Lines

By

George O. Obikoya

As usual, and with just minutes into the dialogue, it is evident that it is going nowhere. With each position held tenaciously, they sometimes call it off. Yet, they admit it is crucial that they address the issues at hand.

Things have clearly gone awry for James. All his friends have moved to the cities. Even his family now comprises just those in the extremes of life. Everyone seems to be leaving the village. The school has no teacher although pupils abound. There are fewer people working on the farms. Water is in short supply, and harvests, dwindling. Even the village nurse is leaving, as she says to seek a better life in the city.

John tells his friend life is better in the slum. He visits his two-year old daughter every now and then. He says he cannot afford day-care in the slum. He also often sends money back home. James tells him how much he expects his share, but says he does not intend to ever leave the village.

It is obvious that John is not able to convince his friend otherwise. He seems ready to leave. The bus only goes to the city once a day, and sometimes it does not have enough room for everybody. He promises to be back within a month, next time with his wife.

James sees him to the door and notices the bus pass by a while later. Someone in the bus waves to him. He waves back. Later that evening, his mother says he has a visitor. James is already on his mat, apparently about to shut down for the day. He gets up, clearly grudgingly. He does not know who the person is, it seems. They sit on mud stools outside the hut for a while.

His grandmother is blind. She walks with a wooden cane, but seems to know her way round her immediate vicinity, even without the cane. She also seems to be able to tell when people are around, even when stealthily. She is back inside the hut. Moments later, James comes back in. He says nothing even as she queries him. Then he tells her that he is off to somewhere for a while. He leaves almost immediately.

James and John have been friends since childhood. They both say they know each other very well. Just weeks apart in age, they compete as much as they cooperate. These days, James admits there is not much of either. He says his friend has an edge in all areas. Not even the few girls left in the village look at him, much more want to marry him, he laments, although he hardly does.

He assures his friend he is not green. In fact, he checks on his daughter now and then. John’s grandmother is in her eighties, and has been ill for sometime. James says he is happy to see his friend more often, but tells him she needs help herself. Sometimes he even asks John to take her and his daughter to the city with him. John explains what life in the slum is like, and how he struggles just to survive. He says his wife seldom works, because she cannot get a job. He works long hours but makes little money.

The village seems to light up whenever John comes home, though. He visits everyone and has gifts for the children. He likes to crack jokes and to talk about his experiences in the city slum. The older children in particular seem to enjoy listening to him. Some would even follow him as he goes round the village visiting. He confides in James that he longs to be back at home, but he cannot at least for now.

James no longer asks him why. He says he just wants him home. When John says it is not just hard to make money in the slum, but that in some cases, it is easier to expire in the process, he does not elaborate. Yet, he tells his friend to leave the village. He argues this would make it much easier for both to make more money so that they could return to do great things for the village.

Recently, John has been complaining of too many new arrivals in the slum. He says there is a lot of trouble on its streets. He says the fights in its alleys are spilling over to the rich neighbourhoods nearby. He even says some people in those places stir troubles in the slum for reasons many say are unclear. John says he suspects it has to do with the money they make in the slum. He seems to purposely avoid talking about such things. He must know that James does not seem to like the slum very much even without a scare.

James on the other hand contends that maybe it would help the village develop if people move back there. They both admit that nobody seems interested in the plight of the villagers, in the pervasive and seemingly enduring inequality that seems endorsed on taunted maxim. On the few occasions that they visit, administrators tell them they are too remote from the coast, and that only the cities would continue to bloat. The friends often joke that this may be so until guzzled by the slums.  

They agree that it seems all roads lead to cities now, but also that someday the reverse would hold. They say the riches the cities crave are in crypts strewn across the countryside. They admit that their concern that hope promised would conceit, and the said downward mammon trickle, delude, is grave.

They openly worry about the latent concurrent cohesion and implosion of mores along curious yet thematic ranks in coastal lines of light, as everybody in essence lives there. They say this would almost certainly stall optimism in the interior. They grant that the eternal darkness that may then cloak coast and country with the lights doused troubles.

John would say life goes on for now, that he has a daughter to support, not to mention his wife and grandmother. James would quip that he at least trumps sometimes. They still attempt to convince each other to move. James even adds that his friend would then trounce angst. He argues that life can be just as dreadful being drab or being crap, anyway, but easier both being in the village, and there for each other. John would agree but at once still proceed to lure his friend to the slum with remarkable vigour.

James is walking very briskly now. He is near the other end of the village where John’s grandmother lives. He looks calm and he mutters inaudibly along. As he approaches his destination, he sees people lighting candles along the path. His demeanour changes in a moment. He stops, and looks straight ahead above the lights as if to make out what lurks in the shadows beyond. He must have known what is going. The emissary shows up by his side, but he still does not tell James why he has to be at James’ hut.

They both walk down the rest of the way to the hut, which lit candles surround. James seems a little perturbed. He must think his friend, known for his practical jokes is telling him something about the lines of light, which perhaps as they always conclude would inevitably shine on the villages remote from the coast, and that the heavens would unlikely for ever see our globe as mere lines of lights.

He enters the hut. John, his daughter, and grandmother are all there. John beckons to him to sit on a stool nearby. The child is asleep in his arms, his grandmother, apparently eternally asleep on a mat next to them, shrouded. John says, “The lines would shine on us too mate someday.” “No doubt, no doubt,” James responded, nodding slowly and then adding, “Thank God. Thank God he is not going back,” more subtly, albeit more surely.