Читать книгу Against the Odds - Ben Igwe - Страница 10

Two

Jamike and his mother lived off the products from their farms. Cassava, cocoyam, green bananas, yams, and plantain were their main foods. In a bad harvest, things were difficult for them. Uridiya would sell pepper, vegetables, and a small bowl of palm oil to buy a handful of crushed crayfish to give taste to their soup. Meat in their food was a rarity. If they wanted beef broth to season their soup, Jamike would take a pot of water or a bundle of firewood to the village butcher so he would give him some broth in exchange after he cooked meat for sale. But as a village boy, Jamike would go into the bush some nights with a palm oil lamp or a lit bundle of sticks tied together to pick snails following a heavy rain, or he would pick mushrooms the morning after. On Saturdays during the planting season he accompanied Uridiya to the farm and helped to make mounds for cassava or cocoyam planting.

Other times he would go on insect-hunting excursions in the farms and low bushes in the village. Early in the morning sometimes, when dew had dulled and weakened the insects, Jamike would go into nearby bushes to catch edible insects like grasshoppers, praying mantises, crickets, and beetles for food. After Jamike removed their wings, Uridiya would fry the insects and put them in their soup.

During the season for edible caterpillars, when greenish voracious caterpillars, like locusts, descended on trees and shrubs, a season that came around at long intervals, Jamike would climb trees to shake caterpillars off branches and leaves so that persons on the ground under the trees would pick them. Once he was on the tree, he would climb from branch to branch, shaking some branches with his hand and thumping his foot on others while he held strongly to another branch. When he came down, he would collect a handful of these wormlike caterpillars from each person.

Sometimes a stingy villager would not contribute enough caterpillars to Jamike. Jamike would be upset and would show it. An old woman was once tightfisted with Jamike.

“What is this you are giving me? I would rather not take any caterpillars from you than for you not to give me enough.” He attempted to walk away, refusing the handful the woman offered.

“Go ahead, young man, and collect from others. By the time everybody gives you their share you will have more than enough.”

“Mama, just give me a fair share from what you have. Don’t worry about what other people may give me.”

“Are you ever satisfied, you little boy? Did you do any other thing except to climb a tree? You are not God that put caterpillars on the tree.” People standing around laughed as they watched the old lady and the young boy exchange words.

“I am not God, but I am the one that climbed the tree. If climbing the tree is nothing why didn’t you climb it yourself?” Jamike was firm.

“If I were a man I would climb it.”

“Now you know you are a woman, please give me the caterpillars.”

Another villager in the group who got tired of waiting for Jamike while he argued was getting ready to leave her share for Jamike at the foot of the tree.

“Please don’t do that. The caterpillars will crawl away.” His simmering anger rose to a boil.

“Please give me the caterpillars. If these other people leave without giving me anything I will seize this big bowl that you have,” Jamike warned.

“I did not get all these caterpillars from here. I have been out all morning.” She gave him a little more.

By early afternoon, before the sun got too hot, Jamike would have climbed over ten trees, and his sizeable calabash bowl would be filled with a big mound of caterpillars crawling in a slimy mass over one another, raising and shaking their tiny heads. When cooked and dried in the sun or fried they became delicacies for different types of soup. Sometimes Jamike and his mother would have more than they required, in which case Uridiya would sell some.

During the rainy season, Jamike and the other boys went to the community pond at midnight to catch frogs. They carried lanterns or brightly lit bundles of dried thin sticks that showed the water of the pond under illumination. They would then surround the pond at different points. On noticing the light the frogs would attempt to jump into nearby bushes. As they tried to jump out, they would be apprehended. Each frog caught had its long legs broken so it wouldn’t jump out of the bag.

As he grew older, Jamike began to hunt rabbits and squirrels with other young men in the village. Sometimes he followed older men on their hunt, carrying their hunting bag like an apprentice. After they slaughtered their catch for the day, he would go home with a leg, thigh, or even the head of a small animal. On these occasions, Uridiya would welcome and embrace her young son with a broad smile and shower praises and sweet names on him for bringing home meat for their soup. She would call him Nwachinemere, one who God takes care of, and Nwadede, my beloved. Jamike was proud to hear his mother call him those names of endearment.

