A SHY WORLD WAR

CULTURE

When Ogbealu who came to babysit for her daughter, Akwugo, noticed that she had been captured by slave raiders, she ran back home to Item with her grandchild, Mmano. The non-stop wailing of Ogbealu for four market days did not let her aged husband, Nwoko, have a good sleep. Nwoko, a man in his eighties and close to his grave, made a vow on the fourth day to give life a trial. He called his friend, Imo, who was aged as well, to accompany him to Bonny with their traditional canoe to search for his only daughter. He knew it had to be the journey of the worn-out and the famished in age if they must come back to tell the tales.

He had young, energetic and intelligent young men and boys as children, but everyone knew that the journey to Bonny Island was a sojourn for the elderly, and indeed, very old people, especially if you were from the Igbo tribe. To save his children, he had to wade into the stormy waters of the Slave River to Bonny Island where slaves were stationed, categorized, and separated according to their ready markets and plantations in the part of the world that was locally called New.

On the 24th day of December, Nwoko and his friend, Imo, embarked on their search towards the Bight of Biafra. It was on the eve of Christmas for the Christian Europeans and was beginning to be so among the remnants of lucky Africans who had not yet fallen victims to the international slave business that was the in-thing and consequently in love with the good news of the Bible preached by Reverend Antonio, a very good friend of a slave baron, Sir Diogo. At the time, almost only the faces of old people were adorning the length and breath of what Biafra had become. The only exceptions were young slave raiders, descendants of retired slave raiders who inherited European-made guns from their parents and others who became anything to escape s*****y.

On getting to Bonny, stretching forth to the Bight of Biafra, Nwoko heard a screaming voice that sounded very familiar.

“Nwoko, ọgọ m [Nwoko, my in-law]”, Ijewuihe shouted at the top of his voice to his father-in-law as he was pushed on board Ship Jesus, a famous slave ship renowned for its capacity to ferry a high number of slaves to Europe and the Americas.

Nwoko ran as fast as he could to have a grip on the ship and draw him out of the steaming slave ship, but he was pushed down by Abu’s men who were henchmen of Sir Diogo.

Overlooking the shock of life he had just received, he stood up immediately, stared in agony of helplessness and as though he had just suddenly remembered what to say, he called back to his son-in-law and said, “Nwa m, ọgọ m [my son, my in-law], forgive my age. Age has separated us because white men want it so. Suffice age, they would have loved to put us all together in this same ship. I’m weak and age has shrunk my strength to submission. They preferred you to older me and, because of this, we lost each other from known to unknown places. May our Ancestors go with you! I am helpless, my son, and you know it.”

As Ijewuihe’s limbs were chain-clasped together in pairs by hefty drag men and his helpless body dragged along into Ship Jesus being steamed for upward movement into the belly of the Atlantic Ocean, he screamed in pain of agony, regrets and bodily harms inflicted on him by the merciless whips of the fierce-looking drag men under the command of Sir Diogo who was about two metres away. Sir Diogo only watched and popped up ash-looking smoke into the face of heaven that seemed to look down while black Africans were stuffed into the storeys built inside Ship Jesus. Nwoko was stunned as he noticed a few white men walking around slave steads, gripping and fumbling the shoulders of the captured slaves to examine their strength and agility. Their fellow Africans showed them around the captured slaves as the whites walked and smoked around them. The sight of the struggle put up by Ijewuihe broke Nwoko’s heart in shreds as tears rolled down his helpless cheeks, and Imo, his friend, had wearily sat down on a heap of ancient mounds made by the last Igbos who cultivated yams on the Island before it became a slave Depot.

