A king's progress
by Ron Singer
[ places - august 07 ]
"Nothing but to show you how a king may go a progress through the guts of a beggar." - Hamlet 4. 3. 32-33
It was just after 11 on the kind of mild, beautiful mid-summer night that is sometimes called "unseasonable." These nights provide a respite from the filthy enervating soup that turns masses of New Yorkers into insomniacs, making even those with air conditioning feel like doomed captives. Up the stairs from AMTRAK, in Penn Station, I came, a tall, slim, neatly-dressed white man with a small beard and tortoise-shell glasses. After scanning the scene for a moment, I walked directly over to a gaunt, toothless, old-looking African-American beggar who was sitting on the sidewalk with his back against a low wall. Reaching down, I silently handed the man, who was filthy even for a beggar, a white plastic bag of the type which often contains food.
"God bless you," said the recipient.
I nodded, smiled, and, heading toward a bus stop, disappeared into the crowd. The beggar opened the bag, took the lid off the round food container, and discovered, on a bed of spaghetti, about 60% of a popular Italian-restaurant entree, 'Seafood Fra Diavola'. The food was partly congealed, and there was no plastic fork or other utensil with which to eat it. Among the assorted fish and seafood remains were two shrimp tails.
From one of his many bags, the beggar extracted a small, worm-ridden, orange-and-white kitten. Patting its head, he set the kitten down inside the square of his crossed legs, facing the food. The kitten sniffed two or three times, then began to pick at a big piece of fish, trying not to get tomato sauce on its whiskers.
At six o'clock that same evening, in the seating area in front of the Dunkin' Donuts kiosk at Philadelphia's 30th Street station, I had approached two men whom I guessed were the Africans I was planning to meet, but whom I did not know by sight. It was easy to guess. Not only were the men perched at a small table consulting their watches every few seconds, but both of them would have been dark for African-Americans, and there was something about their manner and movement which also distinguished them: poised, careful, and energetic in an economical way. To me, they might just as well have been wearing African dress (which they were not).
As if by contrast, crowded shoulder to shoulder at an identical nearby table were five African-Americans, laughing and playing cards. These men looked like off-duty taxi drivers or railroad employees. The way they joked, slapped the cards down, and generally carried themselves - their body language - was different from the manner and movement of the two Africans, although an observer with different preconceptions from mine might have perceived something "African" in the ways of the card players.
Of the real Africans, one was small, tidily built, bald and earnest, the other tall, heavyset and jovial. Like me, they wore light-colored summer trousers and neat summer shirts. But, whereas my shirt was dark blue and knitted, the Africans' were both patterned: the smaller man's, red with blue kidney designs; the larger man's, light blue with big white parrots.
For a few moments, from 15 feet apart, we stole glances at each other. After that, we all smiled, shyly at first, then more openly. I moved forward; they stood up. We looked at each other with something like wonder. I noticed a gap that I did not remember between the larger man's front teeth. I shook hands with them in the old African manner, gently, and we commenced to greet each other, tentatively, at first, then heartily, in a mixture of English and Yoruba, a Niger-Congo tonal language.
Among the greetings were, "My goodness, is it really you?"
And " She da a daani ?" ["How are you?"]
And "Ah, kini ['what!'], this is too wonderful!"
And "But you look just the same!"
And " E ka ti jo ." ["Long time no see."] It was a long time, almost 40 years. From 1964 to 1967, I had been a Peace Corps English teacher at Victory College, a secondary grammar school where the two Nigerians had been my students.
And " E ku she." ["Well-done."] This one was offered on faith, but, as I soon learned, the smaller man, Shegun Oshamehin, a food chemist who lived near Pittsburgh, had driven to north Philadelphia the previous evening to stay at the house of his old friend, Bola Akande, sales manager for a drug company. Oshamehin had brought his 14-year-old son, Gbenga, to Philadelphia so that the boy, a promising sprinter, could compete in a track meet. The greeting, e ku she , could thus be said to apply to Shegun's driving; Gbenga's running (although he had not won a medal); Bola's hospitality; my own train ride down from New York; or, somehow, the whole constellation of these, our efforts.
