fiction
A Letter from Home
My Dear Son,
Why have
you not been sending money through Western Union like other
good Nigerian children in America do? You have also not
visited home. Have you married a white woman? Do not forget
that I have already found a wife for you. Her name is Ngozi.
Her parents are good Christians and her mother belongs to
the Catholic Good Women’s League like me. Please do not to
spoil the good relationship I have built over the years with
Ngozi’s family.
I beg of
you not to become like Kaka’s son who was sent to America
with the community’s funds, only to come back with a white
woman, and then would not let his parents visit him in his
white man’s living quarters in the Lagos government reserved
area. He has large dogs and his white wife treats the dogs
like her children. The only time he visited his family, he
refused to sleep in his father’s old house, complaining that
it was dirty, and took his wife to pass the night in a
hotel. He stretched out his hands to shake the hands of the
elders of the community and would not prostrate on the
ground like a well-brought- up child.
Or don’t
you consider Ngozi beautiful enough from the picture I sent
to you of her dressed in a long gown, holding a hibiscus
flower? She attended the Catholic Women’s Teacher’s College
and comes from a lineage of women who bear strong sons.
Ogaga’s
son who went to Germany only a few years ago has sent his
father a big black BMW and has already completed a
twenty-room mansion and is laying the foundation for a
hotel. I am already in the evening of my days and want to
rock my grandchildren on my tired knees before I go to
heaven to live in the many mansions that God has prepared
for me. I have become the laughingstock of the village
because I sold my only stall in Oyingbo Market to raise
money to send you, my only son, to America, and now I have
no stall in the market and am forced to hawk my wares on a
tray like a housemaid.
Remember
your promise to buy me a car and get me a driver, and I’ll
sit on the back seat like the Prime Minister’s wife and give
commands to the driver and he will take me to visit all my
friends and they’ll be green with envy. My prayer is that
you have not become like the prodigal son in the Biblical
parable who squandered his inheritance on wine and women.
I am sure
you remember Obi’s daughter. She went to Italy to work as a
prostitute after you left for America. Just last year she
came back with lots of goodies for her parents and has even
married a boy from a responsible family. They had their
wedding in the church and the priest said that though her
sins were like scarlet she has been washed clean by the
blood of Jesus (after she made a huge donation for the
repair of the church roof). She has gone on to bear a son
and now nobody remembers that she was once a prostitute in
Italy.
Do you
associate with other Africans so you can still remember your
roots? Do you still find African foods to eat? Because I
fear the white man’s food will make you reason in the white
man’s ways. My son, reconsider your ways and retrace your
steps like the prodigal son, so I can bless you before I
die.
I spent
too much sending Ngozi to the fattening room. I sent her
there at my own expense so the women can teach her the ways
to take care of her husband, and feed her, and fatten her up
so she can be plump like a ripe melon. God forbid that a
girl from a responsible family, like Ngozi, should be
looking like dry
bonga
fish on her wedding day. Sending a bride-to-be to the
fattening room costs a lot of money these days because the
women who run them are dying out and the younger generation
consider it
bush.
The young prefer their women thin and dry like broomsticks.
They seem not to know that men prefer to hold something
ample when they reach out at night.
My son, do
not to make me a laughingstock. I beg of you not to let
those who borrowed toothpaste from me end up with brighter
teeth and cleaner breath. I am sure you remember Odili’s
son, (you were in primary school together). He used to be
the neighborhood rascal who smoked marijuana and pinched
young girls on their buttocks, and can you imagine, that
efulefu,
that idler, woke up one day and announced that he was going
to Europe by road! We all thought that marijuana had finally
crossed two wires in his brain, but how wrong we were. He
joined a truck carrying tomatoes to the North and joined a
bus from there to Mali and joined a caravan of camels across
the Sahara desert. Some of them died of thirst in the desert
but he survived. He found work in a construction site in
Morocco and saved enough money to pay the Tuaregs, who
helped him to cross by boat into Spain. He told the Spanish
authorities he was a Liberian fleeing the war going on there
and was given a work permit. You should have been there the
day he came back exactly five years later: he was loaded
down with television sets, gold and trinkets, clothes and
lots of money, which he spent like water. For the few days
that he was around, his father’s house was the place to be;
it was where everyone went to eat and drink. In my heart I
did not want to go there with the throng but I did not want
to be accused of not wishing him well. So I dragged my feet
there and ate and drank and rejoiced with the family like
everyone. All eyes there upon me, and asking
what
about your son, when will he return with goodies, when will
he invite us to come and eat and drink like the Odilis have
done? You whose son flew to America. Look at Odili’s son who
went on foot, he has come back with goodies.
Not that anyone said a word to me, but I could see it in
their eyes. Their eyes never left me as I drank the
Coca-Cola, and ate
jollof
rice and fried beef and danced foolishly like a chicken with
its head cut off. The young man has gone back, by air this
time, promising his father that when next he comes, he will
destroy his father’s old house, and put up a mansion in its
place.
I have
been tempted to give your young bride Ngozi to your younger
cousin Azuka so she can produce a baby for me to rock on my
knees before they become too rusty. But Ngozi’s mother will
not hear of it. She clapped her hands cynically and hissed
like a snake and asked if her daughter was now a piece of
beef on the butcher’s table that people tossed and weighed
and tossed aside for the next person. She spat derisively at
me, narrowly missing my face, and told me that if her
daughter was going to marry again, she would look for a
better family for her, a family where things grow and not an
arid one like ours. Since that incident, she has stopped
attending the meetings of the Catholic Women’s League and
hisses and crosses over to the other side of the street
whenever she sees me coming toward her.
