I tried to consolidate my fragile hope with the carefree motto that I would worry when things happened and not before. I knew, however, that I could worry from that moment about announcing my apostasy in public – it would give me a bigger stigma than I could ever hope to bargain for - and even more about my mother who, I could guarantee, would slap the light of day out my eyes. She would slap me for my own good, to save me from a hell of a life on earth and the real deal in the hereafter.
****
Papa called a family meeting after he had been briefed by Mama. He came home once or twice a month, working in some oil fields somewhere farther south of the Lagos where we lived. I didn’t know what that meant and often had the image of lots of men, all of the same stature as Papa, wearing long rubber boots and stamping around in tall grass swamped with palm oil mixed with the inevitable rain water. Whenever he came home, though, he did not bring back any palm oil, maybe, there was a strict rule about them touching any of the stuff. He brought home other things instead like what we might need in school, boring things like readers and pencils and biros.
As I’d thought, it was indeed serious. His questions were direct. ‘Do you accept food from him?’ he asked, the stress lines on his face deepening with each word.
This was a funny question, I thought; did I use a pen at school?
‘Yes.’ I replied simply, not attempting to excuse myself.
‘Oh my…’ my mother sighed with despair, slumping back into the sofa, a near fearful look on her face. She must have had nightmares about such a thing happening; the look on her face expressed as much.
‘How many times have I told you not to accept food from other people?’ Papa continued looking sterner and sterner.
‘But he is my friend,’ I protested but wondering if I really should be worried.
‘Even after he told you he is a different boy? You know what that means?’
I could only shake my head in ignorance; I had no idea what he was driving at.
‘Maybe someone gave him witchcraft to eat,’ Papa patiently explained. ‘And he even told you it happened to him when he was eight years old. You haven’t heard about witches and wizards?’
It sounded ridiculous to me, not Ireneh; it was a laugh to think he would poison me with witchcraft even though he’d surprised and frightened me with his revenge on Jegbe and Oscar. He’d used juju after all; witchcraft was different. It was lower, not nearly as dignified and Ireneh didn’t look like a witch. By the way, those boys – Jegbe and Oscar - never found out their torture had been Ireneh’s handiwork but they never got a chance to terrorise us again in class. The teacher had split them up at both ends of the back of the class scared they had some infectious rash.
‘I have heard of witches and wizards Papa,’ I said. ‘I just can’t think that he is a witch.’
‘E-he-n?’ Mama cut in, in anger. ‘What is wrong with this boy?’
‘How do you know?’ Papa asked more gently. ‘Do you expect to find “witch” written on people’s heads?’
I still wasn’t swayed. Of course, I’d heard of the witch problem. It was as big a problem as any could be, not only because it could be so easily contracted - from as little as a handshake or from sharing food with people who would have poisoned the given object with witchcraft germ – but also because it only brought illness and death to the victim and their family.
There was a thriving oral tradition at the time of the work of witches and wizards in neighbourhoods and a few families had even been pointed out to have the problem, what with children waking up in the morning to find scratches down their tummies and backsides. This was clearly made out to be the least of the havoc witches could cause, as eventually, every witch would have to proffer one of their family for ‘dinner’ at their assembly. The witches would remove the heart or some vital organ of the victim while they were asleep to take back to the group; this organ would then be cooked and eaten by the assembly. The following morning, the owner of the organ would be discovered dead to the surprise of all; in a nutshell, this helped explain a large number of seemingly unexplainable deaths around.
We were supposed to be immune from all of this though, my parents had often said. We were Christians and that, possibly, was one of the principal reasons why we were. The power of Jesus Christ was ranked above any other and in his name the power of any spell, witchcraft or otherwise, would instantly collapse but as in all things, prevention was so much better than cure.
‘From now on, you are not to accept any food from him, you hear?’ Papa ordered, tugging at his left ear lobe for emphasis.
‘Yes sir,’ I replied, submissively.
He had to make sure I understood. Who could blame him? Besides witchcraft, there were other dangers lurking about – like the danger of being inhabited by one or more evil spirits. This was called being possessed. Being possessed was a very concerning situation for people and most homes lived in fear that some evil spirit might take control of one or more of their members. These spirits had quite common nouns for names too as I soon noticed; there was the spirit of stealing, of fornication, of stubbornness (a worry for mothers), of jealousy, of anger, of laziness, of failure and of practically every vice you could put a name on. In my day, these weren’t just attributes.
‘And make sure you don’t play with him again,’ my mother added, intending to be more thorough. ‘There are other boys you can play with. You hear?’
‘Yes Mama.’ Of course, there were other boys to play with but which one was not equally capable of poisoning me with witchcraft, I thought miserably. I was not that bothered about being a witch frankly, not if some of the powers I’d heard they possessed were true like the power to fly; there were a few things I could do with that. I wasn’t ready though to endanger the life of any of my family but if they were Christian, then perhaps I had no reason to worry. Already I was thinking of picking Ireneh’s brains on the matter. I was fascinated by witchcraft.
