For a long time, I struggled to overcome the grief caused by the war. One of the ways I tried to cope was by acting out my frustrations. I found some comfort in my stubbornness, disobeying my mother and doing everything that annoyed her. This I did, oblivious to the fact that I was contributing to her grief. And she was indeed grief-stricken, mourning her dead husband while wondering what the future had in store for a pregnant widow at the end of wartime.
But as bad as life was, living in the village post-war was better than we had it while in the forest. If not for anything else, we no longer had to hide under tree canopies in a desperate bid to shield ourselves from the enemy planes that hovered above ever so often. I was free again to play with my mates without being shushed down by the elders. So, I played with the other kids. We used the human skulls littered across the village as footballs. The skulls were those of villagers that were massacred before they could escape to the forests.
Each time I played with those skulls, I couldn’t help but remember Eze. He was a mentally deranged young man I knew before the war. Eze was said to have once been a brilliant scientist who ran mad a few years before the war. Unfortunately, the villagers stigmatised his condition, blaming him for his madness. Some people even attributed his madness to the many fat books he read, while others said it was because he meddled with the occult.
Every effort to treat Eze proved abortive. And so it happened that he would sit in front of his father's house and continually yell out his scientific knowledge at passersby. He spoke big words that the villagers could not understand. And initially, people ridiculed him until they started ignoring him. And so it happened that on the day the Nigerian soldiers invaded the village, Eze sat there in front of his father's house yelling out his scientific knowledge. He didn't run like the other villagers. And that was a mistake because he was among those who were slaughtered on that fateful day. We found his skeleton on that chair he always sat in. The soldiers had cut off his head, tossed it to the open and then placed the rest of his body in a sitting position on that chair. The body stayed in that position until it decayed.
I couldn't stop wondering why the soldiers had to kill him. I couldn't understand why they had to kill so many civilians... all those people whose skulls we played football with. We played with the skulls anyway, even disregarding the risk of getting injured by them. I could not imagine what possible harm could befall us. After all, we survived bomb shrapnel and watched as people we knew got charred and dismembered.
So, we kept playing with the skulls, their jagged and sharp edges regardless. It wasn’t until some of the children began getting wounded that the elders finally gathered the bones and incinerated them.
Meanwhile, just when I thought I could finally get the chance to have a normal childhood again, an incident happened that completely changed my life. It happened on a night I will never forget. The wind was howling, lightning was striking, and the rain was pouring. Amid the rainfall, our makeshift home suddenly collapsed. My mother was quick enough to drag me outside before the mud collapsed on us. Everything happened so quickly, and it was unbelievably scary.
And then in the hysteria of everything that was happening, my mother suddenly went into labour. She laid on her back in the courtyard and wriggled in pain. And even though I had no idea what was happening to her, I knew all was not well. And the only thing I could think of doing was to alert someone. So, I ran blindly through the darkness to my uncle’s house and banged on his door until he opened it ajar.
“What is the matter with you?” the man asked as he rearranged his wrapper around his waist.
“My mother is dying,” I cried out. “She is dying…please help her!”
Immediately, my uncle’s door flung open just as Ahudiya (his wife) emerged.
“What happened?” she asked as she dragged me by the hand back to the spot where my mother was writhing in pain.
“Our hut collapsed and my mother… I think she is dying,” I said.
Ahudiya seemed to know what was wrong with my mother. And the moment she saw her, she raised the alarm even as some of the villagers soon gathered and began running helter-skelter to help deliver my little brother. My uncle’s house was converted into a makeshift delivery room as the women tried to deliver the baby. Unfortunately, the labour lasted throughout the night until the early morning. With every contraction came an agonising scream from my mother. I stood out there in the cold and cried, vowing to be the best son I could ever be if she survived the ordeal. But unknown to me, that might be too late.
By the following morning, everyone was shocked by how much damage the storm had wreaked. It collapsed many of the newly erected mud houses and uprooted some trees.
But none of these damages could compare to the one I incurred - my mother's death. She died shortly after delivering my brother due to some complications. The elders tried to hide this from me. But I could tell, just by looking at their faces, that something terrible had happened. They stared at me pitifully and would not allow me to see my mother for hours. When they eventually told me what had happened, I was numb to my feelings…
My uncle’s estranged wife, Ahudiya, took custody of my brother and I. She nurtured the sickly baby with everything she had, determined to keep it alive by all means. She performed this motherly role with such great joy despite the recent sad experience of losing all of her sons to the war. It was as if she realised we were all she had, asides from her mentally-retarded daughter and her very estranged husband. So, she made every effort to care for us. And she did it all without help from her husband, my uncle.
