POST 1: Babaaláwo Of Our Times. Chapter 1: Tuesday

 Chapter 1 (part 1): TUESDAY

His smile upset me greatly. 

Typically, I am not the sort of fellow who gets upset greatly by smiles, regardless of how condescending or spite loaded they are.
I know this because I do get my fair share of condescending and spite loaded smiles aimed my way, but I was upset greatly by this particular one. Also, you wouldn’t think it - considering the frequency with which I had been obligated to lose my temper in the weeks leading up to that Tuesday - but by and large, I am not the type to carelessly dispense with all measures of self-control at the slightest hint of irritation either, hence, the oddity of my volatile response at the mere view of the wretch’s teeth. However, this wretch: this lanky police officer with the multicoloured top incisors (two yellow, one red, and one curiously green, in that order from right to left from my viewpoint); with the filthy ill-formed uniform cap; with the slightly askew goatee; with the dysfunctional looking firearm; this lanky dunce, who was about to thrash me should I not play my part in the undignified pantomime he concocted off-the-cuff all those years back, was about to thoroughly ruin my Tuesday. And hence, the fact that he smiled arrogantly about this; knowing full well that his contribution to my life would bring me nothing but distress and anger, but continuing with my persecution – employing that unique sulphuric spite effortlessly fostered by colourfully enamelled third world police officials – greatly upset me. But if I’m honest with myself, I think what upset me even more than his sadistic smile; what began to rouse my feelings of self-pity and self-loathing in equal measure, was the helplessness of my situation. Most times, I find there is nothing more infuriating than being at the mercy of the merciless… especially on a Tuesday. 

It is quite senseless to loathe a particular day. Senseless because obviously, the misfortunes and irritations (like lost keys, paper cuts, strife associated with general strikes, water shortages, and impending thrashings from D’ornoirian police officers) which collage my existence, do not sit around open camp fires and conspire to laden themselves upon me only on Tuesdays. In their malignant comings and goings, these misfortunes tend to spread themselves out quite evenly over the week. No, Tuesday detestation is not about the day perhaps being loaded with a greater amount of hard luck and trepidation than all other days, but it is more about the melancholy and tedium associated with the day after the first working day which hovers somewhere just above mid-week.

Hovers - like a Thursday, but without the anticipated joy of a weekend just around the corner. So really, nothing like a Thursday at all, because if you think about it, that’s all there is to Thursdays - the anticipated joy of a weekend just around the corner. So really, there is no other day like Tuesday. There, that’s it. It’s the unique day of hover… and nothing more. 

On Mondays, you can say: “Woe is me! New week more troubles”; on Wednesdays you can say: “Ah! got through half of this already, wasn’t so bad”; on Thursdays you can say: “Joy! The end is in sight”; and on Fridays you can say: “Dear God, why only two more days before I have to go through this tripe again?” But till date, I have found nothing worth saying about Tuesdays, except they “hover”. It is a day where nothing much happens, and if some things do happen, they perhaps should have happened on other days, so they could have ended up being even more than what they ended up being, as they could not have made much of themselves seeing as they chose to happen on a Tuesday. If the world ends on a Tuesday, it will not be a grand ending. Friday is surely the day for grand world endings. If we all end up getting annihilated by a nuclear bomb on a Tuesday, I can assure you it will be mistakenly launched: a cleaner in mid mop of a restricted area will probably slip on a wet floor and accidentally press The Big Red Button on the way down. Nobody in their right minds will chose to end existence as we know it on a Tuesday. It just doesn’t make sense. It is not the day designed for waking up and asking God “why?”, but the day to look-back-on on and query: “Dear God! Was that really there?” It is the day the calendar architects slotted in to make the essence of tedium more perceptible. Like the cucumber - the water hoarding green slices of tastelessness - in a cucumber sandwich, it is there simply to beef up the banal. Tuuuuueeeesday: It is a day perhaps where things which are being concocted for use later on in the week are left to breeeeewwww and steeeeeewwww. 

