Opinion

By Stephen Wang

“THE world does not owe you anything, in fact you owe the universe your life.”

I didn’t coin the phrase, I only live by the rules it handed down to life’s little subjects like you and me. I don’t know something about everything, but I know something that matters, I owed our school that “something.” Perhaps the word is “victory!” It meant everything. To them, to me, and to everyone on our side. I knew the smell of it, and the feel of it. It even had a familiar taste!

The claps were loud as I stepped on stage, this was my last life-line. The margin for error was thin, much thinner than the sharp edge of a Tiger-Head razor blade. I wasn’t on “who wants to be a millionaire,” trying to earn big. I was only hoping to pull the heart strings of the two judges towards my point of view, and earn my school some bragging rights. I immediately sank my teeth into the depths of the topic with a searing conviction.

“Poverty is like a black hole that pulls its victims in and swallows them whole, or a predator that preys upon the weak and vulnerable, forcing them to live a life of strife and struggle, while wrapping circles around them, circles that persist when no attempt is made to shake oneself free. It has killed more people than any disease or single event in history. It is the reason so many are killed by diseases and even wars. Many have struggled to break its deadly yokes, but escaping its clutches can only be achieved by few among the many who try; as so many who try will fall by the wayside, eaten away by poverty itself or any of its underlying effects. It is the perfect symbol of everything that screams out fix me; and an avatar for that which was wrong with the world yesterday, as-well-as that which is wrong with the world today.”

That was my closing argument in a debate organized by our school principal, against the only other school in our village. An event that happened a long time ago, and yet still feels fresh in my memory like it was yesterday. I was in JSS – 3 back then, representing the junior section in a debate where I had to defend the notion that said, “poverty was the most dangerous disease ever, as opposed to the notion that says tropical diseases like malaria and typhoid were more dangerous.”

My closing argument was a slam-dunk finish that clinched the winning prize for our school. I immediately went from an unknown quantity to a mini-celebrity in the eyes of both the students and teachers, almost everyone in school now knew my name, and I couldn’t walk around without hearing someone scream it. I felt like an Olympic gold medalist standing on the podium of victory, with the wind behind my back and the ground beneath my feet. If this were a barometer for measuring progress, it will show the world that I was above the clouds and beyond the moon, it will also show that I was heading for the stars with my wings floating in the sweet breeze of the outer space’s limitlessness, a space that was out there for the taking.

This in fact was a wide open invitation for world conquest with my name boldly written on it. I had read the memo from front to back, and from the depths of my heart and in my head I quietly screamed out, “accepted!”

There is that tiny little silver lining about poverty when one remembers Mathew 19: 24, the Bible verse that says, “It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to make it into the Kingdom of God.” I have always used that verse to remind myself that we are way smaller than camels, but we may never pass through the eye of a needle, or even cross-over the bridge that takes you to the other side, an earthly heaven where they say all the milk and honey flows, and all your dreams turn to gold. I knew it was meant to bring joy to the poor, but the irony of that verse oozed from our pastor, he was a rich man who was not afraid of quoting it time and time again.

My journey began many years ago, it is a journey of emotions that echo like a cauldron of bats in a distant dark cave, so far away from civilization that it squeezes every little light and hope out of you like a python squeezes the breath out of its prey.

I was a class topper right from my JSS – 1, a student who brought home a result made of A’s and B’s, I had never gotten a pass on my result sheet, not to mention a fail. My teachers all tipped me for greatness, a place right at the very top of whatever career I eventually set my mind to pursue. I fell head-over-heels for Law, as the idea of defending the weak and defenceless appealed to my inner self more than anything else. I was a self-starter, who was tailor made for such a profession, and one of the best debaters in school. So-much-so that my literature teacher once put a comment on my result sheet that said, “She will make a good lawyer!” He even had a line with my name in it, which was meant for whenever the class turned rambunctious. More often than not, he nonchalantly blurted out the words, “just keep making noise, all of you will cry later in my test, except for Gift who has the brains of Albert Einstein and Stephen Hawking sewn together and squeezed into her pint sized cranium!”

