Married But Available

by B. Nyamnjoh

  27

  Lilly Loveless accompanied Bobinga Iroko to Nyamandem just as she had indicated she would. However, in more than a thousand ways, the whole Nyamandem experience was surreal, to say the least. The drive to Nyamandem was mostly at night, Bobinga Iroko having insisted on leaving well before dawn, in order to arrive before office hours. He wanted to link up with the secretariat of the National Association of Mimbo Journalists to draft a formal petition to President Longstay, for the immediate and unconditional release of Dr Wiseman Lovemore and his colleagues. He had telephoned the chairman of the association to agree on a time, who had assured him that he would be waiting for him at 8am at the office. This was not an appointment to miss, so Bobinga Iroko persuaded Lilly Loveless to postpone for the return journey, which he promised would be during the day, her plan to entertain her eyes of concern with the devastating spectacle of the ever-diminishing rainforest plundered by unscrupulous logging companies with dubious credentials.

  They arrived at Nyamandem well in advance, so Bobinga Iroko suggested breakfast at his favourite café on Avenue de l’Independence Moderée. As they sat down, Bobinga Iroko noticed a vendor with the papers of the day. He called him over. All of the newspapers with the exception of The Talking Drum, which Bobinga Iroko was pleasantly surprised to find in circulation in Nyamandem, carried the same front page lead story. The captions were wild, lurid and homophobic: “100 homosexuals in Mimboland, well-placed high-ranking members of society”. The papers detailed a growing network of homosexuals among government and administrative officials, businessmen and women, the clergy, sportsmen and women, and in the wider society. They were mostly men hungry for power, wealth and social status, the papers claimed. “Men and women in the higher echelons of society go fishing at universities, high and secondary schools for students ready to donate their bodies to become rich overnight, to gain admission into state-run professional schools. Others seek graduates hungry for big jobs or civil servants looking for rapid promotion,” one of the papers wrote.

  Bobinga Iroko bought all of the papers, three copies of each. “This is explosive stuff,” he told Lilly Loveless. “Soon, the government is going to ban the papers if it hasn’t already, and the traffic in photocopies at double or triple the price will begin.” He handed Lilly Loveless a copy of each.

  As she perused the newspapers, she came by one with a front page picture of a face she believed she had seen before.

  “I think I have seen this man before,” he showed Bobinga Iroko the front page in question.

  “That’s Honourable Epicure Bilingue,” said Bobinga Iroko, “maverick politician, member of parliament and of government with a taste for new ways of quenching old thirsts. He is the one at the heart of the homosexual allegations splattered in the press. Isn’t it he who reportedly sodomised the young man who fell to a shattering death from the balcony of the 13th floor of Hotel Avaravar? You know him? How? Where? When?”

  “I’m not sure,” said Lilly Loveless, but I believe I’ve seen the face somewhere.” Just then it struck her. “Wait a minute.” She opened her handbag and took out a complimentary card. “You see,” she showed Bobinga Iroko the card. “I was convinced I had seen him somewhere. I travelled with him on the same flight when I was coming to Mimboland. He was sitting right next to me, and gave me his card, insisting I change my fieldwork location from Puttkamerstown to Nyamandem where everything that matters happens.”

  “Perhaps you would have saved him this public embarrassment if you had listened to him,” said Bobinga Iroko, jokingly.

  Lilly Loveless didn’t comment, but read on, her curiosity suddenly caught by the story of Honourable Epicure Bilingue, a man she knew.

