Asking For Trouble By Name

DO you eat the flesh of the Tortoise And thereafter consume its shell?
Taboo! Taboo!!
Do you eat the flesh of the sheep
And thereafter consume its horns?
Taboo! Taboo!!
Do you eat the flesh of the porcupine
And thereafter consume its pikes?
Taboo! Taboo!!
Have you ever heard of Porcupine Provisions?

Perhaps, thinks Trouble aloud to the hearing of Alaba, perhaps the python that swallowed the porcupine had forgotten the ancient Yoruba chant. Or perhaps, interjects Alaba, the python that swallowed the porcupine had never heard the chant/incantation in the first place. And, adds Trouble, since his meals were usually pre-prepared and taken naturally, it did not occur to the python to be finicky and pick out the spikes/quills/thorns first before enjoying what would be its last supper. Perhaps, who knows? Perhaps, the python was so hungry and there was nothing else in sight that he had to make do with the porcupine! But a python must know, by way of its snake-memory, that porcupines were made with spikes simply to annoy snakes! In which case it was not out of flippancy that the python decided to try to swallow the porcupine for dinner.

Imagine the Python arriving at a buka on the way from Epe to Lekki and being asked what it would prefer to eat for dinner. Its DNA is swallow. Its fate on earth had been tied to swallow rather than chew! And for that day, because the Mama Fatasi of that buka had only porcupine that day, Python chooses chew! Python could not chew enough to stave off its hunger. So, he had to go for swallow. But the swallow that the buka had were pounded yam, poundo yam, wheat (‘e get protein oooh), eba-gari (as if there could be another eba of something else!) and amala. None of these swallows conform with the Python’s eleda – his DNA. As for the chew that the buka offered, there were rice, beans of various colours and sizes as well as boiled yam, boiled plantain and fried cassava and potato in any format. Which did not agree with the Python. It was out of this frustration that Python went out of the buka and into the groves along Epe-Lekki road and swallowed the porcupine. In spite of the agony of the porcupine, it delayed its action, let the python have its way and then it let its pines have their say. The porcupine spikes detached from the body of the porcupine and stuck out on their own. The Python wreathed in agony thinking to ease its pointed pains, only to multiply them until what it ate to live became what it ate to die.

Will future generations of pythons learn from the experience of this particular python? Nobody can say. What about future generations of porcupines? It is not as if the porcupine survived the experience. It also died. What could it have done to prevent itself from being swallowed by the python? Once again, it can be said that the porcupine refuses to benefit from the actions of other creatures, which arm themselves with spikes. What such creatures do is that they refuse to be swallowed by displaying their spikes from the enemy’s first move! That way, they give notice that they are not for swallowing. Had the porcupine played its spikes this way, it would have lived and so would have the python lived as well. And before going on to some other swallow story, Alaba informed Trouble that doing the unusual, like swallowing a porcupine, could advance nature’s capabilities into the future. So, it could be asking for you Mr. Trouble, but such heroic deeds push humanity forward into a more wondrous and miraculous future.

When a 32-year-old man collapsed at the Abuja International Airport, the airport health system took over the unconscious man and ferried him to the nearest hospital. There, he was stabilized and he recovered consciousness. But the young man knew that his was a short-lived recovery. He knew what had led to his collapse. He was travelling far, all the way to China by way of Addis Ababa with Africa’s most successful airline Ethiopian. In a way, he was on a suicide-mission. At some point after he had obtained his boarding pass, he decided that he had to abort his mission. He informed Ethiopian that he would no longer make his trip. Then he collapsed. It was after his stabilization at the hospital that he confessed that he had swallowed fifty-five capsules packed with cocaine powder, weighing about 1.2kg. The capsule form of swallowing might have been a terrible mistake. Usually condom and such rubber containers are used since they do not so easily dissolve in the stomach. Anyway, the dissolution of the cocaine in the stomach must have sent the cocaine into the blood stream, which carries it to the various places where it would do its deadly duty. First the brain where it knocks off the neuro-informers. Then to the heart where it sends that pumping machine doing double work. Then to the lungs where it would ensure that not much air gets anywhere near there. No wonder reports said that the young man died while receiving treatment. Where would the treatments begin? Capsules do have a stomach friendly nature and enough of the drug would have gone into the blood stream by the time the carrier was deciding to abort his trip.

Unlike the python, the cocaine carrier was not looking for immediate satisfaction of a physical hunger. And even if he was physically hungry, capsules of cocaine was not what he expected his stomach to process to fill his stomach. Rather, his was a calculated risk. He needed a container to carry a valuable load to China where he would sell same and use the proceeds to buy stock for his shop in Lagos. Somehow, many a good-looking muscle carries a porcupine provision. It is up to the consumer to watch out in this risk of advancing human learning and mere stomach infrastructure.