The Strange Case of a Strange Boy
- Isaac Aju
- 1 day ago
- 18 min read
By Isaac Aju:
(Aba, Nigeria, 2023)
I had just resumed work after a short break that I gave myself. We gave ourselves short breaks in our workplace even though it wasn’t written down anywhere or talked about, but all of us who were workers did it sometimes, and when we came back to work, heaven did not fall down, the world did not twist itself out of shape. After all, we were paid according to the amount of work we produced; we were not salaried. When there was little work, we earned little, and when there was enough work, we earned something better for that week. Sometimes everything can be so overwhelming: financial problems compound, the weight of being Nigerian weighs heavily on you, and then you go to work and have no electricity to work with, and you panic because of the horrible cost of diesel for the generators. Sometimes you wouldn’t have enough money for transportation to and from work, and you just feel tired or sick, and then you decide to give yourself a day off from work. Or two days. One of my coworkers sometimes left for a whole week, to our absolute horror. He would switch off his phone, go off from Facebook, WhatsApp, and no one would know his whereabouts. He would reappear at work again after days, and no one would ask him where he had been, never question why he chose to give everyone complete silence, not even our master. Our master was always glad to have him back. Perhaps we all understood how difficult it is to be a Nigerian, to live in this world, and so we keep our peace whenever one of us disappears and reappears again. I worried that he might be struggling with clinical depression.
I came back rejuvenated, full of energy, when I saw the young man, a new colleague who had come to work with us in our fashion house. I switched on my affable personality when I saw him. He was reading a religious book written by a famous American pastor, one of those books that talked about faith and overcoming the world, filled with too many Bible quotations.
“Good morning,” I said.
He looked up from his book. “Good morning. Welcome,” he said.
“I perceive you are new with us.”
“Yes.”
“Did you come to learn from us or to work?”
“I came to work.”
“Oh. Nice to meet you. My name is John.”
“Ok. You are John the Beloved.”
I chuckled, understanding the joke.
“When did you start?”
“Two days ago.”
“Oh. Welcome to our shop. It feels as though I have missed a lot just in these few days I did not come to work.”
I often worked in quiet—until arguments began to rise, until I had to say something. The arguments started early that day. The new young man was lecturing us on the Bible, on righteousness. I listened. He was new, and it was good for everyone to have a voice, even if I disagreed with whatever the person had to say. The first few days that I started working at Okafor the Great’s Fashion House a few years ago, I listened carefully, and observed carefully, and pondered carefully before I joined any conversation. But this young man was in too much of a rush to convince everyone of the validity of his religious beliefs.
The new young man was preaching the gospel to us, but his was a gospel of condemnation. It wasn’t a gospel of love. It wasn’t a gospel willing to listen to other people. I observed his tone, the level of his enlightenment, and so I kept quiet. It was a normal thing in Nigeria to find people like this, people who made themselves saints and condemned other people. They were referred to as “those who carried the church on their heads.” This young man was a very good example of them.
I focused on my work, on my sewing machine, sculpting the cloth I was given to make, but the arguments persisted, their voices getting louder and louder.
“You all are sinners,” the young man said. “You all do not understand the things of the Spirit. The level of you all’s understanding is very poor.”
I wondered if I was included in the “you all” because I hadn’t said anything to him, hadn’t responded to his preaching, hadn’t spoken to him in regards to his message. There was no point trying to retaliate or challenge him. I knew people like him. I would be willing to argue with Favour, my colleague, on his intellectualism and his choice of American movies and his dislike of Nollywood movies, on Nigerian politics, on the new movement for the restoration of Biafra . . . but not with this young man, whose English was very poor despite the fact that he was always holding one book or another. I preferred it when he spoke in Igbo because he was a bit sensible in Igbo, in his Enugu dialect, to be precise. He rambled and stumbled on words whenever he switched to English, as we often did in Nigeria—switching back and forth between indigenous languages and English.
The arguments continued, because our new colleague believed that money could appear in his bank account without having worked for it. He believed that he could speak to spoilt gadgets and they would bounce back to life. He told us he had once laid his hands on a dead television, and it bounced back to life. He also believed that he could raise the dead, and so my colleagues argued with him, disputed him, and I laughed in my mind. Favour was the most incredulous, he shouted and told the young man not to kill us with lies. “My goodness! You have a PhD in lying. Jesus!”
