A SMALL WORLD!

                                                   A SMALL WORLD

This world is a very large place albeit a small world. I agree that that is naïve. We all live in different worlds in this same world of ours. We all have the same time but have different time zones. We have our distinctive races but are of the same race: the human race. Our languages are varied but all of them studied together have the same features and possess incredible similarities.

Granted, some of us have longer noses, others are as flat as it can get, but when you see a dry and skinned skull, there’s just a hole where the nose should be. Inside of us we are not any different from each other. The Chinese wouldn’t look the same to you if they didn’t marry their not-too-distant cousins. The midgets of Africa wouldn’t be so short if they bended that age-old custom of not marrying beyond the sacred river that is their protection against the evil spirit-clans on the other side. And when you live in a 40 degrees temperature like all your ancestors you don’t need any clothes for warmth. You would invent one if you lived in a place where there’s no temperature at all because no one wants a cold heart.

That piece of anthropology and sociology makes one thing clear: that human beings are interesting. And for those of us who have settled for the only reasonable explanation of an intelligent creator, there is no fitting word to describe the creator of such a fascinating race. It is pretty crucial for nations of people to acknowledge they didn’t get here on purpose, that they had no hand in the matter. It is crucial that they ask pertinent questions and weigh up the ready answers without presumption.

I happen to be one of those few people who understand that blindness has little to do with the ability to see temporal things. And because of that whenever I listen to the news or watch it telecast, I try to see the part most people aren’t seeing – the nonphysical cause. It happened again this yesterday. The Queen of England threw a national party to celebrate her 60 years on the throne. And it was a pretty big deal, so big it was broadcast live to the whole world. I relished the rare opportunity of watching a nation in a barrel of laughs. I watched the colours and the sounds and the history, the lessons handed down by time and the experiences of the royal family. There was nothing better than the fact that at this time the whole world is happy with and for the royal family – today, at least they are in the news for the right reasons. And for the first time in a couple of years the world got to see something on the news that didn’t drive their appetite away because of its lack of goriness. And I wished the four-day party wouldn’t end to give way to the usual nightmare that is news and the figures that mean the matter in body bags. And talk of the devil and he is bound to appear.                                                                                                  

We were still watching the event when my little cousin, Sop, came back from church to announce that something big is also happening in our own country right then. There was a world cup qualifying match between Nigeria and Namibia and he was cross that we didn’t give a fig. He wouldn’t understand that those of us who are not as young as he is do care. We care for our hearts. Football and all the tensions that go along with watching it isn’t good for the heart so I gave it to him straight that I wasn’t going to trade any football match viewing for this party.

But it wasn’t long before a number of us grown-ups went out to the country-side to visit with a relative of ours who got his left leg broken for him by a night-blind and drunk motor bike rider. And we came back feeling the way you feel when you have visited a hospital or a correctional facility or a hospice or a refugee camp or any other such place that brings out the humanity out of this body of mud. Those kids of course watched the match while we were out and so gladly welcomed us with the news of victory for our country. That was good but did a bad job of soothing us. But during that time something else had happened – the nightmare that we call news.

We forget that something similar had happened in the morning in the north of the country where some suicide bombers had gone to some churches and blown themselves away with explosives killing over a dozen people and injuring scores of others. You figure that because that happens every other Sunday it becomes a back page news and not so hard to forget. What happened was that in this vast but small world, during the time the British were celebrating and Nigerians were winning the football match in the south, and those in the north were trying to recognize and number fragmented and charred bodies, a passenger plane from our capital crash landed on a heavily populated area of Lagos near the airport. The impact and the explosion set three buildings on the site on fire.

The authorities who didn’t have a sweet clue announced that the over one hundred and fifty passengers and crew aboard the plane were certainly DOA. The authorities who didn’t have a sweet clue did nothing in the form of a rescue operation to rescue those who might still be alive in the rubble. The world watched hour after hour and wondered why nothing was being done about the fact that nothing was being done. We didn’t want to accept the dreary fact that the death toll could end up being in the region of a couple of hundreds. Oh God, let it be less!

