I, Eric Ngalle

by Ngalle, Eric;

  *

  I was starting to believe that all the juju things that had been blended into my body were starting to work. Here I was in the middle of Moscow, in the premises of Ivan Ivanovic Locev and had obtained a Moscow residency and an exit visa in a passport that wasn’t mine. This is juju stuff. When I returned to the hostel that evening, I showed everyone my newly found status but no one knew how I had managed to obtain it. This proved to be the wrong move; I was stepping on people’s toes. When the night of my kidnap and torture came, I found out the depths of displeasure I had caused amongst my own kind.

  With my newfound status as a legal Zimbabwean, I had all kinds of chameleons for friends. I was thought of as the new kingpin and people came to me with all sorts of problems. I helped as much as I could. I had confided in Jerome that I had kept two hundred dollars of Ndumbe’s fees and he was worried about the prospect of me going to Zimbabwe, against all his wishes. When Jerome’s sister sent him three hundred dollars from Switzerland, he lent me two hundred and fifty dollars so I could buy my air ticket. The night before my second attempt at leaving Russia, Jonson and I drank at the French woman’s room. We ate plenty of fufu and cow’s leg—no one knew our plans.

  The next morning, Jerome accompanied me to Sheremetyevo. I had a bad feeling about this second attempt at leaving Russia. Jerome waved as I went past the first customs checkpoint, then the officials for KLM said I could not travel. They told me that I needed a transit visa for Germany and the way they looked at the passport I suspected they had realised that it wasn’t me. I didn’t stop long to plead with them; the worst thing that could have happened to me now was to lose my newfound Zimbabwean status. My second attempt at leaving Russia had failed. Jerome and I returned to the hostel in Pechatniki.

  The only person I human trafficked was a guy called Swappo. I have heard plenty of rumours but there was only one person and one person alone, and that was Swappo. Since arriving in Russia, Swappo had lived illegally and when he heard I had a Zimbabwean passport, with an exit visa in it, he offered me one thousand dollars to buy the passport, for he too was desperate to leave Russia. I never sold my passport, instead Swappo borrowed money from Aubin and then I went with him through the routine of going to see Ivan and eventually Swappo was granted temporary residency with an exit visa in his Cameroonian passport. However, his passport was held at the immigration office until he bought his air ticket. When he returned, with a Bakossi boy called Lanna, at the time, Swappo was detained and kept in a cell for three days. However, Lanna had returned and told the people at the hostel that I had swallowed Swappo’s money and that Swappo had been locked up waiting repatriation to Cameroon.

  This tale amplified people’s hatred for me at the hostel. A couple of days later, when I returned, l was told what had happened. I visited Swappo at the detention centre and I spoke to the guards and discovered Swappo had only been detained because he couldn’t speak the language and because of his exit visa; he had was what they call in Russian a Srochnie Visa which means one had to exit the country as soon as possible, as if one had committed a crime. The next day we met Swappo at Sheremetyevo airport and immigration officers accompanied him. He boarded the aeroplane.

  That was the only person whose human trafficking I initiated. When people heard the success story of Swappo, they swarmed towards me. I could have explored the situation but human trafficking was not my cup of tea.

  Pechatniki itself was getting worse. There was fighting every day, drunkenness was the norm, there was no loyalty, it was a rat race, it was chaos, people had grown horns and they looked like devils, they were cursed. Pechatniki was the closest I got to experiencing hell and the gnashing of teeth—people had given up hope—people could kill and intercourse took place between frogs and princesses and vice versa just for sleeping spaces.

  Three incidents occurred that put me on a good pedestal with some of the occupants of the hostel. You see, the only way of entering the hostel for those who lived there illegally, which was ninety per cent, was through the side of the hostel. You had to navigate your way through the windows on the balcony until you reached the third floor. This was less hazardous in the summer; in the winter the health and safety risks were just too great but it was during one of such winter night that one Cameroonian from Bamenda, his name was Tata McDonald, had slipped and fallen from the third floor. He had fractured his spine and lay under the snow for God knows how long.

