SURVIVING IN BIAFRA BOOK EXCERPTS

PartIII

PartI    

Part II

My family goes home to Nnewi

My father finally gave in to our incessant requests to take us back to Nnewi when the gory details of the pogroms in the north became overwhelming; our departure date was set and we were instructed to "tell no one about it". I had only visited Nnewi once, and even though I preferred staying in Lagos at that time, I still liked Nnewi because my grand mother and aunts pampered us a lot during the Christmas we visited. I saw Nnewi as peaceful, bucolic and quaint with trees ubiquitously scattered all over the place and birds chirping incessantly. I also remembered the Christmas masquerades called "opiakamkpala", "ikedinodogwu" and others; all these memories became compelling reasons for me to want to go back. The kid I was, it never occurred to me that circumstances surrounding this second return were quite different and so would everything else be.

That morning, we must have been woken up before 4:30am because it was still dark. To our surprise, the Lorry (gwongworo) that was to finally take us home was already loaded with some of our belongings. I still marvel at how this feat was accomplished while we slept but I never asked.

The journey to Nnewi was rough; my mother stayed in the front with the driver and Nnamdi - my younger brother. The rest of us stayed in the back for a journey that seemed to last all day. As the sun came up, it was even more miserable. Some parts of the road from Lagos to Onitsha were dusty but no one seemed to care. My dad did not go with us; the explanation was that he was going to wait a little longer to see if things would get better, if not, he would come back to the East with the rest of our belongings. I wondered in my mind why he was testing his fate; having found out that his safety could no longer be guaranteed in Lagos, one would think that he would be the first to head home. Of course that was not my father; he believed strictly in Julius Caesar's assertion that "cowards die many times before their deaths." At near 6 ft and about 225 pounds, I saw him as a giant of a man; I felt that he could deflect danger just by being around us. In a way, that is the opinion most children have of their fathers.

We made it safely to Nnewi and I imagine that we got there sometime after 7:00PM. It was beginning to get dark, and the sound of silence was beginning to descend on Nnewi and as expected, my grandmother and aunts welcomed us very well. Frankly at the time, I thought the stay was going to last for just a couple of months and things would get back to normal and we would return to Lagos. Little did I know that a 30-month stay that would drastically change my life and the lives of many and alter the course of our collective destiny had just begun in a place called BIAFRA.

My father later returned to Nnewi when the situation had deteriorated badly; because he had to leave in a hurry, all our belongings we had so much anticipated their return, were left in our house in Lagos. He only came back with his car and a few belongings. To this day, we do not know what became of the rest of our property!

My siblings and I were quickly enrolled at St. Mary's School Uruagu Nnewi. At this time, some of the changes that would later become all too familiar, began to occur: I was no longer taken to school in my fathers opel cadet, instead, we had to walk all the way to and from school. The distance was not far, but the change gave me a glimpse of what was in store for the future and I did not like it one bit!

I noticed that kids in Nnewi seemed more self-reliant than most of us that just returned from the townships - "ndi ofia", as returnees were called. During recess in school, you would see kids making all types of arts and crafts - baskets, broom and "akpala". I enjoyed watching them do it but the only part of the schoolwork I never really cared for was cutting the grass in the schoolyard. It bothered me that kids in Nnewi did not seem to care about what was happening in the nation; they went about their businesses as though nothing was really happening. That was a far cry from what happened when we were in Lagos, I thought. We always listened to adults talk about the disturbances and then discussed it amongst ourselves.

Anyway, I began to get the hang of things and started making friends; more children seemed to be joining the school practically on a weekly basis. Apparently, more Ibos were returning from places like Kano, Kaduna and Lagos and parents wasted no time in enrolling their kids in school right away.

One day (I assume it was in May of 1967) at the St. Mary's School, news started circulating that the eastern region had seceded! Suddenly, there was a gathering of many people in the school yard, some were carrying cut down branches of leaves, others had palm fronds and spontaneously, a demonstration in support of the secession started. There was commotion! The chanting of war songs filled the air; some people had pictures of Ojukwu while singing the song "Republic Biafra, republic Biafra, republic Biafra, and welcome Biafra". Some people pronounced the name of the new nation as BAYAFRA; while others continued to sing other songs like:

Ojukwu nye anyi egbe
Iwe, iwe dianyi n'obi……

which means:

Ojukwu give us guns
There is anger, anger in our hearts…..

They sang other songs like:
We shall not, we shall never move,
Just like a tree that's planted by the water
We shall not be moved.
Ojukwu is behind us, we shall never move,
God is behind us, we shall never move…"

The crowd was growing by the minute and suddenly they made a spontaneous decision to go to Odumegwu Ojukwu's residence to show solidarity. Ojukwu's village called Umudim is probably a couple of miles from my own village called Uruagu. I knew that my parents would flip out if I followed the demonstrators, so, as soon as they left, I quickly picked up my belongings, joined the rest of the kids and headed home. School dismissed unceremoniously on that day and officially, the Biafra war had begun!

I still remember the events of that day in 1967 as though they just occurred yesterday! I will however confess that the thought of the fact that many of those young men who participated in that demonstration perished in the Biafran war still sends a cold chill through my spine! They were full of energy; they started with hope, with enthusiasm and with the feeling that since the Ibos had been wronged by the North, debased, trampled upon and were on the brink of total annihilation, the Eastern region had no other choice than to defend herself. Some were university undergraduates who had returned to Nnewi as a result of the pogroms, others were graduates, some were businessmen, fathers, uncles, cousins and more. They perished in a war that could probably have been averted. I still get teary-eyed when I remember those young men; my heart goes out to the families who lost these brave men, men who gave their lives so that others would live. God bless their families and give their souls eternal repose.

