The Premiere Journey to the University, The Rough Ride Experience

CHAPTER THREE: The Block Factory Narrative and the Osu's Scam

The next morning which was on Friday was somewhat cold, dry, and dreary but there were no signs of rain. I was however apathetic to the weather but if anything ever startled me that morning, it was the early onset of the harmattan or North-East trade winds and the swith with which it came. The early days of October hardly came up with these surprises, I thought. Well, fully aware of starting the factory work that morning, I had taken it upon myself to wake up at the c***k of dawn so that I could get ample time to prepare myself and at least sweep the main compound before Torgbe came to pick me up. He told me he would be there by 5 AM and I was gratified to have finished all the intended chores about thirty-five minutes before the scheduled time. As I reclined in one of the plastic chairs in the room my elder brothers and I shared, it then clicked to my mind that I had forgotten my work cloth but was wondering if I had one or would get one. I glinted around but found none, took turns to Innocent’s old student trunk, fished out its keys, opened it, and eventually hinted on a sizeable brown shirt that he once used at the same factory. Though its weight and size were about twice those of my normal shirts, I had never thought of being laughed at working in it. After all, was I not going to befriend the sand? Besides, was the factory work a grand ceremonial event like a wedding that would catch the eyes of guests and cameras? What should man struggle for? I simply had to get a pair of trousers to match the shirt. “That my overused khaki trouser would do.”, I whispered, then reached out to an old schoolbag in one of the drawers and struck off the dust from it, folded the attires nicely into it, clasped it to my chest, and took back my seat. Queerly, I had begun to feel haggard. I could not contain it anymore and had decided to take a nap and hoped that, by a few minutes to the five, I would have woken up refreshed and sober.

“Piii! Piiiiii! Piiiiiiiiiiii!”, a car horn spluttered intensely into my ears and instantly woke me up from slumber. Cognizant, I knew it was Torgbe and he had customized that manner of blowing all his car horns even if he brought someone’s car. Anytime he chose such a formality in drawing someone’s attention, it only meant that the former was in a hurry and that found it very time-wasting stepping out of the vehicle and fetching the concerned person. I stood up in trepidation, ran my right palm on the face to read clearly the time on the wall clock and it had struck 6:13 AM. Bewildered, I picked up my bag which was lying on the floor all this while, staggered outside, and called out Mum and kindly told her to lock the door for me and keep the keys.

But why? These our parents and natives always failing in keeping pace with time. You hit someone on phone for instance, and he tells you he will meet you in a five-minute’s time. You wait for the five minutes, he never appears. You add another five minutes, he still doesn’t appear and yet another, the same story. Finally, about say 45 minutes later, when you become too fed up and think of cancelling the appointment, then he appears looking very clumsy. You ask him why he kept so long and he fabricates a false but sweet excuse that could even make you think of giving him your most valued coat. He won’t tell you the time you hit him up, there was no way he could get there within the five minutes even if he were to fly there in an aeroplane. But that’s how most blacks live and our zero respect for time is one of the rationales why the African continent continues to retard in progress.

The car’s engine was still on and revving. “Eddo! Delay me once more and I bet you’ll walk to the factory!”, Torgbe heated up. He brought a Toyota motor car. I hurried to the back seat and he drove off immediately when I barely shut the door. There I saw Michael, his seventeen-year second born in front, and one other boy, about four more years older than him, whom I hardly knew, sitting beside me.

Torgbe had five wives including my mum. Except for Michael’s mum, the rest had had one or two or more children and carried them along to marry Torgbe. Torgbe wasn’t a wife snatcher. If your husband was deceased and you accepted his proposal, he married you. Even if you the woman had had ten children or more before coming to marry him, that was no bother to him. They say new brooms sweep clean but for Torgbe, old ones do better because they know the corners. How he married most of his wives was the same manner in which he bought his cars. “Did I just hear you say I should have bought a fresh car? No. I would rather prefer a used one.” Then it goes and not that he couldn’t afford to buy a new one. He simply wouldn’t and I didn’t understand this and still don’t. Management you say? Well, in less than a month, the engine got broke down. “Eddo! You and your brothers should give me a push.” And we would continue pushing the old car until the old engine “coughed”, which it often didn’t. “Is that your father’s car? Eei!” The embarrassments of car pushing on the roadsides? You know the story and don’t laugh. No old wife had the effrontery to protest against his bringing in a new wife either. He simply considered that a sacrilege! You couldn’t bear seeing him with a new wife, you were kicked out.

