Chike and the River

4 Ezekiel, the Spoilt Child

Chike was so anxious to find the money for his trip across the river that he very nearly went into bad ways.

One of his friends called Ezekiel was a very bad boy. Like Chike, Ezekiel was his mother’s only son. He had four sisters. Ezekiel’s mother was a well-to-do trader who sold cloth in the Onitsha market and made much profit. But she was not a wise mother. She allowed Ezekiel to do whatever he liked. So he became a spoilt child. His mother had three servants who did all the housework. Sometimes Ezekiel’s sisters were asked to wash plates or draw water from the public tap. But he never did any work. His mother said that housework was only for servants and for girls. So Ezekiel was developing into a lawless little imp. He would sneak quietly to the soup-pot at night and search with his fingers for pieces of fish and meat. By morning the soup would go sour and Ezekiel’s mother would punish the servants. One day one of his sisters caught him red-handed. His fingers were covered with egusi soup. But Ezekiel denied it all, and his mother believed him.

When Ezekiel grew bigger he began to steal little sums of money from his mother. With this he bought akara, mai-mai, and groundnuts at break. Sometimes he was even able to buy whole packets of sweet biscuits or a tin of corned beef and a shilling loaf of bread.

Needless to say he was very popular at school. He was called Tough Boy and his friends thought the world of him. Of course they had no idea that he stole from his mother.

Then one day Ezekiel did something really awful. When he told his friends about it they thought it was very clever until their headmaster told them how wrong it was.

Ezekiel had somehow got hold of the names of three boys in England who wanted Nigerian pen-friends. He wrote to them asking one to send him money, another to send him a camera, and the third to send him a pair of shoes. He drew a pattern of his right foot on a piece of paper and sent it along. He promised each of the boys a leopard skin in return. Of course he had no intention of fulfilling the promise. For one thing he had never seen a leopard skin in his life.

After a month he received a ten-shilling postal order from one of the boys. He showed it to his mother and she called him Clever Boy, which was one of the many fond names she had given him. Then she took him to the post office to cash the postal order.

Ezekiel told his friends at school about his exploits and they were all highly impressed. “Tough Boy! Tough Boy!” was shouted on all sides.

The same day many other boys rushed off letters to England. Chike obtained two addresses but could not write straightaway because he had no money to buy postage stamps. He decided that as soon as he could find sixpence he would write to England and ask for ten shillings or even one pound. Then he would cross and recross the Niger as often as he liked. He thought how rich England must be when even a little boy could part with ten shillings. He had seen the letter the boy wrote to Ezekiel. His name was John Smith and he was aged twelve. Imagine that! Only twelve and yet he had ten shillings to throw away. What did he want a leopard skin for? English people must be crazy, thought Chike.

It was fortunate for Chike that he had no money to buy a postage stamp. If he had he would have been in serious trouble along with Ezekiel and the others.

One day at school the headmaster called Ezekiel out and took him to his office. Later he sent for five other boys. They were away for about an hour. Then the school bell rang and classes stopped. The headmaster, stern and full of anger, spoke to the school.

“I have just received a letter from the headmaster of a school in England,” he said and held up a blue letter for all to see. “The content of this letter has filled me with shame,” he continued. “I did not know that among us here are thieves and robbers, wolves in sheep’s clothing…” He spoke at length about Ezekiel’s crime. “Think of the bad name which you have given this school,” he said, turning to Ezekiel and the five boys; they were all looking at the floor. “Think of the bad name you have given Nigeria, your motherland,” he said, and the whole school sighed. “Think how the school in England will always remember Nigeria as a country of liars and thieves because of these six scallywags here.” Some of the pupils laughed because of the new word scallywag.

“Yes, they are scallywags,” said the headmaster, “and they have spoilt your name in England. Some of you will go to study in England when you grow up. What do you think will happen to you there? I will tell you. As soon as you open your mouth and say you come from Nigeria everybody will hold fast to his purse. Is that a good thing?” The whole school shouted “No, sir!”

“That is what these nincompoops here have done to you.” There was laughter again at nincompoops, another strange word.

Chike shivered to think that if he had had sixpence he would have stood there on the platform with the rest. He was sorry for Ezekiel and the others but especially for his good friend, S.M.O.G.

The headmaster was still speaking. He said that Samuel’s punishment would be the lightest and Ezekiel’s the heaviest. Samuel had merely begged for a camera; he had not made a false promise to send a leopard skin in return. But the headmaster reminded the school that begging was a bad thing by itself. He said, “A person who begs has no self-respect, he has no shame and no dignity. He is an inferior person. In this school we do not want to produce inferior people…”

Afterward Ezekiel was given twelve strokes of the cane and he cried. Samuel was given six strokes, and the others nine strokes each. Ezekiel’s mother went to the headmaster’s house that evening and rained abuses on him.

From that day on Ezekiel got new names in the school. Some called him Leopard Skin; others called him Scallywag or Scally-beggar. Only his closest friends still called him Tough Boy.