Chapter 18: Chapter 18

CHAPTER 15

A fragile hand shook Teju as gently as a horse would nuzzle its foal’s head to wake up from sleep. He looked up and saw Simi smiling over him. She had taken her bath, and she was half dressed up for the visit.

“We’re late for my parents’ place; you know it’s rather a long drive,” Simi said softly. Teju rubbed off the residue of sleep still lingering in his eyes.

“Yeah, I know” Teju mumbled and turned to lie on his back. He had been stirred out of a dream yet again. He had been dreaming all these days, but he did not know what he dreamed about. His dream, the one he dreamed that afternoon was closer than any of the previous ones. But it was still puzzling because his dream was neither bad nor good. It was neither this nor that, like a hermaphrodite. Simi was still standing over him, but gazing suspiciously at him this time. Teju looked at her curiously.

“What? Why are you looking at me like that, as if I’m going back to sleep the moment you turn away” he said and chuckled. He gestured to Simi to pull him up, but as Simi made to pull, he pulled her to himself and she crashed on the bed in his arms. The light scent of jasmine from her soap stung his nose. She smelled of bliss, like the smell of a blossoming flower. He kissed her on the forehead. She laughed as an innocent baby girl would laugh at being tickled. He was tempted to tell her about the obscure dreams. She was just going to tell him to pray about it, he thought. Perhaps, she would remind him of how Daniel had helped King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon to remember and interpret his dream.

“Time is not on our side, baby. You need to get out of bed” she finally said

“I know baby, but how can I get out of bed when an enchantress like you is in bed with me” Teju replied, holding her in his arms. He kissed her cheek and unhanded her. She stood up and walked nimbly to her table. She sat down on her chair, scrutinising her face in a large mirror married to the wall. Teju watched her and shook his head resignedly.

“Are you really going to need that?” Teju said, sitting upright on the bed

“Of course, don’t think Mom and Dad would not frown at you when they see their daughter looking haggard,” Simi said and Teju laughed. He laughed at the idea that wearing make-up could make ladies less gaunt-looking.

“I’ll be ready in a minute,” Teju said as he went into the adjacent bathroom to have a facial ablution.

It was quite a drive, though it was confined to Ibadan. Sometimes, travelling within Ibadan seemed like travelling from one end of the world to the other. Ibadan was such a big city with levelled roads, potholed roads and sandy dusty roads. The major roads were adorned with several large billboards, some of which stood at either side of the roads like a guard or suspended by two stout poles over the roads. The smaller billboards are attached to the poles holding up the streetlights. The billboards advertised brands; Trophy lager beer, Maggi seasoning cubes, Airtel mobile networks, Coca Cola and so on. The empty billboards, on a white background, would always say– Advertise Here, followed by a number to call.

Soon enough, most of these billboards would be covered with Party names, acronyms, slogans, and the benevolent smiles or gestures of politicians. It’s never boring to drive through the major roads of Ibadan. Driving through the minor roads however, could be excruciatingly tiring. First, they were as narrow as the eye of a needle and extremely busy which made overtaking sluggish or indecisive vehicles very tricky, except for Okada riders anyway. Second, these roads, as narrow and busy as they were, one would still find vehicles parked at either side of them, and sometimes at both sides, making the roads shrink into a passage that was no wider than a trench. Pedestrians have to walk on road sides, but they cannot walk on these obstructing cars. They have to stop for the traffic to pause before they barge into the road to get past the cars, making sure they do not get run over in the process.

It was just thirteen minutes to four in the afternoon when they got to the house in a dusty shrivelled up locale. The streets were empty and quiet as though they had been hastily deserted.

There were bungalows, duplexes and even two-storey buildings with DSTV satellite dishes and aerials hung on them like flags. Windows were burglary-proofed and gates were closed. The frontage of each house was guarded by a plastic or metal drum of waste bin. The walls were defaced with torn posters of fat-faced politicians in agbadasor suits. Vote this, vote that. Their slogans as preposterous as the chanting of a baby learning to talk, the acronyms of their political parties were unpronounceable. SDP, PDP, LNP, APC, HIV, STD, FFO, JJC and so on. There were also posters inviting all and sundry to a revival service, an open-air crusade, a Holy Ghost service, or a praise night by Pastor, Reverend or Lady Evangelist so... so and so. Automatic Prayer Ministry aka Prayer Life Bible Church, Golden Cross Church aka Prosperity is Mine, Weep No More Ministry aka Jesus Wept Bible Church.

The house Simi’s parents were residing in was completely fenced and gated. It was a bungalow but was still unpainted. Simi had once told Teju that her Dad would have had the fence plastered and the house painted, interior and exterior if the government had paid her Dad his rightful pensions. As it were, pensions were paid to civil servants who retired from serving the government, and not the country or none at all. He had used his life savings to erect that house in order to secure a placid and sane life after his retirement, and after such boisterous and rugged years in the civil service, she had told him.

Her mother was still active as a typical African woman. She was a successful trader, and a trader does not retire from her trade. She ran a cloth store at GbagiTuntun. She was a very busy woman with a lot of travelling schedules to Lagos, Cotonou and so on. Most times, her Dad, Simi explained, was always alone in the house with the two maids. It was later her Dad found solace in gardening. He started tending a little functional garden at the back of the house to keep him busy and productive. He was not going to allow senility to meet him in bed.

