses and Restaurants in Zaira, Kastina and Kano are now in the accounts ledger.
All Taye did on his first visit to the farm after a long break since his suspension, was to go over what had transpired during his absence.
At break time, he joined the others for launch at the farm house canteen where the mid-day meal was always served at the expense of the farm. Taye's father believed that it was a right, rather than a privilege for the workers to have one free meal on the farm every day. Anyway, if you knew the size of the farm, you would ask why didn't the owner give his workers two square meals.
Twenty hectares were effectively occupied by grains and animal husbandry in the completely mechanised farm. Annually on the average, the farm produced over one million yam tubers, hundreds of thousand tonnes of tomatoes processed into puree, 50,000 heads of cattle from which fresh milk and beef were produced, 200,000 metric tonnes of maize feeding the poultry feed mill on the farm and 400,000 metric tonnes of bagged de-stoned rice, vegetables all year round as well as pepper and onions.
It was not until after the mid-day meal that Taye had time to read through the paper he collected from the piggery department.
Taye new love for newspapers was in the hope of seeing Bose again. Although the papers continued to give coverage to the world beater Nigerian football squad, not one photograph of the squad's relatives appeared again.