Under African Skies (20 page)
Read Under African Skies Online
Authors: Charles Larson
“Where is he?” from James.
“Bring him in,” from Connie.
“You know, Sissie, you are a new mother. I thought I'd come and ask you if it's all right.”
“Of course,” say James and Connie, and for some reason they are both very nervous.
“He is Captain Ashley.”
“Which one?”
“How many do you know?”
James still thinks it is impossible. “Eh ⦠do you mean the officer who has been appointed the ⦠the ⦔
“Yes.”
“Wasn't there a picture in
The Crystal
over the weekend of his daughter's wedding? And another one of him with his wife and children and grandchildren?”
The Crystal
over the weekend of his daughter's wedding? And another one of him with his wife and children and grandchildren?”
“Yes.”
“And he is heading a commission to investigate something or other?”
“Yes.”
Connie just sits there with her mouth open that wide â¦
Â
â1970
(BORN 1930) NIGERIA
Chinua Achebe is not only the most widely read African writer of the twentieth century but also the most admired and respected. His first novel,
Things Fall Apart
(1958), has sold more than two million copies in the United States. Six million additional copies have been sold worldwide in fifty different languages. The archetypal African novel, Things
Fall Apart
chronicles the fall in the 1890s of a strong man named Okonkwo, who is brought down in large part because of upheavals within his own traditional Ibo worldâcaused, most notably, by the arrival of English missionaries and colonial officials. Yet Achebe also makes it clear that Ibo traditional life had its own built-in weaknesses and was ripe for historic change. Commenting specifically about Okonkwo's dilemma some years after the publication of the novel, Achebe stated: “ ⦠My sympathies were not entirely with Okonkwo ⦠. Life just has to go on and if you refuse to accept changes, then, tragic though it may be, you are swept aside.”
Things Fall Apart
(1958), has sold more than two million copies in the United States. Six million additional copies have been sold worldwide in fifty different languages. The archetypal African novel, Things
Fall Apart
chronicles the fall in the 1890s of a strong man named Okonkwo, who is brought down in large part because of upheavals within his own traditional Ibo worldâcaused, most notably, by the arrival of English missionaries and colonial officials. Yet Achebe also makes it clear that Ibo traditional life had its own built-in weaknesses and was ripe for historic change. Commenting specifically about Okonkwo's dilemma some years after the publication of the novel, Achebe stated: “ ⦠My sympathies were not entirely with Okonkwo ⦠. Life just has to go on and if you refuse to accept changes, then, tragic though it may be, you are swept aside.”
Things Fall Apart
was followed by a sequel,
No Longer at Ease,
published in 1960. Achebe's second novel jumps ahead to the 1950s and focuses on Okonkwo's grandson, Obi, who must confront more contemporary issues within his country on the verge of independence. Subsequent works include the novels
Arrow of God
(1964), A
Man of the People
(1966), and
Anthills of the Savannah
(1987); a volume of poems,
Beware Soul Brother
(1971), and a collection of short stories,
Girls at War and Other Stories
(1972); as well as
political commentary,
The Trouble with Nigeria
(1983), and critical essays,
Morning Yet on Creation Day
(1975).
was followed by a sequel,
No Longer at Ease,
published in 1960. Achebe's second novel jumps ahead to the 1950s and focuses on Okonkwo's grandson, Obi, who must confront more contemporary issues within his country on the verge of independence. Subsequent works include the novels
Arrow of God
(1964), A
Man of the People
(1966), and
Anthills of the Savannah
(1987); a volume of poems,
Beware Soul Brother
(1971), and a collection of short stories,
Girls at War and Other Stories
(1972); as well as
political commentary,
The Trouble with Nigeria
(1983), and critical essays,
Morning Yet on Creation Day
(1975).
Achebe has remained throughout his career both a critic and a defender of his peopleânot simply the Ibos of his own ethnic group, but his fellow Nigerians as well as Africans as a whole. In the celebrated essay “The Novelist as Teacher” (from
Morning Yet on Creation Day
), he wrote: “Writing of the kind I do is relatively new in my part of the world and it is too soon to try and describe in detail the complex of relationships between us and our readers ⦠. The writer cannot expect to be excused from the task of reeducation and regeneration that must be done. In fact, he should march right in front ⦠. I would be quite satisfied if my novels (especially the ones I set in the past) did no more than teach my readers that their pastâwith all its imperfectionsâwas not one long night of savagery from which the first Europeans acting on God's behalf delivered them. Perhaps what I write is applied art as distinct from pure. But who cares? Art is important but so is education of the kind I have in mind. And I don't see that the two need be mutually exclusive.”
