Lust for the Wilds

It was 6:30pm and I heard the Sun knock on my bamboo door. She was on her way back home and wanted to say goodnight to her dear friend, who was visiting Soku Island for the first time.

“Just a minute,” I muttered while loosening the latch on my rickety door.

As it opened, my visitor greeted me with a million hugs of violet-clad skies, pillowed with broad strips of gold and yellow, resting gracefully on a gentle skyline of shadowed low mangroves. A reflexive smile drew on my lips; and so special I felt, because such a visit as this a man may never receive even though a hundred years he lives.

On barefoot, I stepped out of my shack of bamboo, jute and palm-frond roof, and the soft white sands of Soku met my feet with a charming embrace. As my eyes adjusted to the sweet solar radiance, I began to make out the scene on the street and down to the waterside. It was a sight I did not want to miss. To the locals, it was nothing new, but to an outsider- a city dweller, it is a rare and special treat to a rustic paradise.

A group of fishermen who had just arrived from the creeks were strolling in happily, with big sacs of fish in one hand or shoulder, and bunches of plantain or strings of stacked crabs in the other. Some children ran anxiously to them, shouting ecstatically as they jumped and tugged at the loads. "Make I carry am papa, I fit carry am papa" (Let me carry it papa, I can carry it papa). So glad they were, to see their fathers return from the creeks with bounties of the day's catch. This sure promised a dinner of favourite delicacies for them.

The setting Sun slipped into her night gown of romantic crimson and said “good bye” with a smooth descent beneath the now-sleepy skyline. The creek waters glistened with sweet solar fire, exuding an unspeakable aura of beauty and elegance. I had always heard that such sights as these existed here, in these mazy creeks and bullet-ridden Islands of our own Niger Delta.

I leaned on my door frame and with these scenes I got enraptured in a binding cloud of wonder and admiration.

That night, as the flames of the village burn fire soared into the dark skies and fell upon the gentle creeks and mangrove trees, I sat by the shores and marveled at its awe, enthralled by its sweet loveliness- all these you cannot but adore. This is Soku, a small Island locked away in the ‘middle of no-where’- one hour from Abonema town and one hour to the Atlantic Ocean, in Rivers State, South-South Nigeria.