At first, I could not figure out the genesis of my uncle’s complicated relationship with Ahudiya. The accounts of the events that led to their strained relationship varied. On the one hand, the story was that Ahudiya’s consistent disrespect and abuse towards her husband throughout the war ruined their marriage. The story had it that the woman was quite influential in the forest due to her strong ties with some Nigerian soldiers. The soldiers were said to have slept with her on numerous occasions in exchange for vital supplies such as salt and stock fish. This, of course, was said to have infuriated the husband. But he, unfortunately, could not do anything, lest Ahudiya set him up for failure. Consequently, he tolerated her even amidst the supposed constant disrespect. But this ultimately ruined their marriage, as they never remained the same.
But there was a different version of the story in which Uncle John was the cause of his marital problems. He was said to be a lazy man who failed to take care of his family. He sat back and relaxed while his wife struggled to put food on the table during the war.
My uncle’s bad habit of evading his responsibility started long before the war. In a bid to assist their mother, Ahudiya’s sons undertook menial jobs. Their sense of responsibility and determination to assist their mother became solidified during the war when they would often go scavenging for food despite the risks involved. They did all this while their father slept under the shade of the forest.
And then, unfortunately, it so happened that during one of their scavenging trips, the boys never returned home. Nobody knew what had happened to them, even as some people speculated that they were either captured and killed by enemy soldiers or forcibly conscripted into the Biafran Army.
My cousins’ unexplained disappearance had everyone upset except my uncle. It was as if he couldn't care less what became of the boys. This is because while everyone else was busy organising search parties, he simply slept peacefully under the tree shades. It was this nonchalance of his that inevitably discouraged those who wanted to help. And so before long, the search parties were called off, even as my father single-handedly took it upon himself to find the missing boys. Every day he went to search for them. Unfortunately, he went one day but never returned. And just like my cousins, we would never get to see him again.
This string of incidents inevitably made Ahudiya bitter towards her husband, even as she refused to cater to him for the rest of the months they were in the forest. By this time, it was clear to the couple that their marriage was over. But they were determined to put up a united front, especially considering the stigma that was associated with divorce in the village. So, the couple continued with their sham of marriage until one morning when my uncle woke up and breezily informed us all that he was going back to Lagos; alone. He did promise to come for the rest of us once he had settled down, a promise which very much gladdened my heart and gave me a reason to be hopeful.
Ahudiya then took sole custody of us. She became our only family. And she did her best to take care of our every need. She did this eagerly and never once complained. She cultivated larger portions of farmlands and did all that while caring for my brother. She would strap him on her back every morning on her way to the farm, and would not return until late in the evening with a heavy load of firewood and harvested crops. And even though she was always tired, Ahudiya would always prepare dinner for us, wash my brother’s dirty clothes and shower us before going to bed.
During this period, my only responsibility was to look after my mentally-retarded cousin Nmecha. It was I who took her along with me to school every morning and brought her back home. Taking care of her also meant that I had to stay home with her most time. That didn't give me enough time to play. And I liked to play. Oh! I liked all sorts of adventures! I liked to go to Isingbele to behold the spectacular hills and jump off rocky cliffs, plunging into the soft white sands below. But looking after Nmecha meant I didn't have the freedom to play. So, I hated babysitting the girl. Eventually, I resorted to locking her up at home while I went to play with my friends.
Needless to say I was a stubborn child. And because of my stubbornness, I often got into trouble. I was also very curious, so curious that I almost got myself electrocuted one day. Here's what had happened - one afternoon after I had locked Nmecha at home, I followed one of my friends to his house to behold their electric bulb. His was the only house in the entire village that had electricity, and it boggled my mind so much that all I wanted to do was to stare at it all day.
That afternoon, I stood in the middle of their sitting room and observed the bulb as it glowed. Of course, I was mesmerised, even as my curiosity spiked. And just then, I wanted to do more than stare at it. I wanted to touch it! And that was exactly what I did as soon as I was left alone in that room. While my friend and his siblings were in the kitchen dragging food, I quickly dragged a table right under the bulb and then placed a stool on it just as I climbed onto it to reach for the bulb.
I touched the bulb! At first, I did it cautiously because I feared it might burn my finger. But when it didn’t, I proceeded to cup my palm around the glowing bulb and just stared at it while feeling its warmth. But then again, touching the bulb soon wasn’t enough to satiate my curiosity. I wanted to know more about it, how it worked and everything. And so it was in a bid to further satisfy my curiosity that I removed the bulb from the light fitting, stunned as the glowing light suddenly flickered off.
Wondering where the light had suddenly gone, I inserted one of my fingers into the bulb holder. Unfortunately for me, what happened next wasn't what I expected. The electric current jolted me and threw me against the wall. Then I landed heavily on a makeshift shelf that was by the wall, crashing it to the floor. And as I lay on that floor trying to recover from the shock, my friend and his siblings came rushing to find out what was happening…
Are you loving this tale? There is so much more to come when my book The Shame of Trauma becomes available on Amazon Kindle. Kindly anticipate.