TREACHERY VS LOYALTY

I would be totally wrong to use the word reminisce but that word would have sufficed  to express my feelings except for the incredible fact that I did not witness what I am about to say. All week, my cerebrum had being plagued with quaint events of times remote from the present and I have caught myself humming the tone “what a wonderful world”. I have traveled centuries back on the waves of excellent history when women were modest, respectful and demurely behaved. The times when females were addressed as ladies with uttermost reverence and maidens were virgins. I floated centuries back to the periods of life when men were honorable, noble and fearless. Times when a man’s word was his bond and his life depended on keeping it.

 An age when bravery was sought and displayed by lads who engaged themselves in adversities. Such was a time when subjects were loyal and knights were brave enough to lay down their lives for their kings without flinching. Such was a period when the pure scent of the serene waters aroused and satisfactorily quenched thirst. The wrens and nightingales were never afraid to hold each other to a singing contest, embracing without any tinge of grudge the result. The trees were never hesitant to wave at the proud blue sky that stretches over the universe. The sun shone in its entire splendor but allowed the illumination of the moon at night. Friendship was embraced, engaged and regarded with esteem.

 A friend could risk the executioner’s axe, the stake and the gallows for another friend. Those were days of untainted innocence, heroism and bravery, loyalty and integrity. Such a time it was when great men of valor walked the face of the earth and exhumed honorable traits but treachery also did abound. Phenomenal plots that chronicled the fall of many great kings and tore kingdoms apart. Such was the time of the great Julius Ceaser, the roman god, the holy emperor Otto the great, the ancient city of Gondolin and the historic Troy. These men were exceedingly great and so their empires. Some were regarded above mortals but all had an Achilles heel that facilitated their untimely fall to treachery, mistrust. All of these quaint events brought to life something in me as I pondered over the tale of this young serving boy who lived in those times.

Remotely in a kingdom far away, long extinct, lived a lad. Orphaned at childhood with no one in the world to turn to, he mastered the act of sole survival at a very tender age. At fourteen, he fended for himself any way he could both legitimate and crooked. He lived on and off the streets until fate caused him to witness a scene that brought about a volte-face. One sunny day, he tended to the crops of a wealthy merchant. He was assigned to till and make a hundred ridges before sun down. The young lad worked tirelessly but at sundown, he had yet another thirty ridges to make. He couldn’t leave the farm out of the petrifaction, for the merchant was extremely cruel and unjust. Leaving the job half done meant no pay at all and so kept on late into the night. It was a beautiful night and nature consented to his dedication as a full moon lighted the entire farmland but at about midnight, something strange happened.

From the horizon emerged three men, he couldn’t quite make out their faces in the dark but they looked like royal guards. Quickly with stealth, he disappeared into the bush from where he listened attentively. Alas, his suspicion was correct. He identified the trio as the chief commander of the king’s army and two other trusted soldiers. They had a plot to assassinate the king on his wedding which was to take place in a fortnight as the king had being previously made widower by losing his queen to childbirth. They had a scrupulously orchestrated arrangement to use the potential queen as the carrier of the deadly poison that will eliminate the king in no time. She would be burnt at the stake for treason and consequently, the commander of the kings army would be crowned king as it was in the constitution.

The poor lad had to do something and with exigency, but what? He had not the slightest inkling because no one would take the words of a peasant over those of a royal commander. He needed a royal emissary to carry his missive but whom? Lost in the maze of excruciating thoughts, it hit him like a little stone thrown into a stream and as the ripples broadened so did the smile on his face.

For the king, the status quo had changed. He didn’t care about the fairness of the maiden; no virgin could measure up to his deceased wife. He sought a lady with a pure and true heart, kind and witty and so he had instructed that all maidens go through a test, whoever passed it would become his new queen but how could anyone tame a beast!
Ten virgins had been selected-royals and nobles, pure breeds that had the purple blood running through their veins but amidst the ten was an ordinary girl or so she seemed but immensely witty. All had been given thirteen days to tame the beast, whoever succeeded became the crowned queen on the fourteenth day. Young poor orphan set out in his mission to save the king. For ten days he helped the ordinary maiden and each day the beast was calmer with her but not any of the other virgins.
 
