What can be in the air? So much reflection about Human Waste...here is one more from Femi Segun, the first son of Mrs Mabel Segun... Are You An Agbepo? (Nightsoilman) by Femi Segun, femseg@yahoo.com Are you CORRUPTION, a predator, serial rapist and violator of all that is good and fair? Or are you an Agbepo, a Nightsoilman who carries the detritus of society on his head while swishing away with his broom at the buzzing flies and scavengers attracted by the overflow of rottenness and decay? Which are you? This is a paean to the unsung heroes of the early Public Sanitation System in Nigeria in general, but Lagos State in particular. I speak of those men who sported an item of wearing apparel that stood them out just as their less anonymous Colleagues, The "wole – wole" (Sanitation Inspectors) of the Kepi and Baggy Shorts. They dressed in Singlets and Baggy shorts of great antiquity and wore masks. The masks were of many designs. Some were just simply handkerchiefs tied across the face covering the nose and mouth while others were complete headgear, with just eyes, nose and sometimes mouth holes cut in them a la Lagbaja. They were called "Nightsoilmen" or more commonly, "Agbepos"
Who were the Agbepos? They were those tall men in ubiquitous masks who gave a great service to Lagos State but have never been given the recognition. I have not heard of a retired Agbepo given credit for this dirty and selfless job with health hazards. Many diseases are air born so a day at work was an appointment with disease and possibly, death. A long-lived Agbepo is a testament to the resilience of human nature and a triumph in the battle over disease and early mortality. This article is about the great work this faceless, nameless cadre of Citizens of Lagos State did. They cleaned up after our mess. They sanitized the environment. They humbled themselves to perform their duties and took no credit for it. They were paid their wages but no one came close enough to "dash" them. They were selfless Council servants. Lagos needs Agbepos of a different kind today. We will come back to that.
Even today, the disposal of human waste is one of the most hazardous and messy of the various areas of management of effluents in any society. While there are a few Estates like the Old 1004 Estates which have modern underground sewers that carry the waste to a recycling plant where it is cleaned, most of Lagos State is still using the Soakaway Pit System where the waste is discharged into pits that are emptied when they are full to overflowing. There are Septic Waste Disposal Trucks for hire, specially equipped for this purpose with powerful Pumps mounted on them. The full load is then discharged into the Lagoon at whatever point has been dedicated to this end, usually away from public glare. I do not remember whoever it was that legislated that all tenements in Lagos must have Water Closets (WCs) with drainages built into Soakaway Pits. Whoever that Governor was, he brought Lagos out of the Eighteenth Century into the 20th Century by making people stop using Pit Latrines or Buckets collected by "Nightsoilmen". Let me explain further. Apart from the WCs which had Toilet Bowls with covered seats that we are all aware of today, there were Latrines as well. You know, the type you had to squat on two porcelain slabs straddling a porcelain receptacle sunken into the ground. God help you if you lost your balance. They were mostly installed in Boys quarters until the early 80s. To flush you yanked at a chain hanging from the water closet hung above and behind you and prayed it did not come crashing down on your head.
Then you had the Pit Latrines which essentially dispensed with the WC and simply had a covered wooden box with a circle cut in the front edge on top. You perched on the edge and did your business straight into the pit below and prayed that the edge of the pit would not collapse while it was your turn. Imagine drowning in S**t! In some public latrines, they had them in series, divided between the men's section and the ladies of course, but each sex had very little privacy amongst them. Then you had the Bucket Toilets. They worked rather differently, and that was where the "Agbepos" or "Mil Mascaras" came in. They were nicknamed "Mil Mascaras" after the famous wrestler that thrilled viewers of television in the mid to late Seventies. "Agbepo" means carrier of" Po". "Po" (pronounced Kpo) was a colloquial name for Potty, the little plastic pot with the handle on one side used in place of the toilet and emptied at the earliest convenience. Agbepos however did not carry potties. They came much later down the effluent Channel.
