Five months after, the delegation-sending continued, yet the issue remained a hard nut to crack. The mountain the wedding introduction raised remained insurmountable. Segun's once strong and dogged determination waned. Those words of his that would make any lady as happy as a lark for having a man who would always stand up for her come rain or shine were no longer strong enough to keep him on the offensive against doubts and hopelessness. He was in such low spirits one blessed evening, alone in his sitting room, when he lifted up his tear-laden eyes and caught a strange sight. Letters and Roman figures, without a hand, pen or brush, appeared and arranged themselves on the wall section between the ceiling and the framed painting of Jesus with outstretched arms and a bleeding heart. The cursive letters and the numerals appeared one after the other like an Ms PowerPoint slide show. At the end of the show the message boldly read
Hebrews 10:36
Imaginary or real? He rubbed his eyes vigorously with his knuckles. The handwriting on the wall still stared him in the face. After a minute or two the vision cleared in the same unusual style it came. On recovering from the wonderment, Segun wasted no time in springing up and reaching for his black leatherback King James Bible. He flipped to the recommended text and read out to himself ‘for ye have need of patience, that, after you have done the will of God, ye might receive the promise.'
And long after the page left his view, the word still stayed glued to his tongue. Not only did he play the scripture over in his mind but his voice box also enjoyed a long play-time. When he had digested it enough, he broke down in prayers and pleaded for God's grace.
CHAPTER THREE
The characteristic strong antiseptic smell of the hospital greeted the slim-built, dark complexioned figure approaching it.
Diseases! Diseases! Diseases! What on earth are they here for? No sooner a man bearing with vim and vigour contract diseases than he becomes as weak as to requiring the support of his loved ones to walk. Like a chameleon advancing by stealth towards its prey and a wind-sailing twig moving to the left and right, so do the sickly, haggard and haunted, move, combing everywhere for drug, their sure lifeline. Second in position to death is illness in laying their victims flat on bed for days or even weeks. Plans on money and fortunes get unpleasantly halted when sickness knocks at the door to claim its entitlement.
It seems the greater the advance in medical breakthrough the more the number of diseases discovered. And when these predators seemed to have exhausted the employment of human source to strike, they then began assemblage plants for their products in the animal kingdom. AIDS reigned so much for years until it becomes a pandemic; they say it originated from monkey. SARS reared its ugly head for a season in the Middle East; maybe it is not unconnected with an aboriginal animal too. Most disturbing is the one in vogue – Avian influenza. Its nomenclature of course betrayed its source – birds. It is now in our land! And they say when it begins to infect man it will give him only five days to pack his bags in preparation for the cold hands of death. Come quickly oh Lord!
Now, the slim man awaited the doctor for the result of the test.
Doctors! How enviable a prestige the name carries. Their knowledge seems boundless – they must have a name for every condition, even if the grandiloquent medical jargon would have to confuse the patient further.
The result of the test eventually came and Mr. AdewaleToriola, Segun's Father, impatiently waited for the doctor to settle down and make the pronouncement.
‘I'm sorry, sir, the test reveals that you have prostate cancer.'
‘And what on earth does that mean?'
‘Em, em, y-o-u h-a-v-e cancer of the private part,' he voiced the last five words as if a hot slice of yam was stuck between his palates.
‘And so?'
‘Some part of it would have to be surgically removed.'
‘Doctor! Some part of what?!'
‘Your pr-i-vate p-a-r-t, sir. It will not affect…'
‘God forbid! Over my dead body will you do that!' Mr. Toriola was terribly shaken. He was on his toes almost banging on the Doctor's desk in both frustration and resentment.
A person bursting into the consulting room at the moment would mistake Adewale's charge for a threat on the doctor's life for reneging on a business deal. The doctor, who was used to such loss of manners on patients receiving shocking news, stood up and professionally calmed him down.
‘Ah Doctor, why must I be rendered impotent to be saved from one useless sickness? No!'
In a society where manhood is synonymous with being sexually active and the stigmatization that welcomes impotency better imagined than experienced, Adewale's outburst could be well understood.
‘But, Mr. Toriola, nobody is talking about being impotent here. You will still be active sexually after the operation,' the Doctor explained.
Despite many pleas and persuasions from many quarters, Mr. Toriola refused to succumb to pressure to undergo the operation. ‘I'll rather die a complete man than live a male pawpaw,' he would always say to himself.
* * * * *
Sound of music, filtering out from the first floor of the Great Nigeria house, mingled with the voice of one on the upper floor leading prayer over a loudspeaker, and the imperative baritone of yet another, on the ground floor, rounding off a Sunday school session.
Great Nigeria building is one of the many storey buildings around mortuary roundabout housing almost always a church on each of their floors. The proliferation of churches around the area, one of the bustling centres of the rocky town, made it to receive a whimsical christening: Sanctuary roundabout. On Sunday mornings, like this particular one, it is commonplace for sound waves from varied sound systems – sophisticated, simple; blasting, whispering – to fight for the attention of the ordinary people across the streets. But what percentage of the people on the street turns up for the services as a result of the sound one is never too sure of.
