Chronicles from the Land of the Happiest People on Earth

by Wole Soyinka

  Menka was only too relieved to have the family throw itself into the fray, especially for the acquisition of the most crucial requirement—an air ambulance! It released him to take on chores of nearly equal criticality, such as organizing his admission at the teaching hospital of Duyole’s former Salzburg university, linking Badagry and Salzburg together. There was a brief hiccup, soon cured, as the siblings launched a flirtation with Dubai, then the raging choice of medical destination. Against the patriarch’s chocolate link and his passion for the Viennese waltz, however, it was no contest. Now they could prepare the patient for evacuation on the land sector. Menka organized a Highway Patrol escort from Badagry to Ikeja airport. His clinics had involved constant interaction with the traffic police—the guaranteed crop of road casualties requiring stitching up and worse—he knew just who to call all the way up the hierarchy. Damien would pick up loose ends and act as general factotum. Menka made it understood how critical it was that once the land ambulance arrived at the airport, it should obtain a direct passage to the tarmac to avoid any loss of time or delays that would prove deleterious to the patient’s condition. Duyole would not be moved from Badagry until the plane was virtually ready to take off—all documentation taken care of, the crew in position, the plane fueled and cleared for departure.

  Menka did not hesitate to exploit his new status, often astonished—and frankly delighted—to find how much clout it commanded within the nation’s establishment, even recesses normally considered inaccessible. He swore never again to complain over the negative impositions of the recognition if Duyole came through this in solid shape. In the meantime, he would exploit it to the hilt. He let the highway commandant understand that this was the patrols’ chance to exercise all their frustrated sadistic instincts in clearing any traffic clog along the way, bring to bear their skills of stealth, bullying, and kamikaze drill to ensure that the patient arrived at Murtala Muhammed Airport in Ikeja at a pace that would be restrained only on the authority of the accompanying doctor charged with the patient’s well-being. If he says crawl, then drop on your bellies. If he says fly, turn the ambulance into an attack helicopter! Then he began to work the phones, running last-minute checks on every detail of departure. He did his best to pull back from time to time, make his colleagues feel that Duyole was their patient and he just a spare tyre, but intent lagged far behind conduct. In a nation like his, over matters of life and death, the logistics of such a departure carried the most slithery burden of execution. It was no longer a case of professional competence, where he could confidently leave his friend in other hands. The reality was that he would rather conduct a full day’s sequence of delicate operations than an hour negotiating bureaucratic obstacles and other lunacies of officialdom. He called. Harangued. Intervened. Aggravated. Teahole’s boastful confidence, presumptions on club tie bonhomie, salesmen networks, and guaranteed delivery in a crisis bothered him. As delicately as he could, he asked the senior Kikanmi to keep a supervising eye on his junior’s assignments. As politely as, presumably, he also could, Kikanmi reminded him that this was primarily a family undertaking. Menka absorbed the snub, retracted his antennae.

  The surgeon was the first to admit it—he was a creature of intuitions. If everything had gone right, followed careful plans and designations, he would have insisted on a place on that plane as an emergency patient in need of mental attention. Kikanmi triumphantly reported the arrival of the ambulance plane, but he went there to see for himself, first booking himself into an airport hotel for the night. At the airport, the parked plane was pointed out to him. Only part satisfied, he still checked to ensure that the plane’s documents matched the plane—make, lettering, colours, and description. Everything tallied. The circumstances notwithstanding, Menka declared the sight the most beautiful object he had seen since the Jos mountains. He treated himself to a sumptuous solo dinner at the hotel’s Mediterranean restaurant, slept soundly. In the morning he drove to the terminal to await the land ambulance. The all-clear had been given and the motorcade departed from Badagry. Menka crowed with delight, eased himself out of his car and walked into the airport building, reported his presence to the clearance desk.

  All was in order. They were expected, the route cleared for their passage directly onto the tarmac. The officer in direct charge of the plane’s departure joined the accompanying motor attendant on his walkie-talkie, monitoring progress. Dr. Menka listened in, fished out his mobile, and spoke to the doctor to enquire how the patient was faring. His condition was stable, nothing changed. The crew had also received the all-clear. Shortly after, their minibus drew up at the specially designated departure gate—only then, seeing the shuttle, did Menka realize that he had in fact stayed in the same hotel with them. Lucky crew, they little knew they had been saved a maniac’s ingrained pessimism. He watched them walk confidently into the airport building and felt that it was he taking off to nowhere. Involuntarily he began to intone a long-forgotten school victory chant. All was well with the school team!

  Then came the frowns, the desperate voices and wild gestures at the desk. Mr. Fixer, it seemed, was nowhere to be seen. Missing also were the flight permits and accompanying documents, a part of which he, Menka, had checked, then celebrated the previous night. Fixer Teahole was last seen haring off in the direction of the domestic terminal, then lost to sight.

