BY FEMI ADESINA
All work and no play, makes Jack a dull boy, so goes the saying. After two full days of stimulating lectures, organizers of the 2018 Seminar on National Governance for Presidential Advisers of Developing Countries did the next best thing. They took us on a tour of The Great Wall of China.
The wall was listed as World Heritage by UNESCO in 1987, and tourists throng it from different parts of the world. It is a grand defensive system, spanning many cities, and used by China to ward off attackers in historical times.
The Juyongguan Great Wall is known as one of the Eight Famous Scenic Spots in Beijing since the Qing dynasty. It has slopes on both sides, carpeted by growth of dense foliage. There is a ravine flanked by mountains with brooks flowing all year round. It is strategically located, and must have been quite difficult to access by invaders. It was named “the most difficult pass in the world” in ancient times. A perfect military defense system, if ever there was one.
It took more than half an hour to drive from our hotel to The Great Wall. And there it was, formidable, great and grand in the morning sun. Self-preservation is the first law of nature, and those who conceived the wall must have been geniuses in their own time. Just like the people who built the Bini wall in present Edo State, Nigeria, or the walls of Jericho in Bible times, and many others.
We had a guide, who handed a bottle of water to each person, as we filed out of the bus. That sent an alarm bell ringing in my mind. What were they bringing us to do, that they were handing out water. An endurance trek? They should remember that some senior citizens were in the party. However skilled a carpenter is, he can’t pull out nail from the woodwork with his teeth. When age has left you behind on certain things, you better respect yourself.
The guide paid for our tickets, and we trooped in. We gathered at the entrance to the wall, and he told us to rendezvous at the same spot in exactly two hours. Each person was to climb at his pace, go as far as he desires, and be sure to be back at the appointed spot in two hours.
Then began the great climb of The Great Wall. One, I had the wrong pair of shoes. Hard soles. Two, there are some exertions you don’t subject yourself to, when you are on the other side of 50. As the younger people sprinted up, I took my time, and started singing: “Agba lo de, to mi fi eso rin.” When age catches up with you, better tell yourself the truth, and take things easy.
The Great Wall lay ahead, with serpentine path, in twists and turns, as far as the eye could see. As a newspaperman, I began to cast headlines in my head, if I got to the middle of nowhere, and my February could not get to 30. Even my own constituency, the media, would feast on the story. Would some people miss me? Surely, a lot would, but the wailing wailers wouldn’t.
At that point, I remembered my friend and colleague, Shola Oshunkeye, and his corpulent tummy, which I usually parallel with a 100 litres keg. And I began to laugh. He can’t try this adventure! If he attempts the climb, the tummy was enough to pull him back. Lol.
After awhile, I announced my retirement from active service. Some of our members had gone far ahead, some others did not even venture, and were at the foot of the wall. So, I retired with full honours, found my way to a nearby coffee shop, and began to give moral support to those who were climbing from there.
The expedition reminded me of the climbing of Mount Sinai, when I had gone on pilgrimage in Jerusalem some years back. We had crossed the Taba border into Egypt to climb the mountain, where God had appeared to Moses, and given him the Ten Commandments.
I had got to the foot of the mountain, in freezing cold weather. Men, women, old, young, in my group were all ready.They believed there was some spiritual benefits in stepping onto where God had met Moses. I didn’t think so, as the Holy Bible did not say God had a permanent abode on the mountain. So, I went back to sit in the bus. Hours passed, and a good number of the women were brought back in a faint. They had blacked out. There was an Ijebu woman, who came back on her own, and told a story. She belonged to a Christian denomination, where the spirit often seizes them, dashes them to the ground, and they begin to prophesy.
She said on the way, while dangling between two giant boulders, she felt the spirit descending on her.
“I looked at the big stone below, and the bigger one by my sides, and I said: ‘Iku ree.’ This is death! So, I began to beg the spirit; please, don’t carry me here. Don’t seize me here. I don’t want to die yet.”
As soon as she felt a release from the force, she descended the mountain post-haste, and returned to the bus. I held my sides in laughter as she told the story. If you are familiar with the Ijebu dialect, it is like music in the ears, and as Iya Ijebu told her story, it was laughter all the way.
Predictably, the Great Wall mountaineers began to return one after the other, each giving a report card. Some went only a quarter of the way. Some, halfway. Very few people got to the very end. I congratulated myself for my foresight.
Coward, do I hear you say? I agree. No need for an argument. Chinua Achebe said we often stand in the compound of the coward, to point at the ruins of what used to be the compound of a brave man.
The Great Wall is an ancient defense project with the longest construction time and the largest amount of engineering in the world. It was reportedly built for over 2000 years. It is distributed in the vast land of northern and central China, with a total length of more than 50,000 kilometers.
I didn’t as much as make a dent on the wall, not to talk of conquering it. But I only lost the battle, I may yet come back to win the war…in another life, as a much younger man.
- Adesina is the Special Adviser to President Muhammadu Buhari on Media and Publicity