  This particular paper went on and on about what they termed “this social ill” that was creeping in and threatening to destroy the social fabric of good morals in Mimboland. It named Honourable Epicure Bilingue as the ring leader of “this network of perversion that is spreading like wildfire, corrupting morals across the land of Mimbo.” Even before the shocking death of the young man that ignited the press like dogs of war, it was thanks to his wife’s frustrations with his homosexual activities that the Bishop of Nyamandem had learnt of the matter during confessions, and tipped off the press to go adigging, an exercise that had taken the female investigative journalist, Husana Homely, to “Dens of Perversion that make Sodom and Gomorrah look like pre-historic child’s play”. Husana Homely, whose piece was titled “Honourable Epicure Bilingue ou le Sexe de l’Etat”, expounded the virtues of the investigative journalism that had lead her paper in particular to uncover the network, and appealed to all journalists to stick together as the conscience of the nation against the immorality and illegality of homosexuality. Journalists, she wrote, had a duty of joining hands with other morally upright forces in society to curb the rising assault on marriage and good family life by “ills such as homosexuality, paedophilia, pornography and debasement of women”. She concluded: “The current trends, if uncurbed, would push the dark side of sex to the ridiculous limits of selfishness, pride, and demonic destructiveness, leaving every normal person in the hands of fear and foreboding.”

  The land of Mimbo was under the grip of a new erotic movement, Husana Homely wrote, which consisted of men doing it with men, women with women, and the insatiable superstars amongst them with beasts as well. This “sexualité avancée”, she continued, is the real “bilinguisme national”, and it wasn’t an accident that none other than the Honourable Epicure Bilingue should be at its forefront. Thanks to him and “the perversions he promotes”, shops in Nyamandem were now overflowing with what she termed “diapers for adults” intended “to take care of men whose anal muscles have taken early retirement due to intense and reckless activity in horizontal jogging as the penultimate form of nation-building.” Tongue in cheek, Husana Homely called for the police, if there were still some left worth the name and honour, “to institute compulsory searches of underwear in public places, to identify and take necessary measures against adults wearing diapers.” She wondered if others had noticed as she did that “a strange breed of fat, dark flies has invaded the city and are particularly drawn to men wearing diapers.”

  Lilly Loveless couldn’t understand why there should be this much of a stigma around the use of adult diapers in Mimboland, when this was such a common practice where she came from. It isn’t homosexuals who have weak anal muscles. The old, the handicapped and people with genetic disorders regularly use diapers.

  When Lilly Loveless was through with reading the piece on Honourable Epicure Bilingue, she asked Bobinga Iroko for his opinion on such homophobia.

  By way of an answer, he shared with her his experiences during his years in an all-boys boarding secondary school, experiences that were similar to those of his sister who went to an all-girls school in Zintgraffstown. If those experiences meant anything, then homosexuality has always had its place in Mimboland, named or unnamed, accepted or not. He remembered how five boys were dismissed from his school for inappropriate sexual acts. One of the boys, the leader, was a form five student who had developed a weird habit of always going about with thick toilet tissue paper, inviting unsuspecting others to play hide and seek with him in secluded corridors and nearby bushes, and rewarding those who obliged with exotic biscuits, sweets and other goodies which his parents brought back for him from their frequent visits to Muzunguland. He, Bobinga Iroko, would have been dismissed as well, had he not been a step ahead of the guy. As is common practice in secondary schools in Mimboland, boys and girls invite their friends to share their beds in a brotherly or sisterly sort of way, “to keep warm or because of fear to sleep alone.” Friendlier than most other students Bobinga Iroko knew, the student had shown him he liked him a lot. At the refectory, he took care of Bobinga Iroko’s food when the latter was late. On outings, he brought back sweets and biscuits and other goodies which he shared with Bobinga Iroko. As a senior student and prefect, he made sure that Bobinga Iroko, although quite a troublesome s
tudent, escaped punishment even when guilty. During preps, he would usually insist on coming to study with Bobinga Iroko, and as they shared the same dormitory, at night he would either ask Bobinga Iroko to join him in his bed or insist on joining Bobinga Iroko in his.

  Naïve as he was about these things in those days, Bobinga Iroko would innocently yield, until one day when the boy started touching him in sensitive places in ways more than inspired by a simple desire to be friendly. “I jumped and ran as fast as my tiny legs could take me,” concluded Bobinga Iroko. “Although I felt too embarrassed to tell anyone what had happened, I did understand my sister when she violently protested about going back to school because of what she referred to then as “the weird things that take place between girls.” It was and still is commonplace to surprise girls making love with one another in college toilets, and when sleeping over in sisterly fashion, “a practice not helped by the fact that most parents frown on their daughters getting anywhere near the opposite sex”. Lifting up his head like someone at a confessional, he said, “This is why, to be frank with you, I have nothing against homosexuals as such, but I do have something against using it as a pretext to compound the injustices and impunity that have eaten into our social fabric as a cankerworm of white ants.”

