THE CALLING (PART THREE)

‘The Need Itself is not the call’

-          Charles E. Hummel.

Emeka had not been gone for more than ten minutes when he called him back and introduced a friend of his who he said has been under the yoke of evil. His name was ododo and he started with a request.

“I want my unculu dead.” The word ‘Uncle’ was unduly stressed by the man.

He was jarred by the specificity of the request and it was not a part of the rule book he had adapted from the numerous videos he watched of Men of God sharing testimonies. But he was desperate still. The joy of having increases by having and the recent N6000 has inspired his desire to have at least one more zero added behind the figure.

“Emmy been dey tell me say you be Prophet Sharp Sharp.”
“To The Glory of God.” He answered sincerely. He had not known what happened. How had a snake bitten the man on the first day of his visit to Emeka. He had read somewhere that once a man’s mind is made up to succeed, the entire universe conspires to bring his ventures to fruition.
“Prophet…” The man, Ododo was still speaking on the phone but only half his mind was listening.
“Ododo.” He responded.
“I need deliverance from my oppressors, Pastor. Dem dey suck my blood.”
“Holy Ghost fire!” He shouted and the caller shouted ‘Amen’.
“My Bible tells me not to suffer the wicked to live and that is to say that the soul that sins shall die.”
“Yes Prophet.”
“See, I n eed to see you in this city on Tuesday and while coming buy candles and olive oil. Fast from now till that Tuesday, 6-12 and trust My God that answers by fire.”
“Ok My Prophet.” 

He is already calling him ‘My Prophet’ which is quite an upgrade for someone who was just speaking with him for the first time in his life. His easy trust spurred him towards the kill. He had learnt that the best time to make such requests was when the man or woman has already trusted him well enough to actually eat off the palm of his hands.

“While coming bring a very fitting sacrifice” He noticed the sudden tension in the conversation. It was unsurprising as he himself had lurched into that same lull during the sermon preceding offertories in the church. In those times, he never claimed to understand what the pastors were saying then as their words often sound as impressive and sweetened as that of a siren beckoning on sailors to their ruins. In those times, he often pinched himself to ensure that he had not been hypnotized, for he felt many had been.

The strategy to get the purses and the wallets out from the pockets and bags of the congregation was as elaborate as it was impressive. Offertory was often sandwiched between testimonies and praises. The testimonies are often tilted towards the benefits of generosity, of compliance to the words of the pastor and the efficacy of faithful belonging to a particular denomination.

He was in a church when a Pastor stated that there is quite a difference between the God of His church and every other church. The God of his church answers prayers and is a God of testimonies. There are so many other gods in different denominations who sleep on prayers and never give returns of the investments of tithes and offerings. His God rewards and his reward is always parallel to the amount of tithes and donations and offerings one gives. God loves a cheerful giver, he stated.

On that day, amidst raucous praises and incendiary beats that lit up the tightly air-conditioned church and got the entire congregation in a frenzy, he asked that anyone who knew that he could give the Lord two million naira should line up in front of the altar. To Ogbunta’s greatest dismay, and while he was still wondering where his house rent was going to come from, four people came out with their cheques and with the size of their bellies, he could easily guess that there was a lot more where that came from. They were politicians with their stolen funds or monies earned through contracts awarded to their proxy organizations. Contracts for projects which they under-delivered or had never delivered. However at the end of their donations, The Pastor invited them to kneel down for blessings and afterwards assured them that wherever the money had come from, His God will replace it a hundred fold.

When the Pastor invited the people who could give the Lord one million naira, six people lined up with slightly less protruding stomach. They wore well-sown and fitted brocades and carefully cultivated looks of bankers and top-ranking civil servants and well-to-do business men who visit the church once a week and needs divine reinforcement for whatever underhanded practices they had employed to get ahead in life.

The size of the stomachs kept decreasing until the Pastor called on the ‘hoi poloi’, with their hungry looks and tired demeanor. He insisted that all file out line from their queues. These groups of people, those who could only give God N1000 and below were in their droves, and unlike the contented men who sauntered slowly and assuredly, these people danced ferociously as if they were trying to convince themselves that the dance was what they are paying for. Beside him, a dark short young man extracted a N1000 note from his pocket and closed his eyes in prayers or silent contemplation. Slowly but surely, the line filed out until it was their turn.

The usher tapped at the first seat to Ogbunta’s left and the man stood up with a dance. The contemplating man jerked awake from his contemplation and reached into the breastpocket of black shirt. He withdrew a N100 note and thoroughly squeezed it until disappeared into his fists. Ogbunta did not know where the N1000 naira had gone but he himself was not interested in giving a dime to the church, as far as he was concerned, the pastor’s would use it to buy the newest car or complete the building project he had abandoned before he became a pastor.

Thus, on his part, he just squeezed his fist tightly and filed out with the rest. He was too tired to dance and did not see the point of dancing for a pastor who must be subconsciously calculating just how much he had made for that Sunday, or the kind of lace materials that could look good on his beautiful wife who always wore heavy make up.

