by Jennifer Juo
Winston took Sylvia to the compound doctor the next day. They sat together in the clinic room. The newly-hired American doctor offered a clear diagnosis. He was not clouded by love.
“Is she having nightmares?” he said.
“Yes,” Winston answered for her.
Sylvia was silent, a prisoner-patient held captive by her husband.
“Is she over-anxious all the time?”
“Yes. She tried to take her life,” Winston added in a low voice.
At the mention of her suicide attempt, the doctor’s expression turned serious.
“Has she ever had any previous psychological problems or any family history of psychological problems?”
Winston looked over at Sylvia.
She nodded. “My brother is…schizophrenic.”
“But you, yourself, have you ever been treated for any psychological issues?”
“No,” she said truthfully. Suddenly she wanted the doctor to solve her problems. Could he or was she going mad?
The doctor looked down at his notes and paused.
“I think she might be suffering from neurological side effects of the malaria pills. It’s just a guess, but her symptoms all point to this.”
“The malaria pills?” Sylvia was surprised when she thought all along she was pining for her lover. “The ones I’ve been taking every Sunday for all these years?”
“We’re only just discovering that the pills have neurological side effects on some people. Makes them anxious and gives them nightmares or hallucinations.”
“I’m going to prescribe a new kind of malaria pill, hopefully it should put a stop to these neurological effects. Still, it will take time for her to recover. But meanwhile, you’ll need to keep an eye on her.”
The doctor looked directly at Sylvia. “I’m going to recommend a psychologist in town for you to see once a week. Also, I recommend easing all stress.”
As they drove home, Winston placed his hand over hers. She was surprised, stunned by this small gesture. Had they been happy? She tried to remember the night they had met, walking together on the cold, dark campus. Back then, she had felt the anticipation of something better, different. But those feelings felt foreign to her now.
The first thing Winston decided was to pack the children off to boarding school. He said Sylvia needed time to recover without having to care for them. But she knew he also wanted them out of the way. He didn’t want them to see their mother like this. He asked Richard for a referral to the schools he sent his children to in England. This way, arrangements could be made quickly. Elizabeth, now living in the UK near her children, offered to pick up Thomas and Lila at the Gatwick airport and take them to the school.
***
Sylvia said good-bye to her children in the driveway of her house on the day they left for England in September 1985. The snakes in the bamboo bushes near the house were quiet. She hugged them both, tears collecting in her eyes.
“Mama, get better,” Lila whispered to her as she hugged her. Sylvia held her tightly not wanting to let her go. Her daughter was thirteen years old now. She had prevented her from returning to the spirit world for all these years, and now she was still losing her to another world.
The children got into the car with Winston and Ige, who would drive them to the airport in Lagos. The children would fly to England as unaccompanied minors, taken care of by an air stewardess until they touched down at Gatwick airport and the stewardess could hand the children over to Elizabeth. Elizabeth promised to send a telex as soon as they arrived. Although most of the children on the compound travelled as unaccompanied minors and clearly nothing had happened to them, Sylvia still worried. She twirled her hair into tangled knots, thinking of her children lost, wandering around in a foreign country.
Without Lila and Thomas, the house felt eerily quiet. Sylvia wandered around from room to room, the empty spaces hollow, soundless. It distilled her life back to where she had begun with just her and Winston in the room.
WINSTON
Chapter 34
Since his wife had stopped taking the malaria pills, she seemed slightly better. But it was a slow recovery. The anxiety decreased somewhat, but Winston knew she still had the nightmares. The doctor had said the nightmares would linger for some time.
One night, after the children had left, his wife screamed in the dark and kicked him in bed. He jumped out of the bed, startled. He shook her out of her dream, and she sat up. She said—I was dreaming about fire, I had to fight it. It was consuming us.
Winston stood at the side of her bed. Lie down and go back to sleep, he said. It was not real. It was just a dream. He helped her lie down again. He climbed into bed and placed his hand on her shoulder, not knowing what else to do. Then he lay down himself. He fell back into his own nightmarish dreams—there was a fire and the silhouette of a man he recognized.
