Ajan-mkpaligbe
was a diffident trickster no more, no less. An unapologetic remnant of the
nightmarish caricatures, which plagued your dreamtime when you were a child
even his very name drummed up memories of a time when you believed all you
were told and when the mad woman sitting inside the deep gutter was a witch
who had eaten up her children – all seven of them!
Ajan-mkpaligbe could
have passed for one of those seven although you had to admit he was alive, it
was not hard to imagine how he would look dead well past rigor mortis. He
looked like one of those seven children – eaten but not digested. He was
ugly but not a liar. A trickster? Yes. Thief? No.
Why
was I his friend? He had a great sense of humor and knew how to laugh at
himself. I enjoyed his stories especially the ones which suggested he planned
to repay in kind the almighty for making him so ugly.
He never went straight
to the point and you only had to spend a short time with him to realize he was
a wiser far wiser and certainly with more intelligence than you would allow he
possessed and he seemed to drink from a reality which plagued him - for he
always wanted to make his point no matter how hard people tried to ignore or
put him down.
His speech was slow and
tortuous to follow but the rewards of following it patiently could be
brilliant - for in one instant, things got transformed and even the rainbows
above the hills yonder somehow became brighter. His soberness was astounding.
He never drank alcohol except on Christmas day!
He was tenacious and you
had to be careful not to align yourself or try to expatiate on his convoluted
preambles for no sooner than you did, he roundly rebuffed you - pointing
out new facets to his argument, which you had not considered and could not
agree with without appearing obsequious.
He was adept at brow
beating you with nary a word said. He would never committed himself, skirting
and hinting at issues until you discovered he had led you to the crux of the
issues in his heart and had mentally tied you up.
He was also ungainly in more ways than one could recount: sitting quietly
together in my Ogwa one mid-afternoon, we had nothing to say and so enjoyed
each other’s quiet company. I pretended to be engrossed reading a news
magazine while observed him. He was so natural, so childlike, I always looked
to him for leadership in the ways I was to react to the world in general today
was different...
....I watched as he grimaced
closing one puffed up eye, then another as he appeared to take parallax
measurements, he grimaced some more and got up then moved stealthily like a
cat then lifting one leg after another in the most exaggerated of slow motions
– giving the term prancing fool new meaning then I
realized what he was about to do....he had a bottle in his hand.... too late!
THUD-CRASH!! I managed to shield my eyes but not before I got splattered with
the contents of the bottle.
..
"You
idiot!"
’I missed. I'm sorry”
he said without any remorse as he returned to his place on the bench.
‘Did you see that
giant mosquito?’
"Is that how to
kill a mosquito?" I seethed and returned to reading my newsmagazine book
- this time truthfully but from the side of my eye, I noticed him
squirming in his seat. I held my
breathe but he saved me from further embarrassment when he declared:
‘This my trouser is
tight’
‘Change it’ I said
‘God willing’
‘But it’s the best trozis
you have’
‘You have seen my
portmanteau?’
‘No but I have not
ever seen you looking smarter
‘You’re a smart
dresser yourself’
Taken aback I could only
say in surprise
‘Me?’
‘Yes. And it seems we
are the same height that is our legs are the same height’
I was silent. I was at
least six inches taller than he was but strangely, I couldn’t argue that our
legs were the same height, length and possibly breadth.
‘That means my
trousers will fit…’ too late! I said it – with my very own mouth! He had
led me!! I fell silent!! He had just stolen a pair of trousers from me.
‘All right’ I
conceded ‘I’ll give you a few trozis but please learn to talk straight’.
I looked towards him but he was off and was presently engaging a white haired
man in muted conspiratorial discussion a shriek of laughter followed. My old
Aunt seated at her door-mouth (pronounced Door-mort) picking egusi looked up
our eyes met we smiled. She understood. Ajan-mkpaligbe was a blessing to the
community.
'What did he say to you'
My aunt asked as the white-haired man walked by
"Men's talk. He
likes you"
"Why can't he tell
me himself!" .....and that was how
Ajan-mkpaligbe became my uncle! My widowed aunt with supreme self confidence
married Ajan-mkpaligbe a man half her age!
+++
‘Nobody will go
free’ he declared one day. It was Christmas and he’d come visiting. This
was the one day he permitted himself to drink and he drank heartily. It was
the only day that people were bold enough to force their friendship on him for
he accepted no gifts from people he did not like.
‘Free from what
now?’ some one asked rather irritated.
