THE LAST LEAF OF MY BLACK BRAIN BOX

The cruelty that has now come to stay is probably worse than what was before now, imagined or suffered; from cruelty of the heart, to a manifestation of desires by works or action. Evangelists in the western, eastern, and southern parts of Nigeria no longer go from door to door to share the word of God with the heathens as frequently as before – the North is a no go area as the evangelists are merely God’s servants and not miracle workers skilled at converting machine gun bullets to the harmonious vamping from a grand piano. This could have easily taken the form of “the trial of the black church” but there is no way we can say the churches have come with clean hands – they are not being tested, they have chosen to be tempted. Rev Samuel, I am nursing a heavy heart with a contagious riotous veneer somewhere patched in my black brain box. I have been writing every night – and like the scribes of old, I have been keeping records. Please I am here on my knees, Your Grace, not because I want you to pray for me – this intercessory prayer and daily communion has never been more banal and futile an exercise after all. I just want to pour out my confusions on your graveyard silence and hope that this therapy heals my fractured and tortured internal recess. I think there is a lot of foolishness in the world and I have found those responsible for this common sickness – it is not taking the form of “bullets in the sentinel” because the more a sentinel exposes the objectionable behaviour of the crime overlords, a journalist is buried – so I bring my last scroll to your confessional in the form of “the last leaf” because my confessions may be sinful, despite its complexities, but must be said to ease my brain from the tall suffering; this is because I hope I miraculously get struck with Alzheimer after airing the crucible my tongue, weathers.

I find it quite gauche to tell people that one of the things that make me vomit and retch, is the sight of people who are not just natural and original. Rev Samuel, do you not think that the sickness and sadness in Lana Del Rey’s voice or the cracking stretch marks on an average buttock, fulfils your belief that we were never made perfect? Maybe you do not share same examples because if you had your chance, you will do a lip tightening to have your lower lip finally relieve your jaw as is common in your country, The States. But as regards character, I suppose you hold that the old whites in Dallas are persons who enjoy minding their own businesses and serving their God with less doctrinal conflicts. I will not suffer your ears with further mysteries – the blacks no longer seek the Jesus you described as The Saviour of the world. The black priests here have imposed God’s calling on themselves, and they had to so do because the black people only love the prophet with a healing balm. They criticize you and your missionaries because you only teach the bible and break bread. Forgive me, Your Grace, if I am rendering tittle-tattle, but it has become necessary I let you know that I was starting to buy their thoughts that you are not the man called by God until Rev King was convicted in a Nigerian court. The news gets scarier that some big denominations here have in their foundation, human beings – black souls for a black magic under a black Jesus. I fear to pray as you taught, as I am made to savvy that you come from a country with little witches not open to herbs and dependable juju. But I do not still understand why it is spreading that I have to speak in unknown tongues before my prayers reach heaven, or that I have to be threatened with scriptures that I should better give God my entire earning if I want to have my migraine fizzled out. Your kinds have found it quite burdensome to appreciate the black nature of my skin, and I have found it equally burdensome to adjust to the cultureless society you were conceived into – I appreciated your wisdom that these are part of imperfections, years ago, but I fear the black people are no longer original – they seem towing the line of a yoking with people of your colour and this makes me scared for the morsel of culture, like respect for elders, not yet contaminated by your kind via the teenage love affair on channels on my Dstv. Jumbo, my friend’s cousin, came back from The States with a whole lot of niggotry escaping his mouth and hanging carelessly in the air – he ends every word with a curse and throws a staid laughter in between his teeth. Rev Samuel, there are too many conflicts in this world and pointers are now suggestive that your race is the dickens guised as a deacon with white robes. But I fail to believe that your race contributed to the penitence of Jumbo because it is almost ineluctable to live in a white land for three months and lose your mother tongue – this is not to say, however, that your race is without a blemish. I have been making lazy scratches on my black thigh for three nights now; I have been doing this unconsciously, while I quiz my existence as a black man. 

