So it was the duty of my paternal grandfather to prosecute and punish her… As was the custom, Ajayi was summoned to the King’s Court (and) asked whether she was ready to marry the man her parents chose for her. She said no. They told her that her refusal would earn public disgrace. She was unyielding. So, she was led to the market-place where, before a concourse of people, she was stripped to her waist and told to begin her ordeal. It was to pound water which had been poured into a mortar—and not a drop of the water must spill out of the mortar while she pounded! As she pounded, and water spilled, she was whipped. It was thought that, as many before her had done, she would change her decision during the torture. She cried and wept, as she was meticulously thrashed, but refused to yield her ground. At the end of the day, to the utter discomfiture of her father, she was of her own opinion still, [and in the end] she was free to marry Adesina. Ajayi was my grandmother…
This is a different story, isn’t it, from the ones I have been talking about? It is from Bola Ige’s Kaduna Boy, published in 1991. The story speaks of suffering, but also of triumph. It talks of love, and the awful penalty it sometimes has to pay to be fulfilled. It is uplifting; it celebrates the capacious possibilities of the human will, the triumph of courage over adversity. Obviously we have moved away from the dark territory of the Soyinkas and Achebes.
Let us try another one:
On my 10th day in the ward, the doctors having noted that I had stopped vomiting and stooling and was no longer running a fever, decided it was time to take my blood sample to test if the (Ebola) virus had cleared from my system. They took the sample and told me that I shouldn’t be worried if it comes out positive as the virus takes a while before it is cleared completely. I prayed that I didn’t want any more samples collected from me. I wanted that to be the first and last sample to be tested for the absence of the virus in my system. I called my pastor. He encouraged me and we prayed again about the test.
On the evening of the day Justina passed on, we were moved to the new isolation centre. We felt like we were leaving hell and going to heaven.
We were conveyed to the new place in an ambulance. It was just behind the old building. Time would not permit me to recount the drama involved with the dynamics of our relocation. It was like a script from a science fiction movie. The new building was cleaner and much better than the old building. Towels and nightwear were provided on each bed. The environment was serene.
The following night, Dr. Adadevoh was moved to our isolation ward from her private room where she had previously been receiving treatment. She had also tested positive for Ebola and was now in a coma… It was so difficult seeing her in that state. I could not bear it. She was my consultant, my boss, my teacher and my mentor. She was the imperial lady of First Consultants, full of passion, energy and competence. I imagined she would wake up soon and see that she was surrounded by her First Consultants family but sadly it was not to be.
I continued listening to my healing messages. They gave me life. I literarily played them hours on end. Two days later, on Saturday the 16th of August, the W.H.O doctors came with some papers. I was informed that the result of my blood test was negative for Ebola virus. If I could somersault, I would have but my joints were still slightly painful. I was free to go home after being in isolation for exactly 14 days….
I went for a chlorine bath, which was necessary to disinfect my skin from my head to my toes. It felt like I was being baptized into a new life…
I was led out of the bathroom and straight to the lawn to be united with my family, but first I had to cut the red ribbon that served as a barrier. It was a symbolic expression of my freedom. Everyone cheered and clapped. It was a little but very important ceremony for me. I was free from Ebola! I hugged my family as one who had been liberated after many years of incarceration. I was like someone who had fought death face to face and come back to the land of the living.
We had to pass through several stations of disinfection before we reached the car. Bleach and chlorinated water were sprayed on everyone’s legs at each station. As we made our way to the car, we walked past the old isolation building. I could hardly recognize it. I could not believe I slept in that building for 10 days. I was free! Free of Ebola. Free to live again. Free to interact with humanity again. Free from the sentence of death.
The happiness in this story is so palpable you can almost pull it into your arms. Like the one before it, its tone is totally different from the usual fare we find in Nigerian literature. But still the important difference you may not have noticed is this—namely that they are all true stories. The first set are from fiction and drama; these are biographies recounting the experiences of actual living men and women in our society, one from long ago, the other from, as it seems, yesterday.
The stories they tell are heart-warming, no doubt because what they reveal are examples of astounding courage and resilience, such as we all want to identify with. No one can read them and not come to the conclusion that our creative writers have been somewhat partial in their accounts. Yes, the failures and calamities they write about are all true as we know. But still, those failures are not the only truth about our lives.
Elsewhere, away from the corridors of power and the circle of power mongers, our people are also living heroic lives.
One must not be blind of course to the fact that biographies and autobiographies are not exact mirrors of reality, or of the personalities they seek to sell. Inevitably they exaggerate and embellish, sometimes even to an embarrassingly implausible extent. But all the same, these accounts are irresistible, and it should always be possible for an active imagination to sift the grain from the chaff. The result when the experiment succeeds is what we refer to as ‘faction’…
I believe that the time is long overdue for our writers to begin to de-emphasize the importance we give to crooks and malfeasants, in order to highlight the contributions of the positive figures and forces among us.
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