Ayebaifie Nelson-Ebimie was the first and only person who taught me how to type. He was the first witness to my hunger for writing, and he gave whole-hearted support to my dream. The 26 letters of the English alphabet on a keyboard were strange to me, in the order in which they were laid, until Aye set them right in my mind.
He sat me down, taught me how to place my fingers on the keyboard, and told me that the key letters were F and J. If your forefingers rest on those two letters, then every other letter will fall into place, even if you were typing in the dark. Each finger, he said, had designated letters to land upon. Some had three — up, level, and down.
The forefingers have six letters apiece to deal with. I watched him demonstrate that on his father’s typewriter. He went so fast that I wondered if I could ever catch up with that speed.
But even before he taught me to type, Ayebaifie was the first secretary I ever had. I would labour through my short stories and newspaper articles, fold the hand written scripts into an envelope, commute from the University of Port Harcourt, Choba, to Nembe Waterside, Port Harcourt, and send the letter by boat through someone who was sure to help me deliver it to Nelson-Ebimie’s first son.
There were no hand phones then. I would wait for one or two weeks before the reply would come to me. Immediately I recognized his handwriting on the envelope, I would tear it open with great anticipation, pull out the sheaves of paper fresh as mint, and read my script in clean, well-cut out letters such as only a typewriter can give.
Hardly did I find an error in his typing. He was that adroit at the typewriter, and twice as meticulous in the handling of his assignment. With a grateful heart, I would then mail my new typescript to The Nigerian Tide, The Guardian, Concord, or West Africa magazine in London.
Ayebaifie loved everything that had to do with books and publishing. He had considerable respect for writers. He was fascinated by the process through which raw ink transmutes to hard print, and becomes immutable on paper. He wanted to be part of my success story, and indeed he remains so. If a mentor is someone from whom you learn something new, a lifetime skill, Ayebaifie was my mentor. He taught me how to spread out my fingers on a keyboard, and type. Otherwise, who would have typed all my books for me?
Later on — thanks to my aunt, Ofabara — I got my own rusty typewriter and became proficient enough to bang out my own scripts. I extended my services to any student on campus who was ready to have their term papers, seminar presentations, or graduation projects typed for a small fee. I called my office Chief Banger’s Workshop, perhaps the first idea of a business centre in the Faculty of Humanities, University of Port Harcourt.
I remember Ayebaifie Nelson-Ebimie for another reason. In May 1999, almost two years after my wedding, he left his room for me and my wife to occupy in his father’s house next door. My father’s house was overflowing with visitors who had come from far and near to mourn the death of my younger sister, Tonfie.
She had died under the crush of trailer tyres in Suleja and, being the first of my mother’s children to die, was buried face-down like a naked and tattered doll in the cemetery at Nembe, sparking off my protest against a barbaric and heinous custom. My wife was visiting Nembe for the first time, and there was nowhere to sleep that night. Aye made way for me and my wife in a difficult situation, and earned my gratitude and respect.
When I think of my friend, I remember him to the last detail. He never seemed to be in a hurry, except on the typewriter. He walked with a casual swag, rocking from side to side, his strides measured to the pace of the conversation at hand.
He was persistent with questions until he got you talking, his voice full of anticipation and a readiness to break out in laughter. I remember him for one personal mannerism. I couldn’t miss the fact that he often brought up his hand to touch his nose, snorting, as if he was clearing the foul air in the way of his nasal traffic.
I remember him for the nick-name he chose for himself at a time when guy-names were fashionable. He called himself Jungle Fever. Everyone at Nembe National Grammar School, young and old, male and female, student and teacher alike, came to know that the first son of the fearsome principal was called Jungle Fever.
He loved to take a dive at the waterfront in Anyama Polo, swim as far as he could go, and navigate back to shore. What’s more, he saw himself as a great footballer who never quite found his footing. And, indeed, he was a dependable backie in the Young Strikers Football Club of Nembe National Grammar School in his days as a boy. He took great delight in the power of his shots.
But Jungle Fever made his modest impact even more surely on the table tennis board. His best sport, the one sport for which he sustained a vibrant and unflagging interest till his last day, was table tennis. Some of his best friends and class mates — be it Abu Imusu, Duke Orsino, or Toinpre Adolphus, better known as Meroro – all his friends knew that Jungle could not see a table tennis board, two bats and a small white tennis ball, and walk by.
