To build our nation dear;
Forgetting region, tribe or speech,
But caring always each for each.
London, July 1955.
He quietly and calmly crumpled the paper in his left palm until it was a tiny ball, threw it on the floor, and began to turn the pages of the book forwards and backwards. In the end he did not read any poem. He put the book down on the little table by his bed.
The doctor was seeing new patients in the morning. They sat on two long forms in the corridor and went in one by one behind the green door blinds of the consulting room. Obi told the attendant that he was not a patient and that he had an urgent appointment with the doctor. It was not the same attendant as he had met on the previous day.
“What kin’ appointment you get with doctor when you no be patient?” she asked. Some of the waiting patients laughed and applauded her wit.
“Man way no sick de come see doctor?” she repeated for the benefit of those on whom the subtlety of the original statement might have been lost.
Obi paced up and down the corridor until the doctor’s bell rang again. The attendant tried to block his way. He pushed her aside and went in. She rushed in after him to protest that he had jumped the queue. B
ut the doctor paid no attention to her.
“Oh, yes,” he said to Obi after a second or two’s hesitation as if trying to remember where he had seen that face before. “She is at a private hospital. You remember I told you some of them develop complications. But there is nothing to worry about. A friend of mine is looking after her in his hospital.” He gave him the name of the hospital.
When Obi came out, one of the patients was waiting to have a word with him.
“You tink because Government give you car you fit do what you like? You see all of we de wait here and you just go in. You tink na play we come play?”
Obi passed on without saying a word.
“Foolish man. He tink say because him get car so dere-fore he can do as he like. Beast of no nation!”
In the hospital a nurse told Obi that Clara was very ill and that visitors were not allowed to see her.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
“Did you have a good leave?” Mr. Green asked when he saw Obi. It was so unexpected that for a little while Obi was too confused to answer. But he managed in the end to say that he did, thank you very much.
“It often amazes me how you people can have the effrontery to ask for local leave. The idea of local leave was to give Europeans a break to go to a cool place like Jos or Buea. But today it is completely obsolete. But for an African like you, who has too many privileges as it is, to ask for two weeks to go on a swan, it makes me want to cry.”
Obi said he wouldn’t be worried if local leave was abolished. But that was for Government to decide.
“It’s people like you who ought to make the Government decide. That is what I have always said. There is no single Nigerian who is prepared to forgo a little privilege in the interests of his country. From your ministers down to your most junior clerk. And you tell me you want to govern yourselves.”
The talk was cut short by a telephone call for Mr. Green. He returned to his room to take it.
“There’s a lot of truth in what he says,” Marie ventured after a suitable interval.
“I’m sure there is.”
“I don’t mean about you, or anything of the sort. But quite frankly, there are too many holidays here. Mark you, I don’t really mind. But in England I never got more than two weeks’ leave in the year. But here, what is it? Four months.” At this point Mr. Green returned.
“It is not the fault of Nigerians,” said Obi. “You devised these soft conditions for yourselves when every European was automatically in the senior service and every African automatically in the junior service. Now that a few of us have been admitted into the senior service, you turn round and blame us.” Mr. Green passed on to Mr. Omo’s office next door.
“I suppose so,” said Marie, “but surely it’s time someone stopped all the Moslem holidays.”
“Nigeria is a Moslem country, you know.”
“No, it isn’t. You mean the North.”
They argued for a little while longer and Marie suddenly changed the subject.