Because they disputed him, he labelled them sinners, and not just in a mild way. He was very serious about it, releasing his words in spite, ready to fight, and I watched, amused. Of course, I also believed in miracles, but there was a way to talk about these things, to put them in proper context. Nigerians who had come in contact with miracles, or who performed miracles, often spoke about the miracles in bragging tones, and because miracles by their very nature negate the natural way of things, Nigerians who do not believe in miracles would not want you to take the glory of having performed or received a miracle. Before they believe, they would want you to perform one for them. Like Thomas, they would want to see before they believe. They would want to sink their finger into your wound before they believe it to be real. Years ago, when Pastor Chris came to Aba for a crusade and was said to have made the lame walk and returned sight to the blind, many people in Aba did not believe it because they did not see it happen. Pastor Chris was a popular healer, and many people dithered between believing that he was a genuine miracle worker from God and that the miracles he performed were fake and rehearsed.
The arguments would continue for long hours until they all become tired or one of them left to buy something. I would later talk to the new boy in private about being moderate with his Christian beliefs. I myself am also a believer, I told him, but I did not go about condemning people. You start your gospel from the little things, from your character, your speech, your giving, your accommodation and healthy worldview. I told him to moderate his gospel. Yes, it was good to preach the gospel, but there was a gospel that scared people away instead of integrating them into the fold. He wouldn’t listen to me, he simply went on condemning people: If you drank alcohol, you would go to hell. If you lied, hell fire was waiting for you. If you listened to songs that were not about Christ, you would also go to hell, where you would burn to ashes.
He spoke so much about the miraculous, how God could perform all kinds of miracles. He showed us footage of healing sessions from the Synagogue Church of All Nations, and he supported the claim of a Nigerian pastor who went live on Facebook to say that he received physical money from the Central Bank of Heaven. Many Nigerians, with their serious belief in everything miraculous and supernatural, disagreed with the pastor’s claim. But our new colleague said it was true, that God was capable of dropping physical money on people. I toyed with the idea of asking him where the Central Bank of Heaven was located because I too was seriously interested in having my own free money, but it was too absurd to even think about.
His name was Chigozie. He had come from Enugu down to Aba. He had some experience in tailoring, and he was looking for work, so somebody directed him to our fashion house. Our master was looking for a worker, so he decided to try out Chigozie's handwork, to see if he would be a good fit for us. These days, it was very hard to find people who could sew very well. Most of the people who came to our shop looking for work were not up to standard in their sewing skills. They were mostly half baked, but somehow thought that they would be accepted. We had seen many of them come and leave after our Oga1 went through their horrible handwork, shaking his head no. Then he would rant about young people these days not wanting to learn properly before looking for work. “People think fashion designing is child’s play. It requires a lot of hard work and mastery,” he often said.
Chigozie’s handwork was not close to good, but our Oga did not dismiss him immediately. There was something about Chigozie that made people prone to have pity on him, even if they were stone-hearted on a normal day. He was given children’s clothes to try, but even the children’s clothes he did were very bad. Our master told him he couldn’t be employed as a worker. He was still very mediocre in sewing and in neatness. His work was too rough.
We thought he would leave, since nobody was going to pay him, but he stayed.
Everyday, he came with a book, silently reading the book until work started.
He was tall, and he wore the same clothes for days. Favour was the one who first noticed this. He would wear the same clothes for three days straight. “At least he doesn’t suffocate us with body odor,” I said to Favour.
“If he has body odor, I would have been the one to tell him to bathe more often and change clothes more often.”
“You can’t do that, Favour. You know you can’t.”
“I might not do it with someone who has sense and happens to have some body odor, but with Chigozie, I will do it. I’m telling you the truth. I would tell him to his face not to attack us with body odor, but he’s lucky that he doesn’t have any. Somebody cannot attack us with words and body odor at the same time, you know. Wearing the same clothes every day, only God knows why he doesn’t have body odor.”
“Maybe it’s a miracle he performs on himself, the miracle of not smelling after wearing the same clothes for days,” I said.
Favour laughed.
