The village
Christians gathered after the Sunday evening service under the big Odan
tree in the village square. An open-air service once in four weeks was
a regular feature of the Church’s campaign against heathenism. The Lord
Jesus was taken out to the hundreds of village souls too far steeped in
the worship of streams and trees to seek the new God in the little
mud-walled church down of the other side of the village stream.
The sky was
overcast with thick, grey clouds drifting in the direction of Idasa.
That meant rain. It would come, as long as the clouds drifted in that
direction. Lightning flashes momentarily parted the clouds. They were
followed at varying intervals by deep rumbling of thunder behind the
clouds. Shango, the god of lightning and thunder, was registering his
anger at this strange talk of a new God taking hold of simple folk who
were once unquestioning votaries of his order. The new malady must be
nipped in the bud.
But Royasin and his
band resolved that their bud was destined to flower and to bear fruit.
He was the village schoolmaster, a tall lanky man with deep tribal
marks of tree vertical parallels on each cheek. He combined the duties
of schoolmaster and catechist and general public relations officer.
“Teacher” was the name by which everyone knew him in the village.
The first hymn had
brought the village urchins flying to the village square. To them the
open-air service was entertainment designed solely for their amusement.
The boys gaped at a respectable distance from the select. Teacher read
out loudly the lines of a popular hymn of praise in advance and for the
benefit of his congregation. It meant nothing to the boys. Nor did they
pretend that it did. Teacher next read out a portion from the big black
book which he carried in his hand. He urged his hearers to repent of
their sins for the Kingdom of God was at hand. A heavy peal of thunder
which tailed off into rumbling and died our grumbling behind the clouds
effectively emphasised the case for repentance.
Then the real
attraction of the evening stepped out into the open. He was a very tall
man with a big head that was bald in the front and fringed with a
horse-shoe formation of hair – a mixture of black and white in a ratio
that left the age a mystery. He wore a black suit. Unlike Teacher’s
striped collar with black tie, this stranger’s white collar was turned
the other way round, and he had no tie at all. The rumour went round
the group of children and the seven men and women whose curiosity had
brought them thither, that that white collar was a symbol that the
newcomer was greater than Teacher.
Now that was
remarkable. Someone greater than Teacher in learning! For Teacher was
the pride of Isolo. He alone could write letters and interpret
telegrams.
The pastor looked
round the little group of potential converts, and cast an anxious
glance at the jumbled group of thatched houses in which he knew
villagers went about their secular business indifferent to the call of
the Word. He would give them a few more moments. He recited the four
lines of another song, and started off in a deep, rumbling voice on the
first line:
O’er heathen lands afar
Thick darkness broodeth yet.
Arise! oh morning star,
Arise and never set.
As the fold were
finishing the last line the leader swiftly started on the first line
again. The spirit of the thing caught. They all repeated the verse
again and again.
Then followed the
golden word: “We have brought into your darkness the light of Christ.”
The pastor’s voice was melodious. They all admired him, this curious
hero of much learning. “There is no salvation in the worship of trees
and rivers.” So saying he kicked the trunk of the huge Odan tree fairly
viciously. That was a challenge. The tree was known to be inhabited by
the spirit of the god of the village. He looked round as if waiting for
something to happen – enough time for the tree to hit back if it would.
It didn’t.
“You see, brethren,
it is only a tree, and therefore cannot hit back when kicked,” he
continued. “There is no salvation in the worship of trees and rivers…
There is one and only one way to eternal life. The Lord Jesus Christ is
the way and the life… Throw away your false gods and follow Him. Burn
your idols – they have no mouths – they cannot talk.”
He once more paused for a moment, as if expecting something to happen. Something did happen then.
“But Toro’s
Grandma’s Shonponna has a mouth, and does talk!” It was a small boy
that piped out from the crowd. The man of God stepped forward three
paces, and bent double. With his only functioning eye he regarded the
waif with gravity. Challenge to the Word was a most unusual thing. And
this challenge had come from a most unusual quarter. He was a little
thing with a fat tummy. Half the skin of his head had been laid waste
by ringworm.
