Chapter 29: Chapter 29

CHAPTER 25

Tuesday, 29th November.

Teju got up early the next morning, feeling a little lighter than the previous day. He had started feeling lighter since he had gone to the church to pray. The doors of the church were opened and he had gone in to pray alone at the altar in silent whispers. After the prayer, it seemed the millstone in his belly had been liquefied. He had then disgorged it out of him like vomit or a fart. He had bottled up his problems. His problems had coagulated into a heavy millstone in his stomach. They were like cholesterols that block the passage of blood in the veins. What he had needed was a companion to whom he could discharge all his problems.

When he got home that evening, he had found Simi asleep on one of the sofas long enough to contain her full stretched-out body. He had left her there to sleep. He could not even pull a blanket over her body. It was too risky. If she woke up, the face she would put up at him would definitely rob him of his sleep for the rest of the night.

She was still asleep comfortably in another sleeping position when he got up the next morning. All she did these days was to sleep, eat, and see Indian movies on Z World. Sometimes, she would read romance novels from Mills and Boon and HarperCollins or on Okadabooks. She would read gist and gossips on Bella Naija or Pulse.ng. At times, her laughter would erupt like a volcanic rock as she basked in Woli Agba, Tywse and Emmanuella comedy skits. She would chat and update statuses on WhatsApp and snap selfies or make selfie videos on Snapchat.

Sometimes, she listened to gospel music, mostly from Tope Alabi, Lara George and Sinach. Occasionally, she listened to Don Moen and the Women of Faith. Unlike Teju, she was not inclined to the use of earphones, and most of the time, Teju was obliged to listen to her song collections without objection. Some other times, she would play games on her phone- Candy Crush, Fruit Crush and so on. At first, Teju thought she was feeding her phone with her different rations since a man on her phone periodically screamed–delicious! sweet! yummy! He had to get used to the fact that she was merely playing a game.

At times, she played Scrabble, a game she was extremely good at, even to the extent that she now considered it a fetid game. And sometimes it was Word Cookies. From time to time, she even performed her nanny duties to Angela who had now grown.

As a matter of actuality, she did not cook for herself or for him anymore. Teju did the cooking, and she ate anyway. Teju shook his head grimly as he stood over her sleeping body. She looked so disturbed even in her sleep. She was pale, but even the paleness of her countenance did not have an effect on her beauty. She looked beautiful as ever. Her eyebrows like sleeping zebras, her eyelashes like calligraphy, closed in a distressed sleep.

He wished there was something more soothing between them rather than the malice of marital unfaithfulness. He noticed her bare finger again. The ring he had inserted into her finger almost a year ago was not there. She had angrily wrenched it out of her finger that night as though she was a vampire whose touch on a silvery object was forbidden.

After a breakfast of yellow-coloured pap creamed with condensed milk, and taken with beans pottage, he checked through the list he had made the previous day. He had made the list up without soliciting help or suggestions from Simi. She did not have to make a list before going to the market,however. She could itemize all that was needed at home off-hand. But Teju made sure he took his time to draft a list which, by inference, would be almost as accurate as Simi’s.

He checked through the list, again and again, reading every item on the list to himself.

Rice

Beans

Garri

Beef

Titus

Tomatoes, onions, Rodo, Bawa

Tins of tomato paste

Plantain

Palm oil

Vegetable oil

Egusi

Seasoning

Salt

Locust beans

Vegetables

Stockfish

Pomo

Tins of milk

Tins of Milo

Yam Flour

Semovita

Eggs

Yams

He cancelled out pomo and salt from the list. Pomo was somewhat unnecessary and there was still an abundant amount of salt at home. He remembered he would still have to withdraw some money from the ATM at the bank. He would have to drive compulsorily to Challenge. He wished market men and women used POS for remittance, just as it was done in Shoprite so that he would not have to grapple with the long queues at the ATM stands. It was a relief however that the queues would not be as long as that of Mondays and Fridays.

He checked his account balance with his mobile banking service. One hundred and four naira was missing. His last two SMS alerts from his bank say fifty-two naira each had been debited from his account for ATM Card Maintenance and Mobile Banking Service Maintenance. Sixty-five naira more would be debited from his account because that would be his third withdrawal from the ATM of other banks in the same month. He recharged five hundred naira airtime on his Airtel line with his mobile banking service.

