A Conference in Ennui E-Book

Rotimi Ogunjobi

• Herausgeber: xceedia publishing
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2013

Seitenzahl: 478

Beschreibung

This book was nominated for Commonwealth Book Prize 2012. A story about Lagos, Nigeria and the people who used to live in it : an unemployed family man struggling to keep life and love together; a crooked policeman with a dark, violent past and an even darker future; a disenchanted youth with a cannabis-drenched philosophy and a diabolic mission; a British fun-seeker who sees a promise of gold underneath all the garbage ; a migrant from the violent, oil-rich swamplands who came to the city seeking succor but alas all he reaps is more pain; an eponymous drifter from the hot, dozy and desert north, who must now aggressively protect his simple soul and subsequently his new bride ,from the madness all around ; a ghost that refused to die. ; and many millions more , perpetually awaiting the manifestation of elusive financial miracles.

Leseprobe

A Conference

In Ennui

A Novel By

Rotimi Ogunjobi

Lagos in the 70s and 80s is the setting for this thrilling story. Femi Falashe has not only lost his job; he has also lost all his money, much of his self respect, and is on his way to losing his family and his mind. But James Peregrino, a long lost friend,turns up quite suddenly and for Femi,becomes the desperately needed connecting link to what is left of sanity. But who really is James?

All around him the city is hostile. It is the infernal crèche in which miscreants of every variety are nurtured, coached and commissioned - such as Kabiru Ayinla, the crooked policeman with a dark, violent past and an even darker future; Herbie Wayne, the disenchanted youth with a cannabis-drenched philosophy and a diabolic mission; Duncan Hill, the British fun-seeker who sees a promise of gold underneath all the garbage;Dennis Tom-Dick-Harry, a migrant from the violent, oil-rich swamplands who came to the city seeking succour but alas all he reaps is more pain; Aliyu Mai-guard, the eponymous drifter from the hot, dozy and desert north, who must now aggressively protect his simple soul and subsequently his new bride,from the madness all around.

The city is hostile.It is alive with hordes of existential lunatics, homicidal policemen, magic bankers and millions of expectant souls, perpetually awaiting the manifestation of elusive financial miracles. And like these other slaves to the glitz of the city,Femi Falashe finds himself in a perpetual conference in ennui.

ISBN: 978-978-49837-5-4

Lagos Literary and Arts Journal Imprint

© 2012 Rotimi Ogunjobi

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.

Trade and Purchase Details

Published by xceedia (media and publishing)

[email protected]

Author’s Note:

This is a work of fiction. Any similarities to places, events and persons, in the past, present or future exist only in your own mind; not mine.

PROLOGUE

Femi Flash Falashe was being interviewed by a doctor.

‘How does this feeling come to you, Mr. Falashe?’ the doctor had been asking. Femi Falashe was indeed feeling quite confused. He looked to his wife who sat in the chair next to him for some sort of support. She offered none. Elizabeth’s thoughts appeared quite far away from the situation. Her eyes stared away, blank.

The office in which they were sitting didn’t look any friendlier. It was large, sparsely furnished and with the sort of impersonal feel that one associated with places which accommodated different people of all types very temporarily. An old window unit air-conditioner ran quite a bit too loudly in the background. Overhead, an even quite older fluorescent light fixture lent its own bit to the ambient noise with an irritating buzz like a hundred angry bees enclosed in the three-feet long batons.

Femi could quite imagine what James Peregrino, who thoroughly distrusted doctors, would have had to say in this sort of situation.

‘Scratch the skin off any of them and you’ll find that they know a lot less than they always pretend to,’ James would certainly have said. The sort of doctor who was sitting across him in the hospital consulting room that afternoon, James would have certainly gone loco with.

‘Man, these ones know nothing at all about what they think they know,’ James was talking, his voice coming low and raspy as Femi would ever remember.

‘Doesn’t he look every bit an irritating character? Sanctimonious ass. Next he’ll be telling you that he knows what is the matter with you and how it became the matter,’ said James.

‘Dehinde Vaughan,’ the name badge on the doctor’s white coat revealed.

‘Does that look anything near a doctor’s real name to you? No, my friend. Doctors always have long or ugly names; else it’s not his real name and he’s probably trying to impress ladies with that name. Fool probably thinks he’s like Bob Faye,’ Flash could hear James’ voice further advising.

In any case, James Peregrino had always been a flake. This sort of place was created for people just like James. George would however have seen the situation in a more lenient light.

‘Listen to the doctor even if you don’t like him; cooperate with him. He is here to help you get better,’ George Obanya would have advised.

But it was alright for George to be positive. Life had been relatively kinder to him all around. Okay, he did get shot once but then, a bullet only went quickly in and out of your body. It doesn’t linger along on its journey or slowly worm its way through your body just to make you suffer longer - quick in, quick out. You get patched up and got on with life, completely healed in a few weeks or so. Moreover, a gunshot does not make one suffer for long years - unlike poverty or psychosis.