Morning Yet on Creation Day
), he wrote: “Writing of the kind I do is relatively new in my part of the world and it is too soon to try and describe in detail the complex of relationships between us and our readers ⦠. The writer cannot expect to be excused from the task of reeducation and regeneration that must be done. In fact, he should march right in front ⦠. I would be quite satisfied if my novels (especially the ones I set in the past) did no more than teach my readers that their pastâwith all its imperfectionsâwas not one long night of savagery from which the first Europeans acting on God's behalf delivered them. Perhaps what I write is applied art as distinct from pure. But who cares? Art is important but so is education of the kind I have in mind. And I don't see that the two need be mutually exclusive.”
Away from the domain of art, more recently Achebe has written of a different kind of cleavage: “The trouble with Nigeria is simply and squarely a failure of leadership. There is nothing basically wrong with the Nigerian character. There is nothing wrong with the Nigerian land or climate or water or anything else. The Nigerian problem is the unwillingness or inability of its leaders to rise to the responsibility, to the challenge of personal example which are the hallmarks of true leadership.”
Since 1991, Chinua Achebe has taught at Bard College, in Annondale, New York.
The first time their paths crossed, nothing happened. That was in the first heady days of warlike preparation, when thousands of young men (and sometimes women, too) were daily turned away from enlistment centers because far too many of them were coming forward burning with readiness to bear arms in defense of the exciting new nation.
The second time they met was at a checkpoint at Awka. Then the war had started and was slowly moving southwards from the distant northern sector. He was driving from Onitsha to Enugu and was in a hurry. Although intellectually he approved of thorough searches at roadblocks, emotionally he was always offended whenever he had to submit to them. He would probably not admit it but the feeling people got was that if you were put through a search then you could not really be one of the big people. Generally he got away without a search by pronouncing in his deep, authoritative voice: “Reginald Nwankwo, Ministry of Justice.” That almost always did it. But sometimes either through ignorance or sheer cussedness the crowd at the odd checkpoint would refuse to be impressed. As happened now at Awka. Two constables carrying heavy Mark 4 rifles were watching distantly from the roadside, leaving the actual searching to local vigilantes.
“I am in a hurry,” he said to the girl who now came up to his car. “My name is Reginald Nwankwo, Ministry of Justice.”
“Good afternoon, sir. I want to see your boot.”
“Oh Christ! What do you think is in the boot?”
“I don't know, sir.”
He got out of the car in suppressed rage, stalked to the back, opened the boot, and holding the lid up with his left hand he motioned with the right as if to say: After you!
“Are you satisfied?” he demanded.
“Yes, sir. Can I see your pigeonhole?”
“Christ Almighty!”
“Sorry to delay you, sir. But you people gave us this job to do.”
“Never mind. You are damn right. It's just that I happen to be in a hurry. But never mind. That's the glove box. Nothing there as you can see.”
“All right, sir, close it.” Then she opened the rear door and bent down to inspect under the seats. It was then he took the first real look at her, starting from behind. She was a beautiful girl in a breasty blue jersey, khaki jeans, and canvas shoes with the new-style hair plait which gave a girl a defiant look and which they calledâfor reasons of their ownâ“air force base”; and she looked vaguely familiar.
“I am all right, sir,” she said at last, meaning she was through with her task. “You don't recognize me?”
“No. Should I?”
“You gave me a lift to Enugu that time I left my school to go and join the militia.”
“Ah, yes, you were the girl. I told you, didn't I, to go back to school because girls were not required in the militia. What happened?”
“They told me to go back to my school or join the Red Cross.”
“You see, I was right. So, what are you doing now?”
“Just patching up with Civil Defense.”
“Well, good luck to you. Believe me, you are a great girl.”
That was the day he finally believed there might be something in this talk about revolution. He had seen plenty of girls and women marching and demonstrating before now. But somehow he had never been able to give it much thought. He didn't doubt that the girls and the women took themselves seriously, they obviously did. But so did the little kids who marched up and down the streets at the time, drilling with sticks and wearing their mothers' soup bowls for steel helmets. The prime joke of the time among his friends was the contingent of girls from a local secondary school marching behind a banner: WE ARE IMPREGNABLE!
