R. B. Ejue, 2/29/2016

Current Occupation: I drive a taxi in Nigeria
Former Occupation: I was a messenger at the Nigerian Ports Authority
Contact Information: I am 21 years old. I live and work in Nigeria, and was inspired to write by the great literature I have read.

 

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ME AND OKADA

I call my elder brother Eme, a short feminine rendition of his very masculine name, Emediong. This is an affectation picked up from my mother, who doesn’t live with us anymore. Choosing to quit the urban roughness of Calabar city a year ago, for the tranquility of our ancestral village, following the death of my father.

    Really I cannot, if called upon by a jury, state that my parents were in love with each other because I’m not sure if that’s the correct way to describe what they had. My mother was nineteen when she met and fucked my father, conceiving Eme in the process, and moving in with him. Among their peers this wasn’t odd.

    My father was slim and fair, his collar bones jut out of his upper chest in a manner that meant they were staying no matter how much he ate. I won’t lie, I frequently wondered what my mother had seen in him to allow herself to carry his seed and deliver me and my brother into this sinkhole we called lives. Our house was a one room shack, with a roof that let in less sunlight than rain. The windows were nothing more than rectangular holes punched into the wall, and nailed across horizontally with two slim planks.

    Eme escaped our father’s slight build, I did not. But I didn’t know then that this physical inadequacy of mine would force me into the throttling corner I now occupy.

    They call me Two-Two, I am a slim, dark boy with arms as thin as carrots, and legs as guazy cucumbers. I have sparse hair, but people say my teeth are good, and that my eyes make them feel they can trust me. I’m fifteen now, I was fourteen when my father died and my mother left.

    My father had been a freelance electrician, this meant that whenever a light bulb got blown in a house, or a switch refused to turn on or off, someone sent for him. His income didn’t keep us afloat, my mother’s vigorous trading did. She sold vegetables at the big market at Marian, and it was from these proceeds that she paid our school fees, shopped from thrift stores, and took us to the herbalist when we were ill. She wasn’t contented with the city, she wanted to return to her village, this she told my father, every opportunity she got, using the success stories of friends and acquaintances that had blown up after returning to the village to draw comparison with our situation.

    After wrestling with a bad kidney did my father in, She finally got her chance.

    Our mother didn’t even try to convince Eme to come with her. By now he’d become muscular, his head as flat as the frying pan used in sunning cocoa, with a nose the same shape as the ones of Benin bronze busts I saw in our history books. He was four years my senior, and because he didn’t follow her I didn’t either. A month after she left, he asked me to drop out of school.

    The problem then became that of deciding a profession. Normally there should have been choices, but my unsteady feet and feeble back limited them. My brother of course wanted me to join his business, but a glance at masonry was enough to convince me that we had no chemistry. These men and boys worked from seven in the morning until six in the evening, sometimes longer if their employer could afford it, since they got paid by the hour. The job included catering head pans stuffed with mixed concrete, from the ground, through the scaffolding, to the building under construction. Also molding and transporting thousands of cement blocks and other heavy equipments. They had to be on site come rain or shine. Clinging to flimsy scaffolding with tense muscles, feet and palms, making sure every detail was done right. Their heads got dusty, their skin swelled with grime, sweat, and dirt. The only break they took was spiced with a bottle of Coca Cola and a loaf of flat bread.

    I found something else, more to my taste. Sleek, fanciful, and lucrative as well. I had my brother introduce me to an Igbo business man who had a small fleet of motorcycles under his command.

    This was the genesis of the greatest adventure of my life so far. I was too young to apply for a license, but that didn’t matter, lots of boys my age were riding motorcycles all over Calabar, and no one was giving them tripe.