When, Ogbunta stepped into the line and could see the excitement of people who are all too willing to give their money to someone who was eminently better off, Ogbunta danced to their stupidity, bending down and making stomping movements with his legs. He danced so well that people looked at him and clapped. They must think that he was squeezing a wad of naira notes in his tight fists, he thought. When he reached the offertory box, he dipped his hand in and unsqueezed an empty fist and restarted a very vibrant dance, the one imported from the gold coast and called Azonto.

Therefore, he was not surprised to learn, a week later that the pastor had bought a new Toyota Venza and had converted his old rickety Peugeot to the church’s property. It was in the Pastor’s testimony and no one thought more of it. In that same church, after three collections, another was organized; a voluntary collection for people who had been led by the spirit to fuel the Pastor’s new car. A sizable number of the led have no cars and just outside the church, a widow with a cancerous breast which she often bared for all to see was being chased by the church’s security to an obscure part of the compound because she constituted an eyesore. She begged for alms to feed her three small kids and possibly cut off the cancer before it spread but could barely raise enough to feed them and certainly could not go for a much needed surgery to cut off that malignant cancer.

Speaking to Ododo and noticing that uncomfortable pause in the conversation, Ogbunta could feel a reflection of his own thoughts. He always did a double take whenever the issues of generosity came up. He called it scam alert and Ododo’s scam alert might have been triggered, so he needed to play down the finances. He will get to it when Ododo become’s comfortable.

“Sacrificing to God is optional” He quipped but he could not even convince himself.
“Ok Pastor.” Ododo replied, his hesitant tone underlining his doubts. He is yet to be convinced to make a purchase or to invest. He still has a man he wants dead and Ogbunta is yet to set a date of his demise.

“Are you ready to fast and pray?”
“I am ready to die if that is what it takes to be free from that man.”

At that statement, Ogbunta queried the mentality of a man who was all too ready and willing to die for something that he cannot pay for.

“Christ has died so that we may live, so there may be no need to die”
“So when are we starting the prayers?” The palpable eagerness, devoid of confusion has returned in the man’s voice. He is once more sounding like a man that could pay for his salvation. So Ogbunta went in for the kill again.

“Buy two Saint Michael’s candle, three bottles of olive oil and a white shirt.”
“Ok Prophet.”
“I want to prepare a holy oil made with a secret ingredient and imbued with the power of heavens. It is called The Oil of Judgment.”
“Yes Prophet.”
“It is an oil so efficacious that I am even scared to make it for my worst enemy.”
“Prophet of God…” Odedo’s excited voice interjected his “That oil is what my situation needs now.”
“My Dear, The Oil of Judgment does not come cheap. I will have to defer making it until the time when you have money.”
“Please Prophet…I need it right now, please.” His voice was insistent almost like that of a child demanding some candy from an intransigent mother. He was on the verge of throwing a tantrum; such was his ferocity of his need and insistence.

Finally, Ogbunta almost heaved a sigh of relief. He has him on the ropes now and could mold him to any shape he wanted. The only contention was how much he was worth. Even top businessmen agreed that it is rather impossible to cost a product which one had not seen. He had not seen the man, or his place of business or even if he had any. He had not seen his face, does it look fresh and cleanly cut? Does he look haggard and unkempt?

He sounded like a man with access to resources. He could see that in his insistence on having things his own way. There is also a whiff of presumptuous entitlement about him as Ogbunta could glean from his tantrums. He would possibly hail from a spoilt background where tantrums influenced decisions. He may not be rich but he had the temperament of one who had smelt opulence.

“Am not sure that you can afford it.”
“What do you mean, Prophet?” He queried impatiently “Is it one million?”
“No of course not. It costs N14,000 to make the oil.”

Then the uncomfortable pause came again. Ogbunta knew he had to interject it, in Spiritual jobbing, silence is a red herring and consequently disastrous. Silence forces the minds to open, falsehoods to sediment, keeping the truth as clear as the spring waters in the early morning. That is why most churches unconsciously compete against themselves to know who will win the war of the decibels. In that war, contemplation and meditation is shunned and the oft-used cliché was that ‘a closed mouth is a closed destiny.’

“Let's leave the oil and start with the prayers. Prayers can move mountains.”
“Prophet, please make the oil.”
“Ododo, please don't stretch your meager resources, we can still demobilize the wicked man with prayers”
“Prophet, I don't want all those ones. I want his annihilation. I want his total obliteration”
“The Oil of Judgment is the oil for you” He said with undisguised relief. The marketing was effective and he was now at least sure that he will be getting an inflow of N14,000. He had made in a day what he could not make in the six months that the construction company declared that they could no longer pay salaries. He had never made so much as a porting carting people’s wares on his back in the popular Oze market.