The popular joke in class was that whenever he uttered those words, his mouth will move like that of the old beggar who sat at the village market gate on market days, chewing his bitter kola as he watched the goings and comings with a keen interest that betrayed the fact that he wasn’t paid to do such a thing, in fact he wasn’t even paid to do anything other than beg for alms. The way his mouth looked or how he sounded whenever he was warning the class never bothered me for once; all that mattered was that he always said I had the brain of two accomplished geniuses within a sentence.

The jealousy and envy in the eyes of my two seat mates was always evident. They always laughed and whispered a sarcastic, “na so!”

A tacit reply to our teacher, stressing the fact that they were unhappy that I was always the recipient of his praises. My reply as always, was a well-tailored cliché.

“If e dey pain wunna, make wunna go hug transformer!”

That reply often inspired a reply from the “Axis of Evil,” which always came in form of a pernicious insult.

Na your Mama! In fact ehhhhn! Na your Papa go hug that transformer!

Such pull-me-down attitude only served as fuel to a fire burning deep within my soul, “I was on a first class flight in my journey towards greatness, and nothing could kill my joy!”

It seemed like all that remained for me was to keep working hard, but what awaited me was much more than I could ever have imagined, tragedy landed a fierce punch that hit me below the belt. Mum was on her way to a weekly market that took place on Friday, when a petrol tanker driver lost control of his vehicle and crushed the taxi she had boarded, it was a devastating accident that killed every passenger on the spot, burning them beyond recognition and turning me into an “orphan,” overnight. It felt like a debt was forcefully collected, as the best thing I had was taken away from me by the “universe,” all within the blink of an eye. It also felt like we were all on a line, waiting to be slaughtered under a guillotine.

The single question I kept asking myself for days and days was, “Who is next?” And I hated the answers that kept floating in my head!

Grandma was now the only person left to take care of me. Dad had passed away in mysterious circumstances, just three months after I was born, Mum and Grandma had taken care of me since then. He was an infamous drunkard who was well known in the village for drinking like a fish. If you were looking for a poster child for the word drunkard, or wanted to know the damages drinking could do to a person, he was the reference point.

Grandma always talked about how, “He will often drown himself in a locally made brew popularly called Burukutu, which he always mixed with a homemade Jin called Ogogoro, until his legs were weak and shaky like a new-born calf, and on occasions when his fellow drunkards were too drunk themselves to bring him home, he will crawl like a lizard, or stagger himself to unexpected places like peoples’ front yards and sleep-off the rest of such nights in the open.”

It was on one of such occasions that he was left lying in the bushes, asphyxiated, stabbed and macheted multiple times by unknown assailants, who had disposed him there like some garbage-bag. He was found the next morning by a passer-by who drew the attention of other people to the presence of his severely mutilated corpse, lying in a pool of his own blood, with his tongue, toes, and fingers cut off and taken away by suspected ritual killers. His behavioural maladjustment had turned into a lifestyle that opened up a vacuum; of which his untimely and unexpected death stretched further, creating a gaping hole; as all hopes of him turning a new leaf were now gone with the wind.

As Mum had once sadly put it, “everyone has a weakness, but he had taken that saying to a catastrophic degree, his own weaknesses stood out and were out in the open for the whole world to see, which made it clear to everyone that he was simply a man who was unafraid of death and yet so afraid to live.”

This was a very sensitive issue and I knew it. The expression on her face, her body language, and her eyes always showed it. I couldn’t contain an uncontainable urge to say something, or rather, to ask a question on that occasion.

“I do not understand a lot of things about him.” I mumbled! “But the most disturbing one was the fact that people always referred to him as a useless drunkard, whose wayward ways and careless lifestyle brought shame to the family, as if to say he was a total no-good.”

“That is not true!” she replied. “You must understand that he was a good man who had his bad side like anyone else, yes he could have avoided certain pitfalls, yes he lost his way in a world full of endless distractions, but he loved his family and was full of promise when he was just a little older than you are.”

“How old was he when he began to change?” I asked! “And what caused such a strange change?”

“That is not a thought worth bothering yourself about at the moment, you will understand things better when you get older and wiser.” Her voice encapsulated a type of pain that could only be understood through experience. “Maybe he simply failed at some easy things while succeeding at some difficult ones.” She said. “But treating his story as a manual on ‘how to avoid certain mistakes’ is one way you can right his wrongs.”

Her words were a source of strength. Maybe my purpose on this planet was to right his wrongs. Maybe I was supposed to use his story as a manual on how to avoid certain mistakes. Those words always echoed in my ears when I needed them.

