Wanderlust

WANDERLUST

……my mother now newly single,

thrown out for her lack of fruits.

To wipe her tears, I pledge to stay,

but oh! I already feel the wanderlust.               

-          Ogbanje (Broken echoes…etcetera c.2017)

In the beginning, I was back again; in my favourite shade under the huge, leafy trees. The floor was grassy and made for a lovely plain field for gamboling spirit-children. The trees extended like forever, lines upon lines of giant plants. Massive roots entwined with the earth, branches stretching horizontally like a man with arms outstretched seeking answers from the elements.

The trees were thick above, but below nearer the ground was sparse enough for me and my friends to run around, play hide and seek, and other games as we made merry without a care. The sky above was invisible, blacked out by the treetops. Some of the trees seemed to go into the skies as they stretched like forever to my little spirit eye.

The thing I liked most of this realm, was the lack of time! There was no sense of time, infact there was nothing like time. We could play and run around for what passed for earth years without tiring. Our games only broken up when one of us was called away by a guide, which was often. The guides always appeared from behind one in an instant, their tall cylindrical hats tilting left or right, depending on the nature of message they had for the one.

In this realm too, there was no colour! There was only a permanent dawn, an everlasting twilight. Everything was seen in that dullness. There was no hue, all was grey and slightly blurred.

Who needed colour anyway? In this realm the thoughts were the words that were exchanged. There were no spoken words, but we understood each other just fine as we picked up the other’s thoughts and feelings easily. There was a transparency here than I had witnessed on my sojourns to earth. There was an animal instinctiveness and openness in the grey realm. It was not possible to lie or pretend here, to put it succinctly- we had no need to blush!

I felt a tug on my shoulder. It was my friend, Nedika. He was back. I was yet to see him since his current return. We embraced and soon began drawing trees in the grey sands. Another four spirit-children soon joined us, a male and 3 females.

Geicka, one of the females wasn’t playing with us. She was downcast, devoid of thoughts as well. We soon stopped playing and sat around her. Waiting to pick her thoughts and send ours. She sat with a stiff back and stared deep into the trees, all the while leaving her mind blank.

Then the pain washed over her again, and I picked up her recollection of her session with the guide that had returned her. She had been born to a woman back on earth. The woman named ‘uwaezuoke’, whose name in the earth language of that region meant ‘one could never have it all on earth’, despite her affluence had yet to bear a child. Then she had birthed Geicka, now Geicka was gone.

Uwaezuoke had cried for days on end. Uwaezuoke had committed suicide! Driven by the pain and frustration of her loss, weighed down by the guilt she felt as she had left her on the pram, parked for only a minute, to pick her change from the cashier at the window. Then that ear-piercing scream.

The parked pram had rolled onto the busy motorway. There had been an on-coming truck, the pram stood no chance. Uwaezuoke was inconsolable. She had fainted! She had to be heavily sedated and restrained within the hospital ward. Upon her release months after, she took her life. The sad news made the rounds in most of the local dailies.

The thing poor Uwaezuoke didn’t know was that the baby had been a spirit-child. One of us. Her spirit had long left the body before the truck pulverized the pram. Besides, it wasn’t Uwaezuoke’s fault. We had all been there. All the spirit–children in our group from the grey realm were there at that moment. Infact, it was Nedika who had released the parked pram’s hook, when Geicka hadn’t been watching.

Gecka had been growing fond of Uwaezuoke. She only had good thoughts about her. Geicka had refused to fall ill and die like she was meant to. That was what spirit-children did. She wouldn’t budge. Nedika was our self-appointed leader, so acted before it became late and we lost her forever. Nedika didn’t care for others’ thoughts, his was to ensure our togetherness and quick return to the grey realm.

All spirit-children are able to converge with any other on earth through a totem stick. We all had totem sticks buried in the grey grounds of our realm. Each stick had an individual spirit-child’s name written on it. All twenty sticks had been in a calabash buried at the four points junction, where East, West, North and South met, there our sticks were buried. The sticks had been bound with a piece of string and inserted deep into the ground.

Geicka was hurting. The guide had been hard on her in the aftermath of Uwaezuoke’s suicide. She had never seen the guide so upset, or any guide for that matter. The guide’s hat had been so tilted to the left that Geicka feared it might fall off to the ground. So began an angry dispute between Geicka and Nedika. Angry thoughts flew fast and furious between the two. “You should never have done that”, Geicka thought. ‘It was all your fault’, Nedika thought back in response. “I would never forgive you for this”. She stormed off deep into the trees.

