Letter to the Nigeria that raised me up

Mother, do you recognize my face? See I haven’t changed much. You remember my sheepish smiles. I still wear them. I have tried severally to remind you about who I am but you seem to grow more distant. I swear I’ve changed. I’m older and wiser and stronger. You remember how you shove NTA at me and stuffed all its  contents down my throat. Well, that was what you had at that time and I’m grateful for them. My childhood memories, hang, like my muffler around my neck. I remember Cadbury Breakfast Telly shows and all the cartoons I watched. I doubt you remember watching some of them with me. There was Superted, Fraggle Rock, Muppet Babies, The Little Prince and Jabber Jaw. How will I not speak of Sesame Street, 3-2-1 Contact, Kidi Vision 101 and Voltron. Oh no! there was Doctor Who, Fawlty Towers, Some Mothers Do Have Them, The Adventures of the Famous Five, Rent-a-Ghost, and Behind the Clouds. Little Mama would give me One Naira and Fifty Kobo to buy a loaf of bread so that I could eat as breakfast with Pronto and Dano Milk before going to school the next day. You were not exactly the perfect mother at that time but I wasn’t complaining. Maybe I knew too little to complain. Mama provided my basic needs and I thought she could sustain providence because of your benignity towards her. As little as I was, I was an observant child as well as a keen listener. I didn’t have 2000 channels in my face or the internet tugging at me. I could observe, eavesdrop, relay and remember as young as I was.

A private matter

A private matter

He  started like a preacher. His face, grim and unsmiling. His eyes, narrowed, unfriendly and fixated on nothing but moping at everything. He wore a navy-blue shirt, neatly tucked in a pair of brown cashmere trousers, streaked with black zigzag lines. His belt, brown, broken and bent at the tip held his trousers high, above his abdomen. I couldn’t help but notice the belt-holes around his waist and how they overlapped on top of one another like the tightened tip of a garri sack.

“Treasures appear in subtle packages my dear” Keffi nudged at me. She seemed to knock me out of the climax of my daydream.

“Hmmmm”. I was wondering why she made such statement in this 49-seated-99-standing lorry. The air smelt of roasted fish and tomatoes and sweat and rowdiness.

“That may be your future husband” Keffi chipped in.

“God forbid! Tufiakwa” I retorted, twirling my hands above my head and dusting them over her head. “It’s your portion Keffi. Not mine”

“I already have my darling Kunle” She chuckled.

Yeah right. I giggled. My stomach tightened. I shuddered at the thought. My eyes darted to and fro the preacher’s body and lingered on his chest.

What kind of love or desperation would make someone like me marry a man like this? I thought.

His shirt, faded, missing a button somewhere above the belly. His hair, uncombed, divided like ridges on  a cassava plantation. He had thick upper lips slightly parted by two rabbit-like incisor teeth. He didn’t even have the looks that I wanted in a man. His body structure, small and frail.

Who knows?  He might not even have eaten for days.

Even if he did, by the miracle of the beauty and the beast, have the looks, he certainly lacked the svelte composure that turned me on, the type that Keffi’s fiancé had.

When we GEJ out

You slightly touch your belly. It’s strike day four. Papa’s forehead shines in the distance as he raises his hands.

“Fellow Nigerians”. His voice makes you retch. It is a mixture of Hennessy and hypocrisy.

You bend over and let out soft moans. You can feel Natalie’s eyes on your skin. You feel it every month when you bend like this. Her silence doesn’t annoy you. She is like that.

You feel a grip on your arms. “Madam, hope no problem”. The grip is so tight that you can hardly breathe. You are certain it belongs to a man and you want to sue him for battery. Yeah, battery. Mr. Olajumoke, your torts lecturer mentioned it last December.

“I’m fine. Thanks” you wrench his fists away from your arms without looking up. Your gaze is dim. You can hardly make out your dark brown slippers from the brown sands on the ground. You blink your eyelids and that leeching tear drops.

Who pulled me into this battle? You ask yourself.

Two hands wrap themselves around your breast, pulling you up away from the swirling dust thumped up by the swarm of legs.

Meet me on the other side

Eventide rose and fell as did the chill of the night into the bonfire at the centre of the village square. Chisom pulled me to side and tugged at my wrapper.

