5. I imagine change as a woman. Wearing hasty feet. Her skirt dragging itself along with the wind.
I imagine my shadow chasing after this woman. The closer I seem to get, the farther she runs. Then I stop running and turn the other path. She comes after me. Before I can move a step, she holds.
me down and wrap me up her up in her embrace of metamorphosis. I imagine change as woman.
Running after me.
Gyefo married Omolafe in Egwarto. The marriage took place in the middle of Omolafe’s father’s compound. The space in between her father and his wives’ hut appeared wider after it had been swept and the floors had been washed by neighbours and housewives. Children danced around and the sound of mortars crying from the wrath of pestles could be heard. The whiff of delectable soup hung in the air. Her mother’s hut was also decorated for the occasion. Not that the raffia-thatched hut and mud floors needed much. The preparation showed that the hut as well as the people who slept in it were anxious. The marriage was planned for both parties and neither had seen or had known the other before the wedding day. Gyefo had just returned from his study at Oxford university. He was a tall man with broad shoulders and could have easily passed as a soldier. He kept his beards and had a bumpy moustache. His face was smooth but rigid. It was a sign that he rarely smiled. He was an editor for the royal times newspaper. Saying Omolafe was good looking would be an insult to the nature of the word. Her face was plain. Her busty chest and round buttocks apologized for her unattractive visage. She had a round face and she smiled easily. She was one of those women who broke up a fight with a smile. But Gyefo did not care for such things. He did not need a model to pass as a wife. He would not feel the shame of taking an ugly woman along for an event because he was mostly indoors. He just needed a woman to warm the bath, serve his meal and make sure the child, if he decided to have any, was quiet enough for him to concentrate in the study. Omolafe came out wrapped in coral beads and floral designs on her arms. She wore a wrapper that hung tightly above her chest. Gyefo looked at her sparingly and nodded in the direction of his father and his kinsmen. This triggered a series of laughter and chuckling between the older men. Kola was broken, proverbs were put to test and drinks were exchanged. By noon, Omolafe’s mother was happy that she had one less ugly daughter to share a meal with. Gyefo took Omolafe to Lagos. It was a long trip. They took the train. She had thought that she was going to ride on the city's iron horse and feel the breeze in her hair. Instead her body was stuffed too close to a woman with a basket of fish placed on her legs. Earlier, this woman had refused the driver’s request to keep her load at the back of the train. He had stretched out his hands to collect the bag when she nodded her head vehemently and snapped ‘No’. Thereafter she muttered almost inaudibly about people who stole her stock when she looked away for a second. Omolafe sat close to this woman and observed her quietly. She was conscious of saying anything so the woman would not look at her. She stared at the fish and felt a deep longing in her throat. She wondered how it would feel to be like the fish. Strung tightly far away from home. Trapped in a destination that she couldn’t imagine, just like her. She snapped out of her thoughts and concluded that she was lucky, compared to the fish. At least, she was alive and her legs weren’t bound together.
Gyefo lived in a two-bedroom flat in Surulere, Lagos. Lagos. She had heard of this city. Gossips at the Riverside and songs from villagers who travelled build up her thesis of Lagos. Lagos was the city that never slept. The sun didn't fall and the moon was barely awake. The stars were so close she promised herself that if she would be fortunate enough to see Lagos, she would see the wonders and feel the stars yhat city people could touch them. She looked up at the sky and imagine stars falling. The street was lined up with cars and men in bicycles. Children and women hawked at the side of the road while men walked holding briefcase and wearing angry faces. She wondered what was in the briefcase and where the men were going to, who they were going to meet and why they walked so fast. In Lagos, houses were so close to one another that there was no breathing space. If the houses were bodies, their arms and limbs would be tied to the arms of another.
