OMO ONILE

The leaves rustled in the wind and the earth felt cold beneath our bare feet. I and Akinlolu who was my uncle even though I was a year older than him lurked in the thicket armed with our cutlasses. We stood waiting for them.

Our family tree was a rather complicated one. The main stem had 7 branches which broke out in a confused entanglement of trellised family ties. Those seven branches each had a family head that often represented the interest of the family.

Scenes from the video played itself in my head and swelled it: causing me to go dizzy with rage. Our elders had sold us out.
I could picture again the smiling face of Baba Adekola as he signed the papers. He was the family head from our branch and I had seen him chewing his tobacco and laughing aloud, slapping his belly to add beat to the cacophony. I saw other faces too- faces of uncles and grand relatives: all old men at the ebb of their tide taking thirty parts from the twenty they owed the generations after them. It had been someone’s mistake that we saw the videos documenting the land sale but how long could the hare have run to avoid the scope of the patient hunter? One day he will be found.

My father was very old and the only thing which he owned; the only thing which he passed on to us; the only thing which we owned; and the only thing we intended to pass on to our children was the land that stood as part of the overall family holding. It was where I and my uncle were hiding presently.
He owned a portion of it like I did even though his father had died without an inheritance and my father had been grateful to cede some of our land to him as he had lived with us all his life. He grew cassava while I grew cocoa: cocoa that I and my family cropped from the pods in harvest time and spread it out on the concrete of the courtyard to dry. We would sit around it, my children would dance around it and I would watch it in the night to protect it from prying eyes and cursed hands of lazy men around the village who stole for a living. Cocoa was our sustenance.
I did no other job neither did my wife nor the six children we had between us.

Now, the cocoa, the land, our inheritance; everything was gone. One day we had gone to the farm to find it no more. ‘The government had acquired it’, was the response we got from our fathers but the video had said otherwise.

I watched from the thicket, the place that had once been my cocoa farm and sweat trickled down my bush strewn face stinging me in the eyes and stinging me with the thought that my hope had died with the greed of Baba Adekola- his smile hurting me the more anytime I thought of those images on the screen of my mind. They had sold the family land: All of it, to the visitors; and years of hard work, years of hope; had gone under the blades of the bulldozers revealing the earth beneath. A poor reminder of where we will all end up.

The noise of the truck brought I and my uncle to an alert as we watched the approaching glare from the shade. Our ears strained for the drone that began to draw closer and my grip firmed on the cutlass I held in my left hand. We had dealt with our elders one after another. Now it was the turn of the visitors who dared to enter a stranger’s house feet first.

The drone steadily neared as the tyres, crunching the earth beneath, chewed faster towards us. Finally the truck came to a halt not far from where we hid. It was white and its windscreen reflected the glare in our direction causing us to shield our eyes even in the shade.

The first man to come down looked familiar from the videos. He was the one with the big frame and a bald head and a jowl that quivered like that of a rabid dog when he spoke. He lumbered his bulk out of the vehicle and brought out a cigarette from his chest pocket, wincing in the sun and searching his pockets for a light. His shirt was sweaty and his pate shiny from the sun in the eye of his bald patch. His jowl was quivering as he spoke to some others who were still in the car whom we did not see. Soon after, another man came of the rear of the vehicle then yet another man. My uncle and I, quiet like the patient hunter we were, waited for the grass cutters to sit still.

Waiting was a part of our lives. We knew how to be patient.
In the dry season we planted and we waited.
While we soaked our cassava in water to make fufu for our families we waited.
When the cocoa was ripe, we clawed out the milky seeds, spread it to dry and waited.
At the cocoa merchants, as we bagged our beans in line, we waited.
When our monies came in, we stored it in bags beneath the earth and waited.
When our game ran, we stood still and waited.
We were a waiting people but we don’t wait forever.

I watched my uncle pick a rock from the sod about our feet, his cutlass having changed hands already.

The first stone whizzed through the air and hit the fat one square on the face.
The rest was history that blurred into one moment of flight and fury as the men scampered in the fray. I ran with bile in my veins hacking down the intruders with the thirsty cutlass I wielded- they whimpered like chickens. The driver who unfortunately was in the truck as we approached had sped off to be our tale-bearer to the rest. We chased him but could not reach him as the car sped off leaving a trailing cloud of dust the fleeing letters on his boot that read.

M I S N A R Y

09-09-09

PRELUDE by: Enya
Only Time:
Who can say where the road goes,
Where the day flows, only time?
And who can say if your love grows,
As your heart chose, only time?