  That was when the Gumchi man finally welcomed the long-expected ants crawling up his intestines. It brought a sense of relief—at least it had finally happened, and in the fashion it always did in the land of happy people. Last-minute. Irrationally. Near irreparably. At least there was now something in relation to which some form of counteraction was possible. That read progress! He introduced himself to the crew. Until their arrival at the airport, they had remained blissfully unaware of any glitch. Arrival in Lagos the day before had been flight-perfect. Now, together, they learnt that there had indeed been a problem in that most essential department—documentation! Virtually at the last moment before takeoff from the Austrian airspace, based on the very last receipt of x-rays transmitted to Salzburg from Badagry, it was decided that a neurosurgeon should accompany the patient from Nigeria—an emergency operation on the flight was unlikely, but it was deemed a possibility. The plane was already equipped for just such an emergency. It meant, however, that Salzburg would supply an anaesthetician who would arrive with the plane. All that was agreed before takeoff. Immigration was alerted and the reception team primed for the changes.

  Arrival was indeed flawless. The crew, plus the sudden extra, were cleared by Immigration. Now that they were ready to take off, however, to take their leave of the land of happiness, some airport official, military brand, had pre-empted them, rejected the explanation for an increase of one in the crew’s complement. In vain the protocol officer for Brand of the Land pointed out to him that the extra member had been cleared to enter Nigeria the previous afternoon. No! Permission, he insisted, had been sought and given only for a team of four—why then should there be five who had arrived the previous day and were now attempting to leave the happy land? That extra was an illegal immigrant. He seized even the passports they had all surrendered as guarantee of their morning departure on schedule. Explanations that had been accepted as rational on arrival were now treated as proofs of some sinister plot—against whom, and in what cause, no one could tell. All available papers seized, the adamant guardian of the realm departed, no one knew into which office. There would be no clearance to leave the country.

  It was not a time to take umbrage, but Menka did worse. Not for the first time, he had pitied Duyole for his unfortunate sibling acquisition, forced at times to wonder if the most valued return he could make for their friendship could not reasonably take the form of his quiet elimination of one of them, Teahole especially. Menka felt betrayed. His mobile had run a high temperature the entire evening—it became hot to the touch—mostly due to calls connected with Teahole’s assignments. And it was not the s
urgeon who initiated all the calls—others called him, the nation’s medical laureate, to check if he was indeed involved in demands being made by the salesman, some of which had nothing to do with a patient’s emergency evacuation. Teahole was not the kind to miss opportunities.

  Over and over again the surgeon went through the checklist. The plane had arrived—item ticked. Crew passed Immigration? Ticked. Checked into hotel?—ticked. Ambulance—ticked. Escort—ticked. He demanded to know from others if anything had been overlooked, if there were any last-minute problems or simply uncertainties where he, or anyone else, might need to intervene. If there was any need for him to summon help from any direction, no matter at what level, please, Menka implored, please call on me. I remain available round the clock—I promise you, I can do without sleep for days. I am accustomed to being woken up in emergencies. Just let me know. However, it was not sufficient for the all-capable Teahole to even say a simple no, thanks. He had a desperate need to put everyone on notice that he had virtually taken over all the services in the nation, even for the purpose of gaining entrance into the airport toilets.

  And now the Fixer was missing, and no one seemed to know where he was. Caught in the notorious Lagos traffic? Ensconced in the control tower, scanning air traffic and weather conditions for the best moment of departure? Ticking off the head of state for stalling his brother’s departure for overseas surgery? All that had filtered through—thanks to some sympathetic zones of airport officialdom—was the nature of the problem and perhaps, just maybe, how it could be resolved.

  The ambulance maintained its progress from Badagry, arriving within minutes of the projected time. It drove straight onto the tarmac to a screech of sirens, escorted by the local SWAT equivalent. Instead of the projected instant transfer, however, land and air ambulances now stood staring at each other across perhaps twenty metres, unable to transfer the critical charge from land stretcher into the plane. Menka opened the doors of the vehicle, where Pitan-Payne lay strapped to the stretcher, and exclaimed. He should have known! There was Bisoye with the patient. No, there was more. Her much-traveled suitcase—he recognized it immediately—was beside her, all ready to accompany her man to Austria. He slapped his head in annoyance with himself. He should have warned her. He assumed that her brother-in-law, who knew, and indeed had assented to the plane’s capacity, had taken on board the emergency addition, would have warned her. He had himself considered flying out with the patient, and only realized it was a nonstarter when he had seen the plane the previous night—all enquiry into the plane’s actual passenger allowance had met with stonewalling. Menka found it extremely baffling, almost as if this were a state secret. There was room for the medical staff that came in it from Austria and for one more person only—the neurosurgeon.

