Kaine's Space

Excerpt from Yellow-Yellow (Chapters 1 & 2)

2006-08-13T08:23:00.000+01:00

ONE

During my second to last year in secondary school, one of the crude oil pipes that ran through my village broke and spilled oil over several hectares of land, my mother’s farm included. I was at home that day when she returned shortly after leaving for the farm. When she got to the house, she knocked on the door and said very coolly, “Zilayefa, bring me my bathing soap and sponge.” As I was wondering why she needed them, I saw that her legs were stained black.

“What happened?” I asked.

“And bring my towel too,” she said, ignoring my question.

“What happened?” There was more urgency in my voice as I touched her and looked over every part of her body. My heart was pounding against my chest as I tried to imagine what could have happened that left her void of words. My mother never fought, and she did not look like she was injured in any way, but when she was upset, she got very quiet.

“Oil, Zilayefa,” she said, and turned away from me, walking towards the river. My mother hardly ever called me Zilayefa; she called me Yellow-Yellow, like everybody else.

“Oil? From where?” I was walking behind her, and then I heard people shouting.
A group of people, painted in the same black as my mother, some covered from head to toe, was marching to see the Amananaowei, the head of the village. I joined them to find out what had happened. It turned out some of them had also lost their farmland that day. They were marching to the Amananaowei’s house to report the matter and demand that he take it up with the oil company. Some were crying; others were talking about compensation.

I left them and ran to my mother’s farm. It was the first time I saw what crude oil looked like. I watched as the thick liquid spread out, covering more land and drowning small animals in its path. It just kept spreading and I wondered if it would stop, when it would stop, how far it would spread. Then there was the smell. I can’t describe it but it was strong—so strong it made my head hurt and turned my stomach. I bent over, and retched so hard I became dizzy. It felt like everything had turned to black and was spinning around me. There was so much oil, and we could do nothing with it—viscous oil that would not dry out, black oil that was knee-deep. I stayed there, in a daze, until someone shouted at me, “You no go commot for there? You dey look like say na beta tin’! Come on, leave dat place!”

The community took the matter up with the oil company that owned the pipes, but they said they suspected sabotage by the youths and were not going to pay compensation for all the destruction that the burst pipes had caused. And so it was that, in a single day, my mother lost her main source of sustenance. However, I think she had lost that land a long time ago, because each season yielded less than the season before. Not unlike the way she and others in the village had gradually lost, year after year, the creatures of the river to oil spills, acid rain, gas flares, and who knows what else, according to the voices on the radio.

TWO

“Yellow-Yellow.” That is what most people in my village called me because of my complexion, the product of a Greek father and an Ijaw mother. My father was a sailor whose ship had docked briefly in Nigeria about one year before I was born. After months at sea, he was just happy to see a woman and would have told her anything to have her company. The woman he chose was my mother, a young and naïve eighteen-year-old who had just moved to Port Harcourt from her small village with visions of instant prosperity. She had completed her secondary-school education and had passed her school-leaving examinations. With that qualification, she hoped to get a good job in Port Harcourt. After all, Nigeria was in the middle of the oil boom, and there were many businessmen around. She saw herself working as a secretary for one of them. Instead, she met my father at a disco and fell for him.

For the few weeks that he was in Port Harcourt, she was in heaven. She believed that she had found her life partner and that this man would take care of her. I don’t think my father ever told her that he would marry her; she just assumed that he would. Instead, he left Port Harcourt without saying good-bye. She went to the port to look for him one day, as had become her habit, and was told that his ship had left. There was no message; he was just gone, leaving behind his planted seed in my mother’s belle.

Disillusioned, my mother went back to her village to face the shame of being an unwed mother with nothing but dreams about my future. She would make sure that I accomplished what she had not. She had inherited a small piece of land from her family, which she farmed, and sometimes she would go fishing. With the proceeds, she was able to feed us and pay my school fees. She took care of all my needs and even went without sometimes to make sure that I got an education. For instance, she expelled herself from the women’s group so that she would not be forced to spend money on wrappers for their outings.

I think it was for a festival in another village that the women’s group had distributed the uniform wrapper to all their members. One month later, when the chairlady came to collect my mother’s payment, my mother brought the wrapper out from where it had been lying in her bedroom from the day it entered our house and handed it over to her.

“Na de money I come to collect o,” the chairlady said, trying not to sound irritated.

“I no get money so I dey return de cloth. I neva cut am,” my mother responded coldly.

“Bibi, na wa for you o. We all poor but we dey join hand help each other. De day wey you go need something, make you no come meet us o,” the chairlady threatened.

“I hear. I no join dis una women group again sef. I neva see any beta tin wey come out of am. Dey go!” My mother, still very detached, showed the chairlady out.