Eventually on the twelfth day, they broke through; the beast was tamed by the duo. The lady inquired of the lad what he needed as a quid pro quo but his desire wasn’t for himself. He asked for just one thing, that the chief commander of the king’s army taste the ceremonial wine. The lady was astonished, but she had no other choice. The matrimonial ceremony began in earnest on the fourteenth day in an immaculately adorned palace filled with royals, friends and subjects. In no time, the zenith of the day was reached, the king had to complete the marriage rites by drinking the wine carried by his queen who approached steadily in a breathe taking white dress but stopped a few feet from the throne, tears rolling down her eyes.

The music stopped abruptly as the king rose from his throne. He was already impressed by her ability to tame the beast and so he declared that she named anything she wanted, so far it stills the river flowing steadily down her cheek and he would give it. At her request, the palace became pin silent. The king couldn’t fathom it out but he already gave his word. The commander was summoned and asked to sip the wine. He vehemently refused. Catastrophe had struck, the plot had been uncovered. The commander confessed treason and his accomplices were arrested. The king was devastated for trusting his foes but profoundly grateful to his new bride. He thanked providence for bestowing him with a rare gem but she didn’t forget the orphan. He served the king faithfully and was the youngest commander in history.

When we hear treason, we think about the national acts of disloyalty but the heart stinging truth is this- we all are guilty of some measure of treason. It is not about plotting against the president but it is in the seemingly unimportant things- a wife who scorns her husband behind his back is a traitor just as the private soldier that answers “yes sir” and calls the general a moron. A friend that breaks news told him in confidentiality and denies it. A child that deceives the father and an employee that engages in office gossip and slander. How about the sexton that assassinates the character of the cardinal?

VOLTE-FACE

“Change is the only consistent inconsistency of life” immediately he spoke those words, he commanded my attention. He accessed the recesses of my hitherto walled mind. I immediately began to ponder over these words that would soon gain ascendancy in my life philosophies, I didn’t know that then. It was a Monday morning and I was seated quietly but with discontent on the third seat at the last row of my English class, watching languidly as the teacher blabbed away or so I thought. I was discontent because our English teacher had been changed and replaced without prior notification. The entire class was in some kind of mourning state, inertia was created. How much we loved his predecessor!

He related adequately with us dealing with us as intelligent teenagers not a bunch of spoilt brats contrary to the other   teachers’ assertions. In that spirit, the class unanimously paid no attention to the new guy. I was drifting amidst the crowd too until I heard those words. A few years have passed and I have stopped being that teenager that sat on the last row of my English class and amused everyone by asking the new English teacher “Emmanuel the immaculate” he called himself, all manners of questions, really brilliant questions though. I was his major and only challenger not because I sought to display my wit but simply because my company and I were trying to find out how witty the new guy was compared to our famous teacher.

Those years are long gone now, the company had been remotely dissolved and everyone has taken different routes on the path to destiny. No one knows where “Emmanuel the immaculate” is at the moment but those words did linger and the more I ruminated on them, the more they became crystal, touching me at the very core of my being. In the past years, I have spoken them and shared them often. They have become one of my major philosophies of life not until they met with a storm. A fierce tornado almost obliterated these words that I have nurtured and believed in for far too long in a space of half a year.

What happened? Follow me closely……………….
This conversation ensued between a man and his wife last week; I would share the conversation first and later unravel what chronicled the conversation. This conversation is the end of the beginning of my story. The storm my philosophy came face to face with.
Man: “why now????? Why are these people doing this?” these people should cease their light! I am tired of it. What is this nonsense?
Woman: laughs………….behold, the metamorphosis of PHCN! Please adapt.

That was my aunt and uncle in law. Last week, something phenomenal happened at our neighborhood. We experienced uninterrupted power supply at high voltage for 72 hours. We were practically begging PHCN to hold power as usual. The change was a little difficult to adapt to.
My first time in Jos was in October 2008. I had come for 300level industrial attachment training and I fell in love with the plateau. From 2008 up till this moment I have basically been in and out of Jos anytime the opportunity to travel surfaced. After passing out from the NYSC scheme October last year, I decided to explore the plateau. I have since been in the home of peace and tourism, a beautiful place indeed with a perfect weather but my neighborhood faced terrible power challenges. People supplement on generators under normal circumstances but here in kankang, an outskirts of Jos town where I live, we live on generators!

