Pride of Human Wishes

By Sunkanmi Afolabi

A Nigerian called Owokoniran, meaning money has no heritage, a 300-level university student from Ekiti, he grows in affection with a secondary school girl from Ijebu. Both tribes are in South West Nigeria.

But because of the unfounded but palpable fear Ekitis nurse against the Ijebus and vice versa, Nirans parents staunchly opposed the marriage.

Each of the dishonest characters in the novel is punished for his little acts of deceit, but like natures justice, the quantum of sin does not match the consequence born by each actor, which raises questions about the wishes of the human race.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse UK
• Release date: Feb 14, 2012
• ISBN: 9781467885140

Sunkanmi Afolabi

Sunkanmi Afolabi was born in Nigeria. He attended the University of Ilorin where he studied English Language and obtained a BA Degree. He currently lives in the United States.

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Contents

ONE

TWO

THREE

FOUR

FIVE

SIX

SEVEN

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

For the human intercourse, as seen as we look at it for its own sake and not as a social adjunct, is seen to be haunted by a spectre. We cannot understand each other, except in a rough-and-ready way: we cannot reveal ourselves, even when we want to: what we call intimacy is only a makeshift: perfect knowledge is an illusion. But in the novel, we can know people perfectly, and, apart from the general pleasure of reading, we can find here a compensation for their dimness in life. In this direction, fiction is truer than history, because it goes beyond the evidence, and each of us knows from his own experience that there is something beyond the evidence, and even if the novelist has not got it correctly, well-he has novel.

E.M. Forster, Aspects of the Novel

This novel is dedicated to my charismatic cousin, Gbolahan Bolaji, who was felled by wicked gunmen on Wednesday, February 7, 2007, at twenty-nine years of age. We buried him around 5 p.m. on Saturday, February 10, 2007, amid profuse tears, but the most painful unshed tears are shed when the memory of his doings comes to dwell with us. It is as if one day he will still knock on my door and say good day, as if I will still shake hands with him, as if we shall still discuss our dreams together, as if we shall still gossip together, as if we shall still sleep in the same bed together, as if we shall still laugh and hug, as if he has not gone. I wonder why I have such feelings.

Maybe it is because he always left me better than he found my moody self. He was my close confidant and was a Skye banker! He distributed happiness to people around him freely, which made him accepted wherever he stepped.

He was aware of this novel. He showed interest in it, even though it was not his calling, he wanted me to launch it on time. He saw no reason why I should delay my second book, Kicking the Blind.

Losing a beloved friend leaves long-lasting yearnings.

Death is a long massive pain when it suddenly takes the life of those we know and cherish in our memory.

Gbola, if we are fortunate enough to come around this world again in flesh and blood as we know each other, I will love to be identified with you.

Adieu, Gbola!

I am bereaved of a seed of joy!

ONE

They met when he was in his 300-level in the university. Having exhausted his money his barn went dry, he decided to travel down home to his father in Aero Ekiti.

He collected what he was given at home and set off for school. Experience had taught him that it was wise to take a vehicle from Aero Ekiti to Ayetoro and from Ayetoro to Kory. This has a double advantage. It would reduce the transport fare and speed up the journey. On previous occasions, he had boarded vehicles from Aero to Otun before entering Kory, but this was time-wasting, as the vehicle would not leave until they were full of passengers. Besides, it might not even be a direct vehicle to Kory but to Omu Aran.

Otun drivers had a common reputation for the aggressive monitoring of passengers. Usually, two or three vehicles were designated to parade the length and breadth of the town. Any vehicle seen beckoning to commuters was immediately arrested.

On one occasion he had decided not to board a vehicle at the motor park by walking past the view of the drivers. He negotiated a bend in the road, flagged down a taxi, boarded, and was grateful to his spirit for applying such a strategy. The fare was cheaper by twenty naira from Otun to Kory compared to what was obtainable at the motor park.

The taxi had not sped for two minutes when a white Liteace bus came up from behind and abruptly positioned itself in front of the taxi, inhibiting it from passing in the one-way untarred road. A driver alighted from the bus and spoke in a high-pitched guttural voice.

Oya, turn back to the garage.

Wetin? the taxi driver asked.

You dey ask me wetin? That boy wey you carry for that corner, se na you get am?

Se, if una see your cousin for road, you no fit carry am b’cos una dey drive taxi?

Make you no follow me talk that one, I beg. Go tell dem that one for garage.

During this hot exchange of words, two young men had jumped down from the bus and entered the taxi. The taxi driver had no other choice than to turn back to the garage, where he was compelled to pay a fine of one hundred naira. The passengers in his vehicle were emptied into the vehicle in the queue going to Omu Aran.

The second incident was not as eventful as this, because when the patrol vehicle caught the cab, the driver immediately and passionately begged and gave the patrol driver twenty-five naira, which he accepted, telling the driver not to try it next time.

Hence, Niran had always stayed at Ayetoro to get a direct vehicle to Kory among the vehicles coming from Ado or Ido. The road from Usi through Ayetoro to Otun was untarred. The tarred road from Aero met this road, thus creating a junction where three roads met. At the junction was a roundabout that contained a statue of the town’s legend. A cobbler’s shop directly faced the legend’s statue. This was Tesco’s shop, a prominent cobbler of the village.

Tayo, better known as Tesco, was a cobbler whose two legs were conspicuously paralyzed, but he was about the happiest man in the village. People depended on him emotionally and trusted his intelligence. He was naturally solicitous, gregarious, and generous in nature. Besides, being a talker and exceptionally witty, his charisma earned him quasi-leadership in the unions. It was said of Tesco that he would have been a personality who might have shaped the value of the nation but for fate that reduced him to a crippled cobbler with insufficient education. He was a staunch member of the Oodua People’s Congress, OPC.

