Ogho in her last days

 

When my grandmother ogho was old and dying (she was the eldest person in our village), papa would go home every weekend to see her. He was as broke as broke could be because it was during Abacha’s regime and food was scarce yet, he would go every weekend. Unfailingly.

 

He would walk up to her house  once he arrived at the village and upon opening her door call out, 'mama' and ogho would get elated immediately, replying "ọ bụ Imma? Now I know that I will eat today." Years later, papa would always fight tears whenever he got to this point  of his mother’s last days. He would beat his chest and cry, "mama m! Mama m!"

 

He never forgot for once during his life time, ogho's love for him and how she sent him to school against all odds. Even now that I remember this, I am fighting tears. That was how powerful papa's love for his mother was during her last days.

 

It was touching in a lot of ways because besides cooking every week for her, assorted soups which he left with his elder brother and his family to warm for her and feed her daily, he also ensured to give her personal care anytime he was in the village. It was the part he found difficult to do because he was a man and grand mother was a woman. And that's where my own mother's compassion came in.

 

Mama remembers it with compassion in spite of the messy condition Ogbo was in the first time they came home and found that she'd soiled herself. Mama remembers how she melted on seeing papa in tears, begging her to help because he was too embarrassed to wash his mother. He pleaded and mama helped him. And both of them did it together.

 

Mama washed Ogho while papa cleaned the soiled floor and washed the beddings.

 

And when it was clear that she’d lost her independence completely, papa bought a full mackintosh covered mattress for her. Uncle Thomas brought cleaners and antiseptics. My cuz Luke took charge of the cleaning when Papa and mama were not around.

 

Every weekend mama washed her mother in law and when she returned to the township, she’d be mortified at how old age took power from people, people like Ogho who was the strongest woman in her days. The cycle went on until grandmother's death.

 

That was the first time I saw Papa cry. He came home and removing his shirt called out on our neighbour, “Peter, mama m anwụgh!’ That was the first time I saw someone related to me die.

 

People gathered and consoled Papa. He said that his only consolation was that Ogho, before passing, laid her blessings on her children.

 

She told mama that she would not suffer in her old age, that her daughters would be like men. She blessed Luke, told him that his business would flourish. She blessed all her Sons. She told Papa that he'd not suffer in death.

 

***

 

I am remembering all these things in a sports shop where I've come to buy some shoes for work but instead of buying shoes, I am sitting on a chair and crying because I remember papa. I have just seen an old man fall by the street, soiling himself, with no help in sight. It hurts me to see.

 

I am crying and sad but my only consolation is that papa didn't suffer this way. His death was clean in a hospital, within minutes.

 

It was his mother's blessing. It was what she told him after he took care of her. “You’ll not suffer this way, my son.”

 

Nnaemeka Ugwu

October 2022.

Agwor'oha

 Agwor'ọha! I first heard the name and it's story when mama Okenwa had a serious complication from pregnancy and her womb was damaged and she was dying.

I remember vividly how she bled and bled till her eyes turned white, like paper. I remember her children crying, running to our side of the face-me-I-face you, calling on papa, "papa! our mother is dying. Please help her!"

Papa sprang into action, like he was known to do. He ran to mama okenwa's room and grabbed her, calling for help in the process, and within minutes, the compound was full of people ready to save one of their own, for those days in the public yard, we lived like family.

But getting people to help was easy.

What was difficult was deciding which hospital to go to in the rural farming community where we lived. It was almost a ghost town because herdsmen violence was starting at the time. There were no hospitals in sight with a surgeon that was capable of saving the woman.

Yet, papa and everyone tried their best. They loaded Mama Okenwa on papa’s Suzuki motorcycle and he sped off. To stem the bleeding, the women of the yard stuffed wrappers and pads between mama Okenwa's thighs. I could only watch in confusion, dazed as I was by the blood. 

The first clinic they got to had no doctor. The second had none and likewise, the third. And these hospitals were all separated by what papa would tell me later were hundreds miles, a system of measuring distance between places.

In the end, according to papa, they could only end up in a town called Ukehe where they were told a powerful surgeon who had returned from Germany lived. His name was Agwor'ọha, the healer of the people. Papa said it was luck that led them to the town. 

He said he was surprised at first as per what was such a qualified doctor doing in his home town, when he could have a far richer life in the cities. But then when he heard the surgeon's story, he understood. 

Papa was so concerned when he told me the story. This doctor had been trained by the mission of that town when he had no one to help him. He finished medical school and went abroad. He lived there for years until he read about the mission hospital which had trained him, how dilapidated it had become, how badly they needed help, and how people died for simple cases he could solve.

And so, began his journey home. An orphan boy who had no one to feed him except the mission. He decided to make the sacrifice and headed home to help the mission. 

