‘Port Harcourt! … P.H.! … You dey go P.H.? Enter mah own. I soon go quick, quick. Dis way for P.H.! …’
She looked up at the lorry and saw the emblem: a huge eagle labelled GOD’S CASE NO APPEAL. In fact the lorry was packed full and looking as though ready to depart that minute. Jagua felt herself lucky. She would not lose any time, she thought.
‘P.H.! … Dis way for P.H.! …’
‘Is not P.H. am goin’,’ Jagua said. She tore her arm from the vicious grip of a tout. ‘I goin’ to Bagana.’
They laughed. ‘Den you mus’ reach P.H. firs’, Madam. From P.H., you join canoe in de wharf. Canoe will take you reach Bagana in four hour.’ The speaker gripped her hand once again. ‘Follow me.’
‘All right! How much you charge to P.H.?’
‘Only three an’ six!’
A new face was thrust between them, dark, bearded. ‘Enter mah own. My own cheap pass.’
More faces appeared. More arms gripped her, pulled her this way and that. It was a nightmare of confusion, indecision, treachery and robbery. She yelled.
She broke away from them all and made straight for a brightly painted lorry with the sign TRUST NO MAN. It was now a choice between TRUST NO MAN and GOD’S CASE NO APPEAL. But from what Jagua could see GOD’S CASE seemed a trifle more ready to set off than TRUST. She soon discovered her folly. The men and women seated on the benches in GOD’S CASE had been hired to deceive. They were not travellers but had been put there to fill the benches and to convey an impression of readiness to unwary travellers. TRUST NO MAN. She should have heeded the sign. One of the men seated in GOD’S CASE got up to make room for her and she never saw him again. The other men and women were no less ready to get down, every time the touts hooked a new passenger and led him into the lorry. She sat there for hours watching one bench-warmer after the other vanish into the market. She had already paid her fare and her money was well beyond her reach now. She shouted angry epithets at them. This could never be GOD’S CASE but in spite of it, she knew there was NO APPEAL.
At Port Harcourt Jagua mingled with the newsvendors, canoemen, merchants, timber workers and travellers who floated around the wharf. A canoe labelled SWEET PEACE was filling up with women carrying yams, vegetables, oranges in big baskets, for it was said that Bagana was a village of fisher folk living on a tiny island. There was very little farmland, and unlike in Ogabu, their food must be purchased in the city of Port Harcourt.
SWEET PEACE did not depart for another hour and again Jagua knew the frustration of waiting. When the engine started rattling and they floated down the creeks, Jagua tried to visualize what Freddie’s home would be like. The long stilt roots of the mangroves, the mud-skippers sheltering in the squelch, told her nothing. Women paddling canoes thinner than paper smoked pipes and hummed strange tunes. Jagua’s canoe crossed many such women who had the same ease on the water as birds had in the air. They were said to know the mysteries of this Niger Delta. The birds and crocodiles never attacked them for they were part of the habitat.
Bagana came in sight after two hours steady drumming of the outboard diesel engines. What stood out clearly above the skyline was a church steeple and it remained sharp and clear for one hour. When it disappeared they were practically at Bagana. The covered tin houses which she had noted fringing the island she was told were defæcating houses, and this was why Bagana smelt so sweet and clean. She found she could have walked from one end to the other in twenty minutes. It was quite true that she would not meet any motor cars, only bicycles. There wasn’t the space, and the vehicles would only clutter up the beautiful island.
It was impossible for her arrival to remain hidden. There were boys and girls who trooped down to the beachside every time a canoe landed, having sighted it a good hour ago among the creek waters. One such group led by a tall boy in shirt sleeves and bright wrapper, seized Jagua’s suitcases.
‘De sister done come! De sister done come!’ He was shouting at the top of his voice and soon other Baganans arrived.
Jagua, embarrassed, saw them trooping down towards the beach. Among them she picked out a woman in city-type dress, a frock with a broad belt in the middle. She could not believe her eyes.
‘Mama Nancy, you here?’ She let the anger lash out in her voice. ‘Not you I meet in de store buyin’ cardigan for Nancy? And what you tell me in Lagos? Dat Nancy goin’ abroad, not so? So you deceivin’ me?’
Mama Nancy smiled. ‘Welcome, Jagua. Oh yes, you meet me in de store and I tell you Nancy goin’ abroad. But I forget to tell you we comin’ to Bagana firs’.’ Her smile was triumphant as though there was something glorious in her forgetfulness.
13
Jagua could not help admiring the girl standing beside Mama Nancy. She looked smart in her tight yellow T-singlet and green-flowered lappa. Her breasts jerked restlessly under the singlet. It could be the sun, but Jagua thought that the girl’s skin seemed to have become several shades fairer. Mama Nancy noticed the look in Jagua’s eyes.
‘Nancy, you won’ say welcome to Auntie Jagua?’
Nancy smiled at Jagua. ‘Welcome, Ma.’ For all her sweetness Jagua felt a deep sense of betrayal.
She had never loved these two: plotters, whom she had already fought and knew she must fight again. But she tried to smile back. ‘Nancy so you come to Bagana too? You come see Freddie hometown. I tink you tell me say you goin’ to U.K.? How you manage reach Bagana?’
‘Yes, I still goin’ to U.K. But my Mama, she say is a good thing if I see Bagana firs’.’
‘Oho!’ Jagua felt terribly late about something. ‘Is your Ma Nancy idea, then. Not your own?’
Jagua walked along the sunlit streets of Bagana in the clean air, tramping on the gritty periwinkle shells which paved the ground. She noticed that many of the buildings in Freddie’s hometown were old and decaying. They had a peculiar decorative style that did not look Nigerian. She pointed at one of the buildings, typical of so many, raised on stilts.
‘Dey call dem Deckin’,’ said Mama Nancy. She spoke with authority and Jagua was irritated.
‘How long you bin here, Ma Nancy?’
‘Today make four day,’ Mama Nancy said.
‘You only been here four day. How you manage know all dis?’