Stories are meant to break hearts. The collection of stories in Umwem Akpan’s ‘Say you are one of them’ validates this opinion. Besides the pain and horror witnessed by the African Children, it is harrowing that these stories are narrated through the voices of children. As a reader, the book evokes empathy, and you might find yourself stopping so many times to ponder, sob or in frustration. The important thing about the narrations is that they come so close to the truth as the reality of everyday occurrences in different parts of the continent.
From the family living in a makeshift shanty in urban Kenya, whose 12 year old daughter, Zawadi is pushed to childhood prostitution, to the siblings in Benin trying to cope with the Uncle’s attempt to sell them into slavery in Gabon; the book is full of riveting stories that exposes the survival struggles amongst African children, and the creative ways to get out of their predicament.
For the purposes of this review, as the stories are deep rich for a single review, I have singled out two short stories, and here’s to hoping that you will get a copy of the book and enjoy the read, as much as I did.
P.s. the review is quite long (with a couple of excerpts that I found captivating in every way). I have broken it down into two parts (or rather reviewed the selected short stories separately). The next review will be up in a week’s time.
Fattening for Gabon
‘I mean, look at my face.”
He touched at his scar and pulled at his lip and people began to laugh.
“Scarecrow!” One woman shouted, her mouth full of rice.
“No worry, when l get money well well, l go do surgery…my face no go smile like dis all de time again. N’do na dio face se, military face. Den una no go know again wheder l dey vex o, wheder l dey sad o, wheder l dey lie o…l mean , even now, who tell una say l dey happy wid una?” pg. 52
“kai, you better start looking for anoder monkey man o harvest your coconuts…”
Kotchikpa is a 10 year old boy, who has moved alongside his younger sister Yewa, 5 to live with their Fofo, an agbero. It had been agreed, in a meeting of relatives that the two, the youngest in a family of 3 others, needed to live with their uncle at the border town, who from then would take care of them. Although no one has volunteered information about the parents’ sickness and relatives talk about it in hushed voices, Kotchikpa later eavesdrops that they have AIDS though he doesn’t know what it means then.
The children’s uncle, Fofo Kpee(also Smiley Kpee :), is described as a smallish, hardworking man. He also has an incredulous sense of humour. And perhaps, as Kotchipika thinks, it is this sense of humour and smuggler’s instinct that he had developed as an agbero, that the secret to sell them off was kept from the world for three months.
Before the Gabon deal which as you will learn later, went awry, as a simple agbero, he made a living getting people across the border without papers or just roughing them up for money. He also hired himself out in the harmattan season to harvest coconuts in the many plantations along the coast. He had his fair share of misfortune over the years, falling from trees and getting into scuffles at the border. Yet the man was upbeat about life. He seemed to smile at everything :), partly because of a facial wound sustained in a fight when he was learning to be an agbero. Ridged and glossy, the scar ran down his left cheek and stopped at his upper lip, which was constricted; his mouth never fully closed. Though he tried to cover the scar with a big moustache, it shone like a bulb on a Christmas tree. His left eye looked bigger than the right because the lower eyelid came up short, pinched by the scar. Because of all this, sometimes people called him Smiley Kpee. Pg. 33
The book exposes different levels of comprehension and innocence of children at different stages of life. Whilst the children seem trusting, Kotchikpa is inquisitive, while the younger Yewa does not seem to be bothered by the family’s unexplained fortunes. Partly why, they may have been chosen for this illegal business of children slavery. Having been used to poverty lifestyle, they behold the machine as if it were some sort of magic that had descended upon them, something too much for them—with Yewa circling around it like a Voodoo priest, her legs stepping lightly, and her feet in socks of dust. The brother, whose palms had been dirtied from stocking the cooking fire with wood, even begins to sweat. Both are in disbelief, and Smiley Kpee seems to relish their innocent bewilderment of this fortune before he produced an invoice and proclaimed,..”God done reward our faitfulness………….Nous irons to be rich,-ha-ha!” This opens the reader to the ignorance and attribution of all mysteries to religion and its influence. And perhaps also why Fofo Kpee does not seem to see it wrong in going to offer a thanksgiving ceremony for the Nanfang, presided over by an non-suspecting and non-discerning pastor, the object of the thanksgiving being the price to sell of innocent blood to the unknown future of a distant land.