Who can say why your heart sighs,
As your live flies, only time?
And who can say why your heart crieswhen your love lies, only time?
Who can say when the roads meet,That love might be ,in your heart?

and who can say when the day sleeps,and the night keeps all your heart?
Night keeps all your heart.....
Who can say if your love grows,As your heart chose, only time?
And who can say where the road goes where the day flows, only time?
Who knows? Only time
Who knows? Only time

09-09-09
For Adedayo Makinde

Thursday, 9th September 1999

Dear diary...dear diary? Sounds too ‘galish’...anyway Mr. diary!!! I know I might not fill you after 2 months because it is just not in my habit to write down my thoughts... and also with these Y2k millennium bug stuff who knows if Jesus might be here in December and we’d all be gone. So if I make it and you don’t, tell somebody about me...
Yada! Yada! Yada! Not much to say so bye for now.

Saturday, 9th September 2000

2:12 am and I can’t sleep. these days are so trying.
I seem to be stuck up against an unseen wall. Sort of like so many problems for ONLY me?
God help me tomorrow o abi its even today!!!
Still thinking about what dad said yesterday...i just pray I can disprove him.
Can somebody helllllllp!!!!!!!! If I ever get through today, I’d be grateful to God

Sunday, 9th September 2001

Went shopping for stuff for school today and got these nice Combat shirts ... dem go tire!
So grateful I got an admission eventually after all the wahala. Saw dad laughing today and can’t say I was happy he was, cos he never believed in me anyway.

Took some pictures with the guys and we all looked funny even though it was a good shot. Everyone says I take good pictures, maybe I’d be a photographer someday..not bad!! I heard pictures are the things you are served with when you enter girls' hostels.... ha ha... can’t wait to enter a girls hostel too...(idiot)

....its night, no light and I still can’t sleep. Am so happy, or is it excited? Abegi tomorrow come jo!

Monday, 9th September 2002

Lazing around today thanks to the public holiday. I stumbled on my old diaries. Can’t believe I wrote a lot of that stuff. 4 years? Wow! If I had been told I could keep a diary for 4 years I would have betted against myself...hmm interesting though. Just a lot of memories!

I am still smiling through a lot of the things i see here. Imagine ‘y2k’: passing Jamb was the biggest problem that can befall man!!! If I knew in Y2k that I would be taking Prof. Otus’ course, I for pray say make I no pass the JAMB (that man is a devil)

’03 was funny too, imagine me falling asleep with a love letter on my chest and dreaming of all that rubbish.... children will always be children (ha!ha daddyyyyyyyy)

Caught a bit of the September 11 terrorist attack last year on CNN.........those guys are reaaaaally mean!!! Ah!

Tuesday, 9th September 2003

How? I don’t know how! The pains in my arms and head are unbelievable. I had to ask moyo to bring my diary from school.
How did I not die? The other man in the funny shirt.. dead? Just like that! Why did God spare me? Even in my pains on this bed, how I appreciate life.... Thank you God. Thank you for saving me.

Thursday, 9th September 2004

It’s exactly one year since the accident on Benin-Ore. I still thank God!!!

School is on strike and people are just wandering about the whole place...a lot of people have gone home but I will wait in school....only dad and mum at home....boringggggggg

Why do some people like to hurt others? What Gloria said today reallllly hurt. I don’t think she knows. I wish I had my way, I would have shown her. I think she is just being a kid.......spoilt brat!!! She makes me miss S>H the more. Cant stop thinking about her even though I know I’ve got to read...you never know when these ASUU, NASU, ‘everything-SU’ will come to their senses

Friday, 9th September 2005

Whenever I see you my heart flutters,
You are made for me,
My soulmate, my everything
Never was a poet but now I write, never a lover but now I’m lost. I love you Franca


Saturday, 9th September 2006

Still suffering from the fatigue of graduation trips. I had to look around for Franca (Naughty girl); saw kolade too. I kinda feel bad he didn’t graduate with us. I guess our lives just follow different paths. What next? Service? A job? I am so anxious and so scared too. What if things don’t go the way I planned them?

Sunday, 9th September 2007

The visit to the orphanage today struck a chord of pity in me. I can still see the faces of the children. Full of hope yet unaware of what tomorrow holds. Wish I found some of my older diaries. I think I must have written a poem sometime about a lost child.....
I pray I become rich one of these days. Veeery rich that I can afford to take care of these children and give them opportunities might never have had Ii in life.

I really wished Franca was here with me she loves children more than I do. I pray we have lots of them......like 1 million........hahahah

Tuesday, 9th September 2008

Could not do much at work today.
Yesterday was just sooo crazy.

I wish I could take a forever break!! But I cant cos I need to get paid. Money buys the good life but I just feel like a rat in a maze these days (or maybe a hamster in a wheel...sort of like moving faster running round in circles....)

