Fatigue, Sam Madugba, and a Climax in Pain by Immanuel James
----------------------------------------------------
Life is an endless pursuit of reliefs. From the issue of oppression, poverty, ignorance,etc., to that of disease, even in the matter of successfully conducting a quiet anal hiss in public, thereby dislodging a gaseous restiveness within one's belly, the human experience unfurls as a successive search for reliefs. Relief, like when the last tablets of a 30-day medication are finally swallowed. But the word is not 'swallow': you gather the tablets together -- yellow, green, white members of a populous medical delegation filling half the cup of your sick palm; you stretch the hinges of your mouth to crocodile precision; you pour the drugs directly into the middle of your throat, away from the jurisdiction of the tongue, and then quickly pour in water for a hasty guttural wash-down.
.
.
A strange, persistent fatigue defying self-medication had taken me to a medical laboratory. Widal test and limpid profile revealed it was a group attack, a foursome: malaria, very high cholesterol levels, very high blood pressure, and typhoid. Yet I wasn't feeling sufficiently ill. I found the inclusion of typhoid a little shameful, for it somewhat testified to unsatisfactory hygiene. 'You're too young for this kind of result! What are you eating?', screamed the female lab scientist.
.
.
Fried eggs. Peanuts. Oily soups. Pies. Fries. Fried eggs. Then fried eggs. I loved them, eggs.
.
.
A call to a doctor friend. He asked that I read out the result details, then he screamed. 'At this rate you need to go to a hospital. And please change your diet!' He banned whatever he could lay his mind on, leaving solely punitive diets like unripe plantain and all such oral formalities of chewing-stick tastelessness.
.
.
Kupa Hospital, Ajao-Estate, Lagos.
'It's not that bad, but you really have to change your diet. And you're too young for these, Imma', said my doctor.
'I started life too early anyway, so I'll be surprised if I live long.'
'Come on, don't sound pessimistic!'
'See, if I live long, good. If I don't, better.'
'You've not changed! Please stay away from...'
.
.
I told him I would not be part of life if it became averse to necessary indulgence, if it became a long stretch of caution ambushed at every turn by dietary mayhems. I was escorted home by an entire sack of drugs dosaged for one whole month! The whiff of that possession gave my car the smell of a mobile clinic, and I felt convinced again that if pharmacologists -- or whoever they are that make drugs -- if they are not sadists thrilled to stupor by evil, just what does it cost to make drugs a little tasty and nice-smelling? How does the dual terrorism of ailment and medication not demand the urgency of medical innovation?
.
.
Home. 'Try and get married', texted my doctor friend, a piece of advice as irrelevant as it was unscientific, perhaps only mischievous, in its proposal of solution.
'I have seen marriage-generated BPs', I replied.
'Perhaps I truly need a wife. My funeral would be too boring without a widow busy with dramatic mourning anyway', I texted back again. He ignored me.
.
.
Recovery had come like quick ejaculation, spawned by the haste of good medication and proper diet. I had missed work terribly, having been interrupted by ailment on a new entrepreneurial project. I was about to restart when that call came, one notorious evening: Dr. Sam Iheanacho Madugba, my most-beloved uncle, literal and literary, had died.
.
.
Novelist. Poet. Dramatist. Medical Director in the Imo State Ministry of Health. Catholic Choir-Master. Politician. Activist. Madugba was that middle-aged exuberance who, with his own funds, convinced on its prospects, entered my book, Under Bridge, for its first award, the ANA-Imo Prize for Prose in 2014 -- a gesture that encouraged entering that book for its second award, the National ANA Prize in the same category same year. Unhappy about my aloofness from communal politics, he had invited me alongside 39 other 'illustrious sons and daughters' of our community, December 31, 2014, towards the resolution of a fierce, lingering monarchical tussle. My introduction was first on the agenda, and he anchored an immediate, impromptu launch of my book, which earned me some fifty thousand naira I later squandered in my lodge in Owerri, 'in the spirit of the season'. After the meeting, he led me by the hand to a state commissioner present, so we 'could work together'. He wanted the best for me, and was never infested with that common hatred for rivalry.
.
.
Author of seven books, including that award-winning book of poems, 'Buhari's Boots, Babangida's Boots', an impulsive praise for his most-admired leader, Mohammadu Buhari; former Coordinator of the state's AIDS Control Programme; former leader of the Imo State Medical Association, who supervised a most grinding medical strike that rattled the Achike Udenwa government, for which he was later prematurely retired by Mr. Udenwa for refusing to shut up and work like a slave. He challenged that retirement in court, and won the case seven years after, earning a reinstatement, entitlements, and damages in millions of Naira.
