Voice of America

by E. C. Osondu

  “What do they want, is it money?”

  “Are they connected to any Muslim group? They say their leader has a Muslim name.”

  “Are Americans their target, or are they after every white person living in Port Harcourt?”

  The first of the hostages were set free after a week. They had only good words for their captors; they said they were very polite young men and were only asking for representation and development for their people. But that first abduction opened a floodgate in the Niger Delta. The news leaked out that the first kidnappers had been paid off handsomely—in foreign currency too—by the oil companies, who had established a ransom fund. This was all the news the unemployed young men in the Niger Delta needed.

  The abductors drove up to Pat’s Bar in a navy blue Nissan bus in a cloud of dust. They shot sporadically into the air. One of them leaned out of the front passenger seat; he had a red bandanna around his head and military fatigues.

  “Lie down, everybody—if you move we shoot you, if you talk we shoot you dead, bring out your cell phones and keep them on the table, if you move, we waste you.”

  The rest of the abductors jumped out of the bus; they too were dressed in military fatigues and carried AK-47 rifles. They were all barking out orders at the same time. There was dust, smoke, and confusion in the small bar. Some of the expatriates were hiding under the tables. The girls were lying on top of them, shielding them with their bodies.

  Pat came out from the kitchen, where she had been supervising one of the cooks who was preparing steak for a customer and began to scream, “What police station are you people from, and who sent you? Don’t you know that this is a decent place where oyibo people come to relax, oya, oya, who is your leader, come and see me quick.” She had mistaken the abductors for idle soldiers on an extortion raid. Soldiers from the Tombra barracks would occasionally raid bars to extort money whenever they were broke, but they rarely came to Pat’s Bar.

  One of the gunmen shot at her, but their leader pushed his gun to the side, and the bullet ricocheted off a table. Pat screamed and lay down, calling on Amanyanabo, the god of her forefathers, to save her.

  “We want the white men, oya come out all of you, one by one, and start marching into the vehicle, quick, quick, march into the bus and let’s move, we are not wasting time, anybody that disobey we waste the person one time.”

  It was then Pat realized that these were no soldiers raiding expatriate bars for small extortion money, but abductors who had come on more serious business. The lights in the bar were very dim, powered by the standby generator that had been running all day due to an outage. Pat crawled to where three of her white customers were sitting and shielded them with her body. The only two people who walked into the waiting bus were an American who worked for Chevron named Pete and Chet Williams. Chet had been sitting alone before the abductors came, nursing a beer and waiting for an opportune moment to ask the barman to bring him three shots of Monkey Tail. He had been playing his favorite mind game to amuse himself, which he called “Why This Country Is Fucked Up.”

  As long as they continue to have only one kind of doughnut, this country will remain fucked up.

  As long as they don’t celebrate Thanksgiving, this country will remain fucked up.

  As long as they call every kind of pasta macaroni, this country will remain fucked up.

  As long as Happy Cow cheese remains the only brand to be found in the country, and even that is hawked in the hot sun, this country will remain fucked up.

  As long as they continue to throw tires round the necks of armed robbers, douse them with petrol, and set them ablaze instead of trying them in courts of law, this country will remain fucked up….

  He was still enjoying his game when a gun was pointed at his head and he was led away.

  The girls knew Chet Williams’s story; they knew he had no money, and they stayed away from him. The other American who was abducted, Pete, was a fat, unhappy fellow. He usually wore Levi’s and a New York Yankees baseball cap, preferred young boys, and always looked sullen, which made the girls stay away from him as well.

  As the bus pulled away, the abductors shot into the air and shouted, “You will hear from us.” People began to stand up from the floor; two of the expatriates had urinated on themselves, and they pointed at each other and laughed nervously. They emptied their wallets, giving all the money in them to the girls who had shielded them, fled into their cars, and sped off.

  The news soon spread that two Americans had been abducted from Pat’s Bar, and the story made the local newspapers. The governor of the state invited Pat and whoever had been at the bar to come forward and debrief the security operatives. He called on the oil companies not to pay ransom money to anybody.

  THE ABDUCTORS CALLED themselves names like Rambo, 007, Chuck Norris, and Hulk Hogan. They were all very dark-complexioned and were visibly excited, like fishermen celebrating a big catch. As they drove the bus at high speed through the streets of Port Harcourt, Chet prayed that they would run into a police checkpoint. Pete was crying, big tears running down his face and snot down his nose; he looked too scared to wipe off the snot. Surprisingly, there were no police checkpoints on the road that night. Ordinarily, every quarter mile featured a point where the policemen would ask for bribes. If they noticed that the car was carrying a white person, their manner immediately turned servile. “Oga oyibo your boys are here working for you, abeg find your boys something to do the weekend, as you can see we are here protecting you, nothing is too small, any small thing is appreciated even if na dollar or pound sterling.” Tonight the policemen were nowhere to be found.

  The bus was headed toward the outskirts of Port Harcourt; Chet could tell that they were leaving Port Harcourt because the smell of flaring gas that suffused the city was beginning to fade.

  Pete turned to Chet and began to whisper, barely audible because of the snot and tears that choked his voice.

