Steem4Nigeria Accelerator- Story Time || by @predomina

Greetings my fellow community people. This is my first participation in the @steem4nigeria accelerator project for season one. Today is Tuesday which happens to be story time and I'm delighted to present my part of the story today.

A long time ago, there is a land called the land of Iwu in the Eastern part of the River Niger. Iwu is a small village and leaves peaceful with all its people. They have their norms and tradition in the land and as they obey all of these norms and traditions, they grow more in all aspects of life. Something happened on the land where a widow who has only one child was buried alive alongside her child because the little boy stole some foodstuff.

The widow had no farmland and no source of livelihood. The husband's brothers sized everything from her immediately after he died as they claimed that the woman was the cause of their brother's death because she wants to inherit everything. She and her son starve and one day the child stole some foodstuff and the villages took the child and his mother and buried them alive. This is the custom of the people though.

After some months of this incident, the rote of the gods fell on the people of the land because at the dying period of the woman she cried for vengeance and the god's beard her cries. A lot of unpleasant things started happening in the land and the elders started moving up and down searching for a solution but all to no avail. The more the days go by, the more new disaster befall them.

Their farm's products wider away and their livestock started dying and many more calamities started happening in the community. This incident became too unbearable and they went out to a far land to seek for solution. When they came in contact with the chief priest they went to see, he told them to go back to their land and search for a man called Okpoornor, he has the answer to their demands.

Okpoornor is a drunk who no one always takes seriously. Before the burial and death of the widow and her son, he warned the elders about their actions and said that the woman doesn't deserve death but help. They ignored his words and sent him away from the village. At this time no one knows exactly where to find Okpoornor and the earlier they get him the better for them.

The search for Okpoornor began and days run into weeks, weeks run into months and more calamities kept happening in the land. At a point, they got tired and decided to wait for their own time of death too because they couldn't find the young man in question. When all hope was lost, Okpoornor appeared in the village once again and then summons all the elders and asked them to go back and dig out the woman and her child.

The people replied the woman and her child have been buried for months now and they may have completely decayed but he told them that their only solution is to dig them out. The elders summoned the youths and they went and dig out the widow and her child and to their greatest surprise, a woman and her child were still alive.

They then all apologise and asked for the woman and her child's forgiveness the woman also pardons them and they return all that was seized from her and gave her big plots of land to cultivate her farm she was told by the elders in council that anytime she needs help she shouldn't hesitate to tell them. And that is how the peace of the land of Iwu was restored.

Not all those who steal food should be punished, instead of punishing these persons sometimes, we should try to help them by providing food for them and encouraging them to work and earn their living too. I believe that any who steals food is a hungry person and shouldn't for any reason be treated as a criminal.