Beyond The Border
Beyond The Border
Sam had returned earlier that day to the village. He had been waiting at the outskirts, now hiding in the shadows. He only knew the time
from squinting at the battered watch on his wrist. It was strange that it still
worked, even after his travels through the bushes and forests till this point.
Sam was a soldier from the Biafran army. In his life before
the war, he had trained as an apprentice to a trading mogul in the northern
city of Kano, Chief Festus Okoye. Sam had served the chief as a faithful
apprentice for eight years. He had been set free from his master only ten
months when his mother found him a wife from the village. It was to ensure he
didn’t fritter his new capital, mama had said. The young lady he married was
named Mary. She was tender, thoughtful and had settled in easily with him in
Kano. Then the first coup. The second coup. The riots. The killings. He had run
with his bride back to the east.
There was confusion back in the east! He had been loathe to
leave Kano. Until the next street was attacked and houses razed down. He had
left with virtually nothing except the clothes on his back. He had readily
joined up along with the other volunteers from his village after the war broke
out, into the Biafran army. Not for him the ignoble act of running into the
forests to live wild. Or crossing the waters to Gabon. Or worse still, paying a
herbalist to sever part of the index finger on the right hand. The trigger
finger. Quite a few young men could be found with healing index fingers.
They underwent roughly three weeks training before they were
deployed. Sam left Mary behind with his mother and met up with his colleagues
in the chartered lorries conveying them to the headquarters. The elderly and
children cheered as they drove past the various villages and towns that lined
the routes. They were their heroes who were off to stop the rampaging federal
troops who had already captured quite a few towns and were hurtling fast
towards Enugu, the capital. None of them was really prepared for what lay out
there. None imagined the instruments of war to be as loud or as lethal.
After being addressed by the army chief, they were soon
joined by the former military governor, and now ruler of Biafra, General
Ojukwu. He was very charismatic and in a few words had evoked great anger and
desire to fight to the last drop amongst the new troops. They were divided into
a Battalion, to be led by a Major Eze. They were the 46th Battalion.
Their first duty was to utilize the left flank and cut off the advancing federal troops from their supplies in Nsukka. They were in great spirits, clad
in their new uniforms, with the rising sun emblazoned on the right shoulder.
They had only disembarked not quite ten minutes, when the
first Russian made MIG Jet appeared in the sky. “Nwiiiiiii—vooooooom”, was followed by a big boom as explosion after explosion tore into the area around the group. This was
war! “Rat-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta”. Machine gun fire followed from the jet. Another
was coming out of the clouds when Sam tried to peep through his fingers during
a brief lull. Sam was in shock. The soldier next to him had just brought out a
pack of cards to play with Sam, before the first explosion. Sam could feel a
flutter on his neck. He felt his neck. It was a card. An ace of spades. “My name
is Angus”, he had said. Was Angus. Sam had heard him screaming for his mother
when the first bomb hit. He had been quiet since, a deathly kind of quiet. Sam
just knew. He was gone. The game of cards with him. His dreams. He wondered if
he had been married and remembered Mary. Another round of bombings had him
clutching the grasses and mouthing off prayers.
Sometime after the bombings had stopped, the survivors
started coming out. His unit had been about eighty men with the Major. Only
thirty were unhurt. Another ten had varying degrees of injury. Then the dead.
There was an almost macabre twist of limbs and parts. Even the Major had died
with his mouth open. Angus still had some cards in the hand that had been torn
off and was lying opposite his body.
There was a great heave in Sam’s stomach and he became sick.
He vomited and cried. War was bad. Nothing had prepared him for this. He had
been living in Kano without any qualms. Why did the coups take it all away?
What if it had been him? How could he lose his commanding officer on his first
day in combat. He was still to fire off a single shot for that matter. Sam was
seriously distraught.
The survivors endured two nights in those bushes before help
came and they were transported back to base. It had been hard for Sam to sleep
on the first night, knowing Angus and the rest were lying there, not so far
away. The next day they had jointly pulled the dead into a covering in the
forest and covered them with a shade of cut tree branches and leaves. Sam knew
that wouldn’t last long though, as a couple of vultures had begun circling when
the soldiers were being evacuated. Sam stilled himself and stopped looking at
the birds. Quo sera sera.
Time passed in a blur. Sam was absorbed within several units
during this time. He had been among those that marched to Ore under the overall
leadership of Col. Victor Banjo. The "Midwestern Expedition Force", it was
called. He had been present when the federal troops were routed in Abagana. He
had been in the firing squad that took out Major Ifeajuna and the three others.
He was there when Owerri fell and was there when it was recaptured. He had seen
the worst days and the worst possible in Man. He had acquired wisdom beyond his
years from the war.
Once he had stumbled upon an old woman slumped in the bushes
dying from hunger, yet being eaten alive by two hyenas. Sam had shot the hyenas
dead, and applied the final ‘coup de
grace’ to the woman. The other day Sam saw a pack of emaciated children
clubbing themselves with heavy sticks, as they fought over who will take home
the little bush rat captured to his own mother. It took more than thirty
minutes for Sam to pacify and stop them from killing each other. War seemed to
have brought out the worst in everybody. People were literally dying on their
feet in some villages and towns they passed through, under retreat or in hot
pursuit. Plenty of ghost towns, with even lizards and wall geckos scarce.
Mostly perished in many charcoal pots as the people sought other sources of
replenishing protein.
