HOMO HERBALIST

I wasn’t sure it was the right thing to do but my friend Doris was certain it was.

“You’ve been barren for 8 years now and you have tried everything to no avail. Isn’t an unsure decision a better option than no decision at all?”

I was not sure of how my husband would take it. I knew men didn’t take kindly to such, particularly a free thinker like my husband. But men being what who they were did not care so much, even about critical issues as this.

“Don’t worry; it is until your husband knows how much you have put into this that he will appreciate how dearly you want this child. Moreover the man is not a juju man. He is just a herbalist”.
I tried thinking of the differences between juju man and herbalist but it all seemed like one person to me- the red garbed scary man we saw in home movies who usually perpetuated evil acts and ended up dying by Holy Ghost fire or nemesis. My mind was very disturbed. Doris’ compelling insistence had won eventually and she’d come to pick me from work after I had feigned a fainting spell during lunch.

“The weekday is the best time to go so you don’t have to lie to your husband- he would not find out anyway”

“Doris!” As if she knew what husbands were? She was my best friend; we were both thirty-six and the longest relationship I had a recollection of her having barely lasted six months. Now here she was teaching me about what husbands wanted. I sat in her car, thinking as she drove: all the years of Sunday school, absolute faith in God, sermons of heaven and hell and fiery reprisals started to haunt me. As it pulled me in all directions, I remained still- he is just a herbalist I found myself saying self reassuringly. He is not a juju man.

We eventually arrived the place and against a certain compelling inner will, I walked behind Doris (albeit apprehensively) into the small bungalow tucked in-between a failed bank building that had been shut down and a barber’s shack. No 37 hung unsuspectingly askew from the number panel. We took two steps down into along corridor, turned a right and stopped at a door.

For your spiritual healing powder,
Love rings, money power,
Woman-follow-me,
Contact Papa Shingo.
Herbalist power, no evil. 07028336104

I squinted my eyes to read the sticker on the door.

Before us stood a clean shaven middle aged man, naked to the torso wearing only shorts- with an entanglement of chest hair that looked like termites clinging to a mound. I averted my gaze quickly from his chest to catch his eyes but I noticed his eyes dipped slightly below my crucifix pendant. As he welcomed Doris who apparently was no stranger to him, I shifted uncomfortably.

“Can we sit? Your spiritual highness.”
“Oh yes, sit, I dey come”

Doris motioned me into one of the cushion chairs in the small sitting room where we were ushered into. I sat nimbly on the edge of one of the chairs waiting for a moment to express my discomfort to Doris but she had chosen to sit opposite me across the centre table, denying me the opportunity of a side whisper. The man came back in with a bowl of leaves and some other objects I could not identify and gave it to me to whisper into the bowl what my problems were. All the while he did not take his eyes away from my cleavage. As I spoke into the bowl, I looked up more than once to catch his lewd gaze. I finally gave the bowl back to him after mumbling inanities into the weird salad bowl.

“I’m done sir”“Sir? It is your spiritual highness my daughter”
“Your spiritual highness”

I looked at the man who would only be a few years older than us.
My daughter? I sat closer to the edge of my chair, disgust beating hard against my chest.After receiving the bowl, he sat on a chair that looked like a throne and closed his eyes as he sang an esoterically worded song that screeched at high octaves with a constantly recurring word- Shumba. After the freak show, he opened his eyes and looked into my eyes for the first time that afternoon.
“My daughter you are looking for child?”
“You will baff”“Hmm! you will baff”

I strained my ears to hear him.

“Your problem is spiritual one and we will use spiritual soap to wash it away. You will come on Friday at 12 night-vigil to baff. After the baff all the problem will disappear. You will get a child”

I saw Doris nodding her head at his every stressed consonant giving me that I-told-you-he-was-powerful look. As he finished, we all paused: I, bewildered and Doris reverently listening, apparently lost. Doris finally broke the silence.

“Ok your spiritual highness, she will come on Friday. Here is something we brought”
As Doris put her hand in her purse, the man motioned her not to worry.

