BANTU IS GONE. TWELVE CHICKS ARE NOT.

There is a way to write this story that makes it bearable, and this newspaper is not going to look for it. Bantu, night watchman of Coop Two, was killed shortly after midnight by the monitor lizard that has been testing our fence line since the start of the wet season. He was doing his job. He had always been doing his job, every night, for years, and most of the Republic never thought about it once.

He heard the grate move before anyone. He gave the alarm, the loud one, the one none of us had ever heard from him, and then he stood in the doorway of Coop Two and stayed there while the chicks went out the far side. All twelve of them got out. The last one out was Small Fẹ́mi, who had gone back for a smaller chick that had frozen, and who does not wish to discuss it.

Sergeant Danladi reached him within a minute, through the gap in the fence rather than around it, which is why he is now on light duties and ignoring them. Pete Okpara arrived seconds later. Neither bird has said very much since.

The Assembly voted to bury him under the mango tree without debate, the only such vote in our history. Sisi Ngozi organised the whole thing in an afternoon by not asking a single committee. Mama Gold spoke. The Chief Justice closed as she always closes: 'Go and share something.' Nobody moved.

The flock now whistles at dusk, which is the sound he used to settle frightened chicks. Half the young birds in this Republic learned to sleep to it. They are teaching it to each other.