Alade (Irunmole Saga)

by Jean-Marc Akerele

  Ase was a gift to my people from the Gods themselves somewhere in the dim recesses of time. It was meant to give us the power to fulfill our side of the pact we had with the Gods and was intended to be a positive force for balance in the world. My recent actions had perverted my ase, corrupted it and changed it into a force quite unlike any that had been seen in this world in a long time. I was not bound by duty, sacrifice or obedience, nor was my behavior moral, yet my strength increased exponentially with the frenetic pace with which I fought to make my mark in the criminal world where I now found myself and other than the rising darkness within and without of me, there were no negative consequences. I had been an inmate at the federal minimum-security prison called Lakeview Correctional Institute in Georgia, for nine months now and in that time, I had not stood idle, for I knew that time was of the essence and I must soon cross the threshold into that dark place or I would fail once again in my given task. Fortunately, many of the inmates here I knew from the CDF and this being a minimum-security prison, there was not the same atmosphere of violence and despair that loomed at CDF. But nevertheless, it was a prison and men in prison are not content. There was still so much despair for me to feed upon and feed upon it I did. I spent as much time as possible exercising to strengthen my already strong body because this aided in the facilitation of a perfect union between my soul and the Chaos rising in me. My thoughts were now clear, my self-control almost perfect, and my ability to manipulate my dark ase had grown strong. But my goal here was not just to gain mystical strength by feeding off unsuspecting humans. My goal, my given task was to enter the place where Gods themselves could not go so that this dark power in me could truly blossom and achieve the potential needed for me to return to the world with the grand gift of destruction and so that I could earn my release. I could not fail in this, so I began to focus on the first and most important thing at hand and that was to fully enter the criminal world which would facilitate my entrance through the doorway that was, for now, sealed from me.

  The network that I had built at the CDF did not follow me to Lakeview. The CDF was in Washington D.C. and being an eclectic city, the dynamic of the jail reflected this. At the CDF half of the officers had relatives in the jail and the other half had grown up in the same neighborhoods with the inmates. Using them was not so much corrupting them as it was making them an offer they found fair, because most of them would bring in the small stuff like a few cigarettes or a dime bag of weed for free for guys that they knew from the street. In federal prison, however, it was different; unlike CDF, where if an officer got caught bringing in contraband they were simply fired, in federal prison the officer would be charged with a felony and prosecuted to fullest extent of the law. The federal government did not play, and whether you were an inmate or an officer you would be punished and this made the officers a little cagier, a little more difficult to penetrate. Some would play along with you only to bust you and get points for it, while others might take your money and do nothing, perhaps fabricating something to have you put in administrative segregation (solitary confinement) to keep you silent. But when you finally got one, they were yours for the duration and they could be pushed and pulled in whatever direction you wanted because they had already crossed the line. At Lakeview, I did not have a Tim who knew everyone, a person who I could manipulate to take the risks for me, and to place me close to those I needed to meet. Here I would have to do it myself, for the only way to get the attention of the people I needed was to show them my worth. The reference from D’Andre would help, but for those in power what I had accomplished for him was in another place, another prison, and another world. They would need to see what I was capable of here, I needed to impress them with my skills, and prove my usefulness before they would give me what I needed and let me into their world. Because make no mistake, even D’Andre had only half accepted me, after all I was not from his world. I did not grow up in the same neighborhoods, had not experienced life as he had, did not speak as he did or even look like him. I would always be an outsider no matter how successful I became in that world and the people there would never let me forget that. So in my free time, between exercising and meditating I walked the prison yard, to get a feel for the general atmosphere of the place, letting my senses flow outward and unleashing my dark ase to help me search for the perfect opportunity which I knew was patiently waiting for me to notice it. As a federal prisoner, I was obligated to have a job and to take vocational classes as a part of my “rehabilitation” and since working in the kitchen and taking a class in building construction technology were activities which meant I interacted with inmates and more importantly, officers, I noticed the subtle differences in the flavors of the energies of certain officers and soon I had a mental catalog of potential recruits. I had another two years to go so I did not plan on acting with haste. I knew that I could have snatched up any of the various young and penniless officers to my cause; they were that easy to corrupt. The combination of their own dead-end job and the sly manipulation of my own burgeoning power meant they were like putty in my hands. But they were not enough. Many other inmates had low level officers in their pockets, but it meant nothing to me, for any peon could achieve this. No, if I was to impress the men I needed on my side, I would need to bring to them someone with real authority. So naturally, being the supremely confident little shit that I am, I set my sights high, and targeted the Warden of the prison. Was I crazy? Was I being arrogant? Yes, I was, for this had always been my way of doing things. But guess what? On one fine morning a few short months later, with the scent of my dark ase emanating from deep within him, the Warden of this fine federal institution called me into his office and quietly consented to help me with whatever I needed to do. Now I had leverage. Now the right doors would soon open for me.