An element to Akpan’s writing is that it is so rich of humour that you will gawk and find yourself with an imprinted smiley on your face, or a silly grin as you devour the pages. Maybe close to that of Smiley Kpee. For example, on the night that the Nanfang arrives, the voice of the story tells that Fofo didn’t tell them stories about which he laughed more than they did. Also, after one sip, he decides it is better to save his fruit juice for until dinner, and owing to the excitement of the night, when they finally descend on the Abakaliki rice and stew of onions, Kpomo, and palm oil, they don’t mind to find the little pebbles in the rice. Even Fofo doesn’t scold Kotchikpa for not picking the rice well.
“When l got down to the last gulp, l stopped and saved it. l had water instead and ate and drank until my stomach filled up, the palm oil in the stew yellowing my lips. Then l drowned the rest of the juice so the taste would remain in my moth until l went to bed.” Pg. 39
After the thanksgiving, Kpee throws a party to celebrate the Nanfang. The explanation of the mysterious change of fortunes is that his brother and wife who live abroad had sent him the zokeke does not register any special meaning to the children, neither when he said that they would come with the older children to visit and they would get even better things. The plot thickenes on the day Fofo Kpee comes home in a Nanfang (a motor-bike) that he planned to use to ferry people between Benin and Nigeria to boost the family’s income. Even the exclamation of disappointment by a man, Big Guy, whose words “Smiley Kpee, Only two?” “No way, iro o! Where oders?” don’t seem to bother the already excited children. After all, having an agbero for an uncle, they had been used to people coming to harass him for different things.
And on one evening Fofo Kpee comes home nervous and informs the children of the adoption plan by some NGO people whom he describes as a a group of caring, smiling people who go around the world helping children.
“It was the first time I saw him show frustration or doubt about our new life. Seeing how tense he was and hearing his continual sighs, l kept quiet. He was so distraught by whatever was worrying him that we abandoned the outside walls. After a while he got so angry that in one final rush of work, he closed up everything. And darkness descended on the room. Pg. 82
The guiless nature of the children, would not give any specific reason to doubt their uncle and his humour carried them through the difficult situations, like sleeping in a sealed room with no ventilation, in the guise to keep off the thieves. But it is when he unclad before them, exposing his nakedness before the children that it became unbearable. Fofo Kpee has a dream in which he talks in his brief nap, and while the kids watched him, he was twisted as though fighting a lion, and in a fiery voice saying that his children would not go to Gabon. The nightmare of that night would have served as a warning to Kotchikpa that the dream would unravel, but he had instead chosen to remain strong so as not to frighten his sister. Probably wrestling the strangling demns of child trafficking, or the nasty thought of selling off his brother’s children for a morsel.
The surreal and solemn silence around them is broken when the uncle suddenly takes off his loin cloth leaving the children confused and concerned. You almost turn morbid in fear when the writer introduces the issue of child sexual slavery.
“The dread that had hung around him since he awoke from his nightmare went away now. Apart from his nakedness, he looked very normal. His whole body glowed with the sweat except his bushy pubic hair, out of which hung a limp penis, its head smooth like mango skin, its body wearing a tube of tiny rings of flesh, like the neck of an oba in an odigba.”
“you want to touch my ting?Come on, do it, allez, touchez moi.”
He was now coming towards us.
“No,no I said, and we backed away.
My sister was silent. She never spoke again that night but shielded her privates with her hands and moved behind me.
“Oh, you want touch your ting, mes enfants?”
“No, l said.”
I felt numbness around my groin, and my heart began to pound. l didn’t feel the heat anymore, though l noticed more sweat was pouring from my body. My penis seemed to have shrunk completely, and my balls became one hard nut. l knew immediately this was different from my fofo’s ordinary clowning. l was afraid.”