  He was only spotted when one of the security guards downstairs was doing his hourly patrol. He was half covered in snow. The guard rushed upstairs and summoned us. They had called an ambulance but needed someone to accompany Tata to the hospital. Everyone declined but I volunteered. I jumped in the ambulance with Tata and we drove to Dynamo where he was taken into emergency theatre. I thought Tata had died because he wasn’t moving. They cut off his trousers with a pair of scissors and used a large syringe to prick his limbs but there was no movement and I remember my brother during one of his history classes saying that in some societies, black people were used for medical experimentation. I prayed for Tata. He eventually recovered but remained in a wheelchair. His family sent money and he was eventually returned to Cameroon.

  Tata was not the only one to get hurt.

  Rose was very beautiful and petite. She had light brown and very smooth skin; just looking at her one could tell she had an element of class. But Pechatniki and Moscow were taking their toll on her. Pechatniki was inhumane to both sexes—there was no discrimination. On her return from work one evening, Rose had made the mistake of coming home alone instead of waiting for her friends as was customary. She got off the bus just outside the council estate that housed the skinheads and she never made it to the hostel—instead she was attacked and badly beaten. To finish her off, they had smashed a bottle on her head. The skinheads only stopped when the security guards, who were on their way to changing shifts at the hostel, heard the kerfuffle and intervened. They carried Rose into the reception at the hostel before calling an ambulance and coming up to inform us. Once again, my linguistic skill was summoned—the legal Zimbabwean was to follow the ambulance with Rose to the hospital. She was rushed into surgery, and I stayed with Rose until the following morning. I visited her in hospital a couple of times. If ever there was a black girl I would have dated whilst in Moscow, it would have been Rose. She became my forever friend and when I was being tortured at the hostel, she cried and pleaded on my behalf.

  Then there was Remy.

  We had nicknamed him Remy Money, because he had a laissez faire attitude towards his money. For him money came and went. In this regard, people congregated towards him, waiting until he’d had a few drinks then he would proceed to buy everyone a drink until his money was finished. He would ask those fake friends for money for a train ticket the next day but no one would give him anything. Remy was one of the strongest people I knew. Remy and I ended up working in the same shop at Rigskayaya market a couple of months later.

  The routine at the hostel was like this: every Friday from six thirty onwards Eddie Grant’s ‘Give me Hope Joanna’ would be blasted out of a ghetto blaster and people would drink and dance and then there would be fights along the corridors, sex in the lift, all sorts of debauchery, which would be followed by one of Eddie Grant’s hits: ‘I don’t wanna dance, dance with my baby no more’. People would drink themselves into an uncontrollable stupor.

  It was during one such night that, after consuming so much alcohol, Remy Money thought he had developed wings and was able to fly. He had completely forgotten that the there was a glass door separating the third-floor balcony from the landing but he ran at full speed, leaning forward, and smashed his head straight into the glass and landed on the balcony. We heard the noise and everyone came outside, there was panic as the glass had sliced Remy’s face from his jaw to the top of his skull; he was lying there, bleeding. I rushed downstairs and asked the guards to telephone an ambulance. Once again, I accompanied someone to the hospital.

  Chapte
r 15

  Jerome had finally gotten in touch with his sister in Switzerland and she had sent him two hundred dollars so that day after work at the market we went to Akhotny Ryad. We visited the Kremlin and even had a roast chicken, Armenian style, with soft white bread and two bottles of Coca-Cola. It so transpired that Jerome’s uncle was the late Pa Takesh. I knew Pa Takesh had died under mysterious circumstances according to village news so it was mysterious that even Jerome was apprehensive about attending the funeral. Jerome has promised to give me compensation for the killing of Evenya’a’ Mboli, my goat, by his uncle.

