Voice of America (22 page)

“What is going on?” she asked.

“The soldiers are members of the Task Force on Street Trading. They raid the hawkers weekly and seize their goods, but the hawkers will get their goods back after giving bribes to their bosses. And the next day, they are back on the street.”

“And the government, what is the government doing?”

“They were sent by the government—the government set up the task force.”

“I mean, why don’t they build shops for the traders?”

“The shops are too expensive. The government sells the shops to middlemen who resell to the traders at a highly inflated price, and most of the traders can’t afford the rent for the shops.”

My passenger appeared to be lost in thought, and soon we were at the Temple of All Nations. The members of the welcome committee came, ushered my passenger out of the car, and took her to her lodgings. The temple had built special lodgings with showers, well-furnished bedrooms, and constant electric supply for the guests who came from overseas—something close to the level of comfort they were used to in their home countries.

It still amazes me how the temple had grown, from a few worshippers who sat on wooden benches singing and clapping
under a tree on Sunday mornings to hundreds of thousands of worshippers from every part of the world. But then again, it was not so difficult. The prophet had always told those of us who started out with him that we were privileged, because one day soon he would become the property of the whole world. I think the big growth came after the visit to the temple by that president from one of the southern African countries. Some say he came to seek the prophet’s prayers to win his tenth election. Others said he had a strange illness that could not be cured by even the best Western doctors. He came to the prophet without his guards, dressed in a simple light brown shirt and black trousers. He knelt before the prophet, and as the prophet laid hands on him, he began to shed tears like a baby. His tear-drenched face was all over the newspapers the next day. He won the elections, of course, and bought the prophet a private jet and built the temple.

We, the members of the temple, do not wear shoes, and we are always dressed in white as a sign of our holiness.

The healing service that night had hundreds of thousands of people from every part of the world in attendance. The auditorium was filled with so many people dressed in white, waving their white handkerchiefs in the air, the choir singing and drumming forcefully. Some of the worshippers placed their bottles of olive oil for healing beside the huge loudspeakers that were mounted on the walls. At some point, as the choir sang, a voice would scream out, and the ushers would rush to gather a falling human form in their arms. As the prophet mounted the podium, there was shouting and waving of white handkerchiefs. He stretched out his hands; people in the direction in which his hands spread out were falling and screaming and babbling. By
the time he finished the healing service, thousands had come forth to testify that they had been healed. The foreigners among them were filmed for the temple’s television program. I went over to Beth’s room after the service. She looked a bit tired. I could not ask her if she had been healed. She told me to come and take her out shopping and sightseeing the next day.

I
T RAINED THAT
morning, and Oyingbo Market was wet and slippery. We had to step gingerly between the stalls. I was taking Beth to the part of the market where I usually took foreigners, where they sold textiles, woodcarvings, and locally made necklaces, when she began pointing at some stalls toward the rear of the market. This was the area of the market where dried herbs, herbal concoctions, skulls of monkeys and other animals, and even human skulls were sold. I told her that there was nothing that would interest her there, but she insisted that we go in that direction.

We stopped before an old woman in one of the stalls. A strong smell of herbs and dried animals emanated from her; she was dark-complexioned and had three tribal scars on each side of her face.

“My daughter, you have come from a far place, and yet you have come back home,” she said to Beth, reaching out to her and holding her palms in her own dark, wrinkled hands. Beth smiled.

“You were taken away, screaming and cursing, but you promised to return. You have a lump under your left breast, and all the white man’s medicine could not cure you; you have journeyed well, and now you can return in peace.”

I wanted to drag Beth away before the old woman trapped her even further with her magic, but she was smiling, and yet she had tears in her eyes. The old woman removed her head tie and began to tie it around Beth’s head, all the while calling on the other women to come and join her in welcoming a lost daughter who had returned after crossing many seas and oceans. From the surrounding stalls, women began to emerge, clapping and singing, their voices ringing through the din of the market. I stood aside like a spectator, hoping that no one from the temple would see us. They were touching Beth all over her body, examining her the way doctors examine a newborn baby, and all the while she was smiling, with tears running down her face. One of the women rushed to her shop and came back with a white egg and a calabash. She threw the egg at Beth, and it shattered, the egg yolk wetting and running down her clothes. They grabbed her face, made three quick incisions on her forehead, and rubbed a dark, powdery substance from the calabash on it.

The women went back to their stalls and came back with gifts—clothes, herbs, head ties, necklaces, wooden dolls. They piled the gifts in front of her. She put her hands in her purse to give them money, but they looked offended. Just as they came, they left, chattering excitedly among themselves like black birds. Beth was touching herself under her breast and saying breathlessly, “It is gone, it is gone.”

“It was never there, my daughter,” the old woman said.

I
WAS TAKING
Beth to the airport for her flight back to the United States. She was looking straight ahead. We passed a one-armed, one-eyed beggar turned impromptu traffic warden who
was directing the traffic that was quickly building up. Meanwhile, the traffic policemen were sitting under a thatched shed down the road drinking
ogogoro,
smoking cigarettes, and chatting idly. She turned toward me and began to speak.

“I felt the lump for the first time one morning after my fifty-fifth birthday. It was scary. A couple of my friends had had cancer. One of them had died from it. I kept touching myself on the way to the school where I was a teacher. I called my doctor and made an appointment.”

She paused and was silent. Commercial bus drivers were giving money to the emergency traffic warden; I heard a few of them praising him and saying other beggars should emulate him and look for something to do instead of begging on the streets.

