“Company has been here for nearly three decades. There are young men in this room who were not yet born when they came to tap oil from our ground. Nobody here can say we have treated Company badly. And that’s not to say our stomachs are too sweet with happiness. What your God has blessed you with, you can’t quarrel with it. You use it and move ahead in life, for your own good, for your children, and for your neighbor, too. Is it not so?” Application Master paused.
“It is so, it is so.” More grunts from the crowd.
“Before Company came, we were here, the oil was here, right here.” Application Master stamped his foot on the tiled floor. “Right here, under our feet. Did we make trouble when they came here combing through our forests? When they said the government sent them, did we not make way for them and even show them around? Did we not agree when they pointed at the places they wanted to dig their burrow pits and set their derricks? When their work destroyed our farms, when they cut through people’s houses to build their pipelines, did we fight them or seize their workers so that their work would not go on? Did we not accept the money they paid for damages?
“Everyone here knows what happened in ’71.” A groan escaped some older people in the room. Someone echoed the year and snapped his fingers. “If you were too small,” Application Master continued, “or not born yet, ask your parents, let them tell you what our eyes saw here in 1971. We have managed since then with Company — not friends, not enemies.
“Now that they have decided they want to build pipe for gas, not oil, they want the pipes to go through our farms and our waterside near Idu. I have only one question to ask: If the ones they built for oil are killing us now, why should we allow them to put up new pipelines when we don’t know what damage they might cause?”
Nwokwe rose to his feet and his snuffbox clattered onto the floor, destroying the calm Application Master’s speech had created. “If not for Company!” he shouted. He didn’t even look down at the fallen item. Someone next to him picked it up to hand back to him, but he waved the hand away. “If not for Company, you think we would have been anything that we are today?” His voice was loud, like someone in the middle of a quarrel.
“This secondary school we have now, that our children attend — people from other villages come here now for school — how long did we stay before it was built? The only primary school we have, is there anyone in this room who doesn’t know how that came about?” Nwokwe paused for a while, as if expecting someone to respond to his questions. “Did the government know us before now?” he asked, looking around the room. “Did any tarred road run to us before? Does this village lead to anywhere? So why do we talk as if we don’t know these things? And because I speak my own truth, the truth that I see with my two eyes, does that mean I’ve accepted a bribe from outsiders against my own people?
“If not for Company, would we have the mono pump that gives us water? How many villages — count it yourselves — around here have tap water? Do they not drink from their wells still? Without Company, mosquitoes would be eating us up here in the mangrove, and all these people in the government wouldn’t have known we even exist.”
“So, you have not accepted money from anyone?” Bendic asked.
“He has eaten money, that is why his mouth is so sweet for them,” someone said from the benches before Nwokwe could respond. Ajie saw it was Morgan, a muscular man who had a reputation as a radical member of the OYF.
“I want all of you to listen to what I am saying today and mark it on a wall somewhere,” Nwokwe continued gravely. “Some of you forget we are a small people. All these bigger groups in this country who go in and out of government, do you think they would look in our direction if we didn’t have oil? We can all disappear from here in a single afternoon, all of us in the whole twenty-four Ogba villages, and they wouldn’t even notice. They wrestle for power among themselves as if we don’t count. As our people say, when the elephants have a wrestle, it’s the grass below that feels the stampede. One day you will say that I said it. All I want to tell you is this: Let us stay close to Company; what they are offering may not be the best, but we can’t be claiming our rights and then lose out completely.”
“They have offered you money,” Ikpo said as he stood up, pointing a finger at Nwokwe. Ikpo was a man of about fifty. “They have offered you money, and you may have accepted, so that their gas pipes can run past behind your house. You think we are fools?” Ikpo’s voice was level but hard. He looked like the sort of man who, in his younger days, would have invited whatever was to happen tomorrow to happen right now. “I won’t blame you if you want to accept, or if you have accepted, but at least have the decency to keep your mouth straight when you speak. And as you are taking this money, do us a favor and tell them that pipeline shall begin and end at your house. It will be a very short pipeline. I don’t know if anyone else here has grown soft enough in the head to join you. And if gas fire burns, it is your family who will be consumed, since you have decided to go deaf in both ears.”
“So that is what you wish for me.” Nwokwe’s voice came back wounded. “That my family be destroyed. All of you sit down here and listen to what this man wishes on his brother.”
“You will be the one wishing it on yourself,” Ikpo retorted.
The meeting stretched until Paul and Ajie got bored and went downstairs to meet the other children at the usual place by the water tank stand, over which the house had thrown a huge shade. They sat on the rungs of the steel ladders, dangling their feet, catching up on things. The sun dipped toward Uhwo and turned the sky orange red.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Ajie and Ossai emerged from the hedges and followed the path beside the flower fence. Someone watching from the church would see only one head bobbing above the flat top of the flowers. Ossai was a clear head taller, even though he was barely two months older than Ajie.
They walked past the church and smelled the tannin that was poured regularly all over the window and door frames to keep termites away. Across the road, in the schoolyard, the old gmelina trees stretched their vast branches and littered the ground with fruits. Ossai stepped over them, but Ajie squashed some underfoot, making the juice squirt, mapping their trail with a darker, inky brown.
It was around seven-thirty in the morning, and they were heading for a quick wash in a nearby swamp. Ajie had been idling in bed when Ossai arrived; he told Paul he was going out. He threw a bar of soap, a sponge, and a fresh change of clothes into a plastic bag and left with his friend. Paul, who’d had an early shower in the bathroom downstairs, was back in bed and didn’t look away from his book when Ajie spoke. Ajie and Ossai shut the door to the staircase, and the house sank deeper into that quietness houses often settle into right after breakfast at holiday times, just before the steady flow of visitors begins.
“Gmelina stains never wash out,” Ossai said as he looked back at Ajie. His own fresh clothes were in a black cellophane bag clutched under his arm.
“I’m not wearing white,” Ajie replied, “so it doesn’t matter.”
The edges of the school’s football field were well marked, and at either end of the field was a standard-size goalpost. They walked past the classroom block to their right and then the school farm behind it, and by the corner was a path that led to the bush. Grass brushed against Ajie’s ankles. He walked a few paces ahead of Ossai as they filed into the bush, taking care not to slip on the clay earth. Creepers, bracken, and bamboo emerged in a rush of darkish green, and the canopy of clustered trees dimmed the sun.