  “That’s a very respectable opinion,” said Lilly Loveless.

  What Bobinga Iroko did not say was how his years in a boarding school had disciplined him sexually in ways that had made him focus his attention masterfully on his studies in his subsequent university years and early working life. This he couldn’t tell her without telling her as well about Godlove and Loveline…

  about Ndolo and her tragic death in child birth… a chapter he had decided not to revisit if he could help it, about… Bobinga Iroko and Lilly Loveless were through with their breakfast and with reading about Honourable Epicure Bilingue and the rising homosexual movement he was alleged to lead and they were about to take off when Bobinga Iroko’s cell phone rang. It was the president of the National Association of Mimbo Journalists calling to cancel their appointment. There was an emergency, he informed Bobinga Iroko. The morning’s homophobic articles in the newspapers had set loose the republican rottweilers, to savage the guilty journalists and destroy their “feuilles des choux”. Journalists were flying helter skelter, and it was hardly a proper time to convene a meeting to petition the bruised President Longstay and his inner cabinet.

  If Bobinga Iroko had listened to the radio, he would have heard President Longstay “castigating journalists for digging into people’s private lives,” for bringing the state and its institutions into disrepute and for making complete nonsense of the social responsibility expected of them and their profession. How could such irresponsible journalism be allowed the space and time to adulterate the moral image of the government? Who were the forces behind this calculated attempt to weaken state institutions and endanger republican peace? The Ministers of The Homeland and of Communication must either put their houses in order or face the consequences of their competence, warned President Longstay. This was a call to war that no journalist in their right senses could afford to ignore, so he the president of the National Association of Mimbo Journalists was telephoning Bobinga Iroko from the way to his home village, where he intended to lie low until the situation had calmed down. “It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong,” he told Bobinga Iroko, adding that if Bobinga Iroko had any brains, the sensible thing to do was to make an about turn and drive out of town until further notice.

  Being the Doubting Thomas that he was by nature and training, Bobinga Iroko decided to find out if the president of the association was indeed not at his office and had simply found an excuse to wriggle his way out of the petition. Only when he drove to the office, did he believe his colleague. There were four soldiers armed to the teeth with AK-47s, batons, knives, hand grenades, walkie-talkies and cell phones, keeping guard at the gate, while the police were inside the building ransacking offices. It was then that Bobinga Iroko made an about turn and drove until Hotel Sept Collines, where they checked in for three days.

  It was during the three days that Lilly Loveless got a lot of anecdotes related to her study, mostly from Mariette, the girl at the bar with whom it did not take long to create a rapport and giggle away as she drank her Mimbo-Wanda. Some of the anecdotes she was able to verify when she went out driving around the massive hilly city with Bobinga Iroko. On their first night, they were driving past the town hall in the city centre, when two girls dressed to expose all that they ought to be concealing, rushed to their car as Bobinga Iroko appeared to slow down, only to be disappointed upon seeing Lilly Loveless seated by him. With typical aggression and disdain, they threw insults at Lilly Loveless for standing in the way of their business, as they would do with every woman in her situation. Just as the girls turned away, it was the turn of two young men. They walked up to the car and asked Bobinga Iroko if he wanted them for the night.

  “What for?” he asked.

  “Anything you want,” said one.

  “I already have all I want with my wife,” he turned to Lilly Loveless who smiled her cooperation.

  “You don’t know what you are missing,” said the other.

  “What could I possibly be missing?” asked Bobinga Iroko.

  “New dimensions of doing everything,” replied the one, smiling.

  “You speak eloquently,” remarked Bobinga Iroko. “New dimensionally eloquent,” he added with a playful smile.

