AMELEVI: a short story on mental illness in West Africa and its effect on primary caregivers

Amelevi opened her eyes at the first note of the cock’s crow, immediately anticipating and dreading the day in equal measures. The cock crowed nearby, or far away, it didn’t matter which to Amelevi who already knew what she had to do. She had to go back to sleep. She was having a forbidden dream, the type that never ends because good dreams never end, but skitter into hiding when you wake and peek like a tease when you think of them, only this time like molasses, coagulating to your whims and pumping you with enough saccharine to grant you unfettered hope before petering into pallor when reality appears as reality is wont to do. Amelevi cursed the cock when it crowed again, and it shut up with a smug flapping of its wings, rustling off its perch. She watched it from the gaping square hole on her wall. Ideally, a makeshift curtain should have isolated Amelevi from the cock, but the night breeze had been strong and her tack had not held. Amelevi knelt to pray as customary, to the God she hoped could at least fix a window. 

Amelevi finished her ritual and draped Mama’s worn wrapper and set out on the dirty paths with her basket firmly balanced under her armpit. Her destination was Sodoli’s tomato farm in Attitogon. It was a little way off. The paths leading to it were lonely and the dusts undisturbed by the slog of many feet. Only big merchants or indeed madmen had farms, shops, or dealings assuring daily returns that yonder. Amelevi had once detested the distance. It had jarred her that she needed to frequently visit the farm now that her brother Sodoli was indisposed, chiefly because those vulgar miscreants learned her routine and shamelessly besotted her with the effulgent fervor of horny pigs. She didn’t mind the distance anymore though, not after she acquiesced to their prosaic innuendo and held the palm tree and her hair and the helm of her wrapper and her breath while Tobo rammed into her for all of fifteen seconds. Now, she held that position for more than fifteen seconds for more boys than Tobo. 

The sun was still rising when Amelevi arrived at the farm. She placed her empty basket down and stood to her full height, hands hinged on her waist, and appraised the farm with a shy smile dancing in her eyes, the type that connotes fondness besmirched with anticipated nostalgia. She inhaled the grainy air with big breathes, glad it had not rained as the weather had threatened else the air would taste like dirty water, which she hated. She didn’t want her last memories of this place to be less than perfect. Amelevi took her time in picking the tomatoes, such that the sun was scorching when she began her return journey. She took the longer route, the one that led to Tobo and the boys. She wanted to thank, encourage and maybe, if they’re good, bless them with her revered woman gifts. 

She got to the ageless river that smelt clean and nestled her loaded basket between some jagged stones. Amelevi removed her slippers and threaded her bare feet lightly in the water. She held her fondest memories here, memories of her, Sodoli and Mama, through the entirety of her childhood, wrapped in colorful emotions which constantly beckon to be relived, offering asylum from the perpetual madness of life. Amelevi packed her skirt up in a slant and balled and knotted it in a tight bun close to her waist revealing her plump thighs, and went deeper in the water with her eyes closed and fingertips lightly grazing the water surface. This was her happy place, a time machine of sorts which glided her into her past, washing up bygone laughter, painful spankings and playful splashes. Amelevi didn’t need the past to be factual, at least not all the time she called upon it. So she revised her history, distorting and falsifying the bad images with dreamed up pretty sequences. In the imaginative furnaces of her mind, while ensconced by the cold water, Amelevi rewrote her past until now, she wasn’t so sure what had happened and what she had conjured. 

By the time Amelevi waddled back to the banks, humming the vestiges of a song Mama always sang after bathing her and Sodoli, more people had come to the river. Amelevi jovially said hello to them all, a surprise which stomped everyone, for Amelevi was meant to be too reticent and too ashamed to say hello. Amelevi smiled to herself as she picked up her basket, oblivious of the stir she was causing. She felt light, as though a huge weight had just been lifted off her shoulders. Her spell in this village was done, her rinsing at this river was complete, it was time to move on and the relief caused Amelevi to smile.

