Agbo the Thief

I have always known victor to be a bad boy. Mama had always told me to avoid him and said “bad association spoils useful habit”. But I came to trust Victor right from the day he saved me from the opened claws of Senior Bob Satan. Victor seemed to have a way out of every seemingly tough situation. I remember Bob Satan; he was the senior that had a black and red tattoo of a dragon on his neck down into his back. I only wondered if the principal didn’t see the conspicuous tattoo before admitting him into the school. Some people said he was a relative of the principal – his nephew – but Chukwuma never told me that Bob Satan was his cousin. He must not be anything above 16years yet he carried himself like a grown man. I never saw him smile or poke a joke; even among his fellow senior students who feared him like he was a demon. His face was always blank and expressionless like a heated plantain peal. He walked slowly like he was afraid of trampling on some venomous snails. He walked with his hands raced to the back like a fowl and never returned greetings.

I came to school late on that Monday. I was late because I trekked to school so that I could save up some money to buy a pair of Opanka sandals. Mama refused to buy me Opanka because she said I was too small to wear that kind of footwear, even when I told her that all my classmates wore Opanka. Opanka was the reigning sandals in town. It was victor that taught me that I could save up some money by trekking to and from school. He had taken me through all the apiam ways that would reduce the distance to school. When I got close to the school gate that morning, Oga John, the crooked armed gateman was in front of the gate with legs astradly pinned to the ground like capital ‘A’ and his long cane with black elastic rope woven around it was under his armpit. Some junior students knelt behind him screamed in pains. The Senior Prefect was there behind Oga John flogging the students one after the other with the leg of a broken stool.

I peeked from the walls of the patrol station right opposite the school gate where I hid. The patrol station pump attendant gave me a signal that some senior student were approaching and I ran behind the petrol station manager’s office and hemmed in between two dirty drums of oil that smeared the left shoulder of my shirt with blackened oil. From there I sneaked round through the rail way to the broken walls behind the school fence where victor took me out through, the day we played hippy to an ikeji masquerading festival at Obiohia. It was the broken wall victor called Golden gate.

 The area around the broken fence was as quiet as a grave yard. The over grown elephant grasses there, were almost my height. They waved gently with the morning breeze that swayed them amid the tender morning sun. I didn’t see any train pass on the rail way. I had never seen one before but from our class, I always heard the deafening sound of the trains and the quaking jigi-jigi-kwam-kwam tremor of their wheels on the railway that shook and threatened to demolish the school walls whenever they passed through.

So I waddled through the tall elephant grasses and climbed over the debris of the broken fence into the school farm dotted with weeds on mole hills and malnourished cassava stems with leaves that had turned yellow. It was the first time I saw a squirrel munching a palm fruit. I paused to see the squirrel crack the shell of the kernel in the palm fruit like the ones they told us in the stories did. It held the palm fruit up in two fore limbs just like human and its eyes darted to all directions with flashing gleams. It saw me and dashed into a hole. I would have liked to go after it. I would have liked to catch it and put it in a cage near our kitchen and feed it everyday with palm fruits and cassava tubers. I would have liked to have it as a pet so that I could do shakara for chuks whenever he came to the pavement with his computer games. But chasing after the squirrel might expose me to dangers, so I moved on. I walked down the narrow part that led to the school refuse dump pit. I perceived a growing stench of igbo as I drew closer to the bamboo grove near the pit. The stench of the Indian hemp grew stronger and stronger the more I got closer to the bamboos. I also heard some whispers and some crunching footsteps on the dried grasses and I paused. If I could get to the pit, I could make my palms dirty and claim I went to throw away some dirt, should any senior student see me, I thought. Then I heard a bounced sound behind me like somebody just jumped in through the fence and I ran and hid behind the bamboo grove where the stench of igbo was higher. The dried grasses behind me made some chakri-chakri sounds and I felt it might be a snake and turned swiftly. An opened rough palm slammed on my face and the entire farm darkened.  I saw stars in my head and fell flat with my back on the dried bamboo grasses. I didn’t scream despite the pains that ran into my fore head and the hot liquid that ran in my nose and felt like blood. I didn’t cry because I went blank. When I opened my eyes, I was in the middle of five senior students led by Bob Satan. All my pockets were turned inside out. The transport money I was to save for the day was gone. My school bag was over turned, with my books lying beside it.

