Amazu; The Midnight Palm Wine Tapper.

My first brush with horror was my late-night shared moments with Mr. Amazu Ibekwe, fondly called “Amazu.” He was a palm wine tapper from Nenwe who lived in Ngwo for many years. I lived on the same street with him — a close-knit community precisely. He was a seasoned tapper who knew his craft with so much expertise and happened to be one of the last fabric that held Ngwo and real palm wine together without modern adulteration. He was a defined winnable. Mr. Amazu was to us what Mr. Guinness was to the Irish and English, and we held him in high esteem.

Amazu 2

I crossed paths with Amazu a couple of times, but our late-night chats before his midnight tapping stood out clearly. During those times, I was still a sales boy in my mum’s shop on the streets of Umuode. He always came to the shop late at night before descending into the valley for his tapping. Amazu was that kind of tapper who treaded where angels dread to tread. Like they say, night walkers see many things — for this, I saw him as immortal.

He often had a routine I knew by heart. Once it was 10:00 p.m. West African Time, he would arrive at our grocery shop with his machete, his “Agba,” and every component he used for tapping. He often had a dagger firmly fixed in its scabbard, attached to the hook of his belt. He would first halt my shop closure, purchase a new Tiger battery to replace the old one in his partly rusted silver torch, and then jokingly tease me that I was closing too early — “What if Ndu Mma (spirit) wants to buy something tonight?”

The mention of Ndu Mma would hit me like the uneasiness of an old woman when dry bones are mentioned in proverbs. He would then order a bottle of small stout lager beer and a half loaf of Nora bread. I would unwrap a loaf, use the bread knife to cut it into two equal halves, give him one, and package the other half for sale. Right there in front of me, Amazu would dig a hole inside the bread with his hand, pour the unchilled stout inside, and start enjoying the combo. He would smile at my facial expression.

Amazu would envelope you with his midnight horror. He was a fascinating storyteller who knew how to hook you into his mystic tales. His navigation with words often surrounded his midnight experiences and encounters during his tapping escapades. Our street had that old-world charm in those days, and everyone knew each other. Behind our street was a thick bush that descended into the valley forest of Ngwo. There were those old myths about hovering spirits of dead relatives. He found a way of blending all those stories together with a perfect delivery that struck your chord and left you baffled about life after death.

There was this calm atmosphere that serenaded the space where this story conjuring was delivered. You would sometimes overhear an unidentified passerby murmuring, breaking the conversation and jolting you back from your deep thoughts. That was Amazu for you. Our community still had a glimpse of what the old ways called “Ote-Mma” — the spirit paths. People still pointed at certain paths and said, “This was a dead men’s path.” Some of those paths were Amazu’s tapping routes, and they often fit well in his stories.

Amazu hardly talked about the things he saw on top of the palm trees at midnight — both humans and spirits. “Ndu Mma,” he would say, and keep you in a reasonable degree of suspense. He only made you understand that, in the “zero-zero” hour or the transient phase from midnight to morning, the universe re-adjusts itself — thereby opening certain realms. Those weren’t his exact words, but that was how I understood him. I often found myself stuck, frightened, yet unwilling for the story to end.

By the time I looked at the wall clock, it would be 11:30 p.m. Immediately, my mother would enter the shop with her lamp to know why I hadn’t closed for the day. The arrival of her lantern would brighten the orange glow of the shop. That would mark the end of the late-night chat. Amazu would exchange pleasantries with my mother, make his payment, drink the last drop of the Guinness stout, and press the black bottle to his lips, giving us a serenading flute sound. He would then pick up his torch, swing his “Agba,” re-adjust his “Ori Mmanya,” bid us farewell, and begin to descend down the path that led into the valley — swallowed by full darkness.As I closed the door of the shop, I would watch him disappear slowly into the night. Sometimes, you wonder if such men are spirits too.

Those were the nights that never die. People talk about things according to their level of assimilation. Today, many say there’s nothing like Ndu Mma (spirits). Its existence to many is uncertain, but it is unwise to disbelieve what you’ve never experienced or seen. Those who have encountered it know what they saw and hardly speak of it. Some begin to fear the metaphysical world, while others tell it in tales. I will talk about mine in bits.