Water Baby book cover found on Quercus Books
It was American anthropologist Loren Eiseley who said, “If there is magic upon this planet, it is contained within water.”
Water is, indeed, a most wondrous substance and yet one we pay so little attention to — until it is not there when we need it.
We label it as “colourless”, “tasteless” and “odourless”, so it is the substance we use as a baseline in our day-to-day existence.
We have calibrated so many scientific scales according to the properties of pure water — pH is one example, degrees celsius is another — that it forms the basis of a large chunk of our scientific study of the world around us.
It is, as beautiful and wondrous things often are, a study in contrasts. It is vital for life and, paradoxically, can also bring death. Large bodies of water can be tranquil and calming, yet they can also be tempestuous and terrifying. It can be warm and inviting, cold and unyielding or hot and dangerous.
Like a vengeful deity, we simultaneously revere and fear it, for it can build and destroy, nurture and kill, and its ebbs and flows can change worlds and lives.
It is this complicated relationship with water that underpins large parts of Nigerian-born Chioma Okereke’s heart-stirring sophomore tale Water Baby.
Set in the Nigerian settlement of Makoko, water is literally under our feet for a significant portion of the novel. The reason for this is as old as time — the human instinct for survival.
Makoko is an informal settlement built over Lagos Lagoon on the south-western coast of Nigeria.
People were forced to take occupation over the water, due to the lack of land, and so this rather unique community came into existence. Houses were erected on stilts and Makoko made its way into the lagoon.
Although the Nigerian government seeks to romanticise it by referring to it as the “Venice of Africa”, the truth is far from that. Instead of romantically punting gondolas loaded with Western tourists down scenic canals, the residents of Makoko are forced into a hardscrabble existence that is a daily struggle with poverty, disease and starvation.
It is against this backdrop that we are introduced to our protagonist, Baby. A 19-year-old woman whose real name is Yemoja, after the Yoruba water goddess, she prefers to go by her father’s childhood nickname for her.
Like so many in her community, Baby’s entire livelihood is intertwined with that of her watery foundations.
She ferries people across the lagoon to earn money, while her widower father struggles to eke out an existence for himself and his family as a fisherman.
The Nigerian government, which appears to maintain a low-key antagonistic relationship with Makoko and its occupation of prime waterfront real estate, at one point ordered the large-scale demolition of houses without proper notice.
The official reason given was that the residences were too close to power lines. Baby’s family was one of those rendered homeless, and when we are introduced to her, they are sharing a home with extended family, whose children have become their shared fiscal responsibility.
This adds to the family’s stress and Baby’s father wishes she would marry, as he believes it would improve her life as it did her older sister’s. But Baby has bigger dreams.
An operation to map Makoko using drones has begun, and from the first time Baby sees one of the flying machines, she is captivated.
She is spurred on by the memory of her younger brother, a child taken by the lagoon as so many children of Makoko are, who was enthralled by the passenger airliners that would fly over the lagoon on their way to Lagos airport.
Baby manages to secure an opportunity to pilot a drone from one of the locals who has been recruited to do so, and it is everything she dreamed of and more.
And, as serendipity would have it, she is also caught on camera doing so by a Western camera crew filming in the area.
Baby’s striking beauty and forthright temperament cause a video of her to be posted online and go viral, and she now becomes known as the Pearl of Makoko, a shining beauty in the dross of her hometown.
This sudden fame affords Baby the opportunity to bring the plight of her community onto the global stage and the novel’s crises deal with what Baby elects to do with this once-in-a-generation opportunity.
Critically speaking, one could go on and on about how the coming-of-age trope of “small-town girl done good” has been beaten into the ground by so many works, but to boil this book down to that old chestnut is to do it a great disservice.
The book is very well written. The characters are robust and easily identifiable and the backdrops doubly so.
Okereke’s description of the lagoon and how it has begun to take more than it gives is stirring and particularly jarring when contrasted against the places Baby is given the opportunity to visit later.
Baby herself is a wonderfully rich and complex character, at once manically excited by the world opened up to her and plagued by doubt and insecurity about her own choices.
Living out imposter syndrome with the whole world watching cannot be easy.
She is empathetic and driven, and blossoms as a person and an ambassador for her community as the novel progresses.
And it all flows like water. From the blackened, scum-covered water of Baby’s town of birth to the crystalline Alpine lakes she visits as a young woman, we are reminded constantly of this universal constant of our lives and our planet: water.
It is particularly wonderful to note that, while metaphorical waters often are dirtied and sullied as characters in coming-of-age tales lose innocence and find adulthood, the opposite happens to our heroine in this novel.
In summary, Water Baby is a coming-of-age story that does well to elevate itself above its ilk through powerful use of prose and characterisation. A worthwhile read.
Water Baby is published by Quercus Books.