The monks live in the monastery’s seclusion, its walls painted a deep ochre to match the earth, roofs a monochrome of ash-coloured slates to rebuff the sun, windows large and nearly always open with net meshing to welcome the breeze while keeping the malaria wielding mosquitoes at bay.

The large compound in which the monastery sits is peopled with tall mahogany trees whose leaves whisper in the air as the wind caresses them, of a time when monkeys swung amongst its branches and a plethora of birds sang joyfully before hunters began to aim expertly and the monkeys learnt to swing faraway, and birds learnt to fly above without perching.

The faraway where the monkeys migrated to and the birds began to perch was not actually faraway. It was a place that had been reserved for the monastery. A large swath of the forest on which the monastery was built that was cut out by the state on the bequest of the Catholic Church, who had cited the need for it on the grounds of religious development and botanical research. This land was separated by a river in the north and east, an expressway on the west and the village which had become a town in the south. It was on this land that the monks farmed exclusively; a mixture of crops to eat and plants to treat. The extensive forest that was within the confines of the land was left pristine and it was here that nature bloomed.

There was life. It was electric and palpable. It had a buzz and it attracted animals from far and away. The hunted, the diseased, the lost and the nearly extinct. They found protection and solace, not just by the walls and river that separated it from the other parts of the larger forest from where it was cut out from, or the edict that prohibited hunting of any kind within the grounds, but by something intensely natural and profoundly divine. A presence. A force. A consciousness that was primal and primordial. It was what the monks understood as the source of all things good, pure, and edifying and what those who impugned them could not acknowledge, understand, and accept. So, they looked at the monastery as a commune of ancient rituals, forbidden practices, and dark arts.

This monastery is at Iwu, a nearly-forgotten-by-the-government community hidden in the thick over-hunted forests of Edo state. A community accessible by a road tarred by the Catholic Church, a school built by the Catholic Church, a hospital built by the Catholic Church, and boreholes for water sunk by the Catholic Church through copious donations of the laity from other parishes.

When you walk through the gates on any morning or afternoon, the first thing you will see is one, two, three or four priests, dressed in white flowing robes, simple polished brown Roman sandals, and shaven heads, with rosary beads in their hands, walking across the concrete floor of the wide-open courtyard with hedges of eucalyptus and sunflowers at its periphery.They go from one building to the other, performing quietly an endless array of duties they are slated to do daily. That is after you have heard the singing of the credo in the native language of the people who have lived in that area that goes on without ceasing from a stereo that plays somewhere behind the large, polished mahogany doors of the main building.

These priests, if you do see them, will ignore you completely, as though giving you time to either stand there and take in the serenity of the large compound that sprawls before you or summon the courage to walk to the huge building with stained windows that sits closest to the gate just beyond the open courtyard, lift the wrought iron knocker and announce your presence.

If you do, there will be a long wait before you hear the huge door knob —shaped in the form of an open hand—move, and the door slowly opens to reveal a diminutive priest in a white cassock, with a full head of grey and a bright smile.

He will say to you with a warm tone in his surprisingly deep voice, “Welcome to the house of the Lord. Please come in.”

You will thank him, and he will step aside for you to walk into the building. Once you are inside, you will take in the short corridor before you from which several doors stand to the left and the right, and at the end of which is a statue of the black Jesus, complete with native attire and bleeding hands and head. Alongside the large potted plants, you will see the pictures of the apostles adorning the walls of the corridor. All of them black men. All of them smiling. A smile that hovered a heartbeat away from laughter. They will seem to be holding themselves from laughing at the lock of shock on your face, seeing such an audacious display of religious Afrocentrism in the house of a foreign God.

The diminutive priest will walk ahead of you, his legs taking short but surprisingly lithe steps as he moves towards one of the doors to your right that has a sign on it which reads, CONSULTATION. If you do not follow him, he will turn back to you, still smiling, wave you over and say, “Please come with me.”