They sucked at a single wrap of igbo which passed round from mouth to mouth. Bob Satan squatted and blew some smokes of igbo into my face. I liked the smell of the smoke but it choked me and I coughed and held my throat. The other senior students laughed out loud but Bob Satan didn’t even smile. His face was expressionless. He blew the smoke on my face again and tried to stuff the burning wrap of igbo into my mouth. I raised my hand and knocked the smoke away. Bob Satan’s eyes widened and the other boys’ jaws dropped in awe. One of them picked up the igbo and dressed back. They all looked intently and expectantly at Bob Satan like a movie playing a climax tune – gbam gbam! Bob Satan stood up slowly. I was not terrified, even with the droplets of blood trickling from my nose, but I only watched him without blinking. He walked two steps back and brought out a rusty short gun from the back of his hips and pointed it at me and said:

“Say your last prayer boy”

The expression on his face did not change. Then victor emerged from the narrow walkway with a small black nylon bag on hand. One of the boy turned and screamed

“Agbo de thief!”

He smiled and raised his left hand in a fist. That was the first time I saw Bob Satan smile with only a curve in his cheek. He lowered the gun limply and victor handed him the nylon bag. Then victor saw me lying sprawled on the bare ground and dashed towards me.

“Hey my brother!” victor screamed.

Bob Satan sighed and said “sorry” carelessly to no one in particular. Victor frowned and propped me up. He didn’t talk to any of the senior boys again but took me to the school tap, where I washed up and marched straight to the school’s Guidance and councillor and lied that I was ill and she gave me a permission to go home.

NDU by Ukamaka Olisakwe

Author(s): Ukamaka Olisakwe

Ndu.

For lack of a name and since no one knew his real name, let’s call him “Ndu”.

Ndu, whose name means “life” in Igbo, was a mentally challenged man who became a legend of sorts in Aba. Young and thin, he had a face so narrow the skin stretched tight over its bony expanse perfected a look of hardship. The air around him hung thick, suffused with a heartrending sadness that was difficult to wave away, even long after you had left his presence.

But there was always some kind of smile on his face, as though he was mocking the pain that obviously was a part of his daily life―he had a large wound on his left leg that ran from around his knee to almost his ankle. He wasn’t the only mentally challenged and displaced person in Aba, but what stood him out was the bad leg and the permanent place he occupied in the city: a spot opposite the Abia State Polytechnic.

There were different versions to his story, depending on who was talking. Some said he was one of those vagrants who escaped from Uyo after the governor of Akwa Ibom State conducted the exercise to rid the streets of all mentally challenged and displaced persons. Others said he was a youngman who became mentally imbalanced after he took to hard drugs. And some said, in that generic way, with a superior smile on their religious faces, that ‘probably’ it was nemesis catching up with him―all of these stories were told with the casual indifference of people discussing the weather.

For months, he sat at his spot hunched over his wound, a souvenir from a hit-and-run early last year. Once, he was found wrapped in bandages, but he must have torn them off and began what would become his daily ritual of picking the wound with his finger until it bled. The state’s teaching hospital was about four kilometres away. Upon enquiries, a doctor said that they had tried all they could but that he had become infected and that the infection had spread. They were seeking other ways to get him off the streets and possibly cured. But that never happened.

Ndu remained on our streets. At a point he couldn’t move ten metres from his spot except he dragged his rump on the ground, pulling the bad leg along. At some point too, he sat hunched over the sore, unable to take shelter when the rains came.

As the months rode on, Ndu remained there, held hostage by his condition. We walked, head straight and noses scrunched up in disgust as his other diseases began to manifest: a bloated scrotum, the horrid  growth from his anus―possibly pile, which had him permanently sitting on one side of his buttock. He lost his smile. We sped past him each day. And then we went online and wept for Mandela’s health. We wept for the children dying in Aleppo. We screamed in solidarity with Turkish and Brazilian protesters. We shook our heads at the Americans―they were the cause of the problems in Africa.

And when we got to our churches or workplaces, we recited the arrogant prayer: to thank God for how we weren’t unlucky like the folks rotting on the streets. We gave to the church, when the offerings for the homeless and sick and poor were announced. Even though we had driven past them on our way to church. Even though the homeless, mentally challenged man on the street just few poles away from our church had been sitting there for more than a year, isolated. Even though his left leg had been rotting and no one cared to give him medication anymore. Even though he was dying in a city where you find a church in every other third building, in every street, blaring loud music and smatterings of prayers, screaming God’s salvation, urging on passerby to come witness how the pastor had cured the mad and raised the dead and healed the sick. Even though on the wastebin, opposite the spot where the Ndu sat, was emblazoned with different posters of our preachers advertising these miracles they had performed.