One church elder
recovered first from the shock. Taking four quick steps forward he
gathered with his left hand the tattered end of the boy’s jumper and
smacked him on the head with the palm of his right hand. It would teach
the boy sense. It would put an end to the embarrassment.
But it did not. Instead it earned the elder the pastor’s disapproval, indicated by deep furrows and wrinkles on his face.
“Not so, Elder
Joshua,” he said rather gravely. “Suffer little children to come unto
me. For theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven.” Here Elder Jeremiah nodded
his fat head in approval of the clergyman’s declaration for youth.
“That is the way of Christ,” he said, “the way of Christ.”
The pastor’s eye
was riveted on the boy. The whole group stared at him. He stared at the
red laterite ground. The atmosphere was tense.
“There is only one God, my child… He is greater than all other gods combined.”
The boy looked up
quickly. He was puzzled. That was news to him; it might be true, it
might be false. He was not going to quarrel over that. He once more
stared at the ground. A peal of thunder warned the faithful that a
thunderstorm was imminent.
“Shonponna is no
god. It is a disease. The spirit is the imagination of the mind, and
the idol the creation of man’s hand. It has no life like you and me and
your mother and brothers. lt, therefore, cannot talk.” The pastor’s
manner was now friendly and conciliatory.
But the boy looked
up hurriedly again, and protested in the interest of the truth that he
knew: “But Toro’s Grandma’s Shonponna talks. It is the truth I speak.
My friends hear him. I hear him. We all hear him – truly!” The boy
looked round apparently for a word of corroboration from his friends.
But the other boys had let him down. They had smelt trouble at the
outset of this unusual procedure and had vanished. The boy looked
crestfallen, the way one looks after being let down by one’s friends.
He stared at the ground once more. Elder Joshua and Teacher Royasin
exchanged ominous winks which seemed to say ‘Thank God, the farce is at
an end.’
They were mistaken.
The boy looked up again. His shining face beamed with the satisfaction
that told the tale of a wonderful solution discovered for getting out
of a tight corner. “If you’d come with me to Toro’s house up the
village – her Grandma’s Shonponna will talk to you. Truly!”
The reaction of the
Church members varied. To some the whole thing was a stupendous joke.
To others it was nothing short of sacrilege. A mere heathen boy
upsetting the course of a divine service. Joke or sacrilege, the whole
thing had gone far enough. Surely the pastor was not going to take this
child seriously enough to follow him into a heathen home.
But there they were
wrong. For after whispered consultations with Teacher Royasin, the
pastor bade the boy lead the way. The rain had started in scattered but
heavy drops.
The little boy ran
ahead of the group part of the way. He felt ever so important. What
child would not feel important leading the village Teacher and one
still greater than Teacher and the whole army of village men and women?
“Truly,” he said, stopping once and throwing his head back to look at
the impenetrably solemn face of the striding giant, “Truly, Grandma’s
Shonponna talks well. We all hear him. Toro hears him, and my father,
too, hears him.” Here the boy turned an appealing look to Elder Joshua,
the same man who had slapped the boy on the head at the beginning of
the unusual incident. This time he aimed a blow at his head with his
Book of Common Prayer… but missed. He had hoped to conceal from the
Man of God the fact that he was the father of this brat. Now the secret
was out.
“My child, we go up with you to the end that we may–”
“But I am not your
child,” snapped the little hero. “I’m my father’s child.” Here again
the boy looked at Elder Joshua for confirmation of his paternity. “I
have no mother… and there is Grandma herself at the door of her house
over there.”
The procession
wended its way along the rugged village street, dodging goats, sheep
and puddles. For once Christian and unbelievers were united in a
resolution to unearth the mystery behind the talking Shonponna.
