Under the Stars, Surrounded by Hills

From Kubwa to Katampe.

Jan 26, 2024

The last time I wrote to you was after six months of silence. I am writing now after nearly a year. Perhaps I am trying to outdo myself. Perhaps not. There have been drafts and deletes. In the silence, some things have changed. Other things have endured. I am still reading and writing and [re-]nurturing my solitude.

I am here now.

How are you in the home of your body?

Under the Stars, Surrounded by Hills

XXXVII

I, and about 3500 others, spent 21 days at the Abuja NYSC camp, Kubwa. There were as many versions of those 21 days as there were corps members, but we shared a defiant pleasure in each other’s company and a countdown to leaving the camp grounds. For a select few, the countdown ended in seven days or less. Allergies, homesickness and other illnesses—real and performed—earned them exeats, and they would only return to join the passing out parade.

My 21 days were spent: Learning march-past routines—being one of three platoon marchpast leaders—and earning a reputation for taking it too seriously. Having conversations. Enjoying in doses, the range of human company available. Reading, when I could steal minutes or hours. Oscillating between ignoring and indulging in the flirtatious female attention I received. Struggling to keep my phone charged. Struggling even more to stay awake under the sedative influence of the Skills Acquisition & Entrepreneurship Department (SAED) lectures. Trying new cuisines—masa (rice cakes) with pepper or groundnut soup; bole (which is, interestingly, boli, that I am used to having with groundnuts) served with fried fish or meat and a palm oil sauce of tomatoes, onions and peppers; an indulgent fruit salad that Mr. Sani and Mariam, his daughter who laughed easily and teased me every night I ordered the salad for dinner, drizzled over with condensed milk. Improving on old delicacies—a bespoke (since no one else was putting him through such trouble) fluorescent pink smoothie of cucumber, cantaloupe, watermelon, banana, apple, ginger, carrot and beetroot that Mr. Mark made and cooled for me. Mr. Mark also cut pieces of cucumber, lemon and ginger in bottles of water for me, to boost my immunity against the many things the dry, harsh air carried.

Think of me if and when you enjoy that smoothie.

A bulk of my 21 days were spent serving in the Orientation Broadcasting Service (OBS). I applied on the advice of Maami—who was a member during her 21 days, a little over a score of years ago—and my friend—who was a member during his 21 days, a year ago. The number of corps members who applied to join the OBS was close to 200, if not more. The final selection consisted of 37 members who functioned in four departments—photography, reportage, broadcast and technical.

I struggled to balance my platoon’s march-pasts with the OBS’s many duties and focused on the many duties instead. I would spend most of my 21 days in the company of these 35 volunteers,1 especially the team of eight reporters—including myself—that I headed as the Vice-President Editorial. The hours were long and the requirements of the role were interesting—I had, for one, never functioned as a reporter until then, or edited news articles for radio broadcasts. I reported, like all executives, to Mrs Akpofure, who had interviewed and handpicked us. Like most effective administrators, she inspired mixed feelings. Some members were convinced she hated them—and while that is not true, it is not without valid reason. Others generally avoided her. A few tried to flatter her with moderate success. I found her to be pleasantly exacting. She held us all to a standard, often reminding us what she saw in and expected of us when she made her selections, and I could not have worked with a lower standard, even for 21 days.

As my friend teases me about many of the things I engage with—Ọrẹ mi, you always take things too seriously. Perhaps, but I am glad I did.

XXXVIII

“What he knew, he knew from books, and books lied, they made things prettier.”
―A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara.

I never got over the hills that line the parade ground’s panorama. My pleasure with them persists long after those 21 days and I still look out for other members of their ancient slumbering family on Abuja’s varied horizons.

Entrance View of The NYSC Camp, Kubwa. | OBS' Afternoon View of The Parade Ground.

From the OBS’ vantage point during morning sessions on the parade ground, I watched dawn break against the hills. Behind me, hints of shy fogged sunlight grew into a bolder yolk sliding through clouds like permeable dishes. Sheer curtains of fog and the morning’s lulling chill dispelled. The bold orange yolk simmered—its edges blurring in the newfound heat. Dust from thousands of trekking and jogging feet rose to dispel the lingering fog and chill. The yolk became a ball of yellow, then white heat. Against the hills, colours hiked and pushed light upslope fog further upfill until they reached their peaks and the fog rose to join the clouds. Bathed in sunlight, the hills are no longer sober silhouettes. Their slumber and my pleasure, continue.

Staring at those hills for all the time that I did reminds me of the beauty and danger of poetry and a poetic sensibility.

The first time I saw those hills, I stopped, stock-still. People must have walked past me, but I only saw the hills. The farthest hill I could see had already been clawed at by relentless mining activity. I could not bear to think of what would happen if that activity persisted. What would remain? I looked away.

When I looked a third time, approaching my hostel, I recalled a depiction from Toni Morrison’s Paradise, of hills as lovers and how their lovemaking endured through the seasons. I notice now that this happens often. I will witness something and think of how it corresponds to some literature or how literature could attempt to preserve it. I am not alone in that sensibility. In Every Day is for the Thief, Teju Cole’s unnamed narrator returns to his aunt’s house in Lagos after 15 years away from the country. He depicts the “generosity” of the space in contrast to the “cramped English flats and American apartments” he had endured, through existing literature. He acknowledges the palimpsest quality of his narrative when he says, referencing Michael Ondaatje’s Running in the Family, “[p]art of this story has been told before: the broad doorway, the acrobats. These are incidents from a book I love.”

