Nwosu : Achebe; Stirring up a desirable controversy

Nwosu : Achebe; Stirring up a desirable controversy

WHO IS THIS GEORGE SEF???!!!/CLEANING HOUSE, A STORY WRITTEN BY GEORGE...

WHO IS GEORGE SEF???!!!

George Chimezirim Egbuchulam is a graduate of English, Matric No 132135, University of Ibadan, Nigeria. He graduated with a second class upper division.  He hails from Emekuku, Owerri in Imo State Nigeria. He is born to Mr George and Chinyere Egbuchulam, the first out of six children: three boys and three girls. During his sojourn in the University of Ibadan, He won several awards and made some notable achievements. George as a pressman in his early years won the Union of Campus Journalist award for best fiction. George was also the winner of the annual quiz competition organized by an alumnus of the Theatre Arts Department for the ATAS week. George was also part of the twenty students that made qualified for the Zain20 in the first edition of Zain Africa Challenge though he wasn’t among the final four selected to represent the University of Ibadan at the National and African levels. George was the president of the UI Chess Club in his final year. He is a good prose, poetry and screen writer. Some of his works can be accessed on NaijaStories. He has even picked up his form to pursue a masters degree at the Institute of African Studies, University of Ibadan.

Some of you know him as Oddman, Chess master, Pawpaw, and lots more. Well, he cannot do some of the things you know him for, in his present state of health. He needs your help now. 2.5 million naira is needed for a kidney transplant. And the above figure only caters for the surgery that will be performed on him and his donor. After the surgery, both patients will need very expensive post-surgery drugs to sustain themselves and other laboratory charges. He is currently undergoing dialysis.

Below is a literary non-fiction: Cleaning House, written by George Chimezirim Egbuchulam. A true life account of his sojourn in Lagos with his family. This was written ages ago. Thanks for reading.

Cleaning House by George Chimezirim Egbuchulam

Did you know that there’s a ubiquitous stink to public toilets? (At least, I think so.) I wonder why that is. The fact occurred to me today while I was using the toilet in our new face-me-I-slap-you house. I remembered the days when, as a child, I spent a lot of my holidays at my Aunty Jane’s (she was my dad’s elder sister―and was kind and generous, by the way), in a slum in Orile. She too lived with her husband and children in a face-me-I-slap-you, and their public toilet smelt just the same.

            In all the houses my family and I have lived in, none of them ever smelt close to being near-perfect. Let me give a rundown of our domiciliary exodus: sole occupants of an entire bungalow →fellow occupants in a block of flats → fellow occupants in another block of flats → fellow tenants in a face-me-I-slap-you. Now, our first house, which was in a ghetto in Ilasamaja, Mushin, Lagos, was where I grew up. The first twenty years of my life were spent there. I have already mentioned that we were the only occupants of a bungalow. It rested on, I believe, a plot of land. Let me add that it was a very fertile plot of land. We lived there for so long that people actually thought the house was ours. It should have been, but that’s a story I’m not writing now to disclose.