Despite being drenched under a canopy of despair and acquiescence caused by his demise, she did not throw in the towel; she knew she had to pick herself up in order to keep things together. She had always performed her duties ubiquitously, with a tremendous amount of determination, and a knowledge that she was not only a mother to me; she also had to play the role of a father to a little girl who needed her to be a calming and stabilizing influence, as-well-as a shield that provided emotional stability and discipline whenever the need arose. In just a little over a year after Mum’s death, it had become clear that Grandma did not have the wherewithal to cope with paying my fees as well as the feeding and clothing expenses involved in catering for a girl of my age. A meal a day was difficult to come-by, and the daily subject of our obsession became, “where to get the next meal!”

A very fat sweat soaked man sat at the driver’s side of an ash coloured vehicle, the door was ajar with his torso leaning half-heartedly as I approached, his oversized head looked almost too wide for a normal body, and his squinted eyes spoke about struggles. He was a unique specimen. I squeezed myself into the front seat of the crumbling old taxi, in-between a passenger and our driver. The sun was hot, it felt like a hot pot was pressing against the middle of my head. The wind was in a state of suspended animation, there was a suffocating smell of petrol in the air.

The seats torn and dirty, with foams and sharp steel wires hanging out from every direction of the seats and door panels. The doors had no handles for opening them in case the need for an emergency exit emerged out of the blues. It was a death trap, something similar to being strapped on an electric chair with the death switch waiting to be flipped.

The taxi was a hybrid, nothing like those fancy Tesla electric-cars that looked like some sleek flying machines, or one of those amphibious vehicles. It was hybrid in the sense that it was a mix between two different brands, the back side of the car was clearly a Volkswagen with its name boldly stamped on the lower right hand side of the trunk, while the front was a Renault with its logo still attached to the grill, the two seemed to be in an ugly marriage of convenience which must have been presided over by a drunk welder and his tools, one could only wonder what type of necessity inspired such a union, a fabrication which even the mother of all inventions herself could not in any way be proud about.

Even before the moment came, a strong desire grew stronger. I waited for the day to break with two open eyes, the feeling of excitement had given way to an anxiety that slowly crept into my whole body; I could feel my hands shaking and my heart beating rapidly. Every second seemed like an hour, and every single moment began to slowly freeze into a web of my unquenchable anxiety. It was a long wait, we eventually gathered all our baggage in one place, and as we kept them in front of the house in preparation for the take-off, my Aunt and Grandma sat on a mat under the mango tree in our front yard for more than thirty minutes, they talked about why I had to be taken to the city, and how going there will be much better for me. They spoke about these things as if they hadn’t spoken about them on the phone so many times, my Aunt talked about how I was going to be a professional hair dresser very soon, the type that worked in a professional beauty salon; and not the amateur village ones that sat on stools and waited for customers on market days, as if to announce the fact that their lives totally depended on it.

I was glad, this was an opportunity for me to banish any chance of being accidentally enveloped by the typical “village-girl stereotype,” which included a list of things such as dropping out of school, aimlessly wandering the village, and jumping in and out of bed in a one boyfriend after the other pattern (the type that was referred to as “a one boyfriend per week girl”). A routine that could easily make an unexpected pregnancy jump out of its hiding place to forcefully knock down the door and drag the inexperienced would-be mother into an early marriage. A fate that had befallen so many promising young girls in the village. A cycle that had perpetuated itself over and over again, so-much-so that it now seemed like an aimless lab experiment, or a well forecasted natural disaster, that was waiting to happen. I didn’t want to be among the hopeless guinea-pigs in such a dirty experiment, and I thanked my stars that I wouldn’t be a living proof of such a derailment of dreams.

Mum will definitely roll in her grave if my life made such a disastrous turn in the midst of all the other disasters fate had thrown on my frail and tiny shoulders.

Despite being totally soaked in anxiety, I slept all through the journey, until the loud and cranky voice of our driver hit me in the middle of my tranquil-sleep like the creaky sound of a vintage alarm clock from the 80’s. I woke up to the chaotic sounds of roadside touts, car horns, and flashes of headlights from oncoming vehicles, which all coincided with the harsh sound of a forceful opening of the car door by one of the passengers’.

