#27: When One Door Closes, Another Opens

#27: When One Door Closes, Another Opens   November 15, 2008   All our lives, doors open, they slam shut, or close quietly. They can be made from plywood, cherry oak, fifteen-inch armored glass, tin, or iron bars.   Our doors can also be figurative. Society puts them up, opportunity presents itself and timing or luck opens it. If it’s locked, look for another. Moving on and departure allows us to close doors. Sometimes we close doors because we don’t want to remember, often we throw away the key. Prejudice closes doors for millions of us, faith opens so many. Moving from one place to another may close one old oak door behind and open a brand - new maple door in a new house.   I opened my sturdy alumninum door to Flat 1, Constitution Road, Kaduna, Kaduna State, and I stepped into my new home. It was mid-October, and the end of rain season was nearing. Dust began picking itself up with the winds that increased their strength as days went by. Through my windows, I could feel a gentle breeze that was a welcoming cool versus the intolerable humidity that plagued Nigeria last June. I liked my flat: it was small, perfect for one person. Two bedrooms, one office space, kitchen, separate shower and toilet rooms, and a living room that wasn’t too big or small. This space is more convenient for someone like me, I hated living in the house in Kebbi, with dust growing an inch daily even after I’d swept it off the floors in each room.   Two weeks passed. I had gotten sick with a 48 hour virus and was not able to settle down in my new flat because I needed to rest and because most of my household things were collecting dust and cockroach feces in the house in Kebbi. I needed to go up there for a few days, to pack up my belongings, make my donation to the school and the HIV/AIDS shelter, and try to find closure. I was given permission to leave Kaduna for Kebbi from my boss, Mr. Kehinde (his name in Yoruba means the second-born of the twins) but I needed to recover first.   I was finally off to Kebbi on October 28 and our public transportation amazingly made it to Birnin-Kebbi in one piece after a long 8 hour journey. It was late afternoon when Bisi and I arrived, the principal was waiting for us at the motorpark. I introduced Principal Umar Aliyu Jantullu to Olawope Olabisi Kalafar, my intervenor that replaced Marufat. Umar drove us to the Gesse Hotel, where I opted to sleep in clean sheets and not having to wake up to dead cockroaches that crunched when you stepped on them or breathing nine inches of dust. The Kebbi house was surely to be a mess after three months of no evidence of a daily resident.   I rode around Kebbi with Bisi on motorcycle taxis for the next few days, from one errand to the other. I dropped off twelve yards of three different fabrics for Hauwa and Tina to tailor into several beautiful Hausa dresses; obtained my banking information from First Bank Kebbi for First Bank Kaduna; made my presence known at the school, and the house.   I got off the keke nepap in front of my house. Amadu, my usual guard, wasn’t there. It was the substitute, forgive me for forgetting his name. He handed me a set of keys - it was for the front door. I was surprised to see the guard had them because I made specific orders that the guards were not to have any key access to my house while I was gone. Anyway, I turned the keys to the heavy metal brown door and my nose was hit with the stench of dead, shriveled up lizards and the different stages of decomposing cockroaches. It was so dark, yet I could see dust falling from the reflection of midday sun through the windows. As soon as my foot set in, I could feel a crunch. I shone my flashlight on the floor and let out a scream. There were around ten dead black cockroaches, and my shoe had crushed half of them into pepper. If you stomp on a live cockroach, their purplish-black juice will splatter. Dead, there’s no juice but an empty thin fossilized shell. Pretty gruesome, eh?   It was a horror house, in my honest opinion. I hate cockroaches with a passion. I become a fraidy cat when I see or feel one crawling around. The dead and live ones were scattered in the living room, kitchen, the bedrooms and most especially in the bathrooms. Bisi, bless her tough Yoruba spirit, she went and unleashed her warrior side, armed with Raid and a broom, killing hundreds of cockroaches and several lizards. I walked around the house, checking the rooms after Bisi had cleared the floors for me and the Raid spray had settled. I didn’t want to sleep another night in that house so we decided that Gesse Hotel was going to be our home for the next six days. I would come to the house with Bisi and pack, clean up in the span of several days.   One of my favorite errands was going to the Military Market and visiting my ladies Hauwa and Tina. I announced that I would donate N15,000 ($150.00 USD) to the HIV/AIDS Womens and Children’s Shelter of Birnin-Kebbi where Hauwa lives and advocates in. They were overwhelmed with the news and agreed that Hauwa would meet me at the local merchant market to buy supplies and food for the shelter as well as the deaf school. I provided Tina with several of Nigerian fabrics to sew me Hausa dresses.   