Doing Dangerously Well (24 page)

A fly buzzed around a bare light bulb. The sound of its erratic orbit echoed off the cement walls. A soft breeze wafted over the tops of the beer bottles. No one moved.

Barbara looked around at the faces flickering in the light of kerosene lamps, eyes bright with query. She smoothed back an
errant wisp of hair, embarrassed but proud. Her words had obviously ignited something deep in their souls.

Tentatively, they resumed their drinking.

Aminah raised her massive bulk off her chair again. “Who …” The men backed up a few paces. They raised their eyebrows in anticipation. Beer bottles once again froze in mid-air. “Who is the new leader of Wise Water Nigeria?” Her voice echoed off the silent walls. “I need a contact.”

The bar took a collective sip of release, mixed, perhaps, with a tinge of disappointment.

Her initial informant proffered the information. “His closest confidant was Igwe, so he is now the interim leader, but …” He came closer to Aminah to whisper in her ear. The entire crowd craned their necks for this nugget of information: “Igwe’s a drug addict.”

A collective gasp as they shook their inebriated heads in censure.

“How does the man think drugs can help him?” a man asked in a philosophical vein. He shook his head mournfully, then tossed it back as he threw the last few drops of beer down his throat.

“Drugs?” Barbara stood up with conviction. “Well, who hasn’t tried them at one time, right?” She searched in her bag as the crowd’s unblinking eyes threatened to dry up altogether. The men held their breath, waiting for what would emerge from her handbag. They flinched as she took out a couple of bank notes and slapped them down on the bar.

“What zone does Igwe live in?” Aminah hunted through her own capacious handbag for a notebook.

“Zone? Ah-ah, a drug addict in Abuja? Where does he have the money for that city? No, they had to move him to Jos.”

“Let’s go, Aminah.” Barbara fluttered out the door, leaving Ogbe Kolo’s face to soak up the excess beer on the counter.

They packed and headed for the airport, following Igwe’s trail. Their flight took them to Jos, within the picturesque plateau region—the cool, tranquil highlands sited a mere hundred miles from the capital city, Abuja, Nigeria’s centre of political turmoil.

The taxi drove past small hamlets made of wattle and clay with grass roofs surrounded by farms divided by cacti. The earth, cracked in areas, was yellow, not red, and grasslands had given birth to boulders higher than buildings. They sputtered along at a majestic pace until the taxi reached the wide boulevards and tree-lined splendour of the city centre. Jos was bathed in a serene calm, its gentle vegetation easing across rolling hills, birds in trances as they floated overhead in the cool breezes of the plateau. Here she was, surrounded by excited flowers exploding with colour and matronly trees too wide to hug. She could hardly believe that this city and Lagos had any connection.

They stopped in front of a dilapidated building with hints of past glory, rusting filigree grillwork over the windows. Walls echoed the motif, engraved with gentle circles and other geometric designs.

Barbara hopped past chickens, goats, stray cats and skinny dogs at which the children threw stones. She issued a terse lecture on animal abuse. The children followed her, begging for money. Aminah shooed them away.

On the second floor of the building, they entered a small, dark, dank room where menacing faces peered at them through the gloom—faces that had lost all hope, all certitude of life, smothered by the drug’s jealous embrace. Water-filled jerry cans, plastic buckets and canisters littered the room. A jumble of people sat on mats, a few staring wide-eyed at nothing, some mouthing silent words. Others slept. Several rambled around the room, muttering to themselves.

“Poor souls,” Aminah whispered. “Everything they have is gone. What could possibly be encouraging them to survive?”

Barbara addressed the room. “Is Iggy here?”

“Who wants to know?” a surly addict mumbled from a corner.

“My name is Barbara Glass. I’m a good friend of Femi Jegee-dee. We were very close. Like brother and sister.”

“Who are you?” another asked, fighting to extricate himself from the drug’s haze.

“I work for Drop of Life in Canada on water rights.”

“Do any of you know,” Aminah’s voice echoed around the walls, slamming against delicate eardrums, “where Igwe is? We need to speak to him.”

