Departure and Arrival in Aljanah

Giving birth or dying abroad used to be the vogue in those days. 

Really? Why?   What for?

For social and/or religious reasons. Simple! Simplicita!!

Explain yourself, Baba Simple.

You can call me any name. Who cares? No hassle. Some people want to acquire citizenship of other countries to be entitled to certain rights and privileges, in a nutshell social welfare as provided by the country of particular interest like the US, UK, France or even Germany,  of all countries!

Why of all countries!? Your emphasis, not mine. Why?

Because that’s where “babanla awon to fe drive wa comot” from original Noman’s  Land , came from. Just imagine!

Can you rephrase that for clarity sake?

Why not? Simply means kettle calling pot black.

Still off trajectory. Can you still come closer to my level? Or as they  say it in local parlance, can you reduce the height of “akuko Mecca”?

Lobatan! Akuko Mecca! Well I don’t want to prolong the matter, but let the city mouse tell the bush rat that one aparo bird is not taller than the other except the one that wants to claim advantage by perching on earthen stool at the weigh-in formalities.

Itumo?

Meaning immigrant na immigrant. Everyone in “obodo dike” is immigrant and no one is more immigrant than the other. So there is no crime in aspiring to make a better living abroad where their forefathers had handed them a legacy of hospitality for people from other parts of the world who also have a Dream like Rev Martin Luther King Jnr to live in a country that places premium on the sanctity and dignity of man, a land of freedom and liberty to pursue, grab and salivate happiness like Pavlov’s dog.

Thank you so much. If this or these countries of your dream can allow what I see as birth tourism, does it also allow people who want to die to come  and die here?

O ti o! Mba mba mba, eewo. Kinla?

Come and die ke?! Where in the world do they do that?

I learn France is one country that advertises for people to come and die in their country.

Ah! Come and KU ke? Impossican’t!

Tanda there like Soja Idumota and be shouting “pussycat”. Na you sabi that. Even sef you fit talk of Tiger or Samanja whiskers. You mean say you never heard of SEE PARIS AND DIE before?

How can anybody want to go to Paris to die when Mecca and Medina dey there? I even suspect some people , if they have the money would want to go and die in Jerusalem.

You mean some people “fit jakpa” to a foreign land to die?! 

It’s not that simple. But if truth must be told there are some fanatical, extreme religious adherents who will be happy to die in the Holy land wherever it is located and be buried there. Muslims, in particular, who believe the shortest route to aljanah is the one from Mecca. Few had been lucky in this regard though, who, by happenstance gave up the ghost while on pilgrimage and were buried there. There was, however, one instance of somebody who wished to be buried in Mecca if and when he died. As Fate would have it he eventually died while on a lesser hajj one pilgrimage season and was buried there according to his dream wish. Allahu Akbar!

Any idea who that was?

Do we need to interrogate the dead? Rather let’s pray that Allah grant him “Aljanah Fridaus”. Just as we pray for the recently deceased former chief Justice of Nigeria who reportedly died in the holy land.  Other notable Nigerians who died in Mecca include Tawakaltu Busare Alako , a pilgrim from Kebbi State who passed  away and was buried there, Sheikh Abdulrahman Maigoro from Gombe who died after completing the Hajj rites, Hajiya Bilikisu Yusuf, a notable journalist who reportedly met her death in a stampede while performing the year’s Hajj, along with  one Prof Tijani El-Miskin and some others like the six who died in a crane mishap along with other pilgrims from other parts of the world.

How about Christian pilgrims wanting to die in Jerusalem also in order to go to heaven?

Not much is heard of overzealous Christians who weep more than the bereaved women of Jericho, who harbor the idea of going to Jerusalem to die, probably because they too believe heaven is a stone throw from the Holy Land.

Most likely one holy land is holier than the other and that may account for the lack of enthusiasm to pay attention (homage?) to Death tourism to the Christian Holy Land.

To me I think it is much ado about aljanah. The pilgrim who drops dead on the  legendary clean Mecca Streets, and the wannabe pilgrim of Obun Eko (heart of dirt?) in Lagos Island who dies in his dump site of a home, will all end up in the same Aljanah. Yaashin!

