Part 37

Ibinabo appeared to have arrived at the time the negotiations ended. She picked up the pestle that was lying on the hardened mud caked floor on the corridor to Madam Jolie’s kitchen. The kitchen to the building was an extension of the main building. It was a small doorless hut constructed with corrugated zinc sheets, built to keep most of the sun and rain away. Ibinabo placed the pestle, she had picked up, against the wall of the detached hut. The smell of kerosene burning with hot flames on the stoves had become apparent. Madam Jolie had not gone out yet as earlier anticipated. The corrugated sheets that were the walls of the kitchen were rusty brown, and black from the smoke that bellowed from the firewood Madam Jolie had once used to prepare her meals.