            So what was wrong with our first house? Plenty. For one, I remember no single day―not one―that rain fell and did not leak into the house―in all the rooms. The kind of trauma it imprinted on us is not one I’m prepared to wish on a foe. Two, there was no privacy: anyone who cared to could look to see what we were doing in the compound: spreading any or both of our two fat bedbug-infested mattresses (one, and the best, of which was my parents’, which any of my three youngest siblings had bedwetted―which was often; there was a third mattress, a rather skinny affair, which I brought home after my stint in secondary school) on the multi-purpose wooden rack my mom had had built; putting foodstuff like dried fish, crayfish, smoked fish, dried pepper, vegetables, etc. out in the sun to dry and watching out for goats and birds; lounging in one of our six plastic chairs―which hurt our arses like hell, not to mention hardening them too; playing soccer or ludo or chess, and so on. Any idiot could graze their cattle and goats and rams and pigs there, if they chose. And they did choose, plenty of times. The pigs were the worst and the hardest to chase away: they dug ugly holes in our compound in their endless search for the tortoise’s millstone. Also, there was this particular beans-seller and her daughters who, until we moved out of there, spread their laundry either on our clotheslines or on the grass in our compound. Hell, a lot of people spread their laundry in our compound. Three, our septic tank deteriorated so bad that its top (laid by a mediocre bricklayer, one tribal-marked Mr Rasaqi) completely caved in, revealing shit for the whole street to see and smell. It was so terrible that health officials, time and again, threatened to lash the law on my dad―being the head of the house and all. I think he ‘settled’ them each time they came and that ended it. Matters were made even worse by the fact that our neighbours in the street behind us, though we were separated by a moss-coated fence, hurled their refuse into our backyard―but mostly they aimed for the soak away. Our neighbours who lived in a face-me-I-slap-you beside us also threw their garbage into our sump. Their combined efforts, undeterred by our enraged outbursts and cursing, over the years filled the septic tank to the brim. But even after that they continued to throw refuse into our compound. Can you imagine the sheer humiliation of it all? Four, the house was an architectural bomb waiting to implode. There were marked signs, both interior and exterior, of this: deep crevices in the walls; the wood in all the windows were crumbling by the day; the wooden beams in the roof were rotting away. Five, the landlord put a lot of pressure on us to leave, mostly because my dad helped him secure a mouth-watering contract with Globacom to plant their mast in the compound, and he most likely had nightmares, inspired by his full-grown male children, about my dad suddenly becoming covetous and claiming ownership of the house and its concomitant royalties… We eventually moved…

            … to house number two. This was in Okerube, a town way after Ikotun. The first time I stepped into that house I thought it was the Nicon Hilton. What I mean is, the relief of no more leaking roof, no more exposed sewage pit, no more insults from insouciant neighbours… And what’s more, it had sliding doors and windows, and was fenced and gated! The best things about the house were the small farm (cultivated by the former occupant, and which my mom, raised in the village as she was, maintained) and a mango tree. There was a bathtub with a working shower―the handheld one that resembles a telephone― when there was water and a toilet that flushed! There was a GP tank filled by a pumping machine with water from a well that was sealed shut. But this is real life, and in it nothing lasts forever, if at all. It didn’t take long before we found faults with the house: it could be incredibly hot inside. You could cook beans in the heat. Furthermore, the bathtub leaked, and we were chagrined that we had to resort to scooping out the water again. (That was something we did in our former house that we hated but could not evade. We scooped water that pooled on the floor of the toilet, and water that pooled in the far corner of the corridor linking the toilet and bathroom.) The toilet also leaked, if memory serves. And when there was no electricity, which is a constant in this exasperating country, we had to go out and fetch water from the compounds of grumpy neighbours. Once again, pressure was mounted on us to move out of the house; this time, it was by the caretaker. Like in our former house, we owed rent. I was at school when my family moved to house number 2, and at school when they moved to house number 3.

            This was several streets away from house number 2, in a place called Abaranje. The first day I entered it my heart plummeted. I hated it on sight―and sound. For one, it was too remote, like the second house. As if that wasn’t enough, the landlord blockaded it from the front with a churchand a block of apartments. The bathroom/toilet and kitchen were at the wrong angles, the whole place irritated me and made me very restive. There was no cross ventilation: it was as hot inside as our second house, and was permanently sunk in gloom. Sunlight had to beg the preceding buildings in order to reach into the house. Reading in that house was hellish for me; writing in it was impossible. We were always fanning ourselves anytime we were inside. Again, the landlord put pressure on us to leave. I couldn’t understand what was so special about the house that he hurried us out for. Do you know how close his church was to us? I could place one foot on the wall of our house and plant the other on the wall of his church in a half split. That’s how close it was. It didn’t cross his enlightened mind that he and what passed for his congregation were an auditory nuisance to us, with their militant preaching, preemptory praying, and unskilled drumming. Do you know how foolish and insensitive he was? If he caught us staring or passing what he felt were unfavourable comments while they were gathered in whose name, he would complain later to my mom that wedisturbed them! What have we not been through in this life? I ask.