  “Why shouldn’t I?” retorted the young man. “What do you expect of a university graduate?”

  “Graduate? …You?” Bobinga Iroko sounded incredulous.

  “I can see you don’t live in Nyamandem,” said the other.

  “How do you know?” asked Bobinga Iroko.

  “From your naïveté,” the young men said, turned and rushed to another car that had just pulled up. Moments later they got into the car, which drove off.

  Lilly Loveless and Bobinga Iroko exchanged glances but not a word.

  They were back at Hotel Sept Collines in time to catch a glimpse of the Minister of Forced Arms whom Bobinga Iroko knew well by reputation. It was he whose son, a close friend of President Longstay’s very own legitimate firstborn son, was rumoured to benefit each time his friend bought a new Ferrari because he could not remember where he parked his last one. The minister was rumoured to be often animated by such hungry desires that he could eat his tongue. Known to take his lunch in hotel rooms in the form of quickies, he was a soft target for many a journalist. Last year a newspaper published the following confession by a girl who was seeing him for regular quickies, and who disappeared without trace since the publication: “Once he called from downstairs to make sure I already had my clothes off and instructed me on the position in which he expected to find me. His bodyguard waited outside the hotel room door. The Honourable Minister of Forced Arms would take work-related cell phone calls in the midst of our lunchtime activities. Many of them ended with ‘I’ll deal with that when I finish with lunch.’ He had some weird rituals. Every now and then, he would take my hand and bring it to his lips for a kiss. Afterwards he would jerk his head back saying, ‘What do you want to do, break my tooth?’ To which I would reply: ‘But you’re the one who grabbed my hand and thrust it up toward your mouth!’”

  As recently as a month or so ago, another newspaper published an article on alleged incest the minister had committed with his daughter in a bid to stay super-glued to power. When questioned by his family why on earth he would do a thing like that, the minister is said to have replied: “Where do you think all the money I give you comes from?…I have to fulfil certain conditions to keep my position.” The tall, imposing and disproportionately shaped minister, known to feel something on his everywhere and to mount anything that moves like a veritable equal opportunities f**ker is so attractive that he is always followed by flies like a child who has forgotten to clean himself after excreting. He was waiting for the hotel lift with a
well-built, well-tattooed, ear-ringed young man in tight fitting jeans and a T-Shirt that exposed his impressive weightlifter-like biceps. His plump dancing derriere turned a few eyes. Bobinga Iroko and Lilly Loveless overheard him saying: “I’ve the entire Forced Arms at my command, but the only territory I want to conquer just now is the deep dark valley between these round brown hills. Jeune homme... lead me to your river and take me deep into your territory…”

  Bobinga Iroko thought to himself: Only a mission this urgent could take the Minister of Forced Arms away from the emergency our homophobic press has imposed on the government he under serves while servicing his appetites.

  That night, Lilly Loveless stayed up late to spend more time with Mariette, listening to anecdotes. Mariette told her about a young woman of about 25 years old, very well dressed, who drove a luxury car and parked at the Central Market, not far from where Hotel Sept Collines was situated. She made her way slowly towards a refuse dump, undressed herself completely, went down on all fours, buried her mouth completely in the refuse dump, and started barking like a dog. A tantalized crowd gathered round her shocked with questioning eyes. Through, the woman quietly dressed herself up again, entered her car and drove off, as if nothing had happened.

  According to Mariette, more and more strange things are happening in Nyamandem, as people are into all sorts of strange cults demanding occult practices. Illicit enrichment and ambitions of power and wealth through magical or occult means are pushing people to madden reality with abnormal behaviour.

  She told Lilly Loveless of a similar occurrence, this time at Marché Lologo, in broad day light. A very beautiful young girl with an excellent build, drives up in a Toyota RAV4, which she parks, and comes out with bananas in her hand. After peeling a banana, she lies down by the pavement and starts inserting it into her womanhood. She is completely deaf to all the screams and expression of shocked surprise by a bustling market. Through, she stands up, makes her way back to her car, and drives off.