| THE PASTOR GOOFED
By Ayoola Olajide Sunday, my only day of rest, was sacrosanct and I try not to allow any matters to steal the day from me. Sunday August 14 2005 did not start well for me because I was compelled by the management of National Mirror to attend church services to usher in the paper, the youngest in Nigeria�s buoyant media industry. I would much have preferred to tarry late on bed, but, as they say, who pays the piper calls the tune. I am not anti-church but I had long kept away as a result of certain doctrines which I found gruesome. Since two cannot walk together except they be agreed, I distanced myself, although, having family, I do not object to my children attending church. Sooner or later, the scales would fall from their eyes - if ever they do. Later at Mankinis on Adeniyi Jones Avenue, I was �washing down� a heavenly lunch with Legend Extra Stout when I received a phone call from my cousin, a deacon of the Apostolic Church. He needed to see me, and urgently too. I could not immediately think of any excuse to ward him off, but I rued the intrusiveness of the mobile phone. Eyeing my unfinished beer, I told him I would be with him in two hours. "Can�t you make it earlier - can�t you come now?" Haba, what could be so urgent, I thought, and firmly told him I would see him within the hour. He sounded disappointed as he hung up. Swilling my drink, I considered the summons and decided that his son, a sickler, was ill and he, the child, needed moral prop from an older relative who understood the disease. I downed the rest of my drink and trekked to Hugo Medical Centre, Ikeja, the rendezvous whose mention confirmed my suspicions. On stepping into the lobby of the hospital, I was greeted by benumbed, tear-stoned faces and, even before I asked, the reality of the situation descended on me like a shroud. Yet another sickler, a child awaiting his JAMB results to study Medicine or Computer Science had transited in a chariot of pain to the Great Beyond. The Death Certificate read, "sickle cell crises, septicemia, respiratory failure." The bereaved father had called me because the decision had been made to inter the corpse that same day, direct from hospital to the cemetery and, according to the dictates of Yoruba custom, he was not supposed to be there. All things being equal, every parent desires to be laid to rest by their offspring, not the other way round. But things are not equal, and never will be, and thus Yoruba wisdom of the ages allowed parents to pretend that things were normal by their absence from their children�s funeral rites. The only direct relative of the child, I accompanied a half dozen Elders of the Apostolic Church to the burial-ground. Perfunctory sermons about the Fate awaiting all who took breath were delivered. Having known the deceased for several years, and witnessed the many bouts of pain and illness too distressing to witness, the lead preacher vented the opinion that sad as it was for us, it was good for the child, he had gone to rest. I imagined the child in the makeshift wooden coffin - we actually concocted the coffin from stray planks at the cemetery - and reiterated that I hated the dumb stillness of death - the repellent lying frozen in state. I thought that if I should die, I should be quickly cremated and forgotten and not have to lie down and fraternize with cadavers. I should not lie alone even in a private yard - I abhor bad smells. Even as my attention strayed from one morbid thought to another, the preacher brought me up short when he commented that maybe saying that the dead had gone �to rest� was a misstatement. No one knew for sure, he said. Pointing to the coffin, he averred that it would be a regrettable thing and a wasted life if the boy did not "have Christ" before he died. You goof, I thought, and reflected that it was arrogance for Christians to think that whoever did not �have Christ� was condemned ab initio. This was one of the doctrines that put me off religion, and Christianity in particular. The preacher went further by saying that for all mankind ot was either Heaven or Hell, and having Christ was the Only guarantee of Heaven. This made me to wonder how Loving Omniscience would condemn an 18 year old child to everlasting fire, a child that had already suffered more bodily torments than many would ever know. How could one episode of life on earth, even one of total abandonment to depravity, translate into an eternity of punishment at the hands of a Creator, who knew us before we were even conceived, and who knew the Beginning from the end and vice versa! In his parting remark, the elderly preacher faced us, and smiling wryly, declared that the child�s death was not surprising after all because "sicklers are never reliable." Another goof, I thought, yet unable to see how it was a goof. I was simply angry with the man. I thought that sicklers did not need �normals� to tell them that. Neither the place nor the occasion was appropriate for entering into a dispute with the respectable man of God. Being a sickler myself, I was upset by his statement. I wondered whether he knew his genotype or the genotype of his children. In a country where, equally with or perhaps more than illiteracy, ignorance fuels the march of sickle cell disease, it is saddening to note that there is no all-out campaign to reduce or stamp out the scourge of an illness which has similarities with most disease conditions known to man - a tragic inheritance much apt to deal so many physical and psychological blows to both sufferer and care-giver, even to society itself. Only sicklers themselves and their relatives know the scars formed in their consciousness by a disease which could kill within moments or by protracted slow death and suffering. With one in every three or four citizens carrying the blood prototype for the disease, the number of full-blown sicklers in Nigeria (estimates range from six to 10 million) exceeds the entire population of Singapore. If approximately one in two Nigerians is either a full-blown sickler or a carrier of the sickle cell trait, there is no reason why there should be a near complete amnesia about the illness in this country. Every Nigerian, every African, home and abroad, should know his genotype. The focus on HIV/AIDS is appropriate, but ignoring the scourge of sickle cell disease is a black spot against the health administration in this country. African governments must provide free and compulsory blood testing facilities in every hospital, public or private. It is time to wake up from our collective slumber. OLAJIDE is a journalist in Nigeria. |
| Last Updated 12 December 2006 |