He would pick up one of the bats and challenge the next player. He did amazing things with a bat in hand, more than what the Chinese did with ping-pong. He could twist it this way and turn it that way, steer it through the air in one swift swoop across the net, and smash the shot on the hard face of the board with a satisfied grunt, and a loud stamp of his feet.
I remember breaking down suddenly on the morning the news got to me, right in the middle of a script I was working on. I wept like a distressed baby without meaning to do so. I could not bring myself to understand why Ayebaifie Nelson-Ebimie had to die. I could not bring myself to see his younger brother for one full week, and when at last I saw Otonye Nelson-Ebimie, I had very little to say. The least I could do was hug him to myself for a short while, and feel the brave thud of his heartbeat. To see Otonye and hold him tight was to see good old Aye, and give him the brotherly hug I will never be able to give him again.
Our story began effectively on Wednesday, 18 December, 1963. That was my birthday, me and my twin sister, and that was the day Marcus and Letitia Nelson-Ebimie were formally wedded at St Luke’s Church, Nembe. Fifteen months later, on Tuesday, 16 March 1965, their first son, Ayebaifie Tari Nelson-Ebimie was born in Yenagoa where his parents lived at the time.
Both of his parents, just like my parents, were classroom teachers. My father, Joseph Ayebaitari Owei-ilagha, and his father were next door neighbours, sharing the same fence at Agbutu-Polo, Nembe. Inevitably, we couldn’t deny that we had something in common. His father, Marcus Nelson-Ebimie, was an old-time graduate of History from Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria. He was a man conscious of passing time, and the least legacy he could leave his children was a good education from the start.
Fondly called Oboroko behind his back by his students, Marcus Nelson-Ebimie was a huge, fearsome looking man with a sizeable tummy, a bald dome of a head, a big fat jowl with a dimple in it, prominent eyeballs, and a deep, wheezy, nasal voice. I never saw him smile. He seemed to be frowning all the time. He was famous for being a disciplinarian of the first order, and to hear him bark was to be struck by thunder. But he was a great teacher, and an excellent administrator.
The old principal did not confine history to the past. He saw history unfolding from day to day, and took active part in shaping it for future purposes by being honest about what he knew concerning the present. He hated any distortion of historical facts, whether in recounting the exploits of Sumanguru and the Kanem-Borno Empire, or in re-telling the ambush of King Koko on the white trading post at Akassa, or in the everyday adventures of fishermen along the Nembe coastline.
He was always well dressed. Neatness, indeed, was second nature to him. The nails of his big fat fingers were always pared. His shirt was immaculate, a large parachute that hugged his capacious frame in a suitable embrace. The long-sleeve shirt was always perfectly tucked inside the rim of a noticeable leather belt running the full girth of a trouser that began just below the belly button, and flowed down in two obvious pleats to a pair of scrupulously polished shoes, black if not brown.
My good friend, Ayebaifie, followed in the footsteps of his father, taking his first job as a classroom teacher. He was glad to introduce himself as a college tutor who rose to become Vice Principal. But he spent a long time preparing for his first job. There was a time, indeed, when I began to pray that my friend would break out of Nembe, and travel far. I got tired of seeing him in Nembe every time I visited home on holiday from the university.
I never ran short of news from home because Aye was there to fill me in with details. He had become like an ever present monument in the ancient city, awake to every social and political development. Many years later, he became a community relations officer with Agip oil company, and enjoyed his share of travels around the world.
As may be expected of one who taught me typing, Jungle Fever was feverish with excitement when he held his personal copy of my first book in hand. After holding a few more over the years, he stopped being surprised. He would simply ask when he could get my next book. He was one of the happiest people in the world, in fact, when word reached him that I had safely arrived England in my flight from the heat generated by my forbidden book. His excitement was palpable over the long distance chit-chat between us.
The last time he called me after a long while, I was getting set to leave the United Kingdom. I was trying to decide on the brand of laptop to buy for my wife at a big shopping mall in Essex when his call came through. His voice sounded as if to remind me that the man who taught me how to type could also do with a laptop as a gift. I should have bought two, if I could afford one more.
I have it on good authority that a fetish mask suspected to have been planted by a wicked soul was dug out from a corner of Marcus Plaza, the shopping mall Aye built as a memorial to his late father in a suburb of Port Harcourt. The weird spectacle left his neighbours aghast. A few days later, my friend caught a fever so severe that it laid him low for days. On the morning of Friday 27 April 2018, the harsh news broke into the open. Jungle Fever had died from that relentless fever. It was the last bit of news I expected to hear from anybody.
