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Troubador Publishing Ltd - Obiora Agbo Celestine

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130 pages

English

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Nigeria, 1967: After being left by their parents, seven-year-old Obi and his two sisters live as children of a compound until war arrives one night and the siblings find themselves caught up in the midst of the Biafran conflict of the late 1960s. Separated from their relatives and friends, Obi and his sisters, Arike and Decima, are evacuated headlong into the war and starvation. Living as refugees they are strafed day and night by Russian MiGs and forced to fend for themselves. They learn crucial survival skills by watching others and understand that in order to live through the war, they must keep out of sight from jets and soldiers.London, 1969: Caroline, a guilt-riddled factory worker and mother of seven, rushes home from work in time for the late news. Her prayers are answered when she spots her lost son within a crowd behind a news reporter in a Biafran refugee camp. Against the warnings of the Foreign Office, Caroline plans her audacious rescue mission on the front line. Selling all her possessions to fund her expedition, she finds herself surrounded by war when she embarks on a deadly journey to find and bring her children to England.

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Historical fiction

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Publié par	Troubador Publishing Ltd
Date de parution	02 juin 2021
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781800466012
Langue	English
Poids de l'ouvrage	2 Mo

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0250€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

Extrait

Copyright © 2019 Celestine O Agbo

The moral right of the author has been asserted.

Cover art by Bula Chakravarty Agbo

Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of research or private study, or criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, this publication may only be reproduced, stored or transmitted, in any form or by any means, with the prior permission in writing of the publishers, or in the case of reprographic reproduction in accordance with the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside those terms should be sent to the publishers.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

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ISBN 9781800466012

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Matador® is an imprint of Troubador Publishing Ltd

To the children who get trampled when adults fight,
This book is dedicated to you

Contents
Acknowledgements
Foreword
Who will Love my Children?
Enugu, 1954 Twigs and Footprints
October in the Rain
Nigeria, 1967 Mr Emanuel’s Daughter
Innocence
Dragonflies and Matchsticks
Onugbu Bitter Leaf
Ekelere m Chukwu I thank God
Prelude
The Night of Change
Farewell
Life and Daydream
A Memorable Journey
First Base
Strafe
Biafran Pogrom
Another Path
Fever
Young Lives, Long Memories
Beetles and Termites
Silver Trails
Hearsay
Boy Soldiers
Gifted Children
Dream Child
London, 1969
Angel Without Wings
Escape
So Near and Still So Far
About the Author
Acknowledgements
It has been said that it takes a village to raise a child. This story is no exception.
For Boniface and Caroline Agbo, trailblazers of their time, like most, their journey was not a passage of ease. Thank you, Meg Johnson, for reintroducing me to my story via The Biafra Story and to Fredrick Forsyth for writing it. Thank you, Sam Nico, for helping me to find my pen. I’m grateful to Rose Lenihan, Mick Russell, Anjali Patel for the initial support and encouragement after the first draft of many. My gratitude to Victoria Bilotti for her everlasting support, you are truly awesome. My appreciation to Hazel Scotland Williamson, Onyedinma Ani, John O’Sullivan, Dr Vinod Bhandari, Cheryl Edwards, Dave Parnell, Richard Crosara, Richard Baptiste, Medhavi Patel, Tatjanya Keane, Alan McIntyre, Gail Dyos and Graham Satchwell; your love and faith in this endeavour has been grand. Decima and Arike, I would not be the man I am today without your love and protection as my ‘big sisters’ – love you always. My peaceful warriors Radhika and Anjalee, who chose me as their father, thank you. Anubhav Chakravarty for your constant reminder: “how is the book going uncle C?” and Anjali Chakravarty, my other mother. Aunty Huldah Agbo, Uncle Chris Onduka, Uncle and Chief Chris-Roberts Ozongwu; you have amazing memories of the past. For Ozo Agbo, Dr Khagendra Nath Chakravarty, Mae Valencia Barton, Billy Webster, Micky Carney and Roger Gurr, you gave more than any role models could have.
In my attempt to maintain the integrity of this narrative I have endeavoured to retain the childhood spoken Ibo and Pidgin English of the time.

