The High Table

The Friday Chief Aribisala died was like every other Friday. We returned from school a little after 2pm and began playing an outdoor game of our choice, we usually started with Suwe and then Police and thief, if time permitted us we played Boju boju – the African equivalent of hide and seek. My playmates were the sons of my father’s best friends, Awe and Chief. Bodunde was Awe’s only son after birthing five girls in an attempt to find an heir to his thriving cocoa business, Sanya was Chief Aribisala’s third son but he was the only one of Chief Aribisala’s sons within my age bracket. My father had known his two friends his whole lifetime, right from his childhood days in Otan Aiyebaju, a small village that lived in the shadow of the more illustrious Ire town in Osun State.

            Traditionally, my friends and I had grown used to looking forward to Fridays, particularly because it was the day that began our fathers’ weekend-long drinking binge. We would play at a distance within earshot of the high table.  The high table was where my father and his friends made merry over bottles of 33 Export beer while discussing Nigeria’s politics. Chief usually did most of the talking, he had ventured into politics after making money from his crude oil business. He was well versed in Nigeria’s political scene, he had lost a councillorship election and he planned to contest in the forthcoming gubernatorial elections. Awe always countered Chief’s views, he was a staunch believer in democracy and he always refused to believe that the dirty tricks Nigerian politicians played could interfere in the democratic process, he believed in true democracy. My father was the mediator on most days, eagerly listening to both sides and occasionally inputting his own views. We pretended to be busy with our outdoor games whenever they gathered at the high table but we often re-enacted their actions over the empty bottles of 33 Export that they had filled their bellies with. Each child acting the way his father would. I would occasionally speak, while Bodunde would quote the forefathers of sociology trying to earmark his point. Sanya would laugh, a robust laughter of mockery, the same way his father would and he would pretend to tell a tale of when a certain influential politician told him how things were run in the country.

            It was that same robust laughter that rent the air carelessly when my father strolled into our red-earth filled compound that Friday. Sanya had cheated his way into winning the game of Suwe and he was being very snide about it. Maybe it was nature’s way of compensating him for the unbearable news that awaited him. Nothing seemed amiss when my father walked in, the reckless chickens still swept across the red-earth stealthily looking for ways to feast on my mother’s crop - the unlucky ones ended up in my mother’s pot- the high table was immediately littered with bottles of 33 Export beer but there was no Awe today or Chief Aribisala, my father did not utter any words either, he just sat there nursing empty bottles of 33 Export beer, and immediately he came to the realisation that the bottles were empty, he would call on my sister to fetch another. It was a seamless process. Once he yelled “Yetunde”, she knew what was required of her. It was not until the rise of the stars that my father told of the evil that befell Chief Aribisala, he had been murdered on his way to work. Theirs was a friendship I had not seen nothing like, it was a friendship that was strengthened through youthful adventures in the rivers of Otan, through uncountable bottles of 33 Export beer and through salient discussions that left one craving for intellectual affluence.

            When I was 21 and just fresh out of the university, I sat with my father as we shared bottles of 33 Export beer on a glass table in our sitting room and I asked him why the high table – a washed-out round plastic table balanced on hollow wood and supported by a few stones- was special. My father said “The high table was never special, son. It was the camaraderie of friendship, nursed with a common love for beer” he nudged his bottle of 33 Export beer at me “that made it special. It was nothing but a rickety table that should have been disposed a long time ago. Son, all my life I have had only four friends”

                                    “Awe, Chief, my mother and who?” I queried.

            “This beer, my son.” He nudged at his bottle of 33 Export beer for the second time that stormy Tuesday night “On the day that chief left this evil world, I felt grief like I had never felt before. It felt as if it had been my brother that was shot, and I could not express myself but this beer stood by me alongside Awe, and your mother. This beer did not ask questions, it felt as if it understood loss, it understood the thickets of friendship. On the day that you graduated, this beer was there once again, sharing that joy with me, helping me express it”

            I laughed a little “How can a mere bottle of beer do these things you speak of?”

“You would never understand until you sit at your high table with friends whom you have shared a lifetime with”

            These are the words that echo in my head as Sanya’s robust laughter brings me back to reality. Bodunde stands to his feet and raises a glass of 33 Export beer to our friendship and also to my father whom we lowered into the ground less than an hour ago.

                        “To Papa Yomi, for a life worthy of celebration and to our own high table as it earmarks a never ending friendship”

                        “To the high table” we chorused.