“Biko, ka m zie ọgọ m ozi (please, let me send a message across to my father-inlaw)” was the last word he defiantly uttered as he was suppressed while trying to pass a word to Nwoko whose lips had stood ajar in shock, as drag men closed up the ship decks. Like a baby thirsty in a canoe without a human paddler but under a blowing and prowling wind, jammed against every edge around a water body, and like a thin raindrop that its land had been put a million miles away, Nwoko stood thinly numbed as all he could hear from Ijewuihe in an already cast-off ship was “ọgọ m, biko, ekwekwana ka ihe ọjọ mee nwunye m na Mmano, nwam m nwanyi [my In-law, please don’t allow evil to befall my wife and Mmano, my daughter]”.

Instantly, the numbed body of Nwoko was filled with goosebumps as he shockingly turned back in agony. “Arịrị”, he screamed and lowered his face to look at the land that had kept his ancestors freer before the white men discovered gold in the sweat, pains, agony and displacement of people they called Blacks. On raising his face towards his left, he saw a herd of human beings chained with extending iron chains around their necks, loins and legs. With worn out flesh, badly twisted hairdo, disfigured face and dispirited demeanor, all clothed in self-disappointment and resting on wearied legs, Akwugo battled to not only lift herself up but others who were tired as well, so she could stand noticed or probably be heard. She screamed at the top of her voice, which had lost even the faintest of hissing sound as she struggled to get her face identified. It was almost like half of the battle she gave the slave raiders that captured her as she lumbered. She bodily beckoned her fellow slaves to edge them up, at least to support her to stand and get noticed. The more she struggled, the more breast milk flowed freely as it congealed while running down her legs after soaking the thin folded wrappers around her waist. A piece that became useful in drying the fluid and blood that came out from her newly torn v****a as a few-day-old nursing mother. She had earlier pleaded with one of the drag men, Ojamu, to use the clothe to make a girdle around her waist and torn v****a as she had started shaking feverishly due to the free flow of air into her body through her fragile birthing part. Bonny was an Ocean Island. The unused milk had formed a dry paste and breast cake around her still wobbling stomach and drenched her loins.

Akwugo had fought so many battles, including these last two she had in the birthing room and Njaba road against six gun-wielding slave raiders, but to her, it seemed she owed herself this one as her last. Her father was a few meters away from her, still trying to understand the unease among the chained women kept in the Eboe slave camp. It was an exclusive slave camp for majorly Igbos who the white men chose to call Eboes to save their uncompromising tongues. She was trying to stretch out her head to attract the attention of Nwoko since she could not use her chained hands or her almost dead voice. She had been shrunk down like smoked electric eels.

When Adanna, who had been beaten to submission by Abu’s men, could no longer bear the jerking ups coming from Akwugo who was group-chained next to her by her left hand, she threw her left ear close to her mouth. “Nna m, Nna m [my father, My father]” was all she could hear from the dying sound Akwugo was struggling to make as she tried throwing her head towards a man who was paying keen interest towards Eboe slave camp. The man made a steady walk towards them as he kept his jarred mouth feebly open. Adanna inspired herself and struggled to stand up or at least kneel so that Akwugo could be helped. This almost paid off. Adanna’s strength became so irresistible and discomforting for others and like a clarion call, all of them in a circle of chain stood up. Most stood up without cogent reason other than it was just more convenient for them to stand, since it became a more suiting position as a powerful force among them was forcing everybody up. That force was Adanna’s raw strength.

Did their unison standing up help Akwugo or Nwoko? When all of them stood up, it worsened Akwugo’s predicament as the heads of others taller than her and those of her height barricaded her direct view towards Nwoko, her father. This did not take away the attention towards the rumbling spot off the mind of Nwoko, who his friend was following behind. Adanna also noticed what had happened and started making an effort to pull down others once again. She was a very fair fleshy young mother of average height. She mustered her last strength, ensuring that she pulled everyone down with herself. The resistance put up by Akwugo got the attention of Nwoko who now noticed that Akwugo was gasping to get his attention. It paid off as Nwoko ran with the last strength any loving old man could dish out for his only daughter when he noticed that it was really Akwugo. He ran towards his daughter until just about a few meters nearby when Ojamu ran against him and halted his warm embrace of his chained daughter who had been recreated in the image of a wild animal in captivity.