I have been asking myself of recent, Is God real? Or just a figment of our imaginations...life is sort of like meaningless....we are born, we struggle till we die.... fullstop! Vanity.

That reminds me! guess who I see on the VANITY show... Kolade Ajiboye. Guy from school who didn’t pass out with our set. he must have dumped Civil engineering for entertainment. I thinke he’s done well for himself. He looks like a biggg boy now! Chubbier (even though he didn’t grow any taller). he looks older too (who doesn’t?)

Wednesday, 9th September 2009

Its been 4 months.
Five years gone down the shafts just like that. Still can’t understand why she had to go. But I guess that is just the way it goes. I still miss her though. A lot!

Found my long lost friend on facebook. She is a photographer in the Himalayas......what a job? Wish I had the nerve to have followed my dreams... I remember vaguely I wanted to be a photographer once. Childhood fantasies!!!!!!! So bad all those dreams are dead.

Got to take the car to the mechanic.

Not a dime in the house, not a shred in the kitchen. I feel so alone....even the walls echo.

OIO

The irony of the life of a man is that he lives his life forward but can only read it backwards like the pages of a diary.
Only if he could see, he would know that today's anxiety is tomorrow's joke,
today's dream is tomorrow's memory and today's glory is tomorrow's past.

Then maybe, just maybe he would find pleasure in every moment, taking it as it comes and making the best of it.

2nd Class citizens of a Third World country

I cringed at the sight of black slaves with padlocks in their mouths as they stared ahead, oblivious of my pity for them. On the worn pages of my book I watched them queue in a crude line that ran from the top of the page, where a slave ship berthed, to the bottom where I saw the number 34. They just looked ahead as I flipped through my picture catalogue ‘History book for young blacks’; their black skins worn from strain and their faces hope-lost. I remember wondering why humans could be so inhuman to another just because they looked different. But it was not my pain, it was the pain of slaves aboard a slave ship eons drawn from me.

As I flip through the same pages in my youth, I get to a chapter: ‘FREEDOM?’ but I don’t see any words written on it. It is blank; clear as day.
Did they miss something out?
‘Yes, I think so!’
‘But why is there the big bold question mark behind the word ‘FREEDOM’?
Are we not free?

I turn the pages back quickly to the chapter of Apartheid in South Africa and I see the pictures of black soldiers hounding black people of like colour, people just like them. And I see as one black man goads the other over the face with a club while a white man, in the background, watches one at the other.
‘Beasts they all are’, I imagine he thinks.
I feel the pain but they are not mine. Just that of a man bowled over in pain on the pages of a worn book.

Yet at my workplace is a young 27-year old Briton who never finished school like I did but earns a lot more than I do (and not in naira as you could have guessed).
He rides in the company SUV while I ride the bus. He won’t live in the company house; he’d rather live in hotels. He is FREE to wear jeans trousers and work flexible hours but I get a query a quarter past 8 and a quarter to 5.
Every time my black boss goads me over the head, he just stands there and watches.
It’s not my pain; I begin to say, ‘it’s just that of a man bowled over in pain on the pages of a worn book’.



As I further flip through the crispier pages of now, I watch as black people cringe at the sight of a white man in the work place. We fear to shake him; we stutter when he says hello and even when we can’t hear what he has said, we just smile sheepishly and act dumb.

I watch my sisters flutter effusively when the white man so much as looks in their direction. I watch him come into our club houses with two teens or worse still, pre-teen nubile scantily clad and oozing lust on his arms. I watch them clear VIP for him and chase the rest of us out.

I watch our leaders sit at conference tables with him and say words like, ‘We need you to help us solve this and that’ and I watch the industry moguls import ‘yeomen’ from China in the name of ‘Expats’ and out-populate our kind from OUR own working places. I continue to read through this book of history to the future and realize that it is still the self same pictures I see. Except now, I am the picture on the book I read: of apartheid by blacks at blacks; brought on by the inferiority we feel in our minds.

What kind of slavery extends beyond freedom?
What kind of chain binds a man for 49 years and he fails to see them?
It is the slavery we have brought upon ourselves. It is the slavery of the mind.
A slavery of which the chains, unfortunately, no physical pincers can prise.

Look up brethren, because we were born this way; same as they are. Let us start to believe in ourselves and raise our eyes up in honour for we are no second class citizens in our own home. Let us start to make a move to pay the hard price for the development of ourselves and this nation. Imports and ‘Expats’ are only the easy way out, the way that never lasts.

Who says Nigerians can’t build a monument? Who says we can’t develop a sustainable local technology? Only if we believe more in ourselves and our ability to constantly improve on who we are?
We are beautiful people. Only if we open our minds to see that we are all humans under the surface of our skin and the colour of it makes no difference in the things we can all achieve.