Doctor Vaughan didn’t look one day older than thirty years, which made him at least five years younger than Femi Falashe. Additionally, he looked quite bored. Obviously this was a routine which he did very many times during every week – interviewing people who sometimes, even desperately, tried to prove they were okay, and the more they tried the less okay they looked. Indeed the drugs cases were always more creative with their pleas; the monkey running like crazy up and down their spine, offering astoundingly intelligent pleas by the minute – all geared to being let out and to go get that absolutely important next fix. Whatever the doctor’s age though, Femi wisely recognised that Vaughan was his superior in this joint. The man in front of him officially represented his captors and he, Femi, was the captive. To Femi, the young doctor looked quite certainly a pompous asshole, and Femi believed that whatever he said, the doctor wasn’t likely to believe him too anyway. Keeping anger in check, he watched Vaughan nonchalantly make notes in the file spread out in front of him and leaving no doubt about who was in charge here. Femi was under no false doubts in any case. Here, Dr. Vaughan, he knew, represented the purpose of the establishment, which was to break you into little pieces and rearrange you; and if you resisted, to completely fuck you up, possibly for life.

Why was he here? How did he get here? The first question didn’t seem too difficult to answer. They didn’t admit you into a psychiatric hospital for nothing, ladies and gentlemen. Yes, something had indeed gone wrong with his communication skills in the very recent past. Put in another way, he had suffered a pronounced personality disorder otherwise known as a Pee Dee. ‘Gone bananas’ in street language. How he got here was a lot more difficult. It probably had to do with the Christian brother. He had always been ever available to help.

‘Let me put it another way, Mr. Falashe, tell me about yourself. I want to know a bit about how you came to be here?’ Dr. Vaughan again asked him as he doodled impatiently on a pad of writing paper. Flash looked again at his wife for strength; again Elizabeth did in fact look like she would rather be elsewhere – like getting her hair washed.

‘You know what she’s thinking, man? She’s thinking to wash her hair. Wash this crazy fucker out of my hair!’ That was the voice of the Monster, another entity Femi had learnt to live with over the past years. Well, if he did get down to serious thinking though, Elizabeth hadn’t really been like herself over the past several months. Most often, she had been aloof and far away. They were falling apart, probably already completely fallen apart; though Femi hoped not. What would happen to the children? He could see their sad faces; lost and miserable. Needing to be with their dad, needing to be with their mum. Needing to be with both of them together.

The Monster was now singing him a Bob Marley song; only it wasn’t quite. The Monster was chuckling, singing and whistling the song at the same time in a way that only the Monster could.

Wash this crazy fucker out of my hair.

‘No she isn’t thinking that,’ Femi emphatically said, fighting that dark thought.

‘Oh well, suit yourself,’ said the Monster, this time again departing for a season.

Arriva!

In the far distance he could hear the policeman yelling. The policeman was incurable, as far as Femi had been able to gather. He walks around stark naked. Dress him up and he would have the whole lot off in five minutes. The only way to keep clothes on him was to knock him out with medicine. Often, he even tries to tackle one of the female nurses and they have to knock him out anyway.

‘Arriva!’ he yelled all the time.

Herbie was another matter; probably also incurable. Herbie thinks he is still in Los Angeles and all the time he’s doing a cool rap. Biggest problem is that Herbie thinks the SSS (State Security Service), the Ess Ess gaddem Ess is out looking for him. So also the FBI and CIA. Therefore, whenever Herbie sees a strange face, which was very often the case, he went hiding behind a door, under the bed, behind a tree, under a bench; just about anywhere that one could hide and even in a lot of places where it was impossible to hide.

Arriva!

So how had he come to be here? Femi didn’t think that he had much that he could tell the doctor about this. But he did indeed have quite a bit he would wish to get off his mind. He was pregnant with millions of things that ought to be said and nobody to say them to. Nobody ever wanted to listen. He’d lately been quite scared that one day he would certainly explode with the stress of it all, and the streets will be filled with fractured sentences. He indeed did have a lot more besides that he would have wished to say to the arrogant white-coat before him; but he thought better to safely leave that for another day and another place.

For the benefit of the present occasion though, Femi decided to gently submit whatever would pass as valuable gristle for the administrative mill of the system. Just as George would have advised.

*****

About five miles away the lights went off again in the airport departure lounge. It was the third time this had happened since they arrived here barely thirty minutes ago. Duncan Hill gently squeezed his wife, Wendy’s hand. She smiled up at him, her head resting in his lap. He smiled back. Their smiles were for different reasons but neither was aware of that nor cared to know.

Duncan ran his hand over her long silky hair. In less than nine hours they should be back home in Winchester. It had been a short but extremely thrilling holiday – merely two weeks. Wendy was excited to be returning home. It had indeed been all a little too exciting for her. But Duncan knew Wendy - give her a month and she would once more become her feisty self, looking to tackle another adrenaline activity. Nevertheless, for the mean time, it was back to the drudge of Camelot and the daily train commutes to Basingstoke where Duncan worked as a Network Administrator for a computer company. Wendy had a quieter job as part owner of an estate agency located on high street Winchester and a mere five minutes’ drive from where they lived.

Power failure in the departure hall of the Murtala Muhammed International Airport or in many other airports across Africa was really not the greatest oddity that Duncan had seen here in Lagos and in other African cities. He only hoped that the runway didn’t also suffer similar mishaps. In any case though, it was yet early evening and Duncan was definite that before dark their British Airways flight would be long airborne and on its way safely back to London from where they would pick up their car and drive back home.