The mood was soured. Every spirit-child present, now wandered off, all seeming to avoid Nedika. I chose a spot much farther from Nedika. This was clearly not his finest hour. I sat down against a tree. Thoughts were flying within me like a whirlwind.

I had just returned myself, from Earth. I had already lost count of how many times I had been born, and how many times I had returned to my friends, always before the 7^th month was up. I have been born in virtually all the countries of the earth. I have been born in all the different continents of the world at different times. It had been the same for me. I have been born to all manner of women, the very tall and the not so tall. I had once had a mother that was very rotund, I had once had a mother with a very prominent moustache that got painted from drinking milk or a bowl of soup, I had once had a mother with the saddest eyes ever, big round tear-filled eyes that begged me to live, to stay. I didn’t.

I have been a son to a Pakistani family, an African chief, an American slave merchant, an English royal’s love child. There were some countries I had incarnated in over and over again. I still had scarifications from my last earth trip. I had been born into West Africa, my twentieth time in Africa. My parents had firstly taken me to a witchdoctor when I began falling ill regularly at 5 months of age. Our home had been in a remote small seaside town. The witchdoctor had told my parents that I was a spirit-child and that my playmates had begun calling for my return. He had actually said this with a sweeping arm gesture towards the corner of the room where Nedika and the others awaiting my death were, as if he could see them. ‘Ogbanje’, he called me. Then proceeded to make tiny incisions on the sides of my face and small of my back. He said the scarifications would make my friends desert me and make it easy for my parents to recognize me if I dared return as a new child in their household.

Father’s friend had recommended the witchdoctor. He had come visiting with his family. They had stood and stared at me lying in my parent’s bed, covered in my mother’s best wrapper, the red one with the boxed design. I hated them for not refusing Father’s offer of hospitality. We weren’t well off and I felt bad seeing my parents spend most of their little savings on me. Yet here were these people, clad in their ‘Sunday dress’, eating the last of the ‘chicken-soup’ because they were visitors!

Over the next month, I became worse. I began to regularly throw up the infant formula, which cost my low earning parents a fortune, to ensure I starved the little body. The long journeys to the witchdoctor’s hut and my deteriorating state combined to twist my father’s hand. He overruled my mother and promptly wheeled me to the new town office of a fast-talking new preacher making the rounds then.

He regularly appeared on the television and his voice could be heard bellowing sermons on the radio. “My God answers by fire”! “Thus says the lord……..”. I had been urgently wrapped warm and driven to the preacher’s by my parents. The preacher asked that I be placed on a special cot beside the altar. My mother stayed behind, sat on the front pew, her eyes never leaving the cot. My father had to get to the bank.

The preacher knelt farther to my left on the altar, and began speedily praying and quoting passages interjectionally from the holy book. One of his followers, a fair complexioned female, clad in a white gown and a yellow sash with the inscription ‘Zion’, held a little drum in her left hand which she beat to match the tempo of the preacher’s loud prayers. As she swayed, she mouthed ‘yes lord’, ‘hosanna’, ‘el shaddai’, severally in no particular order.

I couldn’t see the preacher’s eyes as he had hidden them behind a pair of sunglasses. He was of a strong build and if I had been introduced to him at a sports centre as a wrestler, I would have believed him to be a very accomplished one indeed. His rippling muscles made his suit tight and stretched. Or even as a boxer, as he had huge calloused hands. He would have fitted right in, at a gym house. His chest was the size of a mini wardrobe with room to spare.

It was mother that noticed the goings-on in the cot and screamed at the preacher, “my son is foaming at the lips”. The preacher quickly felt my forehead and frowned at the high temperature. I had begun having severe chills at that point. The preacher dialed a number on his mobile phone, “Hello Sir”, he began. “Please come at once to pick up your child”. “The Holy spirit says we have done our part, the rest is for the doctor. Come take him to the hospital at once”, he concluded.

I had been on the altar all through with the preacher and hadn’t heard the phone ring, I had missed the Holy Spirit’s call. Mother was already beside herself in lamentations and grief. She grabbed me and held my fever ravaged little body to her bossom. I felt loved and wanted, but the call of my playmates was stronger. The grey realm awaited with the lush grasses and lack of time.

I never made it to the hospital. I had left the little body just before the hospital workers came running out with their stretcher and life support items. I hurriedly said goodbye to the other spirit-children who had come to escort me over the threshold of yet another death. I had long stopped counting. I went behind the nearest tree to await my guide. The guide was prompt as always but disappointed that I had contrived to return to the grey realm yet again.