And usually when something this tragic happens all in one day, I would ask my family, albeit jestingly, if we had sinned as a nation to deserve all this. The truth is that we have sinned just as our fathers had. Of course the British didn’t deserve to be celebrating because they have not only sinned but had made it lawful to sin. Only that unlike ours, their fathers didn’t sin so. They weren’t so wise and presumptuous as to believe in no-God as most of their children do today. And if these children carry on the way they do, in the nearest future they won’t have anything to celebrate. And as we change and leave the ways of our fathers, soon we will have more reasons to celebrate and less to lament about. Then the pictures in the news will have colours but they won’t be gory.

DREAM IMMIGRANT

                                                  

                                        Dream Immigrant

                                                       

                                              [A Poem]

That dream of mine came true

In a dream last night.

But it was not a dream-come-true.

A nightmare!

No recollection of the trouble

Such a trip affords

As I ambled along the pavement,

Nay, sidewalk

Nor of my first and second jobs

Though I enjoyed their stillbirths.

I was fired for my infectious ineptitude.

My mulatto partner filed for a divorce

I believe before the end

Of the same day she arranged

To marry ‘poor thing’, me!

I no more hated the obtuse, nondescript

Faces of brisk pedestrian robots

At least not as much as I hated

The cold nights and nightmares

In which I grope for home.

                                                          ©Uche Aniagu

I Know One Someone

                                                   I KNOW SOMEONE                                          

Last Monday I went to the beautiful but boisterous city of Port-Harcourt for the second time. The other time I made myself a promise that nothing would make me live in that city save my love for God should He ask me to live there for, say mission work. There were so many people everywhere; the traffic was terrific, the roads a nightmare, but all tried in vain to conceal the innate beauty of the city.

 I went with a sister of mine and her colleague for a business meeting that last time and I recall we lost our way to the hotel and tried to get directions from a young girl in her teens trying to cross the road. She ignored us as I pulled up to her to ask. For all she cared we can’t be anything other than those predators in the form of men scavenging for young women they would have quick sex relations with. That was and still is the situation of that city. What with so many foreigners eager to toss some bucks this way and that for some vain pleasure as they do business in the oil-rich city. And so they sow their wild oats every now and again and believe it goes with the job.

My mission was simple this time. My sister had asked me to go pick up the company car that was used by one of her bosses who had just moved on. She had asked me to look for company just in case. Riding alone for hours in a car was a chance she didn’t want to take with me. What with numberless police men at every tenth pace on our highways eager to fleece road users especially when they are young men.

 Because of the need for precaution, I tried to get someone who would go with me without asking to be paid but I couldn’t find anyone. So I gave myself a good talking to.

“Aren’t you old enough to hold a job of your own?” I asked myself.                                                            
And the answer was yes, I was old enough. I figured that if part of my job involved shuttling from this town to the next it wouldn’t be a problem, I wouldn’t need anybody. So I admitted to myself that my sister’s fear had caught me too. I shed it at once and got ready to leave, alone.

“I could talk to my husband to join you,” Nek, my sister said. “I think he is free today.” But I wouldn’t hear of it. If her man can afford to join me, I couldn’t afford to let him, not out of fear or precaution or whatever word you use for the puny effort we put out to protect or save ourselves from what we can’t save ourselves from. Then I prayed again and asked God to go with me as if I needed to ask him twice.

 I do not know all about how our policemen think but I do know every human being judges you first by your appearance before they have a chance to open up your heart to see if it only pumps blood or has the potential for some dubious business. So I put on a white shirt with blue pinstripes and black trousers and with those fine glasses on I was a young bank executive. I bussed to the city and was there around noon. And as I expected, it took quite some time and some phone calls to get to this boss’s house but when I did get there we concluded our business in less time than it took you to get to this point in this paragraph because I told him how much I needed to be on my way so I can get back home before dusk and that’s good for him for then he didn’t have to offer me a drink or something.

