Clifford

When we enter the restaurant I greet the young proprietress in the Oron local language. She replies with a sweet smile, then asks us in perfect English what we would like to eat. Oron is a small town located on the Cross River in southeastern Nigeria. The restaurant, with the appealing name, “The Relaxing Depot,” is a corrugated iron shack balanced on the edge of the river near the Oron-Calabar Ferry Terminal. When we are seated, Clifford informs me that I am wasting my time learning the Oron language.

“Look,” he says, “How many of these people do you think there are? Maybe fifty thousand, no more. You spend your two years here learning Oron language and what have you got? Nothing. If you go twenty miles in any direction they speak a different language.” Clifford pronounces his words precisely and separates them with tiny pauses. He says one must speak like that here or nobody will understand. It has become so habitual with him that even when he is with other native-English speakers he continues to enunciate clearly.

“Well, it’s very interesting,” I reply weakly. I am thinking about my latest linguistic discovery. Last night while walking along the village path that leads to my house on the school compound, I saw my first fireflies - small greenish lights throbbing on and off in the grass or flickering into brightness like sparks in the velvet night air. I asked the children with me the local name for these wonderful insects.

“Nta-nta,” they replied. When I later wrote this down in my notebook, I noticed that this word for fireflies is also used in conjunction with affiang, the word for moon. Nta-nta affiang means ‘stars.’ The stars are the moon’s fireflies.

Clifford doesn’t think much of the food when it is served. He is more interested in my shopping list and annotates this carefully, muttering prices to himself while we eat. He says I will be robbed blind if I am not careful. “These people are all thieves,” he says. “They’ve got a different moral code here.” His teaching contract is nearly completed but he has decided that one duty he must perform before leaving is to share with a relative newcomer like me the fruit of his years of experience. After lunch I am going for the first time to the large town market to buy some groceries. Convinced that I was being ripped off by the local village market I usually patronize, Clifford has given me a lift into town on his motorcycle and is advising me how to shop.

“Now as soon as they see you coming they have got you marked out – you are a rich white man and that means you are fair game. They are going to ask about ten times the price they would charge a local. Now here is what you do: When you see something you want to buy - say tomatoes – do not look at the tomatoes. Look at something nearby like hot peppers. Pick up a hot pepper and look at it with real disgust. Throw it back on the counter. Pick up another one and ask the price. Just throw it down on the counter when they tell you whatever ridiculous amount they expect you to be sucker enough to pay. They will give you another ridiculous price, but lower. Now at this point it is good to get angry.” Clifford mimics anger for me, “What do you think you are doing, trying to charge this much for these rotten peppers? They are not fit for pigs!”

The other patrons of the restaurant, a man and his small son, look over doubtfully. The small boy retreats to safety between his father’s knees.

Clifford continues, “Now you have got them worried. They know you are not some patsy. They will give you another much lower price. Just walk away. They will call out the real price as you walk away. Do not even look back. Just ‘notice’ the tomatoes and pick one of them up. You might have to do a little performance on the tomatoes too but usually I find that by this time they understand that I am not a sucker. Whatever they ask for the tomatoes, offer them one quarter of the amount. They will come down again.”

Clifford goes back to work on my shopping list and I gaze idly out the glassless window to the riverbank below. About a dozen naked children are splashing and playing in the sunlight and their laughter floats up to us like butterflies in a light breeze.

A few minutes later Clifford’s voice interrupts my reverie. He is speaking without his usually clipped elocution. “Those kids are really having fun, aren’t they?” he muses. “No toys or anything. Poor little buggers.”

When I glance at him to answer he is staring out the window like a lost child. Then he grimaces and states with his normal precision, “Probably half of them will be dead this time next year. They might as well be swimming in a toilet.” He shakes his head and returns to my shopping list. He is marking next to each item the exact amount I should pay.

The food was delicious and I mention that to the waitress as we leave, just for the pleasure of seeing her smile again. Clifford drops me off at the entrance to the market.

“Look,” he says, “just remember that you have to put on a certain face here. You cannot just relax and be yourself or these people will be all over you and before you know it, bingo, you are no better off than they are. It is hard, but it is the only way to survive over here.”

The market is a bustling collage of colors and smells and people, and everyone appears to be in a very good mood. Young boys and girls balancing trays of cellophane-wrapped candies on their heads weave between the busy shoppers with the ease and grace of dancers. I find it difficult to keep Clifford’s advice in mind. There is much shouting and laughter tossed from stall to stall and mixed with it are so many greetings to me, “Mbatang!” that my face aches from smiling in reply.

