TRAVELS w/P: Tales of Adventure Here & There

30/03/2013 Saturday Satisfaction

Wow, wow, WOW~!

Christine and Efiom come visiting Thursday night; we grab a cheap bite from Apples, come home and watch a flick with sub-titles.

Saturday we meet Kim at the “Highway Mobile” at noon and catch a taxi to Akamkpa Okyong a good 60 minutes away. We pit stop to see a baby monkey whose mother was killed by hunters for bush meat and is now an unwitting family pet. Kim despairs.

 Getting as far as we can by taxi we hop on motorbikes. Kim, me and our driver make three. Christine and Efiom have their own.

Dropping bags at Christine’s place, we change into bathing suits, hop back on bikes and take a wild ride through heavily creviced foot paths. Stopping at a village house to hire a fisherman and his boat, word spreads about our appearance; those living nearby come to to check out the three white women. Children with bloated bellies run about bare foot and naked. Men fetch beautiful yellow tubular flowers and red hibiscus after I make a casual comment about their beauty.

We venture on, deeper and deeper into dense growth, passing rubber trees and enormous stands of bamboo. Finally we stop, dismount and take a footpath to the edge of a grossly-ooey-gooey-looking river bed and a high-and-dry dugout canoe. On instruction from Efiom we toss our flip flops into the dugout and begin a barefoot wade. Sometimes we sink up to our knees in icky muck. Christine, who has done this umpteen times before, screams out every now and again; Kim and I try to keep our cool, fearing a croc or gator attack. Thankfully it’s fallen mangrove limbs or sharp-edged palm fronds causing Christine’s distress.  After rounding a corner, we stop and wait. Off in the distance four ripped young men wrestle a dugout through ankle deep water and muck. They join us then lead the way through a good half hour more of mucking about. I had hoped to see mangrove but hadn’t anticipated it would be in this fashion.

Just as Kim and I begin doubting we’ll be able to float this boat, we hit waist deep water and clamber aboard. Within minutes we’re paddled out of the thicket into Calabar River. It’s stunningly quiet save for trilling birds and whining insects. And it’s gorgeous.  We feel like we’re in the pages of a national geographic feature. One moment after the next is simple sublime perfection. This experience can’t possibly be improved, Kim and I concur. Wrong. Next thing our boat is anchored and we’re jumping into the brown currents to look for fresh clams. Forget the clams. I’m blissed out by the cool water and exceptional situation in which I find myself. A couple of the boys pull out huge doobies and chillax in the afternoon sun, bobbing and toking and smiling like kids. I raise my hand with imaginary glass to toast family far, far away on this unconventional Good Friday.

Come late-afternoon currents pick up with the rising tide. We paddle back through the mangrove thicket, a lush tropical canopy alive with butterflies and birds. We paddle through the same places that were only navigable by foot hours earlier. We paddle to where other boats are moored, to the end of our adventure. Trekking back on the footpath we cross paths with a gun-toting man on the hunt for bush meat, specifically, monkey. Mortified Kim learns a piece of monkey flesh can fetch N2000. How many Naira does this hunter earn from a whole monkey? And what does he do if there are any babies? He sells the babies. The whole/how much query remains unanswered.

Evening finds us sitting roadside in plastic chairs munching on deep friend yams with tomato stew dipping sauce and the spiciest Bbq chicken, ever.

Saturday morning brings neighbourhood children to play outside Christine’s door. Petite May-may wears the same tattered burgundy shirt (dress?) she wore yesterday. She and her brother, who has a large appendage sticking from his belly-button, come running for hugs. At least a half dozen more children follow suit. I gather May-may up in my arms and hold her close. The night before Christine shared how emaciated May-may has been and how deeply she yearns for affection, getting none from home. May-may holds on with a gentle tenderness and earnest craving. It is so very hard to set her back down.

 We walk to Mary Slessor church an institution paying tribute to the pioneering Scott who put a halt to the barbaric tribal practice of killing twins. Centuries later, tribalism and strange rituals are still very much alive in these parts. Christine attended the “coming out” event marking the recovery of an 18 year young woman from her recent female circumcision.  Efiom talks about child witches with unquestioning conviction.

Somehow (actually again by virtue of skin colour), Kim, Christine and I find ourselves sitting at the “high table” of the Okoyong Council of Rulers and Chiefs in Akamkpa, Okoyong, Odukpani. Attendees are festooned in garments and costumes ranging from extraordinary to outrageous. Top hats, garish walking sticks, bead and needle-point shoes, long tunics and wrap skirts decorate the men; form-fitting traditional dresses and complimentary head-wraps wrap the women. Heavy heaped layers of colourful cloth encase spirited spirit-mimics. Tribal dancers drum and rattle, snap whips and move with a ferocity intended to scare.  Bottles of booze sit at the head table for the libation part of the agenda we don’t stick around to see. Two tedious speeches into the ceremonies we exit, stage right. It’s the 45 minute diatribe about restoring the nation of Okoyong to its former days of glory that does me in; tribalism at its rudimentary divisional worst.

Back in Calabar Kim invites me to tour Cercopan Monkey Sanctuary. No wonder she’s leaving. The “sanctuary” looks like a living hell for its charges. Cages are filthy, rusted and in disrepair. Some monkeys reach out for touch, some bare their teeth in aggression, some coo, others turn to show their bums in submissive friendship.