We did not talk about Ndu in our churches, or the various Ndu(s) scattered all over Aba, seeking for help, pleading with sorrow-filled eyes for relief from the pains so heavy they are unable to walk straight anymore. We find them on the various major roads where they touch our car doors and plead with open palms.

First week of June, 2013, on my way to work, I saw people clustered together, muttering and jabbing themselves on the shoulder. I saw him, the object of the gathering―Ndu. He was walking! I sreamed in joy. He was walking! Though it was more like limping, as he dragged the bad leg along. Vehicles stopped for him. People stuck their heads out of their windows to watch him. Him, half dressed in rags, walked with a sneer on his face, as though he was mocking us all, as though he held the secret of surviving on this crude conception called life. We all gawked, mouths frozen in Os and eyes asking questions we dare not give voice to. I said, “thank God!” Ndu’s eyes said, “fuck you!” when he returned our stare. And when he got to his spot, he carefully, in that practiced way, sat back down and resumed his ritual.

I got to work that day and before I was done talking about him, colleagues were already hailing his struggles. “Yes!” they said. “At least our government and the doctors must be hanging their heads in shame. They had been waiting for the youngman to die.”

Hope is what keeps the fire burning. It rose in our eyes each day as we returned to watching that one man who had grabbed life by the neck and wrestled it until it succumbed to his will. And he was there too, everyday, picking away at his bag leg, sitting with a mock-like pose. Perhaps it was my mind playing tricks on me.

On Friday, June 14, 2013, as I rode to work in the early hours of the wet morning, waiting to take my share of our daily perverse stares, I found him lying flatback on the ground, completely naked, his eyes wide and vacant and his tongue sticking out of his mouth as flies buzzed around his face and also around his bad leg.

And the body that hosted his soul stayed there for four days.

His death was unimportant. There was no mention of him in the popular Sun Newspaper known for their bizarre news reporting. There was no mention of him over the radio. And there was none too in the local TV stations. Vultures circled above the body by the following day. Same day, the sky, gorged with contempt, retched its anger over Aba. It rained like crazy. It washed over the body, sweeping his essence onto the road and into the rising, stagnant flood, until the body was almost immersed. And after it stopped raining, we, with no other option, poured into same flood on our way back to our homes, taking with us bits and memory of the man who had lain forsaken on our street.

This is 2013. He is not the first of this bizarre occurrence, we suddenly remember. He was not the first Mr No Name who had died on our streets and left there to bloat, until the health workers were awoken from their slumbers to remove them. He became just another statistic. By the fourth day, after he was removed, it was not relief that hung in the air. It was not sadness. The air was thick with mildew, one which clung to our skins and blurred our faces.

MEN DON'T CRY

Allow me to cry
To cry away this rivers in my soul
These rivers of pensive tears
That clog my soul in pains
That my heart would not drown

Remove these dams and let my Niger flow
To swallow this dirty Onitsha market
Screaming and touting in my head
Let my flood eat up Abuja road
And barricade every contact with them

Allow me to shade these tears
That my heart could swim through
Through this putrid murky stream
With tick creamy tears
That this rain could not wash away

Let the sun not shine again
Let the stars die and give no light
That my tears should not dry
And let the rivers run
Till there’s no more
‘cos men don’t cry…

A Group of Quarrelling Words

This is not a poem
It’s just about the feeling
A cluster of quarrelling words
Like a lad building castles on the soil
Until an adult appears from nowhere
And tramples on it
And swaggers on without looking back
What can a hapless lad do?
But be frustrated
And confused
Like these quarrelling words

This is not a poem
It‘s just about the feeling
A hen scratching cemented floor
Like a pregnant woman expecting a boy
She buys baby clothes in every shop
And writes a list of names for the baby boy
Only to be knocked down on the road
By a reckless driver that cares not
And the baby is gone
In slimes of blood and smelly fluids
What can a helpless woman do?
But quack quack quack
A hen mimicking a duck

This is not a poem
It’s just about the feeling
A bunch of straying confused words
Like a jelly fish in flowing lake
Swimming and making merry
Until a hawk appears from nowhere
And digs it fangs into the fish
And there it dies 
Gradually….

I am not a man
I am a fish
Hunted everyday by roving eyes
Seeking dirt under my flipping feebly fins 
They must surely see them
Cos I am a fish
Not a god

I am the orphan
The dirty orphan thrown behind the fence
By those wealthy clandestine chiefs
Like a plague
That could contaminate their spotless clans
Don’t call this a poem
It is just a feeling
A group of quarrelling words….