‘From the wickedness
they perpetrated now? What did you think I was talking about? Nonsense!’ He
declared with a haughtiness that was well beyond his status.
His voice sounded like a
taut drum – and his words I felt mirrored his thoughts, which I sometimes
thought played out a
staccato rhythm in his head. I thought to myself: only the foolish would
controvert his disjointed views.
He eyed me ominously and
declared ‘My views are not disjointed!’
I smiled. 'Of course they are' I said out loud
Thereupon as if on cue, he
broke into song and this was the beginning of events I shall try
to faithfully record here:
‘Who taught you that
song?’ My aunt his wife asked. She was decked out in the most resplendent
purple boubou and had a silvery gold band tied delicately around her dyed
hair. Her face had been delicately made-up. She looked like a queen. Indeed
all African women were queens. Fiercely proud queens who knew they were the
heads of their homes but allowed their errant senseless men the luxury of
believing that they were the ones who held the fabric of the society together.
It was the women who farmed – not because they were forced to, but because
they knew they would starve if they left that all important chore to their
useless dissipated men – besides they needed the men to be strong in the
night time….
“Who taught you
Ajan-mkpaligbe?” She queried even as she stood and to the merriment of all, took over the
singing, dancing as she sang. It was a sweet song - sweet to my
ears which had been recalibrated by western music and acquired attitudes.
Before long, two old men
joined in the singing. They sang in deep tones and seemed to
answer the old lady who sang shrilly. Very soon, the old folks, some standing,
some dancing
some sitting , all clapping in unison, joined in the singing. The women sang their part and the men
seemed to answer them. The call-answer sequence went on and on. There were
carefully choreographed steps also, a lot of swaying in unison.
There were tears too and choreographed finger biting and what seemed to
be a lot of spitting which amongst the Ibos of my native land was associated with the
incantation of bitter curses.
“Who taught you that
song Ajan-mkpaligbe?” I asked with renewed respect at one who knew how to
influence events in the subtlest of ways.
His head had been bowed
in deep reverence. He hardly looked up at the dancing and singing. At length
he spoke. I barely picked out his words
‘Those poor enslaved
ones - they cried as they were loaded in ships didn’t they? And you think no
one heard their songs don’t you? There were slave raiders weren’t there?
Who sang the songs for fun didn’t they?’
“How did the song get
so widely known if originally they were sung for fun? No one escaped from the
slave ships it is said!’
‘Those who mocked the
enslaved unwitting pronounced curses on their souls for the words of the song
are terrible –pronouncing curses on the off-springs of all who had caused
them so much misery so much injustice’
The singing had ended I
was left alone in my Ogwa the place where ancestral spirits were not so much
worshipped as remembered. I had inherited it from my Father who had inherited
it from his own father.
“No one will go
scot-free” Ajan-mkpaligbe had declared repeatedly as he staggered home
wearing one of my best trousers – he had rejected every single trouser I
offered until I in exasperation brought out the new trousers I’d just made
in Lagos…
No one will go
scot-free he had said. You would
think he was blowing a whistle when he said ‘free!’
I thought of the western
world, which had so brutally intruded into the world of my ancestors who had
never wanted to be part of their world. It was curious but almost certainly
true that the interest with which the westerners had looked upon the so-called
savages of Africa was very much the same interest the home-grown African
elites viewed westerners.
“Those strange dirty
people with their meaningless lives. Bah!” was a common refrain. “Those
people and their sordid lives – did you see those houses, which lined the
tracks, which run from Rexxington to London? Would you not rather die than
have to live in them?”
I pondered an amazing
world, in which people went about their businesses appearing normal, but would
verily abduct and kill pre-teen girls for reasons I could never fathom.
Surely there had to be a
reward – positive or negative for creatures who had wrought out of the earth
great order and technical marvels but who in the end have nothing but the
reputation of thieves and spoilers.
Creatures who having
amassed the wealth of others in and under their coffers and consciences, lived
a life so meaningless and unnatural that culture had to be invented to give
meaning to that which could never have a meaning – and like plastic, here
today, the garbage heap tomorrow.
.Yes Indeed. Human souls had become like plastic – destined for the garbage
heap. People had become meaningless trash. The apostles of deceit were having
a swell time...
Was that it?
Those in whose names all the great crimes of history were committed and
horrendous wars fought were predestined for the garbage heap?
Maybe Ajan-mkpaligbe was
right:
'No one will go free. No one will go
scot-free'