Monuments! My knowledge of roads is often entirely based on monuments: remarkable houses, trees, even humans. Humans - I know one fellow who doesnt ever refuse to sit under one mango tree in Esado Street, Lagos. Barefooted like a rabbit, that mango man, a pair of black shorts was his permanent accessory of recognition. Well, there are times he does not sit on that brown bench under the mango tree. Like, when he has gone to stretch his bones, leaving an idle pair of slippers to the task of indicating his proximity. Mango Man loves his spot... But monuments can move. Civilisation. Disaster. They are among the culprits that make fool of men who depend entirely on monuments in claims of territorial knowledge. Year-end festivities brought my presence to Imo State, that State where politics is an industry, where you count thirty campaign billboards before you spot one tiny, rusty board advertising some consumer good. I had gone to a nearby community to see an old woman who was a family friend. Monument was her house, one unmistakable, unflattering address bricked with red earth. Years of domestic austerity had yielded the savings that replaced its thatch roof with zinc, when the former had become the habitation of dangerous reptiles. Mama Benji was a very hardworking widow, who raised two girls and a son with farm labour. Hers wore the ugly badge of the poorest family in her village. For the third time, I had driven to and fro, seeking that red-earth monument of a house. Or that palm-oil mortar planted in the ground in front of her house. Or that stack of old blocks coated with green fungi in the compound, sign-posting an unrealised building project. Landmarks have changed within that environment, making the search more difficult. But that name, Mama Benji, that name, itself an abstract monument... The name became the subject of my inquiry. A hand pointed at a sprawling edifice planted on the earlier spot of Red-Brick. An imposing abode dripping modernity and class. It is one of Benjis many proofs of social mobility. I had missed out on the tales of his legitimate economic rise due to my earlier unfortunate disconnect from home. Mama was so happy to see me. Benji nwa m emegbaala m ihu - Benji my son has taken shame off my face. She looked renewed, her smile permanent, like her face was cut in a smiley template, those two missing teeth still absent. She soon disappeared and returned with a bottle of Coke and, when her help was delaying bringing an opener, she wiped the cock with the tip of her wrapper, lifted the Coke bottle and... Dont worry, Ill open it myself Mama, I cut in. I was not about to let hospitality precipitate another dental loss. The subsisting dental vacuum, itself a sum of history, had assumed artistic grace. We know the history, when a hit-and-run driver knocked down a woman on a bicycle at Ama-Ndumeze back in the day. First were rumours of her death, then of her survival, and finally, of her loss of all the teeth in her mouth. Rumours! It is stories like these, of triumph, that reinforce the capacity of life to transform itself - stories, of the positive dynamism of the human experience - it is these stories that give me hope as a young person in the pursuit of meaning. Completely hopeless in the politics of my country, the reason for my silence on political discourse, I find inspiration in the spirit of the young Nigerian. The spirit to carve out his own destiny from nothing. To be his own government. To create new monuments from ugly ones. That capacity for alchemy... It is my wish that someday, we shall extend this can-do spirit to robust political surveillance, by which we will recognise the sweeping complicity of the political class and the programme of elite gang-raping they oversee. It is my wish that my pessimism be put to shame, that we can create a new nation that works. May the coming election bring us closer to this wish. Wishing you all a prosperous New Year!
Posted on: Thu, 08 Jan 2015 08:47:18 +0000
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