Nature herself has imprinted on the minds of all the idea of God.
Cicero (106-43BC) De Natura Deorum
CHIEF BOBSON GBINIJE
The monomaniacal obsession and instinctual attachment which naturalists, environmentalists and ecologists etc. have for cosmological immaculacy, has been rubbished by a monstrous civilization. The industrial revolution has unleashed it’s destructive and horrendous brigandage on nature, precipitating a tenebrously teratoid terra firma and a moribound cosmogony. The Luddite’s remonstrations in Britain (1811-1816) have been vindicated.
But in the light of the aforesaid, I still strayed on to the “ALFA Beach” situated off the IGBE-FON Ajah-Epe express road on the southern fringe of Victoria Island. It is located in the Ubeju Okun ALFA VILLAGE in Eti Osa Local Government Area of Lagos state terrestrially, but its nautical edges co-terminates with the wider fringes of the Atlantic Ocean
As I approached the beach I heard a monophonic voice that drowned all other voices around. It was the voice of the mountainous waves splish-splashing on the seashore line. I heard and saw breath, poetry, exclamatory and laudatory tone in the waves as they moved in iridescent folds towards the sandy mound in non-negotiable total submission and obedience consistent with the admonition of God Almighty as recorded in Psalm 98 verses 7, 8 and 9.
It says “let the sea roar and the fullness thereof: and they that dwell therein. Let the floods clap their hands; let the hills be joyful together before the Lord for he cometh to judge the earth”. The inspired poet and Psalmist “King David” further said in psalm 95 verses 4, 5 and 6. “In God’s hands are the deep places of the earth: the strength of the hills is His also. The sea is His and He made it and He formed the dry land.”
As I wondered about creationism and the mysterious ineluctability of God’s Almightiness, I saw palm trees planted in symmetrical lines by imaginative minds on the sandy beach. I wondered what the science of geotropism and the hypothetical ellipsoid of the Geiod must have had on the palm trees and other beautiful plants behind the bamboo, palm fronds and raffia huts around. Nature is highly irrepressible.
As I mused further I saw the rare species of the globeflowers, godelia, glozima, Jerusalem artichoke and the lupin flowers entertaining some grallatorial birds and some lepidopteron insects. I saw granivorous and graminivorous animals answering the call of Nature and feeding at the same time. I looked down litorally and saw some eucalyptus and unidentified specie of the acacia tree on which some dipterous creatures were playing noisily. The psalmist captures this scenario with graphic vividness in psalm 104 verse 11 to the end. (See your Bible)
It was a melting-pot as the so-called highest creation of “GOD-“MAN” were all locked in joy. As some from the Iberian Peninsula junketed in and out of water with great happiness. The waves moved and pounded the seashore with isochronal regularity. Some expressed themselves in Homeric guffaws, drinking away, so to speak, their sorrows. Some were locked in conjugal bliss lying very close together as their nannies held their children in loco parentis.
Some inamoratas were locked in uxorious lovey-dovey with their partners. Whilst some down the littoral end tapering to the GAMBIAN Embassy booth, very young ones indeed were having a drink. These ones still too impressionistic and so susceptible to infantile insouciance, Dionysian
exuberance had wanton and immoral orgies under the guise of a liberal free world held closely to themselves. As men, women, boys, girls and children stewed in the wavelength of conviviality, nature slowly-and-steadily watched.
The winds sang a “motet” in polyphonic tone, a classical “musak” was struck in philharmonic keys as the palm trees, grasses, the waves, “MAN” and indeed Nature itself vibrated and gyrated in synchronous quick steps. The ichthyologist will be sunken in sampling out varieties from the catches made by some little rascals and the mycologist will be truly at home because of the multi-dimensionality of his treasure trove. It is lifting man from the dungeon of despair to the pinnacle of glory. As “Art Alade” of blessed memories will say “WHAT A LOVELY WAY TO SPEND AN EVENING”.
The whole of ALFA Beach is subsumed in an icosahedrous landscape reflecting the immanence of God Almighty and the inviolacy of Nature. There is no jejune stint in its trail. The Geneva Convention of 1864 established a code for wartime treatment of the sick, wounded and prisoners of War ( POW). But because it is “fallen-man” regulated, it is not effective. But nature is orderly. The day must break, the sun must shine, the evening must come and man must be born and he must die at a certain time. Nature does not contradict itself, neither does it contradict God’s creation. It takes and makes it its bounding duty to adore its creator.
