A new short story by Americanah author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, titled Olikoye, surfaced on the platform Medium on Monday after being originally published in the story collection The Art of Saving a Life, commissioned by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to spotlight the value of vaccines. The
quick but poignant read is narrated by a woman reflecting on the many
lives lost to disease—and those saved by modern medicine—in Lagos,
Nigeria, as she gives birth to her first child.
“I hope the story humanizes the importance of healthcare, in addition to paying tribute to a great Nigerian,” Adichie says on the site. “I was happy to be involved because I admire the work being done, and because I believe that access to basic healthcare is a human right.”
One of the most distinguished figures in this generation’s wave of African literature, Adichie is known for her novels Americanah, Purple Hibiscus, and Half of a Yellow Sun, as well as her recently published essay We Should All Be Feminists—based on the speech of the same title that BeyoncĂ© sampled on “Flawless.”
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Olikoye
A new short story by the author of Americanah and We Should All Be Feminists.
By Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Illustrations by Wesley Allsbrook
How softly the
rain fell that Monday morning when my water broke. Because I was used
to the raging downpours of Lagos, this quiet patter calmed me, filled me
with peace. My husband Omoregie was at work and so our neighbor took me
to the hospital, my dress slightly damp, my heart full of expectation.
My firstborn child.
The
nurse on duty was Sister Chioma, a woman with an unsmiling face who
liked to crack sharp-tongued jokes. During my last check up, when I
complained about the backache brought on by my pregnancy, her retort
was, “Did you think about backache when you were enjoying it?”
She checked my cervix and told me it was early. She encouraged me to walk up and down the ward.
She checked my cervix and told me it was early. She encouraged me to walk up and down the ward.
“You must be happy that your first is a boy,” she said.
I shrugged. “As long as the baby is healthy.”
“I
know you are supposed to wait until he is born to decide on a name but
I’m sure you already have something in mind,” she said.
“I will name him Olikoye.”
“Oh.” She paused. “I didn’t know your husband was Yoruba.”
“He’s not. We’re both Bini.”
“But Olikoye is a Yoruba name.”
“Yes it is.”
“Why?” she asked. My contractions were slow. I told Sister Chioma to sit down and I would tell her the story.
My father’s first
child was a girl. He said she was a loud squalling baby who grasped his
finger with surprising strength, and he knew it meant she would be
tough. But she died at the age of four months. The second, a boy, was
not yet four months old before he died. Some people from my father’s
family said my mother was a witch, eating her children, trading their
innocent hearts in exchange for her own long life. But, at that time,
other babies in our village in Edo were dying too. They got sick with
watery shit and weak eyes. Some people said the diarrhea was punishment
from God. The Christians prayed in church. The Muslims prayed at the
mosque. The old people performed sacrifices. Still, babies died, and
their tiny still bodies were wrapped in cloth and buried, and it seemed
senseless that they had even been born at all.
It was 1985. My father was
working as a driver at the Ministry of Health. He was in the general
pool, a lowly position. One day, he picked up a visiting dignitary from
the airport, dropped him at his hotel, and then discovered, lodged in
the back seat of the car, a thick envelope of cash that had slid out of
the man’s bag. He returned it immediately. The man was so pleased — and
surprised—that he told the new Minister of Health about it. Two days
later, the new Minister asked for my father. “I want you to be my
driver,” The Minister said. “I value honesty.”
The
Minister’s name was Dr. Olikoye Ransome-Kuti. He had big sleepy eyes
and seemed to come from another time in the past when old-fashioned
integrity was easy. His simplicity surprised my father. He was not
interested in the usual carousing of the powerful, no late nights and
drinking and trysts, and my father did not have to guard any secrets for
him. He ate breakfast with his family every morning, and took walks
with his wife in the evening, and played tennis with his children on
weekends. He listened attentively, those half-closed eyes so intent that
my father, at first, felt uncomfortable when they were trained on him.
The
Minister asked my father about his family, and my father told him
everyone was fine. The Minister asked how many children he had, and my
father said none yet, but that his wife was pregnant and due in a few
weeks. (My mother as pregnant with me.) Then the minister asked a
question that startled my father. “How many of your children have died?”
