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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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Posted by Robot| 24.08.2008 23:47