            And now we are in house number 4, preparing to pass our first night here. We moved in this morning, around eight. Located in Ikotun, it is much better placed than our last two residences. (Speaking of which: moving out of Ilasa to Ikotun was inspired by strictly financial concerns―or is it constraints? Rent in Ikotun is much cheaper; hence, the overpopulation. But leaving our house in Ilasa then to, say, Ojuelegba to purchase a novel or two was easy, affordable and trekable, compared to coming out of Ikotun to, say, Cele Bus Stop to breathe. Traffic in Ikotun is a prototype for its probable equivalent in Hell.) From our new house it’s only about six minutes to walk to Ikotun main market. I already went out to sightsee: Ikotun bubbles and is lively just the way I like it, even though it will never compare to Yaba or Ojuelegba. The thing I loathed the most about our last two residences was their remoteness from Ikotun: if you needed to go out, you had to pay N40 to get to Ikotun first; added to that was the time lost in waiting for a bus to fill up with passengers, except you were willing to pay an okada rider or a Keke-Marwa/-NAPEP, which naturally charged more than commuter buses. (Of course, during Christmas the fares were jacked outrageously high. Life in Okerube and then Abaranje made me very reluctant to return home when semesters ended.) Because of the location of our present accommodation, however, I can ignore the inconvenience of the public toilet, the public bathroom, the public kitchen and the constricted space of two rooms. For instance, if the mood hits me, I can walk to the bookseller’s and exchange novels for fifty bucks―whenever he has books, that is, since, by the looks of his supply, few people in Ikotun read or care to buy novels; I can walk to a shoe seller’s at the roadside and pick up a pair of good shoes for a thousand bucks! Provided, of course, that the police don’t pick him up. I heard a woman informer warn the shoe seller that ‘Alausa’ were coming in a ‘Black Maria’. He quickly threw a large black nylon over his wares and vanished. I too, a firm believer in the quip, ‘prevention is better than cure’, quickly stepped on home. Aside from the fact that we have no one to pay bail if I was picked up by the police, I heard later from my mom that people, especially kids (sent out to hawk), left too long in the hands of the po-po could be sold to ritualists for a quick profit. This country is indeed sick, when traders can’t sell in peace because the police stalks and pounces on them.

                                                                                                            Dec 30, 2010

P.S.:

This morning, a few hours past midnight, I suddenly realized why the toilet in this our yard smells like all the public toilets that I have come across: cockroaches! There is a unique smell to these vermin. There was a whole revolting gang of them on the walls of the toilet when I went in to pee. I had to detour to the bathroom. Sad, but that’s the way it is. I call cockroaches synonyms of public-toilet odour. Shit!

RUBBERS AND ROBBERS ON THE FIELDS

FROM THE CREVICES OF CORPS HEARTS: AN EXCERPT

RUBBERS AND ROBBERS ON THE FIELDS

“Europe is cold and lonely baby, Nigeria is hot and bustling. You can’t compare the two. I bought this for you” said Tarfa, as he stretched out a bottle of Parisian perfume which Kike later found out smelled of Queen of the Night flower, her favourite flower. Kike spent three months of her ASUU strike holiday in Tarfa’s house, cooking for his parents and taking care of his mullatto baby girl, who she came to love and wished was hers, especially the way she coiled up beside her at night and the way she screamed at night, a scream that only Kike heard and responded to. Tarfa took a tour of Enugu, visited choice places with his yellow sisi: white woman. He taught her his native dialect, something he never did for Kike. They would come into the house, exhausted from their romantic tour and speaking French. The baby is the only thing that made her spend more days in that house. She loved babies, reason why she had chosen to specialize as a paediatrics doctor when the time came for her to specialize. 

Tarfa’s parents had fallen in love with French woman. 