Hence, it is with a dual pronged attack of wonder that I ponder, firstly: why I ended up slapping the heavily armed police officer - when I myself bore no arms to counter his inevitable reaction, nor alms to pacify him after my overreaction, and why I chose to do so on a Tuesday of all days. The former part of my query is obtuse. I knew the fellow would eventually receive of one of my better slaps. It was a long time coming. Our paths had crossed several times before. In fact, I’d go as far as to say Sergeant Derin was quite partial to crossing my path and running me through the rigmarole of our well established routine, which was designed strictly to humiliate me. 

Every morning, roughly at about 6:00am - the time I made my daily journey to the shrine - the buffoon, who was the officer in charge of a police security checkpoint situated at the junction of the cul-de-sac where I rented my bungalow, and the main road out of Agboju Estate (the suburb of Ogredhad State I live in) would stop me and begin cracking the joke, which as far as he was concerned, never ran out of steam. 

“Hey you Oyinbo! halt! Cease and desist!” he would say mock militantly in his thick Derigbe accent as he jumped in my path, armed with a cacophonous array of rancid odours. Always sprinkling me with a few sweat droplets from his forehead, which inexplicably, never failed to land in the most irritating of places, like in my right eye, or deep within my ear cavity, or on the tip on my tongue; smiling wholesomely with his caked coloured teeth on display. With the stench from his armpits not oozing out slowly, but in rapid emanation mode, and his repugnant breath always on the full stale offensive, my morning meetings with Derin always set a particularly foul theme for most days. 

“Hello officer and how are you this morning?” I always replied without much jollity in voice; wearing the most insincere of smiles with little or no conviction in heart either, but always asking the question with genuine curiosity. I really wished to know how his health faired every morning - an indication of a decline of any sort would have been fantastic news. However, the excellence of his health was always reported by the richness of his sadistic smile, which remained etched on his face for the full duration of our encounters. His rainbow teeth proudly beaming the words “I am well... very well thank you,” back to me. At which point, I would begin to wonder how a god, any god, with the slightest bit of fairness about him or her, saw it fit that Derin - of all the low-level tyrants of this world - had lived that long without entertaining a stray bullet to the heart yet. And so every morning, as his teeth said: “I am well... very well thank you” somewhere inside, I also lamented: “It still breathes. Truly, there is no greater idler than justice.”

Truth be told, "how are you this morning" was a stupid reply, considering our exchanges had gone on almost every weekday for over half a decade, and that reply had granted me no other outcome than the ensuing humiliation I shall shortly speak of. But in all honesty, I was just coasting – I’d suddenly become tired of it all. 

No, really, I’d just about had enough of it all. I’m not typically the gloomy type. I like to think of myself as your average realist: “it is either half empty or half full depending on whether you’re emptying or filling,” I like to say. Like most men of this world who possess just about a big enough pot to piss in, there are days when I drink a beer or twelve, smoke some pawpaw leaves, and think: “God is great,” and “The colour brown is sublime - the best colour not to have made it into the rainbow.” Then there are times when someone cuts me off in a queue and I begin to morosely question the purpose of life. For me, optimism and pessimism are all variants… dependent on the potency of the pawpaw leaf or the length of the queue. But honestly, I was at the end of my tether.  

When I think about it, it was probably my near death experience at Colteun Market that set off all this tiredness and frustration that I’ve been harping on about. You see, about a week earlier, I went to the market to buy some yams from Mrs Asunji, my customer - the woman who as far as I’m concerned, trades the biggest and tastiest yams in the market (due to my training, I’ve become something of a yam connoisseur you see). Anyway, no sooner had I shown up at her stall in the crowded market - and greeted her very respectfully I might add, as being Derigbe, she is big on respect - did she accuse me of discolouration.

“Oyinbo, you look whiter than normal today. What is wrong with you?” she hissed in Derigbe. 

Mrs Asunji had always been very pleasant in our dealings. To me, she was the large, merry, loving aunt I grew up without. The one with the epic bosom, who would pinch your cheeks and shove toffees into your pockets when your parents weren’t watching. But that day, I noticed that there was no concern in her voice when she asked the question. She sounded as though she was not really anxious about the sudden upsurge of whiteness in my pigment (which she apparently detected) but was really accusing me of something. It was as though she was really asking: “where have you stolen all that extra white from?” 