I remember your preaching, Your Grace, that sunny afternoon. You had just started talking about the need for unity and love to fill our soul. It was a rich sermon which had put the necessary fear in my mind that Jesus comes quickly and judgement was inevitable. You read from the second epistle of Paul to the Thessalonians that the antichrist will come with deception to pollute the weak, partial, and some supposed strong Christians; but when I read preceding verses, I saw that God declared He will cause deception to fill the minds of them that never believed when the good news was preached – I was clogged in my heart hoping you explain this to me once you detach yourself from your vestment and cassock after the recessional hymn. But in the course of waiting for you, I was trapped in my mind; I allowed my mind take me kilometres where I could see Adam and Eve in their white skinned nakedness. I wondered how I came to know blackness as though there was a creation from God the Holy Book left out, or my origin was from the apes named by Adam. I considered my forefathers were the descendants of Ham cursed by Noah, his father, for seeing his nakedness and instead of covering it, went to make it a discussion with Shem and Japheth. I felt the ache in my stomach when the names, Ham and Canaan were connected with the word “slavery” – the profusion of sweats in my pants was fast approaching as I swiped past different articles in my brain of slavery of the Blacks in America in 1619; the Portuguese had had their share in 1441; the up-to-date use of the enslaved Mauritanians are used as bonded labour though the act was earlier criminalised in August 2007; the second Sudanese civil war had humans, grabbed like tickets, walk into serfdom from 1983-2005; the scary truth of slavery’s ugly head in Senegambia; the 90 years of bondage of the Malians; the slavery of Kanem and the people of Nigeria, Ghana, to mention a few. But I could not suck the Ham hypothesis any further because it was highly unlikely that mutation could have a white man from Adam know the darkness of Steven Appiah of Ghana that you suspect his sweats could stain a white paper – if today there are white men in Kenya doing businesses, why has mutation not sucked the juice of his skin to the point of eclipse? Rev Samuel, I also resolved that I would regurgitate this question the moment you finished your vestry meeting. Almost immediately, my muse had segued into another possibility. I feared that the dolour and unthinkable throes the slaves with my skin colour faced, forced them to cling to hope, and from hope to an abstract helper called God, and to an embrace of faith and assurance that their rescue shall so come and His mighty clincher shall wipe out the White race. I know you advised me one evening when we had a biblical tete a tete, that it was good to know your roots so that one does not live a life without a map or destination – I did not forget your inserted reservation that in all my quest and quizzing, I avoid sinning against a God that is still drawn and designed by artists to having different skin tones. I had to leave the cathedral when I saw the face worn by the second white priest the moment I told him the tale my mind unwrapped with a suspecting hornswoggle – he had his nose lifted as though I smelt of shit, or there was so much sin fired up from my mouth causing an untold stench around his geneva gown and preaching scarf. I felt sorry for making him uncomfortable but felt bruised at the possibility he suffered negrophobia. May be I resolved that the blacks were unique; it’s been a year now, so I am not certain as to my take that very day.

It is very difficult these days to show care for a fellow black without it being called a political strategy even when you are honestly pained by the level of starvation and deaths of the black race. It is pretty much the fault of the erstwhile president of Nigeria who gave make-believes in his speech during manifesto days that now gives every appearance of kindness, a raised brow. I remember the prevarication spewed from the gob of Chris Okotie that God had called him to intervene in the crises in Nigeria by becoming the president – he lost like a toddler chasing Gareth Bale in the famous field event, football. But Rev Samuel, I know it is called hustle. Despite the blacks’ inadequacies especially in parliamentary sittings, it is to my mind that the first caitiff is your race, particularly your country – The United States of America. I have been reading some books in my chalky library, and I was convinced that your kind are the anti-culture and anti-independent race rapid to have signed anti-progress pact with the devil so long as you do not go back to being second in the world rank you even influence – the whole supremacy and questionable consistency like the parody of the billboard. I saw the published material by Walter Rodney and Chinweizu behind the pew on the last row of the cathedral. I read the contents and got convinced deep down that your race stands as one key element behind the folly on the blacks’ territory – using the blacks for slavery with a mirror exchange, such odd gesture. How your race so whipped the back of the blacks on a black soil put me in tears and an impulsive vigour to apply my sharp fangs on their white faces to give it a touch of red. Behind the civil war was the role of the British giving posh explosives to the brainwashed Northerners that they may be comfortable at re-defining Biafra – the why question is the oil answer. When I pondered on the reason why your race kept mistaken us for bread on good occasions or spoilt rice pilaf on bad moments, I forced the ugly answer that I was born to be inferior down my trachea, and with hope that it escaped from my anus. The too much trumping by the extant president of your country has extended further as he has chosen to stop being an emergency donor to the crisis-prone black community; the affected countries happen to be my country, Nigeria, as well as Somalia and South Sudan. I was indeed gobsmacked when the pleaders of his conscience reminded him that his decision could have the affected black countries join the Moslem nations, especially South Sudan with over 2.9 indigenes coping with kwashiorkor or less because of food-crisis, in bringing armed attack on the citizens of America. I was sore in my heart and it was not due to the cheap plonk I had just emptied while in my pen desk. The thought of the whites gave an itch in saved hairs in my pubic regions; the annoyance that dwelt in my heart after the death of Christopher Allen, an American Journalist, was that the names of the blacks never get mentioned except with a racial smirk with subtle sarcastic intents – fine, I considered my emotions having a better part of me that night so chose to retire my eyes from the BBC news to a smudgy legal article centred on international rules. Your state really has the whole world in trouble as they extended their peculiar supremacy theory to Nicaragua over weapons not theirs, and the uncalled-for attack on Iraq, to mention a few – they must see the world as some toasted bread they give a gradual gnaw at with enough lies to justify their actions in the political market they structured. This is a pointer to your government as a primary traducer and participant in the common sickness of the world. 