.
.
Madugba's capacity for rebellion had been the source of his popularity in my community and in Imo State. A big pair of lips belonged to him, a divine gadget too thick to be buttoned in the face of injustice and evil. For refusing to shut up in circumstances requiring the silence of life-loving humans; for lacking the hormones of fear, unwilling to accept the photoshop of falsehood as truth; for being unsparing in the expression of what he believed in, most times to the point of offence, Madugba was the owner of a huge, wild, plantation of enemies.
.
.
Our last physical meeting was about three months ago, when I had gone to Owerri to discuss with a certain traditional ruler. My cousin and best friend, George Amakor, had come to Owerri from the UK to do his Ph.D research, and needed to speak with a health worker. We all met at Dr. Madugba's clinic in Owerri, filling his office with repetitive, throaty, masculine laughters sprung by his humour and native eloquence. For the umpteenth time, I expressed fears for his life. Strong in his Catholic conviction of divine protection, he dismissed them, recounting survival of several episodes of juju attacks at home and in his office.
.
.
He was driving himself home from work. And then he complained of fatigue, and asked his driver to drive. Fatigue! He sat at the back seat and was being driven to a clinic; right there he rather took another route, a shorter one, to that painful finality. Till the last breath, it had been a life studded with work and impact. He had a contempt for life and money, unyielding in his conviction that life must not be lived on the condition that it cultivates akimbo silence in the face of impunity. He fought where the battle was thickest and died on his feet, total in his service to a conscience nurtured by a passion for truth. At 54, either by the malignant assistance of some insidious ailment, or by that of some vicious spirituality as widely believed, Madugba gave in to eternal fatigue, relieved, at last, from life, from a suicidal hatred of evil; an exit painful in its glory, all to my total devastation and unceasing weeping. At night, as in every private moment, I imagine the fictionality of it all, conjure up the possibility that it had all along been a long, tortuous dream liable to a cheery awakening -- a denouement.
.
.
And that is the climax of my current pain. My recovery has relatively been reversed by the sheer diabolism of this news, by Madugba's cross-legged presence in my memory, frustrating all efforts at 'deliberate' amnesia. It is (not) well, but my pain is relieved by the awareness that he died triumphant, living far longer than the sum of his life, in the sheer richness of his legacy. Therefore, he lives!
Immanuel James Ibeawuchi.
----------------------------------------------------
Life is an endless pursuit of reliefs. From the issue of oppression, poverty, ignorance,etc., to that of disease, even in the matter of successfully conducting a quiet anal hiss in public, thereby dislodging a gaseous restiveness within one's belly, the human experience unfurls as a successive search for reliefs. Relief, like when the last tablets of a 30-day medication are finally swallowed. But the word is not 'swallow': you gather the tablets together -- yellow, green, white members of a populous medical delegation filling half the cup of your sick palm; you stretch the hinges of your mouth to crocodile precision; you pour the drugs directly into the middle of your throat, away from the jurisdiction of the tongue, and then quickly pour in water for a hasty guttural wash-down.
.
.
A strange, persistent fatigue defying self-medication had taken me to a medical laboratory. Widal test and limpid profile revealed it was a group attack, a foursome: malaria, very high cholesterol levels, very high blood pressure, and typhoid. Yet I wasn't feeling sufficiently ill. I found the inclusion of typhoid a little shameful, for it somewhat testified to unsatisfactory hygiene. 'You're too young for this kind of result! What are you eating?', screamed the female lab scientist.
.
.
Fried eggs. Peanuts. Oily soups. Pies. Fries. Fried eggs. Then fried eggs. I loved them, eggs.
.
.
A call to a doctor friend. He asked that I read out the result details, then he screamed. 'At this rate you need to go to a hospital. And please change your diet!' He banned whatever he could lay his mind on, leaving solely punitive diets like unripe plantain and all such oral formalities of chewing-stick tastelessness.
.
.
Kupa Hospital, Ajao-Estate, Lagos.
'It's not that bad, but you really have to change your diet. And you're too young for these, Imma', said my doctor.
'I started life too early anyway, so I'll be surprised if I live long.'
'Come on, don't sound pessimistic!'
'See, if I live long, good. If I don't, better.'
'You've not changed! Please stay away from...'
.
.
I told him I would not be part of life if it became averse to necessary indulgence, if it became a long stretch of caution ambushed at every turn by dietary mayhems. I was escorted home by an entire sack of drugs dosaged for one whole month! The whiff of that possession gave my car the smell of a mobile clinic, and I felt convinced again that if pharmacologists -- or whoever they are that make drugs -- if they are not sadists thrilled to stupor by evil, just what does it cost to make drugs a little tasty and nice-smelling? How does the dual terrorism of ailment and medication not demand the urgency of medical innovation?
