I forced myself to get in line as we formed our class queue – a row of curly, kinky, unkempt and neatly plaited heads lay like a thin long unravelling tapestry before me. I loved the morning assembly best if I loved anything about school; class by class we would form such rows, usually according to height but often as we well pleased, facing the building, the raised platform of which would support the teacher in charge for that day.
We always began with prayers – the Lord’s Prayer and a series of other short ones; we would also sing hymns from the songs of praise booklets that we were all supposed to have. I loved the feeling of belonging it gave; we were all Christians by virtue of being southerners and we ran our school that way. The Muslim pupils had to play along with the status quo which I thought was a little privileged as they got to know all our prayers, sang our hymns, got a hint of our scriptures while the majority of us hadn’t even seen a Koran.
The head teacher was usually the last to make an announcement after an array of teachers had wearied themselves over us.
Throughout my time in primary school, the head teacher was Mr Salami – so that made him the headmaster. He always looked stern; it was carved into every feature of his face, right down to his eyebrows. Even now, when I think of the concept of headmaster, his is the image I conjure. I can’t recall his voice; he never said much but had a reputation for the cane that put the fear of God in us all – except Ireneh who was to be his guest the following year.
Anyway, he was always very brief at assemblies, I think precisely because other teachers would have used up enough time in front of us. Good old Mrs Ukpo was one such teacher. She was always there; always with some moral injunction to begin the day with. ‘God loves little children like you,’ she would proclaim in a whiny voice. ‘Good little children, ok? You should always be good; respect your parents and your elders…’ It never seemed to end.
At some point during assembly, we would turn to face the national flag flying from the tall mast fixed at a central position at the extreme left end of the playground. It was hard to miss and all our eyes would be raised as hands, also raised in a military salutary gesture - middle fingers touching the side of our heads, palms facing outwards - we sang the national anthem and recited the pledge.
The band never faltered in the beat that accompanied the anthem; it was a very familiar tattoo – made familiar over time and we always repeated this rhythm whenever we sang the anthem producing the beats with our mouths. The band consisted of three of four boys all armed with drums of different sizes. There was a big central drum that was pounded by the biggest of the lads. His beat was standard and constant, almost in keeping with the beat of seconds while the little boys on either side of him provided the variations that helped create the full rhythm. These boys were our heroes, their job awe-inspiring and their skill desirable; they would change the beat of their drums slightly to go with the next song we would sing – the marching song as we filed into our different classrooms, class by class, row after row.
We were halfway in to the Maths lesson when we heard loud groans from the desk behind. Jegbe and Oscar were itching all over very much in discomfort.
‘What’s the matter – you two?’ Mrs Seyi, our class teacher enquired.
‘I don’t know ma,’ Jegbe wept. ‘My body is just scratching me.’
‘Me too,’ Oscar said. ‘My arms and my buttocks, a-a-rgh!’ he exclaimed as he reached for his bum again. At this point, they had both risen pushing back their desk sharply. It gave a harsh scraping sound as the wooden legs moved over the sandy cement floor; in no time, however, friction got the better of it and it stopped, leaning forward with the force of the push so that Ireneh and I were thrown out of our seat. The teacher was exasperated. ‘Stop this. What’s wrong with both of you?’
‘My body ma,’ Oscar alone replied weeping and practically oscillating.
‘What do you mean?’ the teacher was astounded. ‘What’s wrong with your body?’
‘Ha, hanh, anh,’ Jegbe was now itching furiously, hopping about and Oscar was sat on the floor. ‘Please ma, help! I don’t know what’s happening.’
Mrs Seyi was totally confused. ‘Have you got a disease? I think you should go home now, both of you,’ she ordered before the boys could reply to her earlier question. ‘Go home and wash yourselves. And tell your parents to take you to hospital. Now!’
Both boys hobbled out of class, pain etched on their faces. Ireneh turned to me and smiled and my stomach flipped. Had he really carried out his threat?
‘What did you do?’ I asked him. He’d been right; it was spectacular but I was curious.
‘Did I not tell you? Did I not tell you?’ he gloated.
‘Did you use juju on them?’ I asked petrified.
‘Werepe,’ he simply said. I had no idea what that meant. It was clearly a Yoruba word but one I wasn’t familiar with.
‘What is that?’ I enquired.
‘My papa gave it to me. Forget. I think I told you I’ll show them.’
I sat back scared. He’d won my respect. For the rest of the day, I was quieter than usual, a lot going through my mind. ‘That’d better not be me,’ I thought. I couldn’t ever have my now friend for an enemy. I was still pensive when the class rose later in the afternoon for closing prayers.
****
I began to bitterly regret my rather unnecessary and quite mad decision to be non-Christian only two hours later. The barking act occurred on a weekday and in conversation – that randomly and promptly; to be precise, it was a Tuesday afternoon sweltering under the northern sun. To the right of my companion and me, the savannah stretched for miles littered with patches of the devil’s waters created by the heat.
Two hours before, my companion, Banjo, was saying ‘Just like that? You will stop being a Christian just for that reason?’