A half-time teacher, I was there by invitation. After an exchange of emails initiated two months earlier by Oshamehin, who had gotten my address from the Peace Corps in Washington, I had agreed to meet the Nigerians - albeit with some trepidation. After all, aren't Nigerians stereotyped as outrageous scam artists, and who was to say that the two men who turned up at the station would actually be my former students? True, in the emails, Oshamehin had named names and events from a shared past, but perhaps a clever, diligent scam artist could have done a little homework.
The venue and terms of the meeting had been designed to allay my - and presumably their - anxieties. Not only was Philadelphia a convenient mid-way point between Pittsburgh and New York, but it was helpful that Gbenga's track meet was the primary cause of the convergence, and the invitation, an afterthought. This put less weight on the chancy reunion. After all, even assuming there was no nefarious intent, what if the students and their old teacher had evolved into people who disliked, or just had nothing to say to, each other?
To Yoruba greetings such as " e ku she " and " e ka ti jo ", the expected reply is an elongated " O ." We performed many such volleys. In addition to those already mentioned, others involved the health and wellbeing of family members, the weather, the anticipated enjoyment of the occasion, the era in which we all lived, and the overall state of the globe. At least two or three times, Oshamehin and Akande complimented my facility. By the time we (I) ran dry, everyone seemed relieved. In situations like this, an elegant barrage of greetings can break the ice just as well as alcohol.
Preliminaries completed, there was a brief, easy consultation, after which, comfortably ensconced in Bola Akande's new white SUV, we embarked towards Pino's, an Italian restaurant that they said was twenty minutes from the station in northeast Philadelphia. Speeding along the dark, unfamiliar highway with the two Nigerians, I felt distrust creeping back in, but halfway to the restaurant there was a revelation that sent it packing once and for all.
We were remembering a production of Julius Caesar I had directed and taken on the road to a few neighboring schools. Over the years, this production had ranked high on my list of answers to "But what did you actually accomplish?" On the way to one such performance, I was riding my standard-issue Honda 50 with a small boy on the back. This was because, what with props, costumes, and the large cast and crew, the school lorry, which had left before us, was completely packed.
Only a mile or so into the trip, the under-powered Honda was barreling down a steep hill, gathering speed for the ascent ahead, when a goat ran across our path. I flipped over the handlebars, landing mostly on my elbows and knees. The boy, as I remembered, sort of floated down to earth on my back and was not hurt at all. (Neither, apparently, was the goat, which bleated as it ran off into the darkness.) Since the motorcycle still worked, we limped the remaining 30 miles to our destination, and the show went on.
The aftermath of this accident was, in a way, amusing. The Yoruba word for "white person" is oyinbo , which literally means "peeled skin." Mothers would terrify their small children by holding them up as the oyinbo went by, threatening to give them to this monster - me - if they did not behave themselves. The threat was compounded by a belief that oyinbos ate African children. The joke, of course, was that, for weeks, I was literally an oyinbo .
"Ah, but that Julius Caesar was too wonderful!" Bola said, when the accident report was over and we had laughed at the oyinbo joke. " 'For always I am Caesar.'"
"'And, if you fawn on me, I spurn you like a cur!'" added Shegun. Then, we all took turns trying to remember which boys had played which Romans.
"I recall that there was one error," said Bola. "Akeredolu, who played Caesar, could not realize 'Then fall, Caesar' was a stage direction rather than a part of his speech, so he would keep right on saying it as many times as you corrected him."
Bola was wrong, of course, about Caesar's famous dying line. The mistake surprised me, because I had been proceeding on the assumption that the Nigerians' memories must be better than mine. Although I did not contradict him, I also seemed to remember that Bola had not been a very good student, at least not in English. At this point, sudden laughter came from the back seat, where Shegun had been almost lost in the big dark space.
