The following is from Afabwaje Kurian’s Before the Mango Ripens. Kurian received her MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. Her short fiction has appeared in McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern, Callaloo, Crazyhorse, The Bare Life Review, and Joyland Magazine. She has taught creative writing at the University of Iowa, for the International Writing Program, and for The Writer’s Center. Afabwaje divides her time between Washington, DC, and the Midwest.
Zanya took quick, confident strides across the road toward the church construction site, the uneven hem of his trousers striking his ankles. In a few minutes, he’d have them rolled to his knees, stomping barefoot in a shallow pit mixing clay-rich soil, water, and grass for a sludge that would be poured into wood molds for bricks. He did not mind the walk but would have preferred to drive the mission’s Bedford pickup this early morning, fiddling with the radio, desperate to hear a song that mirrored his cheerful mood. Gary Parson oversaw maintenance of the mission facilities, and he had borrowed the pickup for an errand to Keffi. He volunteered to bring back materials the laborers needed from their supplier and would return the pickup to the site later today, the bed of it filled with bags of sand and gravel.
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All this week, Zanya had seen admiration in the eyes of the young boys on the street, the men who greeted him at Shigudu’s or Flo’s restaurant. Mothers in the marketplace had called out to him, hoping for an anecdote he had forgotten to mention on Sunday, one that they would be in possession of to share with their children. He talked to them though he did not retell the story. He did not want to relive the memory of that night. If he thought too deeply about what could have happened to him in Yawari, a pit of fear took shape inside his mouth, one as hard and grainy as a cashew seed, and it would seem intent on going deep into his body, seeking to lodge.
And Nami. This sweet, beautiful woman. What would have happened to her if his relatives’ scheme to burn him alive had succeeded? She had been patiently waiting for him to ask the Reverend about the associate pastor position, which would put him in better standing when he approached her family for her hand in marriage. After his testimony, she had said Reverend Jim would begin to see him differently, to consider him for leadership in the mission church, and of course, he had thought the same. He had ideas about evangelism and the structure of the church and what traditions from their people the church could begin to incorporate into their worship. There were rules against drinking and polygamy that he would have done away with, like the Anglicans. Rules he did not think the Americans had considered when they came to Rabata to minister to their people. He carried a notebook of these ideas, and sometimes he fished it out of his trouser pocket to jot notes. “This is why the church needs Nigerian leaders,” Nami had said when he shared his ideas, “someone like you, Zanya.” He smiled when he heard these sentiments from her, when she made him feel like more than his parents or family had, like he was not only a laborer, but also a man of brilliance and purpose.
His uncle, who had paid for him to go to secondary school, were he still alive, would also have wanted Zanya to advance with the mission. Zanya remembered the drive to Kunama over a decade ago when he was a fourteen-year-old boy, leaving his village for the first time. He and his uncle had driven on the Saturday before the first term commenced. His uncle lectured him about the opportunities he would find as a scholar, advising him to study in the West for university and return to serve a new Nigeria as a civil servant or parliamentarian. The responsibility of the nation was going to come to the youth, he said. It was September of 1960—Nigeria had formally petitioned Britain for independence. Abubakar Tafawa Balewa was to be the prime minister in the North, and Nnamdi Azikiwe the appointed president of the new republic. The country was poised for independence, for the coming together of disparate states.
To this day, he recalled the beauty of the campus. Kunama Secondary School was written in large block letters above the archway, two paths intersecting at the entrance and leading up a hill toward the school dormitories and buildings. Boys strode by in groups, jabbing each other and laughing with such familiarity Zanya deemed it their intention to make him feel a foreigner to their campus. He had looked on at the tableau of boys Kunama had fashioned, and they had all looked cleaner and sharper than him. Their hair shaved low and edged, their socks taut and unblemished, their white shirts ironed and neat; they all belonged together in an advert for Omo detergent. The boys had flashed telegenic smiles at the new and nervous students.
“Soon, Zanya,” his uncle said, before he left, “you’ll be like one of those boys.”
When Zanya’s uncle died at the end of his fourth year at Kunama, his father withheld the money his uncle had intended for his final year of schooling. Zanya had come back to work in Yawari, building houses with his father again in different towns and villages, knowing his path would not look the same as his former schoolmates. He would need to fight to progress in life, as he had fought for other things. Although he had worked with his father before going off to secondary school, the task of brickmaking and construction became laborious and monotonous when he returned, after he had experienced Kunama and seen boys who would go on to be barristers, clerks, engineers, doctors, and civil servants.