I have spent centuries now coming and going. Sometimes I wondered how come there were no other children in the grey realm, except other groups of spirit-children. Could this realm be one for abnormal spirits who had refused to grow up? Was this some kind of purgatory? These thoughts deeply troubled me as I had never seen my existence in that light before. Was it my last view of Mother as I left with the guide? She had sat on the ground tearing out her hair! I feared for her health but couldn’t inquire from the guide if she’ll be alright, as the guide was clearly in no mood to respond.

‘Maxila, maxila’. I knew that thought density. It was Geicka! Her thoughts were happy and loud. They were of euphoria and elation. I had never seen her this excited over anything before. “I have been given another chance “, she thought towards me. Yes, right behind her was the guide, her guide. The guide’s face was bland as all guides tend to be, devoid of thoughts and feelings until they have a message to be delivered.

“But Geicka, you just came back”, I thought towards her. “Yes Maxila, but my guide told me it’s already 5 earth years”, she thought. “I am just excited to get this opportunity, my friend”. “I have not been able to get my last earth trip out of my mind, especially the suicide”. ”One last thing Maxila, I would not be coming back”! “I am going to try and make good this opportunity”, she concluded the series of quick thoughts. Then she grabbed me in an urgent bear hug. I just knew that I would never see her again in the grey realm. Her guide now took her hand and they melted into the trees.

Nedika and some of the other spirit-children then appeared. His thoughts were those of bedlam and disorientation. I quickly learnt that Geicka had dug up the calabash of totems and gone off with her’s. Nedika was going to make a dash along with the other spirit-children currently in the grey realm to the ‘departure bridge’, the point of departure for all spirit-children. He would appeal to Geicka before her totem was lost. Nedika feared losing Geicka would diminish his authority amongst the other spirit-children, and with it his exalted status.

The departure bridge is the busiest transit point in creation. There were always thousands moving across it to be born while thousands were returning from time expired on earth, at the same time. It teemed with all manner of spirits at all times.

“Maxila”, he thought towards me. “Please hold onto this calabash until my return”. It was Nedika. “You know you are the only one I trust in this realm”. His thoughts towards me now ceased as they quickened their paces in hot pursuit, soon swallowed up by the trees.

I quickly thought of Geicka. I understood her pain. My earth life before last, I had been born to an American soldier stationed in Kabul. He was on his way back, halfway around the world on a week’s pass, to see his new son. I had pleaded with Nedika to allow me stay till the soldier, father, arrived and his week was done. Nedika wouldn’t budge. I was gone before they returned from the airport. I sometimes wonder if they carried out their threat to prosecute the poor Filipino nanny.  I had heard most of the angry exchange, as I sat behind the oak tree in the front lawn awaiting the guide.

My guide now appeared again, startling me from my reverie. There was an opening for a child. Since I was the only one left behind in the group, would I take it? Even as I had been back a mere 2 earth years. Yes, I thought. I wanted to go.

My guide held me fast, and we were soon at the ‘departure bridge’. It still retained the bustling activity all around. Now he gave me a pat and a slight shove on the back. I felt the familiar rush of air vapour again. That falling feeling. That zapping of thoughts from roaming lost spirits and the hushed tunes of malevolent spirits singing. The wild thoughts of newly expired spirits as they pondered the futures of their funds, children, parents, spouses were all around us.

I awoke. I had an earth body again. A tiny one once more.  All was quiet save a booming sound up above. I was back again in a woman’s womb. The woman that would be my new mother. I could hear sounds again. In my excitement at having made it to earth again, I tested my new right leg. It connected with some tissues, then again, then again. It felt good.

“Honey”, it was my new mother to be. She was on the telephone. “Honey, it happened, he just kicked”! She continued, “Just like the Gynecologist had said he would in this fifth month”. ”At first it had felt like fluttering butterflies, then I felt it hard”, she said. “It’s going to be a strong boy”!

The husband at the other end began sobbing. The deep sobs of a man who had lived through 7 years of endless IVF treatments and hospital visits, without the bundle of joy they craved. He began pledging to her, that he would always be there, that he would be a great father, and their child would never lack for affection.

I felt really welcome. I will finally get to go to school. Ride a bike. Grow to an adult age to vote, and be able to buy a drink. I will get to know the joys of earth life this time, and really savour them. Watch the sun rise, the sunset. Hear the birds sing, dogs bark.

I was certain of this for I had tossed the calabash of totems into the air vapours as I left the departure bridge. Yes no spirit-child could ever find me again. I had said my goodbyes to the grey realm.

It is finished!