  Jerome grew up in the village of Bokwango. His father was a palapala (traditional wrestling) referee and Mola Pa Takesh was a wrestler, as was Jerome. I have asked Jerome if he was the molikilikili that had brought me down during that wrestling match in Wonganga village but he denies it. Maybe Mola Pa Takesh had planned it all along—he had known how good Jerome was and had given Jerome a bit of village concoction and that is how I was brought down. Maybe Jerome was made to swear an oath of confidentiality but he insists it wasn’t him.

  Jerome was indeed worried about attending the funeral of late Mola Pa Takesh. It was rumoured that his uncle had evolved from simply dancing with nganya (a village juju that only came out at night) into a little juju man who used his magic potions do all sorts of things. It was even said he used his juju to make the wife of Mola Monoko fall madly in love with him (all rumours I must insist).

  Jerome never calls me Eric Ngalle, instead he had ordained and given me two names: Yomadene (something big) and Epassamoto (half stone half human), both gods, custodians of the Bakweri tradition and people. On a bright day, if you pour a good amount of palm wine on the ground and called upon the name of Epassamoto you could see him waving at you from one of the many hills that formed Mount Fako. As for Yomadene, the last we heard Ekulekule, a tortoise, tied him to a tree. The tortoise in the Bakweri mythology is very clever. Yomadene was insisting on marrying the daughter of Ekulekule, however Ekulekule was not happy about the situation. He said he would give Yomadene his blessing on condition that Yomadene visits a dentist because according to Ekulekule, Yomadene’s breath stinks for he had yellow teeth and brown gums.

  Yomadene did not know what dentists did in their surgeries but Ekulekule was happy to demonstrate. Using ropes from the bamboo plant, Ekulekule tied Yomadene to an iroko tree and using barbwire, he made a chain across Yomadene’s teeth. In fact it is rumoured that in the Bakweri mythology, Yomadene was the first black god to wear braces.

  Late at night, if you look towards the back end of Wonya Morake in Buea town towards the direction of Weli and listen carefully, you can hear Yomadene shouting. You can even see his shadow moving, and most of all you can see the reflection of his teeth at night. According to the latest report from the elders, Yomadene has issued a fatwa on the head of Ekulekule.

  Even now when Jerome and I talk, our conversation is spent with us doing the traditional dance over the telephone and Jerome calling me either Yomadene or Epassamoto.

  As we crossed the road towards Pechatniki hostel, Jerome and I were playing a traditional game called Izruki, Immukka (we have arrived, we have not arrived) where he will place his hands behind my shoulders and whatever he said, I would say the opposite. This was our childhood reminiscence. All the village children played this game in order to minimise the distance between school and home and ignore the hunger that made our stomachs sing in iambic pentameter. When we got to the hostel Jerome said, ‘Immukka, we have arrived.’ Jerome and I were birds of the same feather. The hostel was eerily quiet, there was only one guard at the reception, and as we waved he didn’t even look up from his newspaper. We quickly climbed the stairs towards the third floor; there was no one in the corridors, no music was playing, which was bizarre because around this time everyone would have been back from their daily routines of running from the police or working at the market and people would be popping from room to room.

  Jerome went towards another room while I knocked on Ndumbe’s door. Patrick opened the door but he held his head down and there was no eye contact and once again this was strange because Patrick would normally greet me and share some bread and talk about all the verbal racism he suffered at the bakery. But not today. As I entered the room it was like a court chambers, people were seated in circular format and there was a space in the middle with a stool. The curtain was drawn, Ndumbe was talking with Miranda, Barthelemy, The Bull and Ngobese, who, as it transpired, were the judge, jury and executioner.

  Without any warning, The Bull ran from the back of the room and head-butted me point blank in the face. As I fell to the floor there was a stampede followed by a flurry of kicks to my ribs, my buttocks and my neck. I lay in a foetal position protecting my face but Ngobese and The Bull hauled me back up and dragged me into the bathroom. The Bull, who had been nominated the ringleader, demanded I take off all my clothes. When I refused, I was stripped right down to my boxer shorts. Then I heard Ndumbe shouting, ‘Eric! Where is my money?’ That was when I realised what had happened.