"Do you remember the name of that boy who was riding behind you on your motor bike?" he asked.
"Yes, of course," I said. "His name was 'Omotoriogun.' Maybe I remember because he was the smallest boy in the school, but with the longest name."
"Well, that is true about the name," said Shegun, "but he was not the one." I turned to see Shegun grinning. "Actually, it was myself."
It is always odd to have an old, certain memory contradicted, but, whatever the constellation of feelings provoked by the contradiction - and how could I doubt its truth? - it somehow drew me even closer to my two former students. So I was feeling happy and relaxed as we drove on toward the restaurant, five miles below the speed limit, because, as Bola explained, "I do not want to be stopped for DWB."
At Pino's, I ordered the Seafood Fra Diavola; Bola chose the diet platter, a mixed grill; and Shegun, a pasta dish which seemed to feature hundreds of olives. "Mr Singer" - "Ron" now - and Shegun also ordered a bottle of red wine, and Bola called for the first of two large non-diet Sprites.
In the course of the meal, the proprietor, whose name was Larry, not Pino, and with whom Bola obviously enjoyed the kind of teasing rapport common to people of different races and cultures, made several jokes about the half-heartedness of the big Nigerian's efforts to lose weight. Bola, however, was not even close to being the most overweight diner at Pino's that night. In fact, Larry, himself, was a contender. He was also an enabler. Before the entrees came, he had our waitress bring us enough complimentary food for an entire meal: a large garlic-bread puff and a hot seafood antipasto platter for three which made my entree redundant.
Obviously, there was something between Bola and Larry, probably something to do with business. When we arrived, Larry had suggested we skip the long line of people waiting for tables. There were no other black people either waiting for, or already at, the tables, and skipping the line with the two Africans pleased me, since I saw this act as a tiny redress in the history of racism. I was a bit surprised no one made any fuss, or even pulled a face, as we threaded our way through the crowd.
Seated at a cozy corner table, the three erstwhile - colleagues? acquaintances? Victorians? - carried on an animated, practically non-stop conversation for almost three hours. Despite the fact that there continued to be people waiting, no pressure was put on us to relinquish our table. What made the long conversation so satisfying, for me, certainly, and for them, apparently, was the degree to which most of the predictable "Do you remember's...?" were supplemented by actual, often unpredictable exchanges. To wit:
"What was it like, Ron," asked Bola, as we tucked into the garlic puff and the antipasto, "to be a young American - what were you, 22, 23? - all by yourself in Nigeria? There must have been loneliness, setbacks, things which frightened you, no?"
I thought for a moment. "Well, actually, not many. You see, there were all these Peace Corps friends I had trained with in New York, and I'd see some of them now and then, so I never did feel lonely. Besides, almost everyone was very welcoming. It was probably harder for you guys when you came... here. How old were you, Bola?"
"Ah, well, I was 28 already."
"We both were," said Shegun.
"Even so. I mean, I was 15 when I first left home, to earn money for college. I was a bellhop at a hotel in the mountains, a rough job. I did that for six summers and had other jobs, too, and went to other places - once my friends and I drove down to Mexico in a car that didn't work, so..."
"A lot of previous experience," said Shegun.
"And," I added, "you guys probably didn't have the same kind of freedom of movement in Nigeria when you were young."
As soon as I said this, I doubted if it were true. I certainly knew that Yoruba culture is cosmopolitan, and that families such as the Akandes and Oshamehins would have had at least two residences between which they alternated: a town house and a farm settlement in the bush. There might even have been a large family network scattered over Nigeria's then-Western Region, and possibly beyond. But, in the heat of the occasion, I realized, I had probably just accessed stereotypes about supposed African provincialism and about poverty - although the boys' families had also sent them to a fee-paying school.
Bola and Shegun did not directly deny my supposition, but neither did they confirm it. Nor did they point out the obvious - that 28 was hardly "young." Instead, Shegun summarized the story of Bola's arrival in the United States in 1981.