The house was still and almost lifeless. It was an emblematic home of oldies that waited patiently for the day they would be called up yonder. Simi knocked on the door quietly, and one of the maids came to open the door for them. The sitting room was lighted by a yellow light bulb of a hundred watts, foisting it's golden glows on the objects around it. The maid told them that both parents were at home and that Mom was in the kitchen with the other maid, while Dad was in his garden. Simi volunteered to go into the kitchen to help her Mom with the cooking. Teju suggested going to help Dad in the garden. Teju marvelled at the discovery that Simi’s Mom still cooked for her husband even though she had two maids at her disposal. He wondered if Simi would do the same to him when he becomes an aged retiree.

Teju found Simi’s Dad watering the plants with a large rusty watering can. He was in a haggard-looking and ill-used Ankara-made sokoto and an undershirt, bearing several little holes. Its whiteness had been bronzed into a brown-yellowish colour by long days of unwashed sweat and soil stains. There wasan assortment of green vegetables, tomatoes and pepper in the garden, and there was no gainsaying that Teju was impressed. Teju helped the old man to water the tomatoes and pepper which were green and well grown, but still unripe.

“These tomatoes and pepper are fresh, you must be very good in farming,” Teju said to the old man

“Point of correction, I’m not necessarily farming, I’m gardening" replied the old man with humour as they both laughed quietly

“You know,” continued the old man “sometimes I feel a wave of strange anger at God for not putting me in as a farmer. I discovered that it’s almost useless to have worked in the civil service for thirty-five years.”

Teju was mystified. A technically capable, proficient and effectual civil service was a sine qua non for a contemporary state. In fact, the value of the government was to a considerable extent established by the efficacy and aptitude of the civil service. For all he knew, it was something one should be proud of, except of course, if it was due to the bad payments they received, as Sam had been complaining lately.

“Why I thought it’s a type of patriotism for you to serve in the civil service,” he asked,

“I love farming, I wish even one-third of the citizens of this country love farming, I think it would have been a different story for us right now. Instead, we have an economic recession, and we’re facing a kind of drought that had never been encountered in the history of the nation only because the rate of investment in local farming is dissipating year in year out” the old man said, putting the watering can into a short shed where Teju supposed was used to keep gardening equipment.

“We’ve been over-concentrating on petroleum, and even petroleum can’t save us from this drought. You know,” the old man pursued, picking up his soiled hoe, “I wished the perfumes of petroleum were never perceived in this country”

Teju raised his eyebrow in surprise. The words as they kept pouring out on his eardrum tend to be out-and-out baloney. “And why did you say that?” Teju questioned

“The answer to thatis clear, son. Our economy greatly depends on what these foreign bodies are willing to pay for our petroleum. Today they might decide to pay a hundred dollar per barrel, and tomorrow they might pay twenty dollars. And don’t be deceived, thirty percent of the returns from petroleum had developed this nation, and the other seventy percent had enriched chains of corrupt leaders... just look around, and ask yourself ‘is everything the way they ought to be?’; of course ignorance is not the problem, every one of them in those government seats know the right things to do. This is the seventh year of my retirement, and I'm yet to have a kobo from my pension, even after I had served assiduously and faithfully in the civil service for three and a half decades. Tell me; wouldn't it be a different story for me and this nation if I had been something simple yet priceless as a farmer? I guess I could have been much more patriotic to this nation, plus I won’t be yearning with disillusionment for a pension that won’t surface."

The words cut Teju as deep as a dagger would. Somehow he felt that the criticism was tossed innocently into his path, he felt the excruciating feeling of guilt. “You see, the young generation of this nation think petroleum is the true heir to our economic throne” the old man continued wistfully, looking at the range of foliages he had planted and had been tendering jealously.

“But no, it is not. History tells that petroleum became the king of our economy through a coup d’état. Agriculture was the true heir to that throne but petroleum came and leveraged the short-lived oil boom of the 1970s to dethrone agriculture. That Cocoa House over there in Dugbe which went on to be the very first skyscraper in this country would have been named Crude House if it was built with Oil money, but it was not, it was built with the returns from the exportation of cocoa, same with the first radio station in West Africa, the Liberty Stadium and even the Free Education of the early 1960s which was very much successful in the Western region”.

“Are you saying that we should stay away from the oil wealth we are endowed with and focus mainly on agriculture?” Teju later found his voice amidst the old man’s creepy ideological lectures. The old man responded with a good laugh, the distinctive laughs of the aged- slow, low, steady and short, like the creaking of a bed.

“Whenever I talk like this,” the old man continued, “people think I detest the crude oil God had blessed us with, but I do not. You see, during the military rule of the early 1970s, our economy experienced the fastest growth in the history of the nation, and the single most prominent causative factor to the fast pace of economic growth during this era was the oil wealth which swiftly accrued between 1970 and 1973 and then went sky-high in 1974 due to the rise in oil prices brought about by OPEC of which this nation is a member. For instance, our oil rose from 3.8 dollars per barrel in October 1973 to 14.7 dollars per barrel on the first of January 1974. Our oil revenue rose enormously and jumped from 1 billion naira in 1973 to 4 billion naira in 1974.

“Yes, this was a bonanza for the nation, and we have every justifiable right to take advantage of it, but not at the detriment of our agricultural quarter; because by the fiscal year 1975 and 1976, the oil boom had started to disperse due to the slump in the world demand. And that was the beginning of all what you see and hear now, it all began then. The rate of growth of the agricultural sector suffered at the hands of our leaders, and it could barely keep pace with our population growth. My son, the oil revenue, I must admit, is quite attractive, but what it has only attracted in our leaders is the most passionate greed ever known in the history of mankind. Oil became to our leaders, a personal business venture where they can make quick wealth without a millilitre of sweat or a raise of a finger. I can say this anywhere; if this country’s economy would be restored back to its former glory; it has to ride on the pallid unicorn of agriculture”.