But she burst into laughter. “Look at you. Even if you go off for five days will you bring the money? I have been paying their fees, paying the rent, buying the food for the past years and you are just going out and coming back without anything. Are you the only person whose business refused to grow? Am I the person who ran down your business?”
“This business trained you to become a lawyer? Betty, your mouth is foul, and one day I will get up again. I know the God I am serving; He will get me up very soon”.
She burst into laughter again. “People like you who did not go to school cannot do much in business. You think people who went to the university to study Business Management are fools? When you refused to go to school, how do you think you can manage big business?”
By this time a couple of neighbours living in the compound had come out to appease her. They would calm her down. And she would use the opportunity to tell everyone how I constituted a nuisance, wanting to do nothing other than waiting for her to pay all the bills. That is my dilemma.
Sometimes it goes beyond this. I remember the day we were invited to a house warming party, thrown by a colleague of hers. I initially did not want to go because I have been severally embarrassed by Betty on such outings but that friend of hers, Linda, specifically begged me to attend. So I took the bull by the horn. But like all such encounters, we ended up quarrelling bitterly before we got home. What did I do? I poured salad cream on my jollof rice instead of the salad. That’s my mistake!
“Why do you always like to disgrace me?” Betty almost shouted.
“What is disgrace,” I asked her coolly so we do not attract attention.
“Why are you pouring salad cream on the rice instead of the salad? When you do not know something, why don’t you just ask so that someone will explain to you,” she said and before I could talk, she seized the plate of rice from me. That act of hers of hers ended up bringing me out in the public as someone who did not know how to eat salad and rice.
We also ended up quarrelling for one week, for what Betty termed ‘disgracing her in public’. She ended up taking me to the cleaners, talking about the advantages of school, and how people like us will never get anywhere in life without certificates.
“Betty, remember I am the person who trained you in this your school;’ I had said,
“There you go again. You are always boasting you trained me. How much money did you pay? Say it, let me write a cheque and give you! You trained me? Why did you not train yourself if it was easy? You did not go because you are not brilliant, simple. Okay, I know exactly what to do”, Betty said that day. And she knew exactly what to do like she had hinted.
The next day when she was returning from work, I saw her with one big brown envelop. I thought it was part of the files she received from some of her clients but I was wrong.
Betty came to meet me where I was sitting down in the living room and dumped the brown envelope on me.
“Sam, I have bought you JAMB and GCE forms. I want to train you too, because you make noise everyday about training me in the university. You are going to complete the forms so that I will train you too. Do you want me to enroll you in extra mural classes? You should say it now”, she was making a mockery of me. At 47, what kind of GCE and JAMB examinations will I do to gain admission into the university?
“I want to prove to you that there are two sides to education-the money and the intelligence. You had the money but not the intelligence. I have the intelligence and now I am getting the money”, she boasted.
“Please Betty, let us not start because I do not have the energy to quarrel”, I told her.
“I am not quarrelling “, she said. “You are the person telling me every day that you trained me in school. I want to pay you back for all those things”.
But what she has been doing is a clear indication that some women have very short memory. I remember how I met Betty. I remember the kind of unspeakable penury and squalor I met her in. But today, she has thrown her memories to the dogs. She has obviously lost sight of where she was coming from.
I still vividly recollect how our paths crossed. Let me just call it divine providence, because that is what it is. I had returned to the village for a crucial meeting with the elders over a land matter. I had returned with my new Peugeot 505 SR, a big car then. People like us, who were seen to be doing well would always be invited by the elders over such matters because it involved making pledges and donations to pursue such matters.
We are at the Village Square, which was under a huge Iroko tree when another matter came up. One of the elders brought up the issue of a young girl who made the best result in both her GCE and JAMB examinations in the zone but had no funds to proceed further.
“I heard the people at the scholarship board are dragging their feet because the girl does not have money to offer them bribes. That is why we are presenting the matter before our people here because the girl is from this town and it would not be good if we lose this kind of brain. Incidentally, the girl has just gained admission to study Law”, the elder explained.
“Should we entertain this kind of matter? I will suggest that the girl should go and get married. If it was a boy, then we can look into the matter”, another elder instantly cut in, and as expected, this raised a lot of furor.
There was a clash of interests, as the elders argued over what should be done. It was so heated that I had to intervene in the matter.
“My people I wish to speak on this matter”, I had said,
“Why can’t we look for assistance for this girl if she is brilliant? Is it because she is a girl? We live in a world where women are given equal opportunity with the men to become whoever they have the potentials to become. I will suggest that we look into the girl’s matter and see what the community can do because at the end of the day, it will be a glorious issue for all of us here.”
Nobody can make me contribute money for a girl. Anybody who wants to pay can go ahead, but please my kinsmen, count me out”, one of the elders said and almost left with his stool, had he not been begged to return.
I was touched by the unfolding scenario. “Excuse me, who is the girl?” I asked.
“Her name is Elizabeth Nwani. She hails from Nkisi clan”, I was told.
“I will like to see her, and we can take it up from there”, I told them, “Can we continue with the deliberations over the land matter? I want the matter concluded because I will go back to the city tomorrow morning”.
We continued, and as soon as the deliberations were over I was taken by the elder to Nkisi clan where I met Betty and her people. Like I said initially, I met them in penury. They lived in a thatched house, whose walls were made of red mud. The windows in the house were almost falling off and one could see lizards and other reptiles having a feast on their walls. There was no chair in what they called sitting room. It was just a long bench, built with unpolished wood.
I guess they had not entertained a guest like me before, who would drive in with a brand new Peugeot 505 SR. That made all the difference, I guess.
Right there, I was introduced to the household by the elder and I demanded to see the girl who passed the examinations in flying colors. She came out and to my surprise she did not look like someone who was raised in that kind of environment. She was tall, light-skinned and had no scars all over her body like girls who were raised under such debilitating situations.
…To Be continued
