I marched gently on the small road that leads to the Ogbe-Ijoh waterside. On both sides of the road were shops. They were opened and displayed toys, clothes, beverages, notebooks, musical cassettes, plastic buckets, and tins of milk, bags of kpokpo-garri and other numerous items for prospective buyers to purchase.
I marched gently on the small road that leads to the Ogbe-Ijoh waterside. On both sides of the road were shops. They were opened and displayed toys, clothes, beverages, notebooks, musical cassettes, plastic buckets, and tins of milk, bags of kpokpo-garri and other numerous items for prospective buyers to purchase.
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Kpokpo-garri is a special delicacy of the western Niger Delta peoples, which is extracted from cassava tuber. The brown skin of the cassava tuber when harvested is removed. Then the white part of the tuber is partially grounded, and sun-dried or oven-dried, for some days to become Kpokpo-garri. In some part of the state, instead of drying the cassava in the sun, the women usually spread the semi-grounded white cassava on sack bags or baskets near gas flaring sites to dry without minding the health hazards associated with it.
I walked into a small block-walled building with a corrugated iron sheet roof after few a seconds of looking at some items on display for sale there. The house serves as the ticket office for passengers traveling in different fibre boats (speed boats,) to the various riverine communities. I had just paid one thousand seven hundred naira (about eleven dollars,) for a ticket and was stepping out, when an old woman signaled me on to come to her shop.
I stood briefly to contemplate awhile as to why the old woman called me. I walked to her shop. She wore an old black t-shirt and on it the shirt read, “Air walk born in from the 80’s.” She was in her mid-eighties, but looked healthy, and lively, like a woman in her early fifties. She walked into her shop and brought a small polythene bag full of kpokpo-garri, and gave it to me.
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Her Pidgin English was poor, but she speaks her native Urhobo language very well. A young, lovely lady who owns a shop closer to her told me that the old woman said that I am her son, and that I should take the items. I didn’t want to be impolite to the old, kind Urhobo woman. I wouldn’t reject her gift either. I took it, looked at it and smiled. Took some pieces out and pushed it into my mouth, and crushed it with my teeth and nodded my head, to indicate that the delicacy was very palatable.
The old woman looked at me and smiled heartily, and said something in her Urhobo language which I didn’t understand. I didn’t wait to find out what she said. But as I was about to leave them, the young lady, who became my unsolicited translator, asked me whether I was a soldier. I replied instantly, and asked whether she likes soldiers. The lady smiled and said “no.” I asked why. She replied that soldiers hardly stay at a place, and they are terrible womanizers. I laughed, and told her that my work is worse than that of soldiers, because no matter how soldiers frequently move about, they are always under the control of their superiors.
Then I told them both that I am going to the Gbaramatu area, and I don’t have a home there, and won’t come back today. She translated all I said to the industrious old woman. And they stood in suspense to learn about my work, which surprised me. I told them that I travel about and write on what I see: travel journalism expeditions.
“Is that not journalist work?” she inquired. “Yes, it is,” I said. “I like your work, because you don’t kill anybody,” she said. They said I shouldn’t fear and that God is already with me. They expected me to affirm by saying “Amen!” But I laughed, and refused to say it. I bade them a warm “good-bye.” They watched me as I walked down the waterside like a troubled soldier entering an awful battlefield.
The Ogbe-Ijoh, or Ijaw waterside, is a small enclave on the south-western axis of the state. On its right side was a concrete jetty. The rectangular-shaped iron on the jetty, which provided some kind of wedge for its users, are worn-out. Beside the jetty are also small wooden shops at the shoreline. They were decaying, and are falling apart. The shops have become a refuse dumping site that smells very bad. On the left, was another shop built of wood, as well. Nigeria’s Nollywood video cassettes, Compact Discs, and Digital Versatile Discs (DVDs) were sold in one. All over the wooden stall were colourful posters of the comic Nollywood film, ‘Dumebi Goes to School’ a 2013 movie. In this movie, Mercy Johnson, the talented, award-winning actress, performed in a role depicting an ignorant married village girl. The husband sent her to school to learn how to read and write, and be civilized. Not Mercy Johnson, but Dumebi constituted a terrible embarrassment to her educated, and rich husband, later in the film. When I saw Dumebi, Mercy Johnson, with her school bag in the poster, I was attracted to it, because I had watched the entertaining and funny film.
Part of the Ogbe-Ijoh riverbank on the left is built on an elevated wooden platform. One of the ramshackled stalls there had a large flex banner, and on it was written, “Tompolo Foundation Community health insurance for the Gbaramatu Kingdom by All Heath Services Limited. Registration of Beneficiaries Registration for the above will be carried out for the indigenes of Gbaramatu Kingdom as follows: Date – Monday, 24th – Saturday 29th, March, 2014. Time – 9.00am – 4.00pm daily. Venue – Okerenkoko Cottage Hospital. – Promoting effective and qualitative health delivery for the less privileged. Signed; Tompolo Foundation.”
Closer to the banner was another flex banner, though smaller and had on it: “Kenyangbene Development Party (KDP). Motto: Think positive… life goes on. Let love lead. Vote Mr. Freeborn Tonfanwei for Chairman, Kenyangbene Community” with a picture of Freeborn.
There was also another poster, though not on the expensive flex sheet, but on paper. It was that of Tuwayeri Jonathan with his picture, “Kenyangbene Development Party (KDP). Motto: - Think positive. Life goes on. Vote Engineer Tuwayeri Jonathan for Kenyagbene Community PRO”. I was told the KDP election conducted in April, 2014, was peaceful, but Freeborn Tonfanwei didn’t win. Even Jonathan was not successful. Naira Ogoba emerged as the Chairman of the Kenyagbene. Kenyagbene is one of the small and new Ijaw communities around the Chevron’s Abiteye oil facility area.
