I, Eric Ngalle

by Ngalle, Eric;

  My Mother, Iya Sarah Efeti Kange, is the first child of late Mola Mosre Mo Ngwa Kange. I am not sure whether she was born in Cameroon or in Nigeria, but her mother, my grandmother, came from a place called Mevio, a few minutes from Tole. During our short stay in Tole, we enjoyed visiting the extended side of our family. I remember Njie taking us to a small stream and showing us the footprints of porcupines. It was Njie who got me interested in dogs.

  All her siblings love my mother. The first time I contemplated murder was when, as a boy, my mother was involved in that ghastly motor accident caused by Patrick Agar. Seeing her in so much pain, I feared the worse. In our district most people who go to the hospital with minor illnesses do not come out alive as medical facilities are lacking. Most people who have died in the village do not get a cause of death; more often than not the popular opinion is witchcraft.

  I can still see my mother with those drips and bandages, crying in excruciating pain—she didn’t stand a chance. When she heard my voice, she opened her eyes and looked at me scornfully—she blamed the accident entirely on me. When I got to the house that evening, I sat outside like a chimpanzee cracking palm nuts and eating. I went into the kitchen and brought out my mother’s special machete and began sharpening it. I cried, I ran my thumb on the sharpened blade, it was ready. I wrapped it in a white sheet and placed it amongst the dry wood on the mbanda, where we dry firewood, fish and meat for the rainy season. I promised myself, if my mother should die, I was going to kill Mr Agar. He wasn’t hard to find as he lived next door to my mum’s sister in Stone Quarter in Tole. He had been driving his car with no headlights while towing a trailer. The car had just missed my mother, but the trailer had knocked her over and the wheels had climbed over her stomach. I was going to kill him. I was around seven years old.

  About a month after my mother had been discharged from hospital and was on the road to full recovery, my sister Ndinge had cooked her favourite meal, ekwang. As we sat and ate my mother said, ‘Eric (when my mother calls me Eric, it simply means I have done something wrong), when you finish go pack your bag.’ She was effectively exiling me from the village for my own safety.

  The following morning, my sister Christie picked me up and took me to Clerks quarters. From there we got a taxi to Mile Seventeen where we then caught a crowded bus to Kumba. From Kumba, we caught a bus via Ekondo Titi eventually arriving in Mundemba seven hours later. According to my mother’s reasoning, the villagers had placed a curse on her, hence her accident and this only happened because the tales I had told about her being missing. I left the village in 1985 and only returned three years later to go to secondary school.

  *

  We decided to get off in Kiyevskaya after many hours of circling Moscow. I was back to square one: no money, no fixed abode, the only item of value I had was my Zimbabwean passport. As we headed towards the main exit, we heard footsteps and loud cries coming towards us. It was a very skinny black guy. He had been attacked outside the station by skinheads and had managed to escape but they had chased him into the station. I couldn’t run even if I wanted to; my legs were swollen. We looked at the guy, he was bleeding onto the platform. It was like some sort of conspiracy; the trains are always regular but today there were no trains. We had no option but to form a tripartite. About nine youths arrived on the platform carrying broken bottles, penknives and bicycle chains. When they saw one had become three, they stopped. I had no strength left and Alphonse looked haggard. They could have killed us. They wanted to kill us. A few passers-by amplified their anger by encouraging them. It was a standoff, we were only saved when a train arrived and two police officers got off and chased the skinheads out of the station. The Ghanaian, whose name was Achikere, had a swollen face and was bleeding. We waited with him until an ambulance arrived and carried him away. I am grateful I made friends with the cleaners and officers who guarded Kiyevskaya Metro—it became my hiding place after an attempted murder in Babushkinskaya. I slept rough in Kiyevskaya metro for two nights before Alphonse visited me with good news.

  Chapter 11

  The Babushkinskaya district is in the north-eastern part of Moscow and forms one of the hundred and twenty-five regions of Moscow. Named after the Russian aviator, Mikhail Babushkin, it was full of tall buildings when Alphonse and I moved there in the summer of 1998. Chief—who became our main sponsor—also lived there and was in the drug business along with The President’s associates; the three of them shared a one-bedroom flat from where they ran their operation.

