African Tales

DIVERSIONS

Helen gottlieb - Wedding in dedza boma

I didn't marry you for money

Funmi Iyanda An ambassador

Ernest Bazanye Anything a woman can do, so can a man

POTASH SUNDAY OF THE PRODIGAL SON

Shotmusinz NO LONGER DADDY’S LITTLE GIRL

Thursday, May 15, 2008

Funmi Iyanda An ambassador

Dear President Yar'Adua,

Ranka dede sir. Saanu da aiki sir. I hope this letter finds you well. If so, doxology. I am constrained to write urgently to intimate you with the frustrating conditions I've had to contend with since I assumed duties as Nigeria 's Ambassador to the Republic of South Africa . You will recall, sir that I had serious misgivings about being posted to this place but you reassured me that things would work out insha Allah. I must regretfully inform you, sir, that you were wrong. This place is hell and I don't know what I am doing here. The ways of the South Africans are indeed very strange.

The first serious signals of South Africa 's backwardness and dysfunctionality became apparent when I landed at the airport in Johannesburg . I was profoundly shocked to discover that only two official vehicles from the Nigerian embassy and three embassy staff were on hand to receive me. This was a serious breach of protocol. When was the last time I moved in anything less than a motorcade of twenty five cars, heralded by AK-47-wielding soldiers and koboko- swishing mobile policemen sweeping civilians out of my way? I felt naked, empty, and vulnerable. I felt betrayed by those embassy boys who appeared to have forgotten how we handle matters of protocol for people of my standing in Nigeria. Obviously, I wasn't going to subject myself to the indignity of leaving the airport in a 'motorcade' of two miserable embassy vehicles. I sat put and told the boys to organize. They finally found a solution by renting five cars from the Avis car rental outlet to bring the tally of vehicles to seven.
Needless to say your Excellency, I had to 'manage' a convoy of only seven cars. Without siren! As if this outrage weren't enough, we had barely made it out of the airport when we found ourselves in one of Johannesburg' s notorious traffic jams. Again, our boys from the embassy had no idea what to do? When we post these boys out, we must insist they visit Nigeria twice a year your Excellency. They are completely out of touch. Just imagine, I had to suggest to them to phone the Chief of Army Staff and the Inspector General of Police to send troops to come and clear the road for us. Rather than act, they sat there looking at me with eyes so wide open they almost popped out of their sockets. Then one obsequious fool explained that 'things don't work that way here, sir'. 'How do you know, have you ever tried', I asked him.

I did not fare any better on my first day on the job, your Excellency. The first thing on my agenda was to present my letters of accreditation to President Thabo Mbeki. Regrettably, I left arrangements to our boys in the embassy. Their shoddy handling of the airport situation should have taught me a lesson! I had expected them to rent a white horse and a crowd of at least one hundred singing and drumming Nigerians to form a procession. I was going to ride the white horse through the streets of Pretoria, all the way to Union Building, with our people singing and drumming. You know, the way we do things back home. What did I get instead? The Ambassador's official car, a driver and one miserable aide! At my urging, they had to rent five cars from avis! If I hadn't insisted, the boys would have done untold harm to Nigeria's image as the giant of Africa by having her Ambassador drive to that ceremony in only one car. No policemen. No soldiers. No siren!

The humiliation continued when we got to Union Building. Only the official car with the Nigerian flag was allowed in. They wouldn't allow the rental cars in because they were not accredited. I told my aide to go and 'see' the appropriate people only to be told by the rude boy that they don't 'see' people in South Africa. How do you run a country where you don't 'see' people? How do you get things done? Anyway, the ceremony went well your Excellency. The only disappointing thing is the simplicity of the surroundings of President Mbeki. Things were so simple you had no idea you were in the Presidency. They are not doing Africa proud at all sir. From what I saw, my estimation is that the budget that maintains the South African Presidency for a whole year is approximately the size of the weekly entertainment budget of a Nigerian Minister or Governor.

My second day on the job was even more frustrating, Mr. President. I was briefed that we had an application for a new plot of land languishing at the Pretoria city hall. There is an embassy expansion project in the pipeline. Apparently, the application has been at city hall for more than two years because the plot we want happens to be in a protected green area. My predecessors have had no luck with the Mayor. Pray, your Excellency, why deal with the Mayor when things could be accelerated the Nigerian way? So, I phoned the Mayor and respectfully and politely asked for the name and phone number of his Godfather. My intention was to 'see' his Godfather and promise him an oil block allocation in the Niger Delta if he would prevail on his political godson to alter the Pretoria Master Plan and give us a plot in the green area. To my surprise, the Mayor told me that he had read Mario Puzzo's novel but had never seen the movie! These South Africans are unbelievably backward! When I finally got him to understand what I meant? After almost an hour of explanations? he laughed condescendingly and said 'we don't do that in South Africa , Mr. Ambassador. We cannot alter the city's Master Plan'. Unbelievable, isn't it? Have these people never heard of Abuja? So, what exactly do hey do here? What is this idea of people getting elected to political office without Godfathers? I banged the phone on him. If I had continued the conversation, I couldn't put it past him to give me the extraordinary yarn that they also organize elections here without thugs, guns, and ballot box stuffing.