Pastor Tunji's congregation were responding to the praises with strong excitement in the air; one of their best praise-worship leaders was on the microphone. Sister Ayoolape, popularly called AY by her numerous fans and admirers, knew how to hold the congregation in ecstasies. She held great sway with her sonorous voice, lovely face and applaudable control on the instrumentalists – she knew how to make them give her what she wanted. The wall of the warehouse-turned-church reverberated with heavy music. It was one of those popular gospel macosa entries that was on the lips of everyone at the moment;
Baba Baba Baba Baba Baba loke, Baba a a a a
The space in the front, between the pulpit and the pew, was filled with adventurous dancers who felt the legroom at their seats was too strait for the Davidic dance to freely express their joy and thanksgiving to the creator. Others, less adventurous, found a space in the aisle to dig it. The spaces in-between the blue plastic chairs, which constituted the pew, had few people standing in them: those who did not know how to bend to the music and the lyrics. None of the ushers could frown at the scatter-diagram formation the chairs assumed as the youths engaged in the macosa shake-a-leg. The dancers first formed a bow with their legs and then began to shake them as if rendered uncontrollable by Parkinson's disease. As the leg-shaking progressed they raised their shoulders rhythmically in an over-gestured shrug and stylishly dropped them with the palms almost landing at the centre of the lower abdomen, switching from the left arm to the right and back like a pendulum. With one step forward and two backward in that posture, and a jerk of the head, they completed the exotic macosa dance.
After about twenty-five minutes, the praise session came to an end to usher in the worship session which was not in any way less eventful. Some sank deep on their knees to pay homage to the Giver of life while some others lifted up their hands and heads in His colossal awe. Patches of worshippers here and there grimaced and shed tears in emotional response to the ministration. The curtain fell on the fleeting seven-minute worship and it was every ma
n for himself as the congregation was left without ministrations of any sort for a few minutes to enable the people unwind and recover from the mood via personal thanksgiving prayers or individual worship songs.
But for two very peculiar testimonies which marked a heavy presence during the testimony time the service would have gone on uneventful from the point forward.
A brother that introduced himself by eight names at a go had come out to give a medical testimony – actually, that was the nomenclature commentators passed on it at the end of the day's service, during the fellowship-after-fellowship. The octopus-of-a-name brother used almost every clause in his testimony to display, in ostentation, his wealth of medical cum anatomical terms… ‘I diagnosed a subacute myalgia of unknown aetiology around my thoracic cavity so I gravitated on my pelvis and pentadactyl hind limbs to the servant of God. He laid the pronated surface of the dermis and epidermis covering the phalanges of his right upper pectoral limb on the region and opened his buccal cavity to rebuke the myalgia, I felt a sharp locomotion around my external and internal intercostal muscles and diaphragm; I was cured from the pathological development instantly. Praise ye the Lord oropharyngeally'.
The response of alleluia was deafening and that with a thundering applause for a job well done in thrilling the audience by the way of intricate show-off. He came down from the platform and walked back to his seat with an air of importance around him. A couple of people around his seat even shook hands with him. For the healing or the oratory? Only God knows which.
Another gave a unique testimony of how he had swarm of mosquitoes around his head for days. He had tried everything to drive them away but failed. The solution came when he combined the effect of the prayer of one of the ministers for him with a spray of Baygon. This time around the reaction from the congregation was roars of laughter everywhere. About two people laughed so much their chairs almost tipped over; one of them actually fell headlong in the process. May be they never believed devil could make mosquitoes haunt a fully grown man in broad daylight as a form of spiritual onslaught. Well, he who experienced it knew better; he wouldn't laugh at himself.
The time for the message finally came and everything suddenly changed. The solemnity of and the reverence for the moment can be felt in the atmosphere, both in depth and in thickness. The General Overseer of Jesus My Lord Ministries, Pastor TunjiAdetiloye, grabbed the wireless microphone laid, for his personal use, on the stool to his left and stood up to go behind the pulpit. His two associates, sitting one to his left and the other to his right on upright chairs resembling ones at the heads of a dining table, stood up in accordance with the entrenched tradition of pre-message respect for the GO. Their Daddy-in-the-Lord progressed from his armchair to the tinted all-glass pulpit. His Bible had earlier been placed on the lectern by the armour-bearer who had proceeded to carry it from the stool on the right immediately the choir rounded off their special rendition - the cue for the message. The five-and-a-half-feet tall man of God stood on the podium and for the next two to three minutes would say nothing; his eyes roamed wild among the puzzled people. The gaze went to the choir and stayed for some troubling seconds. They were well dressed – every one female among them had something in the name of a hat to cover her head, as opposed to some members on the floor who adopted a free stance. Their music, too, had been superb right from the praises to the just concluded rendition. So, what is it? The stare left them wondering as it went 180 degrees to the Pastor's aides standing at ease on his left. Neither of them had come late for the pre-service ministers' prayer and every ministerial assignment given to them so far in the service they had carried out to the best of their abilities. Why the suspicious look? His eyes turned over to the degrees they had come to meet the bewildered gape of the floor members. What is wrong with Pastor? Hope all is well. Such was the tone of the muted conversation in the house of God. His silence was finally broken and what followed was the most unusual message they had ever had from that altar.