To most visitors, Duncan knew, a visit to Lagos could never be similarly described. Whether two hundred and fifty thousand acres of pain or two hundred and fifty thousand acres of excitement, it actually always depends on which emotion every sojourner would want to remember the city by; which depends on where and how it had hit you the most. For some like Duncan, the latter emotion would be the preferred description. Duncan believed that every environment had a code of conduct, and usually, some fools would be idiot enough not to obey the code of the environment and thereby get very messed up. To him, his experience so far with Lagos had been a lot like falling in love with an old whore - you don’t love her because of her body, but because of her exuberant soul.

This hadn’t been Duncan’s first visit. Two years ago he had come in on a short term assignment to install the computers for Union Bank. That visit had been for only three months, much of which had been spent either in a busy office or in his hotel room at the Le’ Meridien, just about a couple of hundred yards away from the shores of a very angry Atlantic Ocean. This time around, Duncan had returned together with Wendy whom he had married just a year ago. And despite her earlier misgivings, Wendy had thoroughly enjoyed the trip. Wendy had purchased for herself quite a load of tourist’s junk. A huge talking drum and a dozen wood figurines; all of which she planned to put in her office. Not that you got many Africans looking to buy houses in Winchester, she had confessed, but they could be useful as conversation items. She’d also bought half a dozen brightly coloured dresses, a couple of sandals, and tons of beads. Duncan had asked if she planned to start a gypsy commune.

‘Planning to equip an entire carnival?’ Duncan had laughed.

‘Not a bad idea. Might be time for me to visit London again. Notting Hill now looks good,’ Wendy had jovially replied too.

But Duncan had no use for souvenirs. In any case, he would be returning once again and very soon too; as soon as his work papers were done. His friend, Alfred Hutton, would be returning home to Oxford in about six months. His position as General Manager of the Lagos office of Elvin Machines, a British-owned local company, would then become vacant. Alfred had offered Duncan the position. It was a good job, with all the generous perks that an expatriate working in a good office job in Nigeria could expect – a large air conditioned house in Victoria Island, three domestics, two chauffeured cars, and so on. Above all, a pay more than twice what he currently earned at Basingstoke - all free of local tax. Alfred had offered him all these on a three year contract. Duncan thought that he would be an idiot not to accept.

PART I

You will find peace of mind

If you look way down in your heart and soul

Don’t hesitate ‘cause the world seems cold

Stay young at heart ‘cause you’re never (never, never ...) old at heart

- Earth Wind & Fire: That's The Way Of The World

CHAPTER 1

Two kids, green as grass in spring, but both burn up with a thirst for adventure. They were also filled with enormous apprehension for what laid ahead, never having being away from home for longer than a few days. George and Femi had met for the first time when school resumed for first formers at their new secondary school. They had both been assigned to the same dormitory, their bunks separated by only three feet of walking space.

‘My name is Femi Falashe,’ Femi would say to George later in the evening after their parents had finally left.

‘George Obanya is mine; and I am scared,’ George had replied.

‘Why is that?’

‘I don’t know. This is my first time away from home all on my own.’

‘Makes two of us,’ Femi had told George. ‘What school are you from?’

‘Maryhill Convent; and you?’

‘Abadina.’

And so had their long friendship begun.

It was an old school, about forty years old. Their dormitory, one of the nine in the house, seemed just as old with un-tiled concrete floor and creosote blackened window frames and roof trusses. A wider adventure around the school grounds would later reveal about a million acres of lawns and sport fields, miles and miles of planted Casuarina hedges, or so it appeared to the little kids. The school grounds also had within it a wide expanse of forest teeming with reptiles, and through which a monstrous bogey locally known as Paddiman Joe was rumoured to roam in the night. They would also learn that the school, Government College, Ibadan, also popularly known as GCI, had been a place where soldiers were garrisoned during WWII. And indeed adventurous students or those serving hard detention chores did sometimes unearth whole human skeletons and caches of buried and quite expired ammunition.

Neither Femi nor George would have initially understood the purpose of some of the items in their kit. The mattress, the pillows, the blanket and bed sheets could speak for themselves. However, Femi and all other first formers had come with metal buckets with their names neatly stencilled on them in black paint. Femi also had a cutlass and a short handle hoe. George had a similar kit, as well as all new first formers. As both would quickly learn within a few days, there were not going to be any more hot showers and there was sometimes no running water and they then had to fetch their bathing water from a tank about a hundred yards away. And when that tank ran out of water, they needed to travel to the school main tank which was about three hundred yards away. It was quite a bit of inconvenience for children used to having most things done for them at home.

The lawns they would hate for their entire tenure as junior formers in the school - as a provider of house work duties and also of chores to occupy them with when they were booked on detention. And once, after a hot afternoon of swinging a cutlass to trim the lawn and with his hand red, raw and blistered, George had actually broken down and bitterly complained to nobody in particular.

‘Do you know why they admit new students into this school? The only reason is to get a fresh intake of slaves to cut the grass. All they just need to do is employ more gardeners but the principal is too stingy. It’s not fair. I don’t know why our parents stand for this injustice. You know the real meaning of the GCI that they have on the school logo? No, my friend. I am sure it is not Government College, Ibadan. It is Grass Cutting Institute. Do you know that? Yes it is I swear.’

But Femi, his own hands also as badly blistered, had only been able to laugh at it all. The lawns had to be trimmed and this was a task reserved for lower form students.

By a stroke of luck however, both were in the second term at school, given the job of mess boys. The job of mess boys was a lot easier - to get to the dining hall a bit earlier before time, and to share out the food. Mess boys were therefore generally exempted from all house works including sweeping floors and trimming lawns; and if you were lazy enough you could also get yourself exempted from sports – an option which had enormously appealed to George.