DAN, THE MAN, DAMN TOO WITTY

 Master crafter. Writer extra ordinaire. Wordsmith per excellence. Like his friend and colleague, Ray,  he  was a polished, well disciplined commander of language. He knew how to make words do his bidding just as the famous footballer, David Beckham, knows how to bend the ball to do his wish with spot kicks. Ray (Ekpu) is on equal footing with the MASTER. He is  also a king of Verbal Dexterity. 

We all knew Dan had blue blood flowing in his vein, being of Idoma Royalty stock,  but he never donned garlands of royalty. Neither did he wear a princely bracelet on his sleeves to show he was of  a royal breed. All for a just cause..

The tiger does not proclaim its tigritude to the world,  goes a saying, instead it projects it in the elegance of its poise, gait and ferocity of attack.  Dan did not need the services of a megaphone to showcase his pedigree. Instead he projected grace and humility in his dealings with people within his  sphere of influence. 

Yet,  he had a commanding presence. You can’t but give him his due. Oga Dan knew his onions. Peeling them for others to sniff at was a welcome opportunity on his table. The literary  menu was always there to whet your appetite to seek, strive and learn for the advancement of NewsWatch, the magazine he cofounded  and nurtured with Dele Giwa, Ray Ekpu and Yakubu Mohammed.

Theirs was a combination of different cultural backgrounds, talents and interests but a common objective to establish a magazine of international standard in content and style but with a deft touch of local flavor. A kind of ideal fusion of  brilliant minds who wanted to harness their  erstwhile milestones achievements in journalism to cast  GOLDEN  TOUCHSTONES  of professional excellence for others to take a cue from.

It was a perfect team. Giwa, the charismatic American trained journalist, brought his mastery of picturesque, nay cinematic,  writing  style imbued with a knack for details to the table of investment. Mohammed, a  seasoned newsman to the core,  who had proved his mettle on the Concord group of newspapers as an astounding editor, was an equally strong pillar in the FOUR SQUARE configuration. The philosopher king was Ray while Dan was the doyen of brevity, point blank accuracy and  sardonic humour (in his satirical pieces) that could drill a gaping  hole in  a diaphragm made of concrete.

A major thing the four musketeers brought into newsmagazine production was  the introduction of the  avant garde PREFACE TO COVER, a philosophical assay into the week’s cover story, a kind of preview of the central theme. It’s both a stand alone as well as an integral part of the story. 

The three were masters of the art of PREFACE writing and they guarded it as an intellectual trove which Oga Yak was capable of, too, but he was apparently excused from the rigors of “philosophy’, as it were, to face squarely the job of news gathering and presentation, the major task of the magazine. And he did a great job of it. To assist him was Soji  Akinrinade  aka General of the (writing ) ‘forces’ in the newsroom.

I reported directly to Ray in the Back of the Book section of the magazine. We  both shared some attributes, literary and personal, known  to the trio (Dan, Ray and Giwa). Soon I was co-opted into the PREFACE writing group reporting directly to Giwa as the editor in chief and CZAR of the PREFACE ‘cult’ , as it appeared to other members of staff. Then, the UNFORETOLD happened! 

Barely two years of experimenting with investigative journalism and avant garde literary style,  TRAGEDY  came not stealthily but with a bang!  The parcel bombs came  seemingly from nowhere but surely and definitely from evil men, (strangely still at large 39 years after!) barely two years into the magazine’s existence, to blast off the arrow head of the journalistic revolution, a sort of “ counter revolutionary insurgency” against intellectual professionalism (as well as professional intellectualism.). Newswatch has not been the same ever since. Mission accomplished for the parcel bombers , DREAM KILLERS?