‘It is a mad world!' the GO bellowed over the state-of-the-art mega sound system. His audience looked at one another in a knowing way, as if saying, ‘Did we not say something is wrong with the Pastor?' Unruffled by the sympathetic look and the low murmurs, Tunji continued with the atypical sermon preached without an introductory prayer or allowing the listeners to relax on their seats; they stood like the officers and men of the Nigerian Police Force receiving instructions from their DPO.
‘I know you might have wondered what has come upon your Pastor. Yes, the way I turned my head around in silence was unusual and in fact absurd. And many thoughts would have run through your mind as my gaze travelled from one end to the other. But listen to me, nothing is wrong with me. I am in complete control of myself. As usual, I had prepared today's sermon through some sleepless nights searching the scriptures and praying that the message makes meaningful impact on our lives. Up to five minutes ago I had maintained the status quo waiting for the time to preach. Then, all of a sudden, I heard the voice of the spirit of God in my spirit clearly saying, “It's a mad world: a world of breakneck speed: 30 seconds-microwave oven, pop-in-and-eat fast food outlets, near-speed-of-light rocket, real-time internet networking and the much-fantasized human cloning that will need no 9-month pregnancy. Why do they always want everything so fast? They are always in a hurry for everything. Anyway, it's the world controlled by the prince of the lower air whose time is short and days are numbered. So, I wouldn't be surprised. But, why? Why would even some of my children also climb on the bandwagon of haste? Did I not say that he that believes will not make haste?”
‘I felt the Holy Spirit was just making a general comment on the body of Christ. I thought it was only a message for Christendom in its entirety. But, he cautioned and told me not to go too far; He was talking to me about this congregation staring me in the face right now. And this is how He put it: “many are they among you, my sons; who are going at breakneck speed, slow down or else you break your neck!” I heard this and I was shocked. I climbed the pulpit with only one burning passion – that the Holy Spirit might point out those concerned to me and that I might shout at them at the top of my voice, “stop trying to outrun God!” That passion made me look around in the way you've seen it. I pursued it vigorously with my eyes but it was not to be. I couldn't figure out just one person among you in that mess; He wouldn't tell me. The Holy Spirit wouldn't tell me…'
He went on his knees and, with great emotion and troubling of the spirit, pleaded with his congregation, ‘Please, my dearly beloved, make no haste! Our God is not slack concerning his promises; wait for Him. He will make all things beautiful for you in His time. Don't outrun God. I beseech you by the mercies of God, don't! Don't outrun God!' As he continued to hammer the last sentence, knees, two by two, in the congregation, began to find the carpet-laid floor until more than half of the population were with bowed heads and bended knees. With profound groans and deep wails, the suppliants raised their voices to God.
* * * * *
‘Aboruboye nile ifa o?'
‘Aboye bo sise o!' the bald old herbalist replied the voice greeting him from outside. Baba Awo was busy consulting his oracle consisting of some kernels on a wide cane dish. He himself, garbed in immaculate white wrapper tied over his right shoulder and a complementing white singlet as the top, sat on a local mat with the objects of his consultations in-between his outstretched legs. Many grotesque objects hung in a slipshod manner all over the room. On the floor of one of the corners of the strait apartment under the aegis of the Irumoles were carved human head figures wet and sticky with oily libations with a square piece of red clothing hanging over the point where two walls met.
Baba Awo finally stopped his incantations to attend to his client.
‘Regular or novice?'
‘Regular, Baba!'
‘Then you may proceed to come in.'
Mr. Toriola entered, undid his shoes at the foot of the door – only the sole of his feet, and not that of his shoes, could touch the
sacred mat or else he commits a sacrilege. He took a bow to the ground in form of an ablution to the gods at the red corner and then sat cross-legged on the mat to make his case before Baba. He had decided to seek the traditional way out of his present predicament.
‘Dewale, you have the solution already. Just dab at the floor and impress its peace upon your heart thrice,' the octogenarian said with a thickly accented dialect. After observing the figurative instruction literally, Adewale was charged exorbitantly for the treatment. He agreed to the terms and paid a deposit of more than half of the cost on the spot. The bald man took all his time to rise to his feet and then exited through a door, plainly covered by the dried hide of a wild carnivore, to an inner room. When he reappeared, it was with a gourdlet plugged in the mouth with pigeon's plumes. He handed it over to Adewale and directed that he should add some of its content to his food for a whole week and the prostate cancer would soon become a thing of the past. With drenching showers of thanks and lion-brave confidence he departed the den of the gods.
CHAPTER FOUR
As fate would have it, AY and Segun met one-to-one, on two occasions, within a week. The first was in the evening of that peculiar service. Pastor Tunji had announced there would be no evening house fellowship at the centres. He charged all and sundry to use the hours meant for the fellowship they had now been relieved of to go out into their localities for aggressive personal evangelism. AY was occupied with some gossipy whispers, as it was becoming of the choristers of their days among themselves, at the time of announcement. Of course, she missed the information.