Amende: The Stream Water

"Amende is a tale based on a dual process of repair: one by Nature and the other by human beings. From the outset, the title and the subtitle suggest us this two-fold interpretation. Amende, the name of the young protagonist, is drawn from the stream water, as his dying mother reveals to Etusi, the old woman who later became both mother and father to him. The word "Amende" equally echoes back to the English verb "to amend", which means "to remediate", "to reform" and "to rectify". As the rain, after months of drought, finally comes as a blessing for the village and its survival, so does the return of Ikpea from an unjust exile take the community to mend its faults, to plant and to harvest as it has always done, overcoming the feelings of guilt, and to make peace with the ancestors.

The impression of these two events are strictly connected and transpires from the first lines of the story: "the noise" at the village square, coming from the inhabitants of Okpujie village who were returning home in the evening: someone murmuring that the lack of rain would be a punishment from the gods for their wrong doings and some others claiming that it could be the work of some evil people among them." -Cadigia Hassan A Journalist and Cultural Mediator, Padova, Italy