Evenings come with breeze, silence and dust. Across the sky are slivers of brown rustiness finally settling on the town after a long day’s work. A road passes in front of the wooden shack where men young and old sit down to banter in merriment, often with their shirts off. The women sit in groups petting children. When darkness falls and all that lights the day is the moon up in the sky, voices move up and down in modulations that carry the weight of their vain deliberations.
The village is a study of contrasts. On the one side of it is a sprawling mass of huts covered with brown rusted roofs. In the middle of this side of town, also called Aba, was the Christ Apostolic Church – perhaps the only modern building there. Aba burns the eyes with the brown of its thatched huts and of its children’s feet. In a bustling afternoon, the sound of goats and chicken compete with the trail of their smell from one street to another up until the foot of the agbalumo tree…
One hour of traipsing around these edges of the village eventually finds a seven year old boy back at home – a different part of the town. The house overlooks a long equally dusty street that runs from a clinic down to the right hand of the observer to the other part of the village where the barber lives. There is a certain magic in living around here. Grown folks played practical jokes on little children and on each other. A day earlier, on his way back from wandering around the village, he was stopped on the pavement of a certain house where another young boy was being shaven. His head was already bald.
“It’s your lucky day, young man.” A man volunteers. “Stay right where you are. What are you doing around here all by yourself?”
“I was coming from around there. I am going home over there.”
“Why were you staring?”
It is always hard to know where adult conversations were leaning.
“I wasn’t staring. I was on my way home.”
“Like I said, it is your lucky day. All young men your age are being circumcised today.”
What?
“You look frightened. Come closer and sit down here. We’ve been told to go around circumcising all young men like you around town.”
It took a whole minute, then he took off as fast as he could. He never looked back until he got home, panting like a dog. For a long time that evening, he would wonder how grown people managed to make such brutal jokes that seemed at the expense of poor helpless kids scared half to death. And for a longer time after that, he would begin to take a different route home while wandering around the village, but always with a lingering fear that he was not totally out of the grip of mentally bullying elders.
. Now, if we listen to the Mayans, all the remaining negatives on the world’s plate point only to one conclusion: this will be our last New Year celebration. (I haven’t seen that movie 2012, but I’m very familiar with its apocalyptic premise).
Occupied. Now What?
From snippets I get on social media (more than a handful of pictures from Facebook and Twitter), Nigeria is effectively grounded. People occupied (that word again) the streets demanding change. I’d been bothered about one thing all along – having been incapable of joining the protest because of inevitable distance: the capacity of public protests (with tendency to turn violent and take innocent lives) to make a significant difference. At the last count, more than six people have now been shot dead by overzealous policemen sent to the streets to “restore order”.
There is a sad, lingering realization, that this revolution will not solve all the nation’s problems. (It didn’t solve all of the problems in Libya, Syria, Iran, America, Tunisia and Egypt either). If the government subsidy removal would be beneficial to the citizenry, government would have begun to put structures in place for people to see and feel BEFORE removing the only benefit that many enjoy as citizens of such naturally endowed country. Now here is a better thought: LET US ERADICATE CORRUPTION. Where are the new ideas for a different country to arise when this revolution dies? Where is the new direction? Where is the new leadership that will take us from here? In ten to twenty years from now, most of the visionaries and pioneers of Nigerian independence would most likely be dead and gone. Who would take their place? What new ideas would they bring to the table?
I had a long discussion this afternoon with a family member about the progress now celebrated in Rwanda. After a brutal civil war that tore the country into pieces in 1994, bold new steps have been taken (including adopting English, abolishing “tribe” and instituting a host of reforms that has now made the little African country one of the best places to live on the continent). We had our chance in Nigeria (and much of West Africa) after “independence” from the British, it was squandered. We had a different chance after military rule in 1999, some progress was made, and then slowly foundered. Is this another chance? What emerges from here when the tyre bonfires are well burnt out and things return to normal? What will that normal be, and will it be good enough?
It should never be. The world is evolving. So should we. For the better.
Occupied. Now What? was published on January 10th, 2012, with the tags commentary, Nigeria, Occupy Nigeria, Protest, under the Observations, Soliloquy, Travelling category. There are currently no comments on this article so far.