IBO - Brian R. Lundin (100 books to read in a lifetime .txt) 📗

a large umbrella.
“It was amazing seeing all of those “God’s Plants” as you call them,” Eli said.
“You said they were indigenous plants?”
“Yes,” the plant grows and thrives in dry, warm climates. It is said that the ancient Sumerians used the plant, which they called the joy plant as early as 3400 BC they passed along the plant and its euphoric effect to the Assyrians. Alexander the Great also used the plant to help his wounded soldiers as far back as 326 BC. In 1890, your famous bigoted publisher, William Randolph Hearst published stories in his newspapers of white women being seduced by Chinese men who got them addicted to opium, pure nonsense.
The United States involvement in Viet Nam in the 60’s and 70’s is blamed for the surge in illegal heroin being smuggled into the states. To aid United States allies, the CIA set up a charter airline, Air America, to transport raw opium from Burma and Laos. The raw opium was transported to Corsican gangsters to be refined and shipped to the United States via the French connection. Long, long ago, my people used the plant in rituals and for food and drink. The seeds are non-addictive and were used for cakes and breads, cooking oil, paints and varnishes. The juice was used as a painkiller and an insect repellent and our doctors used the plant to calm persons believed possessed by evil spirits. God’s Plant has the ability to survive and thrive under a variety of conditions. There were always wars between the tribes in the area, which usually resulted in the weaker or defeated tribe either being taken into slavery or run off the land. These wars was not over God’s Plant because it was everywhere, the wars were over water and hunting grounds. My tribe was hunter, gatherers, and mighty warriors. They followed the game animals and when they arrived in this area there were many watering holes for the animals to drink, which meant that the tribe only had to wait for the game to come. They could stop wandering the land, but another tribe, the Buntu, occupied the land. The Buntus were mainly farmers, they grew crops and supplemented their crops with the game that came to drink, the first thought of my people who were mighty warriors was to take the land by force of arms from the Buntu and enslave them for ourselves or even sell them to the Arab slavers, but Dubo Montovo, my great grandfather was a very wise man. He convinced the elders that before making war let’s make them an offer where they could join our tribe and teach us to farm and we would protect them and we could share the land and the game. They accepted our offer, war, and bloodshed was avoided. The Buntu showed the people how to farm and they showed them the healing powers of the plants that grew wild and abundant. The Buntus showed my people how to extract the juice, which was used for relieving pain and other medicinal purposes. My people discovered that if the plant was burned the smoke warded off the disease carrying insects that killed so many of the people. It also was used in our rituals and festivals; it soothed the nerves and increased awareness.
Over the years the two tribes through intermarriage became one and God’s Plant was used mainly for our own needs. This changed in the early 1800’s when the European discovered the pain killing properties of the plant in China. When the British colonized Africa they found it grew here also and they began to trade with my people for the plant because it would not be cost effective for them to cultivate, harvest and process the plant themselves but they showed my people how to use modern technology to increase the yield.
During your civil war, which caused massive injuries, the juice from God’s Plant was used as morphine to help the suffering of the soldiers. They found morphine to be a cheap, compact, reliable and quite predictable drug. With the invention of the hypodermic needle the demand for morphine intensified. Doing those times, they believed that morphine was not addictive, but they were wrong. Any drug, alcohol, tobacco or opium if not properly administered can be addictive.”
“Does it grow in the United States,” Malik ask.
“Not wild, but it could be cultivated, but I doubt that your government would allow it to grow. Your warm states in the Southwest United States, Texas, Louisiana, New Mexico and probably other states has the climate and the soil for the plant to grow, but your government and large companies found that it was far too labor intensive to be commercially successful, so they rely on Asian and European distributors who are dependable and inexpensive to produce the morphine. By the 1870’s, morphine and cocaine were cheaper to buy than alcohol. Your Coca-Cola soft drink originally contained cocaine as an active ingredient until the government made them remove it. In the early 19th century, we established trade with the European countries; we imported their goods and exported opium. Morphine became known as the wonder drug and was welcomed by the industrial countries and widely advertised. Opium on the other hand was frowned upon as the “Oriental Drug” primarily because the Chinese use it in their opium dens as a recreational drug. They used it probably to ease their burden while building the railroads for your country. There was an incorrect perception, which was based on prejudice, that opium made a person lazy and shiftless and that it was being used to seduce white woman.
That led to legislation concerning opium possession and importation.”
“We visited one of your processing plants today and the process seemed very simple,” Eli said.
“It is,” Mr. Motovo, said, ” we have added computer technology to make the process more efficient, but it is not that difficult to do by hand, which was done by my people centuries before the invention of the computer or other machines.”
“What is opium?” Malik asked.
“It is the milky white juice from the unripe seed, about the size of an egg, after the juice is extracted from the seed it coagulates and turn brown after being exposed to the air and made into bricks or lumps. At the plant, the bricks or lumps are dissolved in hot water and mix with lime fertilizer, which separate the morphine molecules. These molecules are mixed with concentrated ammonia to form chunky white kernels, which is morphine. The morphine weights about ten percent of the original raw opium. The morphine can be further processed into heroin, codeine or it can be mixed with alcohol to make laudanum, a very popular drug after the civil war.”
“It looks like you’re doing ok, but wouldn’t heroin be more profitable?” Malik asked.
“Yes, but it would also be more problematic, it would be very simple to convert the morphine into heroin at our processing plants, but we would lose the good will and respect that we now get from the international community. Our product helps people; heroin on the other hand harms people and communities. Your government and most of the other democratic government in the world would be against us. We would be looked upon like the narcotic cartels in Central America and Asia or an outlaw like Noriega in Panama and we know what your country did to Noriega; he is still lingering in one of your jails.
It is better to get a little bit for a long time than a big bit for a short time. The cartels are greedy and so was Noriega. The lure of the big narcotic dollar had warped their sense of reasoning.
They must pay off or kill government officials, have armed guards and wage a war against the whole world, which they cannot possibly win, enough talk, let’s take a swim.”

