INGREDIENTS
Black-eyed beans
Onions
Palm oil
Fresh chilies
Salt
Crayfish
Maggi cube
Shredded beef
Dried fish
PREPARATION
Soak the beans overnight, then wash thoroughly to remove outer skins. Put beans in a blender with the onions, palm oil, fresh chilies, salt, crayfish and Maggi cube. Add the shredded beef and bits of dried fish. Pour the contents into envelopes of tinfoil or plastic containers. Next, put four sticks at the bottom of a large, deep pot in a cross pattern and cover with water. Put the wraps or containers in the pot on top of the crossed sticks. Steam over a low fire, topping up with water from time to time, until the moi-moi has the consistency of tofu. Serve with gari soaked in milk, water and sugar.
TWENTY-SEVEN
This is a journey to manhood, to life; it cannot be easy.
The old Igbo adage is: Manhood is not achieved in a day.
Lagos, 1983
Sunday stumbled bleary-eyed out of the house, straight into a rush of people, screaming and shouting. He stood on his veranda lost in an alcoholic mist.
“Sunday! Sunday! Dey have come!” Comfort screamed, running past him and dumping a hastily packed bag in the street before dashing back inside.
It was light everywhere, but it wasn’t sunlight. The earth rumbled as though thunder shook it. Sunday glanced at his watch; it was four a.m., too early to be dawn. He opened his fly and urinated into the street, narrowly missing the bag and a small group running past with an open coffin packed tight with their belongings. He raked up some phlegm and spat with a plop into the nearby swamp.
“What’s matter, eh? What’s matter?” he mumbled, staring vacantly into the bright light.
“Sunday, you stand so? Why not help me pack before bu’dozer come knock our house down?”
“What’s matter? Which bulldozer? Are you mad?”
“De gofment send anoder bu’dozer,” she said, dropping another bag on the ground and going back for more.
“De government can go to hell!” he yelled. “I want to sleep.”
Comfort elbowed him aside and stooped to lift the stuff she had salvaged onto her head. Thank goodness the children were staying with relatives, she thought. She didn’t think she would have managed with them here.
“If you want to die, go and sleep. If not, help me carry something and let us go!” she shouted at him.
“Go where?”
He tried to focus.
“Look, Papa Elvis, bu’dozer is come. Me, I have carry my gold and expensive lappa and I no fit to carry more. Let’s go,” she said urgently as the rumbling grew louder.
A few streets away, clouds of dust and sprays of water rose as the dozers leveled everything in their path — houses, shanties, even the swamps.
“Go where?” he asked again.
She took one more look at the approaching bulldozer, stepped into the street and was swallowed by the crowd. He looked for her, but she was lost somewhere in the sea of bodies flowing past him.
“Go where?” he muttered to himself under his breath. “Dis is my land. I buy dis house, it is not dash to me. Why I go?”
The dozers rolled uncomfortably closer. The vibrations from them shook the windowpanes, dislodging a few, which fell, shattering noisily. The lights cut through the sky and the night was bright, and still Sunday stood on his veranda smiling enigmatically. A few yards away a house built of corrugated iron and cardboard crumbled with an exhausted puff, while the old generator in another exploded.
Sunday became aware of another presence on the veranda. Turning quickly, he gasped when he saw Beatrice reclining on the bench. She noted the shocked look on his face and spoke.
“Sunday, don’t be afraid.”
“Why not? You’re a ghost. Have you come to kill me?”
Beatrice smiled sweetly, and something about that smile sent shivers down his spine.
“No, I came to warn you to leave.”
“And if I don’t?”
“Den you will die.”
He turned away from her. If he ignored her, she would disappear. She was, after all, a drunken hallucination. He laughed. Madam Caro must have laced his palm wine with some narcotic. Whatever it was, it was good, and he was glad he was a regular.
“Sunday.”
He turned back to where Beatrice had been sitting. She was still there, but there was another presence too.
“You’re not really here,” he told her.
“Oh yes I am — and so is he,” she said, pointing to a leopard curled up in the shadows.
“What is dis? Did you bring a spirit leopard to kill me?”
“No. He is here on his own.”
“But what is dis?”
“I am the totem of your forefathers.”
Sunday blinked. A talking leopard, his wife’s ghost, the bulldozers: it was too much.
He turned back to the scene unfolding in front of him and saw policemen and soldiers driving people off with gun butts and leather whips. “Get out! Go! Go!” they yelled. In the distance a mother stopped in mid-flight, remembering her son trapped in her hut. She ran back for him. “Hassan! Hassan!” she screamed. The butt of a rifle chased her screams down her throat with a mouthful of teeth and blood. She crumbled to the ground and the soldier kicked her aside.
“You are going to die here, you know, unless you get out,” the leopard said.
“He’s not joking. Listen, Sunday, you still have a son to care for. Leave,” Beatrice said.
Sunday was getting worried. If Beatrice and the leopard were only hallucinations, why had they remained even when he wasn’t paying any attention?
“You are de one who will die!” he shouted.
“I am already dead,” Beatrice said. “And I think de leopard is a spirit.”
“You disappoint me, Beatrice, eh. Why must you mock me?”
Beatrice’s ghost looked hurt, her lips trembling.
“I came to you in your time of need, but if you like, I can leave.”
Sunday shouted and punched himself around the face.
“In the old days, people were close to their totems, who infused them with their own special attributes, both physical and metaphysical. Lycanthropy was not unusual in those days when the ancient laws were kept,” the leopard said.
“Go and tell your story elsewhere,” Sunday interrupted. “If you are person or spirit, I don’t know and don’t care. Both of you just leave me alone, dat’s all.”
The ’dozers were only a few yards away and policemen and soldiers were running past his house. One of the policemen spotted him slouched on his veranda in only a loincloth, looking for all intents like a man basking in the noonday sun.
“You dere!” the policeman barked.
“He has seen you. Won’t you go, or do you want to die?” the leopard asked.
“Think of Elvis,” Beatrice said.
“You dere, go now before I vex!” the policeman yelled again.
“This is the hour of your death. Go out and fight for your honor.”
“You deaf? I say move before I move you!” the policeman yelled again, advancing on Sunday, and cocking his rifle.
“Well, at least die like a man,” the leopard said with a bored yawn.