All through this period, Abimbola her coursemate had been there for her; a willing and well-muscled shoulder to cry on. When she kissed him and responded “I love you too,” whenever he said “I love you,” she didn’t know. She was vulnerable and had not planned their love projectile. She just urged him on with her oral and bodily responses. She allowed all the lonely years she waited for Tarfa to return from Europe, to be drowned in the passionate touches of Abimbola, her Yoruba brother and reading partner, now lover and boyfriend. She would spray her Queen of the Night scented perfume and waited for Abimbola in her off-campus room. She soaked herself in her bath therapy; a liquid fruit bath, robbed her honey body lotion, wore her cut-offs or short dress, all sprayed, and waited for her honey. She would feel so horny that she could hardly read. Abimbola would return from the library, sweaty, smelly, starved and saturated in the brain. He would ignore the food, the warm bath water set for him in the bathroom, the bed: all made and straightened without a rumple, and descend on her, right on the floor. He rumpled and ruffled her up. He would kiss her all over. The smacking and crinkling kissing sounds of pyooot mmuah....pyooot mmuah.....pyooot mmuah, diffused the tiny self-contained room. He released his kisses like a rush of clean water from Ogbunike cave, the very cave in which he asked her out after he admitted that he smacked her buttocks while they crawled out of the darkness of the cave. They smacked their lips to the cheering of fellow students. It had been during their medical students’ excursion. Abimbola became her hero. He had squeezed out all memories of Tarfa. And gradually, what she thought was a rebound relationship, stretched into years of sweet love and passion.

Final year, Abimbola graduated with a distinction and headed to Medical school, while Kikelomo had an extra year and remained behind in UNEC. She cried, more out of ho the new distance between her and Abimbola might affect their relationship, than because she had an extra year. She thought of Tarfa, her Benue sweetheart and how their love got frozen by two winters in Paris. Abimbola scolded her for poor results and encouraged her to work harder, as he would no longer be there to distract her. She worked hard, but found her lovey-dovey legs at the gates of the interns’ quarters, where Abimbola resided with other medical students. She managed all: school and weekend visits, until Abimbola got his call up letter and traveled to Zamfara state for National Youth Service while she got an intern placement in a Millitary Hospital in Bonny camp, Lagos. 

For months, Kike never heard from Abimbola. He never picked her calls nor responded to her frantically composed text messages. He never left an address; else she would have beaten the distance to it as usual. He however sent her a text on a very cold Thanksgiving morning, after months of silence. Her set of interns gathered at the back of the church, arranging themselves, while distributing their thanksgiving items: rolls of tissue paper, crates of eggs, tubers of yam, leg-tied crowing chickens, dozens of Eva water, and other food items, when a text message came into her phone, bearing her Abimbola’s name. She had left the phone on silent mode. She quietly checked her phone screen and saw the text bearer identity. She would not fiddle with her phone, in order not to violate the solemn atmosphere of the Roman Catholic mass. She happily carried one leg-tied thanksgiving cock and a well-rounded, robust and heavy tuber of yam. She lost her phobia for feathery creatures, she ignored the crowing noise of the creature in her hand, she lost all shyness and self-consciousness and danced to the altar in Yoruba style, her attire of gele, iro and buba, shinning along the aisle to the altar. She whispered to her knowing friends;

“Abimbola sent a text, God bless this day!”

“What did he say?” asked a friend.

“After mass I will tell you girls. I don’t want to spoil my preparation for Holy Communion with noise making in church”, said Kike.

They whispered on as though singing to the lyrics of ‘koso babire kosi kosi,’ while dancing uninhibitedly to the altar. Time for communion, they all filed out and folded their hands in solemnity and marched like soldiers to the altar. This is the day that the lord has made, and it was marvelous in their sight! 

After mass, Kike gathered all her friends and read the text message aloud;

“I have found Jesus. I have joined a missionary group of medical students, saving lives in the north. I am the only boy in the midst of thirteen God-fearing ladies. We all have one goal; to save lives, while saving souls. What I had with you was ungodly. I feel like I took advantage of you. You must move on. You are a good woman, generous, passionate and with a good heart. You will find your own better half to love you more than I ever did and even much more...” she couldn’t finish the text. She threw her Nokia 3310 phone at a flower vase beneath the statue of The Blessed Virgin Mary, in the prayer garden, the object shattered into tiny pieces as pairs of piously praying eyes stared back at her questioningly. She got up, eyed them all and got back to her room. Kike cursed the same day she blessed in church during thanksgiving. No man would ever get the best of her ever again; she swore. 