While Femi had no doubt that he was in the school because his mother was certain that it was the best school in the world, he wondered why George had been sent there. This was because George’s older siblings were in the more expensive International School, tucked away deep inside the University of Ibadan and where it was rumoured that they gave you your own personal butler if you could pay for the service, and they gave you a really hard time for speaking your English without the proper phonetics - you would not get ice cream with your lunch. And from what he had seen so far, George’s father could afford to send him there also. Not that things were so much different in this school though. Femi actually did think it quite exciting. It was also mandatory here that all your conversation be in English.

Punishment was a little more physical; like you did your prep at night standing on a table, which could be so very inconvenient especially when you’d spent the evening playing football and all you just wanted to do was to sleep. That, or you trimmed approximately ten thousand acres of grass. Grass. Grass. Femi also did grow to hate the bloody lawns. The dining hall was also another potential obstacle course. Often, when you did arrive at the dining hall a little late for dinner, you went to bed hungry because some mischief had happened to your food and nobody at your table would own up. To Femi this would usually be merely amusing, but not to George.

‘I still think daddy sent me here to punish me, but I can’t figure out why,’ George would sometimes say.

Nevertheless, George would ever tell anyone who cared to know that his father was the most generous and loving person that existed. His father, Fred Obanya, was a successful lawyer who did a lot of business with government and they lived in an expensive estate abutting the state government secretariat. George was the third of three children. His mother had died when George had been merely three years old. Many years after, Femi would understand why George was in this school even if George never did. The reason was that George’s father had seen deep into the character of his son and seen how dependent he could become. And therefore he had wisely sent his favourite son to this school to toughen him up against life. Otherwise, George’s father was easier on him on most other fronts, regularly visiting him every fortnight, and keeping him stocked up with a fresh supply of provision and spending money.

Being in the same dormitory and class did much to throw Femi and George together. Both found that they shared mutual hatred for football, hockey, basketball and all other sports that were very physical. And George, plump and flabby George, would have the record of never earning a standard point for his house, Swanston House, in athletics for the entire five years that he spent in the school. George had complete hatred of physical exercise. Nevertheless, both shared a passion for the game of cricket; George as a mostly stationary wicketkeeper and Femi as a quite dozy first slip but definitely dangerous bowler.

Femi and George also discovered that they actually lived a mere quarter mile apart. And thus, during the holidays Femi would sometimes go spend the night over at George’s house and sometimes George did go do the same in Femi’s house. By the time they left school five years later, many would think that they were actually related.

Both Femi and George also shared a common enemy in the dormitory during their first year. He was a bad tempered and poorly raised fourth-former who insisted on being called Dhamendra - real name was Damilola Balogun.

‘Where is your grub?’ Dhamendra would often ask with a lot of menace because he was at least a foot taller than any of the two kids. And having got his hands on the keys to their lockers, Dhamendra would proceed to transfer whatever he fancied from there into his own locker.

Dhamendra had the exotic ambition of travelling to India to learn how to become a magician. Not that the two kids cared much about this. They were more concerned that he was doing much to make their provision disappear too often. And your provision was your life. It was what you fell back on when you lose your dinner to miscellaneous mischief.

The situation was eventually saved by Lazzo – a short, swarthy, mean faced third former who walked and talked always with the fearful confidence of a troll. Lazzo’s real name was Lasisi, but he preferred Lazzo because to him it sounded better and tougher; it sounded more like him. And when you stretched the last syllable of his nickname when you hailed him (like nicknames were supposed to be stretched), Lazzo’s face would usually light up with a big grin and he would unconsciously do a little dance. Lazzo was big trouble, even though he was just a little bit taller than Femi and George, and most of the seniors wisely left him alone. Big on survival strategies, Lazzo had wisely taken the bunk bed near the dormitory door which he thought was quite important as an escape location since he was perpetually in trouble.

‘Why do you take that nonsense from Dhamendra? Are you out of your senses?’ he had seriously asked the two kids.

‘We really don’t have a choice, do we?’ George had quite honestly replied. ‘He is a senior and if we don’t give him what he wants he’ll find a way to make trouble.’

‘Is that what you think? We will see about that,’ Lazzo had angrily said to them.

They would later understand that Lazzo had a personal score to settle with Dhamendra, who was really just a spoilt kid who did wet his bed every so often; a situation that Lazzo found disgusting given that Dhamendra’s bed was right next to Lazzo’s and the stink of fermenting urine was to Lazzo, not amongst any of his favourite.

Lazzo’s advice to the kids had been quite diabolic.

‘What you’re going to do is split your Bournvita chocolate drink into two portions and top one of the cans up with sand. That’s the one you make most visible in your locker. Also split your orange squash and pee in the bottle to fill it up. Let’s see if he wants your stuff anymore after that.’

Femi and George had been quite horrified at the suggestion.

‘Dhamendra’s going to kill us,’ George had said. But to Femi the solution did sound like a great deal of fun, and anyway the school year was running out. They had just about a couple of months more to go after which they would hopefully be in a different dormitory next school year and far away from Dhamendra’s reach.