II
‘Sleeping Dead’
‘Hmm? Don’t pray for it,’ Ireneh was staring at me aghast when I questioned him about witches, expressing some admiration for their flying skill. ‘They leave their body at night and fly to the top of the tree where they hold their coven.’
It was break-time and we were standing at the back of our new school building watching the teeming buzz of children who struggled to get served in the food kiosk out of which Ireneh had just emerged, a fish-roll in hand. The children wore a mix of uniforms – of the two separate Government schools housed by the compound. Both schools used identical building blocks facing each other leaving an open and huge mid-section that formed the playground. School was certainly a very public affair.
‘What is coven?’ I asked the chewing boy.
‘Where they meet,’ he replied before continuing with his previous thread. ‘Anyone who sees them in bed will think they are asleep when really their spirits are out of their bodies.’
‘Do they die?’ I questioned, a little scared to risk death just to fly.
‘No, their spirits just fly out of their bodies and return early in the morning.’
‘Do you know what they do in this coven?’ I asked wondering if Ireneh would know if he were really not a witch.
‘Am I a witch?’ he replied, seeming to read my thoughts and eyeing me suspiciously as he bent his head to eat the last bit of his roll. ‘I don’t know but I have heard that they eat people’s hearts there. They fly around and hunt people at night and take their hearts to eat at their party; they also drink their blood.’
‘God!’ I exclaimed suppressing a shudder. I had been told about this from when I was much younger but it seemed to become more real and more threatening coming from Ireneh who had proved to me he knew a thing or two about voodoo. ‘So they can just take anybody’s heart?’ I needed to know where I stood.
‘No, only people who don’t pray; we always pray night in my house so they cannot reach us. Also, if you drink holy water and sprinkle it, no witch
can touch you.’
He didn’t seem remotely like a witch to me at that moment doling out advice for keeping out witches and, besides, if he had not poisoned me in the three years we had known each other, he either loved me a great deal or was not a witch. The latter made more sense. But then again, I wondered how he could talk about praying when he was into voodoo.
‘But isn’t your papa a babalawo?’ I asked. ‘How can you pray to God then?’
‘Forget,’ he replied. ‘Sometimes God, sometimes babalawo. Nothing is spoilt.’
****
I followed Banjo who was making his way to the hostel; we’d be leaving the following day, well, we could leave if we wanted to. We had been in Kaduna for a whole year and in that time we had been involved in a few different projects all wrapped around some form of teaching in secondary schools. We’d just officially finished our time at Youth Service and could carry on with our lives.
When I think of that day now, I wonder, why it had to be then; we could have been given leave a day earlier; I could have been on the road home that very day; I could even simply have walked off to the hostel as I came in from the town without stopping to chat with the guys having a game of football. Any one of those actions would have meant that I wouldn’t have had that conversation with Banjo and would have remained Christian for a little while longer; it certainly would have meant that I wouldn’t be travelling home the next day in the trepidation that was just beginning to creep up on me. I didn’t have to say anything to anyone, I told myself. This was an experiment of a sort, not a cause.
The fight had just broken up when I entered the hostel two hours after my epiphany, still reeking with self-endorsement. Judging from the size of the crowd, I figured that it must have been an intense one, or one with big parties involved, and then I spotted them.
Taribo had lines of perspiration dripping from his forehead as he tore his way through the crowd. ‘If he has liver, let him come!’ he was yelling. ‘Let me destroy the fool. Oloshi,’ he cursed in Yoruba.
‘Banza – worthless thing,’ his opponent hurled back. ‘I’ll show you who I am.’ This was not good. Taribo had almost had a punch up with the stylish Mamu who I reckoned must have found a way to avoid getting into a fight despite his cursing.
Mamu was the big deal; he came from an elite Hausa family, or as the guys called it – ‘well connected’. He had a mean streak which wouldn’t mean anything to any one of us if he didn’t have the backup to enforce this with – that was the story about anyway. And as no one was very keen to disprove it, we steered clear of him.
Though, he could not fight to save his life, the story said, and wouldn’t even attempt to defile himself with such an act, he got others to do his dirty work for him. He was very adept at raising a rabble and had done just that, using them in the ethnic clash that hit Kaduna a few weeks before – still the story.
It was easy, though, to see how he could easily do this as he was from the local area and knew the people well and, besides, he had the money to pay a mob with. I’d always thought of him as a cross between a squirrel and a raccoon; maybe, that had something to do with his looks - pinched nose in a squeezed face - or because he could surprisingly pounce on even the most dangerous, appearing harmless at the same time. Nonetheless, he’d always been feared silently by the coppers; no one away from home in such a volatile place wanted him as an enemy.
