Soldier Ants of Correction

The story I'm about to share is a complex one that started a turning point in my life and before I start, bear in mind that I was brought up in the deep villages of Enugu, Nigeria in West Africa and soups were generally spicier there. I will also invite you to have an open mind about the activities that occurred in the story and to know that I was an exceptionally stubborn child that often required drastic measures to affect correction. On that note, I will like to take you back to the beginning of 2004, the year I was all of 11 years and also the year I got it into my head to graduate from stealing pieces of meat from the pot of soup to stealing from my mother’s purse to buy things I couldn't remember today even if it could save a dying baby.

The amount was 50 naira, less than 50 cents in dollar value, the location was my mother’s purse and the day was a Friday. Mom had called me and my two siblings and invited us all to kneel down before she started the interrogation just minutes after coming back from school. We hadn’t even had lunch. She wanted to know who took the money from her purse. No one knew it was I and I had no honour to compel me to confess even when she promised forgiveness if anyone wants to come forward. I knew my mother better than that so I stayed quiet. When she started whipping my innocent elder sister with the new cane she just bought from the market that very day, I still held my silence. The cane was still fresh, shiny and sleek.

My elder sister swore her innocence on the grave of my dead grandmother as she received five strokes of the cane from mum in between tears of a broken heart for she was indeed innocent. Mum was a teacher. She had mastered the art of flogging for a long duration of time and how best to preserve her energy when doing group punishment like she was today. In no time it was my turn to be flogged and I must confess my crying was a tad exaggerated and deep down to my doom, I knew mum was just warming up and that, thoroughly chilled my spine. My younger sister looked at my mother with such sorrow of betrayal in her eyes after mom finished giving her the share of the fifteen strokes but mom wasn't moved. It felt like she had locked away her heart before starting her version of the Spanish Inquisition.

She started another round of negotiation after that by saying, "I can do this all day. The next round is going to be tripled but if the culprit should speak up now, we can just forget everything. I just want to know who did it so I can know who to pray for God to forgive so just tell me who did it."

We all started pleading with each other to say the truth and shame the devil as the saying went. My mom had used the strategy before to fish out the offender in our household by promising to forgive them but she never held her end of the bargain as she would always most certainly administer punishment to the offender. I didn't want to fall prey to it again but I also didn't want my siblings to be punished for doing nothing. Besides, there might be a chance in hell that she might forgive me, a very slim Victoria secret model chance.

So I spoke up. I did not think anyone could have predicted what would happen to me next. I have been flogged uncountable consecutive number of times before, sometimes with a cane, wires or whatever object was handy but today, mom invoked the wrath of the Titans. It happened in series. She first told us to go get lunch, me and my sisters so we did. Even though she released us from the immediate punishment, we all knew better. I could see the pity and sadness in my sisters' eyes. We could tell it was the eerie calm before the storm and that I was in the eye of the storm.

We ate leftovers from yesterday but I could neither taste the food nor smell it. I wanted to know where mom had disappeared to because I hadn’t seen her since you released us. I was on edge like I was sitting on a mountain of gun powder and everyone around me was playing with fire.

The next on the series of events was the yard invitation. About three hours after supper, mom called me to the yard. There, she commanded me to remove my clothes and strip down to just my seven coloured panties. It was at this juncture the fear of the Holy Spirit invaded my body and I started begging for mercy as I remove the clothes I had layered in preparation for an old-fashioned ass-whooping. But that wasn’t my portion today. I knew removing cloth meant she was going to be inventive with her punishment. Been asked to strip naked meant there was an 80% chance one could get ground hot chilli pepper, the hottest of them all, thrown all over their body. It was the most dreaded punishment and I have never been a recipient of that. That was because it wasn’t famous in our household like it was for other kids in my school. I must’ve really pushed my mom to her limit, I decided as a cried and promised all kinds of repentance if she would only let me go.

The next event was a command from her for me to lie on the cement floor with my face down much as they do with the black man in American when they are pulled over for a broken tail light. I complied. My whole body was already shivering with fear at the thought of what was to come. My tears were also endless and overflowing. I put my face between my hands and prayed in my heart. I prayed and beg God to grant her a change of mind and the ability to instantly forgive me.

After a few minutes, I felt the slimy wetness of the ground-up pepper she poured on my back then on my head, my ass and all over my legs. I could smell the hotness of the pepper and I closed my eyes and locked my legs together to prevent the liquid from going inside them because I knew if that were to happen, the pain would be multiplied but I also knew it was inevitable. I was just delaying fate.

