Gone Too Late

Alani died at the ripe age of 29. But while he was a Yoruba man and didn’t practice the Islamic religion, his family didn’t wait till the second day before they buried him in pomp and pageantry. On the obituaries that were printed and pasted around town, it was written boldly: GONE TOO LATE. This was of course strange in a society where 70-year old men were accused of going too soon and 80-year old women were mourned as killed by witches.

People that saw his obituary thought that maybe Alani was an abiku, which would explain the fact that he had surpassed the life cycle of a typical abiku since an abiku was not supposed to live longer than twelve years. But his mother said no. He wasn’t an abiku. She had knelt down in childbirth thirteen times and all thirteen of them stayed. My uncle did not agree that Alani died at a ripe age; to him, he died at an overripe age. I discovered why, three weeks after Alani passed.

Alani was the last child of his parents. When he was born, he didn’t cry. The nurses had slapped him repeatedly to make him cry, but he had refused. He had kept his little toes moving to show them he was alive and well, but would never cry. The nurses had taken turns slapping him, but he had refused to cry, as if daring them to throw him away because he wouldn’t cry. That was his first act of rebellion, a first in a long line of what was to come.

After they left the hospital and went home, his parents being religious people had consulted pastors, Imams and Ifa priests. Every single one of them had tried to get him to cry. He had looked on, with a look of amusement, like a man watching clowns fool around. Sometimes, the shows became too boring for him, and he slept off. Sometimes they disgusted him and he pooped on the body of whoever carried him. But most times, he just watched them sweating, trying to make him cry.

He didn’t understand their desperation to see him cry. He didn’t think it was a good thing. He saw how his father consoled his mother whenever she looked at him, shook her head and burst into tears. If crying was such a bad thing that they had to beg people not to do it, why then were they all that desperate to see him cry, to the extent that they would even pay people to help them make him cry?

Two years later, he had his first cry. No one expected it. They had all given up trying to make him cry. The last pastor that came had really annoyed him. He had pooped on him and urinated along with it. Before the man left, he had fixed Alani a long, hard stare and had told his parents not to have any expectations of him, and that if they would, they should have very bad ones. He had explained to them that it was a two-way thing: that it was either Adolf Hitler had chosen to return through Alani, or the anti-Christ had just been born in the guise of Alani, in which case, they would be doing society a favour by discreetly smothering him to death. Even the heavenly bodies would rejoice because of that act.

The day he cried, no one beat him. He had been fed. He didn’t fall and hit his head. He was in the living room watching cartoons on TV when he saw the Alfa that came to offer prayers on behalf of his parents packing too much meat into a poly bag in his hand while his parents looked on, saying “naam, naam.” The cry that he gave jolted all of them and left them open-mouthed. When they finally recovered, his mother rushed at him, hugging him and throwing him up.

He kept on crying and stretched his hand to the Alfa, asking him to carry him. He stopped crying and smiled mischievously when Alfa put down the poly bag of meat and carried him. Alani took his time. He didn’t urinate first; he let the poop come out first and then sent the urine after it. By the time Alfa knew what hit him, his white jalamia was a mess. The “Laila ilala” cry of exasperation that the man gave only made Alani giggle harder. After that, visitors only waved at him from a safe distance.

As he grew older, his parents started taking him to church. Their opinion was that even if he was the anti-Christ, with enough messages and prayers, his heart could be changed. But Alani had no such intention. The offering that his parents gave him was put in his pocket proudly while the ushers looked on in shock. All the “Offering time, blessing time” and “Thou shall not rob God” messages found no seat in him. With time, the trend he started was taken up by other children and the “Boycott the Offering bag” movement was born.

As he grew even older, the church felt the weight of his rebellion. He questioned the church too often and the members were always happy when he stood up to ask questions. The dozing ones would tap the sleeping ones, happy to listen to something other than the dull sleep-inducing sermon of the pastor. The pastor would groan internally with the knowledge that he was about to take the hot seat. He would whisper a quick and silent appeal to heaven: “My father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me; nevertheless, not as I will, but as you will.” Heaven’s most common answer over time had always been to allow the pastors drink from the cup.

Alani would smile, take the microphone and sigh heavily. It was a mind game meant to destroy whatever defence the pastor was planning on putting up. He would start by needlessly introducing himself. “I am the son of Brother and Sister Ajanlekoko.” The pastor would shoot them a “You-should-have-stopped-at-twelve-children” look. His parents would keep a stern face, as if they weren’t there. He would then go on to ask questions about things going on in church.

Sometimes, he would ask why the pastor, a man who had no work other than preaching, needed four cars when Sister so-and-so was struggling to pay her children’s school fees. Other times he would ask why the pastor needed four cars when Brother Tamedu’s landlord had just thrown him out of the house. Sometimes he would ask why Deacon Lamidi’s children were schooling in the UK, sponsored by the church’s offering, while he and his friends had to trek to the local embarrassment they called a school. Usually, the pastor would try to laugh and commend his inquisitiveness and then reel out some Bible verses, but they always knew that the damage had been done.