Tobo and the boys waved at Amelevi when they saw her from afar, grinning like happy puppies receiving their master. They raced down in a challenge for who gets to her first. This warmed Amelevi’s heart. She was so engrossed in the sight of her welcome party that she didn’t see the older woman until she almost bumped into her. “Bouge! Fille folle.” The older woman said with enough bile to change the flavor of honey. She had a basket of maize balanced nicely on her head and another basket of palm kernel seeds trapped between her arm and ribs. That’s not fair, Amelevi thought to herself, it is Sodoli that is mad, not me. Tobo and his boys arrived at the scene and screeched to a halt.

“Est-ce que cette femme vous dérange?” Tobo asked, his voice shaky from exertion.

Amelevi responded in English. Her French was fluent and her English passable but Tobo and his boys didn’t know that. They hadn’t gone to the local school as Amelevi had. Tobo, tried to respond in English, being macho. “Tell me Ame. Tu sais que je suis errmmm…your man.” Amelevi chuckled. I belong to no one Tobo. His declaration raised an uproar amongst the boys, each laying claims, albeit weak ones, to Amelevi. Tobo hushed them, “Eish, allez-vous en. Nous voulons discuter de quelque chose de sérieux”. They didn’t leave.

Amelevi watched them with a smile. She didn’t mind the distance to the farm, not when she had this pleasure anytime she came here. She had thought deeply about what it was in its essence that attracted her to these boys. On the surface, it was the sex. Under the omniscient eyes of her mother and brother she hadn’t been able to exchange pleasantries with a boy, but with them both gone, Amelevi was liberated and rapaciously indulged in the irresponsibility of freedom. Lurking beyond the animalistic displays though, lay a soul-enriching reason for this affinity with the boys. It was respect. Tobo and the boys were in constant awe of Amelevi and were perennially vocal about it. They exalted her, they exalted everything about her; her sullen quietness, her soft plumpness, her misshapen nose, her duck feet, her pointy breasts, her baby hands, her pimpled face, her hairy sex, her hoarse voice, her pig grunts, her particular selectiveness, even her unpredictable coldness. They respected her for no other reason than she was, and inadvertently gave her comfort in simply being. Amelevi often wondered if Sodoli felt the same way towards her, if he thought of her with a molecule of reverence, especially now she devoted all her time to caring for him, disregarding her life for his, literally and figuratively. She was not sure if Sodoli had always been indifferent towards her or if his apathy was another effect of the gods taking over his mind, not that she cared for an answer though, for Amelevi had decided, as she should, not to be with (or around) a person (or situation) that doesn’t allow her be.

Amelevi impatiently waited for Tobo to say “Epouse-moi Ame,” with his puffed chest. He had always ogled Amelevi, unreservedly smitten by her since the first day he saw her pass by with Sodoli, but he kept using his loutishness as an obfuscator until Amelevi pulled him into a small forest glade, blocked from public view by a canopy of deciduous trees, kissed him and raised her skirt for him. Tobo decided he could die a happy man. He was hurt when Amelevi took other boys to the spot he had dubbed their spot. He accosted her and in an oppressive show of power, she did not raise her skirt for him for many days until he dumped his shame, spat on his street cred and begged on his knees. Tobo’s affectations morphed from lust to worship, causing him to continually petition Amelevi for marriage. Anytime he said “Epouse-moi Ame,” she would chuckle, teasing that time was not friendly with her. Tobo and the boys would look stricken, instantly grumbling, immensely groveling. But Tobo missed his cue and didn’t read his lines. Amelevi looked at him and saw his eyes were hard. She didn’t like that so she skipped his beat and teased that she was leaving and couldn’t wait. When the boys started murmuring and grumbling, Amelevi grinned happily. Her smile died though when John, one of the more excitable boys murmured under his breath, “Passer du temps avec un vrai homme pas que ton frère fou.” Spend time with real men, not that your mad brother. Unfortunately for John, the voices of his friends had mysteriously died down at the moment he began speaking as though the gods had pushed a giant mute button on everybody save John. His tiny words, meant for the lone comfort of his heart and the noiseless transport of the wind, came out with a force he had not expected. His eyes bulged, his body shaking in the shame that comes when the dirty dealings of the inner thoughts spill out in the crowded marketplace. It was an open secret that Sodoli was mad, sick in the head, possessed by the spirits, yet it was rude to talk about it so openly, especially not in front of Amelevi, Sodoli’s primary care giver. John’s apology never came though as Tobo’s fist caught his jaw, crumpling him. Tobo was on him in a thrice, punching with reckless abandon.