Fofo Kpee teases Yewa (a 5 year old!) on whether she probably would like to touch a white man, and to this Kotchikpa counteres the wisdom of whether they need to actually go to Gabon. That night he sleeps dressed up with his back towards fofo, and his hands shielding his privates, while trying hard to convince himself that the performance of that night did not actually happen. He detests the shorts he is wearing but can not bring himself to sleep naked that night. He hates Gabon. He hates the Nanfang and vowed never to ride in it again.He sympathizes with Paul-the boy who was so withdrawn on the night that the godparents visited. Although Fofo Kpee apologizes to them that he overdid things in case things became difficult abroad, Kotchikpa starts thinking of how to escape and run back to Braffe with the sister.
Things took an ugly turn when Fofo Kpee detested Big Guy’s Gabon deal causing hatred to ensue between them but also moves quickly, from the decision that the children could not go to school again to the suspension of their collective dream of going to Gabon, such that no one mentioned it again to an extent that it filled their silence. Dissipation of pride in the nanfang etc.The pieces of the puzzle come together slowly, and Fofo intimates to Kotchikpa that they need to escape. Unfortunately the night of the planned escape bring with itself miserly and disappointing darkness. As the cartel of children slavery seemed to be watching over them, they are impounded as they tried to escape that night, one week to the impeding Gabon trip. Their games teacher Monsieur Abraham is part of the cartel, explaining the kindness he accorded them in school including giving them glucose on the first days of their lessons when they couldn’t sleep. Kotchikpa feels so disappointed for having been duped into such a well-orchestrated plot but nothing had prepared them for worst days ahead.
Though their situation had gone from bad to worse in a single night, Kotchikpa had behaved to make the guard believe that he liked him, in the hope that they may be allowed into the parlor to see their fofo. Yewa shaken to the core, had been hiding in the water vat, which she had covered…she turned her anger towards the brother whose kindly gestures to fool the guard, the sister mistook as his collaboration with fofo and the guard to sell her off.
The horrors of child trafficking. Sea orientation incase the water in the vessel finished out, or were tossed overboard during the search by government people of which they would be required to hold to a huge prank of wood attached to the ship or given life jackets.
……The plan had been to build a bigger depot for the children awaiting dispatch. What an evil plot. Sadder because immigration officials, people in police uniform and teachers like the games master were part of this unnerving syndicate.The children from northern Nigeria had been brought in a huge fish truck, to disguise the cargo.
The horror before the other children are brought in to share the room with the two ison the night that Big Guy come in with other guys and under the cover of darkness dig the grave to bury Fofo Kpee. Kotchikpa is not asleep at the time, and has eavesdropped by the window until he hears that the pit being dug is to be deep enough to bury Smiley Kpee completely. The gravediggers get the Nanfang as their payment. With Fofo Kpee dead, Kotchikpa feels emboldened to be an even worse human being than Big Guy and he starts plotting their escape.
Exploiting the guard’s friendliness the morning after their fofo was buried in the night, he manages to convince him to let them into the parlor, hoping that he can get access to the green corduroy jacket that had spare keys.You almost coil with fright when Kotchikpa tries to pretend that he knew nothing about Fofo Kpee’s death and burial in the night, and his ruse to fake sighting a rat to distract the guard while he tries reaching for the spare keys, makes the heart of the reader skip a beat.
“Now my insides were rising and falling with joy. I began to fantasize about our escape. Our best bet was to run in the middle of the night, while he was asleep. I hadn’t thought about where we would run, but it didn’t bother me. My joy now was that freedom was within our reach. I just needed to manage my excitement until then. Again, like on the day Fofo tried to run away with us, l thought it was important for me not to tell Yewa anything until we were ready to leave. I didn’t want to risk it. Pg. 137
Desperately the boy manages to escape, but the sister is left behind as she was slow to jump through the window when they were caught up by the guard. His desperate pleas to have the sister jump through the window didn’t yield in time, and he only saved himself.
“I ran into the bush, blades of elephant grass slashing my body, thorns and rough earth piercing my feet. I took the key and padlock from my pocket and flung them into the bush. I ran ad l ran, though l knew l would never outrun my sister’s wailing. Pg. 139
I bought this book at Nakumatt Nyali sometime back while scavenging for African literature but it could be on the shelves of several other book stores.
WRITEthinking 