EXPENSIVE SHIT ~~~ Fela Anikulapo-Kuti.

“Name?” “Fela!” The police officer looked up at me. “Just Fela?’ “Yeah, jus’ Fela!” I knew very well that motherfucker knew my name. “Address?” “My house. …” “Where?” “Right here in Surulere, man, yeah!”

“When I went home, the house was almost completely empty. I got fucking high and went fast asleep. At 4 a.m. –it’s now Thursday morning –guess who shows up? Police! Fuck it! I swear, I didn’t know police would come again. And there they were to raid me again.

“I hear: tarn … tarn … tarn. … I had a spy-glass on my door, but I didn’t even bother to use it. I just opened the door and … Baaaam! What do I see? Five detectives! Now, I’d smoked some joints earlier. What was left was in the ashtray on a small table near my bed. They’d just finished raiding me, man, so I wasn’t ready to have them catch me again.

“I said: “Police? What do you want?” They said they’d come to search me again. “Again? You just finished. I left on bail yesterday. What’s happening?” They said they’d come to raid me again. I said: “Fine. I have a woman inside there. She’s naked. You cannot come in here until she is dressed.” “OK,” they said. I banged the door in their face.

“I quickly went to my ashtray, man. I put all the grass in my mouth, plenty, man. About a handful … in my mouth … just like that … mmmmmmmmm. You follow me? I stood at the door and suddenly opened it.

“Boinggggg! I did like I was feeling sick, holding my mouth like I wanted to vomit and I ran to my toilet. I just rushed through them. They didn’t know what I was doing. I was too fast for them. My toilet was just there. I opened the sink. Spit everything into it. Ran the water. Pushing everything down the drain in a rush. Then I went back into my room, closed the door again. Just to make sure, I searched every corner and cleared my room. My room was safe. Then I opened the door.

“Come in.” They came in. They started to search here, there … under … everywhere. They didn’t find shit. Then they dropped one joint that they brought themselves, just one joint. Enough to send me in for ten years, man. It was wrapped in a paper like how we wrap joints for sale in Lagos.

So they brought it out from under somewhere. “We found this,” they said. “You found this?” He unrolled it and opened it to show me, saying, “I found this.” “I can’t see it.” They brought it close to my face and showed it to me. I again said, “I can’t see it.” And they brought it right up to my face like that. They said: “Look!” I looked at it. I was thinking fast, man. Then suddenly, in a split second –really fast! –I went for the paper, grabbed it, put it in my mouth and jumped on my bed, man. I’d swallowed it! I took the whisky bottle by my bed, put it to my mouth and washed the shit down. Then I started to lecture them.

“Motherfuckers, what’s the matter with you? Look-o, I’m trying to save this country, man. You want to put me in jail. What have I done? Whaaat have I done? ‘Cause I smoke? Fuckin’. …” They were looking at me while I was eating it. There was left about one tiny grain inside the paper. And they took that one tiny grain, looked at me and said: “Let’s go!” And they took me. This time they were so sure they’d got me! ‘Cause that first raid wasn’t a clean one.

They’d done everything roughly. This time they made sure they had a neat one. A police officer was even waiting for me in the office, at Alagbon Close, the big police station. “Fela is coming. This time we’ve got him,” he said. When we got there, this man was sitting on his chair. I stood there, with four detectives standing next to me. So, the man, looking big, stood up in the front. He asked them: “So you got him?” “Yes, sah. But when we showed it to him, he grabbed it and ate it.”

The man was so shocked. He looked at me as if I was the biggest criminal he ever saw. Motherfucker wants to put me in jail, man, and I’m trying to get myself out of jail and he thinks I’m a criminal for that, man! What he has planned-o.

Culled from ‘Bitch of a Life’ by Carlos Moore/images /Google