The children of Kebbi School for the Handicapped were elated to see me again. A symphony of “Good Mornings” were visible as I moved through the crowds of short and tall children. The principal was waiting for me, as well as Hassan’s father. I had provided Hassan’s father with documents from the Helen Keller Center in Long Island, NY the day I arrived in Kebbi. I took the father through the program overview, made a few recommendations to complete the steps and encouraged Hassan’s father to complete them so that Hassan could attend HKNC next year for training. He needed to be independent, learn a better form of tactile and be able to read Braille. So we were a step closer in making that happen.   I informed Principal Jantullu and Special Advisor to SUBEB, Mr. Kabiru, that I had fundraised N50,000 ($500.00) for the school from the trip in America during the summer. They profusely thanked me but I told them that it was the people who opened their hearts and pockets for the school despite the downfall of the American economy. With half of the money, I had spent it on sporting goods, feminine toiletries, hygiene, writing and mathematical supplies as well as some food. I would spend the other half in the New Year on dictionaries, world/national/local maps, visual aids and such.   The feeling of giving is amazing. It injects you with adrenaline, it’s a pure high. Just knowing that the gifts are going to make a difference in people’s lives. Seeing their expressions was like medicine, the effect is soothing and an inspiration. The people who made this happen, the donors, should feel the very same way. In a way, it eased some of my guilt for leaving the children behind for Kaduna, for new opportunities without truly making inroads to improve education and structural quality in the school.   One day, I went to see the children - in the Primary groups and the secondary classes. I explained what I was doing in Kaduna, and they collectively nodded as if they understood my reasoning. I got well-wishes, phone numbers and handshakes from the children, staff, teachers and the corpers. I was saying goodbye to the school as an employer. It was bittersweet.   On November 3rd, VSO came to pick me up and Bisi from the house. Christopher, the driver, greeted us and we were off to pack the truck. My things piled up and the house seemed more empty. I would be leaving behind precious memories (Erin! Zach! Even Marufat.) and the bad (the leg injury, frustrations, loneliness). My physical presence would be absent, but the cockroaches and lizards would occupy the space. A mirror broke during the transfer, thanks to Amadu, who showed up on the last day. Garbage was emptied, goodbyes were said. I regretted not seeing Abdullahi, he had moved back to his village in Niger State while I was away. Once everything was out of the house and in the truck. I closed the heavy metal brown door and gave the guard my key. The principal would be by to pick it up and drop it off at the Board of Education.   It was a somber moment. Tears rolled off the corners of my hazel eyes but a smile formed on my lips. I pumped up my fist and shouted ‘Sannu! Zagobe!’ to Amadu and the neighbouring kids.   And we rode off to Sokoto, where another life-changing event would take place.   When I opened my eyes up to the faint glow of the morning dusk, I found Bisi standing in front of the small TV in our room at the Hotel of Sokoto. I jumped into my slippers and pulled up a chair. On the tv, a live feed of Senator Barack Obama’s acceptance speech was being taped on the BBC. My heart jumped at the realization at that very moment that America had elected its first black president. Eventhough I knew that Obama would win from the projected polls taken in October and the hype his candidacy was generating, nothing would prepare me for the actualization of his election victory. I had lived in the midst of a run-down ghetto neighborhood in Washington, D.C. for seven years, and the past year of my life in Africa. I lived among people of the darker shade of color for 2/3 of my life, and witnessed despair, drug-fueled dreams and shattered hope. Prejudice hovered the African-Americans for as long as five hundred years; the Africans seemed stuck in eternal poverty and famine.   Barack Obama’s victory somewhat made it possible for the ghosts of the slavery past to abandon their shackles that held them down, and freed the Africans from hopelessness. It was amazing: billions of people around the world cheered in approval of a leader of a country they long despised for its economical and political control over the world. The presidency of Barack Obama of Kogelo, Kenya, will go down in history. And I was in Nigeria, West Africa when the historical moment occurred. Everywhere I went after that moment, on the very same day, I saw Nigerians with a permanent smile plastered on their faces and an aura of renewed hope filled the air. They knew.   With the victory of America’s first African-American president and the completion of my placement in Kebbi, we both closed a door and opened one another. Barack is going to open  so many doors for so many people and many opportunities. As my Kenyan VSO volunteer pal told me the day after Obama’s victory: [After 500 years of prejudice and slavery, we are finally free…”   The chance I was given to work with disabled people inflicted with HIV and to educate the disabled community was a door opened after the door on Kebbi closed. That opportunity is going somewhere, but no one knows. Not even me.   But the door to Kebbi is always left ajar. So that I could go back and visit the schoolchildren. I’d never abandon them, nor should they abandon hope.   If there’s a door you should close, close it. But always make sure you open one another. It represents balance and hope.   Tactile love, Coco --------------------

 

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