by Jennifer Juo
Winston climbed out of the mud. “I will walk to town for help,” he said. He knew most villagers walked this road to town, so it was not an impossible feat. He estimated it would probably take him half a day.
“No Masta, let me walk to town. It’s too far. You stay wit the jeep,” Ige argued.
“I would prefer to go,” Winston said. He didn’t want to be trapped in the jeep, waiting for hours on end. Waiting, he had learned, made one feel powerless.
Winston started walking back in the direction of the town. With any luck, he hoped he might run into a bush taxi, a Japanese-made minibus crammed full of bodies, bundles, and the odd chicken, the necks and backs of people contorted and bent to fit in the tight space.
He walked in the hot sun for about two hours, but there was no sign of anyone. He reached for his water bottle, but it was empty. His shirt was soaked through with sweat. Monkeys called out to him in the trees, jumping from branch to branch above him. Suddenly, an old man appeared, seemingly out of nowhere.
“Who are you?” the man called after him from the edge of the forest. The man had yellowed eyes, but his face was clear and unwrinkled, despite the gray hair and stooped demeanor of someone much older. There was something about the tone of his voice that seemed menacing, almost threatening to Winston.
“I’m a friend of Simeon Balewa, son of the chief in the next village.” Winston introduced himself, trying to sound calm and unafraid.
“You, eh? De one causing trouble!” The old man moved closer and grabbed Winston’s arm, rubbing leaves of some sort on his skin. Winston struggled to break free. The man mumbled something. He couldn’t understand what the man had said, but he sensed it was a spell of some sort.
“I go give Simeon juju. Dis is why he had de robbers come to his hut,” the old man said.
Winston had heard of the power of juju magic or witchcraft. In Nigeria, death and misfortune were often attributed to spells cast by enemies through juju doctors or witches. Witchcraft and the supernatural explained these random events. Why had misfortune fallen on one and not another? The answer was simple: a spell had been cast.
“We’ve come to…help Simeon,” Winston said, struggling to speak.
“Help? You people help?” the old man said, gesturing at him as if he were mad. “You help, you will die. Stay away from de village. Or I will give you juju too. You hear me, eh?”
The old man let go of his arm, and Winston started running down the dirt road toward the town.
“Bad tings going to happen,” the old man called after him.
What bad things? Suddenly, Winston felt his throat start to close up, and he couldn’t breathe. He wondered if it was some kind of allergic reaction to the plant the man had rubbed on his skin. This was not good, he thought. He hoped it would pass. He had some antihistamine back in the jeep, but not with him. If it was more serious than that, he had nothing out here in the jungle. He had to get to town.
Winston didn’t want to admit it, but deep down, he had an awful feeling about the old man. Throughout Winston’s childhood, his mother had planted superstitious fears deep in his mind. No amount of Western rationality, PhD or otherwise, could stamp out this raw, intuitive fear. Suddenly, his breathing became more difficult. If he helped the villagers, death would be waiting for him. This is what the old man was trying to tell him. The choice was clearly his, if he wasn’t already dying. This was his last thought before he passed out.
***
When he woke up, he was lying on a wooden slab fixed to the axel of two old truck wheels, some sort of a donkey cart driven by a boy.
“What happened? Where am I?” he asked the boy.
“Sah, I find you lying on de road.”
Winston touched his throat. His breathing was back to normal, whatever had happened had passed. He still wondered if he should go to the doctor.
“Did you see…was anyone with me?” Winston said.
“No, sah. Just you.”
“Did you see an old man in the forest?”
“No, sah. No old man.”
Winston felt relief and confusion at the same time. Was the incident with the man just a hallucination, perhaps brought on by the heat and dehydration or had it really happened?