“Please, don’t beat him,” Amelevi said, grabbing Tobo’s shoulder. She dragged him towards their usual spot despite the reluctance in the young man, which Amelevi supposed was wrought by his righteous anger. This caused a flutter in her, ecstatic that Tobo would attack his boy to protect Amelevi’s feelings. Tobo tugged at her hand but Amelevi refused to acknowledge it. She knew he thought she was upset but she wasn’t. She didn’t want Sodoli spoiling the memory of this last time. 

“Il y a quelque chose qui ne va pas.” Tobo said with too much bass in his voice, the type conjured for grave occasions. “About Sodoli.”

Amelevi didn’t want to talk about Sodoli. She wanted to take Tobo in her mouth and if he wouldn’t go to their private spot, she would do it in front of the boys. Amelevi fiddled with Tobo’s pant button. She knew he never wore briefs. A few more seconds and they will both be- Tobo caught her hand and stopped her. “Ame!” His tongue had a lash to it. Amelevi detested it. She didn’t want her big brother intruding on her personal space any more than he already had. What she wanted to ask Tobo was, “Is it important?” but what she said was, “Tell me, it must be important.” Amelevi wanted to bite the words back.

“Sodoli a été invite à quitter le Dieu est Grand Camp de l’église.”

Amelevi started. “What? How? Why? He is not well yet, how can they ask him to leave? He still has treatment. I am taking these tomatoes to sell and make food and sew clothes for him. How can they do that?”

“Me, I no know.”

“Tobo I do not understand. Who told you this talk?”

“Mon frère est ermmm…Volunteer maintenant. He tells me.”

Amelevi adjusted her basket and left without a word. Tobo called out to her, he was sorry but he had to tell her. Shouldn’t he have? She should come back when she has cleared it up so they will do what they normally do in the forest, as she planned. Amelevi heard but didn’t hear, a fading blur in her mind suggesting she have one more go with Tobo and the boys, maybe all at once, but then a creaking door slowly closing in her mind, frightening her that Sodoli might yet be a dampener on her plans to leave Togo for good. 

* * *

The stench of the Dieu est Grand Camp de l’église reached Amelevi’s nose before it came into view. Forced by habit, she distinguished the constituents of the stink. Vomit, shit, stale food, unwashed bodies, and some other strange smells she hadn’t encountered before. The smell hung over the place like a cloak of despair, rendering all joy asunder. As she got closer still, the chilling sporadic moans hit her unfiltered. It was difficult, improbable, to distinguish between male and female, young and old screams. The anguish was asexual, bursting from sore throats of the tormented, bouncing off the plain walls of the prison-like abode, merging with the ethereal screams from other inhabitants. Amelevi had become accustomed to the noise and she wafted through with ease, tuning out the shrill sounds, deflecting the boom sounds, absorbing the wailing sounds. She wondered which, if any, belonged to Sodoli. 

She rounded a bend and the camp came into view. It was a secluded open area with a slab on the ground that covered the expanse of the field. A few pillars here and there held the zinc with browning corrugated sheets. It always made her remember the time Sodoli took her to see a live football match between the Soul de Futbol de Togo and Arambe Stars of Ghana. She didn’t enjoy the match, merely the fact that Sodoli had taken her out. She had thanked him later for the experience but he grunted, telling her not to ruin it. In Amelevi’s revised version though, Sodoli hugged her. The camp was easily five times the length and breadth of that football field the teams played on. A thick fence surrounded the grounds with a black see-through gate that marked the entrance and exit point. Amelevi exchanged pleasantries with the two guards on duty and passed into the site that housed her brother and others sick in the head like him. All hundred and thirty of them, chained to pillars and immovable stones. 

