“I came from a real tough neighborhood. Once a guy pulled a knife on me. I knew he wasn't a professional, the knife had butter on it.”
― Rodney Dangerfield
We moved around a lot when I was young, and for a period we lived in Port Harcourt. It was not a quiet neighborhood by any means. Children were always running around, cars, motorcycles, and bicycles on the streets, and the hustle and bustle of the market right next to the river down the street. It was a very fun time. My father moved there with my mother after I was born, but eventually married my second step-mom when I was about five years old. She soon had a boy, my mother had a girl, then both of them gave birth to a girl and another boy just six days apart in March of 1973; my father was a very busy man.
It was a relatively serene life. We had two big dogs, Riro and Tiger, but they were as sweet as could be and good companions to the neighborhood children. My father was also very successful. He loved riding around on his big motorcycle in his bell-bottom pants that were the fancy in that era. He was called “Show” by his friends, and he was as brave as any man could be. But sometimes in life, you just did not have a choice but to play along in order to spare your life, or many lives for that matter.
We lived on a street called Diobu which was frequently targeted by robbers and burglars. Not your street kind: these crooks were highly organized as could be, it was almost as if they were working hand in hand with the police. There was always no warning, they just showed up in the middle of the night and demanded that every door be opened. One did not even need to be forced. You either opened your door amicably or they opened it by force, which meant you had to do repairs after they left. They would go from house to house, raiding and looting, and just vanish after they were done. Just like that. They came in trucks and cars, and never once would the police show up.
I remember one time that they came. It was very dark that night, there were no stars at all. We heard them even before they came to our door. “Open the door! Open the door!” they shouted at the neighbors. My father had come home with a lot of money that day, and I stood shaking as he and his wives tried to hide it. If not for the seriousness of the situation, it was very funny indeed. Riro and Tiger were barking furiously at the door, as the shouts got nearer.
My step-mom and mom shoved some of the money under the carpet and caused a bulge the size of a little hill. They took the money out again, distributed it amongst themselves and looked for other places to hide it. Luckily, my father had the idea to keep some of the money under the mattress. “Open the door! Open the door!” they were right at our door. They barged in, gun and cutlasses in hand, about two or three of them, yelling and threatening. “What do you have?” the leader asked. “Jewelry, money, everything!”
The other two started ransacking the house, and one found the money hidden in the mattress. He gave it to the leader. He held it in his hand for some seconds, looked at us, looked at the money, nodded, and beckoned to his partners. “Let’s go!” they dispersed out of there, just as they had come. We all breathed a sigh of relief as we locked the door behind them. Phew! The audacity! At least nobody was hurt.
Another funny incident happened while we were living in Festac Town. At around two in the early morning hours, we heard a knock on our door. My father woke up, all the children woke up, and we went into the living room. We peeked through the curtains and there was a strange woman there in a bou-bou asking us to open the door.
“Who are you?” my father asked, but she refused to answer. “I’m looking for Alhaji (my father)” She said.
“Who are you, and who sent you?” my father asked. Still no answer, just kept insisting that we open the door. My father decided to use the house phone to call the police. “There’s a strange woman at my door,” he reported.
The police asked my father if he knew this woman, and he was adamant that he did not. Who could she be? The police promised us they would come.
An hour passed, this woman was still there, and the police were still to be seen. We called again. “I thought you guys said you were coming?” my father asked.
“Well, we cannot come there, we do not have a truck.” The policeman replied. “So what do I do? This woman is still standing here.”
“Why don’t you come pick us?” he said.
“Come pick you? How is that possible?”
“Sir, don’t you have a car?”
“Yes, I do!”
“Then come pick us up.”
“How is that possible? I’m telling you there’s a strange woman at my door, of course I cannot open the door, and you want me to come pick you up. Do I fly?”
“Oh……………..” silence.
My father slowly hung up the phone. We kept peeking through the curtains and eventually, after two hours, the woman left. That was the strangest experience ever. We never saw that woman again, and there was never any good explanation as to why she picked out our house. The only theory my father could come up with was that he and one other guy had been vying to buy a piece of land to build his mechanic workshop, and the guy had shown up days previous threatening to do whatever he could to have the land to himself. My father said he might have sent the woman to kill him. Well…
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