Dhamendra’s reaction had been extremely scary. He retched and vomited so much that they thought he was going to die. But Dhamendra didn’t die. With eyes glowering with madness and from far away he assured the kids that they would both need a coffin each very soon. But Lazzo had his own contribution to this big showdown. Confirming George’s prediction that he would end up a hired killer, Lazzo had generously dusted Dhamendra’s blanket with stinging nettle, a scheme which had left Dhamendra weeping in agony all through the night. By morning, Dhamendra’s entire body was covered with huge bumps and bleeding from several places because of the scratching. Dhamendra had to be taken to hospital away from school. They would learn later that he had initially been taken away into isolation at an infectious disease hospital settlement deep inside a forest, before being released to his parents two days later after it had been determined that whatever he had was not contagious.

The two kids did not of course know what Lazzo had done. George had consequently not been able to sleep much for days. He had strongly deliberated giving himself up to the housemaster. George was sure that Dhamendra was going to die, and it would be their fault. They were going to be arrested soon by police detectives, he knew. After an autopsy, the content of Dhamendra’s stomach would be traced to their lockers. Then they would be brought before an angry judge and sentenced to death. And then one day at dawn the hangman would come for them. He’d read somewhere that they went more lenient on you if you confessed before they came for you. Femi didn’t of course think much of that idea. Yankee police hadn’t yet been able to arrest Richard Kimble, had they? Nobody was going to put a noose around his neck. Never.

They would never take him alive.

Dhamendra returned to school two weeks later quite contrite. Not only that, he’d become scarily nice to everyone like he’d been given a new brain transplant. Even Lazzo seemed to feel ashamed of what he had done. The kids were simply suspicious of motives.

A more organised and more informed foe did eventually emerge a few weeks later. George’s father had just again come visiting, leaving his son’s locker full of fresh provisions. But as George padlocked up his locker he felt a hard hand on his shoulder. Looking back he found Lazzo standing behind him, looking as tough and dangerous as possible for a fifty inch tall thug.

‘Give me your grub,’ Lazzo growled.

They had both nevertheless survived Lazzo and Dhamendra. Lazzo had turned out easier to deal with in any case because he seemed perpetually on the run, slipping in into the dormitory after everyone had gone to sleep and vanishing very quickly in the mornings.

‘He’s going to become a criminal, probably an armed robber.’ George had afterwards persistently predicted for Lazzo. Both had been pleased to learn many years later though that Lazzo was a university professor somewhere in America. Dhamendra had also finally settled for a more sensible profession as a lawyer and became a federal judge.

For Femi and George, subsequent years had been a lot easier. They were now seniors, unofficially empowered to extort from younger students, and to seize their stuff if any was foolish enough not to put up resistance. They would in later years laugh as they looked back on it all. It had been an exciting toughening process.

CHAPTER 2

When Femi Falashe had lost his job at Matador Engineering, he hadn’t thought of it as a great tragedy. In any case he did eventually think that he should have seen it coming, since the company hadn’t paid staff salaries for three months. The way the system worked though, nobody could have blamed him for being careless. Primarily because in the construction business, this was the norm, and salaries were rarely paid when due.

The only other indication that there was anything amiss had been that very little was going on for some time and most of the construction contractors had been doing nothing for a while. But then also, in the ten years that Femi had worked for Matador Engineering, there had been times they had too much than they could cope with and some other times it would appear that bankruptcy was in progress.

Matador Engineering was the only job that he had kept since graduating and it really should have occurred to him that he might have become complacent with his career. Most of the people he knew had changed jobs several times and even though probably not better off for it in financial terms, most had certainly acquired experience of how to surf the employment waves and how to negotiate with the socio-economic parameters on the times; which were the feisty hands of the puppet master that pulled your financial strings and controlled your life. In summary, Femi realised that he had allowed an elusive job security keep him in tethers for ten years. But now the time had come for him to go find fresh feeding pastures compulsorily.

At the time when he had joined Matador Engineering, the job market had been in full bloom. Construction jobs were plenty and he had always found himself busy, moving around from one construction site to another, looking after the projects of the company. There was therefore never any cause to think of getting another job. What would have been the point of it all? Since he was well paid and the company had even stood guarantee for a car loan for him. Things had drastically slowed down since then, but he had confidence that they would pick up again in the near future. Somehow though, the economy had only got worse.

When Bayo Haastrup, the General Manager for Matador Engineering, had called him into his office on that Friday morning, Femi had expected to be informed of a pay cut. Several companies were already doing just that anyway, as an alternative for laying off their staff. But after a couple of minutes of uncomfortable conversation with Haastrup, he had quickly gathered that Matador Engineering was in worse trouble than he had imagined, and so was he. Consequently, the company would be retrenching, or downsizing, or whatever anyone wanted to call it. In any case, what it came down to was that he was out of job. The news had been a somewhat humiliating experience for him. Leaving a job by yourself was certainly a lot different from being asked to leave for whatever reason, he imagined.

Nevertheless, Femi had left Haastrup’s office with mixed feelings. First of all, he actually felt elated that at last the worst had come and it had not resulted in anything as disastrous as a heart attack. He was also naturally confused. What was he going to do afterwards? This was after all the only job he knew how to do.

Femi knew that his wife, Elizabeth, would be quite disappointed. And women very easily slip into a grieving state of mind. One thing he needed to do was find a way to stop her feeling sorry about his situation. Despair wasn’t anywhere near what he needed in his life at this time. Their two daughters, Deola and Sade, seven and five years old, would of course have no idea of what was amiss; not if the grief element could be suppressed. Femi knew that the greatest asset to him at this time would be a clear head to think and to plan, and so Elizabeth was the one he would need to work on more than anyone else.