A small old woman
peeped out of the door of a modest cottage with a comparatively neat
and wide verandah. Already a number of sheep had displayed better
judgment than the procession advancing towards the house, and had
sought shelter on the verandah. The old woman watched the procession
with curiosity. Then with apprehension as she watched the urchin
trotting by the side of the striding giant, making for her verandah.
She came out to the verandah. She wore no head tie, and her hair, a
rich combination of jet black with thick strands of grey, was plaited
beautifully in a remarkably youthful style. A blue locally woven cotton
cover-cloth was wrapped loosely round her waist. She wore no blouse.
She was in no way perturbed by the fact that her wrinkled breasts were
exposed. She watched the approaching procession with suspicion.
“Ah!” she cried.
“Sheyi, Toro, all come out here. Dele is bringing trouble again… Now
whatever has he done this time—cut off someone’s head?” That last she
addressed to the crowd at that moment boarding her verandah at various
points. They were all dripping with perspiration. “Has Dele cut off
someone’s head?” she repeated.
“And why do you
come to my house instead of following him to the house of Joshua, his
father?” Sheyi, Toro, come and see what Dele is bringing to my house.”
The boy had already taken asylum in the ample folds of the old woman’s
cover-cloth.
“Mother, it is in
peace we come,” Teacher Royasin explained peaceably. The old woman
didn’t appear to see much suggestive of peace in the atmosphere. She
did not conceal her suspicion. She looked over her shoulder into the
house. Approaching footsteps from inside suggested that help was
forthcoming.
“This child,
Mother, has done no wrong,” the pastor cleared young Dele’s honour. At
that juncture another woman, and an exceedingly beautiful girl, came
out of the house on to the verandah. “This child, Mother, has done no
wrong,” the pastor repeated, as if for the benefit of the new arrivals.
“This child has been the means of Christ sending light into your
darkness.”
“Light into my
darkness!” the old woman echoed. She opened her mouth and looked round
the group. “Why, I am not in the dark at all. I can see you all,” she
declared with emphasis. Dele nodded approval in his place of refuge.
“If you cannot see me – Toro, will you please fetch a lamp from my
room?”
The pastor’s solemn
face showed a momentary trace of a smile. His metaphor had miscarried,
and he saw the humour of it. “The darkness I speak of, Mother, is the
darkness of the soul.”
“Darkness of the
soul! Darkness of the soul!!” She reflected. Her wrinkled face gave
away the secret of admitted defeat. Here was a very formidable physical
obstacle. How was she to open up her stomach for a proper scrutiny of
her soul?
The younger woman
came to the rescue. “I salute you all, Teacher, Joshua, Jeremiah and
all the rest.” Her salutation was about as friendly as between two
boxers shaking hands at the beginning of the first round of a
championship fight. “She is my mother and–”
“Yes, I bore her,” the old woman confirmed.
“Please keep
quiet,” the younger woman reprimanded her mother. “My mother is old, as
you can see. Now’ that she will soon go where old people go, I am her
eyes and her ears. Has my mother done anything wrong?”
“Ah, what crime have I committed, what crime?” the older woman asked apprehensively.
“Keep quiet, I
say,” the daughter flared up at her mother, in a way anything but
dutiful. “lf you commit us all through an indiscreet statement you and
you only must be held responsible, You cannot tell what they may be
writing down in that big black book.” She cast a suspicious, hateful
look at the Holy Bible that Teacher held in his hand. She adjusted her
cloth round her blouse and seemed prepared for a battle – by mouth or
by hand but not by book. She was tall and lean, and not by any standard
attractive.
“This child, I
repeat, has done nothing Wrong,” the pastor once more declared. “And
you haven’t done anything wrong either, Mother.”
“I haven’t done
anything wrong, Mamma,” Dele said, somewhat elated. “He said Grandma’s
Shonponna has no mouth and cannot talk. And I said that Grandma’s
Shonponna has a mouth, and does talk.”