The next event of the series was one I could never have fathomed. As kids, we have heard rumours of such parental extreme punishment but we have always dismissed it as myths and legends believing our parents loved us enough to not scar us in such a fashion in the name of correction. It was the torture of many ants, Fire red ants to be precise. They were locally called soldier ants because of their relentlessness in inflicting pain when provoked and because they would rather die than let go of whatever they were biting.

Remember I told you these events took place in the village. In this village, we had trees like mangos and cashew trees that have been afflicted with these fire red ants. They attack the trees and eat all the green leaves until they look like they have suffered a bitter, cold Canadian winter. As children, we knew to avoid these trees as the ants were known to be vicious if one should encounter them.

I had once mistakenly climbed a cashew tree I didn’t know had fire ants on them. When they had attacked me, in my hurry to get down from the tree, I had lost my grip and fell more than 10 feet to the ground, dislocated a shoulder and I was grateful, very grateful for the fall. They were called soldier ants because if one should bite you, they never let go. The only way to get it off your skin would be to detach the head from the body. They die for the cause much like soldiers.

It was these very ants my mom used. She had somehow procured some cashew branches that had hundreds of Soldier ants on them and she placed them without warning on my naked back that was already frying from the peppers she had poured all over. Because I was facing down with my eyes closed, I didn’t see it coming but I felt the fiery bites of what felt like millions of ants. At once, I rolled onto my back and screamed bloody murder on top of my voice, telling her she was killing me in my local language. I started rubbing my back on the floor in a hopeless effort to dislodge the ants that were already latched onto my skin in different locations.

The following happened in this order;

 I open my legs and eyes to roll over instinctively and that allow the peppered water to get into them causing me excruciating pain.

 I scrubbed my back on the jagged cement floor to remove the ants that would nibbling away at my skin. I did remove most of them but I ended up with multiple skin cuts on my body.

 I got pepper in the bloody skin cuts and in other places there shouldn’t be pepper.

It was at this point that mom started flogging me in earnest what a long cable wire from our old broken TV. You would expect me to pass out from the pain because the pain was blinding indeed right? I didn’t. I have never had the good sense to faint when survival required it so I screamed, cried and begged with my eyes closed as mom flogged me with a rage that would have done the devil proud.

As she did that she said, “This will make you a better person. This will teach you to never steal what doesn’t belong to you. This will make you know not to reap what you did not sow. this will teach you basic human honesty and decency. This will teach you not to inflict suffering on your fellow human beings especially your sisters. This is for you to learn, that is if I don’t kill you today.”

She punctuated each syllable with the crack of the wire on any part of my body open to her which was all of them. I had my eyes closed so I could not see where the lashes were coming from to defend against it. It felt like I was being punished by an Avenging spirit invisible to me. I ended up curling myself into a protective ball on the floor, trying to get words of pleading past my raspy and peppered lips and throat.

The neighbours heard my endless screams along with my sisters’ whom I later found out were crying for me. The neighbours rushed over to our house. They were the ones who forcefully pulled my mom away from me as she swore she already made an appointment with my maker that I had to honour.

“Let me kill her. I gave birth to her through my vagina and I tend to kill her with my bare hands before she turns into an armed robber or a prostitute. Not in my house and over my dead body,” she proclaimed as two elderly women had to pry her away from me.

My two sisters immediately poured buckets of cold water on my cooking body and hurriedly started removing the heads of the fire ants still stock to different parts of my body refusing to let go. After the storm was over and mom was calm, she was the one who gave me a warm bath and cleaned up my wound, all the while telling me why she had to do it.

This is where I will conclude the story.

Now back to what I said at the beginning. I had invited you to keep an open mind and I hope you have kept one. I will admit it was a very traumatic experience having to go through that but since that fateful day I haven’t stolen anything that didn’t belong to me and I believe her actions taught me Honour, honesty, integrity and human decency. I believe that punishment made me a better person but I am not grateful that it had happened. Today, being a mother myself, I know there are a 1 million better ways she could have used to correct me without inflicted that level of emotional and physical pain but believe it contributed to shaping me into the human being I am today and I am proud and happy with that person. So is my mother.

That is why to me, she was and still is a boss mom. She thought me all the values I know today, every little decision I make today is somehow influenced by her even though she is continents away from me now. She is a boss mom and she teaches and guides even when she is not present.

The end