He is unmarried. He has no permanent job. But it’s not
like he is really bothered. At 30, life may not have many more surprises in
store for a man who has grown up in the village, had a stint in the city and
seen his life go full circle.
Gumbo, as we fondly called him, has resigned to going
through the motions for the rest of his life. But he is one of the few fulltime
countryside residents one can trust to run a few private errands.
He is one guy you will send on an errand and be sure to
have your message delivered. He does lots of other things. Small chores he does
at a small fee. For the moment, that keeps him going.
As a swashbuckling teenager, he was taken by a relative to
a rich friend’s home in the city to work as an in-house servant. It was from here
that he mastered a good number of chores that many of peers back home can only
fumble at.
In his free time – plenty of which he has – Gumbo will do
just about anything. From hunting down birds off tree tops using a hand-made
catapult, to just bumming around. Sometimes he goes missing for days, only to resurface
looking knackered and hungry and disheveled.
He will say he ran into one of his long lost relatives who
lives 5 kilometers away and paid him a visit. He will have walked that distance
and spent the next couple of days having fun in the guy’s orchard, feasting on pawpaw,
passion fruits and apples. It is his way of having adventure.
His head is full of stories. Tales about the great, rich
men he had seen and heard of. He ranks everyone in the village from the
wealthiest to the poorest. Having a lot of time on his hands also means that he
has access to a lot of countryside gossip.
One time he will tell you how neighbor X is running broke,
and how another is having the time of his life. He is the guy who breaks the
news first if one of the rich neighbors buys a new car.
His classification of the wealthy has two distinct
categories; the rich and the filthy rich. Those who live in concrete and brick
walled houses are rich. Those who own cars are filthy rich, he says. It is just
that simple. Gumbo did not go to school, and has no idea about such
complexities like assets and bank balance. He just sees you and sees the value
of wealth written on your face.
He looks at you and imagines you carried along some loose
change. Money that – according to him – is surplus to your budget and ought to
given to him for a pint of gin.
And so he walks up to you with this rehearsed gesture, wearing
a wide grin before he breaks into a mischievous giggle. He regurgitates some
stale conversation that you had some two years back. He thinks he is good at
scheming for his potential prey.
He imagines you will marvel at his great memory. He
pictures the kind of impression he is going to strike. You suspect he thinks of
himself as some sort of intellectual. So the chat goes on and on. Most times,
the duration will depend on the circumstances in which he finds you.
He will join in if he finds you in the middle of some
mundane chore. It is one sure way he’ll earn something off you. He will still
stick around if he finds you unoccupied. And the idle talk will go on and on until
he appears to have run of saliva.
When he rises to say his goodbyes, he does so with one eye
on your face and another on your pocket, often letting out a grin if he sees
your hand slip into your pocket. The size of the grin will depend on what or
rather how much you pull out. Sometimes he will just sulk.
What does he use the money for?
Booze.
It’s mainly Waragi, a local gin that takes him to the skies
in the shortest time possible. That way, he saunters back home a happy man,
having spent very little and gotten so much on the night. He sings the blues on
his way home. It’s his way of killing boredom.
Often times, his is more of a sermon. A drunken sermon. It
is the moment to pour his heart out. On and on he goes, talking just about
anyone he interacted with during the course of the week.
It is here that those who are in his bad books will get
their bashing. He raps them for being bad friends. Bad, ill-mannered friends
who are only stingy at best. He calls them hypocrites who only call him when
they need his help, and ditch him when they have been sorted.
You will get honorable mention if you are in his good
books. You are accorded a huge chunk of airtime during his raucous 2-kilometer
walk back home. Suddenly, everyone in the village knows you are back to the
village and you are loaded because you bought him beer.
This is detrimental to you, in a way. The set up in the countryside
is such that most middle-class folks normally spend a big chunk of the year
working their socks off in the city, often coming back to the countryside homes
a couple of times a year.
Each of those trips comes with a lot of baggage and
expectation from the folks that will claim to have prayed for your success. You
are likely to run into acquaintances with truckloads of gossip, trying to earn
your favor. You are certain to meet expectant preteen faces at whose
christening you played godfather when they were still runny-nosed, petulant
toddlers.
Their parents will have coached them on how to approach
and greet their uncles (every potential benefactor is an uncle) and (sometimes)
act humble and needy. When Gumbo sings your praises during his evening trek,
you are certain to find a good number of these gathered at your doorstep the
following morning.
Lumped on the porch with their eyes continuously blinking
against the bright morning sun-rays, they sit and wait patiently. When you
finally arrive, they give you the kind of piteous look you wish to show your
landlord when your rent is due and you have not got your salary yet because the
boss forgot to sign the cheque before he left for a month's holiday in
Mauritius.
You have to sort them out in a way. It is the usual
routine – ask for performance reports for the school going lot and fork out some
about $5 for them to buy a few scholastic materials. Off they scatter as soon
the “facilitation” has exchanged hands. There is no pretense.
Gumbo doesn’t like the sight of these, for they, sure, are
going to eat away a portion of what you should have given him to sing your
praises for another couple of days. But he is civil enough not to openly put
his chagrin on show. Or rather he is not charged enough to show his angry side.
So he lets it slide.
He rarely loses his temper when he is sober. But he will
erupt once a drop of liquor has made its way down his throat. He is going to
meet a parent of one of those early morning schemers and he will give them a
dress down.
He is calculative. He’ll employ his old approach of
exchanging pleasantries before running his script. Blackmail. He will tell them
how instrumental he was, in securing the $5 their son conned off his boss.