Nature abhors vacuum. Newswatch did not die with the parcel-bombed chief executive. Dele Giwa’s death brought Dan in as the head of the NewWatch organisation and editor in chief. Now I had a new helmsman to report to as  PREFACE writer. It was a new ball game entirely. It was like starting all over again. Dan was too thorough for me. He would make sure you dot all the proverbial  i’s and cross the cliche t’s. No long unwinding, if not unwieldy, sentences. He loved them short. Dan, the boss, could start a piece with one word, the shorter, the better, he would say. To him brevity is it!  It is the soul of accuracy. No shadow boxing. No gerrymandering. He was our in-house Chike Obi. Seriously! The shortest distance between two points is a straight line.  He seemed to be telling us. He could easily fathom the ‘X’  factor in any editorial equation. With him you have no business dribbling the reader like Maradona on the field of play. Express, not impress with circumlocution, he would advise and ‘tutor’ us and me in particular, his young protege. Some of us jokingly referred to him as “editorial terrorist”. Far from it. 

“The rice grain suffers under the blows of the pestle”, wrote the late Vietnamese leader, Ho Chi Mihn, on the prison wall  while incarcerated in a North Vietnamese prison, “but (it) admires its beauty once the ordeal is over…”. Being under Dan’s tutelage was no “ordeal”. The Idoma Prince was only putting us in the  editorial furnace to polish us into  18 karat gems in the writing profession. Today we are the better for it. 

He meant well.

No doubt he was a great teacher and goal getter, per se. Like my other colleagues in Newswatch I learnt a lot from him. Yes, he suffered no fools gladly but he knew how to “unfrown”  (defreeze) your frowning (frozen) face and clean out your blood shot, angry eyes with  swaps of humour.  

A particular occasion warranted Dan, one day, at the weekly editorial Conference, to display the humour merchant in him when he almost brought the roof  of the newsroom down. 

And how did that come about?  

It was when he, a Benue oga, “yabbed” another Benue oga (Yak) over a somewhat innocuous editorial snafu, “Ya Ku bu”! , he bellowed, “you don  drink burukutu bah’?! . (Oga Yak is a devout Muslim who would naturally not have a sip of burukutu). “Ah!”, exclaimed Oga Yak with his typical smile.  The resultant  “laugh-proar” was a seismic vibration that almost tore  through the eardrums! 

That’s Dan for you.  And that’s just a tip off his paraphernalia of spontaneous,  hilarious jokes sandwiched with wits and wisecracks laced with local flavor  and intellectual panache. Damn  too witty. Dan, the boss! He will be sorely missed. 

Eternal rest grant him, O Lord.

Sometime Ago in One December I Saw Mummy Kissing Santa Claus

Jingle bells, jingle bells, jingle all the way… I hear the bells announcing the coming of Xmas. Do you hear what I hear? Come on, ring those bells again. Jingle bells, jingle bells… 

Hark! The Herald angels sing. Yet everything is silent. Well, it’s Silent Night, holy night… Angels from the realms of glory sing. From Heaven Above to earth they come singing, “We Wish You a Merry Xmas…”

Good music to the ears. But, daddy, this Xmas sounds like a messy Xmas to me. Everything is Still, Still, Still. Nothing is moving… Here they come, all ye faithful. Tearful, not triumphant but hopeful. They all wear long faces. Their eyes are blood-shot. Have they gone to Jeddah or Bethlehem to see the old or the new king? Our Sunday School teacher says we must appreciate him. 

O come, let us adore Him, whether born of Holy Virgin Mary or Holy Virgin Mariam. It’s Joy to the World. C’mon, ring those bells again. Sing the song, Ding Dong Merrily on High/In heaven the bells are ringing/Ding dong verily the sky/Is heaven with angels singing/ Glo-o-o-o-ria, Hosanna in excelsis. 

The choirmaster has promised to play another old song. Let there be peace on earth. We sing it every year and it is becoming a cliché. This is a unipolar world, yet with multi-polar problems. War in the east; war in the west. Iraq, Afghanistan, Israel-Palestine, drug wars in Latin America… But while ideological divides are narrowing, religious gulfs are widening. 

]Then a “political child” was born to the world. His name is Barack Obama. Will somebody ask somebody to shout, Alleluyah? Not yet. 

Here Comes Santa Claus to deliver his Xmas goodies. Daddy, what do you want? Ah! Ah! Ah! Daddy is shaking his snow-white head. All he wants for Xmas is his two front teeth. Teeth that got broken while eating bones as meat. 

