Voice of America

by E. C. Osondu

  The parents of the kidnapped girl brought a gift for the blind girl and her mother. There was no attempt to explain how the girl had arrived at the knowledge she had. Some people said she must have heard something. They said her blindness had sharpened her ears. Her mother suspected something but said nothing.

  One day the girl said softly to the mother, “Father is never coming back.”

  “Why do you say that? I am not sure you remember your father, you were so tiny when he left.”

  “He ran away with the catechist’s wife’s younger sister.”

  “How do you know that?” the woman asked, puzzled and frightened.

  “They were traveling to Mokwa. He was going to start a new life with her. The car in which they were traveling broke down on the way; all the passengers came down while the driver opened the bonnet to find out what was wrong. He was crossing to the other side of the road to urinate, when a car coming from the other side knocked him down.”

  “Oh, my child, how do you know these things?” the woman asked.

  “They buried him by the roadside, his grave is overgrown with weeds, he’s never coming back.”

  The woman was quiet for a while. Everything about the story sounded true. She began to cry quietly to herself.

  All things eventually come to light. People in the village sensed the girl’s true powers and began to come to her for answers.

  “Will there be plenty of rain this year so I can plant cassava instead of yams?”

  “My black sheep did not come home with the rest of my sheep last night. Where could it be?”

  “My son who lives in the city has not come home for five years. Is he dead or in prison?”

  “My son who died three years ago: Was his death a natural death, or did my husband’s other wife poison him while I was out of the house?”

  “Is the price of cocoa going to rise or fall this year?”

  “My husband has been sick for years now; do you think he will recover?”

  The girl answered all their questions in a whisper, and she answered honestly. Her answers occasionally caused trouble, tore families apart. Her mother would sometimes speak to her by way of signs to be quiet, but she spoke up all the time. The answers flowed out of her mouth like a gentle stream. She said what she had to say and was quiet.

  Prosperity began to come to the village because of her. People planted the right crops at the right time and got very rich harvests. Evil was rare. People stopped stealing because they knew she would find them out. More farmers bought motorcycles. Life had never been better.

  The mother stopped frying akara. She made a comfortable living from the gifts the girl received. She was happy for once in all her life. She always felt the girl’s eyes on her and sometimes shivered slightly when she felt the girl was looking at her. The girl’s voice did not change, her breasts were small. The mother was happy when she began to bleed in tiny drops every month. Thank goodness she is a woman, she said to herself.

  People said different things about the source of her power, but no one denied it.

  “Her power is from the river goddess. When she speaks, it is the river goddess speaking.”

  “It is the Holy Virgin that gives people such gifts, that is why she is called the voice of the dumb and the eyes of the sightless.”

  “She is not Catholic, not even Christian—she does not mention the name of God.”

  “God who took away her eyes gave her the gift of sight, and now she sees more than those of us with two eyes.”

  People said all sorts of things but still came to her for answers. On occasion the mother would say the girl was tired and needed to rest, but the girl would come out of her room and provide answers to whomever needed them. People reminded the mother that she could now afford to take the child to the Baptist Missionary Hospital in the big city. The mother acted as if she did not hear them. She did not think it was wise to tamper with the will of God, she told those who were bold enough to ask her. Besides, if the girl thought it was such a good thing she would have said so. Quite a few agreed with the mother; after all, those of them who were not blind did not see as much as the girl did.

  At about this time, the former American president Jimmy Carter launched his River Blindness Eradication Program. The program sent doctors and nurses to villages to distribute drugs for the prevention of river blindness. They did eye examinations and distributed glasses, which the villagers referred to as Anya Jimmy Carter—Jimmy Carter’s Eyes. The frames of the glasses were secondhand, gifts and donations from affluent Americans. This time around, though, it was going to be slightly different;they were coming with eye surgeons to help remove cataracts. The bearer of this piece of news was the midwife. She told the villagers that she had made it happen, that the village was not originally in the plan for the cataract surgery; she had lobbied for them to be included.