He is scheming for a small percentage of that amount,
something close to the equivalent of about 20 cents. Long story short, the
unlucky parent forks out the 20 cents, and Gumbo walks away a happy man. The
one who does not buy his vibe becomes the subject that evening’s rant.
He only befriends the affluent. The rest are just acquaintances.
He keeps a cool circle of families around him, ensuring a regular supply of
alms. From worn-out utensils and shoes that have run their course levels to old
garments in an average middle income family.
But he is wary of any potential fall-outs. He knows one
day he will wake up and he is no longer needed in one of his rich buddies’ homes.
So he keeps sourcing for new friends.
“You see that Nelson?” he tells Morgan, son to his latest
wealthy buddy. “He was once my good friend when he was younger. His late dad
was my good friend too. Those trees he is always cutting down to make charcoal.
I planted them with his dad. He was still a young boy. He was too young to
understand these things.”
“But he cut off our ties when his dad died. Now he just
sells the charcoal and runs to the city to pay fees and have fun with young
girls in the city. He cannot even think of buying me a beer. Yet he is feasting
on my sweat. Please don’t be like him when you grow old and become rich”, he
goes on.
Morgan is a 16-year old high school student who just came
back to the village for his second term holidays. He rarely stays in the
village, so Gumbo is the only person he easily associates with. Morgan just
nods in agreement to Gumbo’s plea. A verbal pact is made.
Gumbo has just made a pact with his newest buddy. Morgan becomes
the subject of his blues “jazz session” that evening. That holiday Gumbo takes Morgan
to the hilly part of the countryside. Together, they do a tour of all the land on
which Morgan’s dad is doing farming. Fragmented as the pieces are, from every valley
to hill and back, Morgan is shown every single piece of land his dad owns.
And so it becomes a routine. Every school term break finds
Morgan in the village. He looks for Gumbo every once in a while when he gets
bored. Morgan knows Gumbo will be itching for something small to keep him
going. So he saves a small portion of his pocket money to grease his palm. It’s
a pact that will last forever, Gumbo thinks.
Gumbo continues to heap praises on Morgan every time he is
excited (read tipsy). Maybe his bar patrons are even jealous of him. His
friends at the local bar have never met Morgan. But they have heard of him.
They have no idea how he looks like, but they know he is a rich man’s son –
which means he has some money of his own.
It’s now two years since the two first became good
friends. In the two years, the whole world knows the rich man has a son called
Morgan. He doesn’t know he has become a celeb. Morgan is now done with high
school, and is enjoying a lot of redundant time in the village. For four long
months, he waits for his high school exam results.
March 28th, 2007. Exam results are out, and Morgan
has aced his papers. A local daily carries the lead story. Morgan’s name
features on page 2, complete with a passport photograph he took when he still had
shaggy hair. It doesn’t matter. His peers still recognize him. He has qualified
for government scholarship. Everyone is happy for Morgan. His parents are
overjoyed. Gumbo is excited.
Even as illiterate as he is, Gumbo knows getting
government sponsorship is a good thing. “Morgan is going to university to get a
degree. He will become very rich. He is going to buy a car, and when he comes
to the village I will always be sitting by the co-drivers'. You people had
better treat me with respect or else I will not let you ride in Morgan’s car”,
he tells his peers at the local pub.
Morgan goes to University and fortunately gets a job even
before he finishes his studies. He becomes a very busy person as he has to
juggle between studies and his new-found job. He wants to excel at both. He
wants to earn praises from his boss. At the same time, he wants good grades.
For the first time in his life, Christmas finds him in the
city. He cannot make it to the village because of a tight work schedule. Gumbo
is disappointed his buddy did not come to the village, but “understands” the
situation because he was told that studying at University is not easy.
Towards the end of Morgan’s final University year, gossip
reaches the village. Morgan got a job and is already working. Gumbo is elated,
and braces himself for a mother of all booze binges when Morgan comes to the
village. He still remembers the pact the two made 6 years ago. Morgan is now
22, and he, 36.
Christmas time comes and it’s almost the same scenario as
the previous year. This time Morgan sneaks in one Friday night, on the Christmas
Eve of 2010. Word goes around that Morgan is around, but Gumbo does not take it
serious. His buddy cannot come around and not look for him. He will pass by his
home on Sunday to confirm the news.
Sunday Morning, 27 December, 2010. Gumbo makes the short
trip to Morgan’s home, only to meet his old friend at the gate. Morgan is on
phone, so they don’t talk. He waves to him and musters a smile. Gumbo tries to
smile back. Morgan is on his way out, and back to the city. Gumbo thinks he
must left something “small” for him at home. Morgan did not leave any message
for him, he is told.
This is the last time the two see each other. The following
morning, Morgan’s phone rings as he is getting ready for work. At the other end
of the phone is his mum.
Gumbo is dead!
What?! How? What happened - was he
sick?
No. He was last seen at 11PM, in a bar
with a couple of friends. He appeared a little pensive. He took several shorts
of gin, but he looked fine.
Then what?
He did not sing the blues that night. He
quietly left by himself and went to his mum’s house.
And then?
His mum says they exchanged pleasantries
and went straight to bed. Normal routine. In the morning he could not be woken
up for breakfast. He had died in his sleep.
Morgan recalls the pact. That verbal agreement, made one
sweaty afternoon after a trip to the hills, all of six years back. Could his
friend have been depressed? Could it
have been a case of suicide?
The Pact, Morgan reflects.
He has become another Nelson. The Nelson Gumbo had always
told him about. The same Nelson who betrayed Gumbo long before he
became friends with Morgan. Guilt sets in.
Dan A.
