CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION

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 1480s.

The Igbos are a resilient group of people bound by deep culture built around communal progress, spirituality, unity, individuality and freedoms which were anchored on community wellbeing. 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 awes 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 through and across West African coast lines, 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 were grieving the loss of their family members to slavery. 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 inroad 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 in Obubra community, Ebonine had 18 children from his four wives. His second wife, Ini, from 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 stationed on the coastlines 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 specialised in 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 for fastening 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 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 the 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 hush tone around 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 big 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 outskirt 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 slavery.

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 outs 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 of the elderly, and in deed, very old people, especially if you were from the Igbo tribe. To save his children, he had to wade into the stormy waters of Slave Rivers to Bonny Island where slaves were stationed, categorised, 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 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 breathe 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 slavery.

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 on 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 old me and for 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 smokes 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 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 demeanours, 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 vagina as a few days 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 vagina 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 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 fatherly old man could dish out for her only daughter when he noticed that it was really Akwugo. He ran towards his daughter until just about a few meters close when Ojamu ran against him and halted his warm embrace to 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 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 a 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 had been captured into slavery”, 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 you are willing to walk home barefooted without your canoe. This is because by this time tomorrow, your daughter shall 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 that. 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 on 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 of 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 more four 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 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 of 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 whenever 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 had 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 with 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 heartbrokenness from 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 harder the cigarette smoke and saturated the airspace of slave depot.

Ojamu looked disappointed and furious sighting anything and anybody that looked white around the Bight of Biafra. It dawned on him that his usefulness to Sir Diogo was only centred 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 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 walking away and some smokes 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 by 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 breaths 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 on 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 off 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 an old man Nwoko had become. He understood the language he spoke because his mother, Ugegbe, who was raped multiple times at will by Sir Diogo in 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 historic presence on the Island became a legend. They referred to her as Sir Diogo’s wife until the day she refused him sex after discovering that he 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 the Ezza spinster who was still a teenager. Also, it 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 Bonny Island, she was of the same age with 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 in 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 motherland 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 the 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 watched his mother put on the chain and stacked into a deck in Ship Jesus while Sir Diogo looked the other way, flinging and smoking hard 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 Easter period when all the missionaries in the hinterlands come down to Bonny for Easter celebration? I learnt 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.

He made a sharp angry walk away from Nwoko and returned sharply back in a jiffy. He tapped Nwoko on his back and urged him to stand erect. A heartbroken Nwoko looked him in the face wearily and disappointedly at the same time, and hushed his breath in cuts. He then pointed at Imo’s canoe and said, “You see that canoe? You are going home today with it. Take up your dead and your dying daughter home. I have chosen a place and peace for myself. It has just begun”, Dios commanded Nwoko and left.

Nwoko was stunned as he stared helplessly with teary eyes, and Dios stopped halfway and sat on a felled tree trunk. Holding his tired head by cheek with his right palm, he stared confusedly at the dead body of Imo, half-gone Akwugo and river-crying Nwoko who was so bewildered that words of thanks were not coming in handy. “Ndéwo nwa m [thank you, my child]” was the closest word his head could dish out for his numbed mouth. He uttered it and jack-closed his ajar lips.

The Slave Coast of Biafra was a very busy place. It had become a sleepless makeshift home of slaves where weeping arouses no sympathy; a business depot for slave barons where wealth was calculated in the number of slaves one has. Also, if you were so opportune to have loyal slave raiders that specialised in raiding Igbo districts, it meant you were undoubtedly a well-established business tycoon both in Biafra and Lisbon. It was a land of chilling mental plague for anyone who lost one to slave raiders. Over all, in view, it was a bobbling land that elicited different things to different people. This was dependent on the manner one came around and the number or nature of shocks one could relate to or could not. It was made a land where wealth took an ugly walk up to the west, leaving behind a worn out and disorganised humanity in whose hearts fear and scares reigned.

Nwoko was naturally expecting passers-by to render hands of help to him; to load his dead and seeming boneless daughter, but none got notice of his desperation. Slave Coast had deadened the minds of creatures that appeared to him as humans. Most of the people he saw around were directly or indirectly partakers in the slave trade. Some were slave raiders, middle men, and slave disciplinarians. Some were also drag men of the slave ship, slave depot guards, and informants. Others, mostly Portuguese, were slave barons who were lording it all on the local population. A token of their cowries was huge enough to set a peaceful district on fire. It takes only a puff of cigarette smoke into heaven to shove all the darkness down to nothingness and folks got better. After all, it was a definition of success that Lisbon understood.

Dios had gawked for long. He stood up and walked towards Imo’s canoe as Nwoko was dragging his lifeless body into it. He turned and reached out to Nwoko to help him. “Ị ka n’emere m [are you still helping me]?” was all Nwoko said and it did not come with any reply. He then remained silent to avoid courting yet another trouble in Bonny Island. After all, it was a rare help in recent times in Bonny Island where long guns have paved way for everything that meant evil.

