Thursday 14 January 2016

This Christian Race: A Memoir (Episode Two)

THIS CHRISTIAN RACE (2)
Greetings again my kith and kin, friends and fans. Welcome to Episode 2 of the weekly serialised memoir, ‘This Christian Race'. For a whole quarter I will be running thirteen episodes of it. Feel free to read, share, like and comment as the interesting novella reads on. Thank you and I love you.

Episode Two – Me and My Big Mouth
Another aspect of struggles in those days that cumulatively severed my born-again claim off from time to time was my sharp mouth.
I need to rewind again a bit to my pre-born-again era. Pleasantly bear with me.
I don’t know whether to say nature cheated me or I was the one trying to cheat nature. But starting school at five years was never a bad idea in a time when it had become archaic for primary school entrance and suitability to be about touching the tip of one’s other ear with the near hand stretched over the head. Moreso, I’m a teacher's son.
Intelligence supported me all the way but my physique chose to be intentionally lagging behind all the time. Worse still, the gap yawned the more when I tried cheating nature further in my transit to secondary school. I moved in from Primary five. I was a runt among my peers.
But I have a consolation: what I lacked in terms of stature, it was made up for me in terms of my big mouth.
Ah! I can talk. Gossips? No! I don’t do tale-bearing. I do tale-telling. I’m a sanguine to the core. I have my specialisation in story-telling, spinning yarns and fables (“oduology”), spontaneous reprisal verbal attacks and ...to bring my business card up to the present-day format... general (humour) merchant.
I competed in many war of words and I won. My favourite was when I would have to have the last laugh when I used one of D.O. Fagunwa's borrowed missiles to finish my opponent. This one example of such expressions never leave my memory: “we are looking for someone with well-placed back to piggyback a child, the hunchback jumps out. Is it on your deformed and scattered back we will place our dear child?” When well delivered, you will hear the unsolicited audience shouting my praise to the high heaven. Goje! Goje! Goje has carried the day. That was my nickname. (The story behind the name is for another day.)  I love it when I fire a fiercer return salvo before the first salvo has done any real damage. We call it “ajaabale”. Something like serving it while still hot and fresh.
Of course, many of my friends were taller and of more blessed stature and build that I. So, if it would boil down to fisticuffs, I know I would be beaten black and blue. I attempted fisticuffs in an uncompleted building once. But I had chosen my opponent carefully: we were relatively of the same build. Even then it ended up an unofficial tie with both of us sustaining varying degrees of non-fatal wounds. We had to stop the fight on our own, to our shame, out of exhaustion because we had to go to “oju-olomo-o-to”, a secluded discontinued building, where there was neither referee nor spectator. Apart from this, I traded most conveniently in “verbal cuffs”
I usually had a funny episode with my friend, Lateef. That was a strongly built, Yoruba-born, Hausa-bred boy. I had two close friends, he was one of them. The other one was Dekunle. Lateef helped Dekunle with the nickname “Emo” (Mr. Field rat) while Dekunle, in return, helped Lateef with the nickname “Omo Mala” (Hausa boy). That was how secondary school friendship was back in those days: it would not immune you from verbal attack. Imagine, Dekunle got the name because of a cutlass stroke he received from Umoru, the school guard, while we were trying to capture a field rat during a school grass-cutting exercise. Umoru's cutlass was coming on the rat at the same time Dekunle's hand was catching the rat. It was a blood bath and we all sympathised and cared there and then. But the following day, what do you see: an illustration of a cutlass hitting a hand on the board, drawn by no other but Lateef! And beneath the illustration was boldly written: Emo. And that became our friend’s new name.
Sometimes, Lateef's hand did give friendly smacks on my occiput, that is, the back of my head, and some other parts. On many of such occasions, I would first of all move far from him having silently counted the number of smacks. From the safe distance, I would shout at him, “Lateef, God really saved you that you didn't smack me the third time, you would have seen your mother and mistaken her for your father.” I have created a scene. The hornet's nest is stirred. Lateef would not take it lightly. He would zoom off after me. Of course I have been on red alert all the while. I would vote with my leg. In D.O. Fagunwa’s parlance, I unwrapped the pounded yam without waiting to have the soup. The chase could be hot at times. The pendulum of victory could swing either way. But if Lateef's way, I would be thoroughly drenched with smacks. Still, that might not be the end of the story. I could be obstinately big-mouthed. Even, when I am eventually released from the lion's den, I would still repeat the cycle: “God saved you you didn’t make it forty one smacks...”
With respect to cracking and sharing all sorts of joke, a colleague, Man Bello, was our ring leader. We would sit round him trading in both practical and verbal jokes, and laughing as if tomorrow would never come. It really did not matter how hurt you felt if you were unlucky to be the butt of our jokes. I remember this girl we called “You Kont” just because she pronounced “you can't” that way in a class reading comprehension exercise as a result of interference of mother tongue. She did not like it at all. But we never cared, we loved it so much. What of a bit elderly student we named "Etiyeri" (sarcastically sizeable ears for a befitting head); even about physical attributes we were no-holds-barred jokers.
Although calling people names like “olosi” (miserable one), “were” (mad fellow) “oloriburuku” (ill-fated fellow), “dindinrin” (moron), “apoda” (imbecilic individual), “ode” (fool) and expressions like “ori e o pe” (you're a half wit), “won n sa si e” (you’re under a spell) and “aye n se e” (witchcraft forces are after you) may neither be found to be surplus nor far in-between with respect to this oral prolific phase of my life, they were with me anyway. Such a character like me cannot be immune from them, most especially on the spur of the moment when anger or verbal war raged on.
So, when I first heard the biblical condemnation of “jestings that are not convenient”, “every idle word man speaks” and “calling one's neighbour ‘fool’ or ‘Raca’” from the fellowship, it hit me like the Hiroshima’s atomic bomb. These were the things I thrived on. The struggle then began. It got so bad that when I subconsciously, courtesy of my old nature, told someone, “Gbenu e soun” (Shut your crap), the scruples filled me deeply with guilt. At times, it might get so worse when I fell into the familiar temptations of these speech sins that I would feel I had lost my salvation and would need to grab a new one at the next altar call.
I must be honest with you, the struggle my rudderless mouth brought on was way more grevious than that of the beautiful-faced temptation. It was a bumpy gallop down the path of eternity for months. So my salvation dates grew in leaps and bounds. I admit the battle was fierce because the foundation must be solid. But God allowed it to teach me to allow the Holy Spirit appropriate the finished work of the Cross in me and to stop falling back on the energy of the flesh to tame my tongue. 
I learnt the hard and long way. But it was worth the effort. Why? Fast-forward twenty two years to the present time. Now, I have been driving for the past eight years on the highly provocative Nigerian roads. I have never for once had a cause to use a foul or offensive word on another road user, motorist or pedestrian, whatever the case or provocation. Thank God my big mouth has become a tame mouth in that respect. But I'm still a work in progress. 
And as for the feminine temptation saga, God took care of it in a unique way...
See you next week for episode three – I can do it better.

2 comments:

  1. Amen Ma. Thank you for creating time out of your busy schedule to read. God bless you.

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