When the chairlady left, she sighed to herself, “I don’t even see what they do with the dues they collect. Better for me to save my money!” That was the end of women’s group activities for my mother and the beginning of her self-expulsion from all social groups.

My mother used to tell me that I would be better than her, that, as long as I was educated, I would be able to take care of myself. I did not question her. She said it with such conviction and made so many sacrifices to make sure that I went to school that I believed it to be true.
I did well in school. Compared to my classmates, I was above average. We did not have all the textbooks, because most of us could not afford them, and the school could barely afford to pay teachers, much less provide books. So, we relied entirely on taking copious notes during lectures, in addition to the notes that our teachers handed out to us. Since school was the only thing I had to worry about, it was not difficult keeping up with my schoolwork. Unlike other parents who kept their children busy, my mother would not allow me to do too many chores around the house or follow her into the bush for firewood and for the other things that people went into the bush for. It was almost as though she was obsessed, consumed by the idea that my education would save me from what I had yet to understand and what she could not explain to me. Perchance in saving me, she hoped to save herself.

***

Sometimes, when I would sit outside with boys and girls in my age group, we would listen to the radio, and sometimes we would sometimes hear an Ijaw person, living in Port Harcourt or Lagos, speaking about how the oil companies had destroyed our Niger Delta with impunity. They would discuss how the Ijaws and other ethnic groups were suffering and even dying while the wealth of their soil fed others. They would proffer ideas about what the oil companies and the government had to do.

These broadcasts drove the boys in my village to violence. If we had to suffer amidst such plenty, then these boys would cause as much havoc as possible until someone took interest in our plight and until justice, as they saw it, prevailed. Some of them joined the boys from other villages to kidnap oil company executives or bar oil company workers from doing their work. Mostly they were successful, but sometimes one or two of our boys failed to return from a mission. The word around the village was that the police had caught and killed them, but we would not hear about this on the radio.

Usually we did not get good reception on the radio, so we would play awigiri tapes and dance, but I had to be careful that my mother did not catch me. “Dance your whole brain away if you like,” she would say. She disliked me “wasting” my time; especially when there were better things to do like plan my entry into a university. In her dreams, I would go on to university and study a subject that would get me a good job with enough income to take care of myself. If I could take care of myself, then I could take care of her. She did not say this, but I knew what was expected of me: I was her only child, and she had made so many sacrifices for me. For this, I knew that if I did not take care of her when I could finally take care of myself, the spirits of the water would tie my womb and make sure that, for my ungratefulness, I never experienced the joy of motherhood.

The day my mother’s farmland was overrun by crude oil was the day her dream for me started to wither, but she carried on watering it with hope. The black oil that spilled that day swallowed my mother’s crops and unravelled the threads that held together her fantasies for me. She was able to find new farmland in another village, but it was not the same. Some who owned land they were not using would allow others to farm on it until they needed to use it. My mother got one such piece of land. She rowed her canoe there and back every day with unwavering determination. In her mind, she would find a way to make sure I completed my education. I did not care as much as she did about finishing school; I just wanted to leave the village. The sameness of life in the village would kill me if I did not escape.

All my life, I had always had something to do. Always had something planned for me by my mother. By the time I finished school, my mother did not have enough money for university. I could not even take the qualifying examinations because she did not have the registration fee. She promised herself that she would find it in time for the next year; after that, all she thought and spoke about was how to find the money for my schooling.

On one of those rare occasions that we got good reception on the radio, we heard that the oil companies had educational scholarships for Niger Delta indigenes. The problem was that we never got more information after that announcement. Nobody told us where we could go to apply for them. Nobody told us what exactly we needed in order to qualify for one. Somewhere out there were marvellous scholarships from the oil companies, but they were useless to us because no one in my village knew how to get them. None of this mattered much to me. I was as interested in these scholarships as I was in finishing school, but my mother saw this as a way to achieve her dream of my success.

Coming Soon!!!

2006-08-04T22:55:00.000+01:00

Finally!!! Yellow-Yellow, a novel about coming of age in the Nigerian Niger-Delta, is due out in September 2006.

It's taken a long time to finally get to the point where I am ready to share it with the world.

I must thank my tripod support - Rumbz, Efere and Aunty Fortune for propping me up and making sure that I saw this project to the end.

Hope you will enjoy it.

Details on how to get it will follow once it hits bookshelves.

A moment from my childhood

2006-02-07T23:10:00.000+01:00

It was right in front of me, a snake, a little green snake! I could not take my eyes off it and my limbs refused to assist me in a retreat. I clung onto the branch as sounds climbed through the air into my ears, “Jump! Jump!” “Little green snakes don’t bite.” “You better get down before mammie catches you up there.” Sour had replaced sweet on my lips. The images below me blurred as drops of sweat filtered through my eyelashes. Six eyes were looking up at me, there should have been eight but two were fixated on the arm of their owner, up, down and around, making sure that not a single drop of mango juice escaped. I wished my limbs would unlock so that I could reach for a hard green mango to throw down on Hadiza’s head. Because of her and her stupid ripe mango, my backside was going to get warmed with a few taps from mammie’s cane.

