After God created the heavens and the earth, He rested.

Who does that?

What happened to the press conference to broadcast His Herculean task? Where were photographers and the army of bloggers to share six million photos and videos and gloat? Where were the six pretty girls to help Him cut the ceremonial tape and – oh yeah! –  plant a commemorative Markhamia lutea tree seedling that would shrivel in a week?

Wasn’t God aware that even a rickety wooden footbridge must be launched? That merely handing over a pit latrine built with taxpayers’ money calls for the mother of bashes, you know, pubescent girls in sisal skirts wriggling little waists for the Big Man? And yet He just rested, like He had done nothing. Good Lord!

Unsurprisingly, after He created Adam and Eve, no mean task if you are familiar with Cell Biology, He read them the riot act and quietly retreated upstairs for a nice cup of tea seasoned with milk and honey. I presume to watch the two fools turn His architectural masterpiece into a deforested slum, a concrete jungle, and a fetid swamp crawling with plastic waste. Which they damn well did.

He was fortunate, though, being single and all. Had there been a spouse, the day would have ended on a sour note. Why, she would have cried, were the clouds boringly white and blue? Why not winter white, cobalt blue, or emerald green? Couldn’t He have given the clouds a dash of rose pink or eggplant purple, and expanded the skies just a wee little bit? To create more space and light? And what was HE thinking, dragging in skunks and baboons? “Get them stinky and hairy things out of MY house right this moment, Yehova, and that ugly owl and that hyena with its funny, short legs, too!”

And so, the next morning, Yahwe would have been up at the crack of dawn, in gumboots no less, sleepily painting strange hues into the sky and shoeing skunks, baboons, hyenas and owls out of the way. “How the hell did I get myself into this mess?”

But He knew in His wisdom to duck that bullet mighty smartly. Unfortunately, He only whispered that wisdom to his most beloved son, Jesus Christ, and to a handful of great men like the Apostle John, Prophet Jeremiah and John the Baptist. Yet, amusingly, no man is more scorned than the layabout who dies without procreating or putting a woman in the house.

God, of course, knew that the young, beautiful couple He created in His own image and their progeny would be up to no good. But as the billions of suffering parents who followed would learn, there is only so much one can do with children. When you warn them not to lick sugar, they lick the sugary stuff by the bucketful. If you wag a finger in their faces and warn them to never, ever smoke weed or set a school dormitory on fire, they suck marijuana into their lungs with a hosepipe and torch the school library as well.   

Knowing Satan, he most likely advised God to whip Adam and Eve a good one.

“You are blinded by love, but I see great evil in those two. If you spare the rod, old friend, you will spoil the child,” he warned.

But the Creator instinctively knew that would be a waste of time.  As time would demonstrate, corporal punishment, or the rod if you may – and counselling – are ineffectual when certain children mysteriously develop a trouble-causing worm in their brains. They will swallow intoxicants, stick syringes into the veins, bum, fight and drop out of school, wander into crime and seek death, sex and its diseases with a vengeance. You will cry, curse, whip them, call the police, take them to the witchdoctor, and it will do you and them no good.

In the years that followed, God would visit incredible violence and pestilence upon belligerent tribes and hard-headed people again and again. He would dispatch fearsome prophets to warn troublemakers of impending doom if they didn’t change their ways. But the moment He turned, the fools would be wailing like savages and genuflecting to nonsensical gods. My God!

So even as He sipped tea and beheld the stupendous vista He had created, He sighed. For He’d already discerned in Adam's loins and Eve’s womb the seed that would spurt Cain, Lot, Hitler and a host of scoundrels who would do everything in their power to torch the world.

He knew, too, that in thousands of years to come, single mothers would be blamed for all the silly things children do. The silliness amused and irritated him because he knew women would raise Jesus, Timothy, Ishmael, Moses, and Barack Obama into giants of men. He understood that His children would crave a scapegoat to blame for their stupidity, and all the things they were too lazy or too stupid to comprehend. So, He lovingly gave them hundreds of things to blame, including Satan, the G.O.A.T of scapegoats, single mothers and witchcraft.

Anyway, back to Day One of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. The Garden was like a brand-new house, so they had to figure out what worked and what didn’t. The two shared a language, but like a couple on their first date or kids on the first day of boarding school, they barely conversed, having no history and no past. Nothing made sense, so I guess they just stared at each other.

Darkness settled upon Eden, but because Cain was yet to be born and carnivores were still too proud to eat prey that could barely run, Adam wasn't bothered about the dark enough to fashion a knobkerrie to protect his nuts, which, by the way, were, so far, his only assets. Not that he was aware of the fact. Still, it must have bothered him that he could barely see, a rare observation with which Eve would forever agree.

At midnight, he looked at Eve and said, "Something strange is going on. My body feels weird, and my eyes… they are strangely heavy…"

Adam didn’t know it, but he was experiencing cold and sleep for the first time. It would be a long night, seeing as the two hadn’t discovered fire or a knife for skinning animals for duvets. They weren’t even aware that they arrived fully loaded either – him with a charger and her with an amazing charging port, gizmos programmed to reboot in seconds.

Still, Adam had the sense to find a cave and kick out the two frogs mating in the corner – not that he knew what they were doing, slow learner that he was.

At 4a.m, just before cockerels inexplicably found themselves crowing, Eve dug an elbow into his ribs. “Adam? Are you awake? Wake up, Adam! There are crawlies all over my bottom!” Adam yawned, turned, lazily stretched out an arm and patted her bottom. Finding nothing, he turned and drifted back to sleep. The fool!

As first dates go, theirs was a disaster – poor conversation, no drinks, no dinner, no kisses. Had it not been a union forged in heaven, and if Eve had a choice, the two would have parted at daybreak. 

In the morning, however, she dutifully gathered fruit, and they ate. Adam then sauntered behind some bushes to relieve himself, after which he instinctively reached forward for a fistful of leaves to wipe himself clean.

God smiled.

“Many times, my son,” He intoned, “You will want to remedy things – clean the slate – with the best of intentions, but only end up reaching for the stinging nettle.” Aristotle, the later-day Greek philosopher, would argue in a million years that in that memorable thought, God succinctly encapsulated elective politics.

Anyhow. Seconds later, Adam shrieked and popped out of the bushes, walking funny. Eve gave him “the look”.

“Where have you been?”

And so, the die was cast.

‍