However some towns didn’t have such overtly malnourished
people. Sam and his colleagues were usually well feted as they passed through
those routes. Provision items that had disappeared since the first months of
war in most towns, were still in rich abundance in these towns after nearly
three years of civil war. Sam soon learnt their secret. Most of the women went
on ‘Ahia attack’ .They infiltrated
towns already captured by the federal troops to buy highly needed items. They
were sold back home at exorbitant margins. Upon their return, people from other
neighbouring towns came to buy and restock. They were patronized by even the
surviving churches and the Army for bibles and medical items. Sometimes they went
beyond the border in search of certain items or higher margins. Some had been
known to get as far as Akwanga and Markurdi, in the search for trade.
Sam also learnt that not all the women went on ‘Ahia attack’ for items trade. Quite a
number engaged in bartering their honor and bodies in exchange for varying sums
which were converted to goods and other items of sale, then smuggled into
Biafra. War was bad on women. Especially those with little mouths to feed, as
well as ageing parents. They often thronged the miniature adhoc cantonments
where the Biafra soldiers were camped before and between battles. In their
droves, they appeared with the dusk. They readily gave of themselves for any
form of favourable barter. Sam was once propositioned by one, she had declared
herself game if Sam would reward her with a half tuber of yam from the Army
store, or a tin of biscuits. Sam had declined the offer but had sought out the
storekeeper and obtained the materials for her to take home. Sam had been thoroughly shaken by the encounter.
A lot of women too never came home from ‘Ahia attack’. Some hadn’t greased the many security officials on
some of the routes sufficiently and never made it back. Some had simply left
their war and hunger ravaged homes behind. Some disappeared back across the
border when they found themselves with pregnancies, their soldier husbands and
kinsmen would find hard to accept. War was a sobering period.
Sam was in the party of soldiers that covered the Uli
airstrip, as the General with some of his family members and officials left for
Ivory Coast, in search of solutions or armaments as he had said. As the plane
taxied off, Sam had a feeling it was over. He didn’t want to wait around to see
what will happen. He wasn’t going to stay and await the likely victory of the
federal forces. They were closing in from different sectors and who knew what
they would do. In Abagana, the destroyed convoy had a truck full of ‘horsewhips’.
There were no horses left at this time in the east, and even before the war only a handful. Sam shuddered as he
wondered what use those whips would have been put to.
Sam pulled off his military fatigues for probably the last
time. He changed to civilian clothing and made his way from Uli through
Awommama, Mgbidi into Owerri. This took the better part of three days of
surreptitious movements. His village was just outside Owerri. Igbada. He hadn’t
been home since he left for the war, it was an emotional return. His In-law’s
house was very close to the town entrance. He stopped to see if they were back
or Mary was still there. “Ogo bu chi onye
ooo”, she shouted. It was his mother-in-law, Mary’s mother. She had always
greeted him thus. Translated from the local dialect, it meant that an In-law was
one’s guardian angel, his chi. She
grabbed him in another of her legendary hugs. She sang and cried at the same
time. An old uncle of theirs’ produced a bottle of illicit gin and quickly made
libation to the gods of the village for his safe return.
She served him bread and freshly opened can of sardines. She
confirmed the town women had also been into the “Ahia attack” trade. She looked quite robust and well attired. Even
the china used to dish the sardines was new. It wasn’t one of those he had been
served with in the past. “Ala adighi nma,
bu uru ndi Nze”, the people said. Whenever there was strife in the land, it
played into the hands of the kingmakers who make hay. The bread suffused with
the sardine oils, melted in his mouth. He was in heaven! Whilst eating and
making small talk, there was a great shout, accompanied by instant music,
urgently composed and danced to.
The war had just been announced over. The Biafran side had
surrendered. The Head of State, Yakubu Gowon had accepted the surrender and
declared ‘No Victor, No Vanquished’. Sam was relieved and happy. However his
mind strayed immediately to thoughts of his first day in war. Angus and Major
Eze. The riots. Why did it take three long arduous years to get here. He
listened to the radio as Phillip Effiong gave his speech on the surrender.
Mary had gone on “Ahia
attack”, she told him. She was late. She had been daring and wouldn’t
listen. She regularly went beyond the border in search of choice items. Mama
Mary seemed really worried over her whereabouts. She had been praying all night
for her safe return and of course the return of Sam as well. Sam left his
In-law’s house in a hurry. He would visit the village cemetery later when he
was rested. His mother had been interred there during the war, she had been
caught up in an afternoon bombing by the federal side. Sam had gotten word
through the army headquarters. It was hard then, harder now. He sat on the
bench at the town entrance. He waited till evening but there was no sign of
Mary. He waited till the last lorry came in and discharged its passengers.
There were lots of people embracing and seeking out loved ones but there was no
Mary.
He walked to his mother’s home
despondent. Mama was gone. The border had swallowed Mary. He remembered all the
atrocities he had witnessed. Deaths. Dismembered limbs. Emaciated children. Women
ready to barter their honor for any palliative/privilege. He wondered what Mary
may have had to barter her’s for. He reached inside his pocket for the tiny
revolver he carried. He had seized it from the impounded property of a top
ranking federal soldier. He closed the door. Was it all worth it? The
suffering, the violent deaths, the losses? He had lost his mother and now his
Mary! He put the gun to his head. It would take him too beyond the border. Not
to barter however, but to continue to strive in the next world.
EPILOGUE
Mary virtually ran to her late
mother in law’s home. She had been delayed as the wooden bridge between Oturkpa
and Alaede in Nigeria near the Biafran border town of Obollo Afor, was being
repaired. She had already heard her Sam was back after these three years, and
had bought an exotic set of undergarments beyond the border for such a special
evening. She didn’t even wait for her goods to be offloaded from the lorry. She
had to see Sam. It had been three long years. Finally she arrived the house.
There was a low popping sound, must be firecrackers by children celebrating the
end of the war. She knocked……………
Nnamdi Wabara, 2016.