I didn’t salivate when I saw this relatively neat and sound silver-coloured Chevrolet Optra but I swallowed and thanked God it’s the kind of car you can speed with and without fear – it was balanced and wide and heavy so it wouldn’t fly. And in about half an hour I was out of the maze they called streets and was on the freeway.                                                                                                                                        

In a country where the police didn’t have ‘offices’ on the highway it wouldn’t take three hours to get to Enugu, but here it’s a completely different story. And you didn’t have to do anything to deserve the delays and the searches and the frisking and the examinations and interviews and the interrogations and the intimidations and what have you. And I don’t want that so I prayed. I asked Him to help me get home fast by, well, blindfolding some of these agents when I get to the check points or making them see me as a dignitary or a politician on special assignment that didn’t need to be delayed and that’s by making them see a government plate number, or by making them see me as a law-abiding citizen with complete vehicle documents and I.D. which is true about me.

Folks, I don’t know how God did it; I don’t know which one He did or whether He did all of them, alternating the means or method as I drove past check points after check points with some of the officers giving me a wide berth or waving at me or giving me a salute or just asking where I was from and where I was going and then wishing me a safe journey or politely asking if I had anything for them and when I said I didn’t they were happy all the same. Or maybe they saw a big man at the back reading the papers or using his computer. Or maybe He made them see some weird or angelic creature ride shotgun. It was so unusual you knew something was right, not wrong. I think I was stopped only by a check point out of dozens that day but I can’t remember being so.

So, did I get back on time? You bet. And that’s not because the president and my dad are friends nor because I had a note from the police commissioner but because I know Someone – the One who pulls the strings that pull those who pull the strings down here.

The Day I Caught My Pants Down

                                                       I CAUGHT NUMBER ONE

Because it is easy, anyone can find out about the American president who said a man who believes money is everything could justifiably be suspected of being capable of doing anything to get it. That quote just came to my mind minutes ago because I was very close to doing just that a couple of weeks ago at school when I witnessed a scene that could have got me some pounds if I had a camera and got it on it.

Let me tell you the story the way you’d get it. I happen to be a regular reader of the BBC Focus on Africa magazine and you know how they tell you to get photos or stories that when they get published earn you some pounds. Of course I like money but not as much as you do. At first I didn’t give a hoot but after some time, I began to want to have their money. My first move was to send them one of my stories – a good one. And when I did, I waited for them to get back to me, and waited. Nothing.                              

Did they get it? I bet. I say that when I didn’t get a mail I can’t read from Mailer Daemon, and when a sent mail remains in my Sent box. Then at long last I got a reply in which they said something or other about the heading or subject of my mail. That it was supposed to have a particular subject heading so they can sort it, or file it, or reply to it, or use it easily. Just like you, I couldn’t understand because I assumed if you wrote a mail to an English magazine in their own language, they would read it and know what to do with it. And if they did they wouldn’t have to use their red tape. I came to believe they didn’t read it and I’m still waiting to get over that before I write them back.   

On the other hand, I’ve been eyeing my sister’s digital camera for some time, trying to find what help it could be of if I went out every day with it taking shots of every spectacular scene that the BBC would like. The BBC can’t help but like pictures that show dirty, squalid, rustic, uncivilized scenes – that is, those that show Africa as they would rather have it be. No, you can’t blame them when it’s Africans that send them those photos; Africans like me who crave their money and wield a camera.

The scene I saw in a village very close to my hostel was that of a diminutive little girl in a dirty-coloured panties and her more diminutive wee sister carrying a diminutive little brown puppy on her shoulders like you would carry a sleeping baby. It struck me how very close to the ground they were as they walked down the tarmacked road to wherever they were headed. I suspected they were headed for the market down the road to sell the dog. I’m sure they could strike a good bargain – those kids; only that the way they carried the puppy tells they wouldn’t give it up for the world and all the stars put together. It was like the puppy was their third little sister so that it’s not just a dog but a member of the family.

I considered that this was African scene par excellence when I saw the apparently undernourished and growth-retarded children with their midget of a dog. I didn’t see the big picture nor did I consider the misrepresentation of Africa that would engender if published. That it would run like every child in the continent is as hungry and diminutive as those. It was hard for me to pick myself up from the moral level I’d dropped down to. After all I’m supposed to have learned about money I saw myself then regretting I didn’t carry a camera to take those kids with and send to my shame.

In the end I had to tell myself the hard truth: that I have often underestimated my greed. Maybe (not maybe) I should always be on constant guard against avarice and the love for just a little more, and to remind myself all the time that it is the love of money that is the root of all evil, not the lack of it as Bernard Shaw would have us believe.