By Moshood Isamotu
The Yoruba has a proverb that says ‘aye oni fi oro wa kogbon’ (May the world not use our case to learn how to take preventive measures). This proverb often goes with when an evitable, preventable, or avoidable tragedy happens to someone. The import is that the worst that can happen to a man is to learn in a very hard way by personal experience when the consequence is irredeemable.
No human being is perfect; as humans, we are bound to make unintentional errors, faults, and mistakes. In some cases, the consequences are redeemable; however, in others, they come with eternal consequences and regret.
The above proverb becomes necessary because there are enough cases already in existence for us to learn from. Many bad cases.
The advice is that we should be on guard in taking preventive measures to avoid tragic experiences that will be a lesson to others.
There are examples.
The year was on a Sunday in December 2010. A colleague of mine lost his wife in a home accident in a circumstance he would die with the weight of moral regret on his shoulders.
The family after a night meal said their regular prayer at their Amukoko home, Lagos. Chucks prayed for divine safety and security in the night and invited the Holy Ghost fire to protect the four of them in their sleep. He was praying for the enemy from outside but the enemy was within. A meticulous man, very leery, he went around, as usual, to check for security gaps and switched off electrical appliances. When he got to the refrigerator, he got a surprised mild electric shock and unplugged the cable from the box. But only he knew the fridge was faulty that night. He went to bed, hopefully, to take this up with their electrician the next day. After all, it was a small ‘thing’. The small thing produced a butterfly effect, which ended up causing eternal grief to the family.
Early the next day, the wife was the first to wake up, said her prayers alone, and she commenced the daily routine. From the bathroom, still wet, she went to the kitchen and plugged in the fridge, unknown to her that it was leaking current. With wet hands, she touched the faulty fridge and instantly felt a heavy electrical surge which threw her off. By the time the family attended to her, it was late and she became late in just a few minutes. Electrocution. The husband knew what happened but it was late too. The information about the faulty fridge should not have waited till the next day or he should have demobilized the faulty fridge that night. A lethal error indeed!
My friend, 43 then, promised to honour the memory of his wife by not remarrying which he has kept to date. But he still carries the moral regret of the Rookie mistake, pangs of conscience, and inescapable guilt which may go with him to the grave.
Last Friday, a very close pastor gave a testimony about how God saved his wife from a poisoned vegetable that he cultivated. As a retiree, the family lived in a very big compound where they planted a garden and cultivated vegetables. The garden has been a good source of fresh food for years. Occasionally, my pastor-friend weeds the garden cautiously with herbicides, and the family would wait for days after each spray before going to their backyard farm for harvest. But, one day, a little misstep on the farm produce nearly turned fatal.
So, on November 22, the wife went out, and the daddy, alone, out of boredom decided to keep himself busy and applied the herbicides to their garden. He then left for a friend’s place. By the time he came back, the wife had gone to the garden to fetch vegetables which she cooked and ate to her satisfaction. No ominous sign. No foreboding. Unknowingly, she had ingested some doses of atrazine, triazine, and glyphosate.
A few minutes after the meal, her body started rioting. Vomiting, chest pain, and stomach rumbling went full blast. ‘This is strange. What is happening”, she raised alarm. Mama Church, as she is fondly called, went for the anointing oil. No reprieve still. She started speaking on her tongue while stooling for the fifth time in ten minutes. Still, no clue. How can ordinary vegetables cause so much discomfort? It must be the enemy firing arrows into the family from their Okitipupa hometown.
As the situation got worse, they called the husband who rushed home. He disclosed that he had sprayed the vegetables with chemicals but forgot to let the family know. Holding the wife close to her chest, he started reciting Psalm 46 and spoke in tongue. The wife was now looking pale, manifesting diminished consciousness and signs of a death rattle. Her eyes turned sideways, uttering incoherent words. A feeling of rue enveloped the husband as his teary duct turned heavy. He consoled her, ‘you will not die’. She was rushed to a nearby specialist hospital. Test confirmed that her fever peaked at 102°F.
After a combination of gastric lavage, fluid replacement, hemodialysis, and urinary alkalization, she was revived. It was a great comeback to life. My pastor friend was in a different world during the treatment. Thank God, the Mama Church was back on her feet after several days of treatment. Many are not so lucky.
It was a great mistake on the part of the husband not to tell the family of the poisoned garden.
The wife washed the vegetables really but the residue of the strong chemical was still lethal.
A few years ago, a devout Christian couple at Ayobo in Lagos also lost their baby in a circumstance that bordered on safety carelessness. A weak soak-away was noticed but the father just put planks to encircle it. He failed to draw the attention of the family to it and also failed to attend to the problem with the emergency it required considering the magnitude of the potential calamity. And sorrowfully it happened. The 10-year-old baby of the house was running around when her feet slipped and fell into the soak-away. She died. The family’s joy took a flight too. People said it must be the work of Satan. The mother went apoplexy while the father went into depression more because the death was not natural. The weight of that guilt haunts the father to today.
A great lesson has been learned. Communication gap that borders on safety MUST be avoided in any setting. It may be a faulty automobile, leaking cooking gas, a cracked wall, exposed electric cable, drugs, flammable items in the wrong place, loosely hung heavy objects, a falling tree, or exposed nails in the house. We must be conscious of safety around us which must be attended to with dispatch and which people around us should know.
Moshood Isamotu is a Lagos-based public commentator