It was a hazy evening that gave birth to a horrific night as Nwoko faced all the storms that engulf Ubani, now called Bonny, trying to meander his way and sail home safely. He could see fishermen casting their nets and hooks to trap tilapias and catfishes. They were majorly the elderly and able-bodied men who fish in groups. They suspected his canoe ascending steadily unto upper old Ubani Island and started watching closely as he came. Alas, they saw a half-lonely Nwoko when they paddled their canoes round about him. It turned out to be a canoe of a dead body, a half-dead woman and a toughly stiffened old man that held his paddle as though his life depended on it.

“Nna anyị ndéwo [greetings our father], the seeming eldest of young fishermen, Odili, said as others followed suit.

“Ndéwonu ụmụ m [thank you my children]”, Nwoko replied.

“E bé ka ịna eje [where are you going]?” Odili asked.

“Nwa m, ána m álá na bem. E jere m na Bonny ga gbapụta nwa m ha tọrọ [my child, I am going home. I went to get back my daughter that was kidnapped]”, Nwoko said.

“Kedu maka ozu a anyị na ahu ebe a [what about the dead body we are seeing there]?” Odili asked.

“Ọ bu ozu nwanne m dugara m ịje ma na ọ nwụrụ ebe a. Ọ bu zi okenye [it is the corpse of my brother who accompanied me but he died there. He’s an old man]”, Nwoko answered.

“Ọ bu n’ọkaghị mma na ị raghuru rue ụtụtụ? Chi ejigokwanu [is it not better you sleep over till morning? It is already night)”, Odili pleaded.

“Imela, mana ebum ozu. Ọ ga aka mma ka m laba tupu ozu ya emebie [it is better I continue before the corpse decomposes]”, Nwoko pleaded with them.

“Ọ di mma, ma jirikwa nwayo [it is okay, but take it easy]”, Odili appealed.

“Ọ di mma. Ụnụ éméla [it is okay, thank you]”, Nwoko said, and suddenly the fishermen round about him paved way for him to continue his journey. Some of them that were water guards rather formed an entourage behind him and saw him off Ubani before they retreated back for fishing.

Nwoko was really favoured that night, the hazy look of the sky could still allow the rays of the harmattan moon to shine on him and showed him ways. As dark as 3am, he was able to trace the home of his in-law, Akaonye, at Azumini. He sent message to Da Oriaku through Kalu, a hunter, who was on his way returning from his hunting expedition around the banks of Azumini River. It took just about thirty minutes to see Da Oriaku running as her legs could allow her to meet her only surviving brother. “Akwugo, ọ bu gịnị? [Akwugo, what it is?]” was the screaming words she uttered when she saw her niece lying like firewood on the floor of the canoe as her head was made to lie half-way the edge of the back of the canoe. Akwugo scraggily put up a fainting smile as she called out her name and opened her eyes.

“Mama”, she tried to call faintly.

Da Oriaku desperately went all out into the river bank to have a hold of her niece but was shocked when she saw the still body of Imo lying behind Akwugo. She was taken aback before she proceeded further.

“Gịnị mere, Nwoko [what happened, Nwoko]?” she asked.

Nwoko gave a silent reply as he tried to anchor his canoe behind her. After anchoring his canoe, he went to the edge of the bank of the river and tiredly sat down on the bare floor. He called out his elder sister and started telling her the story of his journey. Da Oriaku pleaded with him to give him a little time to warm her soup so that they could eat. Nwoko obliged her.

About an hour and a few minutes later, Da Oriaku came back to Azumini River with plates of fufu, warm bitter leaf soup, and porridge of ukwa she made specifically for her niece, Akwugo, who was not expected to swallow food balls as big as rounded fufu. She gave her younger brother plates of fufu and soup and went further to feed her niece in the canoe. She kept thanking Chukwu [God] as she made a loving battle with the lips of her young niece since it took a whole lot of time to open her mouth. Akwugo struggled to sip some spoonful of her specially made ukwa and stopped halfway but felt more energised and smiled harder as audible voice was still far from her lips. Da Oriaku kept the remaining inside the canoe so she could eat on the way any time she had the appetite to eat.

When Nwoko finished eating, he laid against a palm tree bark behind him. He rested for some minutes and had some discussion with his sister who was crying in-between the lines for their dead kinsman, Imo. Nwoko, suddenly stood up and thanked his sister and re-embarked on his journey home. A few seconds after he disembarked his canoe, Da Oriaku called out to him to return to the river bank.

“Please, you will get home safely, but let me bath Akwugo. It will add some strength in her body”, Da Oriaku pleaded.

“Nne, that’s a good idea but you know we are with a dead body here”, Nwoko said.

“Yes I know, but let’s save the living first. We have lost Imo already”, Da Oriaku said.

With the help of her younger brother, she took weak Akwugo to the back of a raffia palm tree to bath her.