In Greek mythologies “Gorgon” is one of the three monstrous sisters who have live snakes for hair and she was so horrifying that anyone looking at her was turned to stone. This was the kind of fear that ran through me when I imagined how Nigerians and their quest for technological development will come and destroy this citadel of Nature’s perfection-where God expresses Himself with motif vibrancy.
The celestial curves of the sky seem to meet the longitudinal edge of the river at an oblique but impossible angle giving it the verisimilitude of God’s abiding presence. It is only God who knows the content of the sea and the sublunary formats. The Bible says in Psalm 148 verses 1-4 “praise ye the Lord from the heavens; praise Him in the heights, praise ye Him all his angels; Praise Him ye heavens of heavens and ye waters that be above the heavens”. The Almighty Jehovah is truly really worthy to be praised.
As I sat pondering on the wonders of God’s creation I heard a distorting sound from the distance and on raising my face behold, there cometh men with various man-made musical instruments. What they played was initially disturbing, but after a short while one was able to look at it from the human angle. The tracks were a fusion of platitudinous lyrics fused into the Apala, fuji and juju idiom. They saw that I was not responding like others and then sang one track addressing me in person saying “Bobo no go die, unless to ba darugbo”. Blah blah blah. I then smiled and parted with some money before they left me alone. They are indeed peripatetic troubadours adding colours to the beach.
There also came a palm wine seller from whom I bought a gourd. It was great and natural, I am aware there is saccharine version of it. But this one was good. I wondered how much pollution we put into our system through drinking advertised poison instead of drinking from Natures inexorable stock of elixirs. There was also cut-out fresh coconut, I ordered one and had a sweet and prayerful drink saying that “the man who shakes the coconut shakes his own head; nobody knows the mystery of how the water got into the coconut and it is the coconut tree that is the head tree inside the town”. And I ended up saying that ‘may this be my portion and that of every Nigerian in the mighty name of Jesus Christ in the New Year 2015” and the sea with a thunderous splash answered “Amen”
I looked slantingly still sitting in lotus position on my morocco across the pelagic and thalaggic undulating sea surface and immediately noticed that there are inherent in-built cleansing mechanism suffused in the life of the sea. All excess luggages were dropped at the bottom of the sea as residual deposit or flushed out by wave action. At the bottom of the sea, even without aqualungs you could see mollusks which are invertebrates with soft unsegmented bodies and their collective families like snails, slugs, clams, mussels, squids and octopuses, their shells are fished out of the sea by young men and mounded-up, ground and sold as poultry feeds inputs. An “allegro Moderato” played gently on the strings of the wind glorifying God as the quintessence of perfection, the embodiment of greatness and lover of concord.
As the chant of the muezzin echoes from the mosque minarets so came a “clackety clack” sound of a horse galloping towards my direction, with two kids seated on it. The horse rider applied his whip most unsparingly as the horse galloped away. I also drew a striking parallel on why man, especially the Nigerian will always want to whipped to fall in line. It looked more of a stallion and slightly like the American mustang specie. As they galloped back on the sandy beach, they splashed a caked whitish substance on me. I quickly stood up and held onto it out of curiosity believing it must be a cracked arm of stalactites and stalagmites. But it turned out to be a big oyster shell, not disappointed or annoyed for no man is an island unto himself, I took it as my God-sent souvenir from “ALFA Beach.
As I was still ineradicably submerged in the bowels of nature, something struck and I looked at the time it was 6:30pm and it became morally instructive to disentangle myself from the stranglehold tentacles of nature and proceeded to go home and this I hurriedly did. As I prepared to go home I remembered that man is but a tenant on earth and that one day the Land Lord will ask for his tenancy agreement, I remembered the transience and ephemerally of life and of the emptiness and vanity of materialism. That one day God Almighty who gave all will ask for an account of our stewardship and in our “Stewardship dossier” will not be recorded our certificates, mansions, duplexes, cars, wives, women or men, but how we dwelt in righteousness and served God striving to know Him through His creation-NATURE. Men know thyself and fear God.
CHIEF BOBSON GBINIJE
MANDATE AGAINST POVERTY (MAP)
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