"You see, I had come here first, in the Fall, to be a grad student at Ohio University in Athens, and Bola joined me in January. He was to attend Illinois State University in Normal. Since I had just got my driver's license and purchased a Ford Pinto - used - so, after a few days' visit, I drove him over there to Illinois. But, of course, there were above four inches of snow. You should have seen his face as we drove through the countryside."
We all laughed. It was easy to imagine the scene: Bola's face was suited for comic alarm.
Another topic was the attempt to reconstruct the layout of the Victory College compound in relation to the roads which bounded it on two sides, a "This was here, that was there," "No, that was here, this was there," exchange. As we struggled manfully with our entrees, a sub-topic, the location of the dorm for the newly admitted female students, came under discussion.
"Don't you remember, Ron?" asked Shegun. "They were housed in some unused buildings in the modern-school compound behind the teachers' houses across the Auchi Road from the College." In the inherited English system, modern schools were the poor relations - cheaper, trade-oriented secondary schools - of grammar schools ("colleges") like Victory.
"Did I even know that? Anyway, I don't remember it now."
Several pleasant memories concerning the girls were triggered. For instance, almost every Saturday morning, two tiny inseparable ones in the first form - which made them something between 12 and 16 or 17, since there were many interruptions to schooling - would turn up holding hands at Mr Singer's door, to visit and joke with him and, possibly, to practice their English. In those days, amusements in the Yoruba towns far from the federal capital, Lagos, and the regional one, Ibadan, were mostly home-made.
One of the girls was a scrawny Christian named Comfort, and her mate, the same height, but four-square, was a Muslim, Falilatu. They both always looked dusty. I remembered, too, that I had grandiosely considered the friendship between these tiny girls emblematic of the country's hopes for achieving unity in the face of what was already, five years after Independence, endemic, violent conflict. Every Saturday when I opened my door, I would greet them the same way.
"Well, well, well. Falilatu and Comfortkatu, E kabo . ['Welcome.']"
And the girls would glance at each other, then stagger and laugh, expressing their deep enjoyment of the silly joke.
"Ah! But that is very funny, Ron," said Bola, smiling broadly. " 'Comfortkatu!' Can you remember those girls?" he asked Shegun.
Shegun shrugged, also smiling, but only politely. "I'm not sure," he said. "But it's a nice story."
I also remembered the time a famous Yoruba band, I K Dairo and His Blue Spots, had come on tour to the modern school and I managed to get into the packed assembly hall, emptied of furniture for the occasion. How did I get in? As a not-despised white man who obviously enjoyed the culture, I automatically had "long legs," or influence - just like Bola's here at the restaurant.
"Ah, yes, I K!" said Bola. "He was the man! He was too wonderful."
"He was!" Shegun agreed.
My memory of that night was magical. In the glow of the weak electric lights, the party had begun around ten and continued well into the next morning. Even when the band took its infrequent breaks, the dancers would carry on to scratchy 45-rpm high-life tunes. Periodically, small knots of revelers would retreat into the darkness to refresh themselves, mostly with warm beer, which materialized from nowhere, and which the American was invited by school and town friends, and even strangers, to come out to share. A white man who could dance all night was a wonder of nature.
So I had danced and danced, beyond exhaustion, until light first peeped through the large unglazed rectangular opening cut into the eastern wall of the assembly hall. Then, at last, I had begged off, dragged myself from the modern-school compound out onto the town road, around to the intersecting Auchi Road (obviously, there was no shortcut to the College yet), and back home, where I immediately collapsed onto my bed and sank into the deep sleep of a saint or sinner.
That was another memory I now shared with my two former students. Neither said much in response, and I guessed they had not been among the bolder boys from the College who had sneaked out of the dorm after curfew to listen to the famous band, to dance in the darkness outside the assembly hall, and to peer in through the unglazed windows at the official dancers.