***
In October 1985, thugs hired by the neighboring plantation came in the night and burned Simeon’s village fields. What little was left, bug-eaten, burned to the ground. The laws were on their side. The wealthy plantation farmer could leverage the new land laws to annex poor peasants’ plots that bordered his farm, all in the name of modernization and development. Simeon and the other farmers refused to leave the land. But by law, since Simeon had no paperwork to show for it, Simeon didn’t own the land that his ancestors had lived on for generations. And so the thugs came and burned his fields just before harvest.
The black smoke whirled around, incensing the villagers, their red eyes stinging. It was not only the fields they burned. Part of the sacred forest next to the village was also torched. This was a virgin forest, untouched for centuries. Simeon’s village had promised to guard this village with their lives, and so, led by Simeon, the villagers marched on the plantation with hoes and machetes.
The plantation owner called the police and paramilitary forces to restore order on his farm, to rid him of these intruders. The police were brutal, unnecessarily so.
***
Winston and Donna heard the news of the riot at the plantation and the subsequent crushing of the farmers by the police forces. They traveled quickly to Simeon’s region, driving the jeep into the night even though they both knew this was dangerous. The number of armed robbers on this lonely road had increased recently. The government had imposed a sunset curfew in part because of the alarming number of highway robbers. In the mid-eighties, Nigeria was becoming more violent, the political machinery was full of thugs, and ordinary people were simply trying to make ends meet. There was a sense of lawlessness. Winston knew Hans, a Swiss colleague, had been held up on the road recently at night. They killed his driver, hit Hans in the head, and drove off in his Peugeot.
Richard had advised them to wait until tomorrow morning when it would be safer to make the drive. But Winston was worried about Simeon and his family. He had heard some farmers had been killed, and many, including women and children, were injured.
In the darkness, they approached Simeon’s village. He could not see any of the usual paraffin lamps. Winston tried not to fear the worst. This man had become his friend over the years. As they drove closer, he noticed the village had been burned as well, the mud huts scorched, razed by the paramilitary troops. Winston got out of the car. He could smell the charred stench of desolation.
***
Winston and Donna found Simeon at a makeshift clinic, a tent set up by a local doctor. Simeon lay on a blue tarp on the dirt floor along with scores of other injured patients. As Winston came closer, he was shocked when he saw Simeon’s leg—a bloody stump in bandages, sliced off by a madmen’s machete. Simeon saw Winston approaching and tried to sit up.
“Don’t,” Winston said, putting his hand on Simeon’s shoulder and forcing him to lie back down on the tarp. He crouched down next to him.
“Dey chop my leg off. I am one legged now. De one legged farmer! Look at me!” Simeon said it in a joking manner, but Winston saw the horror behind his eyes. He knew what losing
a leg meant for a farmer. He would become an invalid now, a burden to his family.
“We’ll fight them,” Donna said, undeterred. If anything, he thought, she seemed further strengthened by the sight of so many bloody and injured people. It gave her license to respond with equal aggression.
For Winston, the stench of the decaying bodies had the opposite effect. It weakened him. It brought up memories he didn’t want dug up. But they came to him, flooding his mind whether he wanted them or not—he thought of his dying mother, her lifeless, cold body.
Everyone in his generation had a war story, an escape-from-China story they carried around on their backs like old Chinese peasants, an amorphous cloth bundle smelling of fish and Chinese herbal medicine. Winston liked to think he had shed this bundle from his childhood, but it was there, he could smell it, feel the burden of the thing riding his back. With these old memories bombarding his carefully-controlled mind, Winston stood up and leaned on the post holding up the medical tent. He needed something to prop himself up, he suddenly felt slightly off-balance.
“Your family? How are they?” Donna asked.
“Dey are safe. Dey went to my wife’s family village before de riot broke out.”