You will follow him through the open doorway of the room, which he would have opened for you. When you do, he will round the wooden desk that sits with two chairs in a spartan room, whose only other furnishing is a wooden cross on the wall behind the desk, three cabinet shelves hugging the far wall, two large potted plants at both unoccupied corners of the room and two other smaller potted plants on the windowsill of the open windows from where a cool breeze blows into the room. He will not sit until he offers you the other chair in front of the desk. When you sit on the chair, he will sit on his, and still smiling, he will say with a certain flourish,

“How may we help you today?”

Since you have journeyed far to come to the monastery, you will waste no time and announce, with a lack of self-assuredness, your raison d’étre, since you still doubt the truth in the claim that the monks can cure the disease.

“I have come to be cured.”

He will look at you for a while, his eyes gradually morphing to a squint. A deep crease will form across his slightly wrinkled forehead. You will feel his gaze boring into your soul. It will make you feel uncomfortable, so you will look away. There is a chance that you will have both hands on your lap, clasped together and sweating. There is also a chance that you will be asking yourself why he is looking at you the way a cat looks at a mouse. You will feel exposed and vulnerable. The silence will be on the verge of strangling you and just before you shift on the chair to announce your discomfort, he will say to you,

“You do not believe we can cure you.”

You will instantly feel naked and quickly hurry to cover up with the words, “I believe you can, honestly I do.”

He will smile and lean back on his chair, cross his hands over his chest, his head still bowed but his eyes still staring at you, then he will say, “There is nothing wrong with not believing, but everything wrong with lying.”

Despite your bruised ego, you will apologise promptly, “I’m sorry.” You will mean it because there is something inexplicably calming about the diminutive priest.

“Why don’t you believe we can cure you?”

A gate will crash open somewhere inside you, like a burst dam and you will feel the truth rushing out of you like an avalanche unleashed and when you are done, he will regard you for a while before he asks you.

“Do you believe trees can talk?”

You will hesitate for a moment and when his eyes keep boring into you, you will shake your head. He will continue without his smile fading or his gaze straying.

“Why?”

“Because they are trees.”

“And who told you trees don’t talk because they are trees?”

“Everyone knows that.”

“Who told everyone to believe it?”

“No one needs to, everyone can see for themselves that trees don’t talk.”

“What if I told you that they talk? What if I told you that it is the trees and the shrubs and the grass and the flowers that tell the monks what they can do? What if I tell you that the monks, before they came here, were all biochemists, pharmacists, pharmacologists, microbiologists, I can go on and on? What if I tell you that they were men of science who encountered nature and discovered that there is true power in the marriage of one to the other under the eyes of the spiritual? What if I tell you that the spiritual in question is not the kind you find in the church or the mosque or the temple, but the spiritual that is of God that didn’t need to enter any of those places to commune with the people and open their minds to nourish their spirits, bodies, and souls? What if I tell you that evil is not the devil but ignorance and the urge to condemn what you do not know, and to disbelieve what you do not acknowledge?

You will feel a tightness in the small of your back and you will be afraid of shifting your position lest you break the communion between you and the diminutive priest in such a way as to break his flow and cause him to delve even deeper into your soul and bring out to the open the secret thoughts of your mind that were unflattering to the church, God, and yourself.  You will sit there silently and contritely listening, praying that he stops talking of his own accord and sells you the medication you had come in search for. He will stop speaking but with the way his head will be corked at one angle, you will know he was pausing and had not concluded. You will feel that he had seen in your mind the part of your story you didn’t tell him. He will see that you were someone who loved to tear down the things that represent your heritage while adulating those that came from the West.

That somehow you believed that white skin was superior to black skin, which is your skin, so it meant that anything that was created or came from those with white skin were inherently superior to those that came from those with black skin. He would be privy to your recriminations with God that you were created as you are because of the dysfunction you see around you and the fact that you were born into it, and no matter how hard you try you cannot separate yourself from it, dead or alive.

You are afraid that if he knew who you really are, who you now realise you truly are while sitting in his presence, he will deem you unworthy of what you seek, a cure, because deep down in you, even at your own peril, you desire to discover that the cure wouldn’t work, just to justify your life-long belief that there is nothing in the world that can give hope, when the white man says there is no hope, and that there is no other God or way to God than what the white man has said there is. You are afraid of the man sussing you out, so you start praying that he stops speaking to the God he worships, and yet is not afraid enough to break ranks with, in order to discover more of the creation, the same God created. So, you sit there and watch him begin speaking again after the interregnum. This time he still does not ask you about symptoms or medical history, but simply continues on the former trajectory.

“I and the other priests you saw outside are the only links the monks who cure have with the outside world. You cannot see them, and they cannot see you. They do not know of your doubts and neither are they aware of the disbelief of the world concerning what they do. You say you have taken western medication for years and have not been cured of this disease, and even though you claim to have met someone who was cured by the herbs the monks grow and the portions they concoct, you still come here doubting. So, don’t you think that what ails you is not just this disease but also your disbelief? Don’t you think that even though they see the truth in nature and share it with the world to cure it for a pittance, the world accepts it not because it has been taught by those for whom money is a god, that nothing free is good and nothing cheap has power? Don’t you think that even though we give you what will cure you, it will not cure you, because you believe it won’t? Don’t you think that the God you doubt and the nature he created to serve you in all things has been put into chains by your disbelief? Don’t you believe that the fear you have of what the monks here have provided to help you, is actually the fear you have of God, that fear that tells you that if you somehow accept the cure of nature, and it actually cures you, it will force you to think twice about all the need you have for the precepts of civilisation which you are currently a slave to? Are you afraid of finding out that you do not need all you have slaved to acquire, and your future is housed amongst the trees, the shrubs and the earth of nature? Are you afraid to find out that the God of the church for which you have discounted your heritage is the same God of nature which your ancestors knew and worshipped? Are you afraid of being who they were, since you have been taught to believe and  have believed that they were evil and primitive? Are you afraid of the truth…?”

You will sit there and listen to him and as you do, you will realise the truth in his words. When you do, you will accept it and when you accept it, you will embrace the journey back to your true self, a journey along a pathway that will be opened in front of you by the wisdom of his words. You will see that he has placed a mirror in front of you. That mirror will show you the true reflection of what you really are, not what you believe you are. It will show you what lies beneath the pretentious veneer, the mask you wear consciously and unconsciously. That mask is not entirely of your making but an inheritance bequeathed to you: The family you were born into. Their bias and prejudices. The encounters had by your ancestors, their triumphs and defeats. The calluses of their struggles  have left a scar that runs across the invisible emotive skin of their descendants. The belief systems they discarded and those they accepted mostly by coercion and surrender and rarely by love and understanding. The demonising of who they are and the canonisation of who they were told they could be but can never be, no matter how hard they try or how much self-harm they perform and humiliation they endure. The self-harm of condemnation and the humiliation of denial. That atrocity committed by a person against their own heritage. The eternal crime of it.  That crime that still carries a repentance. A way of walking back and embracing once again what has been abandoned. The unearthing of what was buried alive but still lives across centuries. The saying to yourself in the presence of the unearthed and abandoned,

“I am because I was, and I will be, rightfully here on Mother Earth, fully with the authority to be as I was created to be. To own what I was through my forebears, what I am through my embracing of what I was and who I will be because those who come after me will embrace what I am. Our thoughts, our beliefs, our practices, our understanding of the divine, our unique knowledge of fashion, of worship, of architecture, of medicine and of love. I am sorry, I am truly sorry for this crime I committed against my past, against my heritage, against my ancestors and against the memory of self that is etched in the mind of the universe. I beg to be forgiven and accepted once again into the pantheon of humanity as a creation of the Creator, destined to exist as I was created. Proudly, wholly and fully.“

In doing that, honestly, you will be cured of the disease that plagues your body and your soul in the house of the Catholic God with the medication that is wrought from and refined through the knowledge and provision of nature as discovered, preserved and shared by the God of your forebears.

It will take you several days, or weeks or months or even years to surrender to the treatment of the monks. These monks that you will never see, as they work behind the high walls that separate the buildings at the fore of the compound from that which exists at the back of the compound. The only people you will see are the priests in white cassocks, who like worker ants will bring to you the brews, poultices and capsules made for you by those who understand your disease from a deeper place than those who have seen you before and failed to treat what you have.