  Chief was the Kingpin: he picked up his drugs between Shabolovskaya and Leninsky Prospekt in southern Moscow. Then he would spend the evening wrapping them in small foil papers before tying them in cling film; Alphonse helped him from time to time. I really admired his courage. I was too much of a chicken to even contemplate selling drugs because my brother’s warning rang in my ears.

  Chief’s target area was along the streets around Biblioteka Imeni Lenina in central Moscow. He never strayed, and only supplied regular customers. Chief was an Ibo Nigerian. He had been brought to Kumba by a Nigerian businessman when he was just six years old and had worked with this Oga until he was seventeen, when he was allocated his own small store to sell Garri (what remains after cassava has been processed) and groundnuts. He was very creative and branched out and started selling second-hand clothes. When his Oga saw that he was thriving, he reported him to the police and customs officers who would visit him from time to time and extort bribes, mostly in the middle of the night, and at times he was threatened with deportation.

  Chief started plotting against his Oga. First, he managed to bribe his way into obtaining a Cameroonian birth certificate. Once he had that, he got himself a Cameroonian passport, and was then introduced to a baron in a place called Fiango in Kumba. The baron took his documents to Yaoundé, where they obtained a Russian visa for him. Once this was in place Chief arranged with armed robbers to visit his Oga’s house in the middle of the night, while the family were in bed. They stole twelve million CFA francs, the equivalent of sixteen thousand pounds. When Chief arrived in Russia, he had four million CFA francs. What a contrast to when I arrived in Moscow with just three dollars.

  Chief was full of stories. I remember this one story he told about travelling from Nigeria back to Cameroon along the high seas with goods and their boat capsized, everyone went overboard, and no one was wearing lifejackets. A lot of his travelling companions died. He tried swimming but there was no land in sight—all he could see was the earth’s horizon at a distance. He gave up any hope. He knew he would die. He said he saw angels waving at him; he saw different devils with Satan at the helm, all laughing and gnashing their teeth. His hands went first, then his legs. He couldn’t swim and he started sinking. He said it was the first time he regretted being obese. When he woke up, he was being resuscitated by a Cameroonian Army officer somewhere in the Bakassi Peninsula (a disputed territory between the Cameroonian and Nigerian Governments). Chief returned home empty-handed. His Oga did not believe his story—instead he thought Chief had scammed him and sold the goods to another bidder (this was not uncommon).

  I liked Chief; he was always smartly dressed. If you saw him, you would not think he sold drugs because he just looked like an embassy official. He had these huge black boots, a preference of the skinheads in Moscow, and always carried a man bag with him with his drugs concealed inside his belt. He was a typical Ibo man. In order to blend into the Russian society, he used bleaching creams to appear a bit white or mixed race, which was a widespread practice amongst Ibo Nigerians. It is also endemic within the Congolese community.

  I liked Alphonse and Chief, but I was tired; I wanted to go to Cameroon, to home. I missed my mother; I missed her home-cooked meals. My father’s family had rejected me, the Cameroonian Embassy had rejected me for not being Cameroonian enough, at the Nigerian Embassy they all looked like Mr Adewouble and the United Nations had stopped their free repatriation programme as it had been abused by my own kind. I had been held hos
tage, battered with the butt end of a short gun, my Cameroonian passport had been defaced and my only solace was in the fact that I was now a Zimbabwean.

  During the first few mornings, I would leave Babushkinskaya and go for a walk around Moscow, visiting different coffee houses and small discount stores looking for potential clients. The summer was at its peak and I loved the hot sun on my back. I roamed around Moscow in total reverie of home, oblivious of the risk to a black man walking around unaccompanied. My only solace was in the language.