The driver immediately jumped out of the car and screamed in Pidgin-English.

“Fine ghe! We don reach oooh!”

We reached the neighbourhood exhausted and tired, it was a place called Angwan Rukuba. A thick blanket of darkness greeted our arrival. Poverty lived here, and you didn’t need eyes to know that these living conditions made a mockery of the popular theory that said, “Nigeria was the most prosperous black nation in the world!”

It was certainly a statement full of self-deceit and braggadocios pride in this venue.

We were welcomed by an overbearing stench of gutters that serenaded the whole place with a smell of urine and faeces, we groped our way through a mixture of effluvia that could suffocate a new born baby to death. This was clearly a “haven” for deadly, crawling, flying and biting vectors with a love for dancing on a stage designed and fuelled by the crippling and debilitating sounds and smells of poverty. I knew that people from a place like this had to work twice as hard in order to make it, and since progress itself had a lot to do with embracing the obstacles that came with uncertainty, I was going to go through its dark tunnel with the hope of coming out at the other side a finished article.

As time continued to flap its wide wings from east to west, I sank neck deep into my apprenticeship work. My life was now a bubble that routinely involved going from home to the salon in the morning, and from the salon back home very late in the evening, with little else in-between. I was a monk, and the salon was my monastery. It was a two-way-street kind of dedication, fuelled by the prospective rewards of sacrificing freedom on the altar of glory. There were no weak and defenceless people for me to defend, such an ambition seemed like a distant memory from a different lifetime. I was facing new realities, missing school, missing the village and missing Grandma.

Christmas was fast approaching. There was a constant traffic of people at the salon, and the pressure of meeting up with the needs of all the customers was intense. The salon was not only a place of work, it was also a meeting place for unsavoury characters and gossipers such as our next door neighbour Emeka, a loud, rude and crude guy with a penchant for distasteful jokes. He had large protruding eyes that always roved around as if searching for something, and a fidgety nature that gave him the appearance of a criminal. Though a jovial nature smoothened his rough edges a little, a wryly smile painted a portrait of his darker side. While no one knew what he did for a living, my Aunt always spoke well of him, she will go on-and-on, drumming about how his go-and-get-it attitude was a good example for anyone who had dreams of making it big.

I was down with malaria Fever on Christmas Eve. My Aunt had told me to take a day-off due to the side-effects of the dose of anti-malaria I had taken. She was happy with the level of my dedication to work. The day was an exception, there was no loud music coming from the room of our neighbor, Emeka. He had a sound-system that loudly announced his presence and silently pronounced his absence. I relished the prospects of at least having a quiet rest before his return, and as I laid myself on the “sleep and die (flat mattress)” on the floor for a rest, my eyes were fixed on the ceiling, the malaria medication was taking its toll on me. While in the middle of a nap, the sound of a heavy bang on the zinc door brought me back to reality, I could hear Emeka’s smoke hardened baritone voice screaming my name in a distressful manner.

“Gift, open door abeg! Gift, open door abeg!” (He shouted in Pidgin-English). He forcefully opened the door before I got there, jumped into the parlour and stood at a corner like someone who was being chased by a pride of lions. Just as my eyes met his blood-red eyes which were now as wide open as the eyes of a prowling owl, he paused for seconds that seemed like an eternity, it was an explosive silence that echoed a message of horror. He drew a deep breath and muffled the words I feared most.

“I have some bad news,” he said! With his right hand shaking as he gently rubbed it against the wall.

“Ba ba, ba ba, Baaad Neeews?” (I stuttered).

“Yes!” he replied in a disconcerted tone, its concerning your Aunt.

I felt a shock wave run through my whole body, but still managed to keep my outward composure for a few seconds.

At this point, his lips began to bounce upon each other in what seemed like an instant slow motion replay, they ejaculated words that sent shivers down my feeble spine, creating an avalanche of emotions that immediately crushed my already fragile heart to pieces. I was now visibly shaking like a leaf.

“Your Aunt is in a critical condition at the hospital!” were the exact words.

I heard a voice. It was mine. It was screaming. “Kaaai! Ahhhrrr! Ahhhrrr!

Ohhhh! God! Pleeeeease! She was okay when she left here this morning!” I cried out.