But after that encounter at the Awka checkpoint he simply could not sneer at the girls again, nor at the talk of revolution, for he had seen it in
action in that young woman whose devotion had simply and without selfrighteousness convicted him of gross levity. What were her words? We are doing the work you asked us to do. She wasn't going to make an exception even for one who once did her a favor. He was sure she would have searched her own father just as rigorously.
action in that young woman whose devotion had simply and without selfrighteousness convicted him of gross levity. What were her words? We are doing the work you asked us to do. She wasn't going to make an exception even for one who once did her a favor. He was sure she would have searched her own father just as rigorously.
When their paths crossed a third time, at least eighteen months later, things had got very bad. Death and starvation, having long chased out the headiness of the early days, now left in some places blank resignation, in others a rock-like, even suicidal, defiance. But surprisingly enough there were many at this time who had no other desire than to corner whatever good things were still going and to enjoy themselves to the limit. For such people a strange normalcy had returned to the world. All those nervous checkpoints disappeared. Girls became girls once more and boys boys. It was a tight, blockaded, and desperate world but nonetheless a worldâwith some goodness and some badness and plenty of heroism, which, however, happened most times far, far below the eye level of the people in this storyâin out-of-the-way refugee camps, in the damp tatters, in the hungry and barehanded courage of the first line of fire.
Reginald Nwankwo lived in Owerri then. But that day he had gone to Nkwerri in search of relief. He had got from Caritas in Owerri a few heads of stockfish, some tinned meat, and the dreadful American stuff called Formula Two which he felt certain was some kind of animal feed. But he always had a vague suspicion that not being a Catholic put one at a disadvantage with Caritas. So he went now to see an old friend who ran the WCC depot at Nkwerri to get other items like rice, beans, and that excellent cereal commonly called
Gabon gari.
Gabon gari.
He left Owerri at six in the morning so as to catch his friend at the depot, where he was known never to linger beyond 8:30 for fear of air raids. Nwankwo was very fortunate that day. The depot had received on the previous day large supplies of new stock as a result of an unusual number of plane landings a few nights earlier. As his driver loaded tins and bags and cartons into his car the starved crowds that perpetually hung around relief centers made crude, ungracious remarks like “War Can Continue!” meaning the WCC! Somebody else shouted
“Irevolu!”
and his friends replied
“shum!” “Irevolu!” “shum!” “Isofeli?” “shum” “lsofeli?” “Mba!”
“Irevolu!”
and his friends replied
“shum!” “Irevolu!” “shum!” “Isofeli?” “shum” “lsofeli?” “Mba!”
Nwankwo was deeply embarrassed not by the jeers of this scarecrow crowd of rags and floating ribs but by the independent accusation of their wasted bodies and sunken eyes. Indeed, he would probably have felt much
worse had they said nothing, simply looked on in silence, as his boot was loaded with milk, and powdered egg and oats and tinned meat and stockfish. By nature such singular good fortune in the midst of a general desolation was certain to embarrass him. But what could a man do? He had a wife and four children living in the remote village of Ogbu and completely dependent on what relief he could find and send them. He couldn't abandon them to kwashiorkor. The best he could doâand did do, as a matter of factâwas to make sure that whenever he got sizable supplies like now he made over some of it to his driver, Johnson, with a wife and six, or was it seven, children and a salary of ten pounds a month when
gari
in the market was climbing to one pound per cigarette cup. In such a situation one could do nothing at all for crowds; at best one could try to be of some use to one's immediate neighbors. That was all.
worse had they said nothing, simply looked on in silence, as his boot was loaded with milk, and powdered egg and oats and tinned meat and stockfish. By nature such singular good fortune in the midst of a general desolation was certain to embarrass him. But what could a man do? He had a wife and four children living in the remote village of Ogbu and completely dependent on what relief he could find and send them. He couldn't abandon them to kwashiorkor. The best he could doâand did do, as a matter of factâwas to make sure that whenever he got sizable supplies like now he made over some of it to his driver, Johnson, with a wife and six, or was it seven, children and a salary of ten pounds a month when
gari
in the market was climbing to one pound per cigarette cup. In such a situation one could do nothing at all for crowds; at best one could try to be of some use to one's immediate neighbors. That was all.
On his way back to Owerri, a very attractive girl by the roadside waved for a lift. He ordered the driver to stop. Scores of pedestrians, dusty and exhausted, some military, some civilian, swooped down on the car from all directions.
“No, no, no,” said Nwankwo firmly. “It's the young woman I stopped for. I have a bad tire and can only take one person. Sorry.”
“My son, please,” cried one old woman in despair, gripping the door handle.
“Old woman, you want to be killed?” shouted the driver as he pulled away, shaking her off. Nwankwo had already opened a book and sunk his eyes there.