Unfortunately, and for reasons I had no idea to and still do not have any answer to, mum never had and yet there are no clear signs that she will have any child with Torgbe. Not that her womb could not contain child anymore but unlike the rest, the one or two pregnancies she had had with him turned out as stillborn. Notwithstanding this problem of childbearing, Torgbe had never for once raised accusing fingers at her about such pregnancy failures. I extol him for this but I am cocksure he had gone cool over this because he had had children with the rest. I could swear that if my mum had been his only wife, the two would have been better off if they divorced. Well, as my elder brothers and I had begun to grow, he would sometimes slip into some of these ill fortunes in his conversations. That was when any of us were involved, and one could tell he felt the pain.

Mum had always been the reserved type but had the sharpest memory. Keep a record of the mammoth dresses you wore for a whole year while she was with you and tell her to give a full account of them. She will tell you incisively the types, colours, shapes, how you wore each, when you wore them, and the mood in which you wore them. And for her dealings in figures? I’m not making a mountain out of a molehill but what is calculator? She would rather use her brains to do those strong sums, divisions, subtractions and multiplications and reserve the calculator money for corn beef. And how quickly and magically she did them and still does them! There is no way you could cheat her in any business under her very nose and her customers up to this day fear her for that. I always tell some of my friends that if this woman had been privileged to step foot in a classroom like you and me, I’m sure she would have made the female society proud, let me simply put it that way.

Michael’s mother had also got her parts: the most boisterous, brawny, and heavily built! The powerhouse, they called her. She is Torgbe’s first wife. Kweku Preko, Abokye Issaka, Alhaji Tunde, Okyeame Kpodo…who thought they were real men in their primes, had had their shares of her beatings. How could she credit them her money when they were in trouble but refused to pay her back? She wasn’t the type that went about beating people for no apparent reason. She merely gave you what you deserved. With such heavy hands and thick legs, her children must have suffered real ordeals, if only they annoyed her. The very day Torgbe introduced my mum to her as his second wife, I bounced back when my ten-year old eyes caught her hefty physique. It was unusual of a woman and I had always thought of her as one of those local female boxers and this made me fear her. However, as I had begun to know her better, I realised she was a second mum and very witty in her ways. You were with her for a day and you didn’t laugh, you surely must be taken to the psychiatrist.

Torgbe obviously was a 'hard' man and once he realized he could no longer entertain the conducts of any of his nagging wives, he either called for a divorce or distanced himself from her and leave her to her miserable devices. Mind you, the latter penalty was more dreadful and the next day, he didn’t mind bringing in a fresh wife. Once he succeeded in getting one because he had the money, he washed off his hand from anything that concerned the victim. He didn’t care what outsiders or any member of the family would say. You stretched him over this matter or decided to coax him to resign his decision, he gave the police payoffs and you served time. You continued to serve time until he decided you had had enough, then you were released. You were not fit to be jailed, he found someone and you got flogged mercilessly. You were too frail to receive lashes, he devised other alternatives to make your life uncomfortable.