To be candid, I was at the brink of another resolution – a decision to suppress Sister Macbeth by stupefying means in order to beat the spirit off her skeletons when she called me Negro with a repugnant glance during a bible-study rehearsal – but I changed my mind because she was really apologetic when I went all ice cold immediately. It got me thinking, was there need to call the white indigenes the second problem to the world’s malady? Having asterisked the American government as the number one unwanted plant on earth’s vegetation – to remember the shooting of Terence Crutcher by the white Officer Betty Shelby in Tulsa, Oklahoma, last year, never stops giving me the phobia to settle in the your country. But I decided to call the indigenes in your community the second destructive element anytime I got pop-up notifications from one of my role models in Charlottesville. He styles his messages that the letters appear ready to shed tears; he wrote me often how he assisted bullied Negroes in the University of Virginia, Charlottesville. I concluded I was not incorrect but the racial discrimination had to be given a dim view if the white indigenes be asterisked as the next tinge to the crisis of the globe. It is globally accepted that blacks cannot be racist; it is shocking how the South Africans char the skins of Nigerians like their dark skin is peculiar thus becoming a sweet smelling savour to whatever spirit in a Hindu festival. When I remember Balotelli being called a monkey because of his charcoal skin, I am forced not to be compassionate since he will rather play for Italy than trace his origin to his black tribe. The love for the black man has remained a natural instinct all my life but I must have thought too broadly that the feeling was mutual – even the Money Mayweather went on air to stress that he cannot use his money to support a black cause as no black man helped him. I saw in my third eye, certain commonalities that most blacks shared in unison – the discovery amused me and that was a relief to my stagnant melancholia. Out of the conflicts in my mind, I did not asterisk the indigenes of your country as the second problem. With a sip of hot milk the following night, I groped expectantly for a paper I suspected had fallen right behind my book shelf. It was a paper that had the details of what I considered to be the next element.

Too many things are fictional and it nauseates me sometimes, amuses me sometimes, and if it is some artificial boob job, it may distract me. Rev Samuel, I wonder how you cope with all the lovely voluptuous girls blessed with roundish outspoken gluteus maximus that rush to your rectory for one physical, emotional, or spiritual concern. It is this your righteous deed that really forced me to restrain my eyes from giving Uju’s rear end a proper valuation like it were some priceless jewels. Do not be disappointed for too long, Father, because I have stopped coming for the bible study programme. I noticed a growing reality in the black churches I read about in a detailed paper I found in my study earlier and it caused some seizures in my chest region. Rev Samuel, I do not know if you are aware that there are lot of evil practices prevalent in the black churches outside our location, Ojota. I developed cold feet at your bible teachings every Tuesday because they seemed ethereal or too utopian – I quizzed the thick darkness those times when I struggled how best not to call Proverbs 29:2 a fictional message like a robot with a human heart and emotions. The thing is, the righteous will never rule the black land but you seem to believe they will rule someday. I have been in utter confusion whenever you talk of the perilous times we are facing – which we have been facing before my birth, your birth, and for how long? Who knows? – But yet you teach us the fruits of a man with righteous deed and the good thing that will happen if we be righteous. If we are to know rapture soon with all the cues of the end gaining muscle like the flood in Texas, why become evasive with the reality that the world can know no more good? It should not be because of the young ones who remain doli incapax, that the congregation do not be in the know as far as the word entire denotes. Just away from Ojota was the shocker in Port Harcourt where a pastor was nabbed pounding a baby; the Royal Command Ministry in Cross Rivers had their underpants thrown into the public as it was discovered that a human heart was used to set up their altar – the others are too grievous that I cannot vouch for a sleep without nightmares if I mention them. Even Serwaa, my Ghanaian friend, is troubled by what rocks the boat of the black church – the offerings are endless with the whole focus on building a vicarage, a big church with extended branches, and even schools to university level that the General Overseer is the direct opposite of his disciples like a tiki taka possession game against a team from Sheffield. The black church was thus asterisked as one of the sacral strumpet that plagued the community – it sought the least thing in God’s kingdom, Rev Samuel.