At Winston’s request, the boy took him to a local car mechanic in town. The mechanic’s shop was by the roadside—a graveyard of auto carcasses rusting on the oil-blackened dirt, many of the useful pieces already reused. A patchwork of corrugated iron and tree branches served as a covered working area for the mechanic. The hand painted green and white sign read “Good Health Mechanic.” Winston wasn’t sure what health had to do with fixing cars. Did the sign mean to imply healthy engines or was it an attempt to convey that the mechanic himself was a strapping lad and in good health, capable of fixing cars?
Winston and the mechanic returned to the forest in an old Datsun tow truck that looked like something pieced together with mismatched parts. Winston wasn’t too sure if the truck could make it, but there wasn’t much choice in the matter. He paid the boy with his donkey cart to follow them just in case. As they made their way slowly along the muddy dirt road, Winston scanned the forest, nervously expecting the man with the yellowed eyes to reappear. But he didn’t see anything, and fortunately, they found Ige and the jeep intact.
Winston asked his driver to return with the jeep and tow truck to town to supervise its repair. He then jumped on the boy’s donkey cart contraption, instructing him to take him to Simeon’s village. He felt safer with a witness about him. It seemed the juju man or whoever he was wouldn’t approach him with witnesses.
The robbery had been a serious setback. But what else lay in store? Winston felt anxious. Superstitions and prophecies had guided his mother’s life. He remembered she had fretted about such things, consulting a Chinese fortune-teller for the most auspicious day before she scheduled anything important. Before their planned escape from China to the island of Taiwan, his mother had wanted to go into town to consult with her fortune-teller about the date of their leaving. But his father had laughed, ridiculed her even, saying there was no time for that sort of thing. And so she had not checked her calendar. The day they had fled had sealed their fate. She would die because his father had not abided by her superstitions.
As the donkey cart approached the village, Simeon’s children waved him down. They were smiling. Winston wondered if this meant good news. But then again, children were perhaps more resilient than adults, always finding something to smile about.
The children were followed by their mother. She looked worried.
“Simeon he go to town,” his wife Abike said. “He go see about da money. He come back tomorrow.”
Winston knew it would be easy for him to just buy the bag of seeds for Simeon, but he didn’t want to hurt the farmer’s pride. He knew what it felt like when the white man gave you hand-outs. But still, as a last resort if the loan hadn’t materialized, Winston knew he would have to consider this option.
Due to the condition of the road, Winston decided to stay the night in the village and wait for Simeon’s return. Abike made up some sleeping mats on the floor of their guest hut. That night, Winston had a vivid nightmare—the menacing face of the yellow-eyed juju doctor in the background, his mother in the corner quietly dying, a boy crying, he couldn’t tell if it was him or his son.
He woke up at dawn, feeling exhausted and unsettled. He hadn’t dreamed of his mother and those last days in a long time. It felt so real to him, as if it had happened yesterday, not two decades ago. He heard the crowing of the roosters and the echo of the women pounding yam with the large wooden mortar and pestle. His body was stiff from lying on the straw sleeping mats on the dirt ground. He got up and came out of his hut but almost tripped on something at his feet. He looked down at some chicken feathers, drenched in what looked like blood, tied to a bone. He stepped away quickly, wondering if it was some sort of fetish. Simeon’s wife Abike approached his hut balancing a bucket full of warm water for him
on her head. When she saw the bloody feathers and bone in front of Winston’s hut, she gasped, spilling some of the water. Suddenly, the village broke out in a commotion, and no one would touch the thing.
“What is it?” Winston said, fearing it was somehow related to the man he had encountered in the forest.
“It no good,” Abike said.
“What does it mean?”
“It no good,” Abike repeated, covering her mouth with her hand but refusing to explain.
Winston turned to a male villager standing next to him. “Please explain. What does it mean?” He sounded desperate now.
“Someone go give you juju,” the man said. “It mean death.”
Abike started screaming and hitting the man. Winston had not stayed away from the village as the old man, possibly a juju doctor, had advised. A spell on his life had been cast. The blood-soaked fetish was meant for him. Fear pumped throughout his body, each limb breaking out in sweat. A part of him wanted to flee, but he stood rooted to the spot.
