I Used to Be a Cockroach
An old story about poverty, palm-wine tappers, a rat called Skippy, a burnt-down shack—and the day I finally walked away.
I used to be a cockroach.
Life was really hard.
I would eat, amongst other things, grass shoots, succulent leaves, unripe paw-paw—and postage stamps.
Unable to afford soap, I eventually gave up bathing altogether. I hated bathing with dirty water; it seemed pointless to rub filthy water over a body already greasy with sweat and dirt.
I had to leave that neighbourhood.
Fast.
There was nothing there for me.
Nobody liked me. Nobody cared enough to help me. And really, I wasn’t asking for much. Sometimes all a human being needs is a smile—a hand of friendship stretched in his direction.
Instead, they conspired against me.
Or at least that was how it felt.
They conspired to frustrate my soul.
They hated the sound of my second-hand transistor radio, permanently tuned to the BBC. They hated the smell of fried plantain that occasionally drifted from my section of the yard.
I must confess that I had a hand in this particular hatred.
On those rare days when I managed to get my hands on ripe plantains, I would fry myself some dodo and sing war songs at the top of my voice.
The first time I did it, I wasn’t trying to annoy anybody.
I merely wanted to let Eshu—the West African god of mischief—know that I was still holding on.
Still hangin’ in there.
And there was nothin’ he could do about it.
I was thoroughly battered, no question.
But I was still me.
I was who I was.
Still a spark of the great God in whose heart, I believed, I remained a dream.
I loved God.
And I was fearless.
They Burnt My Belongings
Where was I?
Ah, yes.
Let me tell you how it happened—how they burnt my belongings.
Don’t you remember?
They burnt my belongings just when it seemed I might actually be making my way in the world.
You remember now?
Right.
It was funny how the poor conspired against one another.
At least the rich held parties and hobnobbed together. They networked. They consolidated their wealth through marriage, friendship, favours and I-owe-you-ones.
But the poor?
We were really poor.
Poor in charity.
Poor in faith.
Poor in hope.
Poor in almost everything.
I still laugh when I remember how carefully they watched as I walked into the compound. They were expecting me, no doubt, to scream and run towards my burning abode, beating my chest, looking towards heaven and ululating:
“WOE IS ME!”
But I’m getting ahead of myself.
Even now, I sometimes wonder where the hell those creeps are.
What are they doing now?
What became of their lives?
Those appalling creatures…
Yes, yes, I’m getting ahead of myself again.
But allow me.
I am still struggling, certainly, but my heart is in the right place.
Not so the doubly wretched—wretched in body and wretched in mind.
Yes, they did me in somewhat. They made my heart angry.
But then, so do mosquitoes.
And tsetse flies.
And rats.
Do I despise them?
No.
Waiting for God’s Dream to End
Listen.
I was returning from the waterside, where I had gone to hear stories.
You guessed right: I had no job.
Or, shall we say, I was between jobs—waiting for God’s dream to end.
At the waterfront, you know, we traded stories. We laughed. We helped the fishermen with their nets and sorted their catch into grades.
This and that.
That and this.
We also “fiftied” cigarettes—two men sharing one cigarette—and sometimes we simply sat and watched the river gently flow by.
We were mostly gentle souls.
All we wanted was to pacify the raging despair within our souls until our dreams were ready for us to inhabit.
I hated my life.
But I was willing to soldier on.
Waka the Great
My heart quickened when I saw smoke rising from my section of the swampy compound, where I had been allowed to put up a batcher.
Batcher?
Basha?
Bacha?
I cannot vouch for the spelling.
I was a nouveau pauper.
I had actually been whistling as I approached the compound because Waka the fisherman had spent the afternoon regaling me with stories from his former life as a palm-wine tapper.
Waka the Great!
“Now das my luck,” he once complained, “to suffer-suffer for my daily bread.”
The only occupations really open to him, he explained, were palm-wine tapping and fishing.
“Just my luck,” he said without emotion. “I either falling down from those tall-tall trees or I drowning in de bad-bad river.”
“Waka!” the entire congregation shouted.
“Speak am well-well! Scatter de grammar!”
“Bookooroo!” someone else added shrilly.
Bookooroo was derived from “book” and was our euphemism for people who tried to show off their great learning.
Waka had fallen—yes, you guessed right—from what was probably the tallest palm tree in the whole Niger Delta.
“Him papa head good,” somebody said when he made a remarkably quick recovery two months later.
He walked thereafter with an endearing limp, the result of his injuries.
And so he became Waka—pidgin for walk.
In midlife, understandably reluctant to climb another palm tree, Waka did what working men the world over do when their industries become hazardous or obsolete:
He retooled.
He retrained.
He became a fisherman.
The Brothers of the Order of Palm-Wine Tappers
Such was the bond between Waka and his former colleagues that they would bring him a gourd or two of frothing, undiluted palm wine in the evenings after the day’s work.
He, in turn, would provide roasted fish—hotly spiced.
Waka was kind to me and shared his palm wine.
I also had the honour of serving as Fish Roaster in the evenings when the brothers of the Order of Palm-Wine Tappers returned.
And what men they were.
They were as arrogant as men anywhere—men who had full and total control of their lives and knew it for a dead certain fact.
The English milord could have learned a thing or two from them.
