WHAT THE NANNY GOAT TOLD HER KIDS (CHAPTER 9)

CHAPTER 9

 

THE REGISTRATION EXERCISE for the get-rich-quick Western-backed scheme (according to what the coordinators professed) brought all sorts of characters to the Ransoms’ threshold and Mr Ransom seeing the mean ones around would ask his family (just like himself) to keep alert eyes on them.

There was one fellow Grace readily identified as a potential crook as all the while he sat on the bench waiting to be attended to, he was just gawking at the goats and if not the goats were moved at night from the open pen to the locked-up stalls, something nasty might have happened soon to some as her instincts strongly warned her.

Even the dogs were not safe. It was the reason they were not allowed to mingle with visitors during the day and were freed mostly when there was nobody in the house and at night.

It was after a month that the applicants said, starting from Mr Ransom, that they were getting text messages on their phones from the NGO inviting them to a seminar at a location, a school ground, not too far from the village.

A date was fixed and the lucky applicants were asked to come down there with a paltry sum of two thousand naira (compared to the vast hundreds of thousands or even millions of bucks they were about to get) to cover the materials they would be given as they prepared on how they would receive and judiciously spend their funds.

Curiously, with a little cash hidden in the corners of their pockets or wallets, the applicants left their homes for the seminar.

If they got there and were not satisfied with what they saw, they would keep their cash and write off the exercise as another ‘four-one-nine’ business (the code name generally used in the country to refer to fraud though the decree with that number was made to punish and deter the crime).

Of course, it was their money and nobody would force them to use it if they did not see a good need on why they should spend it.

An impressive crowd turned out at the venue making those who were double-minded plunge headlong into the scheme. It looked like if anyone dragged his or her feet, another would readily step forward and corner any available cash. People just counted themselves lucky to be at the seminar.

The coordinators of the events came out in their sleek garbs and cars and from their erudition, no one needed to be told they were products from great faculties of great universities within and outside the country.

They all spoke polished English but they understood the dynamics of the country, taking time to explain some facets of the discourse in lucid Pidgin English so that the less educated in the crowd were not left behind and knowing the crowd was a medley of tribes, every speaker would identify with one (as they were of different ethnic backgrounds or linguists who pretended to come from different parts of the region).

The first speaker started with the core reason for the seminar: ‘Good day, my fathers, mothers, brothers and sisters. We thank you all for keeping your phones on and when you received our messages, for honouring the invitation to be here today and hear our talk.

‘Just as we gather here right now, others are gathering in different locations in every state of this country to hear the same things we would be telling you all here.

‘We thank God for the well-meaning people of the countries of the West, the United States of America, the United Kingdom, Canada, the Netherlands up to Germany and even the great people of Japan and China.’

(When Grace later heard Mr Ransom mention the two last countries while recounting at home their experience during the discourse to his family; having eaten Mr Ransom’s youngest daughter’s map before, she quietly wondered when Japan and China slid from the East to become countries of the West.)

The first speaker nevertheless went on: ‘These honourable nations are ready to throw in – in fact, had already thrown in large chunks of money individually to assist the common and poor people of this great country blessed with so much oil yet made poor by those in the corridors of power. The different NGOs that are involved in distributing these funds to all those lucky to hear me speak now know the madness that hides in money, that can trick the goat to step out of its hiding place and challenge the lion …’

That got everyone in the big hall laughing out loud and when they managed to quieten down, the speaker went on: ‘Well, it is to check any dangerous situation arising when you hear the bank alert slip in and then ring your phone the money has gone into your account and is all yours, that the NGOs thought it is wise trained people like us first talk to the beneficiaries about what you’d do, how you’d control yourselves and use your funds well and how above all, you’d not attract armed robbers to raid your homes and attack you and your family.

‘We are here to guide you on how not to turn this blessing into a curse.’ That sounded nice in the ears of the crowd and they smiled and were attentive too.

‘The first place to secure is your mind. Learn to control it and do not be like the woman we’ve heard who was in deep poverty but luckily had a child who crossed the hot Sahara Desert where we’ve seen skulls and bones litter the hot dry sand on our TV sets as people take risks running away to Europe and they would also cross the raging Atlantic Ocean in small useless boats where crocodiles are following to see who’d fall off for them to grab.

‘The child of the said woman successfully landed in Italy. The day her younger child received a package from her sibling and rushed in to inform the mom, the mom out of over-excitement screamed and jumped and had a heart attack.

‘Unfortunately, she did not live to enjoy whatever goodies her child had sent her. May that not be your portion!’