  I explored the Russian Metro, the complex network of trains running deep underground, the beautiful paintings on the walls. I wondered the fate of those who toiled in constructing such a thing of beauty. I remembered Alphonse had told me that in order to keep the construction skills a secret and preventing them from falling into the hands of Western countries, after they finished constructing the Metro most of the engineers were sent to the Gulags in deep Siberia, where they toiled until their final days. Sometimes, I didn’t even go looking for clients, and caught the train at Babushkinskaya station and joined the circle line at Prospekt Mira station. I just sat down and went around and around Moscow. As I sat in that train underground, I asked why had the gods placed such burden on my shoulders? From time to time my thoughts would drift to when I was a young, up-and-upcoming village wrestler.

  *

  For me, wrestling was about brute force and raw strength. I had plenty, and this was my conviction until I met a young boy from Bokwango village. I remember that day very well. It was a Sunday, my mother was dressed in her traditional garment and the whole village was caught up in euphoria and total merriment. Cups and antelope horns were filled with palm wine, and the chiefs of the three villages were there, including my maternal grandfather, chief Mosre Mo Gwa Kange (Dog of Dawn Kange) as he had not yet been accused of witchcraft.

  The djembe played louder and louder. The way the drummers’ hands caressed those drums, with such ease, such dexterity, as if their hands and the cacophony of sounds were a directive from the gods. Jude Tita aka Kebuma was there, wearing a brown suit and yellow Pierre Cardin shoes; Jude always dressed smart, he was a trendsetter straight from the school of Grand Eugene Kebei. Jude and I are not blood relatives but are spiritually connected.

  Mola Maimbe was doing the elephant dance. Pa Takesh, the guy who had killed my goat, was the village champion and he took me under his wing. He had attended most of my training sessions and admired my strength. Pa Takesh sat in the corner: as the head of Obassinjom, the village juju, all kind of different rituals were taking place under his guidance. The whole village rallied behind me, they knew I was a gift from the gods. I danced around, parading myself to both the crowd and my opponents, bare-chested; I was wearing a pair of red shorts Jude had bought for me during one of his trips to Great Soppo market. We jumped and danced to the drumbeat, shaking our biceps in an attempt at intimidating our opponents. Many have forfeited their fights just by the sheer display of muscles shown by their opponents during the pre-fight rituals.

  Someone touched me on my shoulders, and when I turned around, it was a guy that looked like a molikilikili (stick insect). My confidence was boosted tenfold! This guy had guts; he had the cahones to challenge me yet he was as lean as a praying mantis. I knew straight away the fight wasn’t going to last. Boosted by the sight of the molikilikili, I ran around flexing my biceps. I looked at my mother who was proudly shaking her head and muttering something as she pointed towards the heavens. She repeated the same gesture as she pointed to the ground and I knew she was doing the zromelelele, something that has been handed down to us over the generations. She was thanking the heavens for blessing her with such a brave child whilst at the same time thanking our dearest departed for keeping an eye on her precious son. This incantation was normally followed by the pouring of alcohol on the ground, but she had none.

  I ran towards Enjema, my childhood crush, and I blew a kiss in her direction; she shied away and hid behind her sister. I loved Enjema. One thing was certain, after my victory, the least I would be getting from Enjema was a kiss. I had dreamt so many times about kissing Enjema. I would demonstrate my strength to her and the whole village as a hunter-gatherer, my rites of passage completed.

  The drums became even louder: we danced, we were in a trance, and things from another spiritual realm possessed us. I danced for two hours nonstop. I had evolved into an elephant; I was in Cameroon. The umpire blew his whistle and we withdrew to our various corners. To add to my glamorous look I had my face painted pure black with charcoal, and the liquid of some ancient root was dropped into my eyes. I looked like a sorcerer’s son if ever you’ve seen one—my eyes red with anger. The drums played even louder. I was ready to make the molikilikili lay prostrate, to bow in my presence.

  Mola Maimbe was the first to be summoned to the middle of the ring. His fight didn’t last long, he used a technique called Vanga whereby you hit your opponent hard on the back of their head at the top end of the spine. Hitting them once is enough, but Maimbe hit his opponent three times and the guy had to be resuscitated. It was brutal. It turned out that this guy had impregnated Mola Maimbe’s sister on a one-night-stand and had legged it.