Now in camp, she tried to find out why men leave their home girl friends for the girls in camp. She found out much more.

Kike stepped out of her hall and into the cold dim lit fields. She moved to a car parked in the mini parking space behind the parade grounds. She sat on the bonnet, and stared at the vast bush land of the Zamfara camp. She stared on and on, lost in thoughts. She thought of Tarfa at one time and Abimbola at another. Kike evaluated their actions and wondered which of them was better and which was worse. Soon she heard the noise; first it came like a gentle moan, from somewhere within, behind or even far away. She ignored it and caught up with her earlier thoughts of Tarfa and Abimbola. And then the moan returned. It made her dance to its rhythm, her waist vibrated unwillingly to a very familiar dance, only that she was not a responding party in this one, and the moaning sound was not from her, nor from Tarfa and Abimbola, the men of her vanishing thoughts and worst still, she felt no thrusts, no poundings. How dare she dance again and so soon to that familiar dance, now from an invisible duo? Then she saw the vibrating bonnets, the jerking car and jumped down from the car. She peered closer into the dark interiors of the car. There she found the answer, a man and a very young girl, in the car, lost in the pleasure of their heated passions. 

Kike traced his hands with her eyes and found them pulling hard at her hair, a lovely shimmering gold ring on his ring finger; he was a married copa. The girl’s two ringless hands held unto his bare buttocks, urging him on. The two climaxed and collapsed. They stared up at the window and found two teary pairs of eyes staring back at their four. Kike hit the car windows and unsuccessfully tried to open the car. She yelled;

“Tarfa! You are in there, open this door you cheat. Abimbola! Son of a bitch! Let me in you liar, this is the Jesus you found in camp right?” The duo gently opened the door and eased out. Kike descended on the girl. She yanked off her white uniform. The boy came to her rescue, but Kike held him by the waist, leaving nail scratches on the hairy area just before his manhood.

“Tarfa, why? Is it because she is a French woman? You will teach me French today” she said, holding him tight.

“Hey, I’m not your Tarfa...”

“Abimbola you must be, shameless man, this is your missionary work abi? This orobo; fat, girl, is the soul you are saving abi? Answer me!” shouted Kikelomo. Her hair had come loose from the band she tied them in, due to vigorous and violent head shakes.

“I am Rufai, and that is Rachael, my camp girl friend. I am neither your Tarfa nor your Abimbola”

She stared at the tall lanky fellow for a long while and the blurry and inter-changing faces of Abimbola and Tarfa disappeared to reveal very dark and tribal marked face, whose facial features she could hardly make out, due to the dimness of the night, and the charcoal complexion of his skin. He was nothing like light-skinned Tarfa nor the chocolate-brown complexioned Abimbola. She had a ghostly look on her face and allowed herself to be propelled by Rufai and angry Rachael, to her hostel. She was sick and she knew it. She is a product of some unresolved conflicts.

She was the tenth person on the queue for platoon ten, during the early morning corps assembly and drills. All night, she heard the mocking voices of both Tarfa and Abimbola, laughing at her and telling her sorry all at once. A pool of water formed a mirage of sorts in her mind and later, on getting closer, she saw that it was truly a mirage, and it bore the diminishing faces of Tarfa and Abimbola. Both men faded and finally disappeared with the mirage. The platoon ten co-rodinator, read out the topic for their morning orientation, titled; CD for Condoms and Community Development. He tutored them on the relevance of Community Development, which is more like corps members’ type of corporate social responsibility. He equally advised corps members to zip up and stick to abstinence or carry their condoms wherever they go to. He ended by saying,

“AIDS no dey show for face oo. HIV is real ooo.” He went on repeating his statement in a sing-song manner. The corps members grumbled on and on. They prompted him to stop being repetitive and end his dry lecture. The camp supervisor announced for all to keep quiet, as she rounded off thus;

"Gentle men corps members, it has been brought to my notice that some of you dispose their rubbers on the fields, while some turn themselves to night robbers, stealing other people’s uniforms and kits, spread outside at night. I do not want robbers and rubbers on my parade grounds. And I don’t even want to see lost-but-found wedding and engagement rings on my grounds...”