  People were excited about this piece of good news. One of the old men in the village said the former president was kind because he had been a groundnut farmer before he became a president. Most of the villagers were farmers.

  The doctors had already been to the nearby village and had sent a notice to the chiefs that they were coming. The midwife said they would be moving from house to house.

  At first everyone looked forward to the visit, until the woman mentioned that this would be an opportunity for her daughter to have the scar tissue covering her eyes removed. It was free, and the girl was bleeding; she was now a woman and needed to get married. She only said this to a few people. It soon got round the village that the girl was going to undergo surgery. There was anger, there were complaints, there was resentment, and then people began to complain loudly.

  “This program is not for people like her, it is for people losing their sight to river blindness.”

  “She lost her eyes due to her mother’s carelessness. Her mother should bear the cost of her surgery in a proper hospital.”

  “What guarantee is there that she will see again? Even if the skin is lifted, I hear the eyeballs are dead and blank. Please, no one should make the poor child suffer for nothing.”

  “They say her mother wants a husband for the girl. I know many men that will gladly marry her the way she is, she is a bag of wealth.”

  “It is the mother that needs a husband. Why did she never remarry after her husband ran away? As we all know the husband is dead, the girl said it herself.”

  “The girl belongs to the entire village now, not to her mother alone. She ceased being the mother’s property as soon as she received her gift.”

  “You are right, you know—if the gift was for her alone, she would have stopped at telling her mother about her father’s disappearance.”

  “You are right, she sees things for everyone, she was sent to prosper the village.”

  “Why are the Americans sending the eye doctors to us? Do they mean to tell us they have cured all the blind people in America?”

  “The elders should meet and tell the woman what to do, just in case she does not know.”

  Words got to the ears of the elders, and they, being people who acted in the interest of the inhabitants of the village, decided to prevail on the mother of the girl to do the right thing. They made their points—they told her that her daughter’s gift was for the good of all, that if it was for her mother alone she would have been seeing things for the mother alone. They spoke to the woman for a very long time. The woman told them that the girl was already bleeding and was a woman. She wanted her to marry and have children. Mid came along with the elders. She explained the difference between a cataract and the girl’s condition. It was very possible that the girl would not recover her sight after the surgery; this might traumatize the girl, and she might even lose the gift of speech, which would be a double tragedy.They talked to the woman for a long time. The elders told her that they would gladly marry the girl off to any of their sons. She cried, and then she nodded and agreed with them.

  On the day the American eye doctors cam
e, the woman and her daughter locked their doors and remained inside till the eye doctors left. Some people got new glasses; some had surgery. Everyone was happy. The girl and her mother were referred to as heroes who had put the interest of the town above their own interest.

  When the planting season began, people came to the girl with their questions, but alas, she had no answers. The stream had dried up.

  “It was not our fault. We should not blame ourselves for it,” one of the villagers said.

  “Whatever has a beginning must have an end; even the deepest ocean has a bottom. She was bound to stop seeing things one day anyway.”

  “It is the white man’s strong juju that did it, or don’t you know that white people are powerful?”

  “The blind girl and her mother should consider themselves lucky—if it were in some other village, they would have stoned them to death for possessing witchery powers.”

  And so life returned to normal in the village, and everybody’s conscience was at peace. Occasionally when a sheep went missing, the owner would be heard to bite his fingers and mutter, “If only that blind girl still had her powers.”

  A Letter from Home

  My Dear Son,

  Why have you not been sending money through Western Union like other good Nigerian children in America do? You have also not visited home. Have you married a white woman? Do not forget that I have already found a wife for you. Her name is Ngozi. Her parents are good Christians and her mother belongs to the Catholic Women’s League like me. Please do not spoil the good relationship I have built over the years with Ngozi’s family.

