Ibadan of the Beggars

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Chidiebube onye Okohia

Ibadan of the Beggars

 

 

[W]here, where was a, where was a place?
   —Gerard Manley Hopkins, “The Wreck of the Deutschland”

 

 

Another long day as a corps member1 in the Ministry of Information, Culture, and Tourism. I stood beside the perpetually open door of the registry, hesitant to go in, and thinking of the novel excuse to relay to the man almost always sitting behind a frayed desk, littered with dog-eared papers. I finally heaved a sigh, walked in and it seemed like he had been waiting for me.
  “What about that thing that we talked about?” he asked.
  “Sir, honestly, I don’t have any money now. I’m very broke. I even used OPay2 to get here today. I’m owing a lot of people money and I’m even struggling to survive sef.”3
  “Ahn-ahn! Big man like you! You can’t even gimme money to buy bread? You don’t have common hundred naira?”4
  “I don’t have anything. I’m sorry, sir. I’ve told you before that when I have, I’ll see5 you.”
  He finally opened the foolscap exercise book where everyone was obliged to register in and out once they came for work. I brought out a pen and entered my details and desired to exit the office.
  “E ṣé,6 sir.”
  “Ehn.”
  His reply was dry. Dry like the miserable beret he used to cover his head. The faded suit that he wore daily was also sere, thrice his body size, hiding the slim outlines of his body—like the clothes were wearing him. The démodé office was as desiccated as his clothes. A wasteland. And there was something about the way he probed every corper7 for money like he was indigent. He was a boss—as I have come to know it—but he was one whose sole purpose in civil service was to keep records—torn, old, mangled files heaped indiscriminately in shelves where dust and cobwebs have made a home; in this current age of fast technology, they are still unwilling, or perhaps unable, to upgrade to electronic records.
  Baba W— must be paid this due. He must be paid his money. That was the dogma here. He earned much more than corpers yet he inevitably desired to collect free money. “Na so we meet am; na so we go dey do am,”8 shouted the mantra, albeit unwritten, that flooded the consciousness of all the senior members of staff and their temporary superiors. Part of what strengthened his desire to gouge corpers, like a rabid woodpecker, was the fact that when it was time for the monthly reviews, he might put in a word for or against the lucky or woebegone defendant based on whether he was or was not shown love.9 If the fellow was that unfortunate, his testimony will be that he did not know the defendant and thus the defendant had been absent from duty without official leave.
  I was determined not to listen to his requests; his expectation was irrational.
  Eventually, I carried my tired self away from the second floor of the three-story structure. At the portal that led to the first of many steps that ushered workers and visitors to the offices there, stood the ostiary10 in his faded khaki. The man, a sexagenarian, having found a serendipity through the naive me two months earlier when I eventually, although through a chivvy entreaty, spared him a hundred naira, had come to see me now as at a deadlock with him. But he was relentless still. He brought his face in front of me. It puckered and then let out a gradual, amplified smile. His lips palpitating, pleaded, “Ẹ jọ̀, bros . . . ehn . . . no forget your boy.”11
  I was astounded and ashamed. He was four times my age and yet he belittled himself because he wanted me to grease his palms.
  “Sir, mi ò ní12 anything.”
  “But maybe next time,” I replied.
  “OK. Odààrò,”13 he saluted as I departed even as I disobliged him. The consistency of his mendicant nature would not end today. No. The beggarly suasion was sewn in the fabric of his consciousness—like a genetic trait that acts as a stamp of the native Ibadan phratry14—and was enacted whenever he came to serve (or perhaps slave) for his monthly remuneration. He would implore tomorrow, too, like he did every other day.
  I left the Youth and Sports building which housed the ministry where I worked, and trekked the long road away from the environment that spoke of decay, disintegration, decrepitude. But something unusual happened as I reached the main gate to the secretariat. I think I was the only one who noticed the animation. The overhead talking drums—a cement-constructed design to notify passersby of the culture and tradition of Oyo State—on either side of the entry and exit routes began the drumming—du-dum-du-dum—in rapidity just as my conscience abruptly called a meeting to know if my commissions or omissions, deeds or misdeeds, giving or hoarding were acceptable; an adjudication was imminent. Scruples pricking me were my first critiques of every action or inaction. As I walked out of the gate, presently, my mind recalled Matthew chapter 25:35–36, when Jesus emphasized: I was hungry and you fed me, thirsty and you gave me a drink; I was a stranger and you received me in your homes, naked and you clothed me; I was sick and you took care of me, in prison and you visited me. And as my movement switched between my right and left legs, it betokened the growing parallel tension in my conscience. I also knew within me that givers never lacked; however, giving bribe or the like was not part of that Biblical ideal. In like manner, while the heart of the giver might find seeming empathy to alleviate the temporary plight of the beggar, the head scurried around the facts of hearsay that no one should ever trust these street supplicants—possibly because it has been said that the helper might become ill-fated and the begging was simply a hoax to shorten the helper’s lifespan or add malediction to their fate. To give credence to the foregoing, I once heard—in the most baffling of stories—that someone disguised himself as a beggar and traveled to a faraway place, where he was unknown, to beg for alms just for the sake of moneymaking ritual.15 Another tale, a far more frightful one, was about a giver who vaporized into the gossamer air after handing out alms to a needy. To be most determined to disregard these superstitious narrations and give, is to latch onto unrivaled faith—to believe one is giving to one’s god and not to man.
  The verdict is eventually passed and I am absolved of my wrongs.
  Five flocks of malimbes16 hurried past the afternoon sky, their coupled colors urged on by the burning, all-seeing, yellow sun. But this sweet moment of a rare spectacle was snatched away by another all-too-familiar sour situation; and the more I neglected the Vincentian codes (of giving to the poor, helping the impoverished) that spoke to my critical assessment of the false claim to penury of the never-ending requesters—the more I dodged them—the more they haunted me. A man, a swarthy man with a pronounced paunch and underweight in aspect, came close to me and whispered that I should save his life with just twenty naira—a petty note that was gradually becoming obsolete like ten and five naira. There was a tint of cowardice or shame that was plastered on his face. The uniform glow of his blue asoebi17—like those of personages who frequent Saturday functions to indulge in the heavy dosage of Ówàḿbẹ̀18—pronounced him well-to-do.