    The job went like this: you either bought your own motorcycle or you worked for someone who owned a motorcycle, either way you still had to belong to the informal Commercial Motorcyclist Union of Calabar. That meant paying your dues, and observing professional courtesy (things like not haggling with your colleagues over passengers, and helping a brother out if he needed to break his currency into smaller notes to get change for his passenger). I started my day at seven in the morning, meaning Eme and other Okada men could call me lazy, since the latter usually began their stroll at five.

    I just got out of bed, warmed my bike, and drove off. No time really for preening. I’d even stopped brushing regularly since age eleven. Teeth brown with age no matter what you do, so why bother? As for bathing, this was impractical for other reasons. No rushing water in our makeshift apartment meant I and Eme had to go to the reservoir down the street where a bucketful cost ten Naira. Also, it was usually cold in the morning. If you ask me, I’d say taking your bath with cold water on a cold morning is a comprehensive manifestation of stupidity, and also a waste of costly time. Not to mention the fact that half the passengers who clambered onto the back seat of my bike didn’t give a shit about my coiffure.

    With the license problem you didn’t really need to dodge the police. A Naira here and there helped you temporarily block their eyes until next time. The tough one was getting the precise timing on every route, making sure you’re in place when the customers are thickest. Then there was the headache, muscle pull, cramps, and strains that came attached to the job, like monthly electricity bill to a wired house.  

    It was barely a month before I realized I enjoyed cruising the highways, streets, and alleys of Calabar. Zipping my bike on the deserted speed lane in the afterword of  the rush hour, feeling the heavy surge of cold wind whack my head, eyes, and ears, the breeze like the mournful hymn of a banshee in my head, promoted me to a plane of paramount bliss, which although I haven’t been there before, reminded me of heaven.

    Every borough of the city had its own peculiar look, smell, and feel, and I came to learn them all. Ikot Ansa with its cramped lanes and brackish gutters. The textbook look of Marian. The jumpy dust roads of Ekorinim. In time I even became fond of these places.

    It wasn’t difficult for me to find friends among my colleagues. I made two close ones easily; Pilot and Eddy (short for Ededet) were both older than me by at least six years. Eddy I preferred to Pilot, probably because he was playful, with a carefree attitude, or maybe because he was shorter, almost my height, seemingly more approachable. Pilot was more dogged, he once boasted to me that he’d gone two years straight without failing to wake and go to work by five every morning, keeping at it until ten at night. This anecdote stuck with me, and I feel ashamed of my laziness whenever I remember it.

    It was Eddy who gave me the name Two Two. I was trying to report a movie I’d seen to him, imitating the sound of a firing gun, and it’d come out sounding like “Two Two”. Together we created a game. We didn’t name it, we didn’t need to. It had no rules.

    On slow afternoons we rendezvous and purposefully became nuisances to other road users. We’d drive against a one way, or zigzag in between traffic, or shadow car bumpers, all the while screaming insults and making obscene hand gestures at the drivers. Sometimes Eddy rode close to me, then he’d hook his leg on the passenger foot-rest of my motorcycle, and we’d ride like that for a while, inconveniencing anyone who tried to overtake us, the smile on our faces resembling those of Ad actors.

    It didn’t matter that people barked at us, or threatened to call the road safety police. We weren’t breaking any rules as far as our de facto Union was concerned. By then the recklessness of Okada men was already legendary. Motorcycle accidents sent more people to hospitals weekly than malaria. We were complained about all over the state. Some, who felt the government was being too docile, took matters into their hands, running us over on the road, and pouring sand or salt into the fuel tank of our bikes when we left them unattended.

    This only made us wilder, like when you keep poking a chained dog after it has begun snarling at you. We smashed their rear lights with the front end of our motorcycles and zoomed off, punched their doors, spat on their windows – anything that’d incense them.

