by Jennifer Juo
Behind him, a small pickup truck followed, carrying bags of hybrid maize seeds. The bags were printed with the insignia of a maize plant, the iconic logo of Cole Agribusiness, an American multinational. As the truck drove over deep potholes, its contents were thrown around. A bag toppled off the truck, yellow seeds spilling onto the dirt road.
He came to a painted house in the middle of the forest. Its mud walls were decorated with red, black, and white geometric patterns. The design had a dizzying effect as if it were an illusion. Winston wondered if it was a symbol or if it was meant to ward off something. The decorated house, perhaps belonging to the chief, was surrounded by a cluster of plain mud huts. Winston and his colleagues approached the house. Children with flies clustered around their eyes shouted out O’Ebo. Their screams served as a warning, and other villagers started to appear. Women, with babies wrapped on their backs, stopped pounding yam and stood by their large, mahogany mortars and pestles, staring at the newcomers.
A rag-tag group of villagers dressed in torn t-shirts and batik wrappers started to congregate. A woman with a baby on her back tripped on a small stone. Winston tried to steady her, but the woman regarded him with suspicion.
Winston thought of his own wife and baby. He knew he had fled them, feeling confused and helpless. He had married Sylvia because he thought she had understood his work, its significance to the world and to him. But since the baby’s arrival, he felt she had changed. All her focus went to the baby. She had lost interest in his work, in her dream of nursing, and only seemed resentful of his travelling.
He felt betrayed in some small way, making him retreat. Everything he had learned in his life programmed him to protect himself. He thought of his mother, those dark days hiding in the broken building, the terrible way he had lost her. He had vowed he would never feel that way again. It had become his mantra, a mantra-building wall, monastic-like, holing his heart up in a small, six-by-six foot cell.
Winston’s Nigerian colleague, Tunde, explained to the villagers, “Dese men are here with an international NGO. The Agriculture Development Agency, the ADA 2000 project. Dey are working to improve farming in Nigeria. Dey have new solutions. Can we meet with you and your chief?” Tunde was a local agricultural extension worker, a position newly created by the national government to support the project. But Winston noticed the villagers seemed to regard him with caution.
The ADA 2000 project in West Africa was funded by a major philanthropic foundation in New York and donor governments like the United States and the United Kingdom. By distributing free “Starter Packs” with bags of seed, fertilizer, and pesticides to small rural farmers in Nigeria, the project leaders hoped to jumpstart high-yielding hybrid maize production. The goal was to find an initial group to cultivate their land as a demonstration plot and then scale up throughout Nigeria and West Africa. As a partner in the ADA 2000 project, Cole Agribusiness supplied the hybrid maize seeds while the ADA was tasked with distribution, outreach, and training among local farmers.
Winston and his colleague Richard, a thin, sunburned Englishman, sat down with the male villagers, even though he would later learn, it was the women in Nigeria and West Africa who did the bulk of the farming—tending to the crops every day, planting, and harvesting. The men helped seasonally with the hard labor such as clearing new land or making the mounds of dirt to plant new yams. But the women were not called to the meeting, and Winston, not fully understanding the roles of women in farming, did not request their attendance.
Winston and his colleagues sat on a bench on the side of the painted house, their backs leaning against the geometric patterns. In front of the house, a man sat in a pile of wood shavings, holding a large knife. He wielded the knife adeptly, carving a stool from a single piece of wood. They sat waiting for the chief. The villagers assembled around them, staring at the O’Ebos or foreigners, and Winston didn’t feel entirely welcome. But he noticed one man, wearing a Nigerian All Stars soccer T-shirt, grinning widely at him, seemingly eager to talk.
“My name is Simeon Balewa. I’m de chief Balewa’s son,” he said, pointing at himself. He was a stout man with a round face, friendly eyes, and like his fellow villagers, three scars engraved into each cheek, the identity marks of his tribe.
“Where are you from?” Simeon looked directly at Winston. “I know de English, but neva seen a man like you.” He seemed more educated than your average villager.