Amelevi twirled the bus ticket in her right pocket as she meandered through strewn bodies, piss pools, long shackles, plastered shit, and putrid vomit towards Sodoli. 

Sodoli Kossi was propped against the pillar, head bent, and hands hanging over his drawn knees. But for the enormous silver chain, padlocked and shackled to his feet, Sodoli looked like a brooding man, which was not far from the healthy version of himself. Amelevi stared at his hair and made a mental note to beg Pastor Bamezon for a battery-powered clipper. Then she chided herself for that thought. His hair would have to remain that way. It was like soggy pasta, slithering at different lengths with squelchy thickness. No comb had been able to tame the mane, not that Sodoli would remain still. His clothe sleeves were torn and his trousers had a hole near his crotch. Amelevi averted her eyes as a sign of respect–even though life had given the misfortune of coming in contact with her brother’s shaft in the past years. Another mental note. Finish sewing his new cloth. Another mental chide.

“Sodoli. I have come.” 

Sodoli lifted his head with the dexterity of a man versed in pain. The sun caught his face but not his body. His dark skin was shaded uneven by the rub of dirt and soot. His eyes glistened. Residual tears left a meandering trail from his gaunt eyes, past his bony cheeks unto his parched lips.

“Ha Sodoli, what are you thinking that is making you sad like this? Do you not know it is time to rejoice because God’s glory is coming?”

Her brother’s expression clouded. He remained silent for a while staring straight at Amelevi. When he spoke, his words were clear but barely audible. He spoke with eloquence and poise, a result of his international education. He had been the pride of the country before this happened. “How can I rejoice, when a familiar spirit separates me from my family?”

Amelevi was about to respond when the woman closest to them suddenly jerked. It was so violent that Amelevi shrunk back in fear. The woman looked around frantically before grabbing hold of thin air, swaddling as though she was rocking a baby. To her, she was holding her baby. The woman calmed down and smiled, cooing at the nothingness in her hand. Amelevi’s nerves were just relaxing when the woman shrieked. “No! You cannot have her. Why can I not have her? Why? Do you not know who I am? I am the mother. Me. Me. Me. Me. Me. I am the mother. Leave my baby. Ask the chairman. Ask him. He will tell you who I am. No. Do not take my baby away. Please. Stop it. Stop it. Stop it.” She struggled against her chains with such venom Amelevi was certain either the chains or the pillar or her arms or her feet would rip out. In a fade, the woman’s shouts reduced to repetitive whispers. Stop it. Stop it. Stop it. Amelevi wondered what the woman’s story was. What and who did she always see right before she had her episodes? What and who did she see while having these episodes? Amelevi shook her head and turned to her brother. She wondered what or who he always saw that made him speak in gibbers. 

“I am here.” She mentioned. “I have always been here.”

“That’s not what I’m saying Ame. I’m talking of Claudine. Where is she? She must be wrought with grief. Can you imagine what people would be saying to her? That she married and in no time her husband left her? Not for another woman but for a spirit.”

“You have plenty words this day Sodoli.” Amelevi busied herself with unwrapping the food and setting it between his legs. 

“I have given this a lot of thought,” Sodoli replied triumphantly. 

“Have you?”

The bite in her voice was more than she intended. When he didn’t reply Amelevi raised her head. He had a fire in his eyes. 

“What’s that supposed to mean?” He asked.

“Nothing. I am sorry. Eat your food.”

“That I can’t think well? That I can’t think? Is that what you are saying Ame? That the spirit has eaten my mind and is madness that is the remnant? Is that it?”

“Désolé frère. Pardonne-moi. I spoke foolish. I did not mean that. Please eat your food.” 

“Have you joined them, all those that laugh at me in my front and in my back?”