“I’m Igwebuike,” a man slouched against a wall answered. He wore dark glasses, no doubt to protect bloodshot pupils from the intrusive daylight the duo had let in.

“Although to some you represent the dregs of society,” Barbara said in a reverential hush, tilting her head to one side, “the lowest form of life on this planet,” she looked at him with plaintive sympathy, “to me, I am you and you are me. There is no separation.” She nodded to herself, then shook her head in empathetic sorrow.

“Who … ?” someone hissed from the corner of the room, making everyone jump. “Who is calling my friend Igwe the lowest form of human life?” He looked like a king, his throne a broken stool.

“Please.” Aminah’s voice shot through the room, reverberating across the windowpanes. “Please—we don’t want to cause wahala. We are here on urgent business. We are looking for the leader of Wise Water.”

“You can talk to me. I am Femi Jegede, although my ‘sister’ here should doubtless recognize me.”

“You!” Aminah barked. “How can you be Jegede?” Everyone winced as she spoke. “He’s dead.”

Saddened faces erupted into rare laughter. A few who had lost their mental moorings became increasingly bewildered.

“I’m dead?” The king’s handsome eyes screwed up as he laughed. “How did I die?”

“Of, em, of …” Aminah hesitated. She sat down. “Of grief, sir.”

The room erupted once more into a fit of giggles.

“So …” Aminah talked a little more softly when the laughter died down, “… you’re really Femi Jegede? And this is Igwe?”

“Himself.” The man in dark glasses pointed at his own chest. “Am I dead too?”

“No, sir, no. You’re … you’re a drug addict.”

For a moment silence reigned as people fought to maintain control over their composure, but then all was lost. A collective scream of appreciation ripened into chokes of laughter, chuckles retched out in long wails.

One man in ragged clothes, his eardrums plugged with mud, who paced in chaotic circles, began to mewl in a chilly ascending note.

“Ubaldous. Everything is okay!” Igwe quickly got up to comfort him, following him on his desolate journeys with a protective arm around him.

Barbara, bewildered and impatient, put her hands on her hips. “What’s happening here?”

A sympathetic Aminah turned to her. “Naija gossip. If you’re out of circulation, one person will say you must be ill, the next says you’re very ill, the next says you’re dead. Nigeria is like a small village.”

“We had to move from Abuja,” Igwe explained.

“So you’re Femi?” Barbara asked the man on the stool. “You’re alive? And your friends—they’re not drug addicts?”

“We couldn’t afford drugs if we wanted to,” Igwe replied.

The room once more gasped with quiet laughter, as Igwe patted Ubaldous.

Barbara looked at Femi with fresh eyes, noting the aura that fanned out around him. He had a handsome face, with piercing, gentle eyes that told of recent tragedy. His demeanour suggested a weary strength, an exhausted fortitude. His voice resonated with a sad depth; even his laugh, a delightful snicker of descending notes, carried a melancholy charm.

She moved towards him. Eyes flitted to meet other eyes. The room’s nervous tension increased with each step. “I was so sorry to hear about your family. You know, like leaves, we are born, we live, we die, and new life begins in our place.” She put her hands on his shoulders. “None of us, in the great scheme of things, is more or less important than a leaf.”

“Enh?” Igwe stopped walking, gold logos flashing with vexation. “Who is not important?”

“A leaf?” another protested, the words producing some spittle that glinted in a dusty shaft of light. “Who is she calling a leaf?”

Femi looked directly at Barbara. “Did this oyinbo call the lives of one million people unimportant?” His eyes shimmered with fury.

“Stop!” a voice boomed, making the panes of glass rattle. Aminah scraped her chair as she stood. “No one is a leaf. No one in this room is a leaf! No one in Nigeria is a leaf!”

“But,” Barbara interrupted, “we’re all part of—”

“No one,” Aminah’s loud voice obliterated all other sounds, “no one is a leaf.”

Everyone looked at Femi in astonishment as he tried to stand. Several people rushed to help as if he might fall, gently admonishing him. Igwe ran most rapidly to his side. He held his friend under the elbow, gazing at him with worry, whispering softly to him with concern.

