A SHY WORLD WAR

CHAPTER 1 Our ancestors occupied a space that stretched further into a strip of land that gave our Motherland the shape of a gun trigger. They faced the Atlantic Ocean like good old friends that all the dangers, fears, beauties and glories attributed to that great water body were embellished on their guts of survival and for history. They came together and bonded with their cousins from other lands while embarking on journeys they believed were theirs; the journeys of humanity which they were part of, or we thought they were part of. They dominated a particular area of the land space which the Portuguese that visited saw and called Biafra in the 1480s. The Igbos are a resilient group of people bound by a deep culture built around communal progress, spirituality, unity, individuality and freedoms which were anchored on community well-being. They were bold and proud, which was born out of their unfailing zeal to achieve greatness in all their endeavours. Hence, when the Portuguese, the first modern Europeans that visited, came in contact with them, they were astonished to find that there were no beggars among them. This built some awe and mysteries in the hearts of these first European West African explorers, which compelled them to add more anthropologists to their voyages. Among these anthropologists was Reverend Luiz, who led his team around Igbo settlements and communal districts. As the Portuguese sailed along and across West African coastlines, they had a few things in mind while they explored. Among their lists was trading on slaves; the same slaves on whose shoulders the parts of the world we now call “western” built their pyramids of wealth and comfort. In retrospect, their act was a transfer of visceral survival from one race of the world to the other. Reverend Luiz and his team took their time to train some local converts who showed commitment to Christianity by preaching the Bible to Africans. When the number of their converts increased, they started building churches with the help of the locals. The walls of their church buildings were made from the red earth and clay mud of the lands of the Igbos and their neighbours with thatch roofs of raffia palm fronds which were changed to iron zinc when the number of Christian devotees started growing across the length and breathe of the lands called Biafra and some neighbouring lands. It was during this time that Ebonine’s family was reduced to eleven, and they were grieving the loss of their family members to s*****y. Before the slave raid on Obubra farm settlement, the Ebonines were a wealthy family. Their progenitor, Mazi Ebonine, died an Ezeji title holder (king of yam) in his native land; a title he was invited home to receive in Igbouzo. He died a polygamist in 1855, when the last of his four wives, Mmano, abandoned him with her children; Ononuju, her son and Egodi, her daughter. Mmano left to join the Christian missionaries who were making inroads into the hearts of black Africans found within West and Central Africa, which today includes Nigeria and Cameroun. This happened after some European business explorers partitioned Mother Africa to plunder and police in 1884. Before the slave raid on the Obubra community, Ebonine had 18 children from his four wives. His second wife, Ini, from the Ibibio tribe, lost her four children to slave raiders in one night. These slave raiders were in the business of capturing slaves for white slave merchants stationed close to coastal lands. The white slave merchants sometimes toured around beyond the coastal lands and made inroad entries into the hinterlands where they appeared as white tourists. Most of the time, they were mistaken for Bible missionaries by the locals. Those journeys into the hinterlands were means through which the white men discovered healthy farms and gigantic yam barns. The burgeoning nature of the farms around places they visited gave them clues about the ingenuity, brain, psyche, strength and determination of the people around those areas. The richer the farms looked, the more endangered the people behind and around them. It was one of those visits that almost made Alaere, the third wife of Ebonine, a childless mother. Alaere almost lost her son, Ebelemi, whom she had in her previous marriage to Pere, an Izon man, who was reputed for fishing before he died. Pere died of a gunshot wound he sustained when he was canoeing against the storm to save his young son who the slave raiders that were stationed on the coastline spotted and mistook for an Igbo boy. Ebelemi was fair in complexion, just like his grandmother, Nkem, who was an Igbo business woman from Ngwo, a land of about 117 miles from her marital home in Okirika, before she married Timipre who fathered her son, Pere. She was a great merchant who specialized in the cola nut business. She was also into fish smoking and sales. The Igbos had an idolized tuber crop called jị among most of her dialects. The English name for this tuber is yam, and it was called “inhame” by the Portuguese. It was so celebrated that over the years it became the king of all their known crops, and titles, names and recognitions were built around it, especially for the most successful male yam farmers. Yam farming was majorly done by men in Igbo land. However, some women rose with amazing skills, devotion and guts and had a great niche in yam farming, and were equally doing well. Some of them never peddled down in their quest until they saw their yam barns bigger or almost at par with their male counterparts. Although women dominated cocoyam farming business, yam farming was indeed a flag bearer business that represented wealth attributed to men, but their women always severed the seeming monopoly of men in the business of yam farming. Among the women who rose to the occasion was Jidinobi. She was the first wife of Ebonine, whose father from Awkuzu in Northern Igbo land held the Ezeji title (king of yam) during his life time. Jidinobi was born during the yam harvest season, and Igweora, her father, had a particular large swath of farm land in Igbariam village where she was born. The sight of the heaps of yam tubers around Igweora’s barns waiting to be fastened on the barns motivated Igweora to name his second daughter Jidinobi. The name literarily means “there is yam in the house”, or better still, “there is food in the house”. Unlike Akumefu, her elder sister, who was born two years earlier during the farm weeding season, Jidinobi came when there was enough to eat and celebrate with. The first son of Ebonine and Jidinobi was Ezenagu. He was nineteen years younger than his father and seventeen years younger than his mother. He became a parent to his siblings when his father, Ebonine, died shortly after a yearly yam harvest from the wound he sustained during his fight against the second badge of slave raiders that came to kidnap his younger surviving sons, Ikeaka and Ononuju. This happened just a few years after Mmano left him and his children for missionary work in Calabar. After she was converted to Christianity, she had a conviction to not remain in a polygamous marriage anymore. Until she left Ebonine, Mmano was his herbalist who treated the gunshot wound on his thighs. The wound was inflicted on him by a heartless slave raider, Abu, who was discussed in a hushed tone around the Bight of Bini. Mmano hailed from a family of great herbalists that dominated the profession around Isu villages. In 1863, Mmano became so close to Reverend Luiz after she nursed him back to health from acute malaria. She was made head of his cooks and was generally loved among Saint Gregory Parishioners. Mmano was a beauty to behold right from birth. She was as dark as a raven, with dimples so deep that they could hold buckets of water. She was not stingy with her enrapturing smiles that always graced her presence. Her blinding beauty did more of the evangelism for her and her good conduct kept her converts really devoted. These were attributes her late mother was known for during her short life in Awo. She was the only child her mother, Akwugo, had for her husband, Ijewuihe, before slave raiders captured him and sold him to Sir Diogo, the elder brother of Reverend Luiz. Sir Diogo was a large slave merchant that had one of the largest slave depots on Bonny Island around this period. The next day, on a Sunday, Akwugo was captured by another group of slave raiders on the outskirts of Awo, precisely at their border with Njaba, on her way wailing and searching for her captured husband. Mmano was only two weeks old when her mother was captured and sold into s*****y.