Amelevi snapped. In her class in school, she had been taught that a hero is one who does well for you first, before themselves, despite themselves. The teacher had tasked them to go find a hero and write about him or her. Amelevi immediately knew who her hero was. When puberty had hit her before the other girls and they would tease her about it, their jealousy spewing out in taunts and jabs, it was Sodoli that rescued her and insulted her insulters, calling them flat chest and unappealing which made him a pariah amongst girls his age. When she always topped the class in school and the boys got angry at being outsmarted by a girl and bullied her by touching her inappropriately, it was Sodoli that turned the tables around and publicly embarrassed them calling them cocks without brains even though they began bullying and beating him up. Sodoli was Amelevi’s hero. When Sodoli found happiness in Claudine, Amelevi was filled with such immense joy that it broke her when Claudine deserted Sodoli, right after their money finished on herbalists and native doctors, the same night he was drugged and brought to the place of help for people who were diagnosed as possessed by spirits. The need to care for Sodoli and be a hero for him helped her stay strong for both her and him. She pushed a large pause button on her life, forsook her friends (the few she had), shunned marriage advances (the few she had), relocated to the outskirts of the Church, and stood in the gap of family and friends for her brother. In place of Papa. In place of Mama. In place of Claudine. In place of his drinking buddies. In place of all those who knew him. Her back served as Sodoli’s back, absorbing all offences and abuses hurled. Her front, broad enough to cover him from all sticks and stones thrown. 

That’s exactly why she refused to listen to this nonsense accusation. 

“Me?” Amelevi pointed at herself. She looked around, seeing nothing in particular. “Me. You are asking me that question? Me. Tu êst dr?le. How can you say that to me Sodoli?”

“Why can’t I? You think I don’t know what everyone is saying?” He shouted, spittle spraying out of his mouth.

“Anyone can say anything Sodoli, but not me. I am family.” Shock at the accusation numbed Amelevi. 

“Family this, family that. Are you my only family? Why are you blocking Claudine from coming? Are you not telling her that I am disgusting and evil to behold?”

“You mad man.” Amelevi shot to her feet, anger pulsating through her veins like a flowing river under heavy rain. “Claudine is gone. She has left you. She ran away with another man right after you ran mad and started talking to people that are not there. You call her family? Go na. Go. Go and meet that your family.”

She spun around and began walking off. Thinking of something, Amelevi turned to face her brother, disregarding the stunned look on his face. 

“Do not eat my food. I might have poisoned it seeing I am not family.”

She kicked the food away, the catarrh running down her wet face. “And by the way, I am leaving Togo for good. I have ticket for this day’s night bus. Sodoli, I am not coming back. Now you are really without family.”

Close by, Pastor Bamezon watched and when Amelevi noticed him, he beckoned on her to follow him.

Amelevi tailed Pastor Bamezon through the winding corridors of the only erected building. The walls were bare and the light bulbs unlit. Amelevi wondered if electricity ever came through and what happened in these corridors in the dark. In his lavish office, she took the seat the Pastor offered, still upset about her fight with Sodoli, but trying her best to look unaffected. Posters of faith and grace papered the walls. One said, “If you have faith as little as a mustard seed, you can say to the mountain be moved and cast into the sea and it shall be done.” The Pastor was a frequent traveler as churches from all over sought him to speak. Many souvenirs lay about. The lioness head from South Africa, the horn from Ghana, the picture of him swallowing soft brown bolus with green soup dribbling down his arm from Nigeria. 

“I hear you say you are leaving.”

“Yes Pastor.”

“But who will take care of Sodoli?”

“You will Pastor. I will send money from where I am.”

“What work will you do?”

Amelevi didn’t reply immediately. She thought of what lie to tell. After all, she couldn’t very well tell the clergyman her final stop was Italy and she had to cross over to Tripoli and then Agadez before sailing the Mediterranean and the only possible means of livelihood available to her was prostitution. He would want to know why she was choosing this. She couldn’t very well tell him of her escapades with Tobo and the boys and how they have served as her first trial on how to service customers and keep them wanting more. She decided not to reply at all.

“Amelevi?” The Pastor asked, wondering if Amelevi hadn’t heard the initial question. “Do you know what work you will do?”

“God will provide Pastor.”

The Pastor reclined on his seat. He observed the young lady before him. She looked straight at him. He wasn’t sure what had changed but she was different from the girl who would come cry and clean and cry some more at Sodoli’s feet mere two years seven months ago. He made a mental note to pray for her later, although knowing he would forget. 