  Earlier in the day, the rector had come to the hostel looking for me: the four weeks had expired and I had not been to pay the rest of Ndumbe’s fees. During this routine visit he had asked for me in Ndumbe’s room. While there, he had told Ndumbe that he owed eight hundred dollars instead of the six hundred as Ndumbe thought. Ngobese and The Bull insisted on stripping me naked. I said they would have to kill me first, at which point Miranda and Lanna both shouted, ‘Just kill the bastard.’

  I don’t even know why Lanna was getting involved. At first, I thought maybe it was a tribal thing—all but two people who placed their hands on me on that day were Bakossi.

  Around two months earlier in Minsk, a Cameroonian called Ngwa Movawo had been beaten and as life was slipping away from him, his haggard body was carried and abandoned outside the police station in the snow. His beating was reported to the police as a racist attack, but evidence later collected indicated that Cameroonians perpetrated the gruesome crime. He had been stripped naked, his penis electrocuted and he had been burnt with knives and kicked to death.

  He had been accused of stealing money belonging to another Cameroonian. To add more grievance to his family, a few weeks after he had been killed, he was found to be innocent. I, on the other hand, was guilty. I had taken two hundred dollars of Ndumbe’s four hundred dollars, I had attempted to leave Russia for the second time, I had duped Essilor and Barthelemy’s client, I had not bought The Bull and Ngobese enough drinks, I had not lent any money to Miranda, the vultures were circling. The fate of the late Ngwa Movawo was to befall me. The scene was perfect, it was just a matter of re-enactment, and tonight was the night. I was placed on the stool in the middle of the room and people took turns punching me. The noise brought in Ifeoma the Great, who was in tears. Jerome was also crying. Aubin pleaded on my behalf but it fell on deaf ears, there was no way they could intervene. My worst fear occurred when Lanna went and bought a crate of Baltika 9. I knew the alcohol would only make matters worse and it did.

  The Bull and Ngobese brought out two knives and placed them on top of the cooker and waited. Lanna smashed his bottle of Baltika 9 and rushed forward towards me but he was held and pinned back by Jerome. Abraham had blood-red eyes. Rose could not bear looking at me; she dreaded my fate.

  Every time The Bull or Barthelemy landed a blow, the whole room cheered. This is how mad Pechatniki got: the people who were punching and beating me up were only doing so because they would be guaranteed sexual favours, small meals and a sleeping space.

  Then the torture began.

  Once the knives were red hot from the cooker The Bull and Barthelemy took it in turns placing the knives on my body. They started with the back of my neck. You know the noise that comes when fish or meat is placed into a heated frying pan? Well that was the noise from the back of my neck. I didn’t move just in case The Bull was tempted to start cutting my neck. Once the knife began getting cold it was returned to the
cooker and the next hot knife used. All in all I was burnt on my neck, my back, my knees and my ankles. The Bull even stabbed me on my right knee. The whole room smelled of burning flesh; the smell of burnt human flesh is not that different from goat meat or roasted pig.

  As the alcohol flowed the torture continued. They would say, ‘Just kill him and get it over with.’ Lanna and Miranda were the leaders in this chorus. Every time the knife was placed on my body, my thoughts would drift to Ngwa Movawo, how scared he must have been in his last moments here on earth, knowing that he wasn’t even guilty of the crimes he was being tortured for, the fear in his eyes knowing that death was approaching.

  I wasn’t feeling any pain, I don’t know why; I must have had an out-of-body experience. Barthelemy would run from a distance and punch my face as the whole room cheered. Ngobese would run from a distance and punch my face. The whole room cheered.

  Ndumbe and his girlfriend took turns in spitting and slapping me. People were getting excited, some were even turned on sexually by my torture as I saw Lanna kissing his girlfriend passionately and Ndumbe had Miranda pinned against the wall in a passionate embrace. I thought of my mother and a Bakweri song came to my head with lyrics that said: