Chimeka Garricks’ novel resonates with Chinua
Achebe’s voice. In the proverbial way peculiar to him, he speaks through one of
his creatures in Anthills of the Savannah:
“…Age
gives to a man some things with the right hand even as it takes away others with
the left…”
Age is a dunce in the case of Nigeria. It
stares wide-eyed and unmoved, saliva dripping from its tongue as the nation’s
grip on the droopy breasts of its shameful history refuses to slacken. I find
myself wondering why all that could proceed from my thought about Nigeria’s
resilience in holding unto the ugly side of history, is a quotation from
Achebe’s work. It goes beyond the fact that we have just lost him. I’m not
trying to evoke a memorial. No. What I’m saying finds articulation in the similarity
of the plot of his Anthills of the Savannah and that of the novel
being considered. Both stories present how the private existence of a group of
friends spill into public discourse.
Tomorrow
Died Yesterday tells of the reason one needs to blind one’s eyes to a
future that has been aborted before its birth.
There are times when realities seem so bland
to take in, their closeness to you notwithstanding. Such realities easily earn
the ‘overflogged’ tag. Tomorrow
Died Yesterday treads the path of stereotypes and I refuse to mark it
down for it. It hinges on one of the nondescript realities that characterize
Nigeria: the Niger Delta region issue. I have not read much Literature about
this region but, having read Garricks’ Tomorrow
Died Yesterday and recently, Christie Watson’s Tiny Sunbirds Far Away, I can
assertively say it that the Niger Delta is not only a mine for crude oil, it is
a mine for narratives too. All that matters is telling your story. And doing
it, your own way.
Chimeka Garricks has told his. His is that of
angst and pessimism:
“…‘You still get it, Kaniye, do you? There is no future for
the children of the Niger Delta. Their tomorrow is already dead. It died
yesterday’…”(Page 236)
Remonstration,
“‘Why
are you crying, Amaibi? Were they crying for us in ’97? Ehn, Amaibi, answer me.
After 1997, weren’t you the one who always wrote, and I quote, ‘violence is now
a justified option for dealing with the injustice in the Niger Delta’? This is
violence, Amaibi…’” (Page 38)
Resuscitation:
“…After more than six nightmarish years, who would have
thought that I’d get an erection again, in Port Harcourt Prison of all places;
and they say there was no rehabilitation in a Nigerian prison…” (Page 50)
And a whole lot of other motifs. The novel is
complex on different grounds. The scope of its plot is wide, but it is palpable
enough that it is not a burden for the author to manage. His four-stranded cord
of Kaniye Rufus, Doye Koko, Amaibi Akassa and Joseph Tubo are allegories of the
different shades of humanity in the Niger Delta.
The novel reverses the convention in a lot of
binary relationships. The most evident are in the light of sex and race. In the
duo, the conventional ‘other’ finds a voice that either drowns its converse or
that which gives it a similar standing as the privileged.
I remember reading Achebe’s essay, An Image of
Africa: Racism in Conrad's 'Heart of Darkness’ where he alludes
(though without resentment) to one Albert Schweitzer, an ‘extraordinary
missionary’ as he puts it, who says:
"The
African is indeed my brother but my junior brother."
It is in such context that one would
understand that Garricks, though indirectly, writes back to the west in his
work. Imagine these:
“I turned to the white man. His pink face was a blotchy and
sweaty mess. Sweat plastered his thin, fair hair to his big head, and
highlighted, starkly, how large his eyes were. He wasn’t really fat, but had a
stomach that fell odiously over his jeans. His breathing was loud, wheezing and
heaving. I interpreted it as fear.” (Page 7)
“‘Gentlemen, let’s focus on poor Manning, okay?” Granger
said. We all smiled at the description. Manning was anything but poor. He was
an arrogant, obnoxious bully, and a little more than a racist thug…’” (Page 17)
What an honourable disrespect to one’s elder
brother!
Garricks does not extend his disrespect to
his female characters. In a situation where the African society has always
rendered the male in the guise of a hegemonic entity, Garricks’ female
characters refuse to be relegated to the background. Not even when
‘victim-hood’ looms. Kaniye’s mother and Dise typify this. Deola, even more.
That a male writer presents this is something
tangible to note about how contemporary African Literature engineers a novel
mode of treating gender issues. For instance, one would wonder what kind of
feminist statement Doreen Baingana makes with her characters in Tropical Fish. Hers is a different approach to the
issue of gender, in that her female characters take
responsibility for their
actions and not that they ascribe them to some domineering males. Here are some
instances:
Rosa says this:
“…For swaying my hips deliberately, enticingly, as I danced
with you, with others. For those jeans I bought that hugged my buttocks so
tightly men turned to watch and whistle as I walked by. I am mocked for saying
yes. I am guilty…” (Page75)
Christine has this to say too:
“…Why did I always seem to have my legs spread open before
kind men poking things into me? I let them.” (Page 98)
Chimeka Garrick’s prose is scrumptious. His
ability to invoke images is alluring. Here are my favourites:
“From Juju Island, Asiama River surges on, in
elaborating crooks and turns, expanding at every mile. Then, a few hundred
miles from the ocean, the curves stop, and the river suddenly opens out – the
swollen head of a king cobra. The river can now sense the ocean and flows
faster to meet it. The only obstruction, right in the middle of its path, is
Asiama Island. The river is divided by the island. Two hydra heads are formed,
but the river flows on nonetheless. It glides round the island, and finally,
embraces the roaring ocean.” (Page 32)
“I stared at the beautiful body I worshipped for the past
months of my life. The body I knew so well. The breasts were full, firm, big
nippled, the aureoles the colour of dark honey. The tuft of hair between her
legs was shaved in a neat triangle, one of Dise’s quirks. Her legs were long,
slightly knock-kneed. My unborn son slept in the small bulge of her tummy.”
Such is the best compensation for the time a
reader spends on a bulky paperback.
The book is bulky (429 pages in all). So are
its editorial issues so innumerable that the reader feels like demanding the
head of the editor that does a book like this such disservice.
As much as I acknowledge the author’s
cultural background, I won’t spare him and whosoever helps him with his Yoruba
translations the rod for allowing this in the book:
“‘…It’s
the neighbourhood with the best bole and fish in town…’ …“Bole with
dry groundnuts?” I shook my head in disbelief.” (Page 62)
For someone to have written booli as bole is a signal that our indigenous languages are on a fast
track into extinction.
Chimeka Garricks is a writer to watch out
for. His prose is luminous one cannot but anticipate other offerings of his.
***
This review was featured on CLR sometime in May 2013. Coincidentally, the post was published in May, days to Nigeria's Democracy Day.
In the coming weeks, I will be re-posting some of my past reviews here even as I work on fresh ones.
NB: Not until I had read some of the comments on CLR
did I realise that bole is also booli. The only difference is how it is
pronounced in two different parts of the same country.