“Everybody pauses and stares at me/These two teeth are gone as you can see/I don’t know just who to blame for this catastrophe!/But my one wish on Xmas eve is as plain as it can be!/All I want for Xmas is my two front teeth, my two front teeth…” Gee! Daddy wants brand-new teeth for Xmas but he has forgotten that the dentist needs electricity to power his instruments. For the umpteenth time, government has sustained gloom during Xmas. No water. No electricity. No fuel. No generator to even recharge the inverter! 

Now, Daddy has got a brand-new song, “All I want for Xmas is 6,000 megawatts…” That will be the most wonderful day of the year when it happens. Can you imagine the country generating electricity at full capacity? How beautiful will the cities and towns be on Xmas eve? Can somebody shout, Alleluyah? 

What for? Sadly enough, the three kings of Orient love civilisation but not our Herods. They would rather strangle our hope in the manger. But Daddy, you don’t have to lose a heartbeat over that. This is a season of hope and joy. So, Daddy Have Yourself a Merry Little Xmas if grandma cannot. 

Poor grandma! She went out to buy candles and matches when her neighbourhood was thrown into darkness and, guess what happened, Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer! Yet we still wish her happyholiday. But grandma is not happy. She is confined into a wheelchair like our country’s paralysed dream. And so for The Twelve Days of Xmas we shall pray and sing for grandma. But Daddy, do not say I told you what I saw when mummy took us to see Father Xmas many years ago. Daddy, you promise me? I Saw Mummy Kissing Santa Claus! You may not believe me but that’s what I saw. But come, Daddy, have you ever imagined what Father Xmas will be doing the rest 364 days? He is a human being after all. So, he can steal a kiss or two while on duty. Daddy, forgive mummy in the true spirit of the Yuletide. She could have been kissed under duress. The world is changing. Nowadays, anybody, even criminals, can be Father Xmas. 

Life is still Ding dong merrily on high but no Gloria in excelsis. Every year the poor masses hear of Xmas. They hear of turkeys. They hear of hampers. They hear of carols. Christmas is coming/The geese are getting fat,/Please put a penny/In the old man’s hat/If you haven’t got a penny,/A ha’penny will do,/If you haven’t got a ha’penny/Then God bless you. Daddy, have you thrown your widow’s mite in the beggar’s bowl? I have given my own, the pocket money you gave me. After giving the little I had, I started beating my drums and one little angel whispered to me, “Little Drummer Boy, God bless you.” True, I’m a little drummer boy out with his drums and tambourines to welcome both the new-born and the reborn king to the world. Like the Magi (the three kings of the Orient), I embarked on a journey in the cold desert in search of the God of gods, Light of light, King of kings, the only Begotten, not created, Son of the Holy Father who grew and developed in the womb of a virgin. Holy Mary! Holy Virgin! Alas, the King of Angels had been sequestered far from Herod’s arm’s way. I did not see Him in Bethlehem or Jerusalem. It was somebody else I saw and that was in Jeddah. I said: Barka da Chrismois but he did not respond. Yaya de? Still he would not answer. Bako mi? Still no response. “Menene?” No dice. This is a season of goodwill, I tried to explain. He was just looking at me as if I had just dropped from Mount Arafat. I started singing: “We wich you a morri Chrismois/We wich you a morri Chrismois and a haffy nu yah.” The reborn king looked dazed. He was motionless. I said I had come with good tidings and he should not fear. I said your enemies may wish you a messy Xmas, I’m not here to join the bandwagon to wish you ill luck or to "emphasise" your indisposition to a radical change in the polity but to wish you well. I told him what fellow countrymen want from their reborn king. They want him to initiate a rebirth of nationalism in their sub-conscious. They want a reborn or would-be king that will celebrate Eid el Kabirwith Muslims in Calabar and Xmas with Christians in Sokoto while a lighted Xmas tree gleams with the season’s goodwill in the seat of power in Abuja. Only then can we truthfully sing Joy to the World and open a new vista of hope for mankind.