“Amelevi I know you’re a young woman and have your life ahead of you and it pains me to impose on you but, I’m sorry, Sodoli has to leave. It has been three years now and his case has not improved. If anything it has grown worse. Yesterday he tackled a nurse, who you should know is a Pastor’s wife and was strangling her with the chain, saying he got his orders from the Coalition of African Presidents. Volunteers had to flog him for over thirty minutes before the spirit left him and he slept off. Three other cases of the spirit of madness coming upon mere men and eating their minds, including that of a small boy, have been brought to my attention but there is no space for them here at Dieu est Grand Camp de l’église. We have to remove the hopeless ones. I know it sounds harsh Amelevi, but my hands are tied under God.”

“I will send money from where I am Pastor.”

“It’s not good enough. Sodoli has to leave. My hands are tied under God.”

Amelevi closed her eyes and went to the river in her mind. She tried to hear the gentle flow, allow it to wash her into calmness, serenade her with its fluidity, and embrace her in its coolness. She picked the helm of her skirt and began knotting, ready to tread in, when her name pierced through-

“Amelevi,” The Pastor called out. He pitched her name higher than his regular tone as she had not responded the first two times he called her. “I know it’s hard. I know. Let me encourage you. You’re a girl. Don’t stop your life because of your brother’s problem. Marry. I’m sure your husband will help you too with him.”

Amelevi nodded. 

“I…”

A knock came on the door. 

“Come in.” The Pastor bellowed from behind his mahogany desk. Stacks of neatly arranged papers covered his table, alluding to his importance. The chair Amelevi was seated in, had more padding than the floor she slept in every night. 

Two men walked into the office. Amelevi recognized one of them as Tobo’s brother. She didn’t know his name. She wanted to ask if he chose to be a volunteer because God told him to because he cared for the mad people here or because he needed money because his wife was pregnant for the fifth time. The two volunteers wore orange reflector jackets. Their faces held no prejudice as though they weren’t coming in from the kingdom of unexplained insanity. 

“C'est Amelevi que je veux obtenir monsieur.”

“English Komi. English.”

Komi fidgeted a little, self-conscious before Amelevi whom he recognized as his younger brother’s friend. “Amelevi. We want sir.”

“Anything?”

Komi kept quiet and his partner took over. “Yes sir. Sodoli just had an episode, sir. He was ramming into the pole stating that it was a doorway to another world. I have not heard this one before sir. He said he was the last man, screaming that we are insects that want to harvest the baby in his womb.”

“Baby in his womb?”

The volunteer smiled weakly. “Yes pastor. Sodoli wet himself in defiance.”

The Pastor clenched his jaw, afraid to ask the question dancing on this tongue. Komi read him like a book. “Fèces et urine monsieur.”

Pastor Bamezon sighed, weary lines etched across his forehead. In seconds though, his face regained its smoothness: the face of hope in Avoutokpa for these mad people, the face of faith for their healing, the face of God for their lives.

“Thank you Alex, Komi. You can go Amelevi. Remember our talk.”

Amelevi whispered her thanks and followed the volunteers, twirling her bus ticket in her pocket. 

With the exception of the foul smell cloud, her brother was as she left him. Back against the pillar, hands on knees. He raised his face and stared at an invisible horizon. Amelevi spared no breath as she went about what had become a routine. She pulled off his trousers, the stench hitting her like a well-aimed punch, then cleaned with toilet roll. She tossed the soiled tissue into a black nylon. Later Amelevi would shotput at a distance. Pulling one of the four emergency briefs from her big carry-on bag, Amelevi slipped it on Sodoli. She could feel him watch her and she maintained a stoical mien. As she stood to leave, her brother spoke, his words laden with emotions.

“I’m sorry Ame. Thank you for all you do for me. I appreciate you.”

Amelevi did not acknowledge, did not turn. She did not want him to see her tears. She walked off, thinking of the ticket in her pocket, thinking of Italy, thinking of sex, thinking of Sodoli who was in dire need of a hero.