At the waterfront, the tide was full. Debris, such as pieces of wood, wooden baskets, bottles of eva water, among a variety of rubbish, balanced delicately on the surface of water hyacinth on the shoreline. All dancing like the Owigiri dancers to the rhyme of the tidal flow. On one side of the riverside, four motorized dug-out canoes, measuring about fifteen to twenty metres, respectively, were anchored. They had travelled from a long distance during the night and arrived there early that morning. They were offloading goods, mainly dried fish in different sizes of baskets. The variety of fish would be taken to different markets in and outside the western delta. The aroma of the fish was strong, and affected my breathing.
About ten thirty a.m., we sat on the 14-passenger speedboat, with a seventy-five Enduro Yamaha engine to propel it. The Yamaha and Tohatsu outboard engines that are common in a lot of riverine communities in the Niger Delta, are Japanese-made outboard engines. The spare parts of these engines, according to the users, are easier to find than those manufactured in the United States of America (USA.) The American-made spare parts are scarce, and difficult to find in the area. Beside the engine at the back of the speedboat there were four, sixty-litre plastic jerry-cans filled with the petrol/fuel. A pipe linked the engine to one of the fuel of jerry cans. When one was exhausted, the driver inserted the fuel pipe into another one of the fuel cans, until the boat would get to its terminus. The driver here wore a red t-shirt with these words, “Support the Canadian troops to protect our future”.
The boat driver was a smallish man with bloodshot eyes. I didn’t know that the man would be our driver. While I was standing at the waterside, I saw him with six other persons, sitting on a bench, and drinking a small plastic can of Sapele water, and smoking Indian hemp. Sapele is an old town in the Delta State, located on its north-west.
Sepele is also one the earliest places in the region where the brewing of the highly intoxicating gin started, hence the name, Sepele Water. The gin, which is distilled from palm wine, is nicknamed after the town. The people of Sepele and its environs also consume it a lot. Each area where massive production and consumption of Sepele water is done, Nigerians have their special name for it. ln Abua/Odual LGA, the Ijaw community located on the western edge of Rivers State, where the gin(Sepele Water) is distilled in commercial quantity, is nicknamed, ‘ Abua First Eleven’.
I sat on the first row with other two passengers. The boat had pictures of Temitope Balogun Joshua, popularly called “Senior Prophet T.B. Joshua.” He is the Lagos-based televangelist. “Possess your possession in Jesus name. I prophesy breakthrough in your challenges in Jesus name Amen,” were stickers with pictures of T.B. Joshua smiling and waving his right hand, glued on the boat. Apart from our boat, other boats at the waterside had such stickers pasted all over them, as well. T.B. Joshua is one of those numerous Nigerian Pentecostal preachers whose assertions of performing healings and other miracles are contentious. As we took off from the Ogbe-Ijoh shore, the driver removed the engine cover. A plume of thick white smoke drifted out into the atmosphere, likely contributing to global warming. The engine oil that is added to the fuel causes the smoke. When one fills the sixty litres of jerry can with fuel, it is advisable to add at least two bottles of fresh engine oil into each sixty litres of jerry can, because if one uses only fuel without adding the oil, it will damage the engine. Using the engine with the oil, and fuel mixed will enhance its durability, especially in the tropics, according to the users.
We sailed away from the Ogbe-Ijoh shore, passing through Warri River and the driver later covered the engine. We had spent about five minutes when the engine went off. Some water hyacinths in the river had clotted the propeller wheel. The driver lifted the engine from the water, removed them, and started the engine again. We passed some vessels anchored at the waterways; some are sea trucks, and some are huge vessels.
There was one with “503 Mary” inscription on it, and a clean Nigerian flag. It was around this place that I saw six Nigerian police officers. The engine of their boat had broken down, and they were struggling to repair it. It was then I realized I did not have my life jacket on. In fact, on the boat, nobody had one. I complained, and almost everybody on-board said that the buoyancy vest “can’t save anybody if there was an accident, but (only) God. We argued about that. If we were closer to the shore, I would have dropped from the boat. We passed by the Refinery tank farm in the Ubeji community area in the Warri South LGA, where I brought out my huge camera, and took pictures of the tank farms.
The river waves were becoming stronger. The driver who had covered his engine head dared the waves with his small boat, and it shook as if it was about to capsize. We passed the big Warri River where the fresh, non-salty water, flows through. The boat jumped from one rough ripple to another, when it passed by other boats, too. We headed on a north-west course, into the Bennett Island area where the Mangrove trees along the creeks looked fresh and healthy.
A few minutes into the middle of the creek, our boat slowed down. There was a massive houseboat that could be seen, and written on it read: “Lulu IV”. A tall, lanky soldier waving a big bottle of Eva water, like a riffle, looked at our boat and smiled. “Thank you, officer.” the boat driver roared. “Oga, you know the man?” I asked him teasingly. “Nobody wey dey for creek wey I nor know. That soldier is my boy.” He said these words boastfully, as his red-rimmed eyes shone frightfully. He pointed with his right hand aimlessly in the air to stress his prominence, while holding the handle of the engine with his left hand. Sometimes we inevitably put our lives in Nigeria in the control of drug abusers, and abnormal people like the boat driver and we always regret it at the end.
Naagbanton lives in Port Harcourt, Rivers State capital
To be continued.
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