Teju went to Bodija market to buy the foodstuffs he had itemized. The first thing he saw on entering Bodija was a big billboard with a beautiful woman, wearing a head-tie. She was holding a tin of Gino tomato paste with one hand and pointing at it with the other. Gino truly cares it says. It felt natural and nostalgic to visit the large and ancient market of Ibadan once again. Apart from its largeness and its commercial strength, Teju remembered Bodija for quite a lot of sights which he considered horrendous.

The first time he had visited the market, he had accompanied one of his campus friends who were more inclined to shop in main markets than shopping in local stores and shops. It was cheaper and qualitative to buy in major markets where the goods were delivered first-hand, than in local stores where they were delivered second-hand.

One of the first things he had noticed on entering the market made him have goosebumps all over his body. It made the inside of his belly feel like he had swallowed magma. He had seen a hefty man sodden in his own sweat. His muscles were provoked by the loads he was carrying. But what really upset him were the way he carried the loads and the danger which seemed to belie it. The man had two large overlaid sacks of beans on his neck. The implication of that made his neck, which ought to be at angle ninety, bend to an angle forty-five. The way he raced with these sacks of beans on his neck, bouncing like a basketball, made it seem his neck would snap into two pieces like dry twigs.

It was a gross sight. Teju could remember he had meted out his internal anger on the half-drunk sachet of pure water which hung in his mouth. He had snatched it from the grip of his teeth and clout the ground with it, as though he expected the ground to wince in pain. His friend whom he had accompanied to the market gave him an estimation of what the men who were known as porters earned per carriage. It was so paltry- far below the measly feeding allowance, he collected from the scholarship scheme he benefitted from- that he wondered how they managed to feed their families with it.

He had also seen old women carrying loads on their heads with metal containers. He had wondered if they had offspring. It was impossible to believe that they had offspring who have decided to neglect them to the rigorous struggle which the nation had subjected them to, even in their old age. Some people in the same national space were entitled to something called retirement in their old age. However, these old folks could not retire. They could not afford the luxury of taking a prolonged rest after their youthful struggles. They have to work assiduously from childhood to the day they drew their last breaths.

Entering the large market again, it seemed nothing had changed. If there had been a change from what he observed, then it was something possibly worse than the first time he visited. The porters who used to carry two sacks of beans and rice at the same time now carried three. The market men and women in their slacking and rickety stalls, the Hausa traders behind their ware-filled wheelbarrows, some markets women did not have either stalls or wheelbarrows, only the ground. Big trailers painted with bright colours were filled with hundreds of yam tubers, or full sacks of onions, or cartons of Golden Penny Noodles. They were offloaded by groups of muscled and clammy men. It was still the real, highly busy Bodija market.

The beggars with or without guides, with or without rendering prayer services, the crippled and the non-crippled paraded the market in their infinite multitudes. They went carefully from stall to stall. If the Bodija market had sixty percent combined population of buyers and sellers, the rest were beggars. Teju wondered if there were researchers who have found out whether the numbers of beggars increased or decreased on a yearly basis. Or what were the common circumstances that made these beggars beg for alms?

Teju watched excruciatingly how these beggars were shooed off by buyers and sellers. It seemed everyone had only what can hold their stomachs. Subscribing an extra stomach to their various budgets could mean trouble. He wondered if there was competition between the beggars, just as traders competed amongst themselves.

Teju stopped and watched a haggard-looking little girl. She reminded him of those Lebanese refugees at Challenge. They were little girls and boys who clung to you for something. Their skin like the colour of creamed tea, their hair flattened like the hair on the eyelashes, but they spoke Yoruba.

She had been sent away by a trader selling ungrounded elubo which, if grounded, is called yam flour. If Teju was asked to make a guess on what the girl was thinking, then he would say the girl considered this world, this planet inhabited by humans as the most blighted and cursed planet among the eight planets that existed. In fact, it was a thousand times better to live on Mercury, or on the moon.

Teju knew his thoughts were inflated, but he was also aware that the girl’sthoughts about life at that moment were bitter. She probably was blaming God, or the devil, or the merciless market men and women. He was not in the position to decipher the deepness of her bitterness, but whatever she thought of life- she was way too young and susceptible to have such strong and inflexible thoughts.

Teju, therefore, decided to set the fire of doubt on her thought about life. He moved to her without thinking and handed her a neat one thousand naira note. She slowly and with shock collected the money from him. Teju walked away without saying a word and without looking back. For no reason, he did not care what the reaction of the girl was. Whether she would faint out of shock or she would scream with joy, or cry or worship him. He only wanted her to always see one thing in life, and that was hope. In other scenarios, if a man gives a little girl like her such an extravagant amount, it had a heavy clause.