By the time he was ten, Jamike had appropriated one of Uridiya’s old machetes. He went to a relative who was a blacksmith and had the handle changed by the blacksmith’s son. He was proud of his machete. Early on Saturday mornings Jamike would spend a long time sharpening the machete at the grindstone. He used it to cut firewood in the bush and to cut palm leaves and twigs for their goats. Ownership of a machete was a mark of incipient manhood for a young boy in the village. As a weapon, he could use it to defend himself and his family, and he used it as a tool to work on the farms or at home. Every village boy was eager to own a machete, usually one that his father was not using anymore. He sometimes played with it and learned about its many uses from parents and relatives. Jamike had to learn fast. Having lost his father very early in life, he had to come to manhood faster than his age-mates if he and his mother were to survive in a widow’s harsh environment.

Jamike started elementary school at about the age of twelve. It had not been but a few years ago that he wore his first pair of shorts. He was seven or eight and liked shorts that had belt loops. Before that age, he was naked in the village like every other boy or girl. Skinny Jamike wore his long oversized belt so tight in those days that it almost went twice around his waist. His mother always feared the boy would crush his intestines with the belt he drew too tight around his stomach.

School was for anyone who could afford it. Most children of Jamike’s age in the village were apprenticed to learn a trade. Blacksmithing, bicycle repairing, and carpentry were popular choices. With meager capital received from the selling of farmland or cash crops, some youngsters engaged in petty trading. School meant fees, uniforms, levies, and numerous other requests by teachers. But Uridiya, a woman of determination, had sworn that Jamike would attend school whenever she could afford to put him there. She always said that since she did not know her ABCs, her only child must go to school to learn them. Through him, therefore, she would be enlightened.

Harvest was bountiful the year Jamike started school. Uridiya sold vegetables, palm oil, palm nuts, kernels, and other crops to pay his first fees. Jamike even helped out. He gave his mother the little cash he earned from the baskets he wove and the crude kitchen knives he learned to make at the local blacksmith’s workshop. These he constructed with the help of the blacksmith’s son who was his age -mate and who was learning his father’s trade. It was generally the custom in the village for first sons to learn the trade of their fathers. Because Jamike occasionally visited the blacksmith to help fire the furnace for him, he was allowed to tinker with bits and pieces of iron and scrap metal. He learned to make crude kitchen knives and simple types of cutlasses for grass cutting. It became known in the village that he was talented in things technical.

At school Jamike showed a remarkable brilliance that villagers did not expect from the son of a widow. At the end of every term, results of examinations were called and report cards given out to pupils in the assembly hall with parents in attendance. Parents who could afford school fees but whose children did not do well in schoolwork were quick to point to Jamike as a kid whose widowed mother could ill afford his fees, but who came first in class most of the time. He missed classes only when he was sent home for not paying his fees. Uridiya knew well that once in a while she would not be able to afford the fees, but this did not deter her from putting her son in school. She believed that somehow her god who had provided for them through all these years would not abandon her.

Each time Jamike returned to school after staying away for a couple of days for not paying his fees, he was quick to catch up and would still be among the top students, scoring the highest marks in class tests and examinations. Being sent home from school was what Jamike expected whenever he did not have his fees. Even with this knowledge the boy still went to school when fees were due, hoping he would be lucky not to be sent home.

What happened to Jamike one Monday morning was a situation he had been through often for not paying his fees. To make the matter worse, he was late to school too. It was a cloudy and chilly morning in January during the dry harmattan season. There was dryness everywhere as trees reeled in the wind that sent leaves and debris spiraling high into the sky. Smoke and sparks rose from many compounds where fires were made in the open air and children surrounded them to warm their ashy bodies. Uridiya got up early to gather palm nuts to cook. They needed palm oil for use and for sale toward his fees. She noticed that she did not have enough water and wanted Jamike to run to the stream three miles away to fetch water before going to school.

Jamike came out from the room where he slept on a mat on a ribbed bamboo bed. Stretching himself and rubbing his eyes he approached the fire for warmth, extending his open palms toward the rising flames. He was the first child by the fire. Shortly after, other children in the compound crouched around stretching their hands toward the flame like Jamike. At this time of the year it was a ritual to warm up before getting ready for school.

“Jamike, I noticed I will need more water to cook these palm nuts,” Uridiya said to her son who just got out of bed.

“How did you plan to cook palm nuts when you didn’t have enough water? Were you going to borrow water?”

“No matter what else I may borrow, son, I will not borrow God-made water. I will not cook with empty hands, anyway.”

“That’s what I wonder about.”

“Please, son, can you run to fetch me a pot of water before you go to school?”

“Mama, I will be late for school. Each time I go late, I get flogged. I am not going to the stream this morning.” He stood and staggered away from Uridiya, upset and shaking his head.