“Where are you running to, old man?” Gun-brandishing Ojamu fiercely asked Nwoko.

Pointing at the struggling Akwugo, Nwoko fiercely answered, “She is my daughter, my daughter”.

His eyes rained down tears only capable of drowning an unarmed criminal.

“Is she the only one there?” Ojamu angrily asked.

“Don’t ask me that silly question. She is my daughter, my only daughter”, Nwoko said.

His replies put dry laughter on Ojamu’s face.

“Your daughter, old man, can’t be the only daughter around here”, he carelessly replied Nwoko.

“Young man, I am not playing. She is my only daughter, the reincarnation of my late mother”, Nwoko said with all the anger he could express as the attention of other drag men and Sir Diogo’s workers were courted in.

“I have heard you, old man, however, your daughter can’t be the only reincarnated mother among Igbos who has been captured into s*****y”, Ojamu sternly said.

“Oh, young man, she is a nursing mother. She just gave birth just a few days ago”, Nwoko said while dragging himself further against a barricading herd of slave-humbling gang.

Alas, it dawned on Nwoko that the day was not for the unarmed Igbo man in the rainforest of Bonny Island. He had been made to labour in vain as his hard words, mettlesome ones and words in-between them, had not brought about any change.

Sir Diogo was seen cracking jokes with his august visitor, Reverend Luiz, as they looked further down from his specially built high-rising canoe house.

“What do I pay in exchange for the freedom of my daughter?” Nwoko asked.

He was replied with a long queue of laughter from Ojamu and his gang.

“Old man, you have nothing to exchange your daughter with, except if you are willing to walk home barefooted without your canoe. This is because, by this time tomorrow, your daughter will be on board Ship Jesus”, Edidi told Nwoko albeit nonchalantly.

“So be it, my son. There is nothing, not even life, worth more than the knowledge that my own daughter is free”, Nwoko bluffly said. Edidi nodded his head as he scornfully looked towards Ojamu.

“Alright then, I will oblige you. But excuse me, I will have to require the opinion of the owner, the white man you see over there, because ever since your daughter came here, he has always kept an eye or two on her”, Ojamu said.

“What will he do with a young nursing mother whose birth part is still dripping with blood? What will he achieve with my daughter, whose only child is crying in my house as we speak now?” Nwoko asked hysterically.

The words from Nwoko couldn’t move the avalanche of brick-walls the hearts of these slave managers had become. To prove him right, the laughter turned into a joking rhythm among them as they displayed artistic drama with repetitions of words coming out from physically aggrieved Nwoko. Ojamu laughingly left them, and on reaching the staircase of Sir Diogo’s canoe house, he put up a meaner look before looking up straight at him so that he would pay attention to him as a real man. This he achieved as Sir Diogo beckoned him to hastily come upstairs.

Pointing at Akwugo and Nwoko for Sir Diogo to see, Ojamu said, “He came all the way from Item land searching for his only daughter”.

“Young man, is his daughter the only Eboe slave woman we have around here?” Diogo asked.

“No sir, but she is a nursing mother who is still dripping from her private part, and even her body is filled up with congealed milk from her breasts, which means her child is crying for breast milk at home”, Ojamu stubbornly said.

“Are you crazy, Ojamu? You know how much I pay for Eboe stocks. It comes with higher prices. Should I lose money because she is a nursing mother? Who will refund me?” Sir Diogo sternly asked.

“Sir, his canoe is of the finest wood and it is a new war canoe. He is willing to exchange it for his daughter”, Ojamu said.

“Are you sure his canoe can be of help for slave raiding?” Sir Diogo austerely asked.

“Yes, of course, sir”, Ojamu assured.