  The next person to go was Mola Pa Takesh. The aura he carried into the centre of the ring saw his opponent shaking and his fight was short-lived. After just three rounds, his opponent forfeited as he could not take the beating he was receiving. It was then the turn of Izruma, and after the sixth round, his fight was declared a draw.

  Then it came to pass, the moment the whole village had been waiting for: today Eric Ngalle Charles, the son of late Oscar Ngalle Charles, was to become a man. The drums became frenzied and I could see Mola Samba, Small Mbamba, Queenta, Aloga, Moses, Njoh, Peter Moki, all jumping with excitement. I flexed my biceps and looked at the little molikilikili, who was already in the middle of the ring; I knew I was going to kill him. ‘Why did he decide to place himself at such risk?’ I thought to myself. Today was the day the gods had written; today was the day of his demise. Even the weaverbirds on the palm tree opposite the Vefonge household had stopped to watch. We shook hands and took a step back waiting for the final warnings and directives before the umpire’s whistle.

  To this day I cannot clearly say what happened; the memory has been lobotomised. One thing I am sure of is that the molikilikili from the village of Bokwango had used some serious juju and possible witchcraft on me, for as soon as the umpire blew his whistle, the molikilikili simply disappeared. The next thing I knew, my back was on the ground. I cannot remember what happened, did I close my eyes? Once I heard the whistle, I approached the molikilikili as rehearsed repeatedly but he’d disappeared right in front of my eyes; the next thing I knew, I was flat on the ground like a log, a heavy one too. Around me everything was quiet, even the weaverbirds were astonished by what they were witnessing.

  The molikilikili was held high in the sky and his camp was in total jubilation, he had effectively brought down the njoku (elephant). I tried looking at where Enjema was standing but she had disappeared in shame and embarrassment for she too had brought her mother and her entire household. I looked in the direction of my mother, who had her head between her knees and her hands folded tight behind her head.

  I do not know for how long I was on the ground, I begged for it to open up and swallow me. I had brought shame on the entire village. All I wanted to do was to vanish into thin air. I prayed to the gods but they had deserted me in my greatest hour of need. Dazed and confused I walked towards the crowd; they parted as if I was a plague of biblical proportion. I dreaded the thought of facing any late spectators, so instead of climbing the Wonganga hill, instead of walking past the Efange household, instead of crossing the bridge to our house, I took the back roads. I went via the local Wonganga Baptist church, I stopped and collected a few mangoes from Pa Ngeke’s tree, not one but two black cats crossed the narrow road in front of me, the weaverbirds sang in chorus as if saying, ‘Shame, shame, you have brought shame
on the village.’

  This day was going to get worse and I knew it. I walked towards Namonge—a small stream that came and went with the rain season. It was here in Namonge that I saw Mola Ngeke kissing my big sister Christina. It was here along the banks of Namonge that Monyama’s box trap first caught a rat mole. I crossed Namonge, climbing the hill into Mola Mongambe’s farm, I harvested a few pineapples and some sugar cane, and I also collected a few enyengenyenge (strawberries). I checked my fence traps but nothing had been caught. I then heard a noise and I saw a black mamba gliding above in a tree. I remained still as it passed. I walked past the graves of my Aunty Moliko and Aunty Christi, then Aunty Sophie must have looked through the thatched window of her kitchen and saw me for she called out, ‘Ngalle, is that you?’ I did not respond. Sluggishly, I walked on. Normally I would have stopped and eaten some of her kwacoco or cocki corn. Aunty Sophie’s kwacoco and cocki corn can induce greed and gluttony.

  I climbed the small hill, and touched the blocks of my sister’s new building. I saw an agama lizard shaking its head in total disappointment. How did it know I had lost the fight? I picked up a stone and aimed it in the direction of the agama lizard and missed. It shook its head again, this time mockingly. I carried on walking until I reached our kitchen. I opened the door; the squeaky noise had become worse. First, I set down the sugar cane, then the pineapples, then placed a handful of enyengenyenge into my mouth before putting the rest into a bowl. I sat down and rested my back on the ewongo.