“If you go right away you will not be late.”

“I am not going.” He leaned angrily on a mud wall and wiped tears with the back of his palm.

“Jamike, please go fetch your mother some water. I am not going to drink the oil I am making. This is the palm oil I will sell to get money for the fees your teachers never tire of asking you to bring.”

“I know, Mama. I will be late to school and I will be flogged.” Jamike began to look for a bucket so he could take his bath.

“Jamike, please, my son. Please, my husband. Just one pot of water will do. You will not go a second time.” Uridiya called him such an endearing name like “my husband” whenever Jamike did something special or she wanted to cajole him to run an errand she suspected he would resist. Jamike put down the bucket he wanted to use for bathing and picked up a clay pot. He held it by the neck.

“Jamike, do not hold that pot by its neck. It is clay and not iron and will easily break. Before you know it you will be holding the neck while the pot is in pieces on the ground.” Jamike placed the pot on his head and moved toward the wooden gate of the compound.

“I will fetch a pot of water and only one pot. I will not go two times to the stream this morning. I don’t want to be late to school. The teacher told us we would learn new arithmetic today.”

“No, darling, one pot is all I need. Take quick steps. Let me see you back right now.” While he was gone Uridiya set the big earthen pot on a roaring fire with the water available. It was for the second or maybe the third round of cooking that she would need more water.

Jamike was late to school as he worried he would be. There was already a line of latecomers kneeling outside the school gate. The assistant headmaster, Mr. Ndu, was standing with a bundle of canes to administer strokes on each student’s buttocks. The headmaster, Mr. Ahamba, a disciplinarian, stressed punctuality to school, but it was his assistant who enforced it through corporal punishment. The assistant headmaster was notorious for flogging. Students nicknamed him “Eze Nkita,” dogtooth, because students said his teeth were set like a dog’s and he showed no mercy when flogging as a dog would show none when biting.

A woman who once brought her son to Mr. Ndu, against the youngster’s wish, to protest the severity of the strokes that gave her child a bruise on the head had to leave his office in haste because Mr. Ndu threatened to flog her too. Until the student in question passed out from that elementary school he was made fun of by his classmates because of the speed with which his mother hurried out of Mr. Ndu’s office to avoid being flogged too. When the story reached the village those who heard it thought the woman showed no common sense by protesting to a teacher who disciplined her child. She should rather be thankful to the teacher.

On every school day, once morning assembly was in progress, Mr. Ndu would close the school’s big gate, and every latecomer would kneel outside the gate waiting for no less than six strong strokes of his cane on the buttocks. If the pupil did not scream loud enough because of the pain inflicted, he would be called back for two additional strokes, sometimes on the pupil’s back, head, calf, or anywhere else Mr. Ndu determined the pain would be more severely felt.

But students soon devised ways to cope with the harsh strokes of Mr. Ndu’s canes. Some students who knew they would be late for school or who committed an infraction would take time to pad their buttocks with layers of dried banana leaves or rags in readiness for him; others wore two or more khaki shorts. The young boys looked odd with raised buttocks, obviously disproportionate to their small bodies. It seemed, though, that Mr. Ndu knew their trick, because suddenly he began to raise his hand higher in the air, and the strokes came down harder on their backsides. Each latecomer would step up to him and receive his strokes. Brave students would step forward faster, while the chicken-hearted would move behind others as if to shield themselves until the inevitable encounter with Mr. Ndu’s cane. Jamike stepped up this morning and the sound on his stuffed buttocks went “tu-wai, tu-wai,” six times. He ran in with the expected scream to fool Mr. Ndu, grabbing his raffia school bag on the run, with laughter in his heart.

Jamike was not in class for more than ten minutes this particular morning when his teacher, Mr. Ekweariri, sent him away for not having his school levy. He went outside and stood by the window trying to peep at the blackboard where the teacher had set the new arithmetic for the day. What pained the boy most were not the strokes he received for lateness to school. It was the new arithmetic that students would learn that day. Jamike wished he could stay but he would go home to help his mother prepare palm oil.

On a day like this Monday morning when he was sent home, as soon as Jamike stepped into the compound, his raffia bag slung across his left shoulder, Uridiya would move up to him and ask,

“My child, what did they say you did today? You may have to leave this schooling alone.” She knew the only reason for which her son could be sent home from school.

“They said I did not bring the money I told you about when you came back from the market the other day.”