The first time Niran was looking for a vehicle that would convey him to Kory, he had no choice but to hide himself from the scorching sun under the prominent shadow offered by the iron awning of Tesco’s shop.

Welcome, sir. Tesco greeted him enthusiastically.

Good evening, sir, replied Niran.

I know a student when I see one. Wale, carry that chair out for your brother to sit.

Thank you, sir.

Ah, no mention.

This accommodating gesture was showered on Niran by Tesco each time he stopped for a cab at Ayetoro. On one particular occasion the sun was overwhelming, leaving no shadow in front of the shop where Niran could shelter. Spotting him from afar, Tesco invited him to come and sit inside his shop where it was still possible to see the passing vehicles.

The shop was arranged in the usual way peculiar to shoemakers. The debris of shoes made a mountainous hill on the extreme right-hand side. Perhaps the enormous volume of shoes was a testimony to the number of years the cobbler had been in the profession. There must have been ten, even twelve years’ worth of shoes there. Many of them the owners had dropped off and deliberately refused to come back for. Visitors in transit dropped off others. The owners of some must have been dead. There were shoes of different sizes and of different colours that belonged to different periods of fashion. There were shoes for the old, the young, the dead, and the living.

Beside the imposing shoes were two machines. One was electric, but it was easily adjustable to a manual setting so that it could be manoeuvred by hand. This was for sowing shoes and bags. The other machine was also electric. It bore in a noticeable position a discus-shaped file that rolled fast on its own once the machine was switched on. Here, shoes to be gummed were filed to roughen the surface so that their abrasiveness would allow the gum to stick. This particular machine provided double income for Tesco. In addition to the shoes it filed, villagers also brought their cutlasses and knives for sharpening.

It was not the machines that caught the attention of Niran. He was enamoured by the design of shoes—palm sandals, leather slippers and cover shoes—that hung around the shop. Many of them could easily pass for valuable imported shoes. He wondered if many shoemakers in Kory could successfully lay claim to this artistic ingenuity. No, he told himself, he couldn’t have made them.

Bros, do you usually buy these shoes to sell?

Which shoes?

These ones hanging.

No, my friend, all I do is to buy the materials, that is, the leathers, heels, buckles, gum, and the rest. I sit down and design them. I have a friend, or shall I say customer, in Kory who comes every now and again to buy them in bulk, and he sells in his shop. He is also a shoemaker at Taiwo Oke in Kory. All those imported labels saying Made in Italy you’re seeing are just camouflage to make our people buy them. If you put Made in Nigeria", no one would buy. Eight or nine years ago this shop was a magnet that shoemakers and customers patronized. They came from far and near. I used to make my own shoes. The sales grew rapidly, concurrently with the profit. I never had to use charm to attract customers, but all of a sudden the sales dwindled. The more I worked, the less I sold. I had to take a loan at Ayetoro Community Bank there.

"Just before you came in, my pastor friend was here to tell me about Jesus. He said that when he was born, an angel appeared to his parents to tell them to take him out of his home town to another town. I see wisdom in that. It shows God himself has no objection in people leaving their place of birth before they can be great. He called Abraham out of his fatherland.

I greet everyone happily as God has created me, but I don’t know who is actually interested in my genuine and continuous happiness. All lizards run around on their bellies, but we don’t know which one has the stomach ache. I got to my shop one morning to see a charm. Since then, I have not been the same again.

Bros, does that have something to do with your legs? Niran queried emotionally.

No, my friend, I was paralysed before I became a shoemaker, though my mother did not bear me with paralysis. I stopped schooling in Class Two in secondary school. From my primary school through Class One, I was never in second position. I was first throughout. When I got to the first term of Class Two, the then military governor was going on tour. When he got to my school, he gave scholarship awards to the best student in each class. I was given the award for Class Two, and I went to the bank to pay my remaining school fees. After I had paid it, I was going back to the school when the dry ground slipped under me. I fell and was immediately rushed to the hospital. Five days later, I woke up to discover my two legs were shorter than they used to be. I have never walked with the legs since then. I will not tell you the rest. It is not in my character to recount the past for the fear of hypertension.

Bros, but then do you feel some wicked people must have used a charm on you?

My friend, individual experience more than anything else will affect your thinking and your perspective on the world. My answer to your question is that I don’t know a God of sorrow who would have taken away my future when I was enjoying the beauty of human existence and fulfilment. You can’t tell me you’re from Aero and feign ignorance of these things. But generally, I don’t wear this thing on my face. I try to be happy with everyone, or maybe that is the way I’m made and unfavourable circumstance cannot wash my innate traits away.

Niran was in an awkward position. He had no words and essentially lacked the courage to open his mouth and begin to tell this fellow human creature that all things work together for good. He knew he would not have succeeded in assuaging his psychological thirst. He would have only succeeded in insulting him by muttering those words. Niran was an African child. He remembered that the tears of this world were in constant flow. He pondered philosophically on the strange revelation that had come from this castrated genius. Happiness existed nowhere in the world. No man has ever been able to make himself happy. The seemingly serene state of less trouble we think we created was never created by us but by circumstance. If circumstances did not open door for changes, we would be suffocated in our natural habitat. Man, he thought, was nothing but a caged mouse. Happiness, in the form of freedom, was in the hands of an all-powerful somebody somewhere who