CHAPTER TWO
…Sporting just a pair of ‘tunaabu’ Khaki trousers, a pair of heavy black Kumasi-made sandals, which had its soles as thick as a five-inch block, and a shirt, he met Orwell at Preston hotel in Asylum down.
Elorm and the other guys the night before, drank their heads off, had enough barbecue, and popcorn at the Caprice night bar and danced to some burger high life music. It was their last night together before the trip.That night at the hotel, he met Osei, he was a stout, bearded man.
He wove Kente far away at Bonwire in the Ashanti Region and had this funny little accent. He constantly kept using ‘r’ in place of where ‘l’ should normally
be, mentioned ‘friend’ as ‘fliend’,’bread’ as ‘blead’ and the like. He was a very comic character.
One of Orwell’s female mistresses at Kumasi had linked Osei to him,with whom Elorm was travelling together with Orwell. At the hotel,Elorm began shaking in his boots; the reality of life had just hit him right in the face. No travel documents, no money, no relative, yet he was
going to Nigeria to “hustle”.
Orwell had falsified some old birth certificates and travel documents with the names [Sunday Chwukwu] and [Mba Orulemi], looking tattered.
These names he gave to Elorm and Osei respectively, which they would use to cross the Aflao border.
He introduced them to the customs officials.
“When Ghanaians repatriated Nigerians some years ago in the
1960’s, my elder brother Oge, left his two children behind, and he asked me to come and get them, here they are.” – Orwell said to the customs officials,to whom he passed the awfully old
documents and some coins.It was an arduous journey.
At Togo-side, and at about midday,with the sun as hot as red fire, and scorching so hard that the skin of a newly born baby could burn, amid busy
brisk normal business activities,the three boarded a bus from the
Togolese capital Lomѐ to Koutonou, Capital of Benin Republic.
Koutonou was not too far away, as Elorm stuck out his head to sneeze, after.the bus had gone past a really dusty rough road leaving clouds of dust particles spread all over the atmosphere.
The customs officials were busily extorting monies from people at
the border- there Orwell paid some money and the journey continued all day, till dusk. The sun had set, with the darkness casting its shadow over the entire circle-shaped orange sun-image.Tired, and weary, they got to the Nigerian Border and made for Lagos and then to Badagre after the stop over.
At the Nigerian capital, Orwell and the two Ghanaian boys put up with his friend in a small hamlet, just across the ‘forty first Akakpo street’ pub.Night had fallen and night business was rife. Men parked their cars across the street to pick up their mistresses, the beggars had invaded the pub to continue business from where they left off after 6pm; while children hang all over the place gathering bottle tops for the next day’s Mathematics class lessons.
At about four the next dawn, the chirping of the town birds and crowing of the cocks woke them up, and immediately they proceeded on their journey.
They got aboard another bus to Anambra State’s capital, Onitsa.Orwell was a very smart old fellow, he would not take them through the direct route,he knew how smart Ghanaian boys could be, for fear of the boys running back to Ghana, he took them through a lot of indirect and complicated paths.
From Onitsa, they got aboard two more buses. Little Elorm closed his eyes whenever the buses went past very huge Lorries loaded with goods of
market folk, before arriving at Isulo, a very small village, which itself comprised five other villages,dotted with a number of small buildings,tall coconut trees and customary Hausa speaking men and women having their
usual early morning Muslim prayers before a bustling day. One had to be Nigerian to be convinced of the survival of ardent traditions and culture in these parts of the country…....to be continued!
No comments:
Post a Comment