Hope O’Rukevbe EGHAGHA
THE immediate trigger for this essay is a chance encounter with an old schoolmate during our reunion two odd weeks ago in Abuja. The stories from that memorable event are for another day. Suffice it to say that we who were present had cause to give thanks to God for being alive nearly forty-five years after we all trudged our different paths in life, some bumpy, some smooth, some somewhat in between.
At the time, that is, immediately after graduation, we didn’t know how, what our future would be, how we would fare in the world, how the world would receive us, or how we would deal with the world. All we had was the tough hope to survive. And conquer! The luxury of campus life was over. No more parental shield. No more meal tickets. No more subsidies.
Some rose very fast and burnt out too early. Some suffered divorce. Some married three times while some never married. That is life. Some travelled abroad before japa become a singsong. Some went for different degrees to better their chances in the job market. A couple of us went into business.
Well, we didn’t know some would be too ill to travel for the reunion forty-five years after. We didn’t know that some would lose their sight. We didn’t know that some would die shortly after graduation. Shortly after they got a job. We didn’t know that some would die before they turned fifty. Or at sixty. The most popular guy in our sets (78-83) died shortly before the reunion. He was 70+. His death was a wake-up call!
We also didn’t know that some would become judges, professors, State Commissioners, Federal Permanent Secretaries, Senators, or Vice Chancellors. We also did not know that after our first reunion in Lagos some four odd years ago, we would lose two or three persons from the group. So, when we danced away to old school songs in Abuja it was both to glorify God and to revive old pleasant memories when our feet were still swift and our legs sturdy.
This is not a reunion narrative. It is about betrayal and backstabbing from close people. As a young man when I read Jesus Christ’s statement: ‘And a man’s foes shall be they of his own household’ (Matthew 10:26), it did not really make sense to me. How? Why? How can one’s foe be people from the same ancestral tree? The same family. Siblings sometimes. In the course of writing this essay, I found out that some siblings have not spoken to each in ten years!
Later, I encountered African proverbs on betrayal. The Urhobo say: ‘the person you asked to blow the speck from one’s eyes ate pepper before doing so. The Yoruba put it this way: ‘the one who will bite you is the one who eats with you’. The Akan say: ‘When the crocodile eats its own child, what will it do to a stranger? In Swahili, the proverb is a comment on the pain of betrayal: ‘a friend who betrays you is worse than an enemy. The Zulu say: ‘do not show your wounds to someone who does not feel your pains. The Hausa say: ‘the hand that strokes you can also slap you. The Luo in Kenya put it this way: ‘if your brother sells you, the stranger will buy you cheap,
It began to make sense after I had moved on in life both career-wise and chronologically. The biblical story of Joseph and his brothers introduced me to sibling rivalry. Any time I watch the movie Joseph, I am always fascinated by the scene where Joseph revealed his identity to his treacherous and vile brothers. The brothers had thought he would take revenge. No. He didn’t. He showed them love. I am sure they must have felt very miserable about the whole incident. The man who betrayed Christ was one of his disciples. He betrayed his master with a kiss. A kiss ought to be a symbol of love. But in the case of Judas, it was used to betray his master.
Different people have sad stories to tell about how a close family person betrayed them. Indeed, some have not been on speaking terms. In a very extreme case, a younger sibling refused to attend the funeral of his elder brother!
You remit money home and trust a family member to build a house. When you finally visit, there is no house anywhere. The pictures he had been sending were pictures of land belonging to someone else. Is it the one about a brother who cornered land meant for his siblings and threatened to finish the others if they as much as raised their voice against him? Because he lives in the village and is known to be fetish, everyone steers clear of him. Their father had warned them that never in life should they fight over land! My own father also warned me about fighting over land!
My old schoolmate talked about a domestic worker who had worked for his parents, and when the patriarch passed away, he inherited the young man. He trusted him. He trusted the man more than his blood relations. He offered to train him, the guy refused to go beyond secondary school. The domestic staff lived in his house and visited the father’s building twice a week. Last month he received a call from neighbours in Benin. He travelled home to meet his house vandalized. Stripped bare. The domestic staff was nowhere to be found. He had vanished into thin air. Just like that. The police could do nothing tangible to trace. When my friend realized the police were milking him dry, he gave up and committed the traitor to God.
The next story came from another source. It is the story of a cousin whose father had helped this friend to buy a piece of land in a choice location. After a while, the father passed away and his son took over watching over the land, farming on it, and generally behaving like a good caretaker. Of course he received stipends from the land owner. He got the shock of his life when he found out later that this cousin had sold off the land and disappeared. There was nothing he could do. He was family. Very close.
The third story from my research came from a friend who kept receiving threat messages that his wife would be kidnapped if she came home. He used to travel home every December. He didn’t travel that year. Next December, the calls started again. He reported to the DSS. Finally, the culprit was caught. It turned out that it was his younger brother whom he had helped that was behind the kidnap threats. He was promptly arrested. A man’s foes shall be they of his own household!
I once had a driver who became family. I had engaged him as a washman. But he soon showed that he had other skills. I entrusted the cars to him. He would travel alone to my country home in Delta State with bought items and deliver them. Everyone in the extended family knew him. In fact, there was a day he made the trip from Lagos to Oghara in Delta state twice when he had to ferry the household items of a sister-in-law whose husband had died suddenly. He returned around 1am! Such hard work. I gave him a room in my boys’ quarters. Suddenly he disappeared. Fellow occupants in the boys’ quarters said he drove a newly-purchased car to Benin. When after three days we didn’t see him, I went to the police. ‘Oga that man dey run. E don do bad thing’, the desk officer told me. How do you know for sure that he was on the run? I asked. ‘It happens all the time. We get such reports. The fellow is still on the run.
We got permission to open the door. When the door was forced open, he had cleared everything, including items which belonged to the widow that he brought from Oghara! He was indeed on the run. He had even sublet the room to some students at an outrageous amount!
A man living in Lagos sent monies home for a house to be built by his elder brother. And when he went home in December, nothing was on the ground. He collapsed when he found out what his brother had diverted the monies to building his house. He never fully recovered because he died shortly after! ‘The insect which eats the vegetable in inside the vegetable!
So, what must one do to stay safe? Stop having friends? Not possible. Treat all friends as potential betrayers? May be. The Pentecostals talk about ‘unfriendly friends! No wonder the Bambara of Mali say: ‘a house built with the help of a friend collapses when that friend becomes an enemy! The clincher comes from the Urhobo proverbs which says: ‘I bared my itchy back for assistance in scratching it; but my helper had talons of thorns!
heghagha@yahoo.com
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