It was after consummating the sales to Ododo that he realized that he was yet to have breakfast and by that time, a ferocious sun was already overhead, as if it was competing with the rain of the morning. He had been standing at that same spot in that junction for more than twenty minutes and could now hear the surrounding cacophony of drivers shouting their routes and destinations on top of their voices, hawkers announcing their wares on top of their voices and food vendors, carrying food in wheel barrows and calling on hungry men and women to patronize them.

Ogbunta was hungry but he does not want to eat his usual breakfast of N50 okpa and pure water. He does not want to eat the rice and beans carried about by the vendors. He needed a proper meal, the first he had eaten with his own money in six months.

Having made up his mind, he hailed an ‘Okada man’, a commercial motorcyclist. He had always been known as Johnny Walker by Adara who could often see him, from the comfort of her husband’s cement shop, trekking all over Oze market in search of menial jobs. However, today he felt rich. He will not trek.
"Jesus Christ trekked barefooted so that all of us will never have to trek to anywhere" One of his mentor pastors said in a video

He asked the motorcyclist to take him to a popular restaurant, Restaurant De Real, located three kilometers from the junction and which was known for their lavish menu and exorbitant charges.

 They settled at N50 and he climbed the bike.

In the restaurant, he ordered a plate of fufu with egusi soup mixed with small okra soup. The waiter was to make the egusi slightly more than the okra and would add a turkey lap to the soup. As he waited for his order, he looked around the restaurant. A Flatscreen television played some music in the background. A lady clad in matching black leather underpants and bra that revealed her massive cleavages shook and bounced her huge behind ferociously that her behind seemed to have a mind of its own. He felt a familiar stirring in his loins. He had not lain with a woman in six. Sex was only a consideration when one had eaten properly. However, the dancing woman’s backside reminded him of someone’s.

It seemed a lot like Shirley’s. However, Shirley was shorter and had fortunately missed being a midget by inches. She is a very pretty lady that spoke very good English delivered in a very attractive, breathy American accent that gave his customers the illusion of laying with a white woman. Her skin was fair and her eyes brown. She smelled like vanillas and sometimes like exotic fruits and flowers picked fresh from the wild. Furthermore, her attraction was reinforced by creating the legend that she is a Calabar woman, renowned for their prowess in the other room. But having shared a certain level of intimacy with her that went beyond ‘service provider’ – ‘customer’ relationship, he learnt that she was indeed an Igbo woman, Chimuanya, who lost both her parents while she was eleven. She cried as she told him the story of how she could not even finish school.

As she cried, she kept asking rhetorically why she was giving her all the details of her life. Ogbunta felt that it was in a bid to get more than the N500 they had agreed for ‘short time’ yet Ogbunta wanted to give more. He Wished that he could give more. The short time became an overnight stay in her dingy room, carefully scented with vanilla perfumes to mask the smell of male fluids that could have hung around the room, a testimony of her hard work.

“How many paying customers have you had today?” He had asked during the conversation that had succeeded their first session. He saw himself caring. He wanted to make sure that she was making enough money.

“All my customers are paying customers. I have had nine for today.” She had answered caressing his hairy chest “You are the only customer that I did not collect my money for hand before my back touch the mattress.”

At that answer then, he reached into his trousers to extract the N500 he had kept there but Shirley stopped him, placing her hands on that pocket first to stop him removing any money from it and from there, her soft hands wandered immediately to his throbbing member. They had another round of sex, conversed, had another one, conversed and still had another. Ogbunta had entered her hotel room at 9pm in the night and had left at dawn. She asked him to call her anytime he needed her companionship. She said she will not charge him.
They exchanged numbers and names before Ogbunta left. However, struggling for survival had not allowed Ogbunta to think of Shirley until that day in a fancy restaurant, after having ordered his favorite meal.

He will pay her a visit after the hearty meal. He wanted to buy her something nice. He does not necessarily need sex, not that he would reject if she insisted, but sorely wanted companionship. He had always thought of her everyday since they last met but his squalor could not allow a visit.

He would see her that evening, after dark. He would divest, remove the crucifix he wore and drop the bible. He would go to the market and buy her apples and oranges and Bananas. Then they would talk. They may not end with mere talk.

When his order arrived, he purposely asked how much it was.

“N1200”
“Add 'Sir' while talking to me”
“Ok. N1200 Sir” The waiter responded with a half-smile. The price was steep but the whiff of the aroma suggested that it was worth it. That was the same aroma he could only salivate after whenever he trekked past the restaurant but was not able to savor. Now he is there, surrounded by big men and women who could afford to throw N1200 for a meal; an amount that could feed him for a week.

He would finish the meal without ceremony and then move around the tables for more marketing. The gospel should not only be preached from nation to nation but also from table to table. He was on a lucky streak right now and would wish to maximize the opportunities offered by fortune.

As he swallowed the first morsel of fufu, he brought out his phone with his left hand and dialed Shirley’s number.