"everyone thought he was mad," papa said. "What stupidity could do such a thing to a man?"

I listened quietly, surprised that papa did not see, could not see how much truth there was in the opinion of these people who saw the 'madness' in the decision of this doctor.

I told papa that I would never leave abroad for a place like the place we lived, like the big doctor's home town, a town without running water and reliable electricity. 

I held my views even when papa told a glorious tale of how Agwor'ọha had saved mama Okenwa who was like a mother to me. "It still doesn't matter," I insisted. "He's wasting his life."

But then, what did I know then? A boy who didn't understand what true fulfilment and happiness meant, what sacrifice meant, how personal ideals led people, people like Agowr'oha who had seen everything there was to see in life. 

I still wanted to be a doctor but I was never going to do what this old surgeon had done. Even the changes of the years with the constant drifts between the rains and the hamatttern would not change my mind.

Until I too fell sick when I was in the university and was dying because no doctor could tell what was wrong with me. They prescribed drugs upon drugs until the tablets were nearly killing me. Then enter the great man, Agwor'ọha.

I remember the day I met him. I had given up hope when papa went to him and pleaded for him to see me. He was such a busy doctor then and ran the mission hospital all alone. In addition to healing, he also trained the other doctors in the town on how to perform surgeries.

So I was really privileged to have met him. I remember my body having goose bumps when I saw him in his gray hair and deep lenses and heard his English that sounded like flowers. I stood up and greeted him. I was star struck in a way I couldn't understand considering my disapproval of his austerity.

He was shocked when he saw me. He said, "you're lucky son. You've nearly lost your virility as a man but now, it won't happen because you've come to the right place." He smiled. "We shall heal you."

And so, I was healed.

I was recovering from the drugs when papa came and held my hands and we talked and I told him that we would have to really thank the doctor in a big way.

Papa concurred and then smiled. "Do you still think he is crazy to stay here in his homeland to help people like you? Do you still think his critics are right?" he asked. 

Papa waited for me to open my eyes and shake my head then he said, "you might not be as brave or you might not approve the 'crazy' actions of heroes but what you should not do is discourage them for laying down their lives for others."

***

This is a true life story concealed in fiction, a story about Dr Nnabueze, and one dedicated to all the other doctors who saved Nsukka and environs. Without them, many of us would've died in infancy.

They're doctors like Dr Nnabueze, (Agowr'oha), Dr Attah, Dr Elechi, Dr Nnaji, Dr Ochili, Dr Oguonu, Dr Akulue, Dr Onwurah, Dr Nnamani, Dr Iyoke, Dr Ozoemena, Dr Ndukwe, Dr Ezenwa, Dr Sadiq, Dr Odoh, Dr Ezeugwu and all the others whom I did not hear about.

The least we can do is encourage them for all they did and are doing. Because when they're gone, I don't see anyone there to replace them.

By Nnaemeka Ugwu.

 September 2022.

Nunez sent off Liverpool vs Crystal Palace

Liverpool striker Darwin Nunez has become the first Liverpool player to receive a red card following Sadio Mane's red card vs Manchester City in 2016.

The 23 year old striker who cost £64 million was sent off for violent conduct as he appeared to have headbutted Joachim Anderson of Crystal Palace.

He will now go on to miss 3  matches in a move that will surely infuriate Jurgen Klopp and excite wicked Manchester United fans.

The man and his wife

 So, this man came and parked in front of the barbing salon, his car completely obscured by the darkness save for the little wisps of light from the generator powered barbing shop when the woman whom I'd later find out was his wife, came crashing a pestle on the wind shield of the man's car.

It happened in a spit second and I was horrified by it all, by the crashing sound of pestle and that of the falling glass; I imagined it was my golf taking such a hit and so, I panicked even as I was able to phantom what'd just happened - raging wife confronting a cheating husband. 

My heart beat fast because I didn't like staying close to fracas especially this type which had the woman armed and fighting like a crazed bull, screaming in a hoarse voice, "you idiot! You he-goat! You're finished! I will totally destroy you! You men are worse than animals!"

I panicked because I was a man and men were being called 'worse than animals' just a few feet away. 

The woman let the pestle fall hard again and again and again on the car,- a shinny new Lexus sedan whose screeching alarms and hazard light made the torture it was going through look like a beautiful thing, like it was being beaten to shape and not totally being destroyed, like it was being handled the way girls around this hotel were handled by the men who came to pick them up. 

In a short time, a scene was created as was normal whenever a voice was raised on this street, this immoral space around this ever busy hotel which always had uncountable number of prostitutes swirling around, looking for men to take them home. Once, I was coming back from work late night and one with big breasts approached me, saying in the most lustful of voices, "come let's go home. Come, let's go home." I ran. 

