Chike and the River

So they went to the headmaster’s house to hear their results. Chike and two other boys passed but Mark and the other three failed. As soon as he heard his result Chike ran away as fast as he could for fear of being beaten by the disappointed and angry Mark.

As soon as he had run away to safety Chike slowed down to a walk. He remembered a poem their teacher had written:

There was a dull boy in our class

Who swore: “At all costs I must pass.”

He read himself blind,

He cluttered up his mind

With pills; and was bottom of the class.

Teacher wrote this little poem when three foolish pupils nearly died from swallowing brain pills. Some dishonest trader had told the three boys that pills would help them to remember what they read. So they bought the harmful drugs from him and began to take them. But just before the examinations they were behaving like mad people and had to be rushed to the hospital.

They spent five days in hospital and were then discharged. The doctor said they were very lucky; they might have damaged their brains permanently. As for the examination the foolish boys had been so shaken that they failed hopelessly.

Chike recalled all the wild rumors that spread through the school at the time. Before the boys were discharged from hospital it was rumored that the doctor had pronounced them permanently insane. Another rumor said that one of the boys had slapped the headmaster when he had gone to see them. The source of this last rumor was Ezekiel.

Chike remembered how worn out the boys had looked the first day they returned to school. Everyone watched them closely for the least sign of unusual behavior. It was only after several days of watching that they were accepted as fully normal. By that time the examinations were already over and the holidays were near.

It must have been during the holidays that their teacher wrote the little poem which he made public at the beginning of the next term. By then several weeks had passed, and it was possible for everyone to laugh about the incident. Even the three unfortunate boys joined in.

Chike was now approaching home. He had turned off the tarred road and was walking on the sandy footpath which formed a shortcut to no. 15 Odu Street where he lived. He found a hard, unripe orange by the wayside and began to kick it along the path. He imagined himself as center-forward in a big match. He would dribble past an imaginary opponent and shout Eh! as spectators do when their favorite player outwits an opponent. Then he dribbled past three more and counted “One, two, three” before scoring an imaginary goal. “It’s a goal!” he shouted, and threw his arms in the air.

Then he saw a shiny object which he had kicked up with a lot of sand. He bent down and picked it up. For a brief moment the world seemed to spin round him. He closed his eyes and then opened them again. Yes, it was there in his palm-a sixpence. He looked around to see if the owner of the money was coming behind. There was no one. He looked ahead; no one was in sight. He closed his hand on the coin and put the hand into his pocket. Then he walked boldly away. But soon he found himself running.

7 The Fate of the Coin

Chike had never had as much money as this before. The largest sum of money he had ever had at one time was threepence. That was at Easter when he had joined a group of other boys to make music.

The leader of the group was a masked dancer. In the custom of the people this masked dancer was regarded as a spirit. The other boys were called his disciples or attendants. Chike was one of the disciples.

Their instruments were very simple. They had one small but real drum made of wood and animal skin. The other drum was a biscuit tin beaten with a stick. Then a few rattles were made by shaking cigarette tins containing pebbles. Those who had no instruments clapped their hands. The group went from house to house and sang for the inmates. Usually they were given a little money but sometimes they received food or biscuits. At the end of the day they had shared their earnings and Chike received threepence which he spent on groundnuts.

All this happened some time ago. Now Chike had become a different person. He had no desire to spend his money on groundnuts. He wanted to spend it in fulfilling his ambition. Of course sixpence was not enough; he needed one shilling for the trip. But as their teacher said, little drops of water make the mighty ocean. Thinking about this saying Chike remembered his mother’s friend, Sarah, who sold snuff at Umuofia. Sarah was a great talker and her language was full of vivid pictures. She once told a story about a little bird and the River Niger. Chike so liked the story that he added bits to improve it. This is Chike’s version of the story: Once there was a quarrel between a little bird and the River. The River was full of scorn and contempt for the size of the bird, and said: “Even the biggest bird in the air is beneath my notice. As for you, I think of you as a grain of sand. How long are you? Two inches. Do you know how long I am? Two thousand and six hundred miles! I come all the way from the Futa Jalon Mountains through five countries. Get out of my sight.”

The little bird swooped down on the River and sipped a mouthful of water and swallowed it. Then he said to the River: “However great you may be I have now reduced you by a drop. You are smaller than you were this morning. Come and catch me if you can.” And with that he flew away proudly. The River thought about it and decided that the little bird was right. And he realized too that there was one thing a river could not do. It could not fly.

Chike’s interest in the River Niger probably began from the day he heard that story. Of course Sarah had told it much more simply. Chike had added the part about the length of the river, the five countries, and the name of the mountains. Geography was one of his favorite subjects and he liked to study his atlas.

Now to go back to the sixpence. Chike wrapped it carefully in a small piece of paper and put it in his school box. But after one week he began to think of ways of making the sixpence grow into a shilling. One way was to start trading with it. But what kind of trading could he do with such a small sum of money? In any case he knew that his uncle would not allow him to trade. In the end Chike took his problem to his friend Samuel, alias S.M.O.G. Samuel knew how to act like a grown-up. He sat down and began to think, his chin in his left hand.

“You want to change your sixpence into a shilling?” he asked.

“Yes,” replied Chike.

“You can go to a money-doubler.”

“Where does he live?”

“I don’t know but I can find out for you, tomorrow.”

So they agreed to go in search of a money-doubler on the following day. Meanwhile they decided to go and play. On their way they passed by people selling cooked guinea-fowl eggs and specially prepared meat called suya. An idea occurred to S.M.O.G. He had threepence in his pocket.

“Let us buy eggs and suya,” he said. “If I buy threepence worth of suya and you buy threepence worth of eggs then I can have some of your eggs and you can have some of my suya.”

“But the only money I have is for doubling,” said Chike.

“You talk like a small boy,” said S.M.O.G. “You will have threepence left which you can double to become sixpence and then double the sixpence to become one shilling.”

“That is true,” said Chike. “I can even double the shilling.”

“Of course,” said S.M.O.G.

“But why spend as much as threepence?” asked Chike. “Let us start with one penny each.”

“Small-boy talk again,” sneered S.M.O.G. “One penny will only buy one egg; threepence will buy four. Why should we have half an egg each when we can have two? Did we eat eggs yesterday? Why should we live by the River Niger and then wash our hands with spittle?”

Chike gave in. The proverb was very convincing. Chike had heard it used before about Peter Nwaba, the miserly