On Flashback and Strolling

by Paul Chuks

Femi Ogunlana

During the mass transfer of 2008 — an occasional ritual where the government takes civil servants from one end of the country to another — your mother was transferred from Sagamu to a place where the sun mistook itself for an angry mother-hen and burned harsher than it did elsewhere in the country: Ogbomosho. The season there in January was as though God had frozen the atmosphere in the previous year and released it with the new year. The road was smoother than where you were coming from and the people believed in God a bit too much. In your previous station, you were a giddy child who knew all the tricks around Ludo, did backflips and played football. In this new place, you struggled to be human. You froze that afternoon when you bragged about your backflip and your new friends gave you the floor. You froze in church when the youth pastor asked you to recite John 3:16 that you could recite every other day of the week. You couldn’t ride your bicycle anymore, although that had started since your former station — years after the accident. You froze on the chalkboard when your mathematics teacher asked you to find why Y in front of the class. You froze when the principal called you in front of the whole school to say what you learnt from the morning message preached by the assembly prefect. You had things to say but the many faces and their stares scared you into silence. You became a shadow of yourself. You grieved the loss of your previous self amidst allegations of lies and mockery from your new friends.

New personality sprouted. You became reclusive, bad at football, inattentive. You loved basic science and computer and so those were the only notes you had. Your result read 80% in basic science, 94% in computer, 51% in mathematics and 61 in English. In your previous station, you were usually top four in class. Or if you played too much that term, top six. Whether it was because you were in primary school and so your performance was bound to be better than in secondary school, or something wrong had happened upstairs, your parents debated when the term finished. With your new personality, you questioned everything. The man whose hand bent like a sickly flower prayed and cried during the miracle session to have a straight hand. You prayed for him and left your own demands and was expecting a new miracle hand after the prayer session was over. Your heart dropped into your stomach when it had not happened. You watched him with disappointment and all through the journey home, you asked your father why God did not answer his prayer. You did not say amen during the night prayer. The youth pastor said spraying perfume was a sin and a demonic spirit followed those who did. You interrupted calling it a blatant lie and that day you asked to wait for deliverance after church. Although you became dizzy during deliverance, you did not close your eyes. On your way to the car, one of the prayer warriors told your mother that you had a stubborn spirit. You said he was saying that because he tried to rake you down during the prayer but you remained a rock. You were timid in school but proactive in church.

After your junior WAEC, you changed schools to where your mother taught. You wanted to school in Lagos or Ogun state, her former station, but she refused because she wanted to monitor you. Overwhelmed by youthful exuberance, you cared more about impressing your crushes, so your grades dipped amidst being voted the neatest boy in the whole set and the top ten finest boys. You always flew fence to town to cook spaghetti, watch ball and play games. Your school was formerly a battleground, as was the tale. There were trees said to have sprouted without seed being planted. Among them were mango, gmelina, cashew and tangerine trees. According to the tale, they were reincarnations of dead ancestors that fought during the Ogbomosho vs. Ilorin war. They are said to whistle at night when the universe is mute. There were decrees that under no circumstance should anyone pluck fruits that the trees yield, cut a branch from any of them or fell them. It was said that the principal who ordered the felling of one such tree felt pain as the chainsaw cut through until it fell and he bled to death. Another of such tree, slender stem, massive branches, yielded cashews as early as November and as late as June, a respected tree. Out of curiosity, I once plucked dozens of cashews and ate them with my friends to see what would happen. They did not know that the cashew came from the ancestral tree but noticed that it was sweeter than the other ones we were used to. When everyone went to sleep, I stayed awake fearing that if I slept, I’d slip into the great beyond because I had sinned against the tree, the ancestor. Soldier ant beat my toe and after incessant itching, it became red and swole a bit. I thought the ancestor had sent a scorpion to bite me but when my house captain saw the spot, he said it was just a soldier ant bite. He asked if I felt pains travelling up my leg, which I negated. I climbed my bed, looked outside the window till my eyes shut themselves. The next day, very antsy, I rushed to my unintentional co-sinners’ room to check whether they were without blemish. Apparently, my conscience gave control of itself to the tyrannic hands of guilt. I skidded back to my room to prepare for the day.

Years later, a new principal came that was too greedy to spend money on the firewood that cooked students’ meals. He ordered his men to fell every tree and turned them to firewood, claiming the country’s recession took a toll on the school’s pocket.

Today, as you take a stroll, you throw your gaze at the battered roots of where the trees stood before and laugh at the stories they inspired. You remember the one about the principal and wondered if truly he bled to death because of that tree or of other natural causes.