24 Aug 2008 |
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Uncle Paul is my favorite uncle. The day he turned forty-five, our extended family decided that he had embarrassed and shamed us long enough by remaining a bachelor. For many years village mouths had been wagging about the virility of his manhood. In Igboland we say that a mad man does not feel shame and that nwanne onye ara ka ihere ne-eme (it is the mad man’s relatives who feel the shame of his madness). In the face of such embarrassment, extended family members nominated me to foist a wife on him, whether by hook or by crook. I recruited my fourteen-year-old nephew, Noc, an apprentice wayo dude under my tutelage, to assist me by any means possible. But Uncle Paul was a Bible-carrying religious fanatic. He listened only to pastors, evangelists, prophets, priests, nuns, deacons and catechists. He routinely dismissed our entreaties to find himself a wife with ‘God’s time is the best’ or ‘the Lord will reveal the right woman to me’ or ‘tell the devil that you did not see me’. He said he was waiting for divine revelation. I resolved to hasten that divine revelation and I waited for an opportunity. You can now fully appreciate the religious tenacity with which my wayo instinct took control of me the day the opportunity arrived. I was thrilled. Here is how it started: It was July 5, 2008. I was in Owerri on vacation when my young nephew, Noc, came running with a copy of that day’s edition of the Nigerian Modern Times newspaper. I saw in the newspaper that the famous Nigerian man of God, Evangelist Femi Simon Peter, and his traveling prophets of the Winners Angels Church, had come to preach in the city of Owerri . They were scheduled for a world-class rally the next night at the Owerri Stadium. I was delighted beyond description because, as everyone knows, the Winners Angels prophets are famous for matching single women with single men through prophesy. These prophets have been all over large cities in Nigeria , staging large rallies at night to sold-out audiences. They have been to Lagos , Abuja , Jos, Enugu , Port Harcourt , Benin , Onitsha , Ibadan , Aba and now they were in Owerri. Stories of their miraculous healing of the sick and prophesies at these rallies, including making the blind see again and the cripple walk again, are simply too numerous to recount. So, that Saturday night, accompanied by apprentice Noc, I secretly sought out Evangelist Femi Simon Peter at the Owerri Sheraton Hotel where the newspaper reports had stated that he and his group were quartered. There were hundreds of others like me waiting to see him. But I easily bribed my way ahead of the others and told him about my uncle and how badly I needed to foist a wife unto him. Sensing my desperation, the pastor asked me to return in the morning, which was Sunday, and to bring him Two Hundred and Fifty Thousand Naira. The money, he said, was only a pittance for the oracle of divine matchmaking. As agreed, I returned with a big Ghana-must-go bag, full of money. His face brightened as he grabbed the bag and told me that I had done the right thing because “God helps those who help themselves”. He gave me two front row tickets for the Christian night of miracles scheduled for that Sunday night. He asked me to ensure that my uncle was sitting next to me at the stadium. Leave the rest to him, he said. Frankly, while I sat next to my uncle at the rally I had a hard time keeping a straight face. I felt that my uncle was wondering what I was doing there considering that I was not the religious type. I am a wayo guy, not an actor. Acting is not easy. It fully dawned on me why Igbo people say that to vow to fake madness is the easy part, the hard parts of faking madness are the wearing of rags, aimless walking, homelessness, and knowing the proper gibberish to mumble to oneself. I just sat there biting my lips like a bad actor. I had only expected Pastor Femi Simon Peter to, perhaps publicly, counsel Uncle Paul to find himself a wife. I had expected that he would perhaps give my uncle a short speech, spiced with religious mumbo-jumbo, as to why he should find a wife immediately. I had reasoned that such counseling by a religious figure, would, in my uncle’s mind, approximate divine revelation and move him to find a wife. But I was in for a surprise by Pastor Femi Simon Peter, a surprise way beyond my expectations. I was in for a surprise all right. As the night of dubious miracles of healing the supposedly sick, who were really rented actors, reached a feverish crescendo, Pastor Femi Simon Peter suddenly announced that he had just received divine revelation from the Lord. He said that the Lord had just told him to minister to one unmarried woman in the crowd whose name was Bola. Would the lady whose name was Bola please come forward, he commanded? He called out the name ‘Bola’ about ten times. Then an old lady, of at least sixty years of age, unsteady on her feet, went tumbling up the stage, waiving and shouting ‘praise the Lord!’ As my uncle and I listened with the rest of the crowd, the pastor asked the old lady if her name was indeed Bola; asked her if she had been looking for a husband; asked her if she had been praying for divine revelation of her predestined husband; and asked her if she was ready for the Lord to reveal her husband right there and then. She answered all the questions with a “yes” to the noisy delight of the prophecy-craving crowd. The pastor then said to her: “Now walk to the crowd and pick your husband, you will know him when you see him; the Lord will guide you to him”. Let me assure you that all my life I had never seen my uncle happier as Bola came straight and picked up his right hand and led him back up to the stage to the excited applause of the crowd and the holy pastor. Let me also assure you that all my life I had never been so horrified and devastated. That woman was almost as old as my mother with absolutely no chance of ever procreating. I was sad but Uncle Paul was happy. My sadness, which was a product of my wayo anyway, like the parable of a house built on sand, quickly degenerated even more the next day when I found out how far Bola’s home village was. Her village, which was where my uncle would need to travel to conclude the marriage rites was Ogere, Abeokuta, Ogun State, more than one hundred and fifty miles from my home. My heart sank further. Just as I was determined to hook him up to a wife, I was now determined to unhook my uncle from Bola as my extended family reeled out their grounds for objecting to the marriage: she was too old, which was obvious; the distance from her home was too far, my family members were traditionally married to people within short distances; the culture of her home state was drastically too different from ours; a sum of money that she asked my uncle to bring with him to see her father in Ogun State was twice what I had already paid the pastor. But, just as determined was Uncle Paul to marry Bola whom, he was now convinced, was his predestined wife. Trouble began to brew within our extended family. Although my nephew Noc pleaded with me to soften my stance; although I realized that I could not live with myself to see my family continuing to be embarrassed by his chronic bachelorhood, in my desperate bid to stop the marriage I revealed to my uncle how I contrived the matchmaking. Uncle Paul laughed and dismissed my story with ‘tell the devil that you did not see me’. He went round boasting to family members that Bola was his divinely ordained wife. A few days later, my heart full of bile, I reluctantly agreed to escort him to Abeokuta . Driving my old, broken-down, Peugeot 4-door sedan, off we went through Onitsha , Benin , all the way to Abeokuta . With us was my nephew Noc. But three days before we left for Ogun State , I had secretly traveled to the headquarters of the Winners Angels Church in Port Harcourt to see Pastor Femi Simon Peter. Curiously, he already knew of the trouble I was in because he told me why I came to see him even before I could open my mouth. In hindsight, I now know that I missed an important wayo clue then. This time he demanded Five Hundred Thousand Naira for what I asked of him. I had a choice, he said: pay him the money or pay it to Bola’s family. I gave it to the pastor and he promised to do what I asked of him. When we reached the remote part of Ogere village in Ogun State , where Bola and her father lived, the father and daughter were sitting outside in the open compound under a tree. We exchanged greetings and sat down. As Bola left us and walked into their house, her father asked Uncle Paul, “So mo obirin na? (do you know that woman?). My uncle looked to me for translation. But I was already on edge at this time. The question was not directed at me. So I ignored both of them. My uncle opened and closed his mouth, shifting in his seat as Mr. Olabode waited for his answer. Luckily for him, Bola, who had apparently overheard her father’s question, shouted from a distance, “O mo mi oo (he knows me). Mr. Olabode, with a grim face, queried my uncle further, “Ki lo fe? Ki lo fe? Ki lo fe ra? (Yoruba for ‘what do you want?’ but which sounded to me like ‘what do you want to buy?’). Unfortunately, my uncle actually heard: Kuru ofe raa (Igbo for ‘take some soup and eat’). I sat quietly by my uncle, watching his distress from the corner of my eyes, thinking that I should never have contrived this matchmaking, thinking that I should not be here. I hate to admit now that I was enjoying my uncle’s discomfort at this time. Minutes passed. Mr. Olabode repeated the question and waited for an answer, looking my uncle straight in the face. Finally, Uncle Paul looked round, obviously looking for the soup that he thought he was told to eat. Although he found no soup, he, curiously, blurted out in Igbo: “Biko, kedu utara m ga-eji rie ofe a?” (Please, where is the foofoo with which I will eat the soup?). Jesus Christ of Nazareth ! Mr. Olabode, clearly insulted by the response in a foreign language, annoyed that my uncle had responded in a language that he did not understand, turned to me with a blistering array of curses, none of which I fully understood. He stood up and shouted after his daughter. We waited for him to chase us away. I hoped he would chase us away. As we waited, guess who drove into the compound in a brand new Mercedes Benz? Pastor Femi Simon Peter himself. I watched as the pastor alighted from his car and approached us. He ignored my uncle and I and addressed Mr. Olabode in Yoruba: Pastor: E karo (good morning) Olabode: Se daada ni o? (How are you?) Pastor: Daadaa ni (fine) Ki ni oruko ee? (What is your name?) Oruko o mi ni Pastor Femi (my name is Pastor Femi) Nibo lo ti wa? (Where are you from?) Pastor: Mo wa lati Port Harcourt . Nibo ni Bola wa (where is Bola?) E joo, mo fe Bola (Please, I want Bola). I was not deceived by the charade. It took me three seconds to figure out that these people knew each other. I had been taken to the cleaners by the trio of Bola, Olabode, and Pastor Femi. To think that I, a life member of the Wuruwuru Advanced Youths Organization (WAYO), did not put two and two together earlier was painfully embarrassing. Now, my failures had set me back by Seven Hundred and Fifty Thousand Naira. But I was glad when the pastor took my uncle into his car, apparently told him that the matchmaking prophesy was a misinterpretation and a mistake. Grim-faced, angry, dejected, and thoroughly shaken, my uncle, like a dog cowering before his angry owner, came to me with a whispered request: biko nwanne m k’anyi laa, nwanyi a bu Bola bu okongwo (please my brother, let’s go home; this Bola is too old). Yes, suddenly she was too old. Come and see the happiness that took over my soul. But as we drove home, I kept thinking of my Seven Hundred and Fifty Thousand Naira! Then, on July 30, 2008, just when I thought that I had untied the knot that I had contrived by wayo means, just when peace had returned to my family, just when we had started looking for other ways to hook him up to a local girl, we found out that Uncle Paul and Bola had disappeared to Port Harcourt, united in marriage there by none other than Pastor Femi Simon Peter. Uncle Paul, we were told, had vowed never to come home again.
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