I may need narcotics to take me back to the first day I saw the world with my mother’s colostrum welcoming me into the feel of breast milk, but I do remember the good culture as it then was. Just like Ghana, we had diverse ethnic groups with their unique customs and traditions – the native food, manner of dressing, mode of greeting and welcoming visitors, and the language. My grandfather then had read the history of Ghana and looked for any ear in the parlour that was in search for such knowledge. He had talked about the Ashanti and Fanti people having an interesting cultural variation from Moshi-Dagbani, Ewe, and Ga, because affiliation within the clan was through women – he gave a supplemental that mothers had a higher status as their point of view, people got blood from mothers in the two mentioned clans. Many other things that displayed etiquette were similar largely. He had said. The good morning greetings made blessings come from every elderly person, and it was enough to make you smile when you were called by your native pet names. But there is a whole but now especially as the children of God on barefoot, or those without piercings, or the tongue magicians, or those with skirts short-for-Christ as He is understood to look to intent rather than the physiognomy, or those that still wear sack clothes on Easter Sunday and Christmas, have missed the purpose. They carried upon their hands more of their family values or morality and interpreted the bible to include both – to question them is to argue like roadside harlots exchanging competence-on-bed slurs – that you wonder how they can effectively obey the difficult commandments of God and still attach addendums. They never pass the test. The average black man is a judge of whoever walks past his hood; he his either calling Tasha Cobbs a new intake in illuminanti for walking into the studio with Nicki Minaj, or he calling Rihanna a whore for grinding on Drake, and allegedly kissing a girl – the kissing is yucky if such acts were not already practised in the complaining black countries. Sadly, it is a norm. Rev Samuel, I was not complaining overtly with the additional rules by the common black man, but the fact that the blacks travel to your country bearing English names show they embrace your cultureless society where children are not beaten when they do some evil. Your culture is fast swallowing mine that I fear my identity is at the verge of being prehistoric like the Mammoths. The Nollywood and Ghallywood movies are now giving horny girls a shot to flash their nudities and performances as against the morals the early black men had so taught. The black hood is verily another factor behind the malady. The niggotry syndrome had shot the black man’s neocortex and given him the spirit of hate – you never try to prank 50 Cent and not have him flash his revolver, and you often see Kendrick Lamar drop diss rap songs as though he is insecure, or warding off unborn rap attack from other rappers, or he be fighting the dybbuk or a succubus. But there are just too much to drop on this particular point – I just tire of the lot. I left the other findings of the black man’s in a fire after reading it to Eke Martins who kept encouraging me in the black typical language saying write it before you die. Rev Samuel, the government is the last vomit I must point out briefly as my mouth is bereft of water and much saliva. 

The black government is probably the pith of my concerns. The thieves are in the government houses. Deziani needed just six years to show how determined she was to save money to earn her long trip to hell fire. From Mugabe to Buhari reflects the insatiable desire of man to so quest for a position healthy for a lesser age. The black governments stand accused of corruption – example is the emotional trial of Jacob Zuma – that it is now called by even the government to be the problem of the country in total; till today, the government is still looking for the corruption blue pen to call us liberated. But how will there be liberation from a person who threatened heads will roll if he does not become president in the early years of this century, Rev Samuel? I am not surprised that the government jobs are gotten by the well connected, but I was touched in my heart when I listened to a supposed educated Nigerian in Kogi state say that he feels God is angry with his people because the strange sickness was said to have killed over fifty indigenes of a rural area – God or the Devil is not responsible for the sleeping disease of the State Governor and his fratz to bringing medical experts from the capital or popular urban health centres to arrest the issue; they leave the community to a belief that they are cursed by the supreme being. I had to turn off my television, Father, when Obasanjo was asked what could be the way forward for Nigerians. He said Nigerians should cleanse their heart and relief it from filth and corrupt footings – same man that interestingly championed the birth of corruption now talks about cleansing with the intrepid mannerism like the light of God had shone upon him on his way to his money-farm. No I am tired, this is a sickening trend, because the government is surprisingly decaying the retrograding educational system by owing the association responsible for developing the public universities; the government have made a move they may even call heroic having reduced the cut-off mark of jamb to 120. The government has now made the jobless flee to your country to sweep the streets downtown in Skid Row area, Los Angeles, to grab some greenback to purchase an omelette with cheap juice in the Chipotle Mexican Grill, Compton. They are forced to become slaves there because their Government performed far less than yours.

I am here to tell you that these confusions will not follow me to Brazil. I have been advised to go over there to see the Latinos display dexterity in swerving waists like Beckham’s bender if my worry must know a pause. I will go start a new life there, find new hobbies other than writing manuscripts portraying the black community as it gives me endless headaches; who knows, I may take to photography and have the feel of paparazzi; I will always keep in touch so long as my credit cards are no worries; I must relieve my sight from the Nigerians who forward false messages of 666 on Obama’s head, or wear sack clothes whenever they hear from deceiving anti-Christ that Jesus will come after 30 days – their hypocrisy is amazingly unknown to them especially when they resume their jewelleries and human  hair. Finding my source of origin has proved abortive so I leave this last leaf with you, Rev Samuel, to free my mind. I will travel by canoe, do not bother advising I stay to save for a flight ticket. We are all living dead here, after all. If I perish, I perish.

OKOCHA OBED