They were often overtly painted and scantily dressed. They ranged from the wrinkled 50 year olds who scrambled for the lowest of men, the only one who'd be interested in them, to the 35 year olds who were desperate to make a living before losing their youth, often taking only men in cars. There were also the young teenagers who in their naivete often settled for the little keke boys on whom they learnt how to satisfy men, in readiness for when they'd become the 'hot cakes' in their 20s.

They all gathered around to watch the scene and to laugh and to try to rescue one of their own who was now being threatened by the woman with the pestle. "Dirty girl! I will carve out that thing in between your legs and feed it to my dog!" the woman screamed. 

The man was trying to restrain his wife from smashing the girls head since she'd been locked in the car and couldn't get out easily. She looked so terrified, a girl of about sixteen. She was pleading, "madam abeg, face your husband, not me. I am only trying to survive and feed my siblings who all depend on me. I am orphan oooo!" Her eyes glistened with desperate tears. 

Her voice was so soft and poignant that I felt like going over to help her, to hold her and shield her from the chaos and terror. But then, Nnaemeka, you're an ọzọ title holder and if that pestle lands on you and these people make a video of you with all sorts of captions like "a married man caught with a prostitute and his wife smashed his head with a pestle," what will you tell your ancestors?

That idea terrified me and so, I quickly decided to leave the scene entirely.

I walked fast, out of the barbershop and onto the other side of the road where the night girls stood laughing, and threatening to kill the woman if anything happened to their colleague. Beside them was the suya man's stand. I often bought from him on many nights I felt like chewing spicy meat on my way back from work. The light of the hotel gate and the white lights of the street made the smoke from the fire look like a war from afar. I must leave without looking back.

After a few steps towards my street, I heard the man's voice, tearful, weak, pleading, "Ifunanya you have to stop this. You really have to leave this girl alone! What did you expect me to do when you hate me, when you totally are disgusted about me and my life, when you have refused to have sex with me for the past 3 years? What did you expect me to do when all I've gotten for all the love I've shown you, was a total rejection?"

I looked back. But I couldn't see much now in my dimmed view. I only heard the voices. The pleasing. The woman pounding the car into a heap of mangled metal.

***

But in your opinion, who's at fault here. Was it the woman who refused to give the man sex or the man who took to cheating as an outlet?

©Nnaemeka Ugwu. 

Odumeje severely brutalised by Soludo's men

 

Breaking the gods

 Breaking the gods. 

Dude just had an accident and is being wheeled into the ER. I am on duty so I am on ground to 'welcome' him. 

My stethoscope is hanging on my neck as usual, even though, Nonso Oguonu hates that. But, I don't care. He is just a lump of meat waiting for egbe ìgwè to tear apart, on my behalf. 😂😂😂

I am also carrying the investigation forms and other things. And I am thinking about the back side of the girl I saw in Nauth earlier in the day, as I wait for the patient bearers to meet up with me.

The nurses are running helter-skelter, perhaps because they're are confused by the blood and screaming from the injured guy who's also cursing. 

"It's a set up!" 

"It's a set up!" 

"God!" 

"Iam dying! I am dying" 

He is crying, shivering, bleeding from here and there. I feel pity for him because I always feel pity for the patients when I'm in a good mood, when the sun is up and the day, bright with daylight. Plus the girl I met in Nauth is bombing my WhatsApp with messages. 

So I say, as the trolley stops abruptly at the spot I'm standing in the ER and the dude is being rolled onto the couch from the stretcher, "Nna, sorry oh! I'll take care of you." I actually felt for him. At times, it's difficult not to feel for a man when he is crying. 

The flowing fresh blood stain the mackintosh. Broken ones creak. Some held only by dangling flesh. The words of an old man flash through my mind. 'Aren't we all nothing but, lumps of meat, held together by nothing but, bones? Aren't we all ashes, in the end?' 

The story is that just a few minutes ago, the patient was hit by a truck on reverse, while he tried to unload the truck. But, that's not all there is to it.

Some of the people with him are saying that the truck guy had done it intentionally. 

"They had a little quarrel last night and then, this happened this morning. Can you see the correlation, doc,?" one asks. He's the guy with clean shaven head and long neck. His hands are stained the most with blood. His clothes too, are stained with blood. He's the little brother of the wounded guy. He has some tears in his eyes, too. 

He is also angry, just like the rest of the men. And they're getting rowdy, each speaking whatever the hormones and the sight of the horror,  threw into his mouth so, I try to calm down them down. 

"Can you guys please, move to the out-patient? I need space. We need space to work." 

My voice is calm. I don't shout at men in situations like this because, situations like this turn men into beasts. The other day, my colleague was nearly stabbed by angry boys because, she couldn't wake their dead friend. Down here, in this jungle, you don't meet up with friendly people all the time. 

My calmness pays off, as the men begin to clear. One by one. Each muttering some angry words. But, the patient asks for his little brother to stay behind. 