He had gone through a lot in life, spanning from losing both parents as a toddler to the protracted scalding of his right hand by a gas fire as an apprentice in mechanics. “Innocent, Eddo, Michael…I left school at basic six, not that I had intended to. Not that I didn’t have the brain. Not that I was a bad boy and that was expelled from the school. There was simply no assist anywhere but apart from any white-collar operation, which work had I not done before? Carpentry? Masonry? Driving? Bus conducting? Vehicle tire vulcanization? Mechanic work? Welding or blacksmithing? Farming? Merchandising? Second-hand clothing business? Storekeeping? Tell me! What work? Did you say someone linked me to any of those jobs? Where was that ‘someone’? I hunted them by myself! Just ask Mr Kotokoli. I tried this, it failed. I picked up that, it was worse but I kept on trying until on that Saturday afternoon… This your lazy generation? You people think you’re suffering when you eat food containing no meat or fish? Is Michael sleeping? Someone should knock him hard on the head! Useless sleepy scarecrow! Let me continue. I could go hungry for days until my belly carved in. As a result, I fell flat on the floor and never thought I could see the sunshine again. Clothes to wear? ‘What’ was a woman too? You people now think that I like women. Of course, I do now because I’m fit now to carry such troubles. Where was the room? My deceased parents never had one on their own and I had to take lodgings in merchants’ kiosks at night when they had left, in the wild ghettos and streets with vagabonds. You couldn’t locate any free kiosk the night it rained storms, you were doomed! No guardian to support or advise me either and I had to depend on my own conscience to build my life, something I’m very proud of. Today, you people think I’m rich but none of you know what man had gone through. The earth is a very hard place. Use your wit and work like how a horse does and make yourself proud. Suffer and make your own money! Proper money, I say! If I should ever grab any of you fooling about or landing someone’s daughter in trouble because you think you’ve got balls, I swear on my parents’ graves! I will behead you and report myself to the police!”. Such were Torgbe’s words and they are real. You could see one or two visible old scars on his legs and hands, marks scarred by toils. Mr Kotokoli was his closest friend and both had lived together in those rough days; they were as close as thieves. He had several pictures of those days to back his words. I felt for him and sometimes when he remembered those odds, he got inclined in making others suffer similar duress. He was recently crowned a chief and that position had somewhat given him a mighty hand to deal with people who meddled in his affairs or crossed his path.

Hmm, you may have been itching to say that Torgbe was very polygamous and that’s never below the mark. In fact, he was a staunch fun of the game. If he were a president, I wouldn’t be dazed if he entirely called off monogamy and subbed that with polygyny. Of course, he would consider polyandry an abomination and an insult to men’s rights and integrity. How could he share his wife with another man or worst of all, men? The shape of a sword is that of its scabbard, an Akan proverb says – The ways of men could be traced from where they were born and bred. Polygyny was rife in his hometown, a community that may have heard of Christianity and Islam but really could not tell whether they existed or still exist. That’s my, or let me say our hometown too and I won’t deny that. But my family and I had left there when I was barely five years old and I have always known that my natives believed and still hold to the beliefs of ancestral spirits and man-made deities. Mm. Well, my God has taught me never to call or regard anyone unclean but the thought of my people weltering in the spirit of darkness etches me all the time. Even so, what matters to me most is that, you adapt to what is just in all circumstances irrespective of your religion. I never scorn someone’s faith or religion. I am a Christian, you are an atheist or traditionalist but lack evil intentions, we could eat together and sleep under the same roof. I just hope that in the end, we shall all know the true light, the only true God and direct our ways to His.

And most men from Torgbe’s hometown, my homeland, our hometown would, make you believe that only men of straw married one wife. They simply did not care whether or not they could properly cater for them and the children. Well, if they really meant a weak man is to one wife and a strong man is to more than one wife, I couldn’t care less but how wrong they must be. They can go ahead and share their own curses. Friend, do not judge me wrongly by saying I’m against polygyny, though I must say it has never occurred to me to practise one. My only worry is about the man who marries more wives and as a result, produces more children, but could not or refuses to fend for them and leaves them to wallow in hardship or poverty. Good, and as I might have already said, Torgbe was well-heeled and each of his wives lived in different houses with their children. This was principally meant to lessen envy and fighting among them and I believe that is a wise thing he did.

If you’re probably feeling cold, please, draw your blanket closer and listen more, and don’t lose the track of the narrative. We had still not arrived at the block factory and that I must continue from where I ended. “Eddo, do you know who is sitting close to you?”, Torgbe remarked. “No, please.”, I let out my ignorance. “Why won’t you? It’s not your fault either; your continual stay in school prevents me from introducing you to some of these family members. Well, that’s Kweteh, one of your auntie’s sons. He will be learning welder work but for now, he and Michael will join you and the others at the block factory.”, he replied. “Goodness! That’s great but I hope he won’t run away as the others did?”, I joked and everyone including Torgbe could not keep a straight face. “Someone should remind us to fill that empty gallon in the car trunk when we get to the filling station. I need to get an electric machine for this block factory. The expenditure on diesel alone drains whatever profit I make in the business!”, Torgbe grieved some minutes later.