‘Is that not reason enough?’ I asked back, not really sure that it was.
‘But that’s debatable,’ Banjo replied.
To explain, we’d just had a lengthy conversation that had veered into religion and, when prompted, he hadn’t been able to give me a good enough reason why he was Christian apart from the fact that he had been born into a Christian home but had been absolutely flabbergasted that on the strength of that, I’d declared myself out.
Now, I must say that such suddenness was not usually the manner, even for me, to reach such a decision not because I was not the sort for brashness – over the years I had developed rather weirdly - but because I hadn’t given any serious thought at all to the issue surrounding my faith before I dropped the bombshell. When I say serious, though, I am being very generous because my ‘serious’ refers to those few moments spread out in a couple of days in which I weigh the fascination of any idea that carries even the slightest promise of an/any individuating quality.
There had been a few such ideas previously, beginning with the ones I was drawn to in childhood and not unpopular with children (well, the kids I associated with) like when Ireneh and I had vowed that we would only speak the Queen’s English - we certainly didn’t call it that - and not a word of pidgin (the local vernacular) to anyone till death. As we saw it, we were going to begin the revival of the sophistication of the masses in speech and root out from our society the crudeness of that loud sign of illiteracy the popular vernacular was. We hadn’t done badly either, going for as long as two weeks, irritating and amusing our families at the same time and packing it all in, the day we had a fight and neither of us could rely on the English language to fully and competitively give our side of the story.
I remember Ireneh being fiercely pulled away from me as I was struggling to make light, literally, of the situation, my hair and eyes still smarting from the sand the fiend had battered me with. I wanted to kill him but seeing I just had the chance and failed, I was hoping the man who held Ireneh like a broken puppet by the arm would come good for me. But as I heard Ireneh begin to stammer his reasons why he wanted me dead, I knew I had to get in as
quickly as possible if I were to stave off impending doom.
‘Na lie!’ I had roared, realising I was not speaking in English but too bothered to care.
‘Na im start am; im carry the tray of agbalumo run before I even fit take one.’
As I finished my sentence, I became aware with anger and relief that Ireneh had also not been keeping with the language rule; I couldn’t expect less from him at that moment.
****
‘You didn’t find any avocado leaves?’ my mother asked as we unrolled the bundle of leaves and grass I’d brought in. She was going to boil a pot of water with these herbs to make the medicinal drink agbo which was used to treat and prevent Malaria. She drank the stuff the whole time, addicted to it she was. Our battle against disease was primarily herbal in more ways than one. I remember once I spotted an adult neighbour of ours with a bottle crammed with strange looking barks and roots and soaking in a silvery clear liquid. When I asked what it was, he was reluctant to let on, saying I was too young to understand. Well, I finally got to understand when I was fifteen, up to my eyeballs in puberty, and fervently prayed I would not need it until I was seventy-five – at least!
Anyway, agbo was a cheaper option than going to the chemist; there were a myriad of them; they were more common than street lamps, so common that it could have been the law for every street to have no less than one. We could expect to find a drug for any ailment in these shops and we’d better; self medication was a necessity; hospitals with their exorbitant bills, simply an option.
And that was no option for Mama who always said money didn’t grow on trees and harboured a lot of other alternative solutions besides agbo under her sleeves, one for every infection we complained of, one for every wound and sore.
She had a small stall in the city market where she sold household products like washing soap, toothpaste and toothbrushes and had spent an entire year building up her business. Capital had not come easily and she had scraped all she had at the time, the pinch of which was still felt all of us.
‘Mama, they are hard to find,’ I replied.
‘What do you mean hard? Why did you not go to Mama Tayo’s compound?’
‘It is too far to walk,’ I grumbled. ‘I am hungry.’
‘Too far to walk – will you die? Anyway, eat your food first so you’ll have strength to go and get them.’
It was a fair deal. I took the plate of bean porridge she handed to me and sat down on a stool in the corner. Midway into my meal, I asked the one thing that had been on my mind.
‘Mama, my friend for school said he is a different boy. What does that mean?’
She stopped what she was doing and stared at me with a blank face. Then slowly, she seemed to grow concerned. ‘Which friend is this?’
‘One boy in my class. His name is Ireneh. He said he is a different boy.’
‘Did you ask him what he meant?’ she asked.
‘Yes. He just said it happened to him when he was eight.’
She stayed silent for a while staring at me. ‘Eat your food and go get me those leaves. We’ll wait for your papa to come back.’
This was serious. Mama would usually handle issues on her own leaving the big ones until Papa got back.
‘Mama, my sandals are cut,’ I moved on to the other topic on my mind. ‘I have told you before. I can’t wear them anymore.’