Winston went to the enclosed bathhouse behind his hut. He used a pink plastic cup to pour the warm water over his body. He breathed in deeply, trying to calm himself. He poured the water carefully, trying not to waste it. He knew Abike had carried the water from the stream earlier this morning while he still sleeping. He had watched how people in the village washed their faces and hands, using the water with such frugal economy. There was no wasteful sloshing of water all over the place.
As the warm water ran down his face, he couldn’t stop thinking about the disturbing offering outside his hut. What should he do? Run like his heart was telling him? But why? He was not afraid of death. After his mother’s death, he had secretly coveted death. He had tried to jump off a tree once, but he had just broken his arm. He drank some soap, but that just meant a trip to the hospital. Life had stubbornly clung to him. And now, here was death offered up to him. So why was he so frightened? He thought of his son—sweet, innocent Thomas.
After breakfast, Winston followed the village men as they went to work in the fields. A few villagers had taken the free bags of Cole Agribusiness miracle seeds. But Oluwa, Simeon’s brother-in-law had not, planting his fields with seeds leftover from last year’s harvest as he had always done. He scowled at Winston as he walked by. It was him, he thought, he had cast the spell or whatever it was against them.
It was overcast, but the humidity was intense. Winston was drenched in sweat from helping the men hoe the ground. The soil here was dry, sandy, and infertile, not at all like the rich, black volcanic soils in Asia and Latin America where the Green Revolution had been successful. The only solution to this soil, stripped bare of its nutrients, was to add more fertilizers, but Winston didn’t know if that approach would work.
He saw Simeon approaching the fields, coming to find him. He was swinging his arms and walking with large strides. Winston noticed he carried a large envelope in his hand. They counted the money together. Some nairas had been shaved off here and there from what Simeon had originally requested, but Winston couldn’t back out now. And it wasn’t just because of Simeon. Despite his fear, Winston had his own battles to fight.
“Tomorrow we will go and buy the seeds. My jeep should be fixed,” Winston said. He tried to exude confidence, making no mention of the juju spell, even though inside he felt hounded as if someone were pursuing him in the dark forest.
“But sah…de juju magic,” Simeon said.
Winston looked up, fearing Simeon would back out.
But Simeon continued. “It’s all mumbo jumbo. Dese people dey believe it. Dey backward. I don’t believe in dis things. I Christian. I go to English school.”
Winston didn’t know if being Christian would ensure objectivity in the matter. He had seen Simeon’s church, a one-room, tin house affair. The minister incited his congregation with fear of witches and the devil while exacting “fees” to be rid of such evils. Winston also had noticed the minister’s nice, new Mercedes-Benz parked outside the tin-roof church, the only car in the area.
“You aren’t afraid?” Winston asked, not sharing Simeon’s indifference.
“No,” Simeon looked sideways at him. “And you, sah?”
“Me neither. I agree, it’s all mumbo jumbo,” Winston said quickly, although he sounded less sure of himself than Simeon.
Winston and Simeon walked back to the village through black clouds of smoke rising above the circle of huts and the surrounding forest. A little way outside the village, the women were firing a mountain of pottery on top of a huge bed of branches, covered with straw and then lit. Winston imagined how easily the wind could blow this fire into the surrounding bush and the village itself. In the distance, he watched the people—small stick figures—walking around the village. He thought again of the juju doctor’s words. Bad things will happen. Winston continued to walk back to the village with Simeon. The smoke from the fire stung his eyes.
SYLVIA
Chapter 13
A few months later in the summer of 1976, Sylvia went to the market to buy some fruit and eggs. A line of white and brown goats ate from a trough, fattened until the end. Customers dragged their purchased goats with leashes of rough string. Slabs of raw meat lay on a wooden table, the blood darkening the wood. She could smell the sour stench of the meat already spoiling in the hot sun.