    One day I turned a bend and found a big black car in front of me, the kind used by government officials and men with a lot of money. A suitable target. The weather was breezy so I took my time planning the attack. I’d have to be fast and precise. I lolled behind the car waiting for the wind to reduce. Throttling sharply as soon as it did, I pulled up to the passenger side. Then I pursed my lips and encountered a sight I wasn’t prepared for. A young boy my age, with dull, inattentive eyes gazed at me from inside. The glass wasn’t tinted so I could see his sleek skin and watery hair, his general handsomeness and confidence. We beheld each other until the sound of an oncoming vehicle pierced my trance. I hurried to spit at the windshield but it was too late, a brusque gust of air caught the saliva as it left my mouth and hurled it back in my face. I stepped on my brakes, swerved behind the car, and dodged into a side street as words of abuse chased after me.

    Not long after this, the governor went on air and banned us. We were told to park our bikes and find new jobs in less than four weeks. The news came to me during the day as rumour, and when I got home Eme was waiting in our sitting room, which had a single sofa, given to my father by one of his patrons, now rundown with age. The power rationing schedule of the city meant it wasn’t our turn to have electrical power, so he sat in semi darkness, the dull light of our kerosene lamp casting a wan glow like the tint in the eyes of a yellow fever sufferer. I barely saw his face.

    “I’m sure you’ve heard,” he said.

    I wished it’d been a question. “Yes,” I replied, trying to keep my voice gruff free.

    “So what are you going to do?” he asked, shifting where he sat on the bare floor, so he faced me better.

    I had been standing by the door since I got in; he’d been too enthusiastic to begin the discussion to let me settle. Now I walked into the room and sat opposite him, my back resting on the wall.

    “So?” he prompted again.

    “I don’t know.”

    He raised his voice, “What do you mean you don’t know? What are you talking about?”

    “I don’t know.”

    “Then get your buttocks off the floor and follow me to the site tomorrow!”

    If I could hold my own against him in a fight I’d have attacked Eme. Instead, I got up and walked out of the house, banging the door as a retort.

    The next day I caught up with Eddy. We talked round the topic for a while until I couldn’t take his side stepping any longer. “So what are you going to do?”

    We had rendezvoused at Etta Agbor, the most noisy and cramped street of them all, with houses, shacks, stalls, bars, schools, restaurants and petrol filling stations all stuffed into one area. We drove into cars and pedestrians at a higher rate here than anywhere else. You couldn’t really blame us, most people who came to Etta Agbor came for the booze. We were sitting on our motorcycles under the shade of a shack. Eddy started his bike and smiled at me. I had to ask what he was doing. “Getting back to work of course,” he said, with a look of incredulity playing across his face. Despite myself, I felt stupid for asking.

    “I asked what you’re going to do.”

    “Let’s see where the breeze blows, and start from there.” With this, he turned his bike and whooshed away, nearly being hit by a truck.

    I cursed myself for not engaging him on the phone. Why did I believe that I could have a rational discuss with Eddy on a matter of such Importance? Without running an Okada service a lot of people would be out of jobs, this meant a lot of hungry families, a lot of men unable to pay their rent, a lot of youths turned into idlers, a lot of potential criminals and thugs just waiting to be franchised.

    It was noon. In an hour’s time Pilot would be taking his first break (he allowed himself two), a moment of respite before the second rush hour of the day (there where usually three), when school children dismissed from school would need to get home. I couldn’t work, I rode aimlessly, wasting fuel until it was time for me to ride to Pilots’ favorite restaurant. He was alone at one of the tables outside the restaurant. He had just finished his meal.

    He nodded at me as I came over. Pilot was the sobriquet given to him because of his entrepreneurial spirit. He owned his own motorcycle, bought his own kit, worked routes other people avoided.

    “You’re wondering how to get out pickin?” he said, after we’d exchanged pleasantries.

    I nodded.

    He took a long pause before going on, “Good thing, because I’ve been having the same thoughts.”

    “And…”

    He looked at me like I’d walked up to him in a bar, confusing him for a celebrity, asking for an autograph. “And what?”

    I didn’t know what to say. I made an effort but only grunts came out.

    “Wait, you thought I’d have a solution?”