My
father stuttered and said, “Two, sir, but we are praying that it will
not happen again.” The Minister told him it was good to pray, but there
was something else he had to do. “Our children are dying of simple
illnesses and that must stop. I want you to take me to your village. I
have started a program in Lagos but I want to start others in different
parts of the country. We will go to your village next week.” It took my
heavy-tongued father a while to find his voice and say, “Yes sir.”
In my father’s
village, the Minister walked around with his assistants, meeting people
and asking them questions and listening to them. He showed women how to
mix sugar and salt and clean water to give their children who had
diarrhea and he told them about washing their hands with soap and he
told them the Universal Primary Health Care center would be open in a
month. Once it was open, every baby would receive vaccines.
He
showed them photographs of bright-eyed babies in Lagos and he told them
immunizations were like small precious gifts for babies. They cheered
and clapped. In the eyes of the villagers, my father was a star. No
minister had ever come to them before.
Who even knew that our small
village existed? But my father kept telling them that he had done
nothing, that it was the minister who insisted on coming. Years later,
when my father told me the story, I could still see his eyes full of
things I could not name.
“The Minister treated all of us like human beings,” he said. “Like human beings.”
It took mere
moments. A baby’s small open mouth and a drop of liquid. A baby’s warm
arm and a small injection. It took that to save the lives of the babies
born that year in my village, and in the villages around us and those
far from us, in Calabar and Enugu and Kaduna. It took that to save my
life. I was born in 1986. I often tried to imagine myself being
immunized, in my mother’s arms, in the new clinic the minister built.
Women filled the passages. The treatment was free. At the other end was
the family planning unit where nurse was talking to a roomful of women,
sometimes making jokes that made them laugh. My mother joined them.
Years
later, she told me that the reason I did not die was that small
injection in my arm, but the reason I was able to go to school was
family planning. My sister was born two years after me, and my brother
two years after her, and my mother remembered the words of the family
planning nurse who told her to “have the number of children that you can
train well. Otherwise you will not be able to train even one of them
well.”
Because of the
Minister, my father came to know Nigeria well. The Minister went to
other interior villages and towns, and my father drove him through the
flat roads of the North and the undulating roads of the south. He
followed the Minister to the clinics, watched him speaking,
gesticulating, explaining, cutting ribbons to open health centers.
Everywhere
they went, people followed the Minister. Some just wanted to touch him,
to shake his hands. Others brought gifts. “No, no,” the minister said
to my father, when he saw the yams and plantains and chickens. “Give it
back to them. Tell them that they should keep it for me.”
I first met
the Minister when I was six years old. I was in Primary One, and my
father told him I came first in class and the Minister asked him to
bring me to his house. I expected to wait in the kitchen, and felt
awkward to be asked into the living room, into the sinking softness of
the carpet and the smell of clean and new things. He appeared with his
wife, both of them smiling. They gave me a book. A Childs Illustrated Book About The Body.
“Thank you, sir, thank you, ma,” I said, holding the book tighter than I had ever held anything in my young life.
Sister Chioma was squeezing my hand.
“So you knew him personally,” she said. “I finished nursing school the year he was appointed Minister.”
Her
tone was different, less flat, more emotional. It was then I noticed
that Sister Chioma, unsmiling, hard Sister Chioma, had tears in her
eyes.
“It
was because of Olikoye Ransome-Kuti that so many people in Nigeria did
not die,” she said quietly, and I knew she had her own story about the
Minister. Perhaps she would tell me the story later, or perhaps she
would not, but it pleased me that we had a story in common.
“He
was the best health minister this country has ever had,” she said,
standing up and hastily wiping her eyes. My contractions were now
shorter and sharper. Sister Chioma said it was perhaps time to push, and
she got up to call the doctor.
Outside the rain continued to fall gently until Olikoye was born.
Captivating.
ReplyDeleteShort abd interesting.nice!
ReplyDeleteClassic Adichie
ReplyDeleteAwww so nice to rmb ransome kuti this way
ReplyDelete