My nightmare in this country continued last week when I went to the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg . One of our very useful boys? an unemployed graduate of the University of Ibadan who helped organize the shipment of arms and recruited cult members to help us capture the Oyo state government house for Alhaji Chief Alao Akala ? has decided to quit the political scene in Nigeria and return to his studies. He emailed to notify me that he has an application for graduate studies at Wits. Could I please look into it? The boy served the PDP so diligently and I was inclined to help him. So I went to Wits last week to see the Registrar. She informed me that they did indeed receive the boy's application but he did not meet the minimum admission requirements for graduate studies at Wits. Duh, as if I didn't already know that before asking to meet with her! I asked if we could come to an agreement and opened the Ghana-must-go bag I had with me. Crisp bales of rand notes smiled from the bag. She screamed and sent me out of her office, claiming that she would have had me arrested if I didn't enjoy diplomatic immunity. As I did not want to return to Pretoria with the money, I made one last ditch effort. I phoned the University's information service and requested to speak with the Registrar's Garrison Commander. Predictably, nobody had any clue! I gave up on South Africa at this point. I mean, what kind of country is this? People get positions and appointments without Godfathers and Garrison Commanders. I don't understand. Your Excellency, there is really no place like home. All I would have had to do in Nigeria is place one phone call to any Vice Chancellor. The boy would end up in the Vice Chancellor's discretionary admission list with immediate effect.

Your Excellency, these unending insults and indignities are nothing compared to the stubbornness with which people address me here as Mr. Ambassador. Nonsense. I've insisted that they use the full list of my honorifics to no avail. Who would dare leave out anything from this list in Nigeria ? Ambassador, Senator, Doctor, Chief Ahmadu Alli.
Nobody here seems to understand that none of these items can be left out when addressing me. Mind you, to make things easy for the South Africans, I've even reluctantly left out all the items that would compulsorily come after my name in Nigeria ? MON, OFR, GCFR, etc etc etc. Pray, if they can't get a paltry total of four honorific prefixes right, how are they going to contend with the suffixes?

Your Excellency, it is clear that I am not going to be able to stay here. I can't function. There system is completely upside down. May I humbly request to be posted to Cameroon or Benin Republic? They are our neighbours. Years of associating with us have rubbed off them. They know how things are done. They understand. If the slots in Yaoundé and Cotonou are not available, I won't mind the UK. The British are far more tolerant of the way we do things. They see no evil, hear no evil, and speak no evil in order not to endanger the oil flow. London is far more amenable to the Nigerian way than Pretoria. I should be able to function there.

Yours in service to Nigeria,

Ambassador, Senator, Doctor, Chief Ahmadu Alli, MON,
PSC, NDC, MNI, FSS, DSS, MSS. ZSS.OFR, GCFR, etc etc etc.

Funmi Iyanda

He had wanted to fire Crooked Paul for a long time. Mostly because he was a very lousy worker. Paul (we didn't know he was crooked then) told us he was in senior three, though we were convinced he was at the very least twenty years old. He did not discuss his age, but didn't dispute the charge, when leveled against him, that he was a little bit old for O'level class. He explained, in a tiny, plaintive voice, that he had only himself in this world and that is why he went around the neighbourhood on weekends cleaning houses. It was so that he could pay his way through school and get an education.

I was convinced. He needed to make money housekeeping, we had housekeeping that needed doing, I didn't see any problem, only a solution. The Worm was not too keen at first. "Shouldn't a cleaning lady be, I don't know, a lady?"

"It's the new millenium, Worm. Gender equality. Anything a woman can do, so can a man."

Paul was finally contracted. The Worm's consent was secured when he discovered that rather than call Paul a maid, he could call him a valet, and life improved considerably when you could speak of having your own valet.

We soon found out why Paul was such a bargain. He was always late and sometimes didn't show up at all. His mopping and sweeping sometimes left the impression that if you had just blown at the dust then spat on the floor you would have achieved better results. He favoured the dip-once-squeeze-twice-rinse-now-that's-it technique when it came to laundry and often returned our clothes with the stains still intact. And his ironing was pathetic. He could actually make the clothes look more crinkled than before he began. The Worm grumbled bitterly when he would find himself ironing his clothes again after Paul was through and gone. I remember the argument.