“Can we…take you there?” Winston said, but he could hear the catch in his voice. He knew he should put forward a show of strength. Simeon needed that, but Winston didn’t know if he could find it in himself.
Winston and Donna carried Simeon on a stretcher and lay him on the backseat of the jeep.
When the people in his wife’s family’s village saw Simeon’s bloody stump, they put their hands over their mouths or eyes to stem the tears. Abike came running out and started hitting Winston hysterically. Winston let her. He wanted to feel her pain and anger, a public flagellation that he deserved.
As Winston and Donna drove away, Donna said, “Let’s go over to the plantation and give that asshole a piece of our mind.”
Winston nodded. Suddenly, he felt like Donna, full of rage, ready to deliver a punch at that smiling man in a suit. But when they drove up to the entrance of the plantation, the gates were closed. There were several security men with arms guarding the entrance. Clearly, they did not want any visitors.
***
When Winston came home, his wife seemed to be waiting for him. Without the white noise of children filling the silent gaps, their relationship was forced to take shape.
“Are you alright?” she said at dinner as if sensing something was wrong.
“His leg’s gone.” He stared blankly into space, barely touching his food.
“Oh my god.” She put her hand over her mouth.
“I’m afraid—” he began.
She looked up at him.
“Afraid that I won’t be able to help him. That it’s all my fault.” He lowered his head, his hands covering his eyes.
She stood up and put her arm around his shoulders. He let himself succumb to the comfort of being in her arms. He wasn’t sure why he had resisted it for so many years. Later that night, for the first time in a long time, he touched his wife. He let those lacquered doors hiding his heart swing open, revealing the deep, inner courtyards of himself to her. He felt exposed, vulnerable, and frightened as a child.
***
The next day, Winston did not go to his office. Instead, after breakfast, he went to his study and sat down at his desk. The moment had come, the final judgment hour on his project, so to speak. He had to write a report for the ADA about the riots at the plantation. He had two choices. Write it up as an “incident” as they would have seen it. Or write the truth as he saw it. He knew it was far more than just another incident. It undermined the basis of the project itself.
Winston knew the real problem was multinational agribusiness’ involvement in development aid work. Cole Agribusiness was not only taking rural farmers’ lands to expand their plantations, but they were selling the small farmers everything from seeds to fertilizers to machinery, and this had driven the farmers into debt. Winston had signed on the dotted line of this partnership between Cole and ADA in the name of using modern technology to feed the world’s poor. But were they feeding them? Or were they pushing them further into poverty at the expense of a few wealthy men in Chicago?
How to write that diplomatically without potentially losing his job? He thought of Simeon’s bloody stump. Was it even a choice? He put took out his paper and let the rage overtake his pen.
The project has failed, Winston wrote. We have imposed Western technology and practices without tailoring them to suit the unique conditions of Africa. In the process, we have overlooked traditional farming practices. He cited the case study of Oluwa’s planting of acacia trees in his fields as a natural and traditional way to enrich the soil. The consequences of all this have been dire. Over the last decade, Nigeria has gone from being a net exporter of agricultural products to become a net importer of food. Although many political factors have contributed to the decline of the agricultural sector, the Green Revolution project has made the situation worse. The heavy tractors and chemicals have ruined the fragile African soil. The pesticides have caused the pest population to balloon out of control. Moreover, the technology is beyond the bank accounts of rural farmers, and many farmers are in debt. Multinational agribusiness is the only benefactor.
Winston’s Nigerian secretary, Queen, neatly typed the report the next day. The report was hand-delivered in October 1985 to the New York headquarters of the nonprofit ADA by a scientist’s wife who happened to be traveling to America. Winston waited for the ADA’s response. He hoped they would be willing to acknowledge failure and learn from their mistakes. But would they be bold enough to admit nearly thirteen years of investment in the ADA 2000 Starter Pack program had amounted to nothing?