They were kings when they climbed the tall palm trees of the Niger Delta.
They were kings when they climbed down.
And even as they sat around eating roasted fish and drinking palm wine, they exuded a certain understated dignity.
These impoverished royals lived their lives to the hilt, and they knew it.
They set their own work schedules.
Drew up their own Gantt charts.
Decided what to do, whom to supply and who could wait.
I surpass myself…
Unfailingly, each evening they toasted Bacchus, the god of wine.
Bacchus, who had a thousand African names.
“To Mmanya-nmo!” they would say in unison.
“To you, great Mmanya-nmo—the cause of and solution to all life’s problems!”
“What do you mean? Mmanya doesn’t cause any problems,” someone would protest.
“Leave that matter for another day,” Gravelly Voice would retort. “I no get power for argue dis evening.”
“I say Mmanya-nmo doesn’t cause any problems. I don’t care whether you have power to argue or not. It doesn’t cause any problems.”
“But look at yourself! Are you not already a problem to yourself?”
“You’re a damn fool. No wonder your in-laws beat you up the other day.”
“They disgraced themselves, not me!”
And on and on they bantered.
“Who Is That Cockroach?”
Then one evening I heard Gravelly Voice ask:
“Who is that cockroach?”
I knew they were talking about me.
I kept a straight face and continued fanning the embers beneath the sooty basket of fish suspended over the fire.
“That cockroach is a doctor,” Waka explained.
“Doctors do not roast fish! Doctor of what?”
A new voice burst into laughter, sending palm wine shooting from his nostrils.
“I don’t know,” Waka replied. “He told me he is a doctor, and I believe him.”
“There are so many doctors these days,” another voice entered the fray. “I am a doctor myself.”
“Doctor of what?” asked the man with the ejaculating nostrils, doubling over with laughter and clutching his stomach as though in acute pain.
“Don’t kill me here!” he shouted as more palm wine escaped through his nose. “You will all be held responsible! You all know what a troublesome woman my wife is!”
“Answer now, Doctor,” Waka nudged the man who had declared himself one.
“Doctor of tree climbing,” he said resignedly.
His thunder had been stolen by the man with the ejaculating nose.
Then Gravelly Voice turned towards me.
“Come here,” he said. “Sit with us. My daughter has just finished Standard School. She wants to be a doctor. Are you really a doctor?”
And just like that, the cockroach had been invited to sit among kings.
The Smoke
So yes, I had been whistling when I approached the house that evening.
Then my heart quickened.
Smoke was rising from the section of the swampy compound where I had been permitted to put up my bacha.
My gait held.
It betrayed none of the emotions I felt.
I stepped smartly around what used to be my home.
Strangely, I felt gladness.
My miserable dwelling had been mercilessly incinerated by people who seemed to hate me and the very earth upon which I stood.
Yet what I felt at that moment was something close to “the peace that passeth all understanding.”
I remembered the damp floor.
I remembered the rats with whom I shared my space.
Especially Skippy.
Skippy and the Evolution of Rats
Skippy was a rat I had named because he would skip about on his hind legs whenever he sensed that I had finally had enough of his antics and was preparing to smash something hard against him.
I always spared him on account of his comic plight.
Evolution, I reasoned, meant rats like Skippy would multiply, and eventually we would have smart rats.
And if we had enough smart rats, perhaps one day we might reach a compromise with them.
We could teach them to stop stealing and annoying us by explaining that there was enough for everybody.
I reckoned it would be easier to explain this to Skippy and the other members of the rat race than to the great stealing machine called government.
But that is another matter.
Standing there before the ashes of my home, I felt surprisingly little.
My principal concern was that Skippy would now have to find somewhere else to live.
I worried that intelligent rats like him might be exterminated mindlessly before they had a chance to reproduce.
It seemed important that humanity should assist the evolutionary process by getting a little sense into its own head and learning not to destroy everything it did not understand.
Alas, the days of a reasoned tête-à-tête with rats—whether of the governmental or Rattus rattus variety—lay far ahead.
I Walked Away
Still whistling, my hands now in my pockets, I surveyed the remains of my home.
Then I walked away.
Head high.
I was free.
Freed from my shackles, I walked away.
I had had it.
I would first go to church and renew my relationship with Him who had been patient with me and would, verily, receive me.
Then I would beg something from the pastor.
After that, I would travel to Warri.
I was no longer a cockroach.
I had been smoked out of my hiding place and forced into the open.
Ready to make a hash of it.
Cockroaches are afraid to move. They have too many natural enemies. They prefer darkness, crevices, corners—anywhere they can blend into the background and remain unseen.
But I wasn’t afraid to move.
Not anymore.
Indeed, I had to move.
I had no cover left.
But scurry?
Scurry I would not.
I held my head high, turned around and walked out of that yard.
I half expected applause.
But that would have to wait for the movie version of my life story.
First, I would go to church and renew my relationship with Him who was patient and would verily receive me.
Then I would beg something from the pastor.
And somewhere out there was Gravelly Voice, whose daughter wanted to become a doctor.
Perhaps that mattered too.
Life was tough.
But, to my credit, I was hangin’ in there.
I used to be a cockroach.
I hated my life.
But I was willing to soldier on.
Willing to wait for God.
And life?
Life is still tough.
But I’m still hangin’ in there.
#DK
