Nature, in its wisdom, teaches us lessons through various and numerous occurrences and experiences of life. The literatures of the theology of various religions are awash with allegories, anecdotes, metaphors, proverbs and other dark sayings that are loaded with these lessons. Also, creative writers have used prose and poetry to capture these lessons through philosophical depositions and lyrics. This piece gives the account of a freak occurrence and the inherent lessons of life.
During the administration of Police Commissioner Fidelis Oyakhilome as Governor of Rivers State, Dr. Felix Wigwe was appointed Commissioner for Education and, in his place as Principal of School of Basic Studies (now Port Harcourt Polytechnic), Port Harcourt, Mr. Aaron M. Ikuru (now His Majesty) was appointed in an acting capacity.
During his very brief but positively eventful tenure, Ikuru decided to fell a giant iroko tree in the school premises. On hearing the intention, elders of Rumunkara Community, landlords to the institution, insisted that some sacrifices had to be offered before felling the tree to avoid calamitous consequences. This was unacceptable to Ikuru based on his religious beliefs.
Insisting on his stand, Ikuru brought a lumberjack one Saturday morning. Standing defiantly at a distance from the iroko tree, Ikuru watched as the lumberjack carefully attacked the tree from certain angles with the objective of ensuring that it fell into the football field. In view of the controversy that surrounded the decision and action, students and staff (including yours truly) also stood by at a safe distance. Lo and behold, the iroko fell as expertly guided by the lumberjack and everyone heaved a sigh of relief; the matter was over, so it seemed.
With the felling of the iroko tree, the skinny and very tall wild palm tree that stood beside the iroko now stuck out like a sore thumb. Ikuru instructed the lumberjack to also fell the palm tree and drove away. I retired to my apartment but many students were up and about the grounds.
From the inner recesses of my apartment, I heard the strained buzz of the motorized saw as it cut through the tough fiber that constitutes the trunk of the aged palm tree. Eventually, I heard a loud thump indicating the felling of the palm tree. Sadly, the relief I felt was short-lived as the sustained sound of shrilly screaming by students rent the air. I jumped to the living room, peeped through the window and saw students running pell-mell in and out of a crowd that gathered around what seemed like someone under the middle of the fallen palm tree.
My first thought was that the palm tree had fallen on a student; so I quickly ran to the scene. Behold, the palm tree had partly buried the bare-bodied lumberjack in such a way it was difficult to pull him out. Someone was screaming at the students to stay away and allow free flow of air around the victim; he also said we should not attempt to pull him out without the presence of a nurse. At that time, I rushed to the Registrar and requested for his official car; he refused the use of the car which was a four-door Peugeot and was ideal for the assignment unlike my two-door VW Beetle.
In desperation, I mischievously distracted the Registrar, grabbed the key of the car from the table and dashed to a nearby hospital. There, the staff nurse refused to assign a nurse to go with me on the grounds that it was the prerogative of the doctor who was, unfortunately, not there at the time. I threatened to ensure that the doctor and the nurse would never practise their profession in Nigeria if she did not secure approval and  to assign a nurse to me. To my pleasant surprise, she called and obtained the approval, and I sped away with the nurse.
By the time we returned with the lumberjack, the doctor had arrived. They asked me the victim’s name, which I did not know; then they asked me to deposit some money, which, rather sadly, I did not have either. I told them I never met the man in my life and that I had no money but offered my wristwatch with the promise to return on Monday with money to retrieve it. Therefore, they wheeled him to the theatre.
A few minutes thereafter, there was a loud scream and the shout of “De Nick! De Nick!!” from the theatre.  Immediately, the staff nurse was led out of the theatre in tears. Quite confused, I prodded one of the nurses and she said that the lumberjack is the younger brother of the husband of the staff nurse. Iin African tradition, that is as good as her husband. Shortly thereafter, Aaron Ikuru arrived; I briefed him on the situation, retrieved my watch and returned the Registrar’s car.
Back on campus, I inquired what actually happened and was told that the palm tree proved very stubborn and refused to bend in the direction the lumberjack wanted. The fact is that, in the quest for photosynthesis, the wild palm tree leaned away from the iroko tree  and standing like the Tower of Pizza, it was bent towards the driveway. Meanwhile, there was a student sitting in a car and obviously laying his manifesto to a girl smack on the path towards which the palm tree bent. Seeing the danger, the lumberjack rushed to the young man to alarm him but before he knew it, the palm tree fell on him; the young man and the girl escaped unharmed.
Did Nick survive? Yes. His family paid me a visit of gratitude some months thereafter and it was delightful.
There are basically three lessons of life learnable from this anecdote. Initially, I was inclined to use the phrase, inanimate neighbours in qualifying trees; then, I consulted the dictionary and saw lifeless, dead, non-living as synonyms of inanimate. So, I asked myself thus: are trees lifeless? The answer is obviously No! They are very much alive. They live a full life alongside humanity in an intricate symbiosis.  Are we living in harmony with them? Are we listening to them? Aren’t there things we could learn from them if we learn to listen to them?
Bertrand Russell and others of old did; my grandfather and my uncle Lazarus did and many more in humanity still do; but these constitute a micro minority.
Sadly, in Africa where this know-how (technology?) preponderated, we inanely allowed alien philosophies to denigrate it to the point we idiotically abandoned a know-how that holds the secrets of the nutritional and medicinal properties of herbs, plants and trees.
Secondly,  I was threatening the staff nurse towards saving the life of her “husband” and she was making things very difficult for me. If Nick had died, she would have lived with the guilt the rest of her life and Nick himself would have harbored some degree of anger towards her in the inner recesses of his heart, forever. And of course, Nick’s wife and children would never have forgiven her if they were privy to the drama. This episode is illustrative of the saying “the stone you regularly throw in the market may one day hit your mother.”
Thirdly and finally, the episode also teaches us to realize that in whatever position and wherever we find ourselves, irrespective of the seeming height, we should harbor a human heart. “Therefore all things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them: for this is the [natural] law” (Matt. 7:12). It’s a small world.
Osai is of the Rivers State University, Port Harcourt.

Jason O. Osai