Nwoko walked up to the hilly side of the river bank and waited.

A few minutes after her bath, Akwugo uttered a word more audible.

“Thank you, Da”, she said.

It was a smiling moment for the two.

“You shall not die, my daughter. You will live to take care of your child”, Da Oriaku assured her niece, who then nodded in acceptance with a deep smile that courted some deeper tears.

Memories, especially the bad ones we survive, know how best to cost us some fluid in the surviving sockets of our eyes. Today was one of those days, and Akwugo eyes had confessed that.

“Don’t cry anymore. You are at home already”, Da Oriaku said, as she tried caressing and cuddling her body and hair back to life.

Nwoko came closer, thanked his elder sister, shared deep smiles and tears with his daughter and helped put her back into the canoe. “Thank you, nna m” was all she could mutter to her father for keep.

“For staying strong till I came to Ubani was the best gift you could give me, Ada m. Thank you for holding strong”, he said, and they continued their journey back home.

They got to Item on the hot afternoon of 26th December and was welcomed home by kinsmen who ended up mourning one of their own as they hastily buried Imo. Item was for that day a town of unsubstantiated feelings; of joy, grief, pains, disappointment and of acceptance to what fate could offer humans in a society denied of its true colour under the regime of slavery.

Before Ogbealu could return from the market square with her granddaughter, Mmano, Imo had been buried. She walked passed mourners at his home and continued heading to her house to meet her rescued daughter whose news of return had spread like wild fire across the length and breathes of Eke market square of Item. She energetically walked into her house and saw a famished-looking Akwugo looking straight towards the door so she wouldn’t miss any glance of her baby when she arrives. It was shock mixed with gratitude when Ogbealu saw her daughter. She felt like babysitting her. She felt like hiding her this time inside her stomach and transferring some of her strength to her. She was indeed all over her as Akwugo was just about only eager to have a feel of her own daughter. It indeed felt like every mother among them was eager to have the first feel of their daughter as Mmano helplessly yearned for anything that drools inside her little mouth. At last, she had it as her grandmother entrusted her in the welcoming yet tiring hands of her mother who, again, dropped some tears as she lowered the left side of her mollycoddling breasts right inside her mouth. Mmano sucked it like a gift from heaven with all the strength in her little body. “Ush” was the last word she screamed with a wide beaming smile. She looked deeply inside her eyes and caressed her head. It was the last time she did this and silence went on as the only sound ever heard in a century, asides the suckling sound of little baby Mmano. It was still a joyous excitement for Ogbealu as she admired her daughters before she danced to the kitchen to prepare a meal for her daughter and her husband, Nwoko, who was still at the burial site of Imo.

In a jiffy, Nwoko returned to his compound and called out to his wife to prepare food for them, for they had come a long way. When nobody answered him, he went inside his wife’s house to discuss what to eat with her. He met baby Mmano suckling on her mother’s breast with all the strings in her body but noticed that Akwugo’s head was not well-kept as her mouth stayed wide open, facing down and motionless. He called her as he went closer to touch her but there was no response. He went closer again and touched his daughter, and it ended in shock. Akwugo was truly dead. Yes, she did not survive Bonny Island like so many others that died in it.

“Ewoo!” he screamed out loud, which attracted Ogbealu, who hurriedly came inside.

“Ọ bu gini, Nwoko [what is that, Nwoko]?” she shouted as she ran towards Akwugo. She touched her and found that she was already dead. Young Akwugo had passed on.

A moment of celebration had turned into a moment of great loss. Sorrow had replaced joy. Great defacing frowning had chased out those deep dimples of happiness that ushered Ogbealu in, and the hard labour of a hero had been ruined into wastage of unimaginable heartbreak. The river storms of harmattan against that late-night canoe was really trying to pass a message but was created to be ravenously voiceless. Yet, Mmano sucked on intermittently as she battled off a calming sleep that raved in when one gets enough of their yearning or lust.

The moral of the people of Item had been tamed suddenly by double mourning of her own children, and their daughter had birthed into their hands a daughter before taking a short walk into the realm of their ancestors. If it was a world, Imo was earlier there to welcome her, although regretfully. The concerned extended family members and kinsmen of Nwoko had come around to see for themselves the tragedy that had masqueraded around them, as the strong-willed among them tried vainly to resuscitate Akwugo, at least for her daughter. But death comes with greater strength.

At last, the people accepted their fate as Baby Mmano cried. It did not take much hassle to assemble the coffin where the body of young Akwugo was laid in state and shortly boxed in and buried. It was the first day Nwoko witnessed his death. Among Igbos, asides all the shenanigans around the presence or token of a male child, daughters, especially most first daughters, stood to mean several good tidings for their fathers. In most cases, their presence means life to their beloved fathers. Akwugo meant more, because she was the reincarnated grandmother of Nwoko under whose care he grew up when their mother, Ije, remarried after the death of their father, Odo.