  I beg of you not to become like Kaka’s son who was sent to America with the community’s funds, only to come back with a white woman, and would not let his parents visit him in his white man’s living quarters in the Lagos government reserved area. He has large dogs and his white wife treats the dogs like her children. The only time he visited his family, he refused to sleep in his father’s old house, complaining that it was dirty, and took his wife to pass the night in a hotel. He stretched out his hands to shake the hands of the elders of the community and would not prostrate on the ground like a well-brought-up child.

  Or don’t you consider Ngozi beautiful enough from the picture I sent to you of her dressed in a long gown, holding a hibiscus flower? She attended the Catholic Women’s Teacher’s College and comes from a lineage of women who bear strong sons.

  Ogaga’s son who went to Germany only a few years ago has sent his father a big black BMW and has already completed a twenty-room mansion and is laying the foundation for a hotel. I am already in the evening of my days and want to rock my grandchildren on my tired knees before I go to heaven to live in the many mansions that God has prepared for me. I have become the laughingstock of the village because I sold my only stall in Oyingbo Market to raise money to send you, my only son, to America, and now I have no stall in the market and am forced to hawk my wares on a tray like a housemaid.

  Remember your promise to buy me a car and get me a driver, so I can proudly sit in the owner’s corner like the wife of a top civil servant.

  I am sure you remember Obi’s daughter. She went to Italy to work as a prostitute after you left for America. Just last year she came back with lots of goodies for her parents and has even married a boy from a responsible family. They had their wedding in the church and the priest said that though her sins were like scarlet she has been washed clean by the blood of Jesus (after she made a huge donation for the repair of the church roof). She has gone on to bear a son and now nobody remembers that she was once a prostitute in Italy.

  Do you associate with other Africans so you can still remember your roots? Do you still find African foods to eat? Because I fear the white man’s food will make you reason in the white man’s ways. My son, reconsider your ways and retrace your steps like the prodigal son, so I can bless you before I die.

  I spent too much sending Ngozi to the fattening room. I sent her there at my own expense so the women can teach her the ways to take care of her husband, and feed her, and fatten her up so she can be plump like a ripe melon. God forbid that a girl from a responsible family, like Ngozi, should be looking like dry bonga fish on her wedding day. Sending a bride-to-be to the fattening room costs a lot of money these days, because the women who run them are dying out and the younger generation consider it “bush.” The young prefer their women thin and dry like broomsticks. They seem not to know that men prefer to hold something ample when they reach out at night.

  My son, do not make me a laughingstock. I beg of you not to let those who borrowed chewing sticks from me end up with brighter teeth and cleaner breath. I am sure you remember Odili’s son (you were in primary school together). He used to be the neighborhood rascal who smoked marijuana and pinched young girls on their buttocks, and can you imagine, that efuefu, that idler, woke up one day and announced that he was going to Europe by road! We all thought that marijuana had finally crossed two wires in his brain, but how wrong we were. He joined a truck carrying tomatoes to the north and boarded a bus from there to Mali, where he joined a caravan of camels across the Sahara desert. Some of those he was traveling with died of thirst in the desert, but he survived. He found work in a construction site in Morocco and saved enough money to pay the Tuaregs, who helped him to cross by boat into Spain. He told the Spanish authorities he was a Liberian fleeing the Liberian war and was given a work permit. You should have been there the day he came back exactly five years later: he was loaded down with television sets, gold and trinkets, clothes, and lots of money, which he spent like water. For the few days that he was around, his father’s house was the place to be; it was where everyone went to eat and drink. In my heart I did not want to go there with the throng, but I did not want to be accused of not wishing him well. So I dragged my feet there and ate and drank and rejoiced with the family like everyone else. All eyes there upon me, and asking, “What about your son, when will he return with goodies, when will he invite us to come and eat and drink like the Odilis have done? You whose son flew to America. Look at Odili’s son who went on foot, he has come back with goodies.” Not that anyone said a word to me, but I could see it in their eyes. Their eyes never left me as I drank the Coca-Cola, and ate jollof rice and fried beef and danced foolishly like a headless chicken. The young man has gone back, by air this time, promising his father that when next he comes, he will demolish his father’s old house, and put up a mansion in its place.

