African Quilt : 24 Modern African Stories (9781101617441)
Page 29
“Yes,” I said without hesitation.
“Abura!” my brother shouted, almost in a fit. He opened his mouth to say more but then closed it again.
“Hand me the gun, will you.”
The senior policeman got up from his chair. And, before I knew where I was, two men had jumped forward and handcuffed me. They were rough and my precious watch went flying on the cement floor, breaking into two pieces.
“Officer,” I said, with tears in my eyes, “I paid a lot of money for that watch. I hope your men will put it together again.” Instead of replying, he looked at me defiantly and asked: “Show me where the gun is.”
“You can see the gun, Officer, but you cannot have it. I bought it for my brother’s son. It is mine.” Now I looked at the policeman defiantly—then I kicked the suitcase towards him.
“The gun is in that suitcase. You can have a look at it, if you like. But be careful! I have dirty pants in the suitcase.”
Hate flamed in the officer’s eyes as he flung the suitcase open. I heard the policeman who had spat on my breast whisper to the officer: “Be careful. The gun is loaded.”
The officer forced the suitcase open. The gun was lying on top of my clothes. He looked at it suspiciously and then carefully picked it up.
First I fixed my eyes on the officer and then turned them to my molesters. I would have loved to have shouted at them that “Power and wisdom are two different things.” Instead I said quietly: “You don’t need my nephew’s toy gun, Officer, do you?”
Instead of kicking me, the officer threw the toy gun back into the suitcase and kicked it shut.
I picked up my broken watch and my suitcase and walked out of the police station to narrate the incredible story to my stunned brother and sister-in-law.
Up to this day, my husband teases me to tears whenever there is a rowdy party at home.
“Eh,” he will say. “Watch out for that devil—she held two policemen at gunpoint.”
TANURE OJAIDE
Tanure Ojaide, born in 1948 in Nigeria, is a prolific writer of both poetry and fiction. Among his numerous honors are the Commonwealth Poetry Prize for the Africa Region in 1987, the BBC Arts and Africa Poetry Award in 1988, the All-Africa Okigbo Prize for Poetry in 1988 and 1997, and the Association of Nigerian Authors’ Poetry Prize in 1988 and 1994. He is the author of novels such as Sovereign Body (2004), The Activist (2006), and Matters of Moment (2009), as well as more than a dozen poetry collections, including Children of Ironko and Other Poems (1973), The Eagle’s Vision (1987), The Blood of Peace (1991), When It No Longer Matters Where You Live (1999), and Waiting for the Hatching of a Cockerel (2008).
Under New Pastoral Management
(2009)
In Effurun, the Pentecostal churches had mushroomed in the streets at a weekly regularity that amazed many residents. A banner, bell, or crusade would invite passersby to such new churches. Often presided over by a single pastor or a couple, each new church took the form of a private or family business. However, a majority of the new churches that made Effurun look like a Christian town despite the many public shrines to native gods did not grow beyond their first few months, before becoming stunted. But there were a few exceptions.
The Church of the New Dawn had established itself as the most popular of the many new Pentecostal churches in the town. Nobody made fun of it as a family business center, as they did of the very small ones. Its congregation was a mixture of Christians from other faiths such as the Roman Catholic, Baptist, and Anglican, as well as converts attracted by the charismatic evangelist’s heartwarming sermons about here and now.
Those stricken by malaria too often, and who believed it was not caused by mosquito bites but some sinister power, came to Evangelist Peter for a permanent cure. So did those who believed they were working very hard and not becoming rich, but sinking deeper into hardship and penury; they came to the Church of the New Dawn for special prayers, for an upturn in their fortune. And many young women who could not find husbands, as well as married women whose husbands were philanderers, also came to the church for answers to their problems.
Men and women who dreamed of riches did not go to work on the days that Evangelist Peter wanted to say prayers about personal breakthroughs. Women who found it difficult to conceive came to break the curse on their wombs in the Church of the New Dawn. Such women left their men at home to attend regular all-night prayer vigils so that the evangelist could crush the demons making them sterile. Since most of the people suffered from diseases, hardship, and broken hearts, they came in droves for relief.
“It’s always never too late to get a cure for your problems,” Evangelist Peter would exhort his attentive congregation.
He often characterized his work as that of a spiritual doctor.
“You are currently besieged by dark forces of night, but you will certainly come into a new dawn!” he would tell his new converts.
“Alleluia!” they chorused.
“Whatever you want God to do for you will come true in the Church of the New Dawn,” he said.
“Amen!” reverberated in the church.
There was so much enthusiasm for this church that wives disobeyed their husbands and left the churches they had married in for the Church of the New Dawn.
Evangelist Peter was in his late thirties and still single. He was rather chubby but very agile in movement. He was the only single pastor of the many Pentecostal churches around. He had in one sermon wondered out loud why men and women hurried to marry when Jesus died still a bachelor at thirty-three. His congregation believed he wanted to give his whole energy, time, and attention to God’s work.