  Even though a person can make a lot of money in prison by smuggling in drugs, I was not trying to make money, I was trying to gain influence and the fact is most of the money made in prison is by the smuggling in of “comfort” items. Cell phones, so one can call whoever one wants without worrying about being monitored, ethnic foods that are unavailable on commissary, liquor, iPods, exotic candy, even hair care products. Prisoners try to forget where they are as much as possible and like to pretend that they are in the real world. These items help to maintain that illusion. I don’t believe I have ever seen men take as much care of their hair as I saw in prison, the transsexual and homosexual men having a monopoly on hair dressing while making a huge profit in commissary, drugs and cigarettes by making sure that most of the men in the institution looked better than they ever did on the outside. The Warden for his part, although he was very much under the influence of my power had been initially innately resistant to it, though this was natural because, after all, it is was part of his job description. Having him bring in things that were innocuous and harmless alleviated some of his resistance and in calming his misgivings this also bound him tighter to me. We were careful not to flaunt our business arrangement, but nothing truly escapes the “inmate.com” gossip column and it was not long before I began to receive requests from a different kind of clientele.

  It has been my experience both in prison and out of it that there is an ingrained racism in South and Central America, despite these places having a very large population of Blacks. Even when I was still at the top of my game outside of these walls, I had always been careful to send one of my Caucasian consultants to deal with my South American and Central American clientele because of this. And when I think about it, even my Mexican clientele had a similar outlook, though in their case it was much more overt. I found that in my dealings with Hispanics they would not respect me nearly as much as a Caucasian, because despite being from Ile-Ife and of another race of beings completely. I am of a dark skin tone and that is all that mattered in their mind. But their racism is not like Anglo-Saxon racism; they do respect Black creative achievements and Black cultural heritage and indeed have appropriated much from the African descendants who remain in t
heir countries in great numbers, but somehow, they find it difficult to believe that Blacks have the capability to truly succeed and become great, that they are somehow by nature inferior. In federal prison, the tables have turned, but that is all it is, a semblance, because most of the Hispanics in federal prison actually have real power on the outside because of the money and connections represented by the profits of the drug trade. They have been forced in prison to acknowledge the majority of Blacks, because the prison system has more Blacks than any other race and that puts them in a position of greater authority, at least on the inside. But there is a big difference in their respective outlooks because most Hispanic prisoners know that they are eventually going home to a family that loves them and stands behind them despite their present circumstances. They made sure to provide for the future and did not spend their profits wildly on frivolous material things, and ultimately prison is a temporary setback for them, not a fact of life or rite of passage, even when it is. For most Blacks in prison, this was their world, having spent more time in jail as adults than out of it, and with the unfair system of parole and probation working against them, their lives are spent in and out of various correctional facilities, serving additional time for the same crimes sometimes for decades, because of technical violations of probation or parole. It was a travesty of justice and it meant that the Hispanics, who were the greatest purchasers of “comfort” items, had to deal with Blacks and had to deal with them on their terms. They had to play humble and swallow a lot of disrespect that on the outside would earn the perpetrator a quick death. But in this prison their power on the outside meant nothing, because there is one fact that every prisoner lives with, even in a minimum-security prison; anyone can be killed and prisoners die all the time. Blacks knew this and had made peace with it. Hispanics were just trying to get home.