“What happened was not the work of nature,” Femi said, “but the work of man.”

“And/or woman,” Barbara corrected him. “Which is not to say—

“A leaf didn’t fall. A tree was cut dow—”

“You see what your problem is? You may have
listened
to what I was saying,” Barbara paused for Femi to assimilate this information, “but you didn’t
hear.
This leads to miscom-munication, which isn’t going to help when we’re working together.”

“Working together? No! Oh no! Someone get this wom—”

“You interrupted again!” Barbara looked around the room for confirmation. A vein on Femi’s forehead pulsed. “Have you ever read
The Dance of Anger
?” she asked.

“What?”

“The
Dance of Anger.
I’ll send it to you. It’ll really help you with the issues you have around rage.”

Femi looked at Igwe, aghast. “Have I gone crazy? Or is it this woman?”

“—meant to say,” she spoke over him, “was that what the caterpillar calls the end, the rest of the world calls a butterfly. That is my belief.” Barbara bowed in Buddhist fashion.

Femi stared at Barbara. “Who told you we would be working together?”

“Well, that’s why I’m here.”

“Femi,” Igwe interrupted. “Calm down. Don’t worry about—”

“Who told you to come?”

Barbara searched her memory. “I can’t remember.” She pondered the question again and then shook her head in defeat. “Someone.” She wandered off to her handbag. “By the way, I’ve brought some gifts. Probably in short supply over here.” She distributed the condoms, addressing a woman who
sat paralyzed in embarrassment. “Best not to leave them on the floor. They’ll get dusty.”

She turned back to Femi. “We have a revolution to organize. Kolo intends to sell rights to the Niger, as well as outright ownership of water resources through licensing, and full custody of Nigeria’s electricity in exchange for the construction of the biggest dam in the world.” The room erupted into noisy confusion. She could hardly be heard above the din. “So,” she raised her voice, “we have to organize some riots, maybe target a few sites. Do you have any explosives, by the way? Obviously I couldn’t bring—”

“What are you bombing?” Femi cut her off.

“Sites.”

“What sites?”

“Important sites, of course.” Barbara twiddled with her beads. He stared at her, the twitches on his face becoming more violent.

“I’ve brought some dark clothing. It’ll be good camouflage.”

“You’re not bombing anything.”

“Well, we don’t have to bomb. Dynamite will do.”

“No! No bombing. No explosives. Not even a firecracker.”

“Look, you can’t stop me coming with you. Just because I’m a woman—”

“Coming with us? Where to? We’re not going anywhere! Anyway,” he shook his head as if to clear it, “what am I talking about? We’re not working together.”

“But—”

“No!”

Barbara looked around at the oddball assortment of activists lurking in the corners, realizing the futility of attempting to transform them into the efficient army she envisaged. Dejected but not defeated, she turned to leave. “Oh spirit of the trees,”
she murmured to herself. “I’ll have to find the African Water Warriors—”

“Enh?” Femi grabbed her by the arm. “What do you mean, the Water Warriors? They’re terrorists! Nigeria will fall into anarchy!”

Barbara turned to face him, chin up. “I must continue my work,” she replied in a low, dangerous hush.

He paused as if taking in for the first time what she’d said about Kolo’s plans. “So you want to enter trouble. Maybe, then, it’s best if we work together.”

His voice contained an edge of panic, Barbara could not help but notice. Still, she beamed, feeling once more that she was merely a conduit. “You know, there’s a Taoist saying—”

“Please.” Femi rubbed his face with his hands. “I beg-oh, no more Taoist sayings.”

“It goes, ‘Be wary of men who have nothing to lose.’”

“I know another saying,” Femi replied. “It goes, ‘Beware of women who quote Chinese sayings.’”

She sat down on a mat and clicked open her purple pen. “So, where can we find some armaments?”

“Have you ever seen a dead person?” Femi asked.

Barbara waited for a suitable lull in the conversation around them before making her pronouncement: “I have no fear of death.” She gave a curt bow of her head.

“Ehen!” Femi gazed at her. “Let me show you some fallen leaves. Let me show you death. Then you can tell me if you fear it or not.”