"I want my brother to be with me," he pleads.

Little demand. No problem. So, I let him have his wish. And it soon pays off. 

I take history and carry out examinations very quickly. I ligate the few bleeding vessels. I also take care of the major wound sites. I sterilize them as much as possible. I pack them up and bandage and splint some of them. He is fairly stable. Youth is on his side.

But, there's a problem. 

Whereas the guy allows sutures, and the other things, he vehemently refuses to allow me set up an IV line in order to administer fluids and other medications.  The refusal baffles the nurses and the men who are with him. And to an extent me, too. 

The thing is that patients refusing to allow one form of treatment or the other is not a new thing to me but, the dude on the couch looks like someone who cooperates, judging by the fact that he's been so polite from the beginning. And when I scan his body, I find no talisman or charm on his body. Or marks even. Hence, my surprise at his refusal to let a needle near him. 

Time is running out though, and I need to act fast, in order to free up time for the other patients. There are always many of them, waiting.

 

At first, I shout. "I'll slap you! Will you keep quiet and let me treat you so, I can see the other patients?" 

I try to look as stern as I sound. I've used the trick before. And, at times, it works. In fact, it has worked more times than not. But, this time, it doesn't work. The guy is not giving in. Cha cha. 

His wife comes forward and cries a river of tears. His friends shout and cajole. The nurses pet him and beg him. Some other patients and passersby try but, all fail. 

I too, try to beg and cajole. I try to explain things. I try diplomacy. I even tell him some funny things. But, no way. Then, I become more stern and coldly tell him off. 

"You're going to die and I'm leaving you. Don't ever call me back." 

I make a fuss about downing tools. I remove the apron and gloves and try to remove the boots and only then does he try to compromise,  to comply. 

He looks at his wife and kids and shakes his head. He looks at his wounds and at me and shakes his head again. Then, he whispers, imploringly, "Doc, I did 'odeshi.' If you give me any white man's medicine, I'll die. Please, give me some time to call on my 'chi' and perform some rites." 

Really? Rites? Rituals?

For those who don't understand Igbo, 'odeshi' is a form of juju that makes one immune to bullets.  A lot of people trust in it but, in my experience, it doesn't work. I always tell them that 'odeshi' is not for an AK47. 

I want to laugh like I've always done each time I've come across such patients but, the guy is looking real(sic) scared. His eyes tell as much as his words. "I don't want the spirits to kill me," he pleads. "Let me speak with the gods, first." 

They say a good doctor, listens and I want to be a good doctor. So, I listen to him and move a few paces away. I instruct the nurses and the other people to move away, too. Only the patient's brother stays. Because the patient needs him to stay, to help him 'call on the gods.'

I watch from where I am standing, along the passage that leads to the morgue, as the little brother brings out a red clothed charm from the patient's back pack. I watch him smash the charm on the patient's chest and fore head, three times, before moving it round his head thrice, chanting in Ebonyi dialect. I watch him reach out to the earth. 

He scoops a hand full of sand from the nearby lawn and hands it to his wounded brother. The ritual is about to be completed. But, I am disturbed. Because the sand is contaminated, probably full of infectious agents.

This is a hospital for God’s  sake and the earth in a hospital soaks too much blood. And diseases reside in blood. Spilled or not. So, I try to stop him but, his brother urges me not to interfere because the earth that breaks the 'odeshi' must come from the immediate surrounding. 

"The earth must come from the immediate surrounding" he states. They are both still chanting. Their eyes are rolling. Their hands are up in the air. The people watching must be scared.

Yet, almost everyone urge me to allow them finish the ritual. His wife and friends also urge me and so, I step back and only watch in horror as the patient pours the sand into his mouth, chews it and swallow all of it. 

Then, he declares in a whisper to me "the charm is broken." Relief is on his face. Even with the injuries. Pure relief. The gods must be happy now.

I want to laugh but, instead, I move in to complete my job. My hands move fast as I suture the remaining fine lacerations in his tongue and lips and face, after the lidocaine infiltration. I finish up in no time and remove my apron and gloves to do a little write up. 

As I leave him for the nurses to clean up the move him to the ward, I feel another urge to laugh but, I restrain myself. 

I remember the words of the old man 'we're just nothing but, what the world around us makes us to be.'  

He was a wise man. I met him on the day that they shot many people. He often said to me,  before he died of his wounds from the assault rifles. 

"Some of us are fortunate to have enlightenment, to know what's true and what's a lie. It doesn't mean that we should have disdain and laughter for those who believe in other things." 

The sun is suddenly cut off by a rain cloud. I can feel the new cool breeze on my skin. It will rain soon and I know I will like it because I like rain.

It reminds me of childhood and freedom.

By Nnaemeka Ugwu. 

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