“Just bring her, Friday. She will baff? Hmm we will baff her and she will get a child”

I did not speak a word to Doris on my way back home. Even though she spoke of how the man had cured his current wife (the third) of 10 years barrenness and eventually ended up marrying her. As I held on to my husband (maybe a bit too tightly later that night) I had a dream where a large lizard with saliva drooping from it mouth kept looking at my naked body and shouting,

"You will baff”

Part II

I woke the morning after I had the dream, with a pang of guilt of not telling my husband about seeing the herbalist. My husband and I were great friends; during the phase of poke nosing in-laws he had stood by me but how would I tell him I was going to have a spiritual bath at midnight in a herbalist’s house? I went through the motions that morning and on more than one occasion, my husband asked if something was wrong.

“Nothing dear”, I lied. “It’s just the mood”

Judging from his expression after I told him, I knew he saw through the lie but just didn’t bother questioning me any further. As I looked at him uncover the lie with barely any expression, I realized how difficult it would be for me to keep something of this nature secret from him for so long. The day passed very slowly because I did not want Friday to come. I still was not sure what I would do. A part of me, that sensed insincerity in the herbalist held back, but a part of me; the one that wanted a child so badly, nudged me on, coupled with Doris’ unending calls all day.
At my desk in the office, the memory of the man’s ogling eyes and the salivating lizard kept assailing my imagination and one sentence kept on persistently through the memories.

“You will baff”

“He’s not a herbalist”, I found myself saying out loud unconsciously, drawing a suspecting gaze from my desk-mate at work who spun round to give me that ‘are-you-okay?’ look.

Friday morning eventually arrived, even though unwelcome. Doris’, sensing my vacillation from the last discussion we had, had arrived my house early enough to make my husband suspicious. After she left, he asked why she had come so early and I lied again. This time, though, I don’t think he saw through it.

“She just lost a relative and needed to see me”, I told him. He muttered his condolences and made a note to call her. Far drawn from that, Doris had indeed come to encourage me; those were her words “...encourage you to take a step of faith”.

“Faith?” When I was not certain what I believed anymore.The plan was that I would tell my husband that I wanted to sleep over at Doris’ house to lend some support through her supposed bereavement and we would go to Papa Shingo’s house later in the night to take the cleansing bath. I saw the rationale in the plan and how it carried through from what I had told my husband about her early morning visit, but beneath it all, I felt like a betrayer. Though like Doris had said, it wasn’t everything he told me either so a few secrets won’t change anything. But I knew it would. ‘I would be doing this for us’, I kept saying to reassure myself as the day wore on, and the side of me that wanted to give it a try tarried more in the realms of thought than the side that did not. Even with all this, I did not know how I would face up to him to tell him I would not be sleeping at home tonight.

As the evening drew nearer, the tension I felt heightened and I could not engage myself in anything but wander around the house logging the seconds, almost shying from the genuine smile of my husband as he smiled at me from our eight year old wedding photograph.

At about 9p.m. my husband called to tell me he would be sleeping over at a friend’s house because it would be too late to return back home after work. After I hung up, myriads of thoughts barraged me regarding the call I had just received. It was strange in a way that fate had taken my husband out of the way in order to make me go for the cleansing bath without having to tell him anything at all. Yet, something felt out of place with my husband calling to say he would not be sleeping at home. He was a much organised man and usually had his plans laid out. If he had told me earlier I would not have felt the uneasiness I felt now. Still holding the phone in my hands, I had no cause to doubt him but I had no cause not to either. But was it not the same thing I was planning to tell him? Wouldn’t it have been a lie? I was only going for a cleansing bath, and he was only going for a meeting too.

I shut my ears to keep the voices out of my head. It was Doris’ call that saved my sanity.

“Hello, you should be here by now. Is your husband not going to allow you? Should I call to ask him?”
“Don’t bother Doris. I am just about leaving”.

I looked for a last time at the now lonely house, at the still furniture and blank spaces that was once filled with the lives of two people who were so close. Tonight, we felt so apart. Easing out of the driveway, I made my way to Doris’ house.

PART III

At about a half past eleven later that night, we arrived at the same quiet house. It was totally dark from the eternal outage that prevailed in this part of town. This time sleeping dogs with half open eyes that glowed, reflecting the light from our phones, slept along the narrow corridor we had gone through a few days earlier. We side-stepped to avoid them as Doris led me to the door that bore the inscription of Papa Shingo’s abilities. Before she knocked, the door opened. It was almost as if something- maybe the spirits, had notified the herbalist of our approach. A faint glow emerged from the open door and lit up the doorway in the darkness.