Evangelist Peter also cited the many mature women such as Martha and Mary Magdalene who did not marry, but assisted Jesus in his mission. Members of his congregation did not know how to interpret his many reflections on marriage, but felt he was biding his time to get a wife suitable for his pastoral mission. Better to be patient to catch the right woman than be impatient and be ruined by a jezebel, such people reasoned to explain the marital status of Evangelist Peter.
He was always dressed neatly in a white, blue, or black suit and appeared well groomed for every service, which was an opportunity for him to show how kind God had been to him. His choice of the type of suit to wear for service was informed by the spirit of the time. On happy days, thanksgiving services, and the annual harvest, he wore immaculate white. Dark blue was for ordinary times, while the black suit was for sober moments.
“God is so kind, God is so good; my God is fantastic,” he asked his congregation to repeat.
And they did so with rebounding passion. They expected so much from God and they believed that, through Evangelist Peter’s intervention, their hopes would be realized.
“My God is a trustworthy God,” he sang.
There is nothing a good Christian wants that God will not give to the person; through prayers the human and the divine can dialogue, he told his church members.
On Sundays, as Evangelist Peter railed against witches, wizards, and demons from the pulpit, loudspeakers, specially mounted on the church’s rooftop, would blaze his message of defeating evil forces with special prayers. Every passerby heard his holy message. The neighborhood heard him.
“Jesus will make you vanquish all sorts of demons. No witch or wizard can penetrate one covered by the blood of Jesus. You in the arms of Jesus are the winner. Say ‘I am a winner!’”
“I am a winner!” the congregation would chorus.
“Praise the Lord!”
“Alleluia!”
Those who felt vulnerable before suspected diabolic forces holding them down in life or threatened with poverty, accidents, sickness, or death flocked to the church for protection. Evangelist Peter was their shield against evil forces. His church would also ensure their salvation. These salvation-seekers had somet
hing to hold on to so as to be secure and safe from a myriad of perils. In Evangelist Peter’s view, Jesus was a giant that his flock held to or just came to for protection. The presence of a giant or his proximity was great protection for the neighbors. Jesus was their family man or neighbor, he explained.
“If now you have no food to eat, Jesus will fill your plate with enough yams to last you all your life. Believe in the Son of God and He will work miracles for you!” he preached.
The frequent split and subsequent breakups in the Baptist and Anglican churches benefited the Church of the New Dawn. Every personality squabble in the other churches left a group drifting to Evangelist Peter’s church rather than suffering the humiliation of their faction being defeated.
Also those Catholics who felt that their church was too rigid and took no cognizance of modern life found it convenient to become members of the Church of the New Dawn. Among such were divorcees who could not remarry in the Catholic Church but were allowed to have new partners in the Church of the New Dawn. Evangelist Peter was silent on polygamy.
“Only God the Father is the judge,” he told his congregation on this issue.
That opened the way for a few polygamists in the church to pass the word to others outside who needed a church to worship in. Evangelist Peter welcomed everybody who wanted to know God into his church.
The rather tall and smooth-faced evangelist was happy. He glowed. He walked with a swagger, which, though it looked natural, came from confidence in his pastoral mission. His crowded church was the envy of other new churches that could barely draw fifty people into the rented or uncompleted buildings they used for Sunday worship or service at other times. Two nearby mushroom churches whose services used to be drowned by the loudspeakers of the Church of the New Dawn closed to join Evangelist Peter’s congregation. He praised the Lord for His kind mercies.
Evangelist Peter practiced what his congregation called humility and modesty. He had a Mercedes Benz 280 and not a Toyota Land Cruiser or a Lincoln Navigator that other pastors of the few bigger churches around drove. Besides, he drove himself. He had rejected pleas by his congregation for him to have a driver.
“What do I need a driver for when I can drive myself?” he asked those who made such a suggestion to him.
“Maybe when I become older, I’ll need a driver. Certainly not now,” he told them.
He often took along one or two of his church members as he desired on trips that were described as “church mission.” His congregation so revered him that whoever was chosen for a “church mission” felt blessed. Others yearned for such a blessing but discovered that Evangelist Peter tended to select the same woman or others for his trips to advance the faith.
* * *
The church building was imposing not only because of its size but also because of its sophisticated architecture. It was oval, rather like a dome in shape. Perched on the hilly part of town and surrounded by lush green vegetation it stood alone, dominating the landscape. From the low surroundings, the valley that was the main town, one could not look up north without being captured by the spectacle of the oval house of God. It was grand even from a distance. It was like the huge mansion of a rich man with refined tastes. And it held in its precincts a solemnity comparable to any cathedral that the evangelist had entered in Rome in one of his several pilgrimages there.
The church compound was floored with concrete and the roads were tiled. From the spacious parking lot to the church was laid a red carpet of shiny tiles. Different types of plants and flowers beautified the landscape. Eucalyptus, whispering pines, hibiscus, crotons, and exotic palms brought a certain natural harmony to the church compound.