Femi had requested that his one month notice be changed to a terminal leave, since he was due for a leave anyway; promising to still make himself available if needed. He had later gone to see all his closer friends in the office to tell them what had happened and to say goodbye to them. Doubtless, they will meet again, perhaps several times, but not anymore as co-employees. All were quite sad to hear about this, but as things usually went in a case like this, most of them knew, like condemned men on death row, that it would be merely a matter of time before their turn came. Indeed, all the other five engineers whom Femi worked with also got their own letters later in the day. And as he would learn later, most of the supervisors were sent off a week after. The personnel manager was given the shove about a month later; which did made sense since he no more had any personnel to manage.

As he drove away from the office in his Volvo that afternoon, Femi could for the first time in ten years see most things in real light and in perspective. The two-storey company’s building which had been a rich cream colour when he had first come to work here, even though every year repainted, was now covered with a thin film of brown dust, a lot more in some places to highlight the cracks and other imperfection in the façade. Weeds poked out of craters at the base of the external perimeter walls and out of the idle equipment sheds. The main gate house, he decided, could do with at least three new coats of paint, and the illuminated plastic signboard which bore the name of the company was cracked, with at least four of the letters missing from the letters which spelt the company’s name. It now said MATDR ENGINERIN. The rot had slowly crept in and apparently nobody seemed to care anymore.

Driving home had also been a different experience this afternoon. Femi found himself more relaxed, which was far from how he normally interacted with the boisterous Lagos traffic. He had travelled this route every week for ten years, and every time with irritation and with the dread that he would need to do it all again the next day, the next week.

Normally, he had to contend with many miles of crawling traffic, demented danfo and molue bus drivers, insane VIPS attempting to navigate their way through the entire mess with blasting sirens, while the traffic policemen seem probably to have gone away to have a drink and perhaps a quick nap because all this was too much to manage. And they hadn’t signed up for this mess; and this nasty work could be a ticket to an early grave if you are not careful, you see. For Femi Falashe, the trip this afternoon was a special one; it was his terminal commute along this particular route. Praise the Lord, halleluiah!

When Femi talked to Elizabeth about it that night he could immediately see the consternation that came over her face. He could appreciate that of course. After all, this was Lagos, a place where unpleasantness constantly pursued you - high rents, high school fees, low value of life. So like any other sane woman she did have all the right to be worried. Femi knew that it was his duty to assuage her worry, thus Femi had reasoned with her that he was an electrical engineer with more than a decade of experience, the job which he had just left had been a well-paying job, and there should be something similar for him out there. All he needed to do was to take his time and locate a good one.

He bolstered his courage with the fact that at the time when he was fresh out of university he had been faced with a similar task ahead of him. In fact, he had indeed been without a job for several months. But he had gathered his wits together and gone knocking on doors. Several doors had been shut in his face, a few slammed, but he had eventually got a job. Yes, opportunities were always out there, all you needed to do was go looking for them. Elizabeth had been thus pacified, but the ghost of her initial nervousness, Femi realised, never did actually disappear altogether. After all, she had never intimately known him without a job.

It hadn’t always been a great job. It had been quite exciting at first, full of discoveries; then it had slowly become a drudge, same old thing day after day, a mere duty to be done. That was the least of the problem that the job presented. At some time along the way too, he had got married, fathered two children and the drudgery of keeping a family had seamlessly merged into the drudgery of work. Sunday night had been especially torturous, because it was a reminder of the coming of Monday - the weekly advent of drudgery. Heck, maybe he really didn’t need this job. His life certainly could do with more purpose; his family could do with better quality time spent together rather than for mere discharge of duties. His life had become one endless drudge. He did really need to reclaim his life and actually put some excitement in it again. Femi hoped that he had just been given the opportunity to do just that.

His terminal benefit had included three months of salaries and allowance. Put together with two months that he was previously owed, it all came to a nice fat cushion on which he could rest for a bit of time –as long as half a year. His family was therefore not in immediate danger of starvation or losing their home. If only Elizabeth could see that. In any case, the best way to make other people confident about you, Femi knew, was to show confidence. So he had actually relaxed himself at home and spent good quality time with Deola and Sade. It was indeed nice to wake them up every morning, help to get them ready for school, take them to school, and go fetch them from school in the afternoon. The kids immensely loved this. He had never seen them so happy to have their dad do all these chores. In between, Femi took long naps at home, bought himself more than a dozen bootleg videotapes and watched television. The newspaper always had nothing more to say than dreary stories, but he read them anyway; more for the job advertisements than for the news. But then, the paucity of job vacancies relevant to his requirement never failed too to distress him, and the news promised that it would all get worse.

Nobody in the world would believe that once upon a time, at the official exchange rate, one US dollar was worth just a little more than half of one Nigerian Naira. That had been when he was still in the university just around ten years ago. Now one dollar exchanged for thirty-five Naira and you couldn’t tell what it would be in the future; probably become like the Italian Lira, he guessed.

How had things got the way it had for the country? Actually, it could be summed up in two sentences: the government of those good days made a world-wide announcement that Nigeria had free money to give away. And so naturally, people of all colour and moral values came from all over and when they left, the country was broke, naturally. Or more succinctly put, the army completely destroyed the country’s economy, heritage and societal values in less than ten years.