  I sat down with Nino in the bleachers where he was watching the softball game that had just begun. He had seen me working out and had politely waited until I finished my set before calling me over to join him. We called Jose Perez Sanchez, “Nino” because he always called people “Nino” and since his English was not particularly good the nickname stuck. He was a mild-mannered Colombian with well-groomed hair and deeply tanned skin, so tanned that some people took to calling him “Obama” after the president whom he did somewhat resemble. He was a fun-loving guy who was always joking with people, and a big fan of baseball, thus the reason why he sat watching softball. A few weeks before, the rumors of my arrangement with the Warden had trickled down to the Hispanic community, because the inmates who cleaned his office happened to be Hispanic. AngloSaxons being as arrogant as they are tended to be dismissive of Hispanics, and the Warden had many times assumed that he could talk openly despite the proximity of a Hispanic inmate who was perhaps cleaning his office, where we would to meet. When I would chastise him, he would just shrug his shoulders and say, “They can’t understand us.” The knowledge that they had learned was kept secret, because they knew what side their bread was buttered on and wanted to establish a connection with me that was different than the other connections they had with other influential Black inmates. They sensed that I was different and began to send feelers out to me until one day a short muscular Hispanic inmate approached me and said in perfectly unaccented English, “Nino wants to speak with you. Do you have a moment to talk with him?” I looked at him carefully, calculating my response because I also had sent out feelers of a different sort, seeking out the opportunity which I was searching for. For Nino, or Jose Perez Sanchez as he was named, was a powerful Colombian drug lord of the new breed; a businessman first and a gangster last, but a gangster nonetheless. He was a billionaire many times over and had spread his wealth and investments into projects and places that made him more akin to Warren Buffet than Pablo Escobar. This was a man to be reckoned with and this was a man I needed on my side. I looked up at the messenger and smiled. “I always have time for a true gentleman, please lead the way.” And just like that I took my first tentative steps towards opening that dark and obscured doorway to where my true path lay. And now, here I was almost a year after that first eventful meeting with him where we had discussed nothing and everything. He had been gauging my character and I had been on my best behavior. A few days after that first meeting I had received a laundry list of things that the he and his people wanted and as soon as I had delivered his order, our relationship had begun in earnest. In the present, as we sat in the bleachers we did not speak and the softball game continued; I knew better to disturb him while the game was in motion. When he was ready he would speak and I would listen then I would learn the location of a new piece of the puzzle I trying to unravel.

  “You will be leaving here soon, yes?” he finally said.

  “Yes, Nino, I will be leaving in nine months’ time.”

  “What will you do? Have you made realistic plans?” “What will I do? What are my plans? Well my plans are probably the same thing as most ex-convicts, I will try to stay out of trouble but also, I will be looking for opportunities. This conviction has left me with few options. Oh, and I am planning revenge. I definitely want my revenge.”

  “I understand revenge, it is good and it is healthy, a, how do you say, catharsis of the soul. But as for opportunities, where will you start? For if you are going to succeed you must have a plan.”

  “I do have a plan but many things must happen first for it to be able to succeed.”

  “You mean things like financing?”

  “Yes and no. Financing will help, but really, it is access that I need.” “Ah, I think I understand.”

  I looked at him sideways and watched as he seemed to be coming to a decision in his mind, and when he turned to me and finally spoke, what he said rocked my world. “I can give you access and I can give you finance, but in return there is something you must give to me. I want to know about Ile-Ife. I want to see my Gods before I die.”