“OK, fine. Let him have her for the canoe, but you have to assure me that that very canoe will bring four more Eboe stocks to add on before the next badge moves. Because with her type of body, there is no doubt that in the next few years she will give birth to many more and her breast milk will help in raising some healthy Portuguese children in my home country. I have noticed she has very rich breast milk. It flows down her legs like a squashy river”, Sir Diogo regretfully said.

“No problem, sir. Consider it done, Sir. I will send a message across to Abu for this”, Ojamu assured.

In a few minutes, Ojamu, the leader of the slave managers, returned to the Eboe slave camp to meet Nwoko, and his team of slave managers were having hot arguments. Akwugo had been calmed with the knowledge that her father had discovered her presence. It gave her unprecedented relief and put some sleepy tidings into her eyes. She had foreseen a shade of hope even though it all boiled around her tired body and lost voice.

“Old man,” Ojamu said, “you will be going back home with your daughter because Sir Diogo has accepted your offer”.

Imo, who had been made childless from his younger days by unabated slave raids in Item and ever since then vowed not to have a child again, looked stunned, knowing it was his canoe that had been negotiated for the freedom of Akwugo. Since his wife died, following the heartbreaks she had from frequent slave raids, Imo’s canoe had become both his stolen children and his late wife, Akumbu. He couldn’t help his tears.

“Which canoe?” he sorrowfully asked.

Ojamu looked surprised as he replied, “The canoe that brought you two to Bonny, of course”.

It was a wild silence of a few seconds that looked like a whole day for Imo.

“It is all I have. I beg you, wait for any of us to go back home and bring another canoe from among Nwoko’s fleet for this exchange. I beg you in the name of God”, Imo pleaded.

“What’s wrong with you, Imo? I will replace this canoe with four new ones when we get home”, Nwoko said.

This did not go down well with Imo, who had become used to his only canoe. He would always sing when paddling around, fishing, or going home with it, calling out the names of his stolen children and dead wife. It meant the remnants of the whole world to him. It had been an intoxicant to his soul when the memories of how his house used to be tried to overwhelm him. Imo looked up and down and hot tears gushed from his eyes.

“Today, Imo physically died. I want to die alone. More words from me could make our journey down to Bonny Island a waste of opportunity. Live Akwugo, live Nwoko that I may see who buries me. Take the canoe and let our daughter live to breastfeed her daughter”, Imo said, clipping cheeks and lips washed by hot tears down his neck.

It was all tears and weeping as Ojamu went ahead to unchain Akwugo from the herd of Igbo slave women and girls. The more Ojamu men tried to unchain Akwugo, the more the pains of others increased, both from the excruciating dashes coming from one of the harshest friction any metal work can inflict and especially from the heart-brokenness of their understanding that Akwugo had a father who cared while no one came for them. It was a discordant carol of groaning and mortifying weeping among Igbo women, girls and others who were regarded as archetype Igbos. These reverberations, with representations of unseating agonies, went on as Akwugo was led to meet her father, who was forbidden from going further into the slave camp erected for the Igbos.

It was truly a sight to make some buckets of tears. Staunch beautiful Akwugo had become a representation of an ugly one, stretching out her worn out body with barely felt life from the clip of death as she was led by Edidi into the arms of Nwoko, her tearful father, while Imo was seen drenching his tattered body with sorrowful tears. Sir Diogo stretched out his head, sighting the canoe as Ojamu took a look around it as he turned it around its anchorage. He nodded his head multiple times in affirmation of the make it was.

“I hope it makes a nice exchange”, he shouted out at Ojamu.

“Yes sir, it is a nice model. Of a highly-priced wood around Biafra here”, Ojamu admittedly said.

“That’s good. Let her go and pray she doesn’t come back here real soon. Unless her soon-to-be-dead father will rise from his grave and search for her. He is a very old man now. Nature hardly lies”, Sir Diogo jokingly said.

