A JOURNEY WORTH REMEMBERING
I decided to embark on a journey to my village as part of my vacation and drove out of Lagos on Easter Sunday first for a friend’s remembrance prayer for his late dad but another friend’s dad had passed on very early in the morning and being a Muslim had to be buried at 2pm so it was an activity filled day for all of us. Burial done, we had to retire to the remembrance party and we had considerable fun because the venue was a remote village in Ijebu. Everyone retired for the night as every other person returned to Lagos, I moved to my hometown somewhere after Ijebu-Ode to supervise a small project I had been planning for a while and to explore the possibility of farming.
I was in my father’s country home all alone with no TV then I knew the real meaning of boring but peace of mind but thanks to the internet. As the artisans worked, I sometimes watched and engaged them in conversations just to have an idea of their kind of mindsets and found out that apart from the poverty mindset we all believed they had, they were actually experienced in the workings of life but just using their mindset to make more money was the problem. One thing that also struck me was that most of them lived in their own houses they built from the meager sums they made from their labourer job. I had to also engage some labourers to clear the empty land in the compound so we could plant some crops. Whenever I was not with the artisans or labourers, I stepped into the next compound where my father’s best friend who had relocated to the village from Lagos lived and engaged him. I was always filled with some elderly talk, advice and a bit of family history too.
I also made it a point of duty to visit my uncles in the evenings with my pockets lined with N1000 notes to sit and gist with them too and it was well appreciated. On one occasion of my evening visits, a big python was killed and some sort of a small party was thrown as they cooked and shared it with drinks flowing on my account. Don’t ask me if I took part in the eating because I didn’t. The atmosphere was carnival like as even very old women subtly threatened that they dare not eat it alone. I breathed unadulterated air, ate the freshest of foods and learnt more about family history and lands; they even begged me to come buy land at family price if I was indeed serious about farming. WOW, see as God dey answer prayers.
One funny thing happened, I saw they just graded the road in front of my father’s house to the university town of Ago-Iwoye and was now very motorable and in no time, real development would start happening too. I took a drive on the road to see for myself and found myself forcing a smile and greeting every Fulani herdsmen I met on the road to avoid stories that touch. This I did as I drove round the village to places I had never been to before, I had to repeat the same gesture to the Fulani herdsmen. Na wa o, inside my village? Diaris God o. On the day before I left the village, I was tired of watching the artisans at work and I just went upstairs to catch a nap, after about two hours I was awakened by noise on the road that I had to carry my aproko eyes to the balcony to see what was happening. I saw a woman and her child accused of stealing from a farm and as they tried to arrest her, she resisted and she was being physically harassed, I quickly grabbed my phone to record the police harassment but later found out they weren’t police men but operatives of the vigilante group of Nigeria. I spoke from across the balcony to plead with them to stop the physical abuse even if she was resisting arrest and a young man called my name from the crowd and told me that he was coming to give me the full gist. I then called the young man to find out how he knew my name, he explained and then I discovered he was my distant relative whom I hadn’t seen in over twenty five years. He had left his nine to five job in Lagos to come and start farming in the village as a full time job We agreed for him to come pick me later in the evening to go see his farm. He came as planned and when I got to his farm, I was in awe of what he had done though on a medium scale. He promised to take me to his plantain farm the next day but he was going to take me to a very large and mechanised farm which was the largest in the whole village owned by my family friend. When I got there, I couldn’t close my mouth because it was a sprawling and massive farm almost as big as the redemption camp. These farmers are enjoying o. We then went to his own plantain farm to see something else and I saw artificial irrigation at its best. The walk was tiring and I am sure my relation would have been saying to himself if I was really ready for farming. Bought some large bunches of plantain but by the time we were leaving his farm my body was itching badly. Got a bottle of water and washed my arms and face and drove back into the village proper. Bade him and his mother good bye and started the journey out of the village.
On my way back to Lagos, something very funny and near terrible happened. Remembered I said earlier that I visited my cousins farm and unknowingly, soldier ants had entered into my jeans, as I drove on the express, I was feeling itchy in a very wrong part of my body and as I got to Odogbolu junction, I slammed on the break and parked by the road; fortunately no car was coming behind me and rushed out of the car. I didn’t realize when I took of my jeans and started scratching this wrong place I talked about. Everyone took to their heels in different directions. Heard some shouting he is about to run mad, some more saying see the kind of car he is using, he must be a yahoo yahoo plus boy and this was karma catching up with me. A man approached me and asked what happened and asked me to just cool down. After the itching had gone down with an aftermath of swelling, I continued my journey in pain and drove straight to the hospital when I got to Lagos.
Right there and then, I discovered that za oza room activities was automatically suspended at least for the next one or two weeks. Lesson learnt, when you are in trouble, you might not see one person to stand by you just like the people I parked beside took off when I rushed out of the car but some whether the real ones or not will still stay.
IT WAS REALLY AN EXPERIENCE WORTH REMEMBERING.
