chapter FIVE

Newspaper Vendors woke Taye up with a start at Jebba Railway Station.

He looked at his digital watch. He saw 7.04. he disbelieved this. He could not believe he had blinked an eye much less having slept for some hours. When 'Taye became fully conscious, he realised that strolling hand in hand with Bose a while ago on a lovely Island was only a dream. He closed his eyes and tried to recall the dream all over again. It came to him slowly.

Taye had been cruising a speed boat on a calm large lake. It could have even been on an ocean because the eye could not see the shore. Taye had a great time cruising up and down the tranquil water but suddenly he found himself in front of a white cottage up on a hill. A beautiful flower garden around the cottage was the work of a master landscaper. He approached the freshly painted cottage and when he was about to open its gate, behold Bose rushed out of the

cottage, welcoming him with smiles and open arms. She was dressed like a fairy Princess, her long gown sweeping the ground behind her as she ran towards Taye and her long black hair flying behind her. The next thing Taye saw was that instead of entering the cottage, they held hands and headed for the beautiful flower garden. Then the newspaper vendors' noise woke him up.

Jingolo and Bobby were already on the platform where Taye finally came to. Bose, too, was missing from her seat. Taye felt a pang of personal loss and jealousy. He assumed Bose had gone with the boys. "They had seized the opportunity of his sleep to get her", he thought. He was still brooding over this and silently cursing his star for the ignoble sleep when the door of the ladies opened and Bose came out. Taye suddenly burst out laughing, inwardly ashamed of his thoughts.

"You are awake", Bose said when she returned to her seat. Taye nodded in response, still amused.

When the train whistled to leave the station, Jingolo and Bobby reached up to Taye through the window and passed a wrapped bundle, which Taye felt was hot when it touched his hands. The boys hurried into a coach near the

second class compartment because the entrance to their own coach was congested.

Bose felt the familiar Jerk; the pull followed and the train began to labour out of Jebba Station. The train had crawled about five kilometers out of the station before the boys finally made their way through the coaches back to their seats. They brought back with them some of the day's national newspapers, which Jingolo said they had not bought and they had not been dashed.

"You borrowed them", Taye said emphatically. "NNNO" Bobby said. "Then? "Taye queried.

Jingolo then went ahead to narrate that the papers were just left on the stand unattended to. They arrived there, picked their choice and left pretending to have put money in a pool of coins and notes at one corner of the table which carried the newspapers.

"That, in plain language is stealing, clear and .... " Jingolo did not allow Bose to finish when he cut in.

"Look babe, tell me, have you had the term 'tapping' before?" "Oh yeh", shouted a baritone voice from among the students occupying seat behind them. The owner of the voice came physically over to join Taye's ' group. He stood in the aisle from where he took the topic of tapping and dealt with it with the dexterity of a professional debater.

"Hope you'll not mind if I contribute a word on tapping" he paused for effect, and after receiving a non - verbal green-light, he continued.

"By the way, call me Chiko, I'm from Gramma in Ibadan".

He paused again, cleaned the corner of his mouth with his

tongue before continuing. First, he fired a question not particularly directed at anyone. "Who can tell me how the Bible narrated the story of the triumphal entry of Jesus into Jerusalem?"

Apparently, the entire students knew the story and they started almost together to recount it. But, they all left the matter to Bose to answer what all believed to be a simple question.

Bose took her time to relate the story as accurately as the biblical version, knowing full well that many who knew the story were listening.

"Jesus instructed two of his disciples to go into the city. Upon entering, they would see a young Ass tied to a tree. He commanded them to untie the Ass and bring it to him. Jesus also told them to tell whoever that questioned their authority to answer them that the Lord had need of the Ass.

"They went and found it as Jesus had said and when they were untying the Ass, somebody challenged them and they replied him as they had been charged and they brought the Ass and our Lord and Master rode it after it has been decorated with beautiful clothes-----",

"Thank you, Miss. Ladies and Gentlemen, fellow students and co-passengers. You will all agree with me as we have just heard in that story that the young Ass was tapped. Q.E.D. Thank you".

The shout that greeted his

submission was enough to bring the roof of the coach down. Even those who had not participated in the 'debate' enjoyed the blasphemous joke.

While Chiko was at the aisle solving the riddle, the guy's striking handsomeness perplexed Taye. Chiko was tall, slim and shinning black in complexion. Taye saw that Chiko's jet-black hair was slightly curly, an evidence of a fading jerry curl. His face was cool, clean and confident. Taye

was particularly jealous of Chiko's sideboards, or side-burns as the Americans say. He was all the while silently praying that Bose was merely listening to all Chike was saying and not paying attention to his striking handsomeness. Taye

knew he too was not bad as a boy but painfully he admitted to himself for the first time in his life that here was somebody more handsome than him. He

became relieved however when Chiko went back to his seat.

The train hooted repeatedly and slowed down. Since the journey started at Ibadan station, whenever the train hooted this long, it was approaching a major station, but it had just left Jebba Station and this continuous hooting and the reduced speed naturally got passengers curious. When Taye looked out of the window, he noticed that the vegetation outside had become thick and unusually green. The air that slapped his face too was cool and fresh. It puzzled him. It was around Osogbo that they saw the type of forest he was now witnessing at Jebba. After Osogbo the vegetation had become thinner and thinner, becoming grassland at Ilorin. In his quandary, Taye called the attention of his friends to the unusual rain forest after Jebba. "The Niger River bank", remarked jingolo. Taye smiled at his own ignorance.