For at least a mile after that he did not even look at the girl until she, finding, perhaps, the silence too heavy, said: “You've saved me today. Thank you.”
“Not at all. Where are you going?”
“To Owerri. You don't recognize me?”
“Oh yes, of course. What a fool I am ⦠You are ⦔
“Gladys,.”
“That's right, the militia girl. You've changed, Gladys. You were always beautiful, of course, but now you are a beauty queen. What do you do these days?”
“I am in the Fuel Directorate.”
“That's wonderful.”
It was wonderful, he thought, but even more it was tragic. She wore a high-tinted wig and a very expensive skirt and low-cut blouse. Her shoes,
obviously from Gabon, must have cost a fortune. In short, thought Nwankwo, she had to be in the keep of some well-placed gentleman, one of those piling up money out of the war.
obviously from Gabon, must have cost a fortune. In short, thought Nwankwo, she had to be in the keep of some well-placed gentleman, one of those piling up money out of the war.
“I broke my rule today to give you a lift. I never give lifts these days.”
“Why?”
“How many people can you carry? It is better not to try at all. Look at that old woman.”
“I thought you would take her.”
He said nothing to that and after another spell of silence Gladys thought maybe he was offended and so added: “Thank you for breaking your rule for me.” She was scanning his face, turned slightly away.
He smiled, turned, and tapped her on the lap. “What are you going to Owerri to do?”
“I am going to visit my girlfriend.”
“Girlfriend? You sure?”
“Why not? ⦠If you drop me at her house you can see her. Only I pray God she hasn't gone on weekend today; it will be serious.”
“Why?”
“Because if she is not at home I will sleep on the road today.”
“I pray to God that she is not at home.”
“Why?”
“Because if she is not at home I will offer you bed and breakfast ⦠What is that?” he asked the driver, who had brought the car to an abrupt stop. There was no need for an answer. The small crowd ahead was looking upwards. The three scrambled out of the car and stumbled for the bush, necks twisted in a backward search of the sky. But the alarm was false. The sky was silent and clear except for two high-flying vultures. A humorist in the crowd called them Fighter and Bomber and everyone laughed in relief. The three climbed into their car again and continued their journey.
“It is much too early for raids,” he said to Gladys, who had both her palms on her breast as though to still a thumping heart. “They rarely come before ten o'clock.”
But she remained tongue-tied from her recent fright. Nwankwo saw an opportunity there and took it at once.
“Where does your friend live?”
“250 Douglas Road.”
“Ah; that's the very center of townâa terrible place. No bunkers, nothing. I won't advise you to go there before 6 p.m.; it's not safe. If you don't
mind I will take you to my place, where there is a good bunker, and then as soon as it is safe, around six, I shall drive you to your friend. How's that?”
mind I will take you to my place, where there is a good bunker, and then as soon as it is safe, around six, I shall drive you to your friend. How's that?”
“It's all right,” she said lifelessly. “I am so frightened of this thing. That's why I refused to work in Owerri. I don't even know who asked me to come out today.”
“You'll be all right. We are used to it.”
“But your family is not there with you?”
“No,” he said. “Nobody has his family there. We like to say it is because of air raids but I can assure you there is more to it. Owerri is a real swinging place now, and we live the life of gay bachelors.”
“That is what I have heard.”
“You will not just hear it; you will see it today. I shall take you to a real swinging party. A friend of mine, a lieutenant colonel, is having a birthday party. He's hired the Sound Smashers to play. I'm sure you'll enjoy it.”
He was immediately and thoroughly ashamed of himself. He hated the parties and frivolities to which his friends clung like drowning men. And to talk so approvingly of them because he wanted to take a girl home! And this particular girl, too, who had once had such beautiful faith in the struggle and was betrayed (no doubt about it) by some man like him out for a good time. He shook his head sadly.
“What is it?” asked Gladys.
“Nothing. Just my thoughts.”
They made the rest of the journey to Owerri practically in silence.
She made herself at home very quickly as if she was a regular girlfriend of his. She changed into a housedress and put away her auburn wig.
“That is a lovely hairdo. Why do you hide it with a wig?”
“Thank you,” she said, leaving his question unanswered for a while. Then she said: “Men are funny.”
“Why do you say that?”
“âNow you are a beauty queen,'” she mimicked.
“Oh, that! I meant every word of it.” He pulled her to him and kissed her. She neither refused nor yielded fully, which he liked for a start. Too many girls were simply too easy those days. War sickness, some called it.
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