With Alan Kay

“There is always a way out; you don’t need to give yourself Cardiac Arrest over a minor matter.”

“Kay, you know what? The last time I came here in company with Bala, I bought four bottles and Bala three. Midway into the merriment, this hawkish babe came and started packing the bottles in piecemeal. While leaving, I paid N4000 covering four bottles, while our friend paid N3000 for three. Now, see the embarrassment; she is saying I didn’t pay for one bottle.”

“You see, Charles, if you can adopt my style, you won’t have any problem as per settling your bill. Now, once you know you want to ‘shell’ yourself with upwards of three, four bottles, just ask that an empty carton be given you, which must be put near you or under your table. That’s the destination of all your ‘fallen heroes’ from the table. Then, let’s see who will dispute your bill.”

“Ah, thank you my dearly beloved, experienced drunk. You can see now that I’m going to pay for an un-executed project. She has dispossessed me by making me pay for an unconsumed bottle of beer.”

“You will do well to heed my advice and you won’t have to technically dispossess yourself. Again, stop being hysterical over such things. We are in the era of cardiac arrest.”

“Oh, see the various stories woven around the recent death of Kwara-born comedian cum minstrel, Mukaila Senwele, who simply slumped and died shortly after ending a phone call. Some in enlightened circles interpreted the incident as a case of cardiac arrest; while those sold to the belief in voodoo or juju attack, are claiming some gobblins or gnomes from which he got popularity powers were at loggerheads with him and so decided to kill him.”

“Charles, I think we shall do well to stick to the cardiac arrest narrative, for it is common with our people to always attribute every such incident to juju attack or the backlash of popularity or money-making ritual, with no evidence to prove…”

“Another societal foible is that once a family breadwinner dies, mourners throng the home in the heat of grief, promising to be there for the widow or widower as the case may be, as well as for the children. But it’s all show-off or ‘shakara oloje’ as Fela would say. After the dead is interred and the party is over, it’s to your tent, O Israel.”

 “Charlie, there you come again. Let them give us steaming hot assorted meat, a plate each, because this beer is criminally cold. That would just be our variant of Ikogosi-Ekiti warm spring. This time, it will be where hot pepper soup meets with cold beer, (Laughs, alone).”

“Please, be serious for once, you have derailed from the topic at hand. Why are people dying of cardiac arrest these days?”

“Hic…hic, cardiac arrest means heart attack and heart attack means unsolvable financial problem. When a man cannot pay his children’s school fees and his wife is reaching out to a non-biological uncle to ask for financial assistance, then cardiac arrest is bound to set in.”

“Or when someone cannot pay up his house rent and he is facing eviction, that’s also a veritable source of heart attack…”

“Yes, that reminds me of the plight of the African Church cleric seconded to the Alausa, Lagos Government House as chaplain during the administration of Governor Akinwumi Ambode some years ago. He was sacked ostensibly for disrespecting the governor’s wife and ordered to quit his official quarters within 24 hours. Did they want him to contract cardiac arrest? Where would he go, with wife and children?”

“But they said he failed to recognise the presence of the governor’s wife and even went to the extreme by dodging the clerical task of anointing her head with oil.”

“All I know is that, without fire, there can be no smoke. Didn’t we hear that the pastor had got series of queries over some alleged misconducts and that what transpired at the church service was only the last straw that broke the camel’s back?”

“Na so o, Alan Kay. Pastors are now being employed by politicians…oh, the man is not a typical Lagos Boy. Somebody who still had three years to spend on the Government House pulpit…and would now miss many perks, like regular consolidated salary, allowances, gifts, sponsorship to Jerusalem, contracts..oh!”

“I thought along that line too… Well, my advice to the sacked pastor’s successor would have been that, every Sunday, start by saying, ‘I hereby recognise the presence of our beautiful First Lady, a woman of grace and splendour, whom the Almighty has appointed over us all as Mother; you are welcome Mummy.”

“Ah, ah, ah (joint laughter). Wait Kay. That’s not enough, If I were the new pastor, I would take a list of all her family members and friends and not only recognise them, but also prostrate flat for them…hic…and then, pour a bottle of Goya anointing oil on everyone in her entourage, getting them drenched!”

“Na wa o. Losing such a juicy appointment under this harsh economic reality is not a joking matter. Rest assured, such fate is rated as falling from a mountain top to the valley below.”

“Na so o, my brother; in the secular world, after losing such a juicy appointment, if you had been ‘shelling’ four, five bottles of beer in three nights within a week, you would reduce them to one, two bottles per week. Or if you had been taking fish pepper soup, assorted meat, nkwobi, isi-ewu and cow tail, you would revert to ponmo.”

“But things are even worse now. Haven’t you heard of the killer ponmo in town? We never can tell if a long ponmo that had sucked pepper in the broth of a bubbly stew can afterwards precipitate stomach pain and lead to death. So what do we eat?”

“Then, we probably proceed on hunger strike…or aren’t we lucky to be revellers? Those who are running for dear life, in different war zones across the world, if they get ponmo to eat, will they not go and do thanksgiving?”

“Abeg,” let’s take a bottle each for the road. We cannot but thank God for our lives, even as we drink our beer with ponmo in the era of recession; without having to run helter-skelter for fear of attack.”