I was never a night crawler in the early stage of my life. My parents always reminded me about the time-honoured saying that a responsible or well-trained child does not roam about at night. I kept that axiom in my left palm until journalism sucked me in at the turn of the 70s. Journalists have no specific working hours. So long as events are falling, you are on duty. A journalist works round the clock; he is hardly on vacation. I have never been on a normal leave since I joined the pen confraternity. This is because news will always search you out wherever you are. You can only run off on leave; you cannot hide away from news.
In the days before the advent of the internet, a development that provides no hiding place for a Knight of the Pen like me, I could jet out to Europe on vacation for up to six weeks and have my well-deserved rest. Not anymore! Wherever you are vacationing today, even if it is in a rat hole, you are expected to keep writing. For instance, I have been keeping this column since the inception of this paper – exactly five years ago – and the internet has not permitted me to skip one edition… yet I have “enjoyed” my annual vacations.
Even in the pre-internet era, a journalist worth his salt would return from his vacation to share his experience with his readers. There was this experience I had when I was travelling home on vacation from Jos. The Jebba-Ilorin highway was my favourite route until it was rendered impassable owing to lack of maintenance in the 80s, then I explored Keffi-Nasarawa-Toto route (no lewdness is intended here), bursting out at Abaji to connect Abuja-Lokoja highway. I was thrilled to discover that the stretch to Lokoja was replete with bush meat (life and roasted ones) as well as fresh/smoked fish. I was just a few kilometers outside Abaji town when I sighted a brown monkey gallivanting across the highway.
The hunting instinct in me took over the steering. I virtually stood on the accelerator. My plan was to overrun the bush meat. On sighting me, the animal’s survival instinct went on overdrive. He gathered speed as I accelerated. My target was already at the other end of the road. Not caring about any vehicles from the opposite direction, I changed the lane and sped after it, hoping to hunt it down before it disappeared into the bush. I missed the animal by a whisker but not without a slight damage to my car. The fender hit a fallen log of wood, raising some dust. Some Good Nigerians stopped to help me, thinking it was an accident.
Yes, it was but a man-made one. When I confessed to what caused the crash, they had a good laugh.
One of them asked me: “So, you eat monkey too?”
“Yes oo,” I responded. As at that time, Ebola, purveyed by monkey, had not arrived Nigeria.
I managed the car to Lokoja where I spent some cash to fix the damage. When I came back from my vacation, I shared the experience with my readers in the humour column I ran for the Jos-based Sunday Standard newspaper. The narrative excited bush meat lovers in particular. The piece was entitled “Editor crashes in a monkey drama along Abaji-Lokoja highway!”
A few years before I found myself doing monkey hunt on the highway, I was flying from Tunis to Libya (not as a witch) after covering the 3rd All-Africa Games. The DC 9 plane I boarded ran into a terrible storm barely 30 minutes after take-off and everyone panicked. The Christians reached for their Bibles and began to pray and speak in tongues. The Muslim passengers reached for their tesbees and began to recite the Quran. Some passengers even fainted; others farted, did a wee, while some poo-pooed in their undies.
They had to rush to the toilet to clean up later when the aircraft stabilised. The cabin crew had to find a way of putting down the foul odour that engulfed the plane. In my own case, I reached for my notebook to record the drama. The passenger who sat next to me was amazed to see me jotting down God knows what … and with steady nerves. He must have thought that I was either insane or I possessed a talisman to vanish from the aircraft. All that the reporter in me was interested in at that (perilous) moment when we were hovering between life and death was that an event was breaking behind the clouds and it had to be recorded. Period! That is the life of a journalist… feeling comfy when faced with danger. Somehow I was convinced that we would weather the storm.
After a couple of minutes, the storm subsided. We landed safely at the Tripoli International Airport where I had to connect another flight to Kano. I did another piece on the drama in my column which was entitled: “Sparring with death beyond the clouds.” The account held my readers spellbound. Despite the fact that I lived to write the story, one of my readers wrote to tell me that he was so scared he had read the story from bottom up.
In spite of the hazards journalists are faced with round the clock, penmanship remains a thankless job in this part of the divide. However, I take consolation in the declaration of American President, Thomas Jefferson (1801 – 1809), that he preferred newspapers without government to government without newspapers.