  “Come down, Bisoye,” he told her as gently as he could, and helped her down, first reaching for her suitcase. “You’ll join him later. Look at me. I’m a surgeon, but not a neurosurgeon. There is only one spare seat, and it belongs to our Lagos specialist. You are not even a nurse. Right?” She shook her head submissively. He could see she had not slept all night. All the earlier energy appeared to have evaporated. Bisoye seemed to be in a daze, as if the enormity of Duyole’s departure, and the uncertainty of the mission itself, had only recently dawned on her. The stiffening in her spine had thawed completely, perhaps from the termination of the chores she had undertaken towards his departure and the absence of any new challenges. Menka sensed that she must have passed the night in that condition, completely depleted, capable only of following Duyole wherever he was bound.

  Menka led her into the airport, found her a seat. “You should go home and rest. I’ll find you a taxi. I’ll arrange your flights even before I leave the airport.”

  She perked up immediately. “Today? I could still fly out tonight.”

  “Bisoye, you need to get your strength back. Surgery will not be for another week—that is our confident projection. Unless, of course, there is an unforeseen change in his condition. Otherwise, nothing less than a week. After the flight he must be restabilized. You have a lot to do for him right here, before you leave. Go home, rest. Put the home front in order. Check things in the office, so you can take him news. That’s what Duyole would wish—you know that. He feeds on the latest. Am I right?”

  She smiled weakly, nodded agreement.

  Just then Teahole emerged, even more depleted. The flight papers had been taken to the airport commandant, who had his offices at the other end—the domestic end—of the airport. Teahole had chased the papers there, and now he was back, looking harassed, bewildered, left a sizzling rump steak and returned a congealed leftover. He stammered out his ordeal—virtually flung out of the office by the commandant, with a tongue-lashing for disturbing his peace of mind over papers that were clearly irregular. He had no intention of releasing a plane that had treated the nation’s immigration rules with deliberate contempt, and now, as had become apparent, with the connivance of “unpatriotic Nigerians!” What did those foreigners take us for? A banana republic? It was the script of “bloody civilian” collaborators with foreign enemies all over again.

  “What do we do now?” wailed Teahole.

  “First things first. Bisoye needs to get back to Badagry—she came in the ambulance. Let’s get her a taxi.”

  With astonishing eagerness, Teahole offered his car. “My driver is here. He can take her home. I’ll find my way back, no problem at all.”

  Menka could not believe his ears—Teahole so readily self-sacrificial? Something truly unprecedented must have hit him in the commandant’s office. Or perhaps simply from watching all the well-laid plans collapse around his presumptions. But the surgeon only nodded approval, registered the relief with which Teahole picked up Bisoye’s suitcase and escorted her to where his car was parked.

  “I’ll be by the ambulance,” the doctor shouted after him. “Let’s meet there and do some brainstorming.”

  It was, fortunately, one of those early mornings of freshness and coolness around the airport, so Menka told the nurses to take down the stretcher and place Duyole out in the open. The police escort had peeled off; the ambulance itself was working to a timetable, and departure time was only a half hour or so away. There was no point retaining a vehicle the hospital might need for other cases. Most absolutely Duyole was not returning to Badagry—that much Menka had resolved. Whatever it took, the plane would leave and his friend within it, under professional care. The Gumchi jaws were set as he watched the nurses extricate the stretcher and place it carefully on the tarmac. Perhaps it was this action that provoked the next eruption. An open jeep came roaring towards the group, veering off at the last moment to stop parallel to the stretcher. A uniformed soldier leapt out—armed, impossible to tell his rank. Whatever fulmination was in rehearsal en route, however, froze on his lips. Instead he straightened up and saluted.

  Menka saved him the trouble of questions by pointing to the stretcher. “My friend needs fresh air. I don’t like him being cooped in that vehicle, especially as we don’t know how long it will be before the plane can take off.”

  “Oh, does this matter involve you, sir?”

  “Very much so.”

  His eyes widened. “The plane is in trouble, sir. Big trouble.”

  “So I gather. Tell me frankly, what does your commandant want? We are at an impasse. The papers he wants do not exist. They cannot be produced. There is nothing, absolutely nothing we can do. The Austrian embassy has been contacted, they’re working from their end, but every moment’s delay jeopardizes the life of the man lying here.”

  The soldier moved confidentially close. “Sir, that man, the one in charge of this operation, messed up. The one with the moustache. Instead of handling the situation gently, he began to make threats. So the commandant scooped up the papers and took off.”

  “I was not present, but I think I can imagine what happened. Questio
n is, what do you recommend? You know your commandant, I don’t.”

  The man moved even closer. “Thank God you’re here, sir. If our oga sees you, he will release the papers immediately. I know that for sure.”

  “All right. I came here to see off my friend, not watch him die on the tarmac. I’ll do whatever you say. Where’s his office?”

  “In the domestic section, sir. You have to go out again—”

  Menka stopped him. “Go out, enter the traffic, go through the toll gates, enter yet another traffic stretch. In the meantime…?” And he pointed to the stretcher.