The entire neighborhood powered their houses with their individual generating sets. No one remembered PHCN existed in kankang because there was never power and even when it surfaced, it was never up to an hour and at a really low voltage. This year the situation grew increasingly worse. We didn’t even get the low voltages in 6 months! I was irked and decided to stage a one man aluta thanks to my alma mater; I have inculcated the rudiments of a protest. I matched to the PHCN office and delivered my immaculate script. The manager saw a subtle irascibility in my diplomacy and promised that something will be done in 24hours. Did he keep his words? Of course, but only for 30minutes. I got exhausted and I gave up! For me, the residents of kankang were doomed to a lifetime of incredible diesel and petrol expenditures. I concluded that some things could never change, a classical example being power supply in kankang.

A conclusion that warred with my highly esteemed philosophy of life, as the storms raged and threatened my belief; I consoled myself with the scientific claim that to every rule there is an exception and accepted defeat until Sunday evening. The leister went off just as I loaded the blender with pepper and tomatoes. We were out of diesel! That was the end of “Solomon Grundy” for the unprepared stew I thought but as I passed the corridor heading to my room, I saw a miracle. The PHCN indicator on the wall beamed brightly. I screamed, it was not the end of Solomon Grundy after all! 72 hours passed and the indicator kept beaming, my uncle in law could hardly believe it. I was stupefied too.

We later learnt that a brand new transformer was installed for the neighborhood and it held a promise of an all constant power supply. I still cannot believe it but each day that I go to bed and wake up with the indicator still beaming brightly, I realize this time without any contradiction that change is the only consistent inconsistency of life. I have come to believe every word with undeterred vehemence.

I would be right to say that the residents of kankang have suffered this ridiculous  outage for as long as four years but my aunt and uncle in law would have a different time frame as so would other residents of kankang every claim depending on how long each person have resided in that neighborhood.

I learnt this axiom as a little girl “life is not a bed of roses” but at that time, all I deciphered it to be was a flawless pink rose bed I conjured up in my imagination. Though, as I aged, I developed the intellectual sagacity to fathom out that axiom. You will agree with me devoid of a scintilla of dissension that life has its valleys and mountains. Its nights and days, the rains and the sun shines, the floods and the rainbows, the deserts and the lush greens, the wilderness and the oasis, the good and of course the bad. There is always a flip side to the times of life. Challenges will unnegotiably come knocking at the door and no mortal will be exempted from the battles of life.

They will come charging like freshly exorcised fiends at the rich and also the poor, the knowledgeable as well as the ignorant, the noble and the ordinary will not be left out. All mortals will feel the sting of life’s bite, each at different and strategic angles because life’s trials are  inevitable but pertinent evils designed to lead us one step further to fulfilling destiny and purpose every time we surmount them with a  pertinacious resolve . I have had my challenges and you have also had a fair share of some raging storm that made your principles cringe and caused you to crower, a tornado that swept away all your resolve, obliterating the faintest tinge of hope and faith that stood on its path. It could have been a turbulence that rocked the ship of your dreams and threatened to sink it, a fog that blurred your visions or maybe an odyssey that got inexplicably arduous with the breaking of each dawn.

Consequently, what thoughts cascaded through your mind? Did that experience leave you thinking that the end has come? Or that those things will remain all negatively constant? Did you wave the white flag and hold on to the white lie that the sun will never shine again?

It would not suffice to console yourself with some ridiculous scientific claim and give up. I sure do not know what your unique challenge is but one thing I know of a surety is that Change is the only consistent inconsistency of life and you will only step into another phase of greatness not until after you have passed that test. If kankang can experience a volte-face in one minute from a dark, powerless neighborhood to a place beaming with high voltage electricity, your challenge is sure about to fade away. Just believe and you will see that change and when it shows up, embrace it fiercely.