Queue Jumpers

2006-02-07T23:09:00.000+01:00

There were people napping on benches, others were buying snacks, travel accessories and other knick-knacks from the side kiosks, and some just quietly sat in the cars that brought them to the station. All kinds of luggage and parcels were scattered in a corner, just beside the row of benches. It was 6:00 a.m., a whole half hour until the sales counter would open. Almost everyone, especially those who were not holding a bus ticket, had one eye on the counter.

As soon as the counter opened, a long queue formed in front of it. Tickets were sold until there were only three people left on the queue. The saleswoman stopped to tally up her sales to make sure she had not oversold tickets for the journey. The 7:00 a.m. bus was the only bus to Lagos from Port Harcourt that morning. The next bus to Lagos would leave at 11 p.m. The three passengers left were getting jittery, shifting from one foot to the other and stretching their necks to get a glimpse of the tally sheet behind the glass windows. By this time the queue had broken up and the three people, a couple and another young lady, had gathered around the center of the counter. It seemed from the saleswoman’s calculations that there were four seats left on the bus.

As tickets were being written for the couple, two men, just arriving, joined the group in front of the sales counter. The couple took away their tickets and then one of the men who had just joined the group pushed his way past the young lady.

“Excuse me?” She said rather calmly.

He turned to look at her quizzically, “I just want to ask the woman a question.”

After asking what time the bus was scheduled to leave, he pulled out his cash from his pocket and as he was instructing the saleswoman to write a ticket for two, the young lady shouted,

“Excuse me, do you think I am standing here for my health? There is a queue!”

“Haba woman, what is wrong with you?”

“Are you serious? Did you not see me standing here when you came? Why do you think you can now buy your ticket before me? Do you have two heads?” She had finished before she realized that other passengers were looking at her and she felt a little embarrassed for losing her cool but she did not care. She was determined to get on that bus.

She turned to the saleswoman, expecting some support, expecting the saleswoman would return the Naira notes to the man in recognition of the order of the queue but that didn’t happen.

“Madam, what is wrong with you? How can you allow this man to jump the queue?” She spat out. Now she didn’t care if she did not get on the bus as long as the queue-jumpers did not get on either.

“Easy, I did not know there was a line.” He feigned ignorance.

“Are you stupid, did you think I was standing here because it will prolong my life?”

“Don’t insult me! Watch the way you talk to people.” He huffed.

“What? Show some manners first if you don’t want people to insult you.” By this time, even the cool morning air could not keep her temper down. She pushed the man with one hand, slammed her money down on the counter and shouted into the glass separating them from the saleswoman,

“If you sell a ticket to this man before me, there will be trouble in this place.” Then she said aloud, more to herself than to anyone in particular, “Have I lost my mind? Am I the only one who understands law and order?”

As if to answer her questions, a manager emerged from the doors behind the saleswoman and sold the young lady a ticket. She thanked him, collected her ticket and rushed to the bus, which was already boarding passengers.

She was still settling into her seat when she felt a tap on her shoulder. She looked behind her and the same man she had just had a quarrel with was sitting behind her with his co-queue jumper beside him. There was an extra seat after all.

“There is no need to be so angry. I did not know there was a queue.” He lied.

“Just leave me alone, next time look properly.” She accepted his half-offered apology.

“So what is your name?” He asked with a smile.

Without even giving the question a second thought, she turned around, rolled her eyes and muttered a “puhleeze” under her breath. There was no way she was going to get friendly with such an ill-mannered man, she thought to herself as she made herself comfortable for the long journey.

Uncle Shehu's baby

2006-02-07T23:07:00.000+01:00

I was curled up in the fetal position on the cold tile floor of my bathroom, where I had been for almost two hours. My sweat and the water that gushed out from between my legs had drenched my clothes and I was beginning to shiver from the cold and the pain. Every so often, I had to bite down on my towel to keep from screaming. My younger sisters had come to bang on the door several times and threatened to break down the door. I shouted to them to leave me alone. None of them knew what I was going through. For nine months I had struggled to find the right words and the right time to tell my family that I was pregnant. Everyone would have wanted to know who the father was and I could not tell them that I was 18 years old and with child for Uncle Shehu, my father’s buddy. Each time I played out the conversation in my head, I saw my mother crying, my father blaming my mother for failing to keep me on the moral straight and narrow, and then grabbing a big wooden pestle from the kitchen with which he would pound Uncle Shehu into a pulp. I was more concerned about my fate than with the baby’s and I wished I could close my eyes and wish it all away. I had no idea what I was going to do when my secret finally came screaming into the world.