“Yes she was! But she reached the salon before everyone else and drank a bottle of Sniper before the other girls arrived. They were the ones who rushed her to the hospital after meeting her unconscious and foaming at the mouth!”

What could make her do such a thing? I asked myself rhetorically, as I turned my head away. I couldn’t believe my ears, maybe someone had cast a spell over her, I thought to myself. I ran outside and looked at the sky above me, it was still blue, but everything else seemed to be moving in slow motion, the clouds, the wind, the birds in the sky and the sun, all felt different. This could not be the Christmas and New-Year gift she had for me.

I wondered, if this was not a prank and she truly drank a bottle of Sniper, the poison must be seeping through her system right now; she could even be dead as well! I was swimming in a Tsunami of emotions, it was a relapse of the feelings I had when Mum passed away, and it felt like my world was melting away, my heart surely knew nothing about gymnastics, yet it was twisting like a professional contortionist.

This was the kind of situation that took peoples hopes and buried them alive. If it wasn’t clear that the supposedly retreating ghost from my not too distant past, seemed to have stopped its backward trajectory into my distant past, it was at least clear that it was now advancing towards me like a dark cloud that had sorrow, fear and pain all written on its face. I was dazed and confused, something had to be done; I quickly wore my slippers and ran as fast as I could towards the salon. I could see that a large crowd had gathered in front of the salon from metres away, a lot of them had their hands pointing in my direction as I approached. I got closer and a voice yelled at me.

“Is that not the girl she brought from the village?”

As I shook my head in the affirmative; a fat lady rushed towards me and unsolicitedly began to spill the beans.

“Have you heard about what happened?” (She continued without waiting for my reply.)

“Your Aunt was a victim of revenge porn, posted yesterday on Facebook by a soldier, who put-up a video and pictures of her in a hotel room smoking, drinking and dancing naked, the worst part was that he captioned it ‘This stupid girl infected me with H.I.V, she’s a prostitute that wants to infect as many men as possible.’

BEWARE OF HER!”

I opened my mouth but not even a word came out of it, I wondered, who was this soldier? And why will he do such a thing?

The place was gradually becoming grey; I couldn’t even see the lady who was telling me all these things, but I screamed out like a new born baby when I heard her say.

“That was why she drank a whole bottle of Sniper! She is presently on admission at Godiya Hospital!”

She hadn’t even finished when I heard another lady in the middle of the crowd shouting, “Na Emeka wey introduce her to de Soja sef!”

It was at this point that I realized the fact that the rabbit hole was way deeper than the scratch on the surface. I could now connect the dots in my head, “Emeka was some sort of pimp, a status which made him a glorified demi-god in my Aunt’s eyes.”

My head was so light that it felt like a dry leaf, I was definitely dreaming, I knew I was definitely lying down too, but it didn’t feel like I was on a bed, the surface was harder than my ‘sleep and die (flat mattress)’ at home, I couldn’t be on a bed, I was eating sand in my dream, it also began to rain, the sudden wetness from the rain brought me back to consciousness, but this time there were distant voices in the background, it sounded exactly like a transistor radio from very far-off. All of a sudden, it did not feel like a dream anymore, I was physically surrounded by faceless silhouettes; someone was using what looked like a towel to blow some air towards my face.

I slowly realised that I had fainted, barely regaining consciousness after being poured some water. I was very weak, and my mouth was full of sand. I slowly regained my train of thoughts bit by bit, I wondered in my mind, “where did it all go wrong?”

An unstoppable force from inside, made me scream, “EMEKA!”

I was in a sea of my own thoughts, I couldn’t understand why God will allow me to escape the typical “village-girl stereotype,” only to let my aunt fall prey to the typical “runs-girl stereotype” of the inner-city, at a time when I needed her more than ever!

I pictured how she was the Mother Theresa of my life. She had single handedly pulled me out of a black hole, only for Emeka to throw me into another type of darkness; he must be an agent of darkness, an angel of the devil from the deepest depths of hell. I thought about my aunt at the hospital, I felt like running there, just to see if she was truly alive as they said, I wanted to ask her if all that I heard at the salon was true, but the crowd wouldn’t even let me get up from my lying position.

The universe was once again reminding me of the rules of engagement. “You owe me one!” It said. “You will always owe me one!”

A.

-April 12, 2024 @ 10:06 GMT|

Tags: Stephen Wang