He could have taken exams and gone to university in the Soviet Union with a full scholarship, like his former dormitory mate Bashiru, or gone to the UK and America like some of his other classmates. Whenever he remembered the day his father told him he could not return to Kunama, whatever he was looking at or doing in the present became colorless or wearisome, a sudden homage to his failure. Bashiru had become a big man now. He had finished his university degree in Moscow and lived in Kaduna, working as a manager of operations at Nigerian Food Storage Ltd. It was unfair how life happened, how diligence and desire could fail to yield opportunity. He and Bashiru used to compete about being first in class, and Zanya had often surpassed Bashiru with his high marks. He had studied more than Bashiru. He would sit in the top bunk with his textbook, reading pages after pages, while Bashiru lazed on the bottom bunk, disrupting Zanya and hungering for a game of cricket or Fives.
There was a verse in the scriptures he had pondered for days when he first read it. For to him who has will more be given, and he will have abundance; but from him who has not, even what he has will be taken away. Gary Parson said the scripture was in reference to spiritual truths. Those who yearned for God would be given more revelation of God, and those that did not hunger for God, even the knowledge they had of God would be taken from them. Zanya had liked his own interpretation, that the verse reflected the injustices of life. People like him who did not have much could have even that little taken away from them.
As he walked closer to the site, sweat from his armpits leached into his shirt, as if in anticipation of the labor awaiting him in today’s heat. He was close enough to hear the clanging of pots and the chatter from the women who came in the mornings to sell fried yam and kosai to the laborers. Soon, they would begin frying, and the aroma of spiced beans and pepper and the crackling of fire would heighten the hunger of the men.
Piles of adobe bricks, sand, and cement had overtaken the land. Two weeks ago, the perimeter of the building had been marked with timber pegs and string lines before the laborers dug trenches for the foundation. Now, brick by brick, the walls were slowly rising into the sky. When Zanya first started with the mission, he had savored each construction project—the houses, the renovation of the school, the clinic. But when he worked on the church these days, he sensed his impatience to quickly finish, for it seemed to be keeping him in the same role.
Kago and Betabwi, two of his laborers, stood near the mixing pit for bricks when he arrived. The ditch held about four gallons of water, six gallons of chopped straw, and more than twice the amount of soil as water and straw. Kago’s red-capped head was close to Betabwi’s bare one, and the two of them whispered, glancing around as if the women sellers might overhear their words.
“Wetin happen?” Zanya said when he reached them. “Fiya Boy!” Betabwi clapped Zanya’s back.
“Ah, stop, Betabwi,” he said. “Wetin be the matter? The way una dey stand so.”
“Wahala dey o,” Betabwi said. He had no sleeves on his shirt, and the large gaping holes showed off his hairy chest and muscular arms.
“Dem never bring today goods?” Zanya surveyed the site. A lorry was scheduled to deliver water tanks this morning.
“We hear say dem other contractors dey make more money than us,” Kago said. He lifted his cap slightly off his brow. The words Right On! were emblazoned on the front panel. “My cousin wey dey work for mission for Jos, na him wey tell me this.”
Zanya looked from Betabwi to Kago. “Our same mission?” “Almost double for the same type of work wey we dey do for here,” Kago said.
Zanya whistled. “That cannot be. Double?”
He could have done much more with that kind of money.
“I didn’t know this. Kago, you sure say wetin your cousin tell you na true?”
“No be lie,” Kago said. “Them dey do the same thing we dey do.” “We want better money,” Betabwi said. “We come meet you so you go tell Reverend.”
“You know our situations,” Kago said.
“I’m hearing you,” Zanya said. “I’m hearing you.”
It was serious if Kago was here asking with Betabwi. Kago was not the kind of person to complain against the mission. He was one of Zanya’s most dependable laborers. He taught language learning to the missionaries and had worked as their driver. Years ago, he had risked his life to help Gary Parson transport war refugees to the Cameroonian border. He had proven to be serious-minded about the church, and he and his family had taken to the Christian faith.
But this morning, Zanya had hoped to speak to Reverend Jim about the pastoral position after the Bible study. So whether it was Kago or not, this talk about wages would have to wait. The Reverend was due to arrive in the next half hour and lead the Bible session with the men, as was his custom on Wednesdays.
Betabwi said, “When Reverend come, you go tell am abi?” “Ah, Betabwi,” Zanya said. “We must see if this is true.” “It’s true. If you no go ask Reverend, we go ask—”
“No, no, I will ask, but not today,” Zanya said. “Let me find the proper time.”
*
Zanya led Reverend Jim around the perimeter of the church foundation. They came upon the side of the foundation where the administrative offices would be, behind the sanctuary. He visualized wooden pews and a corridor that would lead to the pastoral offices, one for Reverend Jim and the other for the associate pastor. The windows would look out on the land closest to the river, where a jumble of shoots, thorny brush, orange, paw paw, tamarind, and palm trees grew. Land on the other side was a bald, sunbaked surface. Zanya had gone up to the Awyebwis’ grand mansion with Reverend Jim and Gary Parson when the mission purchased the seven acres from Baba Bintu.