Chapter 35
The real owners of the land are the ancestors who have farmed here before and who watch over it still. No farmer has worked his land without asking permission of his ancestors first. At the beginning of the rains, a chicken is killed and its blood poured on the ground. The chicken is cooked with plantains or yams and then scattered on the farm. Only the ancestors can decide whether the land will yield a plentiful harvest.
But Winston wondered if the ancestral spirits would follow Simeon and his fellow villagers to protect them? They were landless, cut off from the long line of their ancestors tilling that same dirt. Rootless now, they were a people in transition. They had no protection.
In November 1985, a month after Simeon was pushed off his land, a messenger arrived at the compound gatehouse. A gatehouse guard brought the messenger to Winston’s house.
His wife opened the kitchen door and saw a thin man with bloodshot eyes standing in front of her.
“What is it?” Winston said, coming into the kitchen.
“A man is here. He says he’s a relative of Simeon’s wife,” Sylvia said.
“Come in,” Winston said to the man. “You must be tired and hungry. Patience will cook something for you. How did you travel here?”
“On top of lorry, sah.” The previous night the messenger had travelled sitting on the top of a tarp-covered truck. He had fought off sleep and the risk of tumbling from the truck.
“Simeon, he dead, sah,” the man said, still standing outside the kitchen door. He made no move to come inside.
Winston felt a numbness descend on him. He thought of the juju doctor’s spell, it was coming true. He still felt nothing—that unadulterated feeling of nothingness, he had worked hard his whole life to achieve this stillness of his heart.
“How?” Winston asked.
“He drink de bottle of pesticide.”
***
Winston and Donna went that afternoon to Simeon’s burial ceremony. They arrived at the village and were ushered into the mud hut that held the body. The body had been washed and was dressed in black and white embroidered cloth. When Winston saw Simeon’s body, the reality of it hit him hard. The carefully calibrated numbness he had worked so hard to achieve was
suddenly replaced by a rage he did not recognize. Simeon, his friend, was dead. The ADA 2000 Starter Pack project had failed. Thoughts of his mother’s dead body invaded his mind. Another death had been his fault, and he should have somehow prevented it from happening.
Winston went back outside. A group of women swayed and wailed, a chaotic sound, as they chanted funeral dirges—Why didn’t you tell me you were going? Why are you so silent? The dissonant sound reminded Winston of the paid mourners and wailers at his mother’s funeral. He felt a pain in his chest he had never felt before. He almost doubled over. Donna joined the women, wailing with them. Winston saw Abike with her hands covering her face, wailing as she crouched on the ground. Winston covered his eyes with his hand.
He had the sudden urge to weep. It was an emotion he had not felt in years, not since he was a boy after his mother’s death. To assuage his guilt, he had gone on this personal crusade against hunger, a crusade that had crushed and defeated him. With the women wailing around him at Simeon’s funeral, all these emotions that he had kept at bay suddenly descended full-force upon him. This was where his project had taken the farmers—to their graves. He felt the tears coming. He walked away from the crowd; he didn’t want the others to see him this way.
He wept for everyone he had lost. The list had accumulated over the years—his mother, his estranged father, his friend Simeon, and his wife Sylvia. He knew he could only blame himself for this monumental feeling of loss. If he could change the clock, he wasn’t sure which way he would go, into the past or quickly into the future to his own death, which he knew was waiting for him.
***
As Simeon’s coffin was lowered into the ground, a goat was slaughtered, so its blood could run into the grave. The farmers from the old village, now spread out, came for the funeral. They still saw Simeon as their leader even though he had led them down the wrong path. Simeon’s sons stood with their backs to the grave and threw maize pap onto the coffin. With their backs still turned, they filled the grave with dirt. Simeon should have been buried in the sacred grove outside his village, the place of his birth. But the grove had been partially burned, and the forest no longer belonged to them. They should have brought his body back to his birthplace, the rightful place for his burial. But instead, they buried him here near his wife’s village. Abike stood at the edge of the group, tears running down her face, she looked up at Winston. There was no anger in her face, just immense grief.