Seeing that his work was not anything that could be managed, our master explained to him that he was free to leave, and maybe try his fortune in other places where workers were needed. There was no way he could be paid, unless he wanted to become part of us and learn for some months. He agreed to learn. We all told him it was a good opportunity. Normally, if someone came to a fashion house to learn, they would have to pay and bring the required items, such as a big pair of scissors, a carton of Malt, one crate of soft drinks, plus a cash payment. It was a big deal when one was allowed in as a learner free of charge. We told him this, but he did not look impressed, as though we were terribly blind to his great sewing prowess.
He started standing beside my sewing machine to watch me while I worked, as the learners did. We also had another boy who was learning. They would stand and watch other people sewing, sometimes they would help the person gum something, or iron something, or they would be sent to go out and buy work materials and snacks. If they had any questions, they were free to ask.
Because I am a very sensitive person, I did not feel too good about him. He still preached to us about how hell fire was waiting for every sinner, about how American rappers were leading young people to hell, about how the world would be destroyed when the wrath of God came, just like it happened in Sodom and Gomorrah. Whenever I looked into his eyes, I had a dizzying sensation, the kind of sensation you had when you beheld a bloody wound. His eyes spoke many things that he tried to hide, things I did not understand.
He was deeply critical of America, often cited celebrities he claimed to be worshippers of Satan. I wasn’t a huge fan of American celebrities, and so my other colleagues who were lovers of everything American fought him with words. "If American celebrities were worshippers of Satan, then shift your gaze from them," my colleagues told him. But he wouldn’t. Even though he was always reading religious books from popular American pastors, he was still deeply critical of America. And most especially, America was the Devil’s home since they legalized same-sex marriage. According to him, the legalization of same-sex marriage was the beginning of the end of the world and the reign of Satan. If I had the time to argue with him, I would have told him that if we start talking about the Devil’s reign (if there was such a thing) that it started a very long time ago, through all the violence that has been unleashed on the world. It was too shallow, too petty of him to think that the Devil started ruling when gay people in America were allowed to marry their fellow gay people. If we should buttress on the Devil’s reign, then we should do it properly. We should start with all the horrible disasters, wars, and catastrophes that the world has seen. So the Devil’s reign must have started a very long time ago. Those things—wars, famine, environmental disasters, national catastrophes, hunger—were heavier issues compared to the choice of American men or women marrying people of their same gender.
When he was not talking, he acted very weakly. Sometimes he staggered, and I was curious. One day I asked him if he was always fasting, because I had sensed that he fasted a lot, or that he did not feed well. His eyes reminded me of a pastor I knew who fasted too often. Maybe there was something that happened to people’s eyes when they fasted a lot, but if I were asked to say what it was in particular that I saw in their eyes, I wouldn’t be able to explain it. “I fast on some days, but not every day,” he said.
“Oh. Is it a church thing or your personal decision?”
“It’s my personal decision.”
“Oh. I just wanted to ask because some days you look very weak.”
“It is God’s commandment for us to fast.”
“How many times do you fast in a week?”
“Up to three times.”
“Is that not too much?”
“Some people do more than that.”
“I see. What have you decided to do since Oga said he is not going to pay you?”
“I have decided to stay for a while and learn, but I might leave at anytime. I would like to work in a place where I will be paid.”
“But your sewing is not good at all.”
“I used to work in Enugu. Just that the people I live with came to Aba. People give me work in Enugu.”
“Who are they, the people you live with?”
“I will tell you some other time.”
“What church do you attend?”
“I don’t believe in denominations. I believe in the one body of Christ.”
“That’s nice. I don’t believe in denominations either, because some denominations will always think they are better than other denominations, and they come out with different kinds of doctrines that might conflict with each other in the same body of Christ.”
“Yes, sometimes.”
“But you should have a local church where you worship.” He did not answer me. “What local church do you attend?”
“I am still new in Aba. I cannot just walk into any church. I will find a church later. I don’t know how suitable the churches here are.”
“Seeing that you are a serious believer who loves God and loves to preach, I assumed you shouldn’t find it difficult to settle in a church, you know. I thought you were a pastor or something.”
“I am not a pastor.”
“But you are interested in becoming one?”
“Maybe.”
“Okay. No wahala.2 I’m a believer too. I have a church where I worship. Which preachers do you like?”
“I mostly listen to Apostle Joshua Selman. His messages are always deep and powerful. And I read books written by great American preachers like Billy Graham, Kenneth Hagin, and T. D. Jakes.”
“Oh. That’s great. I love them too. I’ve heard so much about Billy Graham, and I’ve read books written by T. D. Jakes and Kenneth Hagin too,” I said.