The word of Diogo had caused Ojamu some bruises and loss. It appeared to him like a scornful joke as he laughed himself off guard, making a hard fall into the canoe and broke off his two front teeth. The day had turned bloody for him so suddenly.

“Oh, my God,” he shouted, as he lifted himself back onto the bank of the sea.

When he was done struggling, he looked up towards Sir Diogo’s canoe house to elicit some sympathy from him, but he was altogether disappointed as he saw Sir Diogo making an indifferent walk, reaching out for his seat as he popped the cigarette smoke harder and saturated the airspace of the slave depot.

Ojamu looked disappointed and furious at sighting anything and anybody that looked white around the Bight of Biafra. It dawned on him that his usefulness to Sir Diogo was only centered on the slave herd he manages for him. He disappointingly and regretfully took a slow walk within a few metres around the banks that had cost him his teeth and found a felled tree trunk and made it a mother’s lap. He sat quietly adjusting his body to find closure while spitting out saliva enmeshed in his own blood.

Intermittently, he looked at Sir Diogo, who got even busier with his august visitor. It was really unbearable for Ojamu. He stood up and made an angry walk to the same spot where he had his accident. He took multiple looks at Imo’s canoe as he spat out bloody saliva. Ojamu kept turning his neck nonstop, which attracted the attention of Dios, one of the few mullatos among the slave keepers. He came close to Ojamu and met him, a mouth-bleeding man.

“What happened, Ojamu?” he sympathetically asked.

“Is it not…” Ojamu said, pointing at Sir Diogo, “that sent me to examine this canoe in exchange for that young lady that had been crying for days”, he said angrily.

“You mean he hit you in the mouth?” Dios asked.

For some seconds, Ojamu remained silent.

“Is he not your father?” Ojamu said lastly.

This question made Dios look so perplexed.

“But what happened?” Dios continued asking furiously.

“I came here examining the canoe for him and missed my step and crashed my whole body inside the canoe and lost my teeth”, Ojamu explained.

“Oh, so sorry about that. It was an accident. I thought he hit you in the mouth”, he said.

“What hitting is more painful than looking away when someone you sent on an errand had an accident and all you could offer him was walk away and some smoke of cigarette you pushed up in the sky? To blind his God or what?” Ojamu angrily said.

“How best do you think we should punish this heartless beast?” Dios asked.

Ojamu was so stunned to hear this question from Dios.

“Really…? You called your father a heartless beast? Please remember I have said nothing here against him?” Ojamu fearfully said.

“I know you did not say anything against him, but you can say anything against him in my presence. I am more of you than him”, Dios whispered hard into Ojamu’s left ear.

Ojamu was bewildered to hear such a word from a son against his father, who was a third-generation slave merchant from Lisbon.

“Sorry, I am leaving you here. I can’t continue this talk with you”, Ojamu told Dios as he spat heavy clotted blood into Bonny River, while they both looked at Imo’s canoe dangling about under the sea waves.

His clotted red blood was dived at even before it landed on the water by a sneering crocodile, and it made a rough entry into its mouth. Ojamu angrily looked at Dios and made a rough walk away from him, leaving him behind to think for himself what he understood from the action of that much-unperturbed Croc.

Edidi had led Akwugo into the arms-embrace of her father, Nwoko, who bathed her with tears of joy, sadness, luck and all in between them. Akwugo was barely living, skipping breath at intervals while Imo edged her on as he placed her right hand on his shoulder. Nwoko moved ahead of them towards the bank of the river to look for an available commercial canoe to take them home. This moment became a time for Imo to take a last look at his canoe and possibly render his last salute to a canoe that had represented all he had lost as an Igbo man under the Portuguese-initiated transatlantic slave trade regime. Nwoko was negotiating with Degbe, a canoe paddler, when Imo went powerlessly mad after sighting his canoe as Dios turned it around its anchors, in admiration of the fine artwork it was. “Ugbo m, Ugbo m, Uwa m Uwa m [my canoe, my canoe, my world, my world]” was the last word Dios heard from Imo who started collapsing by the side of half-dead Akwugo while pointing at his old canoe. This caught the attention of Dios, who ran towards him. He was heartbroken meeting him lifeless behind Akwugo, who had also fallen beside him. Dios shouted and beckoned Nwoko to help his kinsman and daughter. On getting there, Nwoko felt the heartbeat of his daughter, Akwugo, and she was still breathing. He then turned to Imo and discovered that Imo did not survive Christmas Eve on Bonny Island. Nwoko screamed in pain and twisted his body in agony beyond what age had afforded him.