“We are not thieves!” shouted a corps member from behind

“Whoever made that sound should come forward and address the assembly,” commanded the camp supervisor. Before the military men could hassle and fish out the fellow, he ran straight to the stage, fearlessly asking for the microphone.

“Madam, we are graduates, not robbers. We and even some of the camp officials here are guilty of the rubbers, but not the robberies. A friend of mine lost her shorts days ago, all to discover that the same short was resold to her in the Mami market, with her initials on the inside flap of the pockets. We lose our items and find them hanging for sale on stalls in Mami market. We lose shorts, tops, slippers, socks, buckets, torch lights and much more. Please help us talk to the real robbers to stay clear and off our property!”

While the whole debate on rubbers and robbers on the fields dragged on and on, with corps members coming out one after the other to support the speaker, Kike disagreed with her fellow corps members. She thought to herself, that all; both corpers, camp officials and mami market traders are all robbers. We all rob with rubbers, rubbing people of their relationships at home. The government robs us of one year of getting permanent jobs with this unnecessary compulsion. The camp officials indirectly rob us of our dignity as graduates. Even the companies that form our places of primary assignment rob us of all our mental energy and man power, paying us so little, some paid nothing at all. And after one year, they dump us, while the system recruits another set to fill the vacuum that our mandatory dismissal had created in the companies. We toil, sweat and hardly get retained or at least contracted. All the companies are cutting cost; better to keep applying for corpers from every batch of national service than to conduct graduate trainee programs and recruit permanent members of staff. We are all robbers in this system, robbing within our utmost social and corporate capacity to rob. The dawn is now bright. Kike looked on the parade grounds and sighted two or three used rubbers; condoms.

"Hmmm, the ways we serve this nation of ours really vary," she thought aloud. And just then, she felt liberated. 

TRUTH AND FICTION: 2012 FARAFINA TRUST CREATIVE WRITING WORKSHOP: Nin...

TRUTH AND FICTION: 2012 FARAFINA TRUST CREATIVE WRITING WORKSHOP: Nin...: Image from here The 2012 Farafina Trust Creative Writing Workshop has been announced. As an attendee at last year's workshop, I know a ...

THE LYRICS OF MADNESS: AN EXCERPT

THE DAY OF THE NAKED DANCE: AN EXCERPT FROM THE LYRICS OF MADNESS

It was an unusually foggy morning. Mama had traveled to her late father’s place at Ezeudo, to tend her father’s farm, pull the weeds that were reported by relatives, as harbingers of poisonous snakes. The compound was reported to have been enshrouded by thick shrubs due to seasons of neglect. Mama was the only fearless child of her father. She had fought hard to retain her late parent’s property from ‘greedy’ in-laws, but her in-laws were all educated, had their own landed and acquired property and would not victimize their daughter for what rightly belonged to her, though they often asked her to sell to them. But mama would still act like a tigress: defensive and assertive just to discourage them, should they ever nurse the slightest nickel of the idea of dispossessing her of her inheritance. They only troubled her enough each time she failed to maintain the property.

I was very happy that Mama would be traveling for four market days; Eke, Orie, Afor, Nkwo. I hung her hand-woven bag around my neck, her clothes neatly swaddled in an akwa oche— suede material, knotted at the middle and balanced effortlessly on her matted hair. Mama sat on the passenger seat, legs entwined on one side of the bicycle, and gently, we rode to Nkwo Otulu market junction. Mama never allowed me to ride further than that. I hurriedly waved her good bye, as she continued the rest of her journey on foot. I rode off. I rode into the now fading thick fogs of the cold morning. I drove past our compound, into the tiny snaky foot path that headed straight into the abode of my kindred spirit; the Professor. I crash landed in front of his ancient edifice; I ignored the bleeding scratches on my knees and elbows. Mama would say that wounds are part of childhood. She would often console me by saying that a strong child is known by the number of wounds on his skin. She would however warn me not to add more: else people would think I had a terribly rough childhood. She would apply honey and Shea butter on the wounds, so they won’t leave scars on my skin. So I had learnt to add up my wounds as they came. I ran up the stairways that led to the professor’s living room.

