Beyond The Border

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 46^th 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.