15.
For fifteen years, the nights slept with Collins and left him the same way it had come, without peace. Whenever he was at home, Collins cried. He thought of the events that had spawned his life till the present moment and he mourned. Perhaps if he had stayed in his uncle’s place and suffered with the little he was given, perhaps a miracle might have happened.
Collins knew in his heart that he was hardworking. He searched for jobs but they never found him. One time, he picked up religion and started accompanying his wife and children to church. But after God had failed to respond, his patience ran out after two months.
Ofure was a good wife. She had helped him up till this moment. Another woman would have left him for another man who could provide for her. When she enrolled both kids into the dilapidated public schools in Ajegunle, he didn’t complain. Money gave one a voice, and without money, Collins was voiceless. As a poor man, Collins could do nothing but nod his head as his wife sailed the ship of their family. He couldn’t even perform as a man and some nights, when desires held him, he was afraid to summon her or reach out to her lap as he used to do once, when he was brave. Now she seemed bigger than him, stronger than him.
Today, Collins had not told anyone what he had planned. A fellow friend of his had told Collins about a prophet who could help his situation. When it came to actions that seemed extraterrestrial, Collins always failed his confidence. Years earlier, a man had approached him. This man gave him an invitation to join a group of men who wore beads and robbed in parks. Whenever they wore the bead, they touched a man’s pocket and the man’s belongings immediately vanished into their own pockets. Collins ran away from the offer. But this prophet was a man of God. And who else could turn his life around if not God?
Collins and this strange friend trudged through bush path to a church that stood far from the main road and was surprisingly huge. The road was far and so they had hidden their stressed face by approaching relatable discussions about their recent effort to escape poverty and life’s backlash.
‘Perhaps this will be out last attempt’ they both hoped.
This man’s word refreshed Collins with a feeling that he had almost forgotten, hope.
A man appeared with a bearded face and white tunic. Collins bowed immediately his friend bowed. They followed the man into the temple and sat in front of the altar. There, the men spoke freely about the nightmares that haunted their reality. The prophet listened intensely. After the men had finished speaking, he asked to be excused. He returned wearing a red tunic. Five women accompanied him; they were all holding wooden sticks.
‘You see my friends. I had to change from white to red. Do you know why?’ he stared at the men with flared nostrils and bloodshot eyes. ‘This is not a prayer of mercy. It is a prayer of war. An exorcism’.
The women led the men outside and assisted in pulling their clothes. There, they were flogged so that the demons of poverty living inside of them would not flow into the church, but out to the underworld. The men were told not to flinch or cry so that the demon would not sense their fear and run back into their host. They were flogged according to the number of demons they had. Collins, who had been jobless for more than fifteen years, was flogged twenty-nine times. Collin’s demons had entered his body many years ago when he was working in the garage. They had slipped in and managed to remain unnoticeable until today. His friend, who was jobless for three years, was flogged nine times. He was flogged an extra nine when a woman said she saw a vision of his father laying sacrifice before a deity and signing an invisible covenant with his son’s life. After that, they were told to bath and drink water from a dirty stream. Collins swore that he had seen a dead lizard inside the water.
That night, Collins slept on his stomach and he wore his clothes whenever he slept for a month, hiding his exorcism from his children and wife. A month later, Collins went back to the labor market, filled with hope and smiles. Every night, he returned with diminishing home and slowly, his dreams vanished leaving familiar spaces for doubt and torment.
Again, Collins peace disappeared and his sleepless night returned to him, planting a heavy burden in his mind, feeding him with anguish and tormenting the scars behind him.