After the declaration of Biafra, civil defense and combing activities started picking up steam in Nnewi and in my clan of Okpunoeze, the town crier whose responsibility it was to disseminate information to all about activities related to the war was very busy. He normally started to make his round just after dark when the sound of cassava-pounding mortars had abated. He would sound his small metal gong called ogene three times and then say something like: "anakpo oku n'Iba, na six o clock nke ututu echi, onye abiaghi ya, oranra ego ise." meaning: a meeting has been summoned in the village square called "Iba", at six o'clock tomorrow morning, absentees would pay a penalty of five shillings. At the time, I always wondered why the town crier was not afraid to be wandering around in the dark, what if he runs into ghosts, I wondered? I also wondered why he said everything else in Ibo but then said six o'clock in English, don't we have a way in Ibo of saying six o'clock, I wondered?

Anyway, it took a while before the kids started finding out what the frequent meetings at Iba were about. Iba is a form of village square in Okpunoeze Uruagu Nnewi. It was the primary gathering location for elders even before the war was declared. After the declaration, it was being used as a place for strategizing on what part my village people would play. Able-bodied men always attended the meetings and every time they returned, you will hear more talks about the progress of what was happening in Biafra. They were gearing up for the war. Some carved mock guns out of sticks and carried them around. One rumor that seemed to permeate every facet of Nnewi at the time was that traitors could be in our midst and so there was the need to find them and flush them out of Biafra. At this time, an activity that was referred as "combing" was instituted. Men with machetes, mock guns, double barrel guns and the likes organized and headed into adjacent bushes looking for the enemy or traitors. I never knew if those combing activities yielded any tangible results but I know that it made some of us feel a little safer; our men were taking necessary steps to keep us out of harm's way, we thought; it was refreshing.

FIDELIS GOES TO WAR
As a result of his passion for the Biafran cause, my eldest brother Fidelis Uzokwe who was at the Merchants of Light Secondary School, Oba, returned to Nnewi and announced his intention to join the war. We were all apprehensive about this because at age 17, we were of the opinion that he was too young to go to war, an opinion he rejected out right! He saw the pogroms and genocide in the North as abominable crimes that must be avenged. He always spoke movingly about the case of the pregnant Ibo woman who was said to have been disemboweled in the North at the height of hostilities and her unborn child removed and killed along with her. He did not see any compromise with people who were barbaric and sadistic enough to cause such suffering on humankind. Every time my father tried to dissuade him from joining the army, in his usual ebullient disposition, Fidelis would tell my dad that he would oblige on one condition; the condition that my father who was 47 years at the time, would go to war in his place.

Fide (as we called him) finally won the argument and joined the Biafra militia for initial training. At this time, enlistment of new recruits was going on. I believe there was a training depot in Nkwo Nnewi and young men quickly started enlisting. Most days, Fidelis would come back and start practicing some of the parade techniques they were taught including how to move guns, how to dive for cover and so on. He had a wooden gun with which he practiced and we were all very proud of him. Before long, he joined the regular army at the same time that some of his buddies like Alphonso Agbodike, Joseph Agbasi (of the blessed memory) and others, were enlisting. As the war progressed, Fide later made it into the Biafran Commando, Ahoda strike force and the next time he showed up at home, he was in full military regalia, with a gun he called "setima" to match. Young Fide had seen action in the war front and had become a second lieutenant!

As Fidelis and other young men went off to war, we were full of hope that Biafra would prevail. We were so enamored by what we heard that the commandos could do that we always spent time singing some commando songs we learned.

The insignia on the Biafran commando uniform depicting a human skull, earned them the name "isi okpukpu commando" (skull-headed commandoes). They were said to be so tough that they were only drafted to the toughest battlefields; we looked at them in awe and that continued to beef up our confidence that Biafra would prevail. The kids played war games depicting Biafra as the winner; my maternal cousin- Charles, my brother Nnamdi and I would hide under tables and play war games. Charles would play the role of Ojukwu, I would be Achuzia, Nnamdi would play Achuzia nta and my paternal cousin Emeka would play Col. Chude Sokei or so.

As the war progressed, optimism about Biafra's survival started dissipating as some families started getting news of the killing of their sons in action. It began to dawn on us that the war was not some kind of game, it was real and men were dying. Many a time, you would suddenly hear a loud wail from a nearby family and further inquiry would reveal that their beloved son had been reportedly killed in action. The sight of mothers crying and mourning their sons was always very heart breaking for me because my teenage brother was in the army and I could not imagine what would become of my own mother, if Fidelis were killed. Little did I know that much more calamity would befall us in that respect later on. Even mothers who had no sons of army age, lost their children too; kwashiorkor (a disease that struck the undernourished) took its toll and killed very many children because food was scarce.

REFUGEES (LOFUJI)
As Biafra started loosing a lot of grounds in the war front, many families started getting displaced and mounting cases of refugees became the order of the day. This turn of events was followed by the influx of refugees into Nnewi and environs. St. Mary's school compound was quickly converted into a refugee settlement and schooling was conducted in private homes.

PartIII

PartI