Uwem Akpan of Nigeria won the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize for Best First Book: Africa with Say You’re One of Them (Little Brown). Florence Sipalla sketches the contents of this collection of short stories
This anthology is a compelling read, bringing to the fore the plight of children who are usually the victims of conflict and other injustices such as child trafficking. The stories are set in five countries: Kenya, Rwanda, Gabon, Ethiopia and the author’s homeland, Nigeria. As we travel these countries through the narration, adults who put children at risk in times of conflict are indicted.
Akpan demonstrates in Fattening for Gabon how adults collude to deceive children and then sell them off. He tells how an uncle takes two children from their home with the promise of a better education. It also seems that the youngsters are being shielded from the reality of their parents’ terminal illness. While in transit, a woman cares lovingly for the children, just as a mother would. By the time their uncle feels guilty about his actions, it is too late for him to save the children from heart-wrenching separation.
My Parents’ Bedroom captures the Rwandan genocide through the eyes of a little girl. This story, a line from which gives the anthology its title, was shortlisted for the Caine Prize in 2007. The girl is instructed by her mother to identify with her father’s people when the attackers come. In her mother’s words: “Say you’re one of them.”
What is interesting to note is that Akpan hadn’t been to Rwanda when he wrote the story. At a forum held last year at Hekima Jesuit College in Nairobi, Kenya, Akpan told the audience that he had not been to Rwanda, yet he captures the dilemma of children caught in the ethnic divide as their parents and other adults around them take sides in the conflict.
The writing is so vivid that it takes the reader right to where relatives who are of the “other” tribe are hiding in the ceiling above the parents’ bedroom. The child watches her father’s brutality at the behest of his own brother. The once-happy family is divided because of “othering” on the basis of tribe. The girl survives an attempted rape and is somewhat unaware of the harm her attacker intended.
An Ex-mas Feast is set in a Kenyan slum. We see the difficult choices children face when an older sister chooses to go into a brothel to help raise money for her brother’s education. The majority of the family is against this sibling support, but they do not mind her “working the streets” as a “day bug” to provide for them. This puts the family at loggerheads when they should be celebrating Christmas, the more so as they have food in abundance and do not have to sniff glue to keep hunger pangs at bay.
Luxurious Hearses features Jubril, a young man who flees Nigeria’s Islamic north for the Christian-dominated south. His mother sends him to his father’s people where, as a Christian, he should be safe.
A large problem, however, is that in accordance with Sharia law he had his hand amputated for stealing a goat. This is a clear sign that he is Muslim and so he has to keep the “offending” arm in his pocket lest it betrays him.
On the way a Muslim elder, Mallam Abdulahi, gives Jubril a medallion of Christ’s mother, Mary. To put Jubril at ease with the gift, Abdulahi reminds him of the place that Mariam (Mary) has in Islam.
Jubril’s hybridity in terms of tribe and religion make his journey to safety in the south a dangerous one. He has to alter his accent and pretend to watch TV, which his conservative Muslim background does not allow, and all this amid the tension and drama that characterises the bus ride.
In this anthology Akpan uses language to create immediacy and to underline verisimilitude. The use of Franglais and Sheng (a bastardisation of English and Swahili) no doubt help to place the reader where the action happens. To a certain extent, however, this language use breaks the flow of the story, particularly in the case of Fattening for Gabon.
Much as one could argue that Akpan’s writing foregrounds the reality of the African child situation, the author could have infused more hope into the stories because, in a way, they leave the reader with a sense of hopelessness.