  “What are they gonna do with us, you think they’re gonna kill us, man?”

  “Why would they wanna kill us? If they kill us, they will not be able to collect any ransom.”

  “Hey sharrap there, the two both of you,” Rambo screamed at them.

  “Leave them let them talk, Rambo, if they want to nack tori let dem nack, no wahala afterall we don get wetin we want and na make pay drop na him remain, make you no make dem begin fear and come get heart attack and die.”

  Turning to Pete and Chet, Rambo smiled, showing a set of very large but perfectly white teeth.

  “Make una no fear, make una dey nack tori dey go, no wahala, we are all together.”

  The bus turned off the highway and entered a bumpy dirt road. The leaves of the plants that grew along the narrow road slapped against the side of the bus. Pete rested his head on the seat in front of him and began to sob, his shoulders quaking.

  They soon arrived at a small beach. Rambo and 007 jumped down into the surrounding bush, dragged out a boat on which was mounted an Evinrude outboard engine, and pulled the boat to the edge of the water.

  “Get into the boat quick, time waits for no man, let’s move abeg no killing of time we don already waste time for Port Har-court make we they move, oya, oya.”

  They got into the boat. Though Pete was used to boats, since he worked on an offshore rig, he looked at the water strangely, as if he was seeing water for the first time, and entered the boat with shaky legs.

  “CAN YOU IMAGINE, they are asking for ten million naira each for Chet and Pete? They say the community relations manager in Pete’s office don dey negotiate with dem. But na who go come negotiate for Chet now? Eeehen, tell me, man wey get wahala wey no get work infact na book me down him de take live for this my bar.”

  The few expatriates who were around looked at Pat and stared back into their mugs of beer.

  “I hear Pete will soon be released—the community relations guy in his office was seen picking up unmarked notes from Savannah Bank,” one of the expatriates said to no one in particula
r and went back to his beer.

  “So what will happen to Chet? Who is going to help the cow with no tail to drive away flies?” Pat said and walked away, shaking her head.

  There were few girls in the bar. They only came early in the evening to check out the place and then move on to other bars with more life. Even the expatriates were beginning to avoid the place. Some of them were already referring to the place as “bad luck bar.” This did not bother Pat much; she had seen it all. She consoled herself with something she always heard her mother say in times of difficulty. According to her mother, the bedbug once remarked to her children that whatever was hot would soon get cold. This was after an old woman on whose old wooden bed the bedbugs had made their home poured hot water on the bed to get rid of them.

  CHET WAS PLAYING his favorite game again.

  As long as these people continue to sell water in plastic bags and peanuts in bottles, this country will remain fucked up.

  As long as the roads here continue to be built without sidewalks and motorists continue to struggle for road space with pedestrians, beggars, hawkers, and cows, this country will remain fucked up.

  As long as the electric company refuses to supply power and the entire country runs on generators, yet no one thinks it wise to shut down the power company, this country will remain fucked up.

  As long as it remains easier to buy petrol from the black market and the filling stations are choked with long lines of motorists even though the country is one of the largest exporters of crude oil, this country will remain fucked up.

  As long as there are more mosquitoes than human beings, this country will remain fucked up.

  Rambo’s voice cut into his thoughts; this made him a little angry, as he was enjoying the game. He could sometimes get to seventy reasons before he stopped. Rambo and his friends had treated them well. They provided bottled water and Off! mosquito repellent. They provided a tent for them and even offered Chet marijuana and schnapps. The only downside was that each time either he or Pete needed to shit, he had to do it in the brackish waters of the mangrove. He had heard the expression “nervous wreck,” but only thought it a figure of speech until his abduction with Pete, who was either crying or shitting or pissing or asking him if they were going to be killed or cowering in a corner.

  “Mr. Chet, your people have refused to perform o, nobody is responding concerning your own matter o. Mr. Pete’s people have responded very well, in fact we are going to release him as soon as my people come back.”

  “Who are my people? I have no people.”

  “I mean your company people, or are you not working in an oil company?”

  “I lied—I no longer work for Atlas Oil, I was laid off months ago.”

  “You mean you are not working for Atlas ? Elelele, Hulk Hogan, everybody please come o, we have bought bad market o …”

  Rambo’s colleagues crowded around him and began to fire rapid questions at him.

  “So who are you working for now?”

  “I have no job. I already told your leader, I lost my job months back, and I’m trying to get another job.”

  “That is a big lie, we have never heard of a white person in this Port Harcourt who has no job.”

  “Well, you are meeting the first one, congratulations,” Chet said, laughing recklessly.

  From where Pete sat, he could hear the conversation, but each time Chet looked at him, he quickly looked away.

  “But you can call your people—I mean, other white people like you, oyibos like to help each other, they can contribute money for you to be released.”

  “I told you before, I have nobody,” Chet said.

  A few days later, Pete’s employers paid up. Rambo and his colleagues drank and danced and celebrated, throwing money into the air and pasting currency notes on each other’s sweaty faces.

  Later that day, they packed and left with Pete in their boat. They left Chet behind. He was almost tempted to doze, but he remembered his game, became suddenly alert, and began to play.