  “Mi ò ní19 change, sir”—the sir I uttered was a regular addendum to any response to anyone older than I was by great degrees. “Mo n lọ20 Gate.”
  “OK,” he responded and with a tense break, he added, “God bless you.” His steps calculated, in backward retreat, he moved close to an electric pole at the edge of the walls that served as part of the gate of the secretariat. His wide eyes wet, skin perspiring, and clothes swaying to the lilt of the afternoon breeze, he surely was hoping the fortuitous nature of life would bring him his manna and messiah.
  As I have observed in this city, as one would want to describe concourses of such shade, the beggars do not recline at pavements in some characteristic tableaux that would seem to cast a flashback to one of those bus stops of bustling Lagos, my residence from time immemorial. Here, they emerge like apparitions, stealing the peace you had when your heart and mind was not in the state of deciding to give or not give, or if the person was truly needy or not. This was part of the deviation from the many lies I was told before bringing myself here.
  People—many people—hurt my eardrums with the emphasis that things, especially food, housing, and other domestic amenities were cheap. Cheap they exclaimed—that I would not spend too much and have enough savings to fall back to. But the theory of their words has been betrayed by my practical experience. The “inexpensive” talk was a lie. These beggars are testaments to the prevarication. If things were actually as cheap as they professed them to be, the noisome littering of hungry mouths around every curve and corner—at Mokola under bridge, in Challenge bus stop, at Ojoo park, around the main market at Molete, and at Gate—would not be this many. Perhaps it is desire that has caused so many to take up begging as both an avocation and vocation. There is a sliver of truth therein: those who even by chance have found infrequent white-collar jobs as occupation still have a sticky laziness holding them from being proactive; to resume at ten antemeridian and close no later than three postmeridian.
  There were other lies, too, that I heard. The lies that Ibadan was a village and had no semblance of a civilized, progressive economy—while the former is inherently wrong, there is a tinge of truth in the latter. This city has a lot of evidence of history scattered about, but left to ruin and rot. My eldest brother who actualized his undergraduate dreams, moved here to spend four years at the University of Ibadan. He was the exception to the liars because he emphasized that Ibadan paralleled Lagos in terms of ambiance and ado. He spoke in his most authoritative yet sanguine voice that I would not really miss Lagos if I came here—de place dey all right.21 But here I am missing Lagos, clinging to every dreg of its picturesque thought like a yearling nibbling at the nipples of its mother.
  I was still at the front of the gate of the secretariat, at a side where okadas22 wait for passengers—the ardent reader would understand so far my need to delve into details about other things to give flourish and flesh to this narration. I hopped on one, explaining that I was headed to Gbagi market, and agreed to pay him a hundred naira after haggling over the bloated fare with him. Gbagi market was where they said you could get any type of clothing you needed, and I desired a particular denim top to complement a quaint fashion of dressing I had recently stumbled on from the seventies; I was willing to adjust my taste in wearables.
  Riding at speed limit in the potholed asphalt that referenced the vehicular swiftness in Need for Speed, my conveyor finally disengaged me from his transport. From the entrance of the market, I could see that it was an extensive array of shops. The aisle that led through different corners of the big market was a greatly peopled place; one needed to move meticulously through the gaps between customers and sellers. No sooner had I arrived than I encountered, for the umpteenth rencounter—if I may use the word—the infinite solicitation for money. Two young girls—too young to be engaged in this kind of activity—walked assuredly to me even as they donned their white hijab. They refused to speak but directed their hands in a form of prayer, giving a presentation of genuflection, but rising abruptly and going down again in continuous motion; they were registering me to be their god. I ignored them but they were persistent. As I walked away, they stalked my steps, following me like flies that latch onto an unclean bottom.
  “Wòó, mi ò ní23change,” I finally looked their way.
  “Má ṣè yọnu, a ní ṣéènjì. Élòó lo ní?24 They responded quite genially.
  “Ah!” The exclamation broke out of my mouth. “O ní change, àbí?25 And you’re begging me for money?” I appended the English with a certain disgust.
  “Ẹ jọ̀ọ́ . . . ẹjọ̀ọ́, sah.”26
  I stared at them intensely like I was ready to beat them up. Watching my demeanor and seeing I was unswayed, they hurriedly left. I decided to go on with what intentions brought me to the market; but after touring the length and breadth of the market, I did not find what I wanted—one vendor referring me to another, another referring me to others. Fatigue had eaten into my strength and I felt I had wasted the hour coming to this part of the city. I had just four hundred naira left and I was hoping to use the ATM for withdrawal but there was no need for it anymore. I came back to the entrance of the market and entered a keke27 to save cost.28 As the keke gathered its four necessary passengers and was ready to leave—I, sitting at one of the edges—one of the young girls reappeared and tapped me slightly. I could only capture a glance of her as we were in motion. I shook my head just as I watched her let out a sheepish smile. I reclined back into the canopy of the keke.
  The keke stopped at Gate bus stop—the last bus stop before my destination—and as I stepped down to go home, this time, a cripple, having the appearance of a Northerner, wheeled nearer to me on his board. The heavy bags of flushed flesh under his eyes and the taut veins sprouting on his face were evident marks of the weakness and marks of woe he had much endured. He opened his famished mouth to seek my attention.
  “Oga, abeg, just gimme enitin wey you get. Enitin.29
  At that moment—with the corporal works of mercy in my mind and after rebuffing the overtures of other supplicants—as I stood, I understood that I should be a standard of almsgiving and for that I should stand out; for after all, I had cash with me. I dipped my sweaty hands into the back pocket of my jeans, intending to offer him one of the newly circulated two-hundred naira notes gotten from the okada man but it was not there anymore. I had spent a hundred naira using the keke and I had just hundred naira left. I only realized at that point that the money must have been pickpocketed when one of the young girls tapped me. Oh, yes! It was her who had stolen from me. Presently, I was in a state of dilemma—giving the beggar all I had and trekking home or refusing him like the others. And for a second, the cripple kept looking at me with his eyes, those eyes debased like that of an imploring dog. I gave him the money and he bathed me with praises. And as I left, I knew, just then, that I had performed a corporal duty. I smiled halfheartedly.
  I had met a needy beggar, but I, too, needed money. But charity won the day.