“I’m fine thank you ma,” I replied cordially. “It might be malaria” I added for effect, knowing full well I was not coming down with malaria, and not knowing what she was going on about, or where she planned to take the conversation. I briefly wondered if she was trying to sell me some special tanning yams at a premium - yams that cost a lot more than normal yams, because once consumed, they add a bit of colour to pale white skin. This is not a stupid train of thought to jump on, because it is not beyond any trader in Colteun Market to try and sell you anything (most likely a nothing) that can do everything (most likely absolutely nothing). Once, I saw a very haggard looking rabbit on sale at four thousand D'ornoir, which I thought was a bit steep. So I sarcastically asked the rabbit hawker: “Why is that rabbit so expensive, does it fly?” and immediately began laughing at my own joke - prompting him to see that I was only teasing as it is wrong to assume everyone shares a common sense of humour around these parts, particularly over the supernatural. But the hawker, seeing that someone had finally taken an interest in his rabbit - which truth be told, looked as though it did not have much more rabbiting left in it - began driving the hard sale. 

“Yes it flies,” he whispered quickly with his eyes suddenly sparking into life and darting about. Probably whispering nervously because proclaiming things like "yes my rabbit flies" out loud in this city is an obvious confession of solidarity with one of hell’s darker deities, which specialise in consecrating flying rabbits and perhaps nothing more. Such solidarity (with flying rabbit consecrating deities) is wholly unsanctioned both by law and established religion, and hence, a statement like yes my rabbit flies is more than likely to get you promptly (and unceremoniously) slain in more than a few places. 

He carried on whispering: “It also speaks French and English. It will read you The Koran and The Bible in other languages if you ask it to. However, it does all this only at night so I cannot give you a demonstration. Four thousand! Just four thousand for this nocturnal miracle of nature.” I knew he wasn’t joking. I have a knack for knowing when people are joking or not (this is perhaps my only practical knack) and I knew without a doubt in my mind that this rabbit seller was not joking. As stupid as it sounds, his ploy to offload the rabbit was to try and convince me - with all sincerity and at all costs - that not only was the animal learned and religious, but it had also mastered gravity. Only that day did I realise that desperation holds logic with little or no regard. 

Anyway, I didn’t have much time to wonder whether Mrs Asunji had started dabbling in the business of hawking genetically engineered tanning yams before she uncharacteristically began howling: “It’s a lie!” she declared at the top of her voice. “It’s a lie! It’s a lie! It’s a lie!…” she continued screaming out loud and drawing the attention of the hundreds around us in the heaving street market. “…It’s a lie! You don’t have malaria. The devil now hates you! He was your friend but you have offended him. The devil is sucking your blood!” she decreed finally with her eyes wide open. She shrieked with such righteous indignation in her voice, as though possessed by some gravely offended trade unionist demon. As she announced these allegations, her round compact frame rose clumsily from behind her stack of yam tubers, which were arranged into a very neat pyramid - sending the yams at the top of the pile tumbling down and bowling into other piles belonging to other neighbouring yam merchants, crashing those down as well. She did all this - creating a scene with the screaming and the tumbling yams - whilst pointing an accusing finger at me, making sure everybody around knew who exactly had grievances with The Devil. It would be useful to re-stress at this juncture, that in all my years of coming to the market and buying yams from Mrs Asunji, I had never had any problems with her, nor any dealings with whichever devil she accused me of being in conflict with. However, I’m familiar enough with the way of life here to know that her slur - although extremely libelous and potentially quite fatal - was nothing personal. Even though we were in a West African market place full of buyers and sellers all too willing to slay any of hell’s correspondents at the drop of a hat, it’s quite conceivable that she meant me no real harm at all, and the horrible witch simply woke up on the wrong end of her broom that morning. 

I would later find out that the reason I was accused of being in liege with The Devil was because the last time I visited the market, I committed the ultimate faux pas of sampling another trader’s yams. However, that is beside the point. At the time, I had no idea what game she was playing - what had upset her so gravely - but I knew not to think too hard about it when a pebble, the size of a small marble, bounced pathetically off my head and landed at my feet. So I took off - running like The Devil - without much ado. 