  As long as abducting foreigners continues to pay good money and the young people of this country remain unemployed….

  When it began to grow dark, Chet Williams began to feel a bit hungry. He was looking forward to the darkness and time alone with the stars. He always felt a particular kinship with the Southern Cross. The sky over here always felt very close, and when it grew dark, it was the color of dark blue ink. Someone had once told him that the sky was close in Nigeria because the people were not greedy. The person told him that when the world was first created, the sky was so close, and the sky was edible.All you had to do was reach up and cut a piece and eat. The only rule was that you could only cut the quantity you needed to fill you, none should be left overnight. Unfortunately, in some parts of the world people became greedy and began to cut more than they needed, and the sky began to flee upward. He told Chet that the sky was farthest where the people were greediest.

  Chet looked up again and saw a distant faint glow. That must be the glow of the gas flare from Port Harcourt Refinery, he told himself. He stood up and began to follow it.

  Pilgrimage

  I liked her before I met her. She had a short name—Beth, this was easy for me to write on the placard I had to hold up at the arrival hall. She was also American, which meant her tips were going to be large. I had trouble with some of the names; just last week there was a couple with a Laotian name, though they were Canadians—Phonprompasang, I think, was their name. They said I spelled it wrong, and that set the tone of our relationship all through their visit. It was the wife who observed the error in my spelling. The man was too ill to observe anything; he was sweating through his short-sleeved white shirt, and by the time they entered my bus, he was fast asleep. I am not any kind of expert; I am only a driver for the Temple of All Nations.

  My job is to pick up foreigners from every part of the world who began flocking to the temple for healing after the prophet’s tour of fifteen world capitals. I was surprised at the number of people that I had to pick up every day—Americans, Canadians, Australians, South Africans, Norwegians, Swedes, in fact, people from almost every country on earth. And the kinds of sicknesses they suffered from, even things I have never heard of before—cancers of every part of the body, paralysis of the mouth, ear, nose, eye, some things we do not even consider a sickness, like restless leg syndrome, they flew thousands of miles to find a cure for them here in the temple.

  I was shocked when she walked toward me. She was black like me—well, not as black, but she was not white. She had a plump, smooth face; her hair was in braids like some of our women’s. She was dressed in a light green bubu, and if she had walked by me on the street I could have mistaken her for some rich man’s wife. She stretched out her hand, but I took her bag instead. I made to pick up the rest of her luggage, but she stopped me.

  “We should at least get introduced—I am Beth, Beth Morgan,” she said.

  “I am Augustine, I work for the Temple of All Nations, I am your driver.”

  “That’s awesome,” she said. “Let’s go. This heat is killing me.”

  I gathered up her things, and we began to wade through the thick throng of touts, policemen, customs and excise officers, men of the air force, police, and navy, pickpockets, con men, travelers, and a few people who had come to welcome their friends and relations from overseas. I was watching her; she took in everything like a child before a large cinema screen. When she spoke to me earlier, I had realized that though she was black, there was no difference between the way she and the other white Americans who had visited the temple spoke.

  When we got to where the minivan was parked, I put away her luggage and told her to sit in the back seat, but she opened the passenger seat in front and took the seat beside mine. I noticed that she was doing well under the heat; some of our visitors would have turned the color of ripe tomatoes between the arrival hall and the car park. We pulled out of the car park and joined Airport Road toward the temple. I turned on the
air conditioner and the radio, but she turned them off. I apologized. We eased into heavy traffic, and soon it came to a crawl. We were surrounded by hawkers, selling everything from car stereos to standing fans, bread, bottled water, oil paintings, cigarettes, chewing gum, and ice water in cellophane bags. I cursed under my breath as the hawkers swarmed the vehicle. I was ashamed; this was why I had wanted the air conditioner turned on. The hawkers thrust different items into her face, screaming, Buy, buy, buy, buy, buy, like angry bees. I screamed at them to move away from the car, but she was laughing. Can you imagine that? She was laughing.

  “Who are these people, why are they on the street?” she asked.

  “Hawkers, beggars, and thieves. They are watching for a careless moment to snatch your bag or cut your necklace from your neck.”

  I had added the last bit to scare her. Though it was true that some bold thieves would cut jewelry from commuters’ necks and ears, this rarely happened. But she was apparently not scared, as she made no effort to wind up the glass on her side of the car. The traffic was moving again, and I was grateful. I wanted to get her to the temple as early as possible so she could have some rest and be ready for the miracle service, which was what she’d come for that evening.

  The traffic slowed down to a crawl once more. We were at a road junction this time. I stepped gently on the brakes as a woman in a flowery, light blue cotton iro and buba came toward us. She was carrying a pair of twins, one male, one female, on either arm. The male’s clean-shaven head was dripping with sweat, and the mother was wiping it with her wrists. She stretched out her hands to my passenger, asking for money. She turned to me.

  “Why is she begging? There is apparently nothing the matter with her, at least nothing that I can see.”

  “She is a mother of twins, and according to her culture, she has to beg for forty days or her twins will die. She has to disgrace herself for her good fortune to prove to the gods and to those who have no children that she deserves the twins.”