LAUGHTER LIVES HERE TOO
I come here often. The walk takes me past a gargantuan urban waste heap, down a road that tends to the right to form an inverted U. To the left of the road is the part of Mgboshimilli that interest me. Like moss hanging on to tall sheer rocks and eking an existence from whatever moisture it can get, these people are our collective collateral. Our Nigeria.
This is the backside of Mgboshimilli. A fractious Ikwerre slum in Rumeme, a suburb of Port Harcourt. This stretch of Mgboshimilli leans against the wall, like a drunken sailor seeking support. It holds on for dear life against the fence of the Agip Oil Company. A stone wall topped by strands of electric fencing and tall poles of search lights, communications towers and gun turrets.
The side of the wall where these folks hang on precariously is poor. Dirt poor. They literally live in the drains.
There is a divide here that is not quite obvious to the new eye. First the natives (the landowners) the Ikwerre people. They take their role seriously indeed and one is constantly reminded that it is their village, they are the host community – landlords. The youth of the community laze around in faux sports gear, replica Chelsea, Man U and Arsenal shirts. They don't seem to work much. They loll about the half-walled hall of the meeting palace, which was once a village square I am sure but now built up without rhyme or reason - the only logic being roads and walkways are a waste of space. Alleyways and communal dumps are fine.
There are a lot of churches here too. Big, small, medium and those that really interest me. The ones that lean on that wall. The ones that separate this hell from the heaven yonder – AGIP compound. Twenty four hour light, tended lawns, clean potable water, European quarters toilets – oh water cisterns, flush and disappear. Twenty four hour armed guards courtesy the Nigeria Army. And what are these churches? Why, expert peddlers of hope! They speak a lot of languages here. Not just in tongues but different languages. The Ogoni church and the Calabar church, churches that spit brimstone and fire, that casts and binds. Churches assures the faithful that no witch or wizard will stand in their way. That escape from this penury is nigh, that this year is the breakthrough year, as am sure was last year and the year before.
A woman makes eko (agidi) cornmeal and moi moi (steam bean pudding), on another lean-to, on an open fire plantain chips are being fried, crisp chips, the oil red and hot mingling with the sweat of the cook. Opposite her another church that promises redemption gazes slovenly as naked and half naked children find bicycle spokes in the midst of the garbage heap to play games with. These are the Tenants. They hail from Ogoni and some are from Yoruba and on this stretch of the U, they are mostly Ogoni people. Laekia is one of them, a skinny man of indeterminable age, who walks freely in the warren of alleys and who knows everyone in the pits of this place.
Laekia has escaped from here; he for a time was my family's gateman – even though booze will just not let him be. He is something of a Johnny all trade – a gardener, and labourer, a paver and a tiler, an odd jobs man that is quick to laughter and song, especially when lubricated by palmwine or star beer. The palmwine parlour is where Laekia takes me. It is tucked away in an alley just by Agip gate. The Palmwine parlour is rank with the smell of stale palmwine and fags and drunken talk. An ardent assistant sweeps the stone floor with a certain urgency. Dust is in free fall. At the corner a large vat is boiling! White foamy frothy angry palmwine. Fresh, Laekia says and he takes a plastic cup to the frothing work of nature.
The palmwine is off white, light and sweet, just so. On the wall are the measuring jugs –two litre bottle of water – 150, four litres, 300 etc.
I can't sit here , it's hot and it smells I thought. We sit out. On a verge, where everyday household chores occur within inches as if we were not there. Someone is going to have a bath, a man striped to his boxers, baths right there by the gutter – by Agip gate. A woman is busy cooking – Egusi soup by the smell - a few feet away. A quarrel has started, the words indiscernible but harsh. Oh..Oh Nepa, someone groans. Everything goes dark. No light. Soon the air is filled with the exhaust fumes from the barber's 'I pass my neighbour' generator.
In the heat and the squalor of noise and close human contact, the palmwine, all three hundred Naira's worth soothes our parched throat.
No one should live this, I thought as I stood near the mouth of the river, Fire wood or angala is stacked and mounted to dry. The angala is the wood of the mangrove and it is harvested at an alarming rate. It is the only affordable source of fuel – not far in the distance a fire burns from the belly of the earth, as gas is being burned off.
To the left is the communal toilet and bath. High on stalks it stands; open to the skies, the privy is as private as the gold fish in a bowl. The River, brackish, marshy and tidal has claimed three children. People gather as the dead are harvested from the depths of the river. Three girls out trawling for periwinkles.
"That one na im kill them " a doe eyed girl of about ten is accused.
"She be wintch..u no see am' another person retorted. The wailing started from the depths of the slum. Belly echoes, deep and mournful, the slum heaved and wept. They gathered the dead and led the child away. An Inspector of police arrives. One cursory look at the corpes, innocent and scarred by crabs – with a nod of the head, they were carted away to be interred, gone.
The girl child accused of being a witch does not see the dawn. She is dispatched, into the same river. Cruel justice.
Barillei my friend is the son of Lily, whose six children are cluttered within a shack that sits by the heaps of angala, in front of river. Her sixth was born one week ago; here she is back in the market selling her husband's catch. The haul is meagre. A small bucket of crabs,atabala (small tilapia), some prawns and little else.
Misery has a smell – its odour is petrid and clings to the nostril. Here It smells of the mangrove, and the dung heap that the tide hasn't yet claimed. It hangs in the air, nothing escapes it.
Barilei laughs as his friend calls him Charity. Barilei is about fourteen, he appears happy in this field of the neglected. They are mending nets, near them in a communal heath cut out of an oil drum they are smoking fish. Mostly frozen mackerel (shiny) and Croaker imported from Argentina and even further. Barilei throws some tilapia straight on to the fire, it sizzles. A pinch of salt and some dry pepper later, he offers me some, his eyes red from the smoke and a smile close to his mouth.
That is why his friend calls him Charity perhaps. The fish tastes very good. I am touched but not too surprised. To these folks I am just this mildly eccentric dreadlocked guy who occasionally cycles in but mostly walks to this, their market and home.
I feel at home here, though in truth I am a complete stranger. I could not help but compare this to all the places I have been, travelled to in search of that solitude some writers crave. These people have no reasonto be kind to me, they are dirt poor
Rage, be incandescent! You are from Ogoni land, you are the scion of Ken Saro Wiwa, and beneath your feet are some of the richest oilfields in the world! I want to shout.
My friend says this is a war front, Nigeria is one huge war front, this is the frontline of the wasteland called the Niger Delta. The war is simply to survive. In this Niger Delta where an uneasy truce holds, Barilei and his friends, and that week old child that clings onto Lily's emaciated breast, have been robbed of any decent life chances. Yes they hold the key. If the laughter dies down and it will, I fear what will replace it.
As I walked away, I look across to the Gun turret and the bored soldiers in green fatigues and their firepower and just wonder if the current truce is a pyrrhic victory or a lull before the storm. As sure as dawn will come, these young men will rise one day, and I suspect that Agip will need more gun turrets.
I , of course go home to my middle class digs, my dogs live better that Barilei and his family of eight who must live in that shack at the mercy of the mosquitoes and the often unkind river.
Someone makes a joke and they laugh. They will be dancing soon.
Laughter lives here too. Echoes from the wooden
lean-to are as deep and rich as anywhere else. But these people do not deserve to be here. No one does.
They are hemmed in not so much by hope but by a futility of reason. This Nigeria, good people – great Nation?