One day, Chigozie did not come to work, and we thought he had left for good. He did not behave like one who wanted to learn and advance his sewing skill. He was not teachable at all. He was averse to corrections, and soon I personally stopped giving him things to do for me. If I wanted to straighten out a material or gum fabrics together, I would stand up, go to the table, and do it by myself. This was the first day he had missed work in the three weeks since he had started coming to our fashion house. I was deeply grateful for the quiet air that reigned throughout that day. There were no arguments or raised voices.
“Our preacher no come work today,” Victor said.
“Na una preacher o. No be ‘our’ preacher. It’s you people that he preaches to,” Favour said.
Victor laughed. “That boy is not okay. Do you notice that he looks weak, except when he’s talking. I’ve even seen him stagger. I said God abeg o ("please"). Let somebody not come and die in our shop.”
“He said he’s often fasting,” I said.
“That guy is not mentally stable. You cannot convince me otherwise,” Favour said.
I laughed. “I don’t think so. I already know there are people like him, people who are too religious.”
“It doesn’t make sense, fasting to the point of staggering,” Favour said.
“He thinks he knows the Bible more than everyone else in this shop,” Victor said.
“He’s not even close to John in enlightenment, but he’s always here making noise in the name of preaching. At least if John decides to preach to us in this shop, I will be glad to listen. John is enlightened and has a proper knowledge of the Word of God. Not me listening to a riffraff who is not mentally stable,” Favour said.
I laughed. Favour had never opened his mouth to say that I was enlightened, and Chigozie’s case had brought those words out of him. Sometimes I talked to them about the Bible, but not in a condemning way. I often talked to them in a conversational way, often bringing in bits of the Bible into the conversation. I didn’t know that Favour was taking note of everything or that he considered me enlightened.
“It’s not a matter of ‘If I decide to preach,’ ” I said. “There is time for everything. This is a workplace. There are better ways to radiate the gospel. I don’t have to start condemning my colleagues to prove to them that I’m a Christian. I just have to be myself. Someone’s character in the workplace can be a gospel all by itself.”
“Very true,” Victor said.
“I don’t have to start shouting up and down to make an impact,” I said.
“Very correct,” Favour said.
“I think this young man will outgrow this. I don’t argue with him because I know he obviously doesn’t know better. It is you guys that are always arguing and making noise with him,” I said.
“That guy na Olodo.3 He doesn’t know anything. I will keep arguing with him as long as he keeps talking rubbish,” Victor said.
I laughed.
“Can you imagine?” Favour said. “He said God can send money into his bank account, and yet he is here looking for work. If God puts money into his bank account, then there’s no reason for him to work. See how hungry he looks. If that is the case, there will be no need to work. You simply have to sit down and have God deposit money into your bank account from the Central Bank of Heaven.”
Victor laughed. “Central Bank of Heaven, indeed!”
“God said we should dress the garden, and that is work. God does not put money into people’s bank accounts. If God wants to give you money, he will simply do it through a human being, either through the work you do, or he might touch somebody’s heart to help you with money. God doesn’t go about depositing money into people’s bank accounts. He does that through human beings,” I said.
“Exactly,” Victor said. “I strongly believe the boy is not okay in his head.”
“And him acting holier than everyone is funny. He’s not holier than me,” Favour said.
“Who knows why he’s not at work today?” Victor said.
“It’s his business,” Favour said. “I do not bloody care.”
“Maybe he has gone to look for work,” I said. “Oga cannot employ him.”
Victor laughed. “Did you see the children’s clothes he made?”
“I saw them,” I said. “The most horrible things I ever saw. He said he sews for people in Enugu.”
“It must be mad people that he sews for,” Favour said. “No normal human being can give this one something to sew for them.”
“The first day I saw him here, he proudly told me he came to work,” I said.
“The ignoramus. He actually thinks he is qualified to work here. He should know we ain’t in that level of his,” Favour said.
“He still has a long way to go in sewing. He should calm down and learn,” Victor said.
“Yes. A very long way to go. The thing is to understand that he still has a lot to learn. He’s the kind of person who is not open to change. He has not even understood the fact that his sewing is not good. He looks as though we all hate him for no reason,” I said.
“But seriously, has he not seen the kind of clothes we make here? How can they be compared to that rubbish he does?” Favour said.