The story was a little more complicated though. The discovery of oil in commercial quantity in Nigeria in the mid-1950s had together with Arab oil embargo on the USA in 1973, resulted in an oil boom for the country; which translated into higher oil prices and created a massive influx of foreign exchange. So great was this windfall, and so dizzying that the military government, which had been running the economy since the beginning of the civil war in 1967, somehow thought it wiser to become completely dependent on the oil revenue. It certainly looked a lot better than hard work on the farms. Thus, it quickly became that the oil revenue began to represent ninety per cent of foreign exchange earnings, which naturally created serious structural problems in the economy.

Agriculture was most hit. Why grow any rice when government agents were already importing from Thailand at half the local price? The farmers had wisely and quite sadly reasoned. Farming became unattractive and the young and able-bodied naturally sought to reap their own benefits from the oil windfall by looking for easier money in the cities. Consequently, food production had progressively suffered, causing the country to become an importer of basic foods - the money earned from selling crude oil now being used to import food.

Not only that. The military guys running the country at that time cranked up the jet planes, decked themselves up in serious military bling, and went partying around the world and around the clock. Word quickly went around that these idiots had so much money that they didn't know what to do with the stuff. And it is said that when they got really smashed, you could find them crying into their champagne; bewailing the other poor black countries all over the world. And oh, also those poor white folks too who so generously gave us independence; and look where they were now. They lamented that the British pound was presently of same value as the naira, and were quite sorry that there was this much injustice in the world. And to make the world a really happy place, they decided it was a cool idea to throw a big party -Festival of Black Arts and Culture seemed a good name for it too - the biggest, non-stop boogie ever to hit the world.

So, millions of tons of construction stuff and food came rolling in. Half of it was eventually tipped into the Atlantic Ocean by impatient ship captains who wisely figured that with the queue at the Nigerian ports, it would probably take them about two years before their cargo could be discharged. The bill was nevertheless passed on into the country's foreign exchange account. No problem, the military guys said.

A strong foreign policy of handing out free money to other countries and also importing anything possible from them, including toothpicks, had now been established. Nigeria of the seventies was now buying so much canned beer and champagne that the highways were clogged with empty cans. The government had, whether intentionally or not, created on its own, a business class that depended solely on government contracts rather than on industrial production. The hare-brained industrial sector had now also without any foresight learned to depend on imported labour, managers, machinery and raw materials. The military government, being largely constituted of half-literate buffoons, saw no serious need to invest the windfall from oil in viable projects.

But the chicken soon came home to roost. Declining oil revenues and disequilibrium in the balance of payments, as well as increasing rate of inflation all began to spell out more difficult days ahead. By 1978, a country which had thought that foreign exchange was not a constraint on development went borrowing on the Euro-dollar market. Importation bills had begun to add up to colossal debts abroad, and which those nice bank guys in Europe were willing to pay up for a fee. After all it was a loan and well, so long as you had oil revenue coming in, you were still good for a loan.

The military rulers wisely thought this a good time to split. The incumbent military head honcho, General Obasanjo, handed over to a secondary school teacher named Shehu Shagari, who became the next civilian president. In the charge of this seemingly reluctant ruler, corruption, theft, real estate speculation, outright looting of government treasury and various larcenies went absolutely nuclear. Most of the programs of this new civilian government had incongruous outcomes and only launched the careers of Nigeria's legendary economic rascals who swamped the Nigerian ports with more imported garbage and legitimised bribes and kickbacks.

The fall in oil price started in 1981. It quickly messed up the finances of the government and they soon discovered that paying out more than you were earning was not the way of financial prudence. Shagari in an attempt to reduce government spending, suggested, albeit too late, to limit import licenses which were in those days even better as legal tender than cash in the bank, and which were already abused by money bags and government officials. But this had turned out to little medicine given too late and the country fell into further economic quagmire. Shagari's ouster by an angry-faced Major General in 1983 was therefore actually looked upon with relief by most Nigerians at the time.

But this freaked out the lenders. They could deal with a tight money situation and consequently put you in hock if they needed to. They could deal with madmen and robbers playing government. Their motto always had been: you can vandalise your country as much as you can and we will even give you a lot of assistance if you wish, but sorry, we can’t allow you to vandalise our bank. However, they didn't fancy tackling cranky political situation, especially dealing with uniformed men who went carrying guns for a living. Hey guys, party over, they had tersely announced; and we want some money back fast.

Bad news to very many Nigerians of those days that was, though. There was now no more money to import those lovely bubblies, those exotic toothpicks, those horrible tasting but expensive caviar, those beers that were only just a little bit stronger than water and you had to drink at least a dozen of them just to get a decent buzz going. To complicate the diet too was the realisation that there was also no more money to import flour for making bread, so the new military government suggested eat yams instead. Problem was the yam farmers now lived in the cities, chasing government contracts. The Major General had a brainwave though; he made Nigerians start queuing in the sun to purchase basic food items such as rice, sugar, and salt; as essential commodities instead of shopping in the convenience of air conditioned shops. The government also made it known that delicious bread could actually be made from cassava flour, corn flour, and dust if you were really in a pinch with your ingredients. Military discipline for a spoilt people; they imagined.

Nevertheless, the currency exchange rate rose with all the elegance of a helium filled balloon. Not done yet, another set of military guys, rumoured desperate to keep from being court-martialed by the Major General for having been extremely creative with the spending of military budgets, gave the Major General the shove. Enter a new genre of military-civilian politics with an avowed mission to completely extirpate industrial productivity and create a primary economy of black marketeering and brigandage. Fellow countrymen, let’s do it again, they announced.