“My Prof” I called out.

“Have I seen this face before?”Prof asked, staring as though in a trance.

“Ten dead men on a seaman’s chest yo ho ho, and a bottle of rum!”

I talked on, telling Prof about, Gulliver, Oliver Twist, Treasure Island, Silas Manner and Robinson Crusoe. And gradually, a smile of recognition formed around his shriveled and pale lips. And for the first time he called me my real name; the same way my Mama will shout when calling me home from Prof’s backyard.

“Opuriche!” Prof shouted, mimicking Mama.

“Yes my Prof.”
Prof walked up to me, cupped my cheeks and kissed my lips. It was such a nauseating deep mouthing. His cold lips sucked mine, leaving copious spittle on my now quivering lips. He squeezed me so hard; I thought my bones would snap. He buried my face into his smelly, sweaty and hairy chest, calling Erika, Syl, Selena, his smoky and husky voice trembled from the rough effort of the mouthing. He kissed my cheeks, fore-head, shoulders and more. I felt the drops of his hot tears on my bare spine. I smelt the heat of his hairy chest; it smelled of old dusty books that had outlived their shelf lives. The villagers and Mama never knew that Prof cried in my arms.

“The Prof is sad again” I observed aloud.

“No. He is waiting to hear voices, familial and ancestral voices. They are long in coming”

“Mama says that when a widow hears the voice of spirits, she speaks less to humans. Is that true?”

“Your mother is a widow. I am a widower. I speak less to humans and I hear no spirit voices yet” said Prof, more as a lament, than a statement.

Professor had faraway look in his misty eyes. I made ji agworo-agwo; boiled yam, mixed in fresh pepper, oil and onion sauce, for him. We ate enough. Professor told me lots of stories. He advised me like a father who wants to embark on a long journey would. For the first time, I slept on the same bed with Prof and for the first time in my life, on a foam mattress: better, softer and more body-friendly than our bed-bug infested raffia bamboo bed or the cold mud floor. I slept in Professor’s arms. I felt the warmth of his laboured breaths on the skin beneath my left ear. I felt the rhythmic thuds of his heart beat on my bare back and the sensation from the hairs on his bushy chest is altogether ticklish and stingy. I remained silently sound awake. Prof no longer smelled of his Irish perfume now, he smelled of age: old age. I wondered why Prof was not my father, why he didn’t marry Mama. He would have been a good husband to Mama and a good father to me. We would have been happier, drinking from the wealth of his book wisdom, sleeping on his dunlop bed, watching his TV and keeping his house warm and alive. His house echoed of emptiness, and bore the constant signature of a cemetery silence. Prof would have made Mama a woman and be the father I never had.

The room was dark except for the shadowy light from the grey skies. It was still ututu nwa mmuo— wee hours of the morning, a time when market spirits parked their wares and headed home for humans to take over. In spite of the cloudy darkness and the drizzling dawn, I stepped onto the wet earth, feet feeling the slushy mire of Prof’s clayey compound and searching everywhere for him. The darkness gradually faded, as daylight crept in slowly and illuminated the atmosphere. I heard the sharp wail of an owl and hit my big toe against a tiny rock— bad omen.

“My Prof, My Prof!” I called. I thought of the bats flying around, over the mmimi tree, the earlier wail of the owl, my bleeding big toe, and my fears came alive. I had never thought of evil, but I started shaking all over. Prof was nowhere to be found, at least, nowhere on the ground. I decided to look up and closely at the mmimi tree; the tree of bitter-sweet seeds, seeds of contrast, the same tree that Prof had no English name for. The mmimi leaves and branches rustled, and a choking,  coughing and asphyxiating sound followed, and Prof’s body came dangling down like that of a condemned robber from the hangman’s noose. He struggled and danced violently for breath. I ran over, screaming—

“My Prof, Chei! My Prof eee... Help me ooo... My father is dying...”

