‘My brothers and sisters,’ she pleaded, ‘I have nine children and hunger is threatening to kill us. My husband has been very sick for over a year and we have no money for the operation.’
She said that we – those of us in that vehicle – were their only hope of survival. If we would only chip in some funds.
‘My brothers and sisters,’ she begged, ‘please nothing is too small.’
Around her neck hung a cloth rope attached to a photograph of her husband. In it, the sick man was lying on a raffia mat on the cement floor. He was stark naked and his ribs were gleaming through his skin. There was a growth the size of two adult heads, shooting out from between his bony legs. The faded photograph dangled on her flat chest as she stretched a metal container into the car and jangled the coins that were inside.
As soon as I saw the photograph, it hit me.
I realised what had been missing from Ola’s room, what it was that had been nagging at me all the while I was there. All my photographs – all three of them – had vanished from her room.
Four
The local 7 o’clock news was usually a harmless serving of our state governor’s daily activities – where he had gone, what he had said, whom he had said it to. The national 9 o’clock news was different. It always reported something that infuriated my father.
‘They’re all illiterates!’ he ranted. ‘That’s the problem we have in this country. How can we have people ruling us who didn’t see inside the four walls of a university?’
Two days ago, it was the allegation that one of the prominent senators had falsified his educational qualifications. He had lived in Canada for many years, quite all right, but the University of Toronto had no record of his attendance. Yesterday, it was the news that the Nigerian government had begun a global campaign to recover part of the three billion pounds embezzled by the late General Sani Abacha administration. About $700 million discovered in Swiss bank accounts had already been frozen. Today, it was the news that one of the state governor’s convoys had been involved in a motor accident. This was the fourth time this same governor’s convoy had been involved in a fatal car crash.