More than two hours into the meal, as excessive food threatened dyspepsia in all three diners, there was one last, serious exchange. We had been recounting instances of the legendary cruelty of Victory College's Headmaster, Mr S B Folaye (M Litt, Bristol).
"You never caned any students, yourself, did you, Ron," said Bola, stating a fact.
"No, I couldn't do it, even though the Headmaster said I should."
"Why not?" asked Shegun.
"Well, you see, for Nigerian and British staff, caning students was a holdover from 19th-century English schools - like a lot of things about the College. So it wasn't so bad. But, for Americans, a white person caning a black one... well, to us, it meant slavery."
The Nigerians nodded solemnly, and the subject was dropped.
After another half hour, we had reached the point of picking at the food and getting ready to wind things up so I could be driven back to the station in time to catch my train. As time ran out, Bola and Shegun produced a final flurry of stories and information: about students who had died young and promising ones who became eminent or went to jail for drugs or politics, and one about a teacher who suffered a family tragedy that might have come straight from the annals of the House of Atreus.
And, finally, Shegun and Bola performed a duet imitating Okun Orimolade, my beloved neighbor, a small, energetic Yoruba man with a large beard who taught both Agriculture and Bible Knowledge, and who was nicknamed "Amos" - for the beard, Shegun said, correcting my 37-year-old misconception that it had been inspired by the subjects the man taught.
"'This way, boys. Quickly now!'" said Bola. I could hear and see my neighbor.
"'Even rows, boys, remembuh, they must be even, please,'" said Shegun. "'And remembuh, please, two feet apaht for the corn.'"
And once again we all laughed, this time swaying and shaking just like Falilatu and Comfortkatu.
With that last imitation, the happy reunion wound down. The packed-up leftovers arrived with the check, which was seized by Bola, who whipped out a credit card and gave a little speech about how I had taken the trouble and expense of coming all the way from New York, to which Shegun nodded in agreement.
So we thanked Larry, who shook hands with us, and hurried out to the car and back to the station, arriving two minutes before the train was due to leave. (Was there a "Yoruba Standard Time" joke?) At the station entrance, more hands were shaken, "thank you's," reiterated, and enthusiastic hopes of repeating the occasion, expressed. But I, and, presumably, Bola and Shegun, realized that no repeat could possibly be this good, which may have been why the parting was a little bittersweet.
" O dabo " is Yoruba for "goodbye;" and " O digbao ," for "see you soon." Along with their (in English) "safe journey," we " o dabo -ed" each other.
And so, with the two Nigerians watching from the big white SUV, I rushed inside the station and, with about 30 seconds to spare, jumped into my waiting train. Back in New York, I gave the beggar the food, then waited briefly for the bus, which, 10 minutes later, dropped me at my corner. An hour later, as my wife and I lay in bed, I regaled her with an excited, circumstantial replay of the whole evening, which she seemed to enjoy, although she was possibly just being polite. As Ms Singer realized, her husband used recitation to fix details in his faulty memory.
About a quarter of the fish and seafood from the 'Fra Diavola' probably wound up, temporarily, at least, inside the beggar's kitten. The rest could have been left in the container against the low wall outside Penn Station, to be swept up the next morning, after the beggar, his bags and the kitten had all been sent packing.
"Ah," wrote Shegun Oshamehin in reply to my email of thanks that night, "I knew you would make your train. And to meet again after all these years!! Being able to break bread and to reminisce with you, Ron, was the icing on the cake!"
" O poju ," I thought as I read, which means, "it is too much." The phrase encapsulated both Shegun's metaphor and the whole reunion. To Americans like me, poju has built-in negatives, not overwhelming, but real: God and the devil are both in the details. To Yorubas like Bola Akande and Shegun Oshamehin, poju is an unmixed, if swirling, good. The negatives are inconsequential: you cannot really have too much of an epochal, of a royal, of a wonderful - too wonderful - thing.
Note
I have used pseudonyms for all names (except for I K Dairo's, the College's, and mine) and have, of course, invented what might have happened to the leftover food. The rest is memory - RS