“What happened to him?” Nwoko asked.

“I don’t know really, but he was pointing at that canoe over there before he fell, and was shouting ‘ụgbọ m, ụwa m’”, Dios replied Nwoko who was on the verge of losing his daughter, as Akwugo grasped and gulped air as tiredly as her weak body could take in.

“So, Imo could not let go of this canoe even with the four new ones I promised him?” Nwoko rhetorically asked.

Dios was stunned. He looked directly into the tears-filled eyes of the old man Nwoko had become. He understood the language he spoke because his mother, Ugegbe, who was r***d multiple times at will by Sir Diogo on Bonny Island before she was released to Ship Jesus when her breasts became flabby, was an Igbo woman from Igboakiri. The tales of her beauty had been a recurring story among the old slave suppliers that lived close by and over time, her historical presence on the Island became a legend. They referred to her as Sir Diogo’s wife until the day she refused him s*x after discovering that he had made love to a newly arrived Igbo slave from Ezza. Meremebere was a tall raven-dark girl. She had a long towering neck and was above five feet tall at her age with thickly endowed pink-looking lips. She was a very young creature with bulging hips and bold feminine curves. These endowments courted untamed conquest on her fragile body in the eyes of slave barons on the Island. She was particularly irresistible to the untamed raw guts of slave barons until Sir Diogo ordered the delay of Ship Jesus for two more days before a sail to Lisbon. The two nights were terrible for Ezza's daughter, who was still a teenager. Also, they were unsettling nights for Ugegbe, who couldn’t resist the agonies oozing out from the heart-wrenching cries of little Miss Meremebere. This didn’t allow Sir Diogo’s cook, Ugegbe, to sleep. At the time when Meremebere arrived at Bonny Island, she was of the same age as Ugegbe’s mullato son, Dios. However, Meremebere was not her real name; it was a name given to her in the few days she spent on Bonny Island by slave managers. It was a plea cry for mercy; ‘méré m ebere’ in her Igbo language dialect, which means ‘have mercy on me’. She had been shipped outside the Native land but the name she was given in Bonny slave depot kept reverberating from the mouths of those who knew what happened in those two awful nights that divided humanity in this Igbo maiden, together with her broken hymen. The ear witnesses during the time were the ones that kept the story alive over the years. It was one of those moments old Motherland was murdered in her younger soul.

Imo had fallen to rise no more. Every effort to resuscitate him had proved vain. It became a day in the days of Dios, since the day he saw his mother put on the chain and stacked on the deck in Ship Jesus while Sir Diogo looked the other way, flinging and smoking his cigarette. His cries on that very day did not change a thing as his mother started off begging Sir Diogo to leave her for the sake of his own child, Dios. Sir Diogo later told him in the evening of that day that his mother would soon be back.

“I sent her to Lisbon to get you some winter jackets”, he said.

“But she was crying. Why was she crying?” Dios asked.

“You know your mother is a stubborn woman. She was insisting I go myself. Why should I have gone when it was the Easter period when all the missionaries in the hinterlands come down to Bonny for Easter celebration? I have learned now she chose to live in Madeira Island”, Sir Diogo said.

Dios angrily bottled up his anger and walked away. The memories of the happenings around the Bight of Biafra had just started making senseless sense to him.