“But the doctors could not find anything. All the X-rays, all the scans, blood tests, urine tests—they came up with nothing. I was beginning to suspect that the people at the hospital were whispering behind my back. My doctor even suggested I see an analyst. And then I saw the prophet on television. I decided that he might be able to heal me after I saw the pile of wheelchairs on the stage, left behind by those who claimed he had healed them. And besides, I had always dreamed of visiting Africa. At the healing service last night, the lump was still there. I wondered if the trip had been in vain, and then at the market when that old woman touched me, I felt lighter, as if a large moth had flown out from under my breast. In your car I touched myself just to be sure.”

Traffic was moving again, and we were soon at the departure hall. I helped her with her bag—this used to be my moment—but when she stretched out her hand and extended several dollar bills to me, I shook my head. She extended both hands and hugged me, and walked away to catch her flight.

W
e were sitting in front of Ambo’s provision store, drinking the local gin,
ogogoro,
mixed with Coke and listening to a program called
Music Time in Africa
on the Voice of America. We were mostly young men who were spending our long summer holidays in the village. Some of us whose parents were too poor to pay our school fees spent the long vacation doing odd jobs in the village so we could save money to pay our school fees. Someone remarked on how clear the broadcast was, compared to our local radio broadcasts, which were filled with static. The presenter announced that there was a special request for an African song from an American girl whose name was Laura Williams, and that she was also interested in pen pals from every part of Africa, especially Nigeria. Onwordi, who had been pensive all this while, rushed to Ambo the shopkeeper, collected a pen, and began to take down her address. This immediately led to a scramble among the rest of us to get the address too. We all took it down, folded the pieces of paper, put them in our pockets, and promised we were going to write as soon as we got home that night.

A debate soon ensued among us concerning the girl who wanted pen pals from Africa.

“Before our letter gets to her, she will have received thousands from the city boys who live in Lagos and will throw our letters into the trash can,” Dennis said.

“Yes, you may be right,” remarked Sunday, “and besides, even if she writes you, you may not have anything in common to share. But the boys who live in the city go to nightclubs and know the lyrics of the latest songs by Michael Jackson and Dynasty. They are the ones who see the latest movies, not the dead Chinese kung fu and Sonny Chiba films that Fantasia Cinema screens for us in the village once every month.”

“But you can never tell with these Americans—she could be interested in being friends with a real village boy because she lives in the big city herself and is probably tired of city boys.” Lucky, who said this, was the oldest among us and had spent three years repeating form four.

“I once met an American lady in Onitsha where I went to buy goods for my shop,” Ambo the shopkeeper said. He hardly spoke to us, only listening and smiling and looking at the figures in his
Daily Reckoner.

We all turned to Ambo in surprise. We knew that he traveled to the famous Onitsha Market, the biggest market in West Africa, to buy goods every week; we could hardly believe that he had met an American lady. Onitsha Market was said to be so big that half of those who came there to buy and sell were not humans but spirits. It was said that a simple way of knowing the spirits when in the market was to bend down and look through your legs at the feet of people walking through. If you looked well and closely enough, you would notice some walkers whose
soles did not quite touch the ground. These were the spirits. If they got a good bargain from a trader, he would discover that the money in his money box miraculously grew every day, but any trader who cheated them would find his money disappearing from his money box without any rational explanation.

“She was wearing an ordinary Ankara skirt and a blouse made from local fabrics, and had come to buy a leather purse and hat from the Hausa traders. She even exchanged a few words in Hausa with the traders. The way she said ‘ina kwu ana nkwu’ was so sweet and melodious, it was like listening to a canary singing.”

“She was probably a volunteer schoolteacher in one of the girls’ secondary schools around Onitsha, and has lived here for so long she does not count as an American. We are talking of a real American girl living on American soil.” Jekwu, who said this, was Ambo’s adversary as a result of a dispute over an old debt and was permanently on the opposite side of any argument with Ambo.

“Well, what I was trying to say was that she might be interested in a village boy. Like the one I saw in Onitsha, who was wearing a local dress and spoke Hausa, I am sure she will be interested in a village boy,” Ambo said and went back to his
Daily Reckoner.

Someone ordered another round of
ogogoro
and Coke, and we all began to drink and became silent as we thought our own thoughts. The moon dipped, and everywhere suddenly became dark. One by one we rose and left for our homes.

….

W
E WERE SITTING
in Ambo’s shop one evening when Onwordi swaggered in holding a white envelope with a small American stamp. There was a bald eagle on the stamp. He waved it in our faces, smiling. He called for drinks, and we all rushed to him, trying to snatch the envelope from his hands.

“She has replied,” he said, looking very proud, like a man who had unexpectedly caught a big fish with a hook in the small village river. The truth was that we had all forgotten about the announcement on the radio program, and I had actually washed the shorts in whose back pocket I put the paper where I jotted down the address.

Onwordi began to read from the letter. The girl’s name was Laura Williams. She had recently moved with her parents to a farm in Iowa from a much larger city. She had one more year before finishing high school. She was going to take a class called “Africa: Its People and Culture” in the fall and was curious to know more about African culture. She wanted to know whether Onwordi lived in the city or in a village. She also wanted to know if he lived close to lots of wild animals like giraffes, lions, and chimpanzees. And what kind of food did he generally eat, was it spicy? And how was it prepared? She also wanted to know if he came from a large family. She ended the letter with the phrase “Yours, Laura.”

“Oh, my God,” Lucky said, “this is a love letter. The American lady is searching for an African husband.”

“Why do you say that?” Onwordi said, clearly very excited about such a prospect. Though he had read the letter over a hundred times and was hoping for such a stroke of good fortune, he had not seen any hint of it in the letter.

“See the way she ended the letter? She was practically telling you that she is yours from now on.”

“I think that is the American way of ending letters,” Dennis said. He was the most well-read among us, having read the entire oeuvre of James Hadley Chase and Nick Carter. He used big words and would occasionally refer to some girl in the village as a “doll” or some other as a “deadbeat floozy.”