I squeeze through the press of bodies until I reach the vendors selling food items. There, beneath a patchwork roof of rusty corrugated iron sheets, pieces of cardboard and packing cases, the rickety market stalls are piled with pyramids of brilliant yellow papayas, red and green mangoes, sacks of purple onions and trays of carrots and cucumbers. Long-handled dippers rest in basins of ruby-red palm oil and the humid air is rich with the scents of smoked fish and strange spices. I do want to buy tomatoes and see some that look fresh and ripe. The woman selling them has no peppers for me to finger in disgust so I pick up one of her onions. I realize that I don’t know how to look at an onion with disgust. I’ll have to practice at home.

The vegetable vendor calls, “Custo-mah!” I look up and she gives me the Oron greeting in a testing tone of voice. I am proud to be able to give her the correct response. She looks at me approvingly and gives me a second, more complicated Oron greeting. Once again I am able to respond correctly. She smiles broadly now and shouts something to the neighboring market women and they all call out their greetings. The tomato seller comes around and pulls me into her stall where she has a small bench. I am seated while she bustles around giving orders to the flock of children who have gathered.

A schoolboy appears with a cold soft drink, uncaps it and pours it for me into a large plastic mug. Clifford’s advice has not prepared me for this situation. The schoolboy tells me the tomato seller is his mother and her name is Atim. She would like to ask me some questions. He translates. My grasp of Oron is not adequate for conversation. She is not satisfied until she has me perfectly located and has assured herself that I know several of her relatives in the village where I live and teach. One of her nephews is a student in my English class. Atim nods happily once she has thus established our relationship. When I have finished my drink I look sadly at my watch and explain that I must do some shopping. The son (Tuesday is his name) asks what I want. I mention that I had come to buy tomatoes and his mother has some nice ones. Atim goes to the front of the stall and carefully selects six perfect tomatoes. Then she comes and puts them into my pack. I ask how much they are.

Tuesday says, “They are a gift.” When I protest, he adds, “ She is giving them to you,” as if I am a little dense. Atim is adamant in refusing all payment, extracting only the promise that I will come to see her whenever I am in the town. Her son accompanies me to guide me to what I want to buy and carry my purchases. Sugar is the first item on my list and once again I fail Clifford since, after we exchange greetings with the sugar seller and Tuesday makes introductions, the price I am quoted is lower than the one Clifford has neatly marked on the list. The quoted price is in fact so much lower than Clifford’s price that I offer Clifford’s price to the shopkeeper, Celestine, in the hope that I can keep everyone happy. “No, no, no,” he says, stabbing his finger at Clifford’s penciled price, “Nobody ever pays so much for sugar.” He will accept only the lower price. I cannot bring myself to follow Clifford’s injunction to offer less and reach for my wallet to pay for the sugar. My wallet is missing. It’s not in any of my pockets or the pack. Has it been stolen? Clifford’s sardonic laughter echoes in my mind.

Tuesday and Celestine hold deep discussion. They decide we should return to the last place I remember having my wallet - The Relaxing Depot - and see if anyone along the way has found it. Celestine stuffs the sugar into my pack. He says I can pay for it next time I am in town. He and Tuesday escort me towards the main market entrance. Along the way we are joined by Atim and several of her and the shopkeeper’s acquaintances. They develop a plan for searching the street and inquiring from street vendors for the wallet. They all seem to be more concerned than I am and keep patting me on the shoulder to make me feel better. I do a quick calculation. The wallet holds the equivalent of about twenty American dollars.

No sooner do we leave the market, however, than I am hailed, “Mbatang!” We stop and a woman comes over to us from where she has been sitting in the deep shade of a mango tree. It is the woman from the restaurant and she holds my wallet in her hand. “You forgot your wallet,” she says. She explains that she overheard me say I was going to the market. She knew I would leave by the main entrance and has been waiting here for almost an hour. “You must be more careful,” she says and adds, “And you shouldn’t carry so much money around like this. There are thieves here.” Everyone nods. Celestine, perhaps sensing that I am a little embarrassed by so much solicitude, suggests we all adjourn to his shop for a little refreshment. I thank everyone as well as I am able and explain that I still have to do some shopping.

Atim pretends anger. “Is my son not a schoolboy? Can he not read your shopping list? Why am I paying his school fees?”

I surrender my list to Tuesday, with the instruction that he is not to pay any more than the amounts Clifford has noted in the margin. Tuesday glances at Clifford’s prices, smirks and trots away into the market. The rest of us go back to Celestine’s shop to sample the contents of his fridge. In a half hour Tuesday joins us there with my pack full of groceries and most of the money I gave him to pay for my purchases. I bid farewell to Celestine and Atim. Tuesday carries my pack to the market entrance, shakes my hand and disappears into the jostling crowd.

Clifford picks me up shortly afterwards. “So, how did it go?” he asks.

“Well,” I say, “it was OK, although I wasn’t able to pay exactly what you wrote down.”

“Hey,” says Clifford. “Do not feel bad. You will get better at it.”

("Clifford" is available in the book entitled "Night Studies: Stories of Life in a West African Village," by Benjamin Madison.)