The floor of the church itself was of terrazzo and glazed when cleaned, as was often done by a group of women volunteers led by Magdalene, wife of Elder James Ogbe. The seats were the most comfortable of any church around and had cushions; the evangelist’s special chair was of imported Italian leather and burgundy in color—he was, as head of the flock, a special shepherd and his seat was comparable to a monarch’s throne.
The eye-catching building had imitation fresco windows at the upper level and real frescoes at the bottom. The ceiling was a splendid work of art. The heavy cross hanging above the altar shone day and night, displaying the suffering Christ with blood splattered over his body. It was heart-rending to look at this image for too long. Suffering such nerve-racking pain that He could have avoided as the Son of God was the ultimate sacrifice, Evangelist Peter told his congregation, mindful that in the society no son of the king would suffer for the sake of his father’s subjects.
Five years earlier, Evangelist Peter, moved by missionary zeal after waking from a dream of one day becoming a saintly man, after years of debauchery, had gone to the United States to raise money to convert the many pagans that still frustrated God’s work and needed to be converted into light, as he told his various white donors who lavishly contributed towards his church in Nigeria. He felt he needed the American connection since his country men and women respected what came from outside rather than what was homegrown. He had seen how American and European pastors drew mammoth crowds in their crusading missions all over the country.
“The devil is having a field day among my people. I need to bring God to rout Satan and his evil angels from their midst. Today my people live in darkness; they need God to see light. Your dollars will bring light and God to them,” he had pleaded.
The pastor of the American host church he had visited saw a cause that needed to be pursued with vigor and so challenged his congregation to come out with a sufficient amount of dollars to make God proud of them. It was just after the Thanksgiving holiday and everybody was looking forward to the Christmas season.
“Instead of spending all your money in buying gifts in a few days, let your gift go to God,” he said.
“Amen,” the congregation chorused.
“This is the only opportunity we all have to contribute our little quota to the building of the house of light in dark Africa. Do you want to be counted out of this noble cause?” he asked.
“No!” was the thunderous response.
“Let your best gift this season be given to the needy people of Africa,” he admonished them. “God will reward you a hundredfold for the saving of lives that your contribution will bring about in Africa. Let them in Africa see God and light!”
“Amen,” the congregation chorused.
“Let the lost people of Africa be saved!” he shouted.
“Amen!”
And the American Christians gave what pleased the visiting pastor and his host church. Those who had inherited money from slave-owning parents saw an opportunity to be free from the moral burden that was always weighing heavily on their minds. Such donors gave out hefty sums. Those who gambled regularly and made it, but knew that Jesus had condemned gambling in the temple, saw the opportunity to relieve their minds of that age-old sin. Many whites who had felt guilty in their racist treatment of blacks throughout their lives wanted to redeem themselves by being supporters of the cause of Christianizing Africa. Different groups for their own reasons gave out so much money to free their minds from excoriating thoughts and deeds of the past.
It was enough money to build a fine church. Peter felt contented because his foreign mission was worth the pain of the physical exertion and personal humiliation at European airports where young men in uniform questioned him as if he were a drug smuggler or someone running from his country for residence in Europe or North America. His youth and boyish looks fitted the profile of drug traffickers and illegal immigrants that airport security worldwide screened thoroughly; that caused so much embarrassment to a man wearing a golden cross and a pastor’s collar.
The American donors would not have been disappointed with what the African evangelist did with the money he had raised from them. The impressive church building spoke loudly and cl
early for itself.
The pastor had from the inauguration of the church taken the name of Evangelist Peter. He had become the rock upon which the new church would stand and grow. The church would be the beacon of light in a dark landscape, he had envisaged.
Five years later the church was as solidly rooted in the community as if it had been there from the beginning of times. Even the older churches did not have as passionate and devoted a congregation as the Church of the New Dawn’s. No service in any other church in town could boast of more numbers. No church event elsewhere in town was more crowded than anything done in the Church of the New Dawn. No congregation was more loyal and more generous than that of the Church of the New Dawn. Members of the church took literally the paying of tithes and did so without Evangelist Peter beating it into their ears as other pastors did, but without success. The Church of the New Dawn had become a model church in the area. All other Christians looked to the church on the green-clad hill with envy and admiration.
* * *
One Sunday morning, in the season of Lent, only two weeks to Easter, at 11 a.m. the congregation of the church came as usual to their place of worship for their weekly service which usually lasted from late morning to late afternoon. The church members looked to the service as to a great event in their lives and had dressed as for a popular festival. The Sunday service was a weekly festival that they waited for to fulfill a strong yearning that was at once social and spiritual and so compelling. Despite the five hours of service, they looked to the hours spent there as the time they had dedicated to God. The drumming, singing, and dancing brought spiritual energy that radiated into every pore of the body. They were too busy the rest of the week to think of God. The rest of the week they put into practice Evangelist Peter’s recommendations about achieving wealth and fighting diabolical forces that stood in their way to success. During that period they sought the breakthroughs that their pastor told them to expect from God.