First appeared in TELL Magazine, December, 2009 under the title

A MESSY XMAS  FOR DADDY.

Abefele Oloni…TOO TOO SHARP II

Yoruba aka the Ngbati Ngbati People, can be very creative and crafty with words. They are never caught pants down (no pun intended) in weaving tapestries of language without much ado…

Sorry to cut you short. Did I hear you mention weaving and tapestry or something like that?

Yes, you heard me right. So, what’s cooking?

Nothing really. I’m just wondering if that’s the reason why you, people, get am for adire (tie-and-dye) and KIJIPA cloths for Upper Ogun and Oje market for Ibadan Mesiogo?

You are never serious . How does weaving tapestries of language translate into weaving KENTE and KIJIPA like the descendants of Osagyefo for Ghana?

Sorry if that infringes on your sensibility.

Apology taken. As I was trying to say before you leapfrogged into my mouth, the typical African  in their traditional cultural setting draw a lot of their imageries from the floral and fauna, coupled with historical and prevailing circumstances. Thus they are rich in anecdotes, allegories, metaphors and “stinging  oxymorons” that turn theirs into a PARALLAX world.

Really?

For instance, see how a typical Yoruba person sees the OGBENIOJA of GBOGBO AGBAIYE who is given to abusing and yabbing anybody that crosses his path.

Sample?

Trust my Ngbati Ngbati people. It doesn’t take them  time to baptize him with names like ENU OROFO, EIYE IBAKA, OROPO, ENUPOJU, GALA ALATA SUESUE (spicy Gala-snack) ELENUUGBORO, ABEFELE OLONI, TULETULE…”ati be e be lo and so forth, and so fifth.

O ga o! Isi gaju! But duro na (tarry a little),  can you substantiate with facts and figures the rationale behind the re-Christening of the OGBENIOJA OF WASHINGTON AND GBOGBO AGBAIYE  as ABEFELE OLONI?

Maawo e! We gather dey write elegies, deliver eulogies, pay tributes and  busy pleading to  the Biblical women of Jericho to stop crying, and here you are asking whether somebody dey do graduation or a prince “dey chop king” (prince’s coronation as king). That’s the story I wan tell you abi no be tory!

No be story o!

Wetin e be?

Amebo! Gbeborun ni.

You dey craze? Teitileko (listen attentively) as I open book on ABEFELE OLONI, BABA BULLY. ELENU RAZOR…

O ya! Make you talk am.

Sure, why not if not? The man don use im presidential tongue to make unpresidential, derogatory remarks severally about people, place and thing as if e be Mr. Noun wey we don know for primary school days. The latest is his umbrage against Ilhan Omar, the Somali-born US congresswoman whom he called GERBAGE and suggested she should go back to her “hell of a country where they shoot each other on the streets” (of Mogadishu?).

Iro ni! Na lie! You mean he said that?

Look at you! I say “tetileko’! You won’t just listen. Remember Stormy Daniel, the stormy strumpet who stormed out of his love nest over after-service-cnarcges disagreement? Se you remember how he abused the hell out of that girl saying she is not pretty after all, but ugly like a horse.

You don’t mean it? Do you?

Yes, I do. He said her head has the shape of a horse’s head after reexamining her, post match review, as it were.

He said that? And what did the poor girl say in response?

Sorry, that is CLASSIFIED info. and I don’t want to disclose that for now lest he sends Airforce ONE drones on a search-and-destroy-the -stupid-fool mission to Africa. Excuse the self censorship.

O ma bloody se o!

You haven’t seen nothing yet. He is used to calling the out-going congress woman, Nancy Pelosi, “Nasty Nancy”, when she was the House Speaker. He looks down on immigrants as ‘jiggers’ that  should be thrown across the fence, back to where they came from. Both blacks and browns are nothing but undesirable elements that should go back to their “shithole countries”, shithole countries like, according to him, Nigeria  and Haiti. He called Mexico, a next door neighbour country that sends its worst people to America: criminals, jail breakers, arsonists, drug addicts and rapists to come and pollute the crimson red blood of Americans.