  I have been tempted to give your young bride Ngozi to your younger cousin Azuka so she can produce a baby for me to rock on my knees before they become too rusty. But Ngozi’s mother will not hear of it. She clapped her hands cynically and hissed like a snake and asked if her daughter was now a piece of beef on the butcher’s table that people tossed and weighed and tossed aside for the next person. She spat derisively at me, narrowly missing my face, and told me that if her daughter was going to marry again, she would look for a better family for her, a family where things grow and not an arid one like ours. Since that incident, she has stopped attending the meetings of the Catholic Women’s League and hisses and crosses over to the other side of the street whenever she sees me coming toward her.

  You really have no excuse for not sending money, because Western Union now has an office on our street. Daily, I see men and women who have caring children in America marching majestically into their offices and swaggering out with huge bundles of naira notes in large paper parcels. They wave with their free hands and clutch their parcels of money as if afraid I’m going to ask them to lend me some.

  Do not imagine that my ears are not filled with all manner of suggestions from different people. After all, as our people say, “The day an elephant dies is the day you see all kinds of knives.” A native doctor once suggested to me that he could cast a spell on you over there in America that would make you abandon whatever you were doing and board the next flight back to Nigeria. He said the spell was so effective that even if there was no flight,
you would board the nearest boat and return home. But you are my son, you came into this world from between my legs, and I will not do something that will harm you. Okolosi’s son was forced back from America by such a spell. He is back home now; he wears an old jacket and walks up and down the street frightening children on their way to school with his hyena laugh while reciting aloud to himself the names of the capital cities of America.

  I am not threatening you, but please do not force my hand. You were born the year the Americans landed on the moon and returned with that strange eye disease called Apollo. I still remember everyone’s eyes turning red and dripping water like a tap as soon as the men came back from the moon. It was said that the disease was God’s punishment to the people of the earth for peering too closely into his eyes and leaving an imprint of their feet on his face. It did not surprise me, therefore, when you said you were leaving for America to study. Even as a little boy watching Bonanza on our old black-and-white television, you were always taking on new names every week. One week you were Dan Blocker, Purnell Roberts the next, down to Michael Landon and Lorne Green. As a child you would wear a cowboy hat, put a dry piece of wood in your mouth, pretending it was a cigar, curl your lips, and speak through your nose like the actors on television. It did not surprise me when you said you were leaving for America, because you were born the year the American flag was planted on the moon. During moonlight play, while other children saw the man in the moon, you always ran back home to tell me that you saw the American flag waving to you.

  And now I want to share a family secret with you. In the early 1940s your father secured a place at Howard University. Your grandfather sold his entire rubber plantation to the United African Company to raise the funds for your father’s boat trip via the Elder Dempster Lines. Your grandmother sold her gold ornaments too. When your father got to the Lagos wharf, he fell into the hands of con men, who convinced him they could double his money. The con men were soldiers of the West African Frontier Force, recently discharged from the army after fighting in Burma. They spent their days idling around the wharf looking for gullible bumpkins like your father. Your father reasoned that if they doubled his money he could send half back to his family and travel with the other half to America. The con men collected his money and handed a black wooden box to him,telling him not to open it till the next day. On opening it, he discovered it was filled with neat rows of newspapers cut to the size of pound notes. He was distraught and was about to throw himself into the Atlantic when a woman selling bean cakes by the wharf stopped him and took him home. He got a teaching job in a private school and managed to save enough money to travel to Sierra Leone in search of better opportunities. His family back home assumed he was studying in America. He was in Sierra Leone when his father, your grandfather, became sick. As the first son, he was expected to be there to lay his father’s hands across his chest when he breathed his last. The elders conferred and decided to consult a medicine man to cast a spell on your father to bring him back home. It was this spell that brought your dad back from Sierra Leone. By the time he arrived, your grandfather had breathed his last, but not before placing a curse on his son who had broken his heart. He said that just as your father had disappointed him, your father’s own children would in turn do the same to him.