How Beautiful We Were(12)
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The next morning Papa is out of bed before the oldest rooster, having not slept all night. He throws a blanket over his shoulders, flies out of the hut, and storms into Woja Beki’s house. Papa gives Woja Beki no chance to rinse out the night’s taste from his mouth, or flick off any of sleep’s crumbs from the sides of his eyes. There’s only an abbreviated greeting between them—I hope you slept well, is all Papa says, according to Woja Beki’s third wife, Jofi, who later gossips about the visit with half of the women of Kosawa.
Woja Beki is sitting in his parlor, still in his sleeping clothes, waiting for one of his wives to boil his bathing water, when Papa starts speaking, his voice louder than proper for a morning conversation, which is why, Jofi will later explain, she was able to hear the entire conversation even though she was far from the living room, in her kitchen, lighting her fire for the day, because that’s just the kind of woman she is, minding her own business and staying far away from useless gossip.
Papa tells Woja Beki he wants to leave for Bézam as soon as possible to seek an audience with high-level government officials. He wants to have forthright conversations with as many of them as he can find. They need to look right at his mouth as he tells them how it feels for a man to watch his only son die because of this abomination they’ve brought upon our land. Maybe they know the number of children Kosawa has buried, but have they heard the stories of any of the parents of the departed children? Have they heard about how the days and months and years of these parents’ labor and hope vanished in a single breath? Have any of these officials ever looked down helplessly upon their helpless child? He isn’t going to sit back and keep waiting for Woja Beki—someone has to save his children, and whatever Woja Beki is doing is clearly not working.
Woja Beki listens in silence.
He knows—because the entire village knew less than an hour after it happened—about how Juba stopped breathing and Jakani brought him back to life. Woja Beki does not need to ask Papa where this heedless idea is coming from; he simply nods and shakes his head and nods some more as Papa swears by his ancestors that nothing will stop him from doing what he needs to do for his family. When Papa is done speaking, Woja Beki calmly responds that, indeed, everything Papa says is true: it is time for the village to start thinking of new ways to solve this problem.
His tone still tinged with the freshness of morning, Woja Beki agrees that none of the pleas he has sent to Bézam, asking the government to use its power to stop and punish Pexton, have worked, and nothing is getting better—he doesn’t know what else to do. How can people not care about children? How can they not see that they’re doing to our children what other people could one day do to their children? He ponders these questions often, he adds; he’s found no answers. He was at the district office in Lokunja days ago and heard that Pexton was thinking about drilling another well. Another well? All those wells breathing poison on us every day, are they not enough?
After the last funeral, he says, he was unable to sleep. He went to Lokunja the next day to beg the district officer to speak to Pexton again on our behalf, ask them to find a way to, please, for our sake, replace their pipelines, because it wouldn’t be long before the spills entered our homes and killed us in our sleep—but would they listen to him? The district officer told him that the pipelines were fine, that occasional leaks and spills meant nothing, pipelines the world over spilled. What was he supposed to say to such a statement? Should he have kept on arguing while they looked at him as if he were a madman? Say nothing and watch his people die on? He just didn’t know what to do.
That night, from my mat, I listen as Papa gives Mama more details about his visit, whispering in the darkness. Mama is silent—she became tongue-tied the moment Papa returned from Woja Beki’s house and told her of his plan to go to Bézam. I picture Papa lying on his back, his hands clasped on his chest, as he tells Mama about Woja Beki’s theory that Pexton has been paying off people in the district office to shut their eyes, or turn them to the ground, or to the sky, to anywhere but the children dying in front of them. They all deserve the punishment that would inevitably be theirs someday, Woja Beki had said. How could people show such contempt for the laws of the Spirit? Was money so important that they would sell children to strangers seeking oil? “Look at me,” he said to Papa. Look at how he always made sure to put some of his own money in the hands of bereaved families. Look at how he spoke to even the least in the village as if they were the most significant, because isn’t that how it should be? Wasn’t man’s ability to recognize his fellow human what made him better than dogs? It was sad how the love of money was corrupting many; truly sad, he’d added with a sigh. But Papa was right, he went on, it was time for the village to take its complaints directly to Bézam.
Unfortunately, his back had been very stiff lately, so he couldn’t manage the trip, and his counselors couldn’t go either, old as they were—wasn’t it a miracle they could still get out of their huts and walk around, one of them barely seeing, the other two half-deaf? But Papa could go on behalf of the village; Woja Beki’s son Gono lived in the capital, and he would take care of Papa as if Papa were his own brother.
Mama must have fallen asleep somewhere in the middle of the retelling, because when he’s done talking Papa says, “Sahel, Sahel, are you up?,” and Mama says nothing, and I thank her in silence for not listening to the lies of that deceitful, dirty-teeth buffoon.