The hills looked nothing like lovers, or lovemaking, even in the most inventive of positions. Still, they reminded me of Morrison. The thought of inventiveness, and its absence in the hills, reminded me of Anne Carson, who exposed me when she wrote in Eros the Bittersweet, “All lovers believe they are inventing love.” These recollections and the tenderness they infuse one’s gaze with is the beauty of that sensibility, that vantage point of experiencing the world.

When I recall my morning baths in those 21 days, I remember the moonlight that diluted the predawn dark and how clear the litter of stars was. The danger is that beauty obscures and transforms. My memory says you were bathing under the stars, surrounded by hills. I have to remind myself that it was also quite cold and anything could have lurked in the grass where I stood on wet lather-sprayed leaves and the reason the air was such a shivering surprise when I came out of the hostel was because the rooms were cramped with bodies and their heat.

Yet, the danger is siamesed to the beauty. In looking at the hills and the sky and the stars, my eyes must rise above the ground. Above my, so to speak, circumstance. If I think only of the hills, I may forget how disgusted I was with my country. How clear the reminder was that my country does not consider me its concern or responsibility.

Beauty preserves. The danger is I may forget I needed preserving. Beauty either is or is insisted on. If we insist long enough, we forget the insistence. I remember those 21 days and recall Aria Aber’s Asylum where she writes “[e]ven poverty can be glamorous, if you insist.”

XXXIX

When receiving change from taxi and okada drivers, I scrutinise the naira notes more and more. Every now and then, there is a torn note that I discover only when the taxi has zoomed off, the exhaust laughing out its faint smoke. Or a cleverly folded one posturing for my acceptance. I have fallen for the posture a few times, only to get home or to a spot where it is wise to stand still and fumble with my wallet, and see the torn or tattered note. Awolowo stares, bespectacled, out of what remains of the note. Ahmadu Bello smiles. Azikiwe slightly parts his lips to say something but doesn’t.

To avoid thinking of the notes as almost-rags and falling-apart-rags, I trace my fingers across their faces as one does a palimpsest bearing memories. Memories of tight fists, hurried crumplings, harsh denim pockets, warm thighs and damp braisers. I fold the note into my wallet to preserve its fragile tender, in its former clever posture, ready to make its way into another hand.

What Awolowo, Ahmadu Bello and Azikiwe’s faces remind me of are the facts of a case I overheard years ago—which I doubt made the news and, if it did, only stayed there long enough to attract shock or disgust in the numbing midst of shocking and disgusting financial news. A man’s house had been seized by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC). The Commission had painted bloodred Xs, in broad artless strokes, over his black gate and cream fence. The strokes bled and dripped as they announced, Under Investigation by the EFCC.

He was under investigation for converting naira notes intended for recycling. The figure ran to the typical tune of tens of millions of naira. He saw those millions of naira going to waste and thought, no. Would he watch Azikiwes and the twin heads of Mai-Bornu and Isong become tissue paper and printing press fodder, which will eventually become roadside wrappings for boli and agbado yiyan? No. Over my dead body.

Before 2020, the CBN disposed of almost-rag notes by burning them. Awolowos, Ahmadu Bellos, Azikiwes and the unidentical twins became indistinguishable ash and smoke, long before they became pitiable falling-apart-rags. While this preserved their honour, it did so at a carbon cost to the environment. So, the CBN proposed to strike a balance by recycling.2 They called for sealed bid proposals from recycling companies that would recycle notes withdrawn from circulation on a monthly or quarterly basis. Successful companies would take over an operation that was formerly carried out in 12 disposal centres across the country and generated a weekly estimate of 100 tons in paper banknotes.3

Perhaps over my dead body was not the solitary declaration of a man saving his countrymen from excretory and oily futures. Even though I only saw the artless streaks on his house, I heard there were others. Over our dead bodies, they swore and brought those palimpsests back into circulation. Every time I see a note falling apart, I think of them.

There is an Azikiwe folded in my wallet. When I first met him, I traced my finger across his face wondering what memories he had. Do you know this story, Sir? Do you recognise the men? Have you heard their chorus? Azikiwe slightly parts his lips to say something.

While at camp, I read Louise Gluck’s Averno, Salman Rushdie’s Shame and parts of Teju Cole’s Known and Strange Things. When I left the Kubwa camp for Katampe, I completed my reading of Teju Cole and started an anthology, Telling Tales, edited by Nadine Gordimer. I dipped in and out of those stories for the rest of December and started my year with Hanya Yanagihara’s A Little Life. With the book’s reputation, some would call that a curious way to start a year. Perhaps. Others will ask if I was already sad and trying to make myself sadder. I can neither confirm nor deny that. Do I have a sweet tooth for melancholia? Guilty. Or is it a masochistic streak? Perhaps.

Yes, the book spares the literary effort to [make] things prettier, or even pretty. Yes, it is harrowing, but what is a humbling unrelenting sadness and a few nightmares when it is siamesed with beauty? When it offers, across its hundreds of pages, profound lessons on how to be—like life, like all our little lives do?

My thoughts about the book are less than answers, but I’ll write to you soon.

XLI

I intend for soon to mean something quicker and more consistent this year. Thank you for being here.

Be tender with yourself.

Love.

Ọbáfẹ́mi

The Unwrapping

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