‘Amen o!’ echoed around the hall. Some spoke additional positive things to back up their claims. When a hush fell on the hall again, the speaker said, after wiping his moistened face with a handkerchief he retrieved from his pocket: ‘Please, please, learn here if you didn’t do that before to stay calm in any situation. No amount of money, no matter how poor you fancy yourself to be, should make you go mad and harm yourself. Instead, keep calm and think of how you’d make good use of that money to keep yourself and your descendants from ever being poor again.’

‘Yes o!’ the crowd responded enthusiastically and heads nodded in all directions.

The speaker went on: ‘Most of us just think money, money, money. We have this wrong belief that when we step into money everything will fall into its rightful place.

‘For most of us, the reason we desperately want money is to start dwelling in fast-food joints and take alcoholic drinks from morning till night. What our parents ate and lived long would just seem to us like symbols of poverty and we make sure such things do not grace our plates and tables again. Soon, we become regular visitors to hospitals.

‘We’ve been asked to first guide you to the things you’d spend your money on to enable you to live long and enjoy the funds that will be given to you through the benevolence of the good people of the West.’

He picked a book with a glossy cover on the table and showed it to the crowd and his colleagues picked a few copies and walked down the aisles to let the audience look closely at the well-produced books. Boldly on the large covers were assorted leaves surrounding a bee blown out of proportion.

‘The experts had carefully researched and put in this book the secrets of why our parents lived healthily for long and stayed strong throughout their years. They had lived long before the Europeans arrived and were not wiped out. But as soon as they arrived, the Europeans started falling sick because of mosquito bites. Our researchers were baffled by something they thought our forebears used in treating themselves which the Europeans ignored and brought in quinine to treat malaria. That missing remedy had been rediscovered and packaged in this book for our own good.

‘Another bad practice our parents ignored but we’re fond of doing today is this frying of food. Our parents boiled their yam, plantain and cocoyam.

‘But we are all frying these things for ourselves and our families. Instead of whole grains, what the eating houses and our homes feed us today are processed foods. We don’t have time to pluck our oranges, pawpaw, pineapples and other fruits, sit down, peel them and eat.

‘Chickens that used to run around our yards for like six months before our parents started planning to eat them are now doctored in poultries and in six weeks are served on our plates and we just eat them and enjoy crushing their brittle bones. So the style of our parents letting the fowls walk around till their bones became hard suddenly to us has become old school. But our diseases and death seem to suggest a whole lot is wrong with our new-school practices health-wise. These are the things the experts have done much to address in this fantastic book.

‘They tell us not to eat and then jump into our cars and drive off. You that is poor and walk to and from your farm don’t know the excellent things you’re doing to your muscles and bones. What you do and keep complaining about is what in the clinics the doctors and nurses are telling the rich people going there to check their conditions of health to copy and start practising so they can live well and long.

‘Before you get into money and become like them, we’re here to guide you on how properly you’d keep living and save yourself from the troubles they face.’

The first speaker spoke long both in English, Pidgin English and his mother tongue before leaving the podium for the second speaker who took time to explain the things in the book, the herbs and how they were called in the mother tongue familiar to him as the other two speakers would chip in the names in the mother tongues familiar to them.

At the end of the seminar, every attendee gladly parted with the stipulated sum of two thousand naira as they were quite determined to imbibe the tricks of staying alive and being in robust health so they could handsomely enjoy the largesse from the West, not minding Grace, if Japan and China had eventually relocated to join them.

When Mr Ransom returned home, he turned into an herbalist overnight. He read his book with seriousness and followed the instructions on preparing the concoctions religiously.

He had bought a big bottle of honey which he was guided by the book on how to separate the bona fide from sham.

A drop of sham honey would attract ants while the genuine did not (according to the anonymous author or authors of the book). A match could be dipped in the real honey and there was assurance it could still be struck to obtain light while with the sham it would not.

Mr Ransom’s children suffered peeling onions which made them sneeze and their eyes teary as their father guided them robustly on how to form a concoction which the benefits seemed to be a secret between him and his wife. But whatever was the result of the concoction, husband and wife just appeared to everyone else to be quite lovey-dovey though Grace believed whatever great traits they were exhibiting newly was basically as a result of what they and other villagers were anticipating.

The pawpaw tree from root to fruit became gold. The different parts to different diseases and organs of the bodies had beneficial impacts. Grace had a good laugh, secretly though, when Mr Ransom drank the bitter concoction made from the leaves and would be grinning, unfortunately, like a roast goat and would keep spitting around the compound long hours after.

To Grace, he was really killing himself to stay alive to grab the expected freebies from the West.