“China,” Winston responded.
“China? What it look like in China?”
“Much like this but rice paddies,” Winston said.
“Like dis?” Simeon said, seeming curious and surprised.
Finally, the chief came out of the painted house. He wore a flowing agbada, and Winston felt somewhat intimidated. The chief sat down on a wooden stool held up by ornately carved elephants. A woman poured palm wine from a bright yellow plastic container into an enamel tin cup. Winston winced when he saw the old label for engine oil on the side of the yellow plastic container.
“Please,” the chief said as the woman held out another cup to him. The chief wore a fake gold Rolex watch, but Winston noticed the hands of the watch were frozen in time, either broken or the battery needed to be replaced.
Winston took a polite sip of the thick, milky drink. “We’re doctors of the soil and plants,” he explained.
“Is that so?” the chief retorted, and his eyes narrowed in disbelief. His attitude reflected his thoughts; no doubt he had met many a white man coming to his village promising magic—first it was their God, then their doctors, and now doctors of the dirt.
“These are improved seeds, hybrid seeds. We crossed two different breeds to produce a new, stronger, and healthier plant. You’ll get two or even four times more harvest with this improved seed,” Richard explained, waving the seeds in his hand with a flourish. It all sounded like a modern Jack and the Beanstalk.
“Eh, what is dis? Dis I neva heard before. You white people, always coming wit something. Promising miracles.” The chief let out a loud, raucous laugh.
“We’re part of the Green Revolution. Scientists in America made these seeds. They were successful in Asia, where I come from. Before, people were starving. Now, everyone’s belly is full,” Winston said, patting his own stomach for effect.
“Ha! Da Green Revolution, eh! Dis is new; I haven’t heard of dis one. Who is it going to make rich dis time?” The chief clapped his hands loudly and rubbed them together, but Winston noticed Simeon listening intently.
“This Starter Pack we will give each of you for free,” Winston continued. “It should be enough to plant a one hectare plot.” He showed them the contents of the Starter Pack—a ten-kilogram bag of hybrid maize seeds, a fifty-kilo bag of nitrogen fertilizer, and a small pesticide backpack containing a hand-pumped sprayer. The ADA 2000 Starter Pack program was part of the American aid package to West Africa, millions of dollars pledged, then used to purchase the seeds and inputs from Cole Agribusiness.
“Free, eh?” the chief looked even more suspicious. “What you tink I am? I am not stupid. Noting is for free in dis world.”
“Can we look at your farms?” Winston changed the subject. He could see they weren’t making progress with the chief. He thought they might fare better talking to the individual villagers, and he wanted to talk to Simeon directly.
The chief waved his hand dismissively. He said to Simeon, “Son, show dem de fields.”
The “fields” were small, random, slash and burn clearings in the forest, each one full of tomato, cassava, cowpeas, and okra. In between the plants were piles of dirt, some three feet tall. Simeon dug into one of these mounds with his machete, producing a large, gray-brown tuber.
Without the chief, the men were more talkative.
“Don’t listen to my fatha. He is of de old way. But not me. I practice de new way. I go to missionary school. Ma wife and I, we practice family planning. You know dis? Family planning? We only have four children,” Simeon said.
“He o
nly has four children because he has problems…you know da kind I’m talking about,” another villager laughed.
“How was your last harvest?” Winston asked the villagers.
“No good, sah. We had small small rain last year,” Simeon said.
Winston opened a bag of the high-yielding maize seeds. He scooped up a handful and showed the villagers. These were the seeds of plenty, manufactured from the good intentions of Western science. Winston, the bearer of these seeds to Africa, on that first sunny day, was himself bewitched by their promises.
***
After several months of peddling the seeds, Winston’s truck of seeds was still just that—full of seeds. Of the small number of Starter Packs that had actually been distributed, half had been left unused and pecked by chickens while industrious wives had sold the other half at the market. These same wives poured out the pesticide and used the empty metal canisters and backpacks for carrying water. Winston estimated that some of the buyers at these industrious wives’ stalls might have planted some seeds. But without the fertilizers and pesticides, he didn’t know if the laboratory-bred seeds would work their magic.