The crowd pushed her, and Sylvia started to feel a kind of hostility. She stopped at one stall, picking through the pineapples and oranges. Suddenly, a man grabbed her by the arm. He pulled her roughly into the dark, makeshift wood, and blue tarp stall. He was an old man with yellowed eyes and clear skin.
“You Winston Soong’s wife?” he said menacingly.
“Yes.” She nodded. She wanted to scream, but who would hear her above the din of the crowded marketplace?
“Tell your husband to stay away, eh?” he said, still holding her arm tightly.
She didn’t understand what this man was talking about.
“Tell your husband, he go stay away from Simeon’s village,” he repeated. “I go give him juju. It go kill him, you hear, eh?”
She nodded. She was too afraid to say anything. Did she hear the word juju? She knew spells were associated with juju magic. Was Winston’s life at risk? She didn’t understand, she thought he was helping Simeon and the villagers.
The old man shoved her out of the stall, and she fell onto the ground, the orange dirt staining her dress. She got up and pushed her way through the crowd. When she got back to her car, she noticed a small pickup truck parked next to her. It was crammed full of several brown bulls piled on top of each other, their horns jutting out. Were they still alive? They were hardly moving, but when she looked into their eyes, she saw a skittish fear. She knew what she really saw was her own fear reflected in the eyes of the cattle. Next to her, a man pushed a wheelbarrow of freshly slaughtered beef, large bones of bloody meat piled high.
As she drove out of the market, she saw the old man with yellowed eyes. He was shouting out to her, I go give him spell. I go kill him. He was standing under the baobab tree at the center of the market, a variety of animal skulls used as fetishes for juju spells were spread out on his mat. She had heard that witches placed offerings under this baobab tree at the Ibadan market because they believed it was a spirit tree.
Spirits were known to live inside the hollowed-out trunk of baobab trees, water spirits swam in its interior lake. She had heard of a dying baobab tree exploding from a cigarette stub, its rotting trunk full of methane.
As she drove off, she saw the haunting image of the man in her rearview mirror. She pressed on the accelerator. But along the road back to the compound, she got stuck in the usual traffic. There was a loud bang on her window. She jumped and looked over. A small boy pressed his face to her window, offering drinking water tied up in clear plastic bags—fatal, unboiled water. A man walked by, balancing on his head, a large basin with the macabre, sun-bleached skull of a cow. The empty eye sockets stared at her.
When she reac
hed the royal palms and white gatehouse, for once she felt relieved. Luckily, Winston was home. It was Saturday, and he was playing golf with his colleagues on the compound golf course. Winston had taken up golfing with surprising interest. It was the only sport he played. As with everything, he did it with obsessive perfectionism.
Sylvia didn’t know if she could find him, but still in a panic, she went straight to the course and parked in front of the golf clubhouse. A few men were drinking beers on the terrace overlooking the green golf course and small lake. She found Winston at hole seventeen. Her husband saw her running towards him, and he looked worried.
“Sylvia, what is it? Is Thomas?” he said, running up to her.
“No…” She stopped, trying to catch her breath. Sweat dripped down the sides of her face, but she didn’t notice.
They stood apart from his colleagues, and he signaled them to head back to the clubhouse without him. The palm leaves waved wildly in the wind. The skies had darkened, and she could feel the increasing humidity of the approaching thunderstorm.
“What is it then?” he said, impatiently.
“A man grabbed me at the market,” she said, explaining everything the man had said to her.
“What did…what did he look like?” Winston said, his face clouding over.
“I don’t know. Old man, clear skin, yellow eyes.”
She thought she saw Winston shudder, but if he did, he didn’t say anything about being afraid.
“Don’t worry about this. It’s all mumbo jumbo, nothing will come of it,” Winston said. She couldn’t believe he was trying to reassure her. Mumbo jumbo? That sounded like something his colleague Richard would say.