Wow! By the way, Is it only the Mexicans, the Haitians and the Nigerians that he loathes  (hates?) so much?

Don’t mind the Baba Alatika, ABEFELE, ELENU RAZOR. The South Americans, the good people of the Caribbean and the entire Asian continent are easy, cheap game for his SHAKABULA Dane gun of a mouth. There was a time, true to his razor blade mouth,  he took the Asians to the cleaners saying there is scarcity of cats and dogs in America because  they, the Asians, have eaten up all the cats and the dogs. “Asians are eating the cats and dogs”, cried the crocodile with the proverbial CROCODILE TEARS.

Ah! Iro! Na lie! How can a whole OGBENIOJA descend so high and ascend so low?

Even the thing don make you “confusion” your grammatical self. Take it easy. You know what and how he calls CHINA?

How?

JAINA! He leaves people, especially women, wondering all the time what exactly he is alluding to any time he pronounces China J A I N A.

I hope it’s not What I’m thinking. If so I’d advise he doesn’t say  it to the hearing of women in VIRGIN ISLANDS,  VIRGINIA  and those pretty cabin attendants on VIRGIN AIRLINE FLIGHTS or  else, RERE go RUNUN wallahi, tallahi.

Lobatan! Abefele dimeji (razor mouth don multiply).

God forbid bad thing.

One God, One Love

Good morning, class, and welcome back from the Thanksgiving holiday. How did it go?

Went well, sir.

Good. Nice to hear that. Anything of particular interest that you may want to share with the other members of the class?

Yes, sir!

Okay, go ahead.

Thank you, sir. When I heard there is a place in America where people can worship God  through any intermediary like Sango, Oya, Obatala and Ogun Lakaaye I decided to go to town to follow the devotees of Orunmila to their “church” to worship and thank Olodumare for His protection for us in this school and in our respective homes.

Where is this your Ifa church?

It is in Ibadan Mesiogo, sir, “nile Oluyole, nibiti olosa ti njare olohun”.

What garbage is that? What did I ask you and what are you telling me? What kind of ELONKOKO is that? What concerns me with Ibadan Mesiogo or wharrrever their cognomen is. Where did you attend an Ifa Church, the exact place and the name of the church? Period!

Sorry, sir, I didn’t know that’s what you meant.  Yes, I attended the IFA MOSQUE CATHEDRAL  in Ojaaba, to be specific, in the heartland of Ibadan  Mesiogo, near the famous Mapo Hill.

Now you are talking! What did you learn from that experience?

Very handsome, sir…

The Ifa Priest or you mean to say AWESOME?

Thank you, sir, that’s it. The name is enough, Ifa Mosque Cathedral.  Though it is largely a gathering of Ifa worshippers, it allows and encourages both “awon Musulumi Ododo and orthodox Christians to partake in the day’s events. They even do Saturday School also like our Sunday School.

Gbabrake small. You said they invite orthodox Christians to join them on Saturdays for religious discussions, how about the unorthodox, the PENTICOSTAL and the  “the awon aje and awon wizards” to come and worship God with them since it is the same God we are all worshipping and who is omnipresent, omnipotent omniscient and “omni gbogbo e”(omni everything).

Sir, that will be asking for too much, putting chickens and kolokolo (fox) together in a cage as exclusive congregants. That na “rererun loju paali” (wholesale confusion)! ,, And as for the Pentecostal in particular, that will be asking for the impossible.

Why do you say that?

Those people, I dare say,  are too irrational and fetish about their unbridled, negative fixation on the African traditional religion. Inviting them to participate will be akin to a declaration of war on anything African. They can make a true son of of the soil look stupid, inferior and devilish for not seeing religion through their narrow prism of RELIGION.

Good you are conscious of this, and this is what we try to impart to you in Sunday School, that  we are all worshipping the same God and need not abuse, insult, maim or kill one another because of our different ways of worshipping HIM through whatever intermediary we fancy. Perhaps they should always remember that we all came from the same  ELEDA (creator) and shall return to Him for Judgement.

One God, One Love.

Got it! Happy Sunday to you all.

C-O-U-R-T-!!