Read Online Blood Is Dirt by Robert Wilson - Free Book Online Page B

An officer type levered himself out of the Land Rover and removed a Browning pistol from a holster on his hip. The gun hung down his side in a slack hand. He approached the window and rested the gun on the ledge and looked at us from under his brow.
    â€˜We’re looking for Major Okaka. This is Dr Bagado from Ibadan.’
    Bagado leaned across me and said something in Yoruba to the officer. The officer’s other hand came up on the window and he leaned on the car as if he was going to roll it over. He grinned and spoke with an English accent that he must have picked up from the World Service in the fifties.
    â€˜There is no Major Okaka on this exercise. We’re not expecting a Dr Bagado. You have entered a restricted area. If you return to the main road nothing more will be said. If, however, you prove yourselves troublesome we shall have to escort you down to Lagos for interrogation. Your passports, please.’
    He flicked though our passports, the Browning still in his hand, his finger on the trigger and a certain studied carelessness in where he was pointing it.
    â€˜Who is the officer in command of this army exercise?’ asked Bagado.
    â€˜That is none of your business. You just go back to the main road. It’s dangerous out here. If you wish, my men can escort you back to the frontier and ensure that you cross the border safely.’
    â€˜That won’t be necessary... er, Major...?’
    â€˜Captain Mundo.’
    He returned our passports and took us back to the main road. We drove towards Meko. The two vehicles disappeared back into the bush. Four kilometres outside Meko we came across a man walking in the dust at the side of the road, his jacket thrown over his shoulder and his white shirt filthy and patched dark by the hot morning sun. His trousers were no better. He looked as if he’d been kicked around. We offered him a lift. He removed a pair of black-framed glasses held together above his nose by electrician’s tape. He wiped the sweat out of his eyes and got in. His name was Sam Ifaki and he worked for a weekly news magazine called
Progress.
    â€˜Are you making any?’ I asked.
    â€˜Not here.’
    â€˜What’ve you been doing?’
    â€˜Looking around.’
    â€˜Akata village?’
    â€˜Not any more.’
    â€˜Those army people roll you around in the dirt and send you back?’
    â€˜Army people,’ he said. ‘They’re all the same, army people.’
    â€˜So you’re not interested in Akata any more?’
    â€˜It’s not my job. I was looking at a farming project outside Ayeforo. Some people told me there’s something happening near Meko. I come. These people are rough with me. Tell me this business is none of mine. They tell me to go. So I go. If I don’t, they kill me. They say it’s nothing to them.’
    â€˜What did you hear about Akata?’
    â€˜Some sickness. They talk about the gods and such. That’s why I’m interested.
Progress
likes to report on witchcraft. You know, we like to show the people this pile of rubbish. When people get sick it’s not because of the gods, unless they think it’s god business putting faeces in the water supply. Nine times out of ten this is the problem. We’ve been having some rain. Strange for this time of year. Things are messed up, is all.’
    â€˜We’ve heard about deformed babies in Akata.’
    â€˜And sick cattle,’ said Sam, squeezing the bridge of his glasses, ‘and crops dying. Orishala is angry. Always the same thing.’
    We arrived in Meko at lunchtime. Sam took us to a chop bar where an old man wearing a shift patched together from polypropylene fertilizer sacks sat outside. He had cataracts over both eyes and tapped the ground in front of him with a heavy stick as if summoning an audience for a foreign potentate. Inside, a couple of petrol barons, who sold cheap Nigerian gasoline in Kétou for half the Benin