"The guy needs the money! You can't just fire him because you're too pompy to iron your own clothes!"
"He is ripping us off!"
"He needs to pay his school fees! Look, do it as a kindness; send out some good karma. Let it be said of The Worm that he was a sarcastic, self-centered and vain bastard but his life wasn't entirely useless, for he once did a good deed. He ironed his own pants so that Paul could have an education."
"Mordecai, have you ever seen Paul's handwriting? He left a note the other day and I tell you it was not inspiring. The man is barely literate. Senior three? I was forced to conclude that whatever education they are giving him, its quality can only be adequately described by a person who has had his head immersed in a sewage pit. I mean to say, of course, that it is shit. So we are paying for shit service, so Paul can pay for shit education!"

Eventually we agreed to put Paul on probation. And he did show improvement, knowing that he was in danger. We shouldn't have. Are you familiar with the phrase "term egenda"?
Knowing that they will be out of the teachers' and prefects' jurisdiction in a few short days, naughty schoolboys go on rampage at the close of the term, vandalising, stealing, bullying etc. Sure that they are going to lose upcoming elections, bad governments loot and pilfer as much as they can before they get booted out of office. And Paul, knowing how his probation would end, also began to do his own term egenda.

There is a hardcover Wole Soyinka book that The Worm likes to bring out and place on the bookshelf to impress select visitors. One day it fell out of Paul's shirt as he was leaving. Suddenly we came to understand why so many books and CDs and magazines had been turning up missing over the past couple of weeks.

Paul said he was only borrowing it, and we said, of course you were, goodbye and have a good life. We didn't pursue the matter beyond firing him. Me, because of my sympathetic soul, Worm, because he was just stymied by the twisted nature of the crime. "The guy who decides to steal a book by the man who won the Nobel Prize for Literature can barely read! Words, fittingly, fail me."

Monday, March 24, 2008 POTASH
POTASH SUNDAY OF THE PRODIGAL SON

Son, thou art ever with me, and all that I have is thine. It was meet that we should make merry, and be glad: for this thy brother was dead, and is alive again; and was lost, and is found. – (Luke 15:32, KJV)

In the old days, a son returning home was celebrated. The Kikuyu people did not celebrate with the slaughtering of a fattened calf, like the Jews of old, but they slaughtered a goat instead. But things have changed- in my part of the city, at least- returned sons get wary smiles and uneasy back-pats as their pockets get picked. Sons who return with empty hands get the cold shoulder.

I returned with empty hands. My mother embraced me. Tukutenderesa!

My mum sat on a stool outside her house. She was poised delicately, leaning over the charcoal brazier, with only two legs of the stool touching the ground. The stool's third leg jutted out of its seat at an unlikely angle- broken. Like dreams in this neighbourhood. The fourth leg was missing; gone for as long as I can remember. Like many sons in this neighbourhood.

“Thanks and praises to the almighty...” My mother yelled as she reached out to me her calloused palms touching my face. The stool tumbled over an edge of its seat hitting her unshod heel before finding the pebbled ground. In its rapid descent, the stool spun slightly and knocked over a plastic bowl of uncooked sukumawiki. “Welcome home my son...” mother said putting her arms around me. At that moment, the charcoal brazier she had been coaxing came to life. The measly bits of charcoal burst into low, dancing flames sending sparks all around us even threatening to set the palm fronds placed against the kitchen wall on fire.

It was Palm Sunday and this place was my Jerusalem. Would I last through Easter before the local chief crucifies me, for a crime I have not committed? I thought to myself.

“Where did you go to, Potash?” My mum asked her eyes squinted somewhere between joy and pent up concern.
“I have been around and about, mami... here in Nairobi.”
“So how comes you never came to see us, at all... did you move out of home and not tell me... is it a girl that kept you away from us; we that have always loved you?”
“What are you talking about mami? ...I was busy. Working.”
“What kind of work is this, Potash, ...work, work, work..., for twenty four hours a day, seven days a week? Even muhindis give you a Sunday off, once in a while.”
“I cannot make you understand, mami, but that is what it is: I have been very busy. With work.”
“So you have money... you really need to give me some. Look at this house, this place... look at my roof... over there... can I tell anyone that my son is out there working?” My mum started to sob but could not stop talking. “... my son, Potash, all you are, I made you... and if you got married and didn't tell me, hmmm....”

I had no money and no girl. Not here not now. In the year and a half since I left this place, there has been money- not much, but a lot for where I am coming from- and there have been girls. But now I have nothing. How could I make my mum understand that I had done my best, at least tried to, in most cases, to make a better life for me and in the broader scheme of things, for them too? Here I was, with nothing, and yet I had done my best- in love and in labour.

I stepped out of my mum's embrace and stared at all of the horizon that I could see beyond the low-lying cluster of tin roofs. Dusk was creeping, rapidly, upon this neighbourhood. My mind wandered into the nights of a distant past. Nights filled with rancorous yells; muffled grunts, of both pain and pleasure. Illicit pleasure. Sobs of a two year old flower plucked. Some times the nights smothered you with an eerie silence. A silence punctured by gunshots and the wailing from the vigil of another son.