 I ran to him and jumped up, with all my little man’s effort but could not even touch the sole of his leather shoes. Soon the neighbours arrived and tried a belated rescue. I knew he was gone. Even when they climbed up hurriedly, trying hard to untie the electric wire around his neck, I knew he had slipped into yonder and will sleep forever. Even when his body fell like a sack of red meat, I knew Prof was gone. I traced the red lines around his neck and felt for the slightest pulse, telling myself, that professor was acting out another drama. The villagers stood by the corners, shouting, ‘aru— abomination! Sacrilege! This is a taboo... tufiakwa!” Prof had prepared for this journey. He wore his three piece suit, his red tie, neatly ironed. He smelled of his Irish perfume. He never thought of me; how I would feel. I cried a river.

The news got to Mama. Mama left all she was doing and ran all the way from Ezeudo to Otulu, crying and shouting my name like she did whenever she wanted me to leave the Prof’s house. She told people, that I copied the professor too much and might join him. She met me lying on professor’s now lifeless mass; head buried into his suit, wishing to be sucked into him, so that my life and his would become one and live. The night before, Prof had narrated the story of Richard Cory to me, an English man, who went down town and never returned— he blew his brains off and died by his own hands and in his own pool of blood. He said Richard Cory had the courage to journey down the narrow path we all dread but must thread. Prof admired his courage, he said Richard defeated death, he didn’t want the old hooded man of shadow: death, to snuff out his life through some sheer whims; so he beat him to his own games, by doing himself some honour and taking his life by himself. “Such rare bliss— to die in one’s own hands’, thought the professor aloud.

Mama pushed through the crowd and ran to me. She held me and cried endlessly. She cried much more for what this would do to me than for the corpse lying on the floor. Prof was given a quickie: a fast burial, no music, no tributes, no epitaph, no marble vault, no masquerades, no lengthy rituals and no requiem, just a raised mass of red earth, beside the triple marble vaults, bearing six-feet deep, the bones of Erika, Selena and Syl. He committed an abomination, and must not spend one more night on the surface of the earth. Days later, I would see Prof walking around his compound, hand in hand with three other fellows. I thought of Prof’s body and life, and see everything I must never become in life; a professor.

Mama watched me closely. She never wanted me to leave her eyes. When I stopped going to school, she never complained. When I burnt my pocket Dicktionary and shattered my abacus, she gave a whimpering sigh of relief. When I crawled under the bed to sulk and caress the smooth sleek body of my first love— my flute, she nodded her approval. I went about the entire Mbaise, from one event to the other, playing my flute and telling the story of a certain mad man of manners. I sang of domestic and public mad men. Soon, I realised that there is a thin line between sanity and insanity, and that; there is a certain lyricism to madness, one that edifies like music to the soul.  I felt the cold hands of the children on my bare buttocks. I watched the naked children follow me round the village, singing, chanting and dancing, to the incoherent music of my two naked flutes. And the entire world dissolved into one harmonious rhythm of madness and nakedness.
AUTHOR: CHINYERE EDITH CHIMODO

The Vanity of War

The Vanity of War

The shell-shocked earth of the east

The poisoned vegetation of her withered forests

The drippling dusk and the drizzling dawn of her space

The mashy-slushy mire of her deeps

The agony, acrimony, anarchy and anxiety

All of which define her struggle

Today stare us in the face

The legends of her past

The mystery of her survival

The expectations of war

The realities that now are

The relics of a history

A history written in blood

The blood of ignorant men

Unwary and unthoughtful folks

Who fought another’s war

The blood that forms the under pool of a flag that may never fly

The darkness above the bloody pool a second signifying layer

The half of a yellow sun that summarises the vanity of her wars

A sickly yellowness of a half sun towered above her kwashiokor stricken babes

No gods to the rescue, no uniforms or uniformity

Just dead-hungry and dust-clothed emissaries on patrol

The war ends

Lives and homes lost

Th streets naked and barren of activities

Some of her cultures lost to a cold-blooded war

War intensified her woes and mores

A surrender with no respite

A tug of war; the defence of a tribe and the loyalty of a country

And she paid,

She paid a bloody price

And just as the tragic tale goes, there is Biafra No More!?