You see, the Bucket Toilets worked just like the Pit Latrines with a box with a hole on top posed over a bucket. The only difference was that the box was placed next to a hole in the wall which could be accessed from the street at ground level. So household members did their business into the bucket throughout the day, and each evening the Nightsoilman would come and pull out the bucket, empty it into his own larger dustbin-like bucket and then move on to the next toilet to repeat the exercise. When his bucket was full of the amalgam of different S***t he would then move over to the Tractor-pulled tanker, empty his load into it and close the hatch. He would repeat the same actions until all the buckets from everyone's houses had been emptied for the evening. Then the tractor would pull the whole tanker full of sloppy human waste across town – woe betide you if you had to drive behind it in those days before cars were air-conditioned and there was only one road to Lagos Island across Old Carter Bridge. The road shared the bridge with the train just as they still do in Cotonou, in the neigbouring Benin next door. Driving behind the tank was an unforgettable experience. So many different Peoples S***T! It was an unforgettable stench. The Tractor would then empty itself into the Ijora Lagoon just beside the Iddo Train Terminal in full view of those diving across the Ijora Causeway. This explains why that stretch of water is an environmental nightmare today.
Now look beyond all your grimaces and see the funny side to it. I schooled at Igbobi Ciollege, not too far from home in Yaba and consequently had to walk to School until I was admitted into the Boarding house in Form Two. To do that, I had to walk through an area of Abule Ijesha which was still what it was called, an Abule, or village. Bucket latrines abounded and Nightsoilmen worked there daily up until the mid seventies. It was dirty and mean work and unlike Otunba Ghadaffi and his modern Portable Toilet the men did not agree that "S**t Business is good business" or "s**t money no dey smell", so they wore masks to hide their identities. It was probably a second job for them, and I have never met any retired councilman that said he retired from "Agbepo". Anyway the story is that children often made fun of the nightsoilmen and ran away before he could retaliate in the customary manner – dipping the broom that he used to clear the bucket after every dump into his receptacle and swishing the mixture in their direction in the hope that some of the muck would cross the distance and touch them. Once, my cousin who was on his way back to the Boarding-house in King's College got caught in the crossfire! And you can guess what happened to his immaculate white uniform.
As for me, as I passed by the toilets which backed unto the street on my way to school each day, I noticed with disgust that chickens pecked at the maggots in the smelly waste that had overflowed unto the edge of the street. As a result, I did not eat chicken until I was 22! And once, when I asked my dad what happened to the Poo that was poured into the Lagoon, he said that the fish ate it. You can guess the rest! I still am not a fish eater. I would rather eat meat than fish. How impressionable is the young mind! Where was I going with this? No I am not rambling. You see, Just as the frontage of the houses were clean and the façades bright and shiny, it was different behind the frontage. Just as deep inside, the Pit and Bucket Latrines fouled the environment, so it is with our society today. While the nation is acquiring the latest of technology and Industrial appliances, construction is ongoing and societal exteriors are becoming more beautiful, the human element is rotting and stinking away. our Old values of honesty, trust, family name, industry, responsibility, leadership and togetherness have been thrown out of the window. Instead we have corruption, greed, mistrust, favouritism, fetishism and xenophobia in our Public and private lives. The deterioration of our Value System is telling on the society. Today we have irate youth that have turned to drugs and crime to imitate the flamboyant lifestyle of the Corrupt in Public life. There is a disconnect between the people and their government. Violence is fast becoming a way of life and the Hobbesenian Theory is manifest before our very eyes. Life is fast becoming nasty, brutish and short, and society does violence to the honest.
There is constant lip service being paid to the observance of the Rule of Law. Injustice is being done daily to the System and the Officers themselves. How can Justice be upheld when the Agencies of Law and order are undermined daily? How can the society develop when the mediocre are elevated and merit is flushed down the toilet? A Society that undermines its Penal System will breed degenerates. In this surfeit of anomie, the honest are now donning masks and becoming Agbepos. They have to seek anonymity and hide their faces for fear of being identified and victimized. They carry the weight of the corruption in the system and suffer the fallouts. The unjust are exalted while the deserving are marginalized. Its time to welcome back the Agbepos – The Nightsoilmen of our society values. The honest people. We need Agbepos, are you an Agbepo? |
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