Arriving
at this country, I heard much about hydroplaning. Back in Nigeria,
nobody knew about hydroplaning, possibly because the roads are so
cratered that it is impossible to have traction enough to build up
whatever causes a car to skid. The gutted roads, rampant kidnappings
and violent highway robbery force leaders to take to the skies even
though our airports are just as dangerous.
Although
the stories were wrenching, I had no clue how dangerous hydroplaning
really is. Until I got a close shave, I may have naively wished to
see things for myself. I am now wiser, having witnessed firsthand how
unnerving an experience with hydroplaning could be.
It
happened on my way to the Apex, Raleigh. My ward had planned a temple
trip, and I welcomed the opportunity. With gas prices going up, I
asked Daniel and Susan Zeller for a ride, and they graciously
obliged. When we began the trip, it was drizzling but I thought
nothing of it.
As
we began this trip this trip, the never-ending terror of bomb
explosions in churches in my country — especially on Sundays
when faithful Christians gather for worship — weighed heavily
on me. The carnage in my native country preys on my mind continually,
which makes the temple a haven for me as a place to seek harmony and
solace.
In
addition, the day before, one of my students asked me to remember his
father in prayers any time I visited the temple. The student, whose
father lay dying in a hospital, had checked and found out I was
Mormon. I had grown fond of the student ever since I learned he was
an activist and had had brushes with the authorities a couple of
times. It worried me that this student was missing classes.
Upon
inquiring, I found out his father’s health was the culprit. The
student had offered to let doctors take some bone marrow from one of
his legs and transplant into his father but had been refused for fear
of complications. I was touched by his love, because years back I had
watched my own parents die of diseases that could have easily been
cured if affairs weren’t so muddled and messy in my country.
I
also had other pressing issues, and I thought a visit to the temple
could help me find succor.
Although
the road was congested and the weather condition outside stormy, the
feeling inside the car was warm and graceful. Along the way we talked
about the plight of suffering humanity. The Zellers, who had done
some travel outside the U.S., recalled the agony the felt when the
saw abject poverty in the Caribbean.
Having
lived back home through some bone-chilling crises in a failed state,
I had learned to cope with the degrading effects of poverty that the
Zellers found so distasteful. I had to, because George Orwell had
accurately described my nation when he wrote that, “The further
a society drifts from the truth the more it will hate those that
speak it.”
Though
unwilling to deepen the anguish the Zellers felt at the human tragedy
they saw, I shared with them my personal experience. Life in a failed
state is like a living, fire-spitting nightmare. It is like being
trapped in a pounding cycle of violence that viciously upturns logic
and irately spins it into a nastily knotted vertigo.
As
we conversed, our car suddenly hydroplaned. Instantly the peaceful
atmosphere in the car was supplanted by sheer terror, so my eyes
glazed like a cornered rat. Losing steering and control, the car
careened in gross violation of all traffic rules. I saw in the
erupting chaos an apt metaphor for the savage disposition of
governments out of synch with the people, for governments that betray
the trust and welfare of its people.
Seemingly
apoplectic with rage, the car skidded on the wet surface; its tires
losing contact with the road, it swerved and slammed us senseless.
Luckily our seatbelts prevent us from the tragic drama and trauma of
being thrown out and crushed on the asphalt.
Behaving
as if it was in a tango dance with a crazy snake, the car violently
fishtailed and spun so fast it was a miracle the punishing whiplash
did not snap our necks. Not done with its bizarre nerve-racking
tantrums, it surged over a ditch and assaulted an electric pole with
such impact it immediately broke the pole, which returned the hostile
gesture by hurling the vehicle hood-first into the ditch.
As
the engine sputtered and shut down, gas and oil mixed with water
belched an acrid smoke that stung our noses with venom. In that
ghastly dance of scare, fright and panic, scenes in my life flashed
rapidly through my mind like a reeling montage. I thought of my
lovely wife and promising children and the dire challenges they would
face if I had been fatally hurt. I also contemplated the wonderful
people who had raised us on their shoulders as we walked the stormy
paths of life and how I wouldn’t get an opportunity of
returning their kindness if I passed so unexpectedly.
I
recalled the malice and spite, the brutal hounding, cruel evictions
under torrential rainstorms and the sadistic clobbering I got from
agents of a self-serving dictatorship for counseling students on
democracy and for having the nerve to participate in a teachers’
agitation for academic and social reforms. Perhaps if Shakespeare had
known the ferocity and violence of a skidding car he would have
recognized that there are other mishaps with more fury than hell or
“a woman scorned”! The frenzied battering of bodies in a
spinning car possibly could have given the English bard more succinct
imagery to capture the experience of intense and destructive rage.
After
surviving the crash, I remembered Elder David Bednar’s
inspiring witness that, “The tender mercies of the Lord are
available to all of us and … the Redeemer of Israel is eager
to bestow such gifts upon us.” Though giddying, my encounter
was a mere shadow of the crushed spirit and shattered molars I
sustained while living under a thuggish government. It was
significant that when next I talked with the Zellers or other
Westerners unfamiliar with the disorders in states without the rule
of law, I would no longer invoke Thomas Hobbes’ Leviathan.
Hobbes
notes that in derelict states or what he called the state of nature,
“there is no place for industry; because the fruit thereof is
uncertain … and which is worst of all continued fear, and
danger and violent death; and the life of man is solitary, poor,
nasty, brutish and short.”
Rather
than look to an ancient book for ways to describe the withering and
churning nightmare of living in a drifting nation, I could find handy
imagery for disconcerting instability in the horrors of a
hydroplaning car.
Imo Ben Eshiet was born in Port Harcourt, Nigeria. Raised in his village, Uruk Enung, and at
several cities in his country including Nsukka, Enugu, Umuahia, Eket and Calabar, Eshiet is a
detribalized Nigerian. Although he was extensively exposed to Western education right from
childhood in his country where he obtained a PhD in English and Literary Studies from the
University of Calabar, he is well nurtured in African history, politics, culture and traditions.
Imo is currently a teacher in the high priests group in the Summit Ward of the Greensboro North
Carolina Stake.