“How much longer before the building is complete?” Reverend Jim asked.
“Two months’ time,” Zanya said.
“Two months?” Reverend Jim beheld the clear blue March sky. Calm today, but with the approaching rainy season, a haven for storm clouds.
“Before the rains come,” Zanya said, noticing.
Dry season was the ideal time to build. They should have begun in October or November of last year, but funding had not come from headquarters until last month, February, and Reverend Jim had not wanted to wait any longer to begin construction.
Zanya indicated an area farther behind the marked foundation. “We can build an outdoor structure here, a place for mothers, if we have additional material after the church is complete. When the children cry, they can have a place to go and sit comfortably.”
“That’s a wonderful thought,” Reverend Jim said.
“I was also thinking,” Zanya said, leading them along, “that local farmers in the church can help us to cultivate the land around the building—”
“I hadn’t thought of this.”
“See, we can plant money-producing trees—mangos, locust bean, and shea butter. We can use these funds to support the mission church.”
“Very good. I like how you’re thinking. Keep this up, Zanya, and we’ll have you overseeing the building of our guesthouse next year.”
“Guesthouse? Here in Rabata?”
“That’s right. The mission has plans to build a hotel for mission travelers, and it’d be open to other guests too, non-missionaries. They’re in the process of solidifying the plans, securing the funding. It’d be the perfect project for you to take on next, I’d think.”
It was not what he wanted to be doing in a year’s time. In a year’s time, he wanted to be standing behind the pulpit, preaching, not holding a brick in his hands.
He nodded. “Oh. Okay, sir. Thank you.”
“Let’s gather the men for prayer,” Reverend Jim said, settling comfortably into a chair Zanya had set up for him under the shade of a pear tree.
Zanya called to the men, and the laborers cast their shovels aside and left their wheelbarrows and came toward the circle of trees. They mumbled incoherent greetings, and they either flopped down in the grass with muddied legs outstretched or arranged their bodies against tree trunks with hands behind their heads.
“Before we build the Lord’s house,” Reverend Jim said, his red leather Bible on his leg, “we must ask Him to bless the work of our hands. Second Timothy says we ought to purge ourselves from dishonorable practices. Let us be sanctified so we may be fit for the master’s use and prepared to do every good work. As always, let us begin by confessing our sins—”
“Palm wine,” Betabwi said, cutting the Reverend off.
“Yes o. Pammi,” another agreed.
Zanya frowned. Normally, the men bowed their heads and said their confessions quietly. “To ourselves,” Jim said, “as we usually do.”
Another laborer ignored his ask. “When I drink pammi, I wan kneel down begin dey praise God. Because na him make something wey sweet like pammi, ba?”
“When my wife vex me,” Betabwi said. “How you wan make I calm down—”
“If you no take pammi small?” someone interjected.
The other men chortled. Betabwi once had three wives. Reverend Jim, in upholding mission tenets for baptism of new believers, had required Betabwi to divorce two of his wives. Their laughter held long enough for Zanya to hear the frostiness undergirding it. It was not a pure and affectionate sound. He detected a mockery in their eyes, and his stomach sank. They were going to bring up the wages.
Reverend Jim looked uncomfortable as he twiddled the clerical collar around his neck. Zanya decided to speak up. He could change the direction before it devolved. “Men, we have work to finish. Please, if we can pay attention—”
“It’s fine, Zanya.” It seemed Reverend Jim would entertain their unusual decision to publicly air their sins. “Palm wine, women. Yes, what else shall we confess? Dishonesty?”
A new laborer grinned, a glint in his eye. “Which one be dishonesty again, Reverend?”
“It’s deceitfulness,” Reverend Jim said cautiously. “Falsehood when truth is required.”
The man twisted his mouth, contemplating the Reverend’s definition. “Ehn, so I go tell my wife one thing and then commot go do anoda thing?”
“Yes, that would be one such example,” Reverend Jim said. “What else, fellas?”
“Na only us get sin?” Betabwi said. “Reverend, every day, you dey make us talk our sin. You nko? Wetin be your own sin? Na God you be wey we no fit ask you?” He heaved himself up, snapped a twig and chewed it. “So wetin be your sins, Reverend?”
“My sins are many,” Reverend Jim said, “and if we were to go through each of them, ponder my own failings, well, I’m afraid we’d be here all day.”
“This is not the type of question you ask a man of God.” Kago wrung the bill of his cap and fixed it back on his head. “You no suppose ask am to open him mouth talk all his sins.”
“No, it’s all right, Kago.” Reverend Jim set his unopened Bible on his lap. “James 5:16 does say, ‘Therefore confess your sins to one another and pray for one another so that you may be healed.’ I confess to you, fellas, to harboring uncharitable thoughts about some of the people I come into contact with in my day to day—not any of you, of course.”
Some of the men grunted, others laughed a little.