“My lord Shonponna!” the older woman was saying. “Why, my lord Shonponna is–”
“You keep quiet,”
Sheyi thundered. “I must repeat that you and you alone will be held
responsible for whatever palaver your tongue lands you in. For
goodness’ sake keep quiet. You cannot understand the way of these
educated people. Leave me to deal with them… My mother has no
Shonponna in this house or anywhere else,” she declared belligerently,
conclusively. “Here you see all of us, the inmates of this house – my
mother and my daughter, Toro. The only other inmate is my younger
sister. She is much too sick to come out.” The painful coughing of a
woman in the last stages of consumption testified to that fact. “No
Shonponna at all in this house…
“This child of
yours, Joshua, is the bane of our lives in this house,” Ma Sheyi
continued belligerently in an aside to Joshua. “If he keeps any
Shonponna somewhere in the house, ask him to produce him. And if he
can’t—-”
“Shonponna! I have
no Shonponna at all!” declared Grandma Gbemi in an attitude of great
innocence. She caught the warning signal from her daughter’s face and
stopped there.
At this point Elder
Joshua hit his wayward child with his hymn book. “Take that, you
scoundrel. And that will teach you sense. He is a mere child, Reverend
Sir, a mere child,” he observed to the pastor by way of bringing the
embarrassing farce to a close. “The child knows not what he says,
Reverend Sir. He is a mere child, Reverend Sir.”
***
The scene shifts to the little study of the village Teacher in the mission house.
“This, I suppose,
concludes this business, Mr. Royasin?” the pastor asked wearily, not
caring to look up at his companion’s face. The open-air meeting had
long finished. Pastor David and Mr. Royasin, the village Teacher, had
arrived back in the modest but neat mission house. After changing from
their wet clothes, they had had a meal of pounded yam with
fowl-in-soup, specially sent down to the august visitor by an elder.
But the reverend
gentleman was in a bad humour. The delicious meal couldn’t compensate
for the humiliation he felt after the blank he had drawn over the
Shonponna incident. Winning the arch-heathen, the grand old dame of
Isolo, to the fold of Christ would have been the achievement of the
year. The greatest propaganda for the cause of the Gospel in the
village and the surrounding district. He was unhappy about it.
“Nothing more really, sir,” the junior man said; a trace of insincerity born of diffidence was just discernible.
“In which case we retire to bed, Mr. Royasin?”
“Very well, sir.”
The long pause between the last two words showed there was certainly something on Mr. Royasin’s mind.
Both men were
silent for a moment. The pastor watched a wall lizard stalking a moth
fluttering around the flame of the kerosene lamp unaware of its double
peril. A servant entered who proceeded to pour oil into the tank of the
lamp from a bottle he held in his hand. He was nervous in the presence
of the visitor, and quite a substantial quantity of oil found its way
on to the table.
Pastor and Teacher
watched the flickering flame. It appeared to be fighting a gasping
battle against unseen forces tending to choke it out of existence. The
gasps were periodical. The flame looked like going out after every
gasp. Then it seemed to recover and continue another lease of life for
a brief period. At last the boy put down the bottle and began to screw
the lid back on to the tank. The flame slowly regained steadiness and
confidence. Its light rose steadily in intensity as the boy tip-toed
out of the room.
A smile grew slowly
on the clergyman’s hitherto solemn face. “See that flame, Teacher? It
very nearly went out during refuelling.” Here he paused as if allowing
his companion to take his bearings. The younger man, however, showed no
anxiety or enthusiasm for him to proceed. But he continued. “It very
nearly went 0ut – was very nearly choked out of existence.” Another
pause. “It got over the trial, however. It new sends out light into the
darkness of this room.”
Royasin’s face was
collected enough to cover the disgust that he felt in his heart. That
light and darkness stuff was meant for the village heathens, not him.
“To-day the Church
in this village is still in its infancy. The forces of heathenism are
tending to smother the life out of it. But they cannot prevail. For
Christ our Royal Master leads against the foe.”