The tithes and offerings dwindled. People stopped giving and instead chose to keep the required ten percent of their salaries for better things. The church leadership called Alani’s parents and politely inquired if they didn’t think it was time they started attending another church, a Bible-believing one of course. They replied that the spirit of God wanted them to continue there.

The church decided to take their destiny into their hands.

A month later, the Ajanlekoko family got to the church to find it empty. Alani’s father called the pastor and was told that the church had moved to another location. “And we weren’t informed?” he shouted into the phone.

“Calm down, bro.” The pastor replied calmly. “The call to move was sudden and we couldn’t confer with flesh and blood before we carried out the Lord’s instruction.”

Mr Ajanlekoko was pacified. “Ok. So, where is the new church location so that we can come over?”

The pastor stammered through his reply. “Errm, actually, that won’t be necessary. I think the spirit would want you to find another church, a Bible-believing one of course.” He ended the call immediately and switched off his phone. It marked the end of the Ajanlekokoʼs church experiences.

The Ajanlekoko family’s decision to start going to a mosque yielded no good fruit either. Alani didn’t waste time before he got together his gang of like-minded boys. Two weeks after they started attending the local mosque, new shoes worn to the mosque started disappearing, only to be replaced by old and worn ones from the streets. All the spiritual songs composed by leaders of the faith got remixes, composed by Alani and his gang. The mosque didn’t waste time at all; they told Alani’s parents to either stop coming with their son or to start looking for another mosque. Alani, in his magnanimity, agreed to stop going and directed his efforts to something else in the society that was beginning to catch his fancy: girls.

At school, the teachers had been instructed not to use the canes bought with school money to beat him again. This was because he never cried when beaten. The canes would be all tattered and his back would be bleeding, but Alani would still not cry. Sometimes while he was being beaten, he would be scratching his chin or just smiling, and when the teacher was done, sweating and panting, Alani would ask when the teacher finished.

The female teachers were reluctant to teach any class that had Alani in it. He was in science class but had been caught on numerous occasions drawing the backsides of the female teachers. When caught, he would say he was trying his hands out on life drawing.

As he grew older, he rallied his troops and together they took over the street. They had a hideout located in an uncompleted building. There, there was no shortage of anything: food, drinks, and women. Theirs was a Mecca of some sort. They killed chicken and goats every day. Goats so feared Alani that when they saw him coming, the pandemonium that would follow would make one rethink everything scientists have written about animals and their level of intelligence.

With women, news had it that once every twelve hours, a woman got pregnant for Alani. He was quoted as saying he had been given a mandate to replace all his people that died in the civil war. After over 47 women came to the Ajanlekoko family house with a protruded belly, ten of whom delivered twins, Alani's parents bought him a big box of condoms. But Alani, the ever charitable one, shared out the condoms to his boys while he continued to fulfil God's creation instruction to be fruitful and multiply.

By the time he celebrated his 28th birthday, Alani’s children and their mothers were enough to start a new town. He didn’t ask how they lived or fed; he didn’t even know half of them. The older children often came to sit with him in his hideout and introduce themselves, starting with the name of their mothers. He would then shake them, pump their hands, and smilingly inform those seated with him that, “This is my son” or “This is my daughter,” and they would in turn wrap them a quick wrap of weed and watch them fill their lungs. Those seating would playfully pat Alani on the back, telling him, “Your son is not a bastard, he’s a natural,” and Alani would grin back and reply, “A lion does not give birth to rats; it’s an abomination.”

The day Alani died, he was found inside a woman, lying lifelessly on her, with a bottle of alomo in one hand and an unfinished wrap of weed in another. The first person to see him early the next morning tried to playfully pry the alomo bottle from his hand, half expecting him to grip it tighter and fling expletives at him, but Alani wordlessly relinquished the bottle and slept on.

Shocked, the man dropped the bottle and shook Alani. The lady under him woke up and searched for her underwear from the pile in a corner of the room. The man shook Alani again, hailing him and asking him to put away his junk and wear something. But Alani wordlessly slept on. The other men joined in trying to wake Alani, but it was a futile exercise. The general was gone.

The whole town woke up to hear the news. While some heaved a sigh of relief, others were undecided about what to feel. Alani’s parents entered his hideout for the first time since he colonised the place. Looking at him, they felt sad about losing a son, but again, it was the kind of sadness you felt when you heard that some people had died in an earthquake millions of miles away in a foreign land. He may have died, but the over 200 Alani-like children he left behind, who were now on a mission to be greater than their father and surpass whatever achievements the society thinks he achieved, were definitely going to be a handful.

When the obituary was to be written, one of the pastors suggested that they put “GONE TOO LATE.” Other clerics had bought into the idea and had called it a befitting send-off for a man of his societal stature.

At his burial ceremony the same day, weed was the official food of the day, while the other food varieties were add-ons. The churches and mosques that had closed down started opening their doors to resume operations. Goat and livestock owners let the animals out after long years of being kept inside.

On his tombstone, it was originally written, "Alani, okunrin meta. In your next life, come to us. Do not go to another town or country; come to us." But before it dried up, someone added, "Just Kidding" under it.