 

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1  A Nigerian graduate who undergoes a mandatory one-year paramilitary service to the nation.

2  The parent company of the e-hailing service, ORide.

3  Nigerian English: By the way.

4  Nigerian currency (565 naira ≈ 1 USD).

5  Nigerian English: Get back to you.

6  Yoruba: Thank you.

7  Colloquial term for corps members.

8  Pidgin: That is how we met it; that is how we would be doing it.

9  Nigerian English: Given bribe.

10  A porter or doorman.

11  Please, brother, don’t forget your pal.

12  Yoruba: I don’t have.

13  Yoruba: Goodbye.

14  A descent or kinship group.

15  Nigerian English: a type of ritual killing where the victim’s life is exchanged for instant wealth.

16  The crested malimbe, predominantly black and red.

17  Yoruba: A ceremonial uniform dress.

18  Yoruba: A flamboyant, lavish party.

19  Yoruba: I don’t have.

20  Yoruba: I’m going to.

21  Pidgin: The place is good enough.

22  Commercial motorbikes.

23  Yoruba: See, I don’t have.

24  Yoruba: Don’t worry, we have change. How much do you have?

25  Yoruba: You have change, really?

26  Yoruba: Please . . . please, sir.

27  Commercial tricycle, a rickshaw.

28  Nigerian English: to cut down on expenses.

29  Pidgin: Sir, please, just give me anything you have. Anything.