We repeated these lines again and again until we began to doze off in spite of the heat. Fofo was satisfied and declared the lesson done. It was like the medicine we needed to sleep.
In school the next morning, we were drowsy and dull and our noses ran as if we had catarrh. Even on the soccer field, I was so slow and jittery that Monsieur Abraham, our games master, benched me as a creative midfielder, and my friends threatened to stop calling me Jay Jay Okocha. After the game, Monsieur Abraham, who was a tall, cheerful, athletic fellow, questioned me seriously about the cause of my lack of stamina. He wanted to know whether Fofo Kpee was treating me well at home and whether I was getting enough sleep and eating well. I refused to tell him, but he didn’t give up. He kept an eye on me, maintaining that I was very important to his team, and in time he said he noticed the same thing was happening to my sister. He smiled at us often, and my sister came to like his beautiful teeth. Every afternoon, he brought us together and gave us some glucose to boost our energy. We wondered what we had done to get such special attention.
AT NIGHT, FOFO KPEE chewed lots of kola nuts to induce insomnia so he could oversee our progress. He kept questioning us about Gabon, and we mastered the answers. Sometimes he would fall asleep, but the next morning he looked drowsy and grumpy. His lips were stained red, with kola residue at the corners.
Some mornings, we didn’t need to shower to go to school because he was constantly dabbing us with a wet towel. One time we couldn’t even go to school, because rashes broke out all over us like a fine spray of goose bumps, and Fofo Kpee got us efun, the local calamine chalk, soaked it in water, and poured it all over our bodies. We moved around the house like little masqueraders. During the day, Fofo encouraged us to play outside the house, saying it would make the infection heal faster. Yet at night, when we needed air the most, he would sigh, lock us in, and tell us that men who would succeed in life knew how to take pain.
“ ‘Papa has three younger brothers,’” he read to us one night. “ ‘Vincent, Marcus, and Pierre, and two sisters, Cecile and Michelle. . . . ’ Repeat after me.”
“Papa has three younger brothers, Vincent, Marcus, and Pierre, and two sisters, Cecile and Michelle,” I said.
“Papa has three younger brothers, Vincent, Marcus, and Pierre, and two sisters, Cecile and Michelle,” Yewa said.
“Hey, what do your parents do?” he said suddenly, pointing at my sister.
“Our parents run a small NGO,” she said.
“Bon. De name of de NGO?”
“Grace Earth!” she answered.
“Good gal . . . Repeat after me, you two. . . . ‘Our father’s father, Matthew, died two years ago.’”
“Our father’s father, Matthew, died two years ago,” we said.
“‘When he died, Tantine Cecile cried for two days. . . . Our grandmama, Martha, refused to talk to anyone.’”
“When he died, Tantine Cecile cried for two days,” we said. “Our grandmama, Martha, refused to talk to anyone.”
“‘Grandmama Martha died earlier this year and was buried beside Grandpapa Matthew.’”
“Grandmama Martha died earlier this year and was buried beside Grandpapa Matthew.”
“Where do you live in Gabon, Pascal?”
“Rue du Franceville, nombre douze, Port-Gentil, Gabon,” I said.
“Good boy.”
“‘Fofos live in Libreville, Makokou, and Bitam’ . . . repeat.”
“Fofos live in Libreville, Makokou, and Bitam,” we said.
“‘Tantine Cecile is married to Fofo David and has two children, Yves and Jules.’”
“Tantine Cecile is married to Fofo David and has two children, Yves and Jules.”
“OK, break time,” he said.
“No break,” Yewa protested.
“I say I done tire,” he said, sitting down and throwing the piece of paper on the table. “According to our elders, even de piper dey stop for break.” We grabbed the paper and looked at it, as if we had stumbled on our exam questions shortly before the test. It wasn’t his handwriting. I attempted to read what I had seen to my sister, but she wanted to see the letters that formed each word. We pushed and pulled until we almost tore the paper. Fofo, seeing how close our faces were to the hot dome of the lantern, reached out and took it away from us.
“Come, go inside and bring de pot of beans here,” he said to me.
“But we were going to eat it with ogi,” I said, “in the morning, for breakfast.”
“The vulture eats between his meals”—my sister started singing a nursery rhyme—“and that’s the reason why. His head is bald, his neck is long . . .”
“Na you be vulture, no be me,” Fofo Kpee said, and laughed. “OK, when he bring de Gabon núdùdú, you no go eat. I hope beans no be Gabon food! Pascal, just bring de ting out.”
I went to the inner room and brought out the beans, holding the pot with old papers to avoid the soot. The food was cold, and the palm oil had solidified on top like a layer of brown icing. Fofo said it was too risky to go outside and make a fire then. I scooped the servings, which were as firm as cake slices, onto three plates. We filtered the garri and divided it into three bowls. Fofo Kpee added salt to his garri. I added sugar, Nido powdered milk, and Ovaltine to mine, and Yewa added salt and sugar and Nido and Ovaltine to hers. Fofo teased that we had already become children of the spoiled generation, drinking garri with milk and sugar. He ate fast so that his garri wouldn’t soak up all the water and congeal. But Yewa and I drank our garri slowly, intentionally. Whenever the garri soaked up all the water, we poured in more and added the flavorings.
“Look at dese Gabon vultures!” Fofo Kpee taunted, and made faces at us. We laughed and ate and made merry, as we would for many nights after this.
When we resumed the rehearsal that night, we were too full to sit properly. Yewa tried lying on the cement floor to lessen the heat, but it was too hard for her bloated stomach. We climbed onto the bed. I lay on my side, Yewa on her back. My mind was in Gabon. I saw myself in my godparents’ mansion. I thought about having my own room and being driven to school daily. I thought about wearing shoes to school and about coming home to Mama’s great food. The more I thought about these things, the more I laughed, and the more funny faces Fofo Kpee made. I was no longer tired that night, and for a while it seemed as if I could live without fresh air and suffer anything without becoming frustrated.
“NON, DIS ONE CANNOT defeat me!” Fofo Kpee shouted one evening during a nap, which he had insisted on, to ease his fatigue before giving us lessons. “Mes enfants no dey go anywhere! Pas du tout.”
Yewa and I looked up from our books and exchanged glances.
“N’do˙ ye ma jeyi ofidé!” Fofo Kpee repeated in Egun, this time his body moving with the force of his voice. Yewa held on to me and opened her mouth, but I put my hand over it and pushed her behind me. Our uncle turned and twisted as if he were fighting a lion. When he almost fell out of his bed, he awoke and sat up, hurriedly rearranging his loincloth around his waist. Though we were all sweating, his now came down in waves. He had never spoken in his sleep before, so his words caught us off guard. Though I didn’t say anything, I was afraid and confused and folded my hands in front of me.
“I’m OK, pas de problem,” he said when he recovered and caught us staring at him. “Why you dey look me like dat?”