I’m not a stupid man. Unfortunately, it’s not the first time I’ve had to fear for my life whilst fleeing through a busy D’ornoirian market. I have been in this country for many years and know how market lynchings commence. It all starts with an accusation. In one instant someone begins shouting: “You stole a sweet!”, or “You squeezed my breast!”, or “I saw you flying with some witches yesterday!” or “You and The Devil were best of chums but have now fallen out,” and then the next moment a pebble is landing feebly on your head and you’re thinking: “that’s a bit of a nuisance,” and before long, your four limbs are being strung out by four market “enforcers” whilst the fifth steadies a large boulder over your head. 

I managed to escape that day - abandoning my shirt in a slight mid-escape scuffle – sustaining only a minor stoning. Flight hath no speed like an accused white man in a West African market. But that whole yam incident put me in a sombre mood. Apart from the fact that I’d been outlawed from a market I loved to visit, can you imagine almost losing your life on account of looking a bit pale? I’ve known more important people who’ve died for even less compelling reasons, but still, what a reason to go. 

I recon that’s when all this introspective pondering began. After the market incident, I began to think about the fragility of my life in the country, and what exactly I was doing in West-Africa. It’s only normal to do so after such an episode. If something as petty as not looking quite rosy enough had set a hoard of irate merchants against me - merchants who only the previous week had all greeted me like a familiar cousin - then surely, an endless arsenal of reasons to put me under the boulder lay readily available to whoever felt like picking on the white man. 

I still had concerns about the colour of my skin in mind - in particular, the conspicuousness of my whiteness within the circles I moved around in Côte d'or noir - when I came home early from work the next day to find my wife voluntarily (and from the sound of her, quite merrily) impaling herself on a mature beech of a penis attached to my mentor. Several times in the past, I heard work colleagues discuss these matters of infidelity under the theme of: “You’ll never believe what Mr A saw when he got home”. These colleagues always attempted to save some of Mr A’s face by suggesting his spouse was being taken advantage off; that all the calisthenics were completely against the will of poor ravaged Mrs A. However, I could draw no such comfort, as I said, I found Loretta, my lovely wife, impaling herself - she was on top. 

So needless to say, with lynchings, adultery and treachery in mind, I was not in the most diplomatic of moods when Derin began to run through his routine that Tuesday. He knew I had no money to give him, but extortion was never Derin’s aim during our encounters. He sought solely to humiliate me in front of his four police colleagues, and the dozen or so commuters huddled beneath a ramshackle lawn umbrella (a make shift bus stop shelter) in the immediate vicinity. This was perhaps the most important aspect of his life you see - proving that he could humiliate a white man. 

“To where this morning?” he carried on as he always did.

“Shrine!”

“Shrine?”

“Shrine!” I repeated again curtly that Tuesday. 

On any other day, my typical response would have perhaps been: “Yes officer, I’m going to the shrine: to glorify our gods; to appease our forefathers, and enrich our soil,” but that Tuesday, with images of special tanning yams running riot in my head - running riot to a soundtrack of joyful howls I could never inspire my wife to make - all I could muster was a sharp “Shrine!” 

“What are you looking for in Shrine? Are you a Babaaláwo?” Derin angrily snapped with a frown, losing his sense of humour as he sensed I was not sticking to the script. He straightened himself from the butt of the gun he had been leaning on, and tried to comport himself in as officious a manner as he could. 

“Are you a Babaaláwo?” he repeated more forcefully after a few moments passed and I remained silent. 

“Yes!” I replied. Just Yes!. It would normally have been: ““Not yet, I am a Babaaláwo in training, because the ancestors have seen it fit that Ifa still needs priest,” or “Not yet, I am a Babaaláwo in training, because I am here to provide answers for the few of our kind who still have questions.” but as I said, I was not in the best of moods, so it was just “Yes!” 

“You are a Babaaláwo?” he sneered disapprovingly as he always did, before clearing his throat dramatically, straightening himself out, and bellowing out the words: “Holy-Ghost-Fire!” at full volume. And then he broadened that provocative smile.