    I couldn’t answer him. Who can answer such a question?

    “Listen pickin, everyone is wondering how to get out, but don’t you think that if we knew how we’d have done so already? We wouldn’t be riding motorcycles up and down Calabar? Who do you think wants to be an Okada man? You get no respect, customers shout at you if you’re too fast, complain if you’re too slow, haggle over your charge. There’re police and touts everywhere waiting for the slightest opportunity to invoke the law of the state or that of the street, as the case may be, to collect money from you. I don’t even think my children are proud of their father’s profession, I work this job to save them from this life,” he paused and gulped from the bottle. “Figure out a way boy, and when you do, let me know, I need a job too.”

    But I wanted to be an Okada man. I couldn’t think of a way out because for me there was no other way. We might suffer all the things he says we do, but still, it beats masonry.

    I and Eme weren’t talking anymore. He kept to his bedroom, the one he’d inherited since our mother left, and I isolated myself in the parlour. The news had gotten to our mother in the village, and I returned home to a letter from her. She was illiterate so she couldn’t have written it herself, a school teacher probably had, but the voice was very much hers.

Dear son,

We’ve heard what the government said. I know you’d be angry and sad. But the truth is, I’m happy. I take this as a sign, and I want you too to see it as one. Return home; I have planted, and the crops need tending to. I could use help on the farm. So far I do the easy work myself, and hire young men for the harder jobs. With you here that problem would be solved. Return home, and may God bless you.

Sincerely,

Your mother.

    I squeezed it, threw it into a dustbin, and went to bed.

    After the ban was enforced most Okada men parked their motorcycles, some, like Eddy and I continued riding. We removed our commercial number plates, and illegally ferried people looking for cheap transport.

    It was afternoon the day my phone beeped with the message that Eddy had been arrested by the police. They had been cramping us one by one. The warm sweat on my forehead turned to ice. I was riding behind a lady driver, suddenly she braked. My handle bar bruised my palms as I gripped my bike, braking and swerving manically. I pulled up to her, an ammunition of choice curses already loaded, when I saw what was in front.

    A man lay on the asphalt, his upturned bike a few feet away, three policemen on him with batons. A small crowd was forming around the crash scene, so I was able to slip away unnoticed. I rode straight home. Into a corner.

    I was in the sitting room when Eme returned. “Welcome.” Our first word in days. He stopped and stared at me. “You’re back home early,” he said.

    “I could say the same thing about you.”

    “What of work?”

    “That’s over.”

    “So, you’re coming with me tomorrow?”

    “I guess.”

    He went into his room.

    Two months later, one evening, I was on my way home. I had to flag a number of taxis before one stopped. They were the new form of transportation that had replaced us. It was my look and dressing that discouraged them. Sweat, sand, and dust – who wants these in their car. I bent my head to the glass to tell the driver my destination, and it was Pilot’s smiling face I met. We laughed and clasped each other’s hand, then I got in. I asked about him and his family – they were all fine. When it was my turn, I gave brief answers and stared out the window instead.

    He pushed back my hand when I paid my fare. “Listen, I know a man who runs a service like in the old days. You drive, you give him a percentage – in time you make enough money to buy your own taxi.”

    I was silent.

    “I’ve a number now, do you have a phone?”

    I shook my head.

    He pulled open his pigeon hole and took out a small piece of paper. He wrote his number and passed it to me. “Think about it pickin, I know you’d love this job, it’s just like the old one.” Then, “What of Eddy, haven’t seen him in a while. Do you know where he is?”

    Again I shook my head.

    “Well think about it, and give me a call when you’re ready.” He patted my hand and drove away. It was the rainy season, a time when night falls in rapid swaths. His tail lights disappeared into dusk. A cool breeze made the paper flutter in my hand.

    Something most people don’t know is that Okada is the brand name of cheap Japanese motorcycles that got imported into the country in the 1990s. Pilot told me this a year ago.