The train hooted again braking almost to a stop. Then the noise of the engine picked up and so was the speed of the train but still the train was crawling. This was how it crossed the long bridge on River Niger. All passengers sat on the edges of their seats to take in all they could of the longest river in West Africa. The train had hardly gone clear of the bridge when a discussion about the River Niger and its long bridge broke out. Some passengers sang about the beauty of the scenery. Looking at the mass of water flowing away quietly, its depth was the only thing Taye was trying to phantom as the discussion was going on about him. Talking about the long bridge, some passengers marveled at the technology that went into its construction. To others, it was the many souls that went down with the river during the construction of the bridge they lamented about. According to an elderly man, during the construction of the bridge, when a black man fell into the river below, the usual parlance was that a nail had dropped, but when a whiteman fell into the river, they would say a hammer had dropped.

The elderly man concluded that as many as one hundred nails and twenty hammers were swept away by the Niger River before the Jebba Bridge was completed. Nobody contested the authenticity or otherwise of the man's claims. The revelation alarmed Bose who felt sympathetic for the lost souls.

Another elderly passenger, a woman narrated how River Niger came into being. She reeled off the story:

"Once upon a time, a powerful king of the old Oyo Empire fell from grace to grass. The name of the king was Shango who was driven from his throne and banished from Oyo Empire. He and his household including slaves set out on foot for many days and nights until Shango's companions became weary and began to desert him one by one. By the time they reached the spot where River Niger is today, Shango looked back for the first time since he set out from Oyo and found to his chagrin that even his household had forsaken him. Only one of his many wives remained. Her name was Oya. The tale has it that Shango pleaded with Oya too to go back but she refused. Instead, Oya spoke in the tongue of Ruth (in the Bible) that where-ever Shango went she too would go; wherever he died she too would die. Shango latter committed suicide by hanging and Oya in her anguish, fell down and died".

The story teller concluded that water immediately began oozing out from the ground where Oya's corpse laid and that was how Oya became the big River Niger we had just passed.

As usual in oral tradition, the story lacked all scientific elements to make it plausible. The students in the coach in particular knew from their Geography subject that the River Niger took its source from the foot of the Foutta Djallon

highlands in present day Guinea Republic, thousands of kilometers away from Jebba, Nigeria.

The River Bridge behind them as well as the lively discourse it generated, most of the passengers seemed to suddenly remember breakfast. Those who had prepared something for the journey from home dug into their reserves and served themselves and those who had provided for themselves from Jebba station brought out what they had bought. Aroma of delicacies filled the coach. The smell of fried fish was very strong. There were also verbal invitations to meals and corresponding acceptances or polite declines making the rounds. In the thick of all these, Bose got up, excused herself and headed in the direction of

the toilet towards the tail of the train. What she would see in that toilet would be revolting Taye thought because he had been to that particular toilet in the night. Taye's eyes followed Bose as she went, and he only became relieved when she passed the toilet door without entering but slipped into the next coach. He returned his eyes to the Sports page of the newspaper he was reading. 

Taye's interest in sports was such that he had told his father

that he would like to read Journalism so that one day, he too would report sports.

He had his father's blessing on this profession after his heart. Bose returned with breakfast. The meal consisted of a pot of steaming coffee, two long loaves of bread and a can of sardines. All the students in the

coach including Chiko and his fellow students at the seat behind Taye's tasted the delicious meal Bose provided. During the meal, discussions among the students centred on the changes in vegetation as they sped further North. It was an occasion to demonstrate knowledge of the climatic structure of their fatherland, Nigeria. They observed that the turbulent and meandering rivers in the South were now replaced by vast open grassland punctuated by deep and almost dry river valleys at this time of the year- December. Palm trees in the South had also been replaced by Date palms. Unlike the thick forest in the South the grassland of the North was a fascinating scenery. There were cattle and sheep grazing far away in the fields and river beds.

The students were still busy discussing the physical geography of the country when the train hit Kutuwenji close to mid-day. Not many passengers came in here but some of those who had occupied Taye's coach from Lagos bade them farewell and removed their luggage from the overhead rack and from under the seats. The lucky ones, Taye thought, as those who had reached their destination, disembarked. Taye looked forward to reaching home which was still some ten hours or more away. He shrugged and concentrated on the present.

"Taye!" Bose called sharply as if a thought suddenly struck her. When she got his attention she asked, "Have you heard that Kutuwenji is a  town of ghosts?" Taye was going to exclaim Ghost village! but Bose continued.

"When I was very young my granny often told us that her own granny  reappeared at Kutuwenji after she died in our village".

Although everybody pretended not to have been listening to Bose, when she began her private conversation with her dear Taye, she was shaken by the reactions she drew. Everyone was ready to contribute to this matter of ghosts or spirits and Kutuwenji. However, one clergyman had the upper hand.

The Pastor with grey hair at the templates cleared his throat and adjusted his collar calling attention to it in the process. He talked slowly but clearly and all listened with rapt attention. Papa, as the students referred to him after his speech, pleased himself and perhaps the illiterates by what he said. The theme of his sermon, if you like, was on the theory that God Almighty created human beings in duplicates.

According to him, there was nothing like re-incarnation. He went further to say that the duplicate beings were rarely born in the same locality. What the Clergyman was saying in effect was that the person seen at Kutuwenji purported to be the re-incarnated great grandmother of Bose was only a carbon copy of the dead woman.

"Well reasoned but hollow", Taye thought, if the Pastor were not old, because he must have been above sixty years of age, Taye would have challenged him.

The many psychic books, which he had read, would not let him

accept what he termed a misconception of facts on the issue. So, when they arrived at Minna Station and the clergyman reached his destination and left, Taye now had the opportunity to deliver a lecture entitled, "Life after Life, not Life after Death".