The smile on Pastor
David’s face outlived his divine discourse for a long while and
illuminated the clerical features. Then gloom descended once more on
his face. And silence, awkward silence, reigned once more in the little
study in the Mission House.
Royasin had to get that thing off his chest. He coughed to attract his companion’s attention. “Please, sir.”
“Yes, Teacher?”
“You received my application, sir?”
“Your application?” The pastor looked puzzled. “I don’t remember it.”
“I sent it through–”
“Ah! Yes, asking
for an increase in salary. I remember now.” He sat back in his chair
and looked at the ceiling. “What is it you earn now, Teacher?”
“Seventeen shillings and sixpence a month, sir.”
“That’s – er – seven pence a day. I dare say it isn’t much these days, Mr. Royasin.”
“You know I hate to
complain, sir. Now that I act as catechist and schoolmaster as well as
manager, sir, I beg that the pastor recommend me for increase of
salary. Prices are going up every day, sir.”
Awful silence. The
junior man awaited the verdict, hoping for the best but not unprepared
for the worst. At length Pastor David spoke. “My dear young man, when I
hear of demands for higher salary I look across the years and smile.”
He was smiling now. “When I came out of the Mission College in 1903, my
salary was three shillings and sixpence a month – exactly a fifth of
what you now earn… I accepted it then with the cheerfulness becoming
of a worker in the Lord’s Vineyard. I am not saying that you should go
back to a salary of three and six a month now – I myself will be the
first to oppose cuts in the salaries of workers.” He paused to allow
that bit about his consideration for junior fellow workers to sink in.
His only functioning eye relentlessly trapped Royasin’s.
“Church funds are
very low, very low indeed. We had only two shillings and a penny at
church collection today, both morning and evening. Pastorate dues
aren’t coming in well in this parish. Synod last year ruled that unless
response to funds improves, I may have to leave the parish.”
Here he paused for
a long time, his one eve focused on infinity. Then he jumped up
suddenly to his gigantic height and fired away rapidly. “But I don’t
want to leave this parish. I am not going to leave this parish. I
haven’t been paid my salary for four months now.” He paused again, and
spoke more slowly as he sank back into the chair. “No, I am not going
to leave this parish.”
He now directed the
full force of his one eye on Royasin’s face. The latter behaved in an
awkward fashion, like the pilot of an aircraft trapped in the beam of a
powerful searchlight. “You and I, my dear Royasin, are workers together
in the Lord’s Vineyard. Why must you and I seek after worldly returns
for our labours when we know that returns a hundred-fold await us in
Heaven? Isolo here looks difficult. Here men and women continue to
worship trees, rivers and rocks. Here your labours are required.
Required by the Lord Jesus in the service of your fellow men. Will you
desert Him? Will you abandon this little oasis of the Church of Christ
in this desert of heathenism – all because of another two shillings and
sixpence increase in salary?”
Royasin was silent, painfully silent.
“No, you will not.”
The clergyman made up the mind of the hesitating young worker for him.
“I know you cannot go against the dictates of your inner self, the
still, small voice within you. I knew the day the Lord flashed His
torch of truth and salvation into the darkness of a heathen home and
brought you out to the Church – I knew that day that you were cut out
to be not just another worker but a very special worker in the cause of
the Lord. You will not allow a mere half-crown to stand between you and
your divine mission.”
Royasin was held
under the spell of that penetrating single eye. A strange power seemed
to impinge upon his soul through that one eye which covered him
unrelentingly. It was invisible but it was real. The mud walls and mat
ceilings of the little study were no longer there. The whole atmosphere
was pervaded by the influence of this strange power. Royasin dreamingly
repeated endless Amens to a special prayer said by his guest and
superior asking the Lord Jesus to open the eyes of His creatures to the
superiority of spiritual Wealth over Worldly possessions.
*Being the first chapter of ‘One Man, One Wife’ by T.M Aluko (published in 1959).
