“I no go fail, oga,” said the gardener. “One man for our village wey old pass my fader sef done register everyting finish. He just go for Magistrate Court and pay dem five shilling and dey swear-am for Court juju wey no de kill porson; e no fit kill rat sef.”
“Well it’s entirely up to you. Your work here has been good but …”
“Mark, what is all that long talk for? He wants to go, let him go.”
“Madame, no be say I wan go like dat. But my senior brodder …”
“We have heard. You can go now.”
“But I no de go today. I wan give one week notice. And I fit find anoder gardener for Madame.”
“Don’t worry about notice or gardener. Just go away.”
“I fit get my pay now or I go come back for afternoontime?”
“What pay?”
“Madame, for dis ten days I don work for dis mont.”
“Don’t annoy me any further. Just go away.”
But real annoyance was yet to come for Mrs. Emenike. Abigail, the baby-nurse, came up to her two mornings later as she was getting ready for work and dumped the baby in her lap and took off. Abigail of all people! After all she had done for her. Abigail who came to her full of craw-craw, who used rags for sanitary towels, who was so ignorant she gave the baby a full bowl of water to stop it crying and dropped some through its nose. Now Abigail was a lady; she could sew and bake, wear a bra and clean pants, put on powder and perfumes and stretch her hair; and she was ready to go.
From that day Mrs. Emenike hated the words “free primary” which had suddenly become part of everyday language, especially in the villages where they called it “free primadu.” She was particularly angry when people made jokes about it and had a strong urge to hit them on the head for a lack of feeling and good taste. And she hated the Americans and the embassies (but particularly the Americans) who threw their money around and enticed the few remaining servants away from Africans. This began when she learnt later that her gardener had not gone to school at all but to a Ford Foundation man who had offered him seven pounds, and bought him a bicycle and a Singer sewing-machine for his wife.
“Why do they do it?” she asked. She didn’t really want or need an answer but her husband gave one all the same.
“Because,” said he, “back home in America they couldn’t possibly afford a servant. So when they come out here and find them so cheap they go crazy. That’s why.”
Three months later free primary ended and school fees were brought back. The government was persuaded by then that its “piece of hare-brained socialism” as the New Age called it was unworkable in African conditions. This was a jibe at the Minister of Education who was notorious for his leftist sympathies and was perpetually at war with the formidable Minister of Finance.
“We cannot go through with this scheme unless we are prepared to impose new taxes,” said the Finance Minister at a Cabinet meeting.
“Well then, let’s impose the taxes,” said the Minister of Education, which provoked derisive laughter from all his colleagues and even from Permanent Secretaries like Mr. Emenike who were in attendance and who in strict protocol should not participate in debate or laughter.
“We can’t,” said the Finance Minister indulgently with laughter still in his mouth. “I know my right honourable friend here doesn’t wo
rry whether or not this government lasts its full term, but some of us others do. At least I want to be here long enough to retire my election debts …”
This was greeted with hilarious laughter and cries of “Hear! Hear!” In debating skill Education was no match for Finance. In fact Finance had no equal in the entire Cabinet, the Prime Minister included.
“Let us make no mistake about it,” he continued with a face and tone now serious, “if anyone is so foolish as to impose new taxes now on our longsuffering masses …”
“I thought we didn’t have masses in Africa,” interrupted the Minister of Education starting a meagre laughter that was taken up in good sport by one or two others.
* * *
“I am sorry to trespass in my right honourable friend’s territory; communist slogans are so infectious. But as I was saying we should not talk lightly about new taxes unless we are prepared to bring the Army out to quell tax riots. One simple fact of life which we have come to learn rather painfully and reluctantly—and I’m not so sure even now that we have all learnt it—is that people do riot against taxes but not against school fees. The reason is simple. Everybody, even a motor-park tout, knows what school fees are for. He can see his child going to school in the morning and coming back in the afternoon. But you go and tell him about general taxation and he immediately thinks that government is stealing his money from him. One other point, if a man doesn’t want to pay school fees he doesn’t have to, after all this is a democratic society. The worst that can happen is that his child stays at home which he probably doesn’t mind at all. But taxes are different; everybody must pay whether they want to or not. The difference is pretty sharp. That’s why mobs riot.” A few people said “Hear! Hear!” Others just let out exhalations of relief or agreement. Mr. Emenike who had an unrestrainable admiration for the Finance Minister and had been nodding like a lizard through his speech shouted his “Hear! Hear!” too loud and got a scorching look from the Prime Minister.
A few desultory speeches followed and the government took its decision not to abolish free primary education but to suspend it until all the relevant factors had been thoroughly examined.
One little girl of ten, named Veronica, was brokenhearted. She had come to love school as an escape from the drabness and arduous demands of home. Her mother, a near-destitute widow who spent all hours of the day in the farm and, on market days, in the market left Vero to carry the burden of caring for the younger children. Actually only the youngest, aged one, needed much looking after. The other two, aged seven and four, being old enough to fend for themselves, picking palm-kernels and catching grasshoppers to eat, were no problem at all to Vero. But Mary was different. She cried a lot even after she had been fed her midmorning foo-foo and soup saved for her (with a little addition of water to the soup) from breakfast which was itself a diluted left-over from last night’s supper. Mary could not manage palm-kernels on her own account yet so Vero half-chewed them first before passing them on to her. But even after the food and the kernels and grasshoppers and the bowls of water Mary was rarely satisfied, even though her belly would be big and tight like a drum and shine like a mirror.
Their widowed mother, Martha, was a hard-luck woman. She had had an auspicious beginning long, long ago as a pioneer pupil at St. Monica’s, then newly founded by white women-missionaries to train the future wives of native evangelists. Most of her schoolmates of those days had married young teachers and were now wives of pastors and one or two even of bishops. But Martha, encouraged by her teacher, Miss Robinson, had married a young carpenter trained by white artisan-missionaries at the Onitsha Industrial Mission, a trade school founded in the fervent belief that if the black man was to be redeemed he needed to learn the Bible alongside manual skills. (Miss Robinson was very keen on the Industrial Mission whose Principal she herself later married.) But in spite of the bright hopes of those early evangelical days carpentry never developed very much in the way teaching and clerical jobs were to develop. So when Martha’s husband died (or as those missionary artisans who taught him long ago might have put it—when he was called to higher service in the heavenly mansions by Him who was Himself once a Carpenter on earth) he left her in complete ruins. It had been a bad-luck marriage from the start. To begin with she had had to wait twenty whole years after their marriage for her first child to be born, so that now she was virtually an old woman with little children to care for and little strength left for her task. Not that she was bitter about that. She was simply too overjoyed that God in His mercy had lifted her curse of barrenness to feel a need to grumble. What she nearly did grumble about was the disease that struck her husband and paralysed his right arm for five years before his death. It was a trial too heavy and unfair.
Soon after Vero withdrew from school Mr. Mark Emenike, the big government man of their village who lived in the capital, called on Martha. His Mercedes 220S pulled up on the side of the main road and he walked the 500 yards or so of a narrow unmotorable path to the widow’s hut. Martha was perplexed at the visit of such a great man and as she bustled about for colanut she kept wondering. Soon the great man himself in the hurried style of modern people cleared up the mystery.
“We have been looking for a girl to take care of our new baby and today someone told me to inquire about your girl …”