Adebayo Lamikanra

By Adebayo Lamikanra

My involvement in a workshop for traditional medical practitioners made it necessary for me to have a brief chat with the leader of one of the groups which claim to be the voice of traditional medicine in Osun state. One of the points advanced by the proponents of traditional medicine is that the practitioners of this art resided, together with the overwhelming majority of Nigerians, in rural settlements which can be found in considerable profusion throughout the length and breadth of the country. In this wise the man I had to see could be regarded as fitting this rural mode as his residence / clinic was situated in a place which although was only a few kilometres outside the state capital was more than a few light years away in terms of infrastructural facilities and was heavily cloaked with the garment of undisguisable rurality.

I had never paid a visit to this particular village and I was therefore rather apprehensive about the possibility of getting lost in what I imagined was a wilderness. In order to eliminate this possibility, I asked the way from at least three people and gained confidence from the fact that their descriptions were identical. I was to make a left turn on one of the roads leading out of Osogbo, after which all I needed to do was to follow the road. As it turned out however, I had grossly overestimated the possibility of getting lost. The point at which I was to turn off the main road was plainly marked by three signboards in garish competition for the traveller’s attention. Clubs founded by the village indigenes in far away places like Lagos and Kano, felt that it was their civic and patriotic duty to make sure that no visitor to their village was put at the disadvantage of whizzing past the insignificant dent in the road which marked the way to their much cherished place of origin.

One kilometre down the road to the village and I knew I was back in the last century. Immediately after the turning, the first time traveller was confronted with a massive pothole which without the benefit of experience was impossible to detect let alone avoid. The next time I make this journey, I will be on the alert, but this time I suffered the full effects of its presence and was flung around in the car like a rag doll, leaving the very marrow of my bones quivering like freshly set jelly. This was only the powerful commencement of a torrid journey. Needless to say, the road was unspoiled by a coating of tar or any other surfacing material but its corrugated top betrayed the recent attention of a grader, suggesting that the people living in that area had not been completely forgotten and left to their own limited devices.

This being the dry season I had occasion to be grateful that I had not taken the trouble to clean my car as progress was marked by thick, swirling dust which coated everything on the side of the road and penetrated into the vehicle through all available nooks and crannies. My speed was, out of necessity, a shade too slow to be registered on the speedometer so I had the opportunity of looking around the limited environment. The road was lined to its very edge by the wealth of that part of Nigeria, that is, economic trees like cocoa, kola nut and some timber. But, there were some signs, apart from the evidence of the recent passing of a grader, that the 21st century had passed that way. There were the carcasses of cars which no doubt ruled the roads a few years on either side of the country’s independence, the railway line which for all its currency appeared to have been abandoned, not long after it was laid and, the greatest surprise of all, a massive steam roller which undoubtedly will not steam again, let alone roll anything. The journey was rough, very rough, but there was nothing in it to raise the ashes of excitement. I reached my decidedly humble destination not long before noon.

Any man of the world should know that in a village, a wristwatch or any other timepiece is exclusively an item of decoration. Abandon all thought of haste all you that enter a village. That, believe it or not, is very sound advice. My first observation on being shown into my host’s sitting room was that all the four expensively looking clocks on the walls had stopped ticking or tocking for goodness knows when, but the peoples’ attitude to time was demonstrated more practically by the fact that I was told very courteously that the Baba had gone out but his arrival was being awaited more or less with bated breadth, anytime from then. I waited…waited … and waited, but he did not put up an appearance. Further questioning elicited the response that my host had in fact gone to a meeting, probably in Osogbo, but since Osogbo was practically down the road, he was bound to come in any second from then on. I was determined that the trip would not be fruitless so I settled down to a long wait. It was not long however before I began to feel the bite of restlessness and, to assuage it, I decided to have a little walk around.

Any man of the world should know that in a village, a wristwatch or any other timepiece is exclusively an item of decoration. Abandon all thought of haste all you that enter a village. That, believe it or not, is very sound advice. My first observation on being shown into my host’s sitting room was that all the four expensively looking clocks on the walls had stopped ticking or tocking for goodness knows when, but the peoples’ attitude to time was demonstrated more practically by the fact that I was told very courteously that the Baba had gone out but his arrival was being awaited more or less with bated breadth, anytime from then

The village could be described, as medium sized with no less than three roads running through it. Surprisingly, all the roads were not only tarred, but were in very good condition, much better condition than the village itself. It was immediately apparent to the visitor that there were virtually no completed buildings in the village. The houses were either in the process of being built in the most casual manner imaginable, or in the process in of terminal decay, with roofs being held in place, more by an inexplicable act of God than the strength of the walls. They were actually perched on the walls, rather like a cap on the head of a man suffering the effects of extremely potent liquor.

The houses may have been picturesque, but the really noticeable thing about the village was the virulent and seemingly infectious fecundity of the women. The place was simply inundated with children in various stages of attempting to grow up in what were clearly, inauspicious circumstances. Of industry, there was no sign apart from a few looms on which some young ladies, evidently unmarried, (they were the only sexually mature women I saw without a baby on their back or a highly suggestive bulge in the abdomen) were weaving cloth. Of grown men there was no sign whatsoever. But, since the children swarming about the place could not have been the result of self inoculation or artificial insemination, it is most likely that the men had gone outside the village to work at some trade in order to provide the wherewithal needed to sustain their numerous offspring and overworked spouses. According to official sources, rural dwellers have been introduced to the good life and we can now expect the suffering urban masses to return to their ancestral villages. From what is easily apparent on the streets of Ruralville however, there are already far too many people in our rural areas struggling with the dire consequences of annual negative net growth for anyone to entertain the realistic hope that anything good will eventually come out of Ruralville.

By the way, my visit to Ruralville was successful in the end. I got to see Baba after an impatient and at times, anxious wait, which consumed the best part of four (urban) hours. I was not sorry to depart from there.

Lamikanra, a professor of Pharmacy at Obafemi Awolowo University, Ife sent this 1993 piece because of its relevance to 2016 Nigeria