“I confess that from time to time, there comes over me a great reluctance to do the hard work of preaching. I confess to anger, anger at His plans, which appear misaligned with my own. I have wrestled with anger that God saw fit to take my dear wife too early.”
There was a silence, and the men nodded, surprised that he had answered with candor, embarrassed by the catch in his voice.
“Now, I’d like us to get through the scripture,” Reverend Jim said, leafing hurriedly through the pages of his Bible. “David said, ‘Behold, I dwell in a house of cedar, but the ark of the covenant of the Lord is under a tent.’ We, like King David, are residing in houses of cedar, in palaces, and the Lord’s house has not been built—”
“Reverend, na us you dey talk to?” asked a long-faced man with a pleasant smile. “No be you wey dey live for dat big house?” “Am I not seeing it there?” Betabwi pointed with his lips toward the mission compound. “House wey we build you.”
Another laborer thrust his body forward. “Reverend, make you come see where me, my wife and my pikin dey live. After you see am eh? You no go count us as people wey live for palaces. You even get well inside compound.”
Zanya crossed his arms and looked at the laborers. Betabwi must have put the others up to this. To prove a point about his capabilities and show Zanya he had some authority. He must have spoken to the laborers and stirred their frustrations. They would never have done something like this when Zanya first hired them. A twinge of worry surfaced because, like children, they were out-growing their dependence on him, and like children, this new understanding of their power might lead them to distrust his guidance.
“Gentlemen,” Reverend Jim said. “Today, we’re speaking of David’s call to build God’s palace, and how God has chosen you to do His work. We are not here to discuss the mission compound, the houses we have.”
“Increase our money,” Betabwi said, with a quick glance toward Zanya. “Then we go come build God house like we build your palace for you.”
“More wages?” Reverend Jim frowned. “What are you speaking of?”
Zanya walked closer to the Reverend’s chair. “This is not the time to discuss such matters.” Had he not asked Betabwi to wait? Had he not said he would be the one to ask at the appropriate time?
One laborer pulled himself up. “Reverend, we know say you fit add more money for us.”
Betabwi said, “After all the work we don do for you—”
“Kago agrees,” another laborer said. “Even if he no wan talk.”
Kago, who had kept his word and not said anything, glowered at the man who had spoken but did not refute his claim.
“Men, please,” Zanya said in Gbagyi, commanding their attention. Reverend Jim was moderatly fluent in Hausa, and Zanya did not want the Reverend to understand fully. He spoke softly, like a teacher taming a classroom of boisterous children and tried to ignore the dread, the whisper in his mind that what he was saying was not enough to allay their frustrations. “I’m hearing your complaints. Please, don’t spoil things now by asking for more pay when it is not the right time. Let me talk to the Reverend. What if he is angered? What if he insists that other laborers take your place? Let us wait.”
After a silence and what seemed like reluctant nods of agreement, the men grudgingly turned to face Reverend Jim. The rest of the session proceeded without interruption. After the session ended, the men loped back across the grass to the construction site in twos and threes.
“I’m sorry.” Zanya crouched beside the Reverend’s chair. “You knew?” Reverend Jim’s tone was accusatory. “What is this about?”
“The men learned the mission is paying its workers more in Jos.”
Reverend Jim fluffed a white handkerchief loose from his pocket. The helices of his ears shone pink. “What do you mean they learned of it?”
“They have relatives who work for the mission in Jos—”
“Is that right?” Reverend Jim was quiet a moment.
Zanya studied the Reverend. “Is it true? Is the mission paying them more money for the same work? This would be good money for our laborers.”
“Listen, laborers in Rabata should not expect to receive pay equivalent to laborers in Jos. I’m also not at liberty to discuss what the mission pays contractors at other stations.”
Zanya stood and dusted his palms before putting his hands in his pockets. The laborers would not be happy with such a response. He imagined Reverend Jim in his office radioing headquarters or the other mission stations to warn them against disclosing wages.
“Just know,” Reverend Jim said, “that what the mission pays its contractors in Rabata is fair. I trust you to relay this to the laborers and take care of this situation.”
“Laborers will always complain about their pay, Reverend. If you took every complaint seriously, you would never have time to work.”
“Well, if today was any indication of how serious they are—”
“But you see that they’re still working,” Zanya said, as if reassuring a child.
“None of them have left. I’ll speak with them.”
Reverend Jim tapped his foot against the leg of the chair in rapid movements and brushed invisible crumbs from his trousers. Zanya would leave him alone with his thoughts. Clearly it was no longer the right time to ask about the pastoral position. He walked off to work among the laborers, who were testing the bricks for dryness and turning over those in need of the sun’s heat.
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From Before the Mango Ripens by Afabwaje Kurian. Used with permission of the publisher, Dzanc Books. Copyright © 2024 by Afabwaje Kurian.