  To understand why he would make such a statement one must understand that South America is a volatile mixture of ancient cultures which have somehow managed to merge their respective heritages into an amalgamation of great beauty, culture and spirituality which affects its every inhabitant to the very foundation of their souls. These are by no means a Godless people, and much like the Africa where Ile-Ife lies hidden, there were once Gods in South America who walked the Earth openly and conversed with the men and women of vision and power who once ruled these many nations. And these many Gods who had walked this once emerald land of spice and exotic ideas, had fueled the fire of empire in the hearts of the men and women who gave them worship and the riven hearts of daily sacrifices that these bloodthirsty deities demanded in return for their patronage. Then a sad thing happened; Europeans arrived and slaughtered the faithful with powers granted them by the Interloper and much like the enslaved Africans who were transported from Africa to America were eventually broken and indoctrinated, these ancient South Americans had their culture and belief quickly and brutally torn from them. And in their despair, they turned on their Gods and gave their hearts to the Interloper, who did not demand that they remove them from their breasts as their own Gods had, and without their worship their Gods dwindled to memories and dreams. Then came colonization, and with it the discovery that the native population made poor slaves, thus the idea to bring more enslaved Africans to work the land became a reality and with them the Africans brought their language, customs, culture but more importantly they brought with them their Gods. The Gods of Ile-Ife do not need the worship of many, only the faith of a few to remain strong for theirs was a mandate from Oludumare, the Triple Being, the Creator, the Primal Urge and the One True God, to maintain the balance upon this Earth. Neither male nor female, Oludumare was creation and everything resided within Oludumare, even the Interloper. It was this mandate that fueled the faith of Africans no matter where they were and despite the most brutal of treatment they kept their faith within them and did not turn their backs upon their Gods. And how could they when they
knew that Ile-Ife endured?

  Colombia was no exception to this. With a population of almost thirty percent African descendants, the connection to the old world that they represented was palpable in every aspect of the culture. In the food, in the music, in the very foundations of modern Colombian culture there was Africa, whether or not the status quo would deny it, by not showing Blacks on their television programming, as if to deny their very existence and their treatment as second-class citizens. But it was not there where the greatest African influence lay; it lay in a part of this society that was inseparable from the identity of its soul. These were a spiritual people since before the coming of the colonialist conquerors. They had walked and talked with their Gods and though they had given their hearts to the Interloper, it was a farce. They could no more worship a silent God, than they could go back to human sacrifice, so when Colombians noticed the power and majesty of the babalawos who served the Black community, and when they saw with their own eyes the power and majesty of the Gods they served, who walked with them as their own Gods had once walked with them, they began to turn to them for solace, first in trickles, and finally in droves. Oh, they didn’t completely abandon their adopted God, for they feared him, they instead merged the worship of the Orishas with his worship and disguised it, as Deus ex Machina, the ghost in the machine. They called it by various names; Santeria, Candomble, Vaudun and many others, but in the end throughout not only Colombia, but throughout the Latin and Caribbean world in general the worship of the Orishas spread outside of Africa and their influence grew. So why had Nino said what he had said? He had said it because all of his life he had worshipped the Orishas and before being arrested and extradited he had finished his apprenticeship and had been finally initiated as a babalawo dedicated to Orunmila, the Witness of Fate, the first servant of Oludumare, and despite his present circumstances he had kept his faith. Because of this he possessed certain powers unique to priests of his God, for the priests of Orunmila are oracles, they have True Sight. Nino had only done business with me because he had known what I was from the moment he felt me extend my dark ase on the prison compound. In me he believed he had the chance of salvation, the chance to walk with the Gods that he had dreamt about since the moment of his initiation, when his God began to grant him True Sight, and the power of foresight. But there were rules. Ile-Ife was the home for my race, the Omo Orisa and humans were not allowed to come into it no matter how faithful their worship. And Nino wanted me to break a cardinal rule; he wanted me to get him there.“