THE THIRD ADAM

They say three generations cannot live in poverty, at least one has to rise above it, but then those who say that have never lived the life of Adam or his father and grandfather. They have never gone through a lineage of pain and the ravaging cruelty of penury. You see, Adam was not the only one that lived in a world of dreams, where every morning, he had to assume that one day, someone would be brave enough to carry arms and kill all the unscrupulous men in politics, all the men with potbellies - the size of the selfishness in their hearts. Men who consistently ravaged his economic freedom in his homeland, Nigeria.

No, Adam was not the only one. There were 140million others like him, who had learnt that patriotism was folly and to live a good life, the ways of evil and corruption ought to be mastered. But who started it? Was a question that even Adam could not answer. Some said that it began in the 1960s, shortly after independence from colonialism, when righteous men forgot to teach their children the dangers of walking in the shadow of evil, and allowed those children grow to explore that shadow. Other religious ones said it began with his namesake in the Garden of Eden, way before Hitler was ever born: that man had evil in him and it was inevitable not to explore the vagaries of a life he humanly had every right to choose.

But Adam did not believe any of that. No he did not. Why should he? Does that explain his poverty? No, Adam could not believe that him, his father and his grandfather – three generations, had been cursed by that apple in the Garden of Eden, and he was sure that certainly the 140 million other Nigerians didn’t. So where lies the problem and genesis of it all? Adam pondered beneath the leaking roof of his thatch house. He pondered the effect of the rain when the next morning he would have to travel on foot, through mashed grounds to his farm to harvest cassava. He pondered how he would sell the cassava at the market and hopefully make enough money for food, for himself and his wife. He pondered, with his wife expecting their first child, how he would ever provide a life for that child. Then he pondered about all those fancy cars that splashed water on his body as he hawked packs of beef rolls in the afternoon on the streets of Lagos.

Two generations had gone through that, his mind told him, so he stopped pondering and wiped his cheeks of the tears dripping from his eyes. As he walked the street of Lagos the next morning, with a paper cartoon of beef roll, under the sun spurting heat like venom from a black mamba, he was oblivious of those flashy cars, those eyes from behind steering wheels that stared hard on his misfortune. In death all men were equal, his mind told him; in the grave, Lazarus and the rich man were one. So he couldn’t envy them, the thought danced in his head. The following night, reality hit him again.

At this point, it was time to start pondering again and that night, he began to ponder when his wife told him she was almost due. With each passing moment of folding his arms and of watching the stars form round dots in the sky, his child was coming. The fourth generation was coming. How would the child live? For three weeks, he and his wife had eaten cassava; they had drunk gari and imagined in their sleep that their bellies were filled. On those nights when he brought home little money for a proper meal, his wife would make okra soup and shred tiny pieces of smoked fish, particles of which he would only have to imagine was going into his mouth as he could not find it as he pored over his meal. He recalled that the last time they had eaten that sort of meal was two months ago. That was because in the two months following, all the beef rolls had expired and at first he had been reluctant to sell them. Now, he had no choice, he told himself, with the fourth generation at hand. So with a rag dipped in kerosene, he began to wipe off the expiry dates: the black letterings on the nylon packs of beef rolls. The next day, in traffic, a woman stretched out her hand and touched them, asking if they were fresh.

“Yes they are. They are very fresh, I just received them this morning,” he swore.

The woman ordered five, one for each young child at the back seat of her car. As soon as she gave him his money, Adam’s feet began to move fast. Faster than it would go if normally he had to chase a car to sell his beef roll. When eventually the car was lost in sight, he thought of those children, those five children, the queasiness in their bellies as they ate the beef rolls. The taste of kerosene somehow penetrating the packs, till he convinced himself it was impossible. But peradventure one of those children ate it and became sick? He thought of his fourth generation and the law of karma, but then again he thought of all those leaders in power and how they constantly lived above that law. Or how could he explain that for all their evils, that for all his sufferings in an abundance of wealth in his nation, they had sound health? Adam pondered again.

He was resolved that for whatever the cost, his child will not live in poverty. Never! He voiced out loud, convincing himself, letting his eyes heave up moist. Four generations cannot live in poverty. And for his generation, even Adam believed that was true.