The Closing Stories Closing, Stories, The

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The Closing Stories

　

Cief Qi J once told me of his first and only visit to London. He said everything there were so strange and weird to him. He did not understand why men there downgraded themselves by opening doors for Ladies and carries their bags. He didn’t understand why the Londoner covered the ground around their trees in the street with cement, and surrounded them with iron fence. Are they prisoners? And how are they going to breath? He asked. He did not understand why he was not allowed to wear his slippers in the Hotel lobby. They were new slippers bought specially for the trip, he said. The one thing that puzzled him most was, why did the children were tied to leather straps walking with their parents like a dogs?! I had to explain to him what modern city life was, or is. He did not completely agreed with me. Trees and plants are living creatures, whose spirit has feelings and emotions, they even moved about when we are not paying attentions. He informed me!

I later reflected that must also be my findings about Nigeria and Nigerian. It all came down to two words, Cultural Differences. The so call experience that had deeply embedded in my mind is but things I was ignorant to, and in a great extend, the result of the cultural supremacy I thought I possessed. Towards the end, I realized that I was no better than them. We are all human kind, living in different parts of the world, under different degrees of hardship. Western culture dominates most of us, who sometime even turn around and point an accusing finger on our own or others.

The hardship the Nigerian experienced are, in my view, comparable to the hardship and humiliation we Chinese experienced in the last two hundred some years. The Colonial powers had ruled them and exploited them. Had tried to annihilate their culture and heritage, which I think is very wrong, no matter how primitive it is. To serve their purpose, they gave the Nigerian some glimpse of modernization, but not enough for them to develop themselves.

One day I was sitting in the Palace of Cief Qi J talking to him. A young girl came to us with some arithmetic problems. As there were no calculators around, the Cief was lost, and did not know how to proceed. So, I took the pencil and calculated it on a piece of paper. The Cief was greatly impressed and admired me for my TALENT. I was surprised of his reaction and commented about it. He went to his room and fetched a thin book. He told me, in the colonial days, the British taught them the basic theory of Arithmetic, but instead of trained them hard, they were given that book and were taught to use it I looked through the book and found that each page was a chart, you needed only to look up the two figures you are working at, and the result is there. If you are working with three or four figures, you first look up the result of the first two figures, then use the result verses the third and look again, and so on, until you finished with all the figures you are working on. The Cief said it was necessary in the beginning, as they used to count only up to four. But after almost two centauries of colonial rule, there were still a whole lot of them who did not know how to calculate, and had to rely on that book. People of his age or somewhat younger, if not for the invention of portable calculators, would have to carry that book with them all the time. You can do Addition, Subtraction, Multiplication and Division with the book. A very handy tool, ingenious of the British.

Situation did not improve after their independent. The Ibos who is in the Southeast of Nigeria were suppressed to the point where they revoked and tried to form their own country, but were defeated. The Yurobas in the Southwest were no better off; they were not really suppressed, but were greatly exploited.

I once bought dinner for a bank manager of a branch office of The Chartered Bank in Nigeria. We went to the Chinese Restaurant of the Federal Palace. That place was a rip off. If not for entertaining a Bank manager, I would never have eaten there. The dinner cost a little short of US$500. When the Bank manager saw me pay the bill, his face turned red. He then informed me that that was the amount of his monthly salary. And I should not have spend that kind of money on him, because he could not really helped me. He told me the majority of Nigerian managers of the bank are there only for P.R purposes. All credits and payments were controlled and have to be approved by the Whites. I don’t know how true he was, as later, some payment was granted by another Nigerian.

But I believed what Lady Uolowe told me is true. Both She and Sir Uolowe were from Chieftain families. Their families owned large pieces of land before the Independent. After the Independence, they were forced to sell the land to the Government, at what seemed to be a very handsome price. The Government later handed the land over to Shell Oil, who then discovered oil underneath. So, the handsome price was only a fraction of the true reward. They suspected that Shell Oil knew that there was oil there, and conspired with the Government and stripped them of their legal right.

Both the Colonial Government and the Nigerian Government encouraged these Chieftain families to send their young to seek education in England. They were all highly educated. Sir Uolowe held a Doctorate of International Affairs, and Lady Uolowe was a Bachelor of Economy. But they would have no position in their own country. The Government was and still is in the hands of the Hausers and they have no use for Yurobas. If they were to work in Nigeria, their position no matter in a commercial establishment or the government, would be something that their training not fully used. Thus they stayed in England, a self imposed exile, as second-class citizens.

Towards 1994, the whole country was in turmoil, there were demonstrations and strikes everywhere. A lot of killings and murders between groups, and even among the Hauser militaries themselves. Civilian Government were promised but later denied. The Ofonis held strikes on Shell Oil, threatened the income of the Government. And it was time for me to retreat from Nigeria. There was not enough business there for me to return.

My last trip to Nigeria was in the summer of 1995, and visited only Onitsha. Originally I planned to visit the City of Benin also, and bid farewell to Cief Qi J. But the whole country was in a chaotic state, so I cut short my trip and leave, little did I knew that the winter of 1994 was the last I saw my Nigerian Mentor.

As you can all see that this is the last of my Nigerian stories. There is still some experience in my mind. But they are either too trivial to write about, or too complicated to narrate. Besides, readers may not find them interesting. One last story I forget to tell with “My Beloved Nigerian Friends”, I am telling you here.

In one of my returns to Lagos from Benin, I took a long journey bus instead of by air. There was no flight available for a whole week. It was a 30 hours drive. The condition of the bus was such that I will leave it for your imagination. Have you been in a Hard Seat train carriage from Nanjing to Wuhan? Before ‘Spring Festival’ holiday? That was about it but worst.

When we were approaching Lagos, the bus hit a ditch and went cap side, and rolled down the slop of about 300 meters. Several passengers were killed and many heavily injured, I was told later. I was luckily. I was sitting at the rear of the bus. When it was rolling over, I was flung out of the bus and left on the road with several others. I was unconscious in the hospital for two days. There were cuts and bruises all over my body, but no serious injury, only a long cut on my left leg, which the doctors closed it with 21 stitches. When I regained my conscious, the first sight was Lady Uolowe. Somehow, the police found the address of Uolowe Lodge among my things, and inquired about me there. Lady Uolowe stayed in the Hospital the entire two days of my unconsciousness. She later took me back to the Lodge and nursed me until my full recovery. I left Nigeria two weeks behind schedule. To this day, my family still does know that I have had an accident in Nigeria. And I am eternally grateful to Lady Butterfly for her care and love.

Afterthoughts

Is Nigeria really that bad like some of the readers felt after they read the stories? When I was writing about our Helpful Nigerians, I saw in my mind our follow countrymen badgering foreign visitors in Shenzhen or the Bung in Shanghai. The Helpful friends at least offered some unwanted services. Three years ago when I visited a remote ethnic village in Duyun, Guizhou, I could not held myself and tuned the TV for them, and felt a slight similarity of my first encounter with the Cief. The TV was tuned to only one channel, Guizhou satellite. Why the people who installed the TV for them failed to tune all the channels was beyond me. I still remember how we have to guard our position in a queue in front of CAAC counters for fear someone would cut in, even in our Capital city. Perhaps there are more than just these few that we can reflect upon.