You
really have no excuse for not sending money, because Western
Union now has an office on our street. Daily, I see men and
women who have caring children in America marching
majestically into their offices and swaggering out with huge
bundles of Naira notes in large paper parcels. They wave
with their free hands and clutch their parcels of money as
if afraid I’m going to ask them to lend me some.
Do not imagine that my ears are not filled with all manners of
suggestions from different people. After all, as our people
say,
the day
an elephant dies is the day you see all kinds of knives.
A native doctor once suggested to me that he could cast a
spell on you over there in America that would make you
abandon whatever you were doing and board the next flight
back to Nigeria. He said the spell was so effective that
even if there was no flight you would board the nearest boat
and return home. But you are my son, you came into this
world from between my legs and I will not do something that
will harm you. Okolosi’s son was forced back from America by
such a spell. He is back home now; he wears an old jacket
and walks up and down the street frightening children on
their way to school with his hyena laugh while reciting
aloud to himself the names of the capital cities of America.
I am not
threatening you but please do not force my hand. You were
born the year the Americans landed on the moon and returned
with that strange eye disease called
Apollo.
I still remember everyone’s eyes turning red and dripping
water like a tap as soon as the men came back from the moon.
It was said that the disease was God’s punishment to the
people of the earth for peering too closely into his eyes
and leaving an imprint of their feet on his face. It did not
surprise me, therefore, when you said you were leaving for
America to study. Even as a little boy watching
Bonanza
on our old black- and-white television, you were always
taking on new names every week. One week you were Dan
Blocker, Purnell Roberts the next, down to Michael Landon
and Lorne Green. As a child you would wear a cowboy hat, put
a dry piece of wood in your mouth, pretending it was a
cigar, curl your lips, and speak through your nose like the
actors on television. It did not surprise me when you said
you were leaving for America because you were born the year
the American flag was planted on the moon, and during
moonlight play, while other children saw the man in the
moon, you always ran back home to tell me that you saw the
American flag waving to you from the moon.
And now I
want to share a family secret with you. In the early 1940s
your father secured a place at Howard University. The same
Howard that produced the great Pan-Africanist and leader of
our country’s independence struggle, the Right Honorable
Nnamdi Azikiwe. Your grandfather sold his entire rubber
plantation to the United African Company to raise the funds
for your father’s boat trip via the Elder Dempster Lines.
Your grandmother sold her gold ornaments too. When your
father got to the Lagos wharf, he fell into the hands of con
men, who convinced him they could double his money. The con
men were soldiers of the West African Frontier Force,
recently discharged from the army after fighting in Burma.
They spent their days idling around the wharf looking for
gullible bumpkins like your father. Your father reasoned
that if they doubled his money he could send half back to
his family and travel with the other half to America. The
con men collected his money and handed a black wooden box to
him, telling him not to open it till the next day. On
opening it, he discovered it was filled with neat rows of
newspapers cut to the size of pound notes. He was distraught
and was about to throw himself into the Atlantic, when a
woman selling bean cakes by the wharf stopped him and took
him home. He got a teaching job in a private school and
managed to save enough money to travel to Sierra Leone in
search of better opportunities. His family back home assumed
he was studying in America. He was in Sierra Leone when his
father, your grandfather, became sick. As the first son, he
was expected to be there to lay his father’s hands across
his chest when he breathed his last. The elders conferred
and decided to consult a medicine man to cast a spell on
your father to bring him back home. It was this spell that
brought your dad back from Sierra Leone. By the time he
arrived, your grandfather had breathed his last, but not
before placing a curse on his son who had broken his heart.
He said that just as your father had disappointed him, your
father’s own children would in turn do the same to him.
Do you
still recall the birds that migrated all the way from
Australia to our village to nestle in the rice farms? They
wore shiny gold bangles around their feet, embossed with the
words “Melbourne Zoological Gardens”. You must remember
going to watch them play and sing all day, as they pecked at
rice seeds and bathed in the pools of water by the rice
paddies. They were large colorful birds with feathers that
looked as if they had been painted on them with a hand
brush. The farmers didn’t bother them; they looked like
royal visitors and behaved as such, never being overly
destructive, unlike the local kwela birds, and only pecked
at the rice seeds that fell on the ground. As soon as it was
time to harvest the rice, they gathered themselves together,
conferred for a few minutes as if praying for journey
mercies for the trip ahead, and flew off together as a
group.
But one
year, one of the visiting birds stayed back. While the other
birds gathered together, limbering up, preparing for
takeoff, it sat on the ground pecking without concern. The
departing birds made signs at it and spoke to it in their
shrieking bird language, but it did not pay them any heed.
Discouraged, the other birds left it behind. When the
farmers came the next day, they tried to drive it away and
persuade it with signs to fly away and return to its
homeland but it just stayed there pecking at rice seeds.
After some time, it flew slowly towards a group of local
kwela birds and joined them in their destructive scattering
of the unharvested rice. The farmers said to themselves that
the bird no longer comported itself like a visitor, and
decided to do to it what they did to the local birds. They
shot it with an arrow and used its meat to prepare rice
stew. My son, I hope you have not become like that strange
Australian bird that forgot its homeland.
SLQ
A Reply to E C
Osondu's "Letter from Home"
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