“Listen Emeka. You must do it. You don’t have a choice”

The drums were loud, too loud that I could barely hear what he was saying. I only understood what he said by the deep furrows on his face that formed a scowl and how his lips moved as they did in the early afternoon on our way from the farm.

I stared at him deep in the face. “I’m scared. I don’t know yet. Brother I really don’t know”

I was revered by all the young men in the community probably because I was taller than all of them or my big belly and wide shoulders intimidated most of them. No one dared challenge me to duel. The old women will plead with me to pluck some oil palm fruits, for which our village was known whenever I passed by their compound. They would tease me and call me the husband to their unborn children even though they knew my Omalicha, my beautiful one. The King had promised my father that once I became of age and proven myself as a man, I would become the next in command to his chief guard; the second highest position in the Igwe’s palace. My father had long prayed for this day.

“Make me proud my son” He said as he looked into my tear-filled eyes.

I wept for my father had suffered much. He made misery his bed and sorrow his meal ever since he lost his wife to the palms of death.

“Remember papa’s condition”. Chisom’s voice cut through my thoughts.

His eyes were now wearing the hues of the azure moon. He had a slightly diminutive stature but he was my elder brother; the firstborn of the family. I didn’t respect him enough to advise me about how my life should be run. After all, he showed back into our lives few months ago after his two-year marriage with Ify fell apart. He narrated how she had packed her belongings and followed an oyinbo man, for whom she worked as a nanny, to Lagos. If he was man enough, he would have fought to keep her. If he wasn’t a lazy man, he would have known that money exerted more power than muscles.

I joined my peers in the revelry of the night. I could feel the ground move under my feet. Maybe the earth was inebriated by the ogogoro spills from the benevolent fiesta. Maybe it was the joyful stampede of the young men who danced vigorously in anticipation of their individual moments that sent tremors. Maybe it was my fears that were pushing hard on my chest and asking for a wrestling contest.

The pace of the drumbeats changed. My turn had come. Nnenna and I had asked for the Atilogu drumbeat. Time had sped past like a man under lustful chase by a naked madman. Nnenna’s dark eyes glistened red in the blaze of the fire. Her shoulders dropped as she let out a deep breath. I could feel her veins pulsate faster as I led her by hand to the slaughter house.

This Rain

This rain is a downpour.

It drops cats and dogs.

The mice scurry to the pig’s sty.

The gander ogles at the rooster’s droppings.

This rain is an exodus.

Curses dart across the sky,

And immortalize those gluttonous politicians

One tribe makes the bow, another makes the arrows.

This rain is noisy.

The noise is lethal.

Riotous rounds of ammunition are dispersed.

The bushman finds solace in the Eskimo’s igloo.

The Famished Plain (A Poem)

The sculpted frames crawl, crawl

Into thickets of twine and thistle

The sky’s orange eye peers, pries

On the Iroko’s listless shade

Fallen west

The gorillas’ percussions buried

Beneath the Omele and Gangan’s enchantment

Rhythms splash against the gourd’s back

Shielding the palm wine-drunk ground

Belches savouring the seasoned bones of the Impala

As shadows lost under feet, all

The dial points home; eastwards

Identity

I kept silent. I wasn’t weary of repeating the same things, yet I was tired. I gazed into the air like someone without an ambition, but I had so much hope in things that were hard to explain. The harder I tried to explain, the more misunderstood I was.

The sun’s rays looked like rain, as it leaked through the mango canopy that sheltered me.

I looked on and a young boy walked by. He didn’t greet. I launched forward angrily.

“The gods will punish you”.

He was hurried away by a young woman. “Don’t look back” She said “He’s a mad man”. She looked back at me with disgust and threw her hands over her head. I hurled stones after them but they had disappeared too soon.

I returned to my seat. I was angry. I hated them all. They were hypocrites, them – the men. They had snakes knotted over their collars. That was their new identity. I had my tattered Ankara wrapped around my chest in the usual manner. I had retained my uniqueness. I rubbed my backside back-and-forth against the trunk of the tree with half-closed eyes. I enjoyed my tradition. I was loyal to myself and to my community and I was despised for it. No one dared to tell me, but I read it from the way they crossed to the opposite side of the road when I approached and how they took to their heels when I crept up behind them to say good morning. They all knew me, and even told their children about me but I was never a subject of discussion. I didn’t make any sense to them, as did the ambience of their native land; their culture; their hard-fought society.