“Ah welcome! So you have decided to baff ehn!”
“Hmm, you will baff. And you will have child, less go”

He led the way into the same sitting room we had been ushered into the last time. Tonight it was lit by candlelight from a lot of coloured candles placed haphazardly on the floor leading from the entrance door. The herbalist himself was ceremoniously dressed in a red wrapper he knotted beneath his shoulders like women did and a head tie of the same material that had cowries sewn in.

He turned round almost abruptly at the centre of the room issuing a command in my direction. “Doris! wait here!” This time he looked more into my eyes, even though I thought I saw a fleeting sneer flicker across his face like the dancing candles that illuminated the space tonight.

“You follow me!” he beckoned to me leading me along a narrow corridor which was also lit by meandering candles by the side of the walls. I reluctantly followed, ashamed of myself, furious at my husband even though I did not know why, and tired of my predicament. The herbalist stopped at a heavy black door that opened into a shower stall lit by a lone candle. I looked around the corridor and the line of candles that ran the length. There were many doors on either side of the corridor and I wondered where his three wives were; as the last time we came too, there didn’t seem to be any other person in the house. I stepped gingerly into the shower stall my frame shivering in the dark from a far-drawn fear I could not define.

“Oya don’t just stand there? Take off your clothes” he ordered, shutting the door behind me and standing in the doorway staring hard at me.
“Abi you wan baff with clothe, Take am off”

I had never stripped before any other man except my husband and it fell awkward doing so in the presence of the herbalist. Doris had told me however, that he would only need to bathe my head and arms so I had brought a wrapper with me which I removed from by bag and tied around my chest before proceeding to discretely disrobe in front of the stranger. I still held my bag as I took off the items of clothing one after another; stuffing them in the burglar proof of the window on whose sill the candle burnt and dripped wax.
“Oya, Oya!”, he hurried me up.
“We are not small pikin”

I thought I saw him change to a salivating lizard as he spoke those words. After I had taken off my blouse and the jeans trousers I wore, he dragged a bucket filled with what seemed like dark coloured water from a corner of the shower stall, and proceeded to scoop the liquid with a bowl he picked from a pedestal beside the bucket. In the bowl was a sponge of raffia husks and a darkish thing that I believed was soap. At that moment I wished I had not come and I insitnctively blurted out,
“I am not bathing again!” (maybe a bit too loud).
“I am not bathing again. I want to go home”

“Haaa-Haaa!” the herbalist laughed; a raucous laughter that made me afraid. That kind of fear that boded evil.
“You no fit change your mind now”
“We have prepare the water and you must baff”.

My thudding heart seemed to echo in the now claustrophobic space.

“No, I don’t want to bathe anymore”, I screamed. At that moment, I pulled my clothes from the burglar proof and started to walk towards the herbalist who was still in the way. The man did not move his ground. He only bent down to scoop some of the water from the bucket as if what I had said had gone unheard.

“I said I don’t want to ....”

The liquid splashed all across my face, my hair, into my eyes and in my nose and I started to choke on the sour tasting water, coughing loudly and flailing my arms, knocking out the candle in the process.

“Dori...” I started to scream as the man pressed his palm hard against my mouth and ripped off the wrapper I had on with his free hand. The hot fumes of adrenaline rose from my nostrils and clouded my eyes.I started to fight frantically, as he struggled to pour some more of the sour tasting liquid in my mouth. I clawed and bit, screaming at the intervals that his strong hands afforded me.“Doris!” I shouted but the liquid I had swallowed was starting to have a weakening effect on me. Here I was naked, except for my underwear, struggling with a stranger in the middle of the night. I started to feel his hardness against my body as I struggled in the dark. I could feel his hands all over my body while the other wrenched tightly against my mouth hurting me badly.

Slowly my fighting arms started to wane and the resistance I put up gradually wore out. I could only feel now- there was not much else I could do.

“Doris”, I thought,
"My husband".
As I thought of my husband, I started to cry. The motions were hasty and hurting, totally devoid of feeling and all I heard from the herbalist who was running out of breath before I fell asleep was,

“You want child abi?”
“Hmm, you will baff today”

OIO