All in all, Winston knew, the last few months had not been particularly successful. But he told himself, it was only the beginning, although he had envisioned a different kind of beginning altogether. He dreamed of being a hero of sorts, saving the world from hunger and all that. But was he really after saving lives or was he trying to salvage his own life? The question waged a quiet tug of war in the back of his mind.
Winston and Richard drove to the same painted house in the forest outside the town of Ife, about fifty miles east of their compound in Ibadan. Simeon greeted them, smiling, “My fatha is at a funeral in anotha village. But please, please, welcome to my village.”
Without the chief around, Winston hoped they would have success with Simeon and the younger generation of the village.
Simeon showed Winston and Richard his home and introduced them to his wife, Abike. Winston squinted as he entered the dark, smoky mud hut. As his eyes adjusted, he could make out a small fire in the middle of the hut and some straw sleeping mats in the corner. Simeon seemed somewhat embarrassed by his living quarters.
“Your hut is nice and cool,” Winston complimented Simeon. “The palm leaf roof creates a breeze unlike the tin roof bungalows the British built. It’s so hot in those.”
“You tink so?” Simeon said, confused. “I like de British house betta.”
“Well, then you’ll have to get air condition,” Winston said, and Simeon grinned.
Winston stepped out of the hut and stood in the middle of the village. Flies buzzed around his shoes, attracted by the animal dung from the cattle and goats kept inside the village walls at night. Women with babies strapped to their backs crouched on the ground crushing alligator pepper to flavor their stews—reddish brown seeds from the pods of trumpet-shaped purple flowers, a cardamom-like peppery spice known by Portuguese traders as the grains of paradise. Children with protruding navels, the telltale sign of malnutrition, clustered around him. Although the Western media concentrated on famine in their stories, Winston knew the lack of protein in growing children was the more insidious killer on the continent.
Simeon led them to the fields bordering the village.
“Can we take some samples of your soil?” Winston asked. “We need to test its nutrient levels in order to decide how much fertilizer you will need.”
“Yes, yes of course,” Simeon said.
Winston set to work with a group of villagers watching. He put on rubber gloves to avoid contaminating the soil sample with the calcium chloride in his own sweat. He first scraped leaves and manure from the surface of the soil. Then he pushed a long metal probe into the ground about a foot deep. The probe pulled up a core of soil in its tube, which he emptied into a clean, plastic bucket. He did this several more times, then carefully put the soil samples into plastic bags, which he placed in a cooler full of ice for transporting back to the lab. The ice kept the soil cold to avoid mineralization caused by the heat.
After he was done, they walked back to the shade of a thatched canopy made of dried palm leaves, built at the center of the village. A group of villagers followed them and sat down, the group quickly increasing in size.
“I will bring stools to sit on,” Simeon said to Winston and Richard, embarrassed that his countrymen sat on straw mats on the ground. Simeon returned with intricately carved wooden stools for them.
“I don’t think your father will notice we took the samples, the cores were very small,” Winston said.
“No problem, no problem. My fatha is backward. If we follow him, we no move to de future.”
“My father was like that too. He didn’t want me to study science and come to the West,” Winston said.
“We can’t listen to dem. Dey are of de old ways.” Winston recognized that impatient, dissatisfied tone of youth in Simeon’s voice. “I want to be like de English wit lights and TV and air con.”
Winston understood what that glimpse into the modern Western world could do, how it made you look at your own people, how it drove you to want something more. He had felt that same longing when he first saw a visiting American professor’s house in Taipei. In the professor’s house on campus, there was a flush toilet with a seat. It was so clean, Winston was impressed; he was obsessively hygienic. After that, he couldn’t use the Chinese latrine, that reeking hole in the ground. He was embarrassed at how backward his people were. They used to be the Chinese Empire and they had fallen to this.