Uridiya sighed and continued to stir the pot full of palm nuts cooking in the open on a dry season day. A goat came close to her feet to eat peelings of the cocoyam she would cook with the nuts. Uridiya hit the goat on the waist with a clenched fist. She examined her fingers and cursed the goat for making her hurt her knuckles. Jamike wondered why his mother would worry about a goat trying to eat cocoyam peelings that would be trashed later.

“The cocoyam peelings will become manure for crop when they are spread on the farm. Why should the goat be allowed to eat them?” Uridiya chastised the goat and responded as if she’d read her son’s mind.

Uridiya walked away from the hearth, cleaning her sweaty forehead with the back of her palm. She asked Jamike to add firewood to the decreasing flame burning outside the periphery of the big pot. Jamike added firewood and pushed back wood burning away from the pot. He went down on his knees and lowered his head toward the smoldering firewood to blow air into the fire. After drawing in air and blowing rhythmically for some seconds, the dry firewood logs ignited and flames rushed from under the pot, causing Jamike to move his face away quickly and rose. A woman whom Uridiya asked for help arrived late because her child was still breast-feeding. She apologized. On seeing Jamike she asked why he was not in school.

“I was sent back.” She inquired no further.

After a short while, Uridiya behaved as if she was just hearing what Jamike said for the first time.

“Jamike, what is the reason you said they sent you away from school today?”

“It is because of the money.”

“Which money is it, now? Did you say you told Uridiya about it?”

“If you bring an oath I will swear I told you. Maybe you forgot.”

“You will swear no oath, my son,” the visitor chimed in.

“This time, Jamike, you are going to swear that oath for me, because you always claim to tell me these things.” Uridiya did not mean it.

“Bring the oath. I will swear it.”

“You see, this is the reason why people do not go to this thing you call school.” She stirred the pot filled with palm nuts while standing, with steam enveloping her. She pulled her face, sneezed, and continued, “Everyday there is one kind of money or the other to pay. Do these teachers ever spend the money given to them before they ask for more?”

“Mama, you talk as if I am the only student asked to bring money.” Jamike was irritated.

“No, my son, you are not the only one. That is the way those teachers are,” Uridiya’s helper added.

“Well, I cannot get money by magic or through the movement of my bowel. The palm oil I am making is for sale.”

“I am still waiting for the oath.”

“You are not swearing any oath for Uridiya.”

“Jamike, find something to do. Two of us can handle the palm nuts; do not stay idle. No living person stays idle. See if the goat has something to eat. Do we have drinking water in that pot? Do we have enough firewood? You can visit the farm near the market square and see what mischief has been done to the yam stems. Jamike, I tell you this all the time, and I will not tire of saying it. You are the husband I have today. You are not a child anymore. Remember what the elders say, that no matter how young a male child is when his father dies, he starts from that point to stay awake at night. It is a true statement, and I hope you understand it.”

“So when others are asleep I would be awake. What would I be doing?”

“When the time comes, son, you will understand the meaning of what I am saying. I will not be the one to remind you to stay awake at night while children whose fathers are living would be sleeping. An orphan learns these facts fast. You are an orphan on your father’s side. Do not forget it. That’s what I am talking about.”

Some days, like Saturdays or during the holidays when Jamike was not at school, he would busy himself constructing mousetraps for sale. He hunted lizards, rabbits, or squirrels with some of the adults in the kindred. He usually held their hunting bag for them. At the end of the day, they gave him a share of their kill. On one occasion when he hunted by himself, Jamike gave a squirrel a long chase, the animal dribbling him around. He tripped twice before the animal hopped onto the nearest tree and sat on a very high branch. From there, the squirrel viewed Jamike with disdain. Anger and desperation filled Jamike as he stood arms akimbo, looking at the prey that got away. Said he,

“Since you are a runner, why did you not continue with me on the ground? If you are not a coward, why do you sit where I cannot reach you?” Jamike shook his fist at the animal.

He broke a cassava stem, held it at one end, and with all his might threw it at the squirrel. The stick went in a different direction from where the animal was comfortably perching, twitching its whiskers. By the time he broke another cassava stem and readied to hurl it, the squirrel saw Jamike’s movement and was nowhere to be found.

“Thank your god, you escaped today,” he said. “Your luck cannot continue forever. Try coming my way tomorrow and find out if your head will not cook in a pot. Idiot!”

Jamike moved deliberately in the bush in search of a quarry, attentive to every noise or movement on the ground or on the trees. He used his machete to cut impediments on his path. Suddenly he stopped. His foot stepped on a hard object. He cleared the ground with the tip of his machete. It was a big snail and would make good meat.