OIO
From a grieving heart.

Haraamu!

The large steel ‘basia’ over the firewood stove is breathing steam and the flame is licking the black underbelly of the pot of amala causing it to hiss and curse. ‘kpoto kpoto kpoto’ the black paste bubbles over the fire.
Sweat is pouring down her face and the smoke is stinging her eyes. She tries to avoid both as she pours more water into the ‘basia’ of amala and feels for the consistency of the paste, dipping her burning hands in a bowl of cold water beside the ‘basia’ (just the way Alhaja does it).
Alhaja is the owner of the ‘Buka’ where they serve only Amala and assorted meat to the men, spinsters and lazy wives of the neighbourhood who patronise them daily. Alhaji Farouk is Alhaja’s husband and the Imam of the family mosque where they all gather to pray in the mornings.

While she sits and waits for the paste to cook, one of the other girls, Bilqis enters into the kitchen shed carrying a volcanic ‘basia’ of egusi soup using shreds from old cartons to insulate her fingers from the heat. Gingerly, the new entrant balances the steaming ‘basia’ of soup on one of the tripods in the shed and walks back to the yard. In due course, to bring in the other ‘basias’ of efo riro, egusi, ewedu and other delicacies that have lent the buka the alias of ‘Jeun koo yo – mother of the neighbourhood’.

At the sight of the sizzling pot of egusi, a crisis starts to brew in the Middle East and a certain uneasiness envelopes the sitting girl. It is the third day of Ramadan and she is not yet accustomed to the cycle of hunger and sating. Having not woken in time for ‘Saari’ this morning, her enzymes were starting to protest in voices of rumbling and writhing within.

Alhaja is nowhere in sight. Neither is Alhaji Farouk.

She takes one last look at the sizzling soup filled to the brim with meat and hurries to her feet; picking up a dirty plate from a stack of unwashed ones lying in a corner of the shed.
She scoops some egusi from the basia, capturing three pieces of meat in the process and covers the steaming soup with another of the dirty plates. She looks around again to ensure no one is watching then ladles out a large glob of amala into one of the nylon wrappers idling about and wraps it into her wrapper folds placing some of the other dirty plates beneath and above the transgression steaming within.

The amala feels warm against her abdomen; the plates feel warm against her fingers. Saliva streams start to run in her mouth and her heart starts to pound. Ggbim, gbim, gbim in her chest. Swallowing one more time, she steps out into the open courtyard walking across the threshold aiming for the side of the house where the changing room hides secure from prying eyes.
As she crosses the courtyard, she tries not to look up but she notices all eyes are on her. Alhaja in a mass of flesh, is staring at her from the shed where the butchers cut the meat. Iya Abeebat is staring at her above the noise of the grinding machine, which rises and dips to the dance of the fluctuating current in the bulb above the mill. Children on the balcony; goats eating leaves on the eve of death; girls crisscrossing the courtyard; Everyone is staring at her but she doesn’t stop. Balancing the lot and walking carefully as to keep the amala wombed within from falling, she just about reaches the other side when,
‘Kafayat’
‘Kafayat!’
It is the unmistakeable voice of Alhaja.

She freezes in her footsteps and looks back: back into the courtyard as she catches the sight of another of the girls with which she shares a name, moving in the direction of the motioning hands of Alhaja.
It wasn’t her Kafayat!
She doubles her pace about the corner and ducks into the windowless changing room, a left turn before the dish washers’.

Shutting the door behind her she crouches in a corner among the clothes stack, her belly growling too loudly, like all expectations on the eve of fulfilment.
She unfolds the wrap about her waist, retrieves the amala, then tucks the plates underneath a clothe pile, retrieving the covered plate of soup which still feels so hot. Devouring the food quickly in no particular order, amala, egusi and meat begins to cramp themselves in her mouth all at once.

Then the door lever starts to turn. Before it opens, she crouches farther into the hanging clothes stack standing tall among the fabric soldiers: her weapons; on one hand, amala-sizzling hot; on the other hand, a plate of egusi yet untamed.
She can hear the shuffling feet of the latest entrants.
...Hushed voices and a quick riffling of clothes.
The plate feels hot now but she cannot drop it
...whispers and a groan
The amala feels hot now but she cannot drop it
...clapping and quicker breathing
Yee! She shouts, dropping the plate on the floor and jumping out of the clothe stack.

Right there on the other side of the dark room is Alhaji Farouk, his Jalamir folded above his hips; and Bilqis (her hands on the wall) stuck to his pelvic regions gasping for breath.

Ha! Haraamu!