Chigozie appeared the next day, looking weaker than I had seen him a few days ago. I came to work and found him resting his body on my sewing machine. I left him alone, feeling something close to pity for him. I did not want to interrupt whatever he was doing, either sleep or meditation, or even prayer. He was in that position an hour later when we put on the generator to start work for the day. There was no light, and so the next option was to use a generator. Our Oga came in and saw him. “What is wrong with him? Is he praying?”
Victor and I said, “I don’t know, sir,” at the same time.
Our master had to touch him three times before he woke up. “Are you okay?” he asked him.
“Yes, sir.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Have you eaten?”
“No, sir.”
“Come and take money for food. Follow me.”
When he went out to buy food for himself, our master came out of his office and said, “I don’t know what to do with this young man. I have told him to leave. I cannot pay him, and I don’t even know where he came from. See me, see wahala o!”
Nobody replied to him. It was simply his cup of tea if he chose to retain an unemployed stranger in his shop.
That same afternoon, Chigozie told Victor that his brain was like the old model Nokia 3310 that was no longer suitable in this modern time, that he should upgrade his brain to understand the things of God, and they nearly fought.
“How dare you talk to me like that? Who do you think you are?” Victor shouted.
When they saw our master coming in, they all kept quiet. “What is the matter with you guys? You guys should stop making noise and work. Our fuel is wasting. There’s been no light for two days now, so you guys should focus. Nobody should add something to the anger I already have this morning. I don’t understand how we will continue to pay huge amounts of money for light, and yet we still end up buying expensive fuel just to work. I’m tired of this country,” he said.
In the following days, Chigozie would start begging us for money, but nobody gave him any, except me. He did not do it openly. He went to each of us secretly. Favour and Victor would later tell me how he came to ask them for money after condemning them and calling them sinners. “I can’t give that riffraff any money of mine,” said Favour.
“He knew he would want something from us, yet he’s full of judgement and condemnation,” Victor said.
“That’s not fair,” I said. “You guys should just say you didn’t have anything to give him.”
“I have the right to decide who to help and who not to help,” Favour said.
One day, while I bought soft drinks and doughnuts for lunch, he asked me to buy for him too. “Oh. You should have told me earlier. I don’t have extra money with me today,” I said, which was the truth. He looked disappointed, but then he quickly remembered that I owed him nothing. Even if I had money with me, I still had the right to decide whether I wanted to help him or not.
A few days after that, to the shock of everyone at work, I was eating a gala sausage when a huge chunk of the gala fell from my hand. I didn’t pick it up because it had come in contact with the sand on the floor, but we were all surprised when Chigozie walked over and picked up the fallen sausage, put it into his mouth, and swallowed it. “How can you allow this to waste?” he said.
Favour looked at me in shock, and we said nothing.
Chigozie would stay with us for the next two months until one day we came to work and didn’t see him. Many days passed, and we didn’t see him. It was now up to three months, and Favour had taken the role of storyteller upon himself, telling everyone how Chigozie rushed to pick up the piece of sausage roll that fell from my hand. It was funny to Favour, but it wasn’t funny to me, in any way.
Whenever Favour brought up the topic of Chigozie’s strangeness, I felt a deep sadness in my spirit because he reminded me of the level of suffering in present-day Nigeria under the new president. Chigozie reminded me of the boys who would often meet me on the streets asking me for money to eat. He reminded me of the beggars on the streets, of the pain I often felt in the market because the prices of foodstuff kept increasing every day. He reminded me of the red-eyed young men who were now joining cults and stealing and waylaying people in dark and lonely corners of the streets in Aba. He reminded me of the suffering of all the poor Nigerians I knew, and while Favour laughed and joked about Chigozie’s story, I would think and ponder on why there was so much suffering in the world.
1. Oga—"boss" or "master"
2. wahala—trouble, problem, or inconvenience
3. Olodo—a very stupid person.
Isaac Aju is a Nigerian writer and poetry deeply interested in history and the need to engage with history. He's been published by Flapper Press, Poetry X Hunger, Steel Jackdaw Magazine, The Kalahari Review, Synchronized Chaos Magazine, and he's also coming forth in Asemana Magazine (Canada). He lives in Nigeria, where he works as a fashion designer. He writes poetry and stories and essays because he feels most alive when he is writing.
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