It is the vibrating urgency of my cellphone that brought me back to the living. I pulled out my phone. Flipped it open expectantly. Maybe someone, from the world I had left a few hours earlier- a world of affected conversations: the craft of writing and the proper use of a semicolon; construction and deconstructions of the 'other'; positive ethnicity and the role of the writer, over exotic cuisines, Scottish whiskey and South African wines- was inviting me back.

“Eiiii, nice phone, baba Potashi...” Karis, my brother's son, Exclaimed. “... ni ya camera, eh? ...Photo me!”
I could barely hear him as I brought up the phones screen to my face while fumbling with the 'answer' button.
“Hmmm, is that one of those people you left us for, ii? ... you know, Potash, and I have told you this many times before, the book of Isaiah tells us that blessed is the man that does not walk in the counsel of the wicked, nor stand in the way of sinners... those there friends of yours are nothing more than chaff in the wind...” she punctuated her sermon by brushing spit off the corner of her mouth with one hand and waving the other about to mimic the wind. “...but here son, in this house, no matter how much we use poverty to light the jiko, Jehovah knows our way. And our way is righteous. Stay here, with us, where you belong and the lord will make you like a tree planted planted by the water's side...”

It was not one of those 'sinners' calling, just a reminder I had set two days before. A reminder to go home today, no matter what. But I had remembered to come home and here I was. What I should have remembered was to tell someone- anyone- to call me and summon me out of this place. But who was there to tell, anyway- the writers I was walking away from or the the girls who had walked away from me?

***
The sound of thunder reaches us from a distance and above us cumulus clouds swiftly steal the sun's thunder. A drop of water lands on my face and then another and another in quick succession. “Come inside, Potash...” my mum whispers and I can feel the soft, kind pleasure of her hand on my elbow. “... I have to put something on the floor under the leaking roof...

...remember when you were very young and I left you sleeping alone in the house and went to the market...? ” My mum smiles into my eyes.
“Mami, I can never forget, that day... but I will never believe that it is the wind that blew away the iron sheet from our roof. Baba Njenga stole it...”
POTASH

‘Ugonnaya’, that is my dad’s name for me. I was born 10 days after his 30th birthday; in the year he first left the shores of Naija. I'd been born ill, fragile, and needed to have a head surgery to keep me alive. He was convinced I looked like him, even though I was light-complexioned and he is as black as coal; and I’ve a straight nose, while his is flat, with gigantic nostrils. I was his beloved child.

I realised early in life that dad made exceptions of me. I was the child who could discuss TV programs with him. I was the one he asked to read out the newspaper articles for him (it wasn’t a pleasant experience, cos he’d correct me on every line). I was the one who he’d give a sip of beer/wine when he was taking his evening drinks. I thought he was the most wonderful person on earth; I couldn’t comprehend why nobody else shared my opinion.

There were many people who didn’t like my dad. Chief on the list, probably with good reasons, was my mom. Then, there were her family. Also, dad’s half brothers and sister. The tenants weren’t left out either. I suppose the rest of my siblings didn’t like him, only they were too afraid of him to acknowledge that. Actually, I suspect everybody was afraid of him as well. I mean, why wouldn’t they just tell him to his face what a horrible person he is, instead of attacking me. I hated going home to the village because there was always an assembly of those united in their dislike of dad. And they all had nasty things to say about him to me. For years, I defended him – how he was a good person, just misunderstood. Nobody listened; they didn’t care for my opinion.

Then, I got tired of being the odd person out. I hated being segregated as the advocate of the enemy, who would most likely report back to him all what they said about him. I hated being singled out as the favoured child by my siblings. I hated my mom treating me as though the times dad was mean to her, he had consulted with me and I gave my approval. I was tired of walking on egg shells all the time. So, I joined the other side and became the opposition leader.

There were many fights between my dad & I. A few of them ended with dad coming to me in the middle of the night to plead with me not to be brainwashed by mom. But I was older then; I had needs. Body cream to be bought. Pocket money. Clothes too. And good hair-styles don’t pay for themselves. Not to mention that text books and school projects needed financing. Mom was the provider of these things, so I put my mouth where the money was coming from. Dad decided I had betrayed him. And since he was the wicked man no one loved, we should all go to hell. He did many things over the years to prove that we were inconsequential. Things, try as much as I may, I can’t forget. I do remember how much he loved me, however. When I call him, out of guilt, I try to sustain a long conversation. But, I don’t want to give him false hopes that I’d come back to him, so I don’t make those times regular.

I’m reminiscing on these painful events because, seeing as I’m about to enter another stage in life, dad wants to be a full part of it. But I’m too biased to let him.