“You guys go ahead, I can’t swim,” Malik said.
“What?” Diki said. “Oh no, now is the time to learn.”

Diki and Eli grabbed Malik, and in the pool he went, clothes and all. The summer went quickly; Diki took them to some of the surrounding countries, Chad, Niger, and Cameroon where they found the poverty staggering, worse than in the projects. The land was either semi-arid or lush, beautiful rain forest with wild flowers, which carpeted the landscape. Diki explained that the governments in many African countries were constantly changing, one despot being overthrown by another despot. As a result, there was always some kind of civil war going on and the people suffered the most.

The following week Diki told them they would be leaving in the morning for the boat trip to Doctor Lumody’s laboratory.
“Our chemist is a brilliant man, his name is Brenden Lumody. He is the son of Ralph Lumody who for many years was the Hougan or healer of our tribe. Ralph, Brenden and his wife Lumma lived in an isolated village deep in the jungle not far from the Benue River. Ralph taught his son the magic of “God’s Plant,” and the many other plants that flourish in our magnificent jungle. At an early age, Brenden showed an almost mystical understanding of the plants and my father convinced Ralph to allow Brenden to go to the missionary school in Lagos. He left to attend the school when he was ten and he graduated first in is class when he was twelve. The missionaries at the school tested Brenden, which revealed he was a genius. They recommended sending him to England for further study and he graduated, again first in his class from Cambridge with a PhD in chemistry. He was fifteen. When he returned home he went back to work with his father, it was Brenden who discovered how to extract the morphine from “God’s Plant” and he has discovered how to extract a substance the will repel bugs. My father had a state of the art laboratory built in his village and that is where he has been every since. Ralph died a few years ago and Brenden, his mother and ten assistants work in the lab. I must warn you that he is kinda of eccentric but what genus is not! He is a very warm person and I am sure you will like him. We’ll leave in the morning the only way to get there is by boat and it’s takes about two days to get there, but I think you will enjoy the trip and the wildlife,” Diki said.
The following morning at sunrise they were driven to the boat dock of the Benue River, which is converge with the Niger River and emptied into the Niger Delta, one of the world’s largest river deltas. . Listing lazily at its mooring was a white a fifty-five foot Chris Craft motor boat, gold trimming ran at down it sides. There were two decks and a flying bridge. The name IBO was painted in big brown letters on the stern. A guide rope was tied to the stern and attached was a thirty-foot aluminum boat with a two fifty horse-powered Evinrude outboard motors.
“Malik and Eli meet Molanti, he’s the captain,” Diki said as the men shook hands and boarded.
Diki gave Malik and Eli a bottle that contained a red thick liquid.
“Rub this on your body especially your arms and face, he will repel the flies and mosquitoes,” he said.