****
In the weeks that followed, I took to gulping down large amounts of the holy water my father stored in the house for practical purposes. Ordinarily, he would sprinkle it around the house and on every one of us every night before we went to sleep. He always made sure each person got at least a drop on them but very often, he only managed to half drench us and our beds.
Another ‘weapon’, he would use, though sparingly, was incense. I particularly loved this one since it meant having to light a fire and burn pieces of wood until the embers glowed red hot; I would then put them in the incense pot and tip the small shavings of fragrant incense, blessed beforehand by some priest. What had always irritated me was the obvious lack of attention the priests had for incense, compared with say, holy water. Usually, my parents would buy the incense from the parish kiosk and hold it out in front of passing priest who always seemed to be in a hurry whatever for, but very often heading for his car or the parish house. Very often, too, the priest would oblige, not breaking his stride but with a quick wave of his hands in a not too discernible sign of the cross, mumble incoherently and smile at my very grateful parents.
‘He is a priest; God would have heard him,’ I always consoled myself as I looked dismally at the incense in my hand. ‘Because, this had better be effective and drive them evil spirits away,’ I’d worry.
Papa always took some holy water with him when he went to the oil fields, no doubt, for the same enterprise as he got up to at home. He had left about two four litre bottles of the stuff behind at home hoping that Mama would use it as industriously. Since he always filled up a new bottle for blessing at the monthly healing mass and would expect it to be used up in a month, two bottles at home showed that Mama wasn’t as conscientious in the use of the blessed liquid. Natural evaporation took more of the water than she used on us so that we had more of the stuff than we needed, now for my drinking pleasure.
I did not speak again about witches to Ireneh nor did he seem to remember that we ever had that conversation. Life seemed to carry on as normal although I prayed harder than ever before buoyed on by Mama who always led family prayer, and placed larger amounts of faith in holy water day after day. I recalled vividly at this time the kids of the family who had lived in the flat below us two years previously and how there had been rumours of witch activity in their house. Maybe, someday, one of them would turn up dead; was it only a matter of time? At the time though, the only problem they had seemed to have was being scratched while asleep; that was definitely nothing compared to what lay in store for them, I reasoned. They hadn’t even ever woken up while being scratched, it was that painless.
****
My suspicions weren’t confirmed either way when I realised I’d been deposited inside a sterile room. But they grew stronger when my mother appeared, as real as anything else and there was a man in a white coat with a bored expression by her; he looked like a NAFDAC (National Agency for Food, Drug Administration and Control) inspector. And he didn’t look remotely Northern. White walls with ceramic tiles mocked me from all around even more than the hushed tones with which the two spoke. I could hear them and took pleasure that they didn’t know I could. I heard the white coat say “Banjo”
‘I don’t know him,’ said mother.
‘How long has he been home?’
‘Three months.’
‘How was it?’ I heard White coat ask.
‘It was God’s will. He’s lucky to be alive. His friend didn’t make it.’ And she began to cry.
I waited patiently.
****
About three months after our family meeting, I defied my parents’ warning and brought Ireneh home. It was simply my end of a bargain that would fetch me an opportunity to see the workout equipment of his brothers’ that the lad had droned on about endlessly.
I made the first move pushed by my curiosity but Ireneh countered and offered to see my home first.
‘He-he, no. Let’s go to your house first,’ he’d said. ‘After that, my place. What do you think?’ He made it sound like he was offering me a treat.
‘I don’t have that kind of energy abeg,’ I turned him down. He had no idea he was public enemy at my house.
‘A-a-n, what do you do with your energy? Please, we’ll play that your table soccer. You can teach me how to play and I am sure I’ll thrash you.’
‘Ha! You, thrash me? You are dreaming. Have you seen me play?’
‘You don’t know me,’ he boasted. ‘If I play once, I’ll become champion at it.’
‘We’ll see but I can’t take you to my house today. I
get..’
‘What? Is your house dirty?’ he pushed. ‘What are you ashamed of?’
‘Okay, okay, come now,’ I said, giving in. ‘But be prepared to walk o because it is far.’ That was my plan. At that point in time, home was definitely pushing all boundaries but since I could no longer refuse the lad in order to protect the honour of my home, I was determined instead that our first attempt was going to be as eventful as possible.
I took him through every road I knew led anywhere but home. We kept going around in well mapped out circles, through Alaba market, Ajayi and Izoba streets and even past my very street at one stage, with me being ultra careful not to take him into the same street twice too soon and certainly not via the same route.
‘See how far I walk every day?’ I explained, noticing the grimace on his face. ‘Now you’ll have plenty of respect for me.’
‘Arinze, are there no buses around here?’ Ireneh asked a short while later, flagging. ‘I am tired.’
‘It is not too far now. I always like to walk. Come on lazy boy.’
We walked on for a few minutes more with no destination in my mind before he gave up. We had come into a street that he only vaguely recognised but he quickly seized at the opportunity and decided to navigate his way back home.