Struggling for space and air. They had taken a taxi from the train station. Omolafe had enjoyed the treat and was secretly grateful that her body did not mesh with someone else’s anytime the taxi hit a pothole. The air smelled of something new. Something she couldn’t identify. Gyefo wasn’t much of a conversationalist through the journey so their conversations were short and precise. ‘Are you hungry?’ “Are you comfortable?’. She knew he asked as a result of a sense of duty. This sense in him lacked the emotion that she imagined and it scared her quite a bit. The taxi stopped at the end of a flat. It was a bungalow. Gyefo ushered her in and said ‘Welcome to my humble abode’. She could detect a hint of pride in his smile. The flat was bigger than her father’s barn. She walked about with a sense of amazement mixed with anxiety. She questioned the large unused space and was already planning how to fill those spaces with pots, yam and red-oil when Gyefo’s voice interrupted her ‘follow me. I will show you around’. He showed her the rooms. Theirs had a bed in it. ‘No more mats and wrappers’ she thought. He showed her the bathroom. He showed her how to put on the gas cooker. He taught her to change the tv stations and put off the electrical appliances whenever the lights went out. He didn't permit her near his shelf less she disrupt the arranged pattern of his books. Over the weeks, she got accustomed to her new home and her new world.
However, there were some things she failed to understand. She didn’t understand how he generated words on the type writer. Or why he tapped his feet continuously whenever he listened to the radio.
Or why he never drank beer or palm wine but gulped down vodka and whiskey as if there were water. She had grown up in a village where a man’s ability to remain sober after gulping gourds of palm wine determined his level of manliness. She also failed to understand the conversations between Gyefo and his friends. Whenever they came around on Sunday evening to chat and drink, she would sit at the hind side of the table, close to the kitchen door. Her hands folded and her eyes staring at their mouth as they spoke. Gyefo and her conversed in Ishan when they were alone.
Sometimes, he talked to her in English at the expense of sounding slow. The English that Gyefo and his friends spoke were different. Fast and smooth. Even Gyefo spoke differently when they were around. The words seemed to leave their mouth faster than her ears could pick up. She knew
what they were discussing meant much to them. The names bore a sort of symbolic tetherance to their reality. Somedays when luck was on her side, she got names like Lugard, Obafemi Awolowo, the constitutional conference, the national election, decolonization, independence, Tafawa Balewa and Zik.
On Sundays, they went to church. Gyefo’s Sunday habit was not regular and it gladdened Omolafe.
Whenever mass was on, she would stare at the tall ceilings or at the gold painted walls. The painting of a man and twelve men surrounding him. She wondered who this man was and why she had to believe in him. Sometimes the priest would switch from English to another language. She would watch as people’s lips move in motion to the priest’s words. Somedays she would pursue her lips and close her eyes. Other days, she would sit down and cry. She felt she was failing her husband. He had given her a map of this new world and she still couldn’t find her destinations or the directions. The white priest spoke too much English and the sacrament tasted too numb. She didn’t believe in God. She didn’t tell Gyefo, she kept it to herself. They were many things she didn’t tell him. Or maybe if they talked more, she would have developed enough confidence to.
But the silence they shared was as vast as the Sahara. They only talked at dinner, church or when he was hungry either for food or for sex. Their love making life was as numb as their emotional life. Once her body hung limp to his desires and thrusting. This pricked him and he pinched her.
Deepening his fingers deep into her flesh till she cried. She lay looking at him as his sweat landed on her and he moved thrusting. She remembered her mother’s hut. She remembered the crack in the walls. She used to put meat and cowries in those holes when she was alone. At night when she couldn’t sleep, she used to look at the holes. Watching lizards stroll into them and she would pray that they wouldn’t see her meat. She wished that she was like those lizards. Finding refuge in the holes. Finding food and money in them. She closed her eyes and allowed the nostalgia to make her cry more. He moaned when he heard her whimper. Her cries were like horses. The harder she cried the faster he rode. He rode on those moans till he approached climax. He stifled an apology as he got up to go to the bathroom. Gyefo was gentle nevertheless. He took her out on some days. He listened to her pleas not to hire a house help and allow her go to the market to get foodstuff. He allowed her sip vodka when his friends came over on Sundays. He would smile when he saw her frown when the aftertaste kicked in. He would smile when he saw how violently she nodded at their argument. Deep inside he felt pity for her when he saw how hard she was trying to fill the empty spaces in his life. Though she never asked questions, he knew she had many. He understood that she lacked education. Her intellectual ability to understand her new environment was slow but they held promise. He had read enough poetry about the clash of cultural consciousness and western conventions to understand her current disposition. He saw her expressionless face at mass.