The bottom line though was where was all this leading; where would it all end? Femi had no idea, but decided never to permit this to affect his optimism. In any case, he had half a year of cushion money to permit him sort himself out, regardless.

There were also some other things that he had not done in a long while, such as visiting his mother. So, during the children’s school mid-term holidays, Femi had taken his entire family to visit his mother at Osogbo. Indeed, he had never done this in all the eight years that he’d been married. The best they had ever done was a visit on Saturday and return on Sunday. But this time they had stayed for three whole days and his mother had been ecstatic. So had the children.

As he did find out again, there was something about getting out of Lagos even for a few hours that gave a lot of life back to you. It usually felt like a huge weight lifted off your shoulders. You could physically feel the disappearance of the tension from all around you and know without doubt that wherever you found yourself, you could actually live longer by remaining there. Femi’s mother who had only once ventured to visit them in Lagos had frequently told him.

‘Olufemi, that your Lagos is not fit for human beings.’ That had been when Deola was born seven years ago.

Mama had been Beatrice Oluwakemi Osunkeye before she got married to her husband, Felix Olukayode Falashe, a science teacher at the Government College, Ibadan. She had met her husband while she had been in teachers’ training at the United Missionary College and he was an undergraduate at the University of Ibadan. When they married she had been twenty-four and her husband newly graduated at thirty-three. Men went to school quite late in those days.

Mrs. Falashe had consequently left her family home in Osogbo to live with her husband in Ibadan. She had four children before tragedy struck and her husband had been killed in a motor accident while on his way to attend a teachers’ conference in Lagos. Barely thirty-two at this time, Mama had taken this as a Christian’s challenge and worked to see all her children through university. Now at sixty-five and her task completed, Mama had since six years ago retired back to her home town in Osogbo where it was still possible to live comfortably on a teacher’s pension.

Femi was the third in line of her children. Femi’s younger sister had sensibly taken a safe job as an administrative officer at the State Secretariat in Ibadan. Funmilola was an accountant and had not too long ago married a colleague in the government service, also an accountant. Femi’s older brother, Yemi, a pharmacist, worked in the University Teaching Hospital in Ibadan, and was married to a quite pleasant doctor. Their oldest sister, Folashade, would have been the embarrassment of the family had things not gone so well for her. Folashade was now a professor in the University of Manchester where she had initially gone to study on a scholarship. Now she taught Yoruba in the Department of African Studies. Mama would have found this an insane joke if it had happened to someone else other than her own child. But yet, she would say quite often and with amusement: ‘Can you believe this? Why would someone travel all the way from this place to England to study Yoruba, shouldn’t it be the other way round?’

But her daughter was doing well and so all was forgiven, and as far as Mama was concerned she could return to Osogbo and take over from Adunni Olorisa, the white woman who used to be called Suzanne Wenger and had decided instead that she didn’t want to be white anymore and was now priestess in a traditional Yoruba Osun shrine. The world was indeed becoming a very crazy place.

And in Osogbo they had a great time. They visited museums, visited the Osun shrines, art galleries. They ate pounded yam until it was painful for them to even look at the stuff. They ate stinky goat meat, they ate roasted squirrel, and they ate bush meat, some from animals that couldn’t be identified. They were even bold enough to try some toasted giant insect larva which didn’t taste so very bad after all. They did have a great time.

The day before they left, his mother called him to the privacy of her bedroom.

‘Is there something wrong?’ his mother had asked. Femi had thought for a long minute, trying to decide what to tell her and what not. Finally though, he decided to come completely clean. There was no way you could fool your mother, especially when she comes to you knowing that something was not quite right.

‘I lost my job, mum,’ he said with a deep sigh but quickly added, ‘but never mind I will get another soon. It is just a matter of time.’

It had been his mother’s turn to think about the right response, and Femi could see that it was not coming easy for her either. Give it to her that she had handled it better than Elizabeth, though. Mama had been a survivor. She knew that life wasn’t easy and that accidents happened always unexpectedly. Indeed, her favourite advice had always been that you should be worried if you hadn’t had any accident for a long time, which could mean that you may not be around to see the result of your next accident. Yes, Mama had enough experiences in her life to start a school for surviving tragedies and emergencies.

‘So what are you going to do next?’ she had asked with motherly concern. It wasn’t a question that Femi had any answer to, so he had been completely thrown for a long moment.

‘I don’t know yet Mama, but I am sure another job will come up soon,’ he had truthfully replied.

‘You will be a wise man to know as quickly as possible. You’ve got a family to care for, you know. Your children are growing and your wife is also still young. I am surprised that you don’t have any more children yet.’

‘Just like a mother,’ he smiled. Always looking for you to have more children when you are concerned about how to raise the ones you had.

‘We don’t need more children, Mama. I’ve got all that I need,’ he nevertheless lied. In truth, Elizabeth had suffered several miscarriages since the last had been born, and was actually afraid of getting pregnant again for fear of another miscarriage. However, Mama didn’t press.

‘Okay, that is your decision, son. After all, me and your father only had four children and that was a time when six was the minimum that people expected from you,’ she had laughed. ‘As people will again tell you, the more children you have, the poorer you are likely to get.’

‘Thank you for understanding, Mama.’