The Color Of Death

As a teacher in Nigeria, the tools of my trade were chalk and red ball-point pens.

The red ball-points were for grading papers. One day, I sat down to write a letter to someone in another part of Nigeria.  There were no blue ball-point pens nearby, so I used a red ball-point pen. I mailed the letter, and got a response back.

“Please do not write letters in red.  Red is the color of death.”

I had never thought about the color of death.   As an American, I probably would have chosen black as the color of death. 

After getting a scolding about colors, I made a point of carrying both a red pen and a blue pen in my pocket.  Red in case I needed to grade a student homework assignment; blue in case I needed to write anything else.

Nigeria underwent a Civil War from 1967 to 1970.  Before 1967, there were basically no guns in Nigeria and it was a peaceful place.  The Civil War changed that.

After the War there were a lot of weapons floating around.  Suddenly, Nigeria had to face an unheard-of crime: armed robbery with guns.  The Nigerian public was scared and outraged.  Laws were passed: if you committed a crime with a gun, you were to be executed.  The country was so outraged that they decided to bring back public executions.

One day, I was in the Principal’s office, when he said: “Mr. Schneider, here is a wasifa.”

The word wasifa does not translate handily into English.  Wasifa means “misfortune”, wasifa means “this is what we are up against”, wasifa means “this is our suffering.”

He handed me an envelope.  Inside was an invitation to a public execution.  My Principal was clearly upset.

I could not tell if he was upset about guns, or upset about armed robbery, or upset about public executions, or upset about being considered important enough to sit in the VIP section to view an execution.

I looked at the invitation; it was printed on nice paper with nice script.  Nigeria was not used to inviting people to executions.  It was clear that the government had used a printing company that printed wedding invitations.

This, however, was not an engraved invitation to witness someone’s wedding.  It was an engraved invitation to witness someone’s death.  

It was printed in red.

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NOTE: Doug's best stories have been collected into a book: Puppy Out Of Breath.  Price = $11.  You can purchase a copy at  http://www.puppyoutofbreath.com