You will get restless and tired; your hope and belief will waver and you will complain to the grey-haired priest.

“How long do I have to keep coming?”

He will respond gently, his words like a cool salve over an open wound,

“Trust the process. This is not like the treatment you receive in the hospital, which is good for immediate intervention for a heart attack, a stroke or massive trauma from an accident. This one takes time. It does not just attack the symptoms. It goes deep and fixes the source of the symptoms. It removes it from your body, like a farmer uproots weed. You have to be patient, so that what you are being given can end the infestation and bring you back to the default state in which you were created.”

You will ask more questions. He will answer them. You will show dissatisfaction and your spirit will reveal the disquiet. You will be tempted to go back to the hospitals you have been going to, to start the medical rigmarole once again, which you accept with equanimity but something about the calm assurance of the grey-haired priest will draw you back to the monastery. So, you will return.

It will be a long time to keep coming back, but you will do it because you will begin to see improvements daily. Small and nondescript at first. Then slowly, it will increase. Those improvements will give you hope.  They will loosen your tongue and force you to speak well of these monks, like you were spoken to about them by that person who had brought them to your attention in the past.

Then a day will come when the grey-haired priest will look at your ebullient face and smile avuncularly before whispering,

“You don’t have to come back here anymore.”

“Why?” You will ask, puzzled, since you have built a friendship and bond with him and the monastery. A quiet addiction to the rigours of the journey. A need for the expiation provided by the entire experience.

He will look at you with a smile. A smile that captures the fondness he also has developed for you. You, the disbeliever who has become a believer. A member of the doubting crowd that had dared to step out from their maddening and test the waters by yourself. A tester who knew that the saying “He who wears the shoe, knows where it pinches”,was true of you. They could doubt because they had the luxury of not suffering the agony of the disease. But you, who did suffer, were propelled too forcefully by the need for respite, that to doubt so abstractly was a choice that was too costly.

“You are healed.” This simple statement from him will wipe away the puzzlement and replace it with an out-of-this-world peace. The sort of peace that is akin to a sweet sigh of the soul. The peace of a soaring eagle at the mountain top.

You will sit there staring at him, a well of gratitude stirring and slowly rising from the deepest part of your soul, your body vibrating with new life. Replenished. Reinvigorated. Reborn.

You will try to find words to express the joy that will be bubbling inside you, but words will desert you. Your lips will open and close. Your tongue will search and when it finds, the only words that will escape your mouth will be said in a breathless whisper in tandem with the gentle breeze blowing in from the window and the chirping of birds you will hear from a distant faraway.

“Thank you.”

You will be free.

Jude Idada is a winner of numerous awards including: the Nigeria Prize for Literature, AMAA Best Screenplay Award, ANA Prize for Drama, and several others. His artistic works across several media continually build bridges of understanding between people, cultures, races, and places. As the Artistic director of the Africa Theatre Ensemble in Toronto, Canada, Jude directed the stage plays “Flood,” “Brixton Stories,” “Lost” and “Coma”, the later which he adapted for screen and was produced in South Africa. He directed his stage play “3some” as part of the fringe section of the Lagos Theatre Festival and in a public presentation at MUSON, where he had earlier directed his play ‘Sankara’.  He also directed his play, “L’Otor – The Devil’s Pilgrimage” at the Lagos Fringe Festival and “The Movement” at the Quramo Festival of the Arts. He was also selected as one of the writers for the University of IOWA International Writers Program, the Toronto International Film Festival’s “ADAPT THIS!” and the Afrinolly/Ford Foundation “Cinema4Change” projects and was an inaugural participant in the Los Angeles based Relativity Media/AFRIFF Filmmaking Project. He also founded the Sandra Whiteley Prize for Children’s Literature, is an advocate for pro-democracy initiatives and Sickle Cell Anaemia, and has been inducted into the National Wall of Role Models at the Black Canadian Awards. He lives in Lagos and Toronto.

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Photo credit: Jude Idada