.
.
Home. 'Try and get married', texted my doctor friend, a piece of advice as irrelevant as it was unscientific, perhaps only mischievous, in its proposal of solution.
'I have seen marriage-generated BPs', I replied.
'Perhaps I truly need a wife. My funeral would be too boring without a widow busy with dramatic mourning anyway', I texted back again. He ignored me.
.
.
Recovery had come like quick ejaculation, spawned by the haste of good medication and proper diet. I had missed work terribly, having been interrupted by ailment on a new entrepreneurial project. I was about to restart when that call came, one notorious evening: Dr. Sam Iheanacho Madugba, my most-beloved uncle, literal and literary, had died.
.
.
Novelist. Poet. Dramatist. Medical Director in the Imo State Ministry of Health. Catholic Choir-Master. Politician. Activist. Madugba was that middle-aged exuberance who, with his own funds, convinced on its prospects, entered my book, Under Bridge, for its first award, the ANA-Imo Prize for Prose in 2014 -- a gesture that encouraged entering that book for its second award, the National ANA Prize in the same category same year. Unhappy about my aloofness from communal politics, he had invited me alongside 39 other 'illustrious sons and daughters' of our community, December 31, 2014, towards the resolution of a fierce, lingering monarchical tussle. My introduction was first on the agenda, and he anchored an immediate, impromptu launch of my book, which earned me some fifty thousand naira I later squandered in my lodge in Owerri, 'in the spirit of the season'. After the meeting, he led me by the hand to a state commissioner present, so we 'could work together'. He wanted the best for me, and was never infested with that common hatred for rivalry.
.
.
Author of seven books, including that award-winning book of poems, 'Buhari's Boots, Babangida's Boots', an impulsive praise for his most-admired leader, Mohammadu Buhari; former Coordinator of the state's AIDS Control Programme; former leader of the Imo State Medical Association, who supervised a most grinding medical strike that rattled the Achike Udenwa government, for which he was later prematurely retired by Mr. Udenwa for refusing to shut up and work like a slave. He challenged that retirement in court, and won the case seven years after, earning a reinstatement, entitlements, and damages in millions of Naira.
.
.
Madugba's capacity for rebellion had been the source of his popularity in my community and in Imo State. A big pair of lips belonged to him, a divine gadget too thick to be buttoned in the face of injustice and evil. For refusing to shut up in circumstances requiring the silence of life-loving humans; for lacking the hormones of fear, unwilling to accept the photoshop of falsehood as truth; for being unsparing in the expression of what he believed in, most times to the point of offence, Madugba was the owner of a huge, wild, plantation of enemies.
.
.
Our last physical meeting was about three months ago, when I had gone to Owerri to discuss with a certain traditional ruler. My cousin and best friend, George Amakor, had come to Owerri from the UK to do his Ph.D research, and needed to speak with a health worker. We all met at Dr. Madugba's clinic in Owerri, filling his office with repetitive, throaty, masculine laughters sprung by his humour and native eloquence. For the umpteenth time, I expressed fears for his life. Strong in his Catholic conviction of divine protection, he dismissed them, recounting survival of several episodes of juju attacks at home and in his office.
.
.
He was driving himself home from work. And then he complained of fatigue, and asked his driver to drive. Fatigue! He sat at the back seat and was being driven to a clinic; right there he rather took another route, a shorter one, to that painful finality. Till the last breath, it had been a life studded with work and impact. He had a contempt for life and money, unyielding in his conviction that life must not be lived on the condition that it cultivates akimbo silence in the face of impunity. He fought where the battle was thickest and died on his feet, total in his service to a conscience nurtured by a passion for truth. At 54, either by the malignant assistance of some insidious ailment, or by that of some vicious spirituality as widely believed, Madugba gave in to eternal fatigue, relieved, at last, from life, from a suicidal hatred of evil; an exit painful in its glory, all to my total devastation and unceasing weeping. At night, as in every private moment, I imagine the fictionality of it all, conjure up the possibility that it had all along been a long, tortuous dream liable to a cheery awakening -- a denouement.
.
.
And that is the climax of my current pain. My recovery has relatively been reversed by the sheer diabolism of this news, by Madugba's cross-legged presence in my memory, frustrating all efforts at 'deliberate' amnesia. It is (not) well, but my pain is relieved by the awareness that he died triumphant, living far longer than the sum of his life, in the sheer richness of his legacy. Therefore, he lives!
Immanuel James Ibeawuchi.
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