To tell the truth, I really wasn’t bothered even though I’d been going to school barefoot for about a week. In fact, when I think of that sandal-less episode, the last thing I remember is any feeling of sadness or frustration – I couldn’t even work up the concept. Instead, it represented for me one of those rare occasions when I could be as loose and as irresponsible as I always wanted to be, not fettered by clean clothes or footwear; when I could get up in the morning, have a rushed shower – if one will call it that – swallow my breakfast and throw on my body the uniform I had dug up from the bottom of the crumpled heap I called my wardrobe. Imaginably, the uniform would be lined with caking mud from my fall on the playground the day before as I dragged the boy in front of me to the ground to stop him from making that fatal shot I was so convinced would result in a goal. But our class teacher Mrs Seyi wouldn’t have any of her class improperly attired and had let me know, even threatened to contact my parents.
‘When did you tell me?’ Mama questioned. ‘When did this happen?’
‘Tuesday,’ I replied. She was right. I hadn’t really told her but I certainly wasn’t going to admit that.
‘I didn’t hear you tell me,’ Mama said without looking up. ‘Anyway, when you’ve got me those leaves, go to Papa Bisi, and tell him that I sent you.’
Papa Bisi was the cobbler on the next street – a shabby old man perpetually crouched over a low stool in his workshop, a large needle and thread in hand. He took care of the shoes of about fifty families, receiving payment in cash and in kind. He got all he wanted, never lacked for any kind of domestic service. I knew what would be expected of me.
He wasn’t the only one; my neighbourhood deep in Ojo-Alaba was cluttered with skilled traders in every craft imaginable; cobblers, tailors, carpenters, welders, hair stylists, key cutters, even blacksmiths. All battered their services for cash or other favours; it was quite an unreal existence where money could almost be dispensed with.
In my part of the country, survival was a full time job; from when people got up in the morning to when they went to bed at night, all they did was to hang on to life. And that life always seemed elusive. There were so many things waiting to send us to the grave. Those who didn’t fall to hunger and disease were waiting prey to all kinds of physical danger. Where do I start - an exposed and overflowing gutter, a falling tree, road accidents…and the many more we only picked up from the News but I’d hate to say that the list is endless. That’d be too cruel. Anyway, we lived in dread, more of all those dangers because hunger and disease, many could take care of by, for example, learning a trade.
I spent an hour of that afternoon making trips to the well at the back of the cobbler’s compound as I fetched water for the man while he mended my sandals. Good thing he only had a small drum.
****
My religion wasn’t to be taken as lightly though and was definitely not something I could barter away in the need of any kind of recognition. Indeed, I was twenty-one now, no longer drawn to childish fantasies, not interested in my teenage ideals and away at Youth Service. It was a year of service to the Nation, demanded of every student in a scheme called the National Youth Service Corps. I had been assigned to Kaduna, north of the country, a city flagellated by intense heat and constantly besieged by flies some big enough to be hunted down with arrows. In time, though, one grew used to the heat and might even begin to derive some pleasure from quite distressing things like the baking ground, digging one’s toes into the hot red sand, measuring one’s pain threshold.
Banjo was actually doing the very thing as he talked to me; we were sitting in the shade just behind the jagged line of sunlight cut off by the slant of the roof of the classroom block. He had his right leg stretched into the light and retrieved the limb whenever he couldn’t hold out any longer.
‘You are not supposed to make such a big decision just because of what I said; you know that I am not serious about such things,’ he said.
‘I don’t really see any reason to wait,’ I replied stubbornly. ‘After all, I don’t see any clear reason to be Christian myself; which means that it’s simply a matter of choice, not so? So, I can choose any way I like.’
The truth, though, was that I was not entirely confident that I could choose either way. There was, hanging around, the threat of a spurned God and his eternal tortuous prison of hell as his last recourse. Before that, there were the innumerable evils I could be courting merely by taking such a stand.
I remembered clearly the voice of a TV pastor who had railed against the evils of the land and against which Christians do battle constantly. He was one of the regulars on Sund
ay TV, the kind that, being so constant, can be used as a focal point in describing a typical Sunday afternoon. He kept levelling his hand at the camera as he made a point on and against evil; it felt like he was pointing at me all the time. His long but well kept beard gave him an infinitely more authoritative persona than he should take credit for but his words still had plenty of force behind them.
My blood had chilled as he went through the list starting with the most hideous, from witches and wizards, spirits that fly by night and poison by day and juju power down to the violence of armed robbers, the treachery of the enemy - which everyone seemed to have at least one of - and more familiarly, the ghastliness of road accidents and disease.
‘It is a curse for the vain who think they are self-sufficient enough to deny the Lord,’ the pastor had explained, narrating the story of one such person – that he knew, of course – and how this person had ended up in abject penury after he’d been hit by no end of unfortunate events.
Even as I was thinking of this, I could hear Banjo saying something to the same effect, rousing me out of my reverie.
‘Be careful o. Don’t be proud before God; it will be really bad for you if you offend him. Life is hard enough.’
‘Hmm,’ I murmured, wondering if by his last sentence, he meant hard enough with God and, at the same time, resolving to hang on to my new belief - or the lack of one - for a while, at least, until things got unbearable. Tempting the Lord that would be, of course, and that in itself might constitute some sort of sin which might also mean that God would not heed my prayer in my hour of need but since that hour was not the present, that awful prospect didn’t seem as scary.