He had seen her once when she tried to mimic the priest’s Latin. One of the reasons he stopped attending church so frequently. He knew she was not used to many. She grew up having few. That was why she didn’t allow him hire a housemaid. That was why she sliced onions and yams so small as if she feared they would run out of food anytime. He knew she didn’t enjoy sex. He felt guilty that he had once pinched her to make her sound like she was in pain. He knew she allowed his inconveniences to please him. Undoubtedly, she was scared of losing him. She was scared of losing as anything and everything.
1962 came as fast as the harmattan. Days gave birth to weeks and month grew into years. Omolafe had almost completed the process of metamorphosis in her husband’s home. Her English had revamped. She enjoyed practicing it whenever she entered a store to buy a product. She would stifle a laugh when the trader replied her with broken English or some mispronounced words.
Although not as perfect as Gyefo or his friends, she could hold a normal conversation without stammering. The bubbles in her throat had almost disappeared. She got used to the food. The yam greased with butter, the red porridge overcooked with red oil and the green leaf she found at the top and side. She no longer spat out the greens when she ate fried rice. She stooped sucking bones in public and left the chicken on her plate after eating. She ate fufu with spoon and cut turkey with knife. She did not open her tongue and suck in her teeth whenever she ate suya. She did not stand to stare at the fountains at Tinubu square anymore. She recited mass in Latin and English. She did not point at the big ships at the port when they passed through. Nor did she feel afloat when they passed old carter bridge.
On Sundays, when Gyefo and his friends would visit. She would no longer sit at the side of the table, nodding her head to vague expressions and inaudible words. Instead, she would sit close to Gyefo listening. They would criticize the lack of harmonization in Nigeria’s politics and how it was suffering from in development. They blamed Awolowo for triggering the western crisis when the action group party split. They celebrated when France transferred sovereignty to Algeria. For hours they would cry over the Cuba missile crisis. They wrote letters when Nelson Mandela was arrested and convicted of sabotage. And when James Meredith, the first black student was allowed to attend the University of Mississippi, they labelled it a step towards black liberation. Slowly, Omolafe slipped the panties of her new world and wore it with pride.
Lagos Metamorphosis.
Written by Festus Obehi Destiny. 08-09-19. 10;17AM.
Depression is the poison that keeps me alive.
While I'm clutching tightly to the feeble representation of reality as life claws its way out through me.
Depression is the sea I thirst for when I'm alone in the wilderness.
Depression is the beautiful beads I adorn my feet with when I dance.
Depression is the screen of the television that keeps me mesmerized. Different pictures and different people all saying the same words.
Depression is the key to the fortified fortress and long walls that guards my heart.
Depression is the fairy tale I read when I'm going on a futile journey in search of my lost cousin, happiness.
Depression is the clothing line that's in full stock. Anyone that doesn't put it on is an outsider.
I once stormed the high mountains of Mount Olympus, stole Prometheus fire in order to refuel the depression that burns in me.
I once painted a rose with depression because it was the most beautiful colour I could find.
I once took a stroll without my buddy depression and they had to send out a search party to find me.
Depression is the sea that my mentality needs to ship on in order to reach its final destination.
Depression is the song I sing to myself to sleep at night. The demons I feed on when I'm choking on sadness.
Depression is the beautiful thin line that burns the cloud in a beautiful sunset.
Written by Festus, obehi Destiny.
Depression knows me my name.
Hugs and eyes