“Listen, plant our seeds. You’ll get two or three times more harvest,” Winston explained. “Sell the surplus at the market. Eventually, you’ll make enough money to buy a TV and an electricity generator. You can have lights and air condition in your house too.”
“Is that so?” Simeon said. “De whole village will go envy me, eh?”
“Not me, brotha,” said a tall, well-built man with a permanent scowl on his face. Simeon introduced him as Oluwa, his brother-in-law, married to his eldest sister.
“Oluwa, you’re as backward as my fatha. No wonder my sister married you. You not smart enough to study at de missionary school. Dey send you home,” Simeon said, laughing at him.
“I don’t want your T.V. or whateva,” Oluwa said, angry now. “I grow enough to feed my family. We take de left over, and my wife sells at de market. Enough we can buy all de tings we need.”
“Tst Simeon, you de one stupid,” Oluwa continued, pointing to Simeon. “Dey go be robbing you blind, eh.”
“If you grow more maize, you can also use the extra cash to hire someone to help you on the farm,” Winston said, trying another approach.
“But, why would I want to do dat?” Oluwa said, appearing ready for a good fight.
“So you can relax, sit under this tree, and enjoy the lovely view,” Richard said, grinning. “Like so.” He sat down, crossed his legs, and pretended to enjoy the view of the towering jungle beyond the village.
“But dat is what I do now.” Oluwa’s wide eyes looked indignant, and he looked around at his fellow villagers, his eyes bulging and his mouth stretched in an expression of ridicule. The other men laughed, but Simeon did not join in the laughter.
Winston didn’t know what to say. In one sentence, the man had questioned the core of capitalism—the grow more, want more, get rich mentality. Winston felt uncomfortable and suddenly out of place as if he and Richard had been accidently dropped in the jungle, bundled haphazardly in some sort of aid care package. He imagined the villagers staring in awe but then quickly casting it (and them) aside. He didn’t like the way Oluwa had laughed at their expense as if hinting at some superior knowledge of the way things would turn out in the end. There was some truth to what Oluwa was saying. Perhaps Oluwa could see right through him, see him for the charlatan he might be, nothing more than a man with a bag of tricks. Winston stood up abruptly and took his leave. Only Simeon took a Starter Pack and agreed to plant the hybrid mai
ze seeds as a demonstration plot on his small farm. Winston and Richard drove off in silence; the orange dirt swirled in front of their jeep, caking the windshield with a layer of dust.
SYLVIA
Chapter 6
Sylvia had married Winston as an escape, but in reality, she found herself in a prison full of large rooms, high fences, and the solitary company of herself. She kept the young doctor’s card in her pocket for a few days, touching it occasionally before eventually placing it underneath a dusty stack of canned Chinese food in her kitchen pantry. She didn’t know why she hid it there or why she had to hide it at all. But she knew Winston wouldn’t have any reason to enter the pantry and the servants could not read.
While she was in the pantry, Sylvia stood staring at the rows of canned Chinese food around her. She had forced the essence of her culture into the boundaries of a suitcase, cramming her bags with bottles of soy sauce, sweet lychees, fermented black bean sauce, and dried ro sung pork purchased in London’s Chinatown. Since Lila’s birth, these bottles and tins had sat on the shelves of her pantry, collecting dust. Suddenly, her mouth watered for her forgotten food. She took a tin of sweet lychees off the shelf and walked into the kitchen she had seldom used, looking for a can opener.
In an effort to make something of her marriage and life, she turned to the food of her culture. It required great improvisation to cook Chinese food in Africa. With her steward Energy’s help, she planted dark, leafy green Chinese vegetables in the back garden. She found a local supply of soybeans on the compound, an experimental plot grown by the scientists.
She made the tofu from scratch. It was a labor-intensive process that involved soaking the beans for several days until they were soft. Then she strained the creamy mixture through a cheese cloth to produce the liquid soymilk which she poured into a plastic Tupperware container. She placed several of Winston’s heavy books on top to harden the tofu. It was a labor of love, an effort to please her husband, all of her loneliness and longing went into this process.