Bula
The Rani of my world
Foreword
In reference to childhood aspirations, the award-winning Nigerian writer Ben Okri is quoted as saying: “We plan our lives according to a dream that came to us in our childhood, and we find that life alters our plans…” The author Celestine Obiora Agbo survived three terrifying years on the run in numerous refugee camps during the Nigerian Civil War, also known as the Biafran War, of the late 1960s and early 1970s. As a young boy, nothing during that period of his life would have predicted his fate: to give a voice to the men, women and children who were victims of famine during the war when the Military Government set up a blockade severely affecting the lives of civilians in the Biafra region of southeast Nigeria.
An impassioned storyteller, Celestine compels his reader to identify with the daily lives of his characters portrayed in this well-crafted novel as they struggle for survival in the appalling conditions resulting from the terrible conflict. The author is careful not to allow political events to overwhelm the human story – the emotional truth – for, after all, this is a book about human beings.
Dragonflies and Matchsticks is a welcome addition to preceding literary works that have centred themselves on the Nigerian Civil War, and therefore sits well alongside such fictional material as Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s award-winning novel Half of a Yellow Sun (2006), convincing portrayals of the Biafra middle-class. In Chukwuemeka Ike’s Sunset at Dawn (1976) and Flora Nwapa’s Never Again (1975), and even emotion-moving memoirs such as Surviving in Biafra (2003) by Alfred Ibiora Uzokwe, and Sunset in Biafra (1973) by Elechi Amadi, which looks at the war from an anti-Biafran minority.
Celestine could be described as a ‘renaissance man’. He has succeeded at so many things: be it piloting light aircraft; a chef, working in schools, social services, children and elderly services and charities. As a therapist he has worked within a variety of disciplines; not to mention winning numerous awards as a social entrepreneur. He dished out healthy food at his London trendy art gallery, vegetarian and vegan restaurant ‘Pepperton’s’. Celestine has featured in numerous TV, radio, and newspaper reports for his work and charitable involvements over the years. As if all this, and more, wasn’t enough, Celestine completed a postgraduate programme for creative writing and now writes exceedingly good novels. Such an illustrious life certainly fulfils the quote by Ben Okri at the start of this foreword: “And yet, at the end, from a rare height, we also see that our dream was our fate. It’s just that providence had other ideas as to how we would get there. Destiny plans a different route, or turns the dream around, as if it were a riddle, and fulfils the dream in ways we couldn’t have expected.” Celestine’s stories have so far won him numerous awards. With Dragonflies and Matchsticks he looks set to win many more.

Donovan Lee McGrath
University of London School of
Oriental and African Studies.

…for I was then a deeply angry young man, and with cause. I had seen such misery, so much starvation and death, so much cruelty inflicted on small children; and I knew that behind it all were vain and cynical men, not a few in high office in London, who had closed their eyes, hearts and minds to the agony of those children rather than admit they might have made a mistake.

Biafra was a mistake; it should and need never have happened…

…the passage of time may mellow viewpoints, or expediency may change them. But nothing can or ever will minimise the injustice and brutality perpetrated on the Biafran people, nor diminish the shamefulness of a British Government’s frantic, albeit indirect, participation…

Victors write history, and the Biafrans lost. Convenience changes opinions, and the memory of Biafra and what was done there remains inconvenient for many.

Frederick Forsyth.
The Biafra Story: The Making of an African Legend
On a country road a few miles away, relief workers held out bits of food to a group of hungry children. They ran, not knowing what to do with it. We are going to have to teach a generation of children how to eat again.

A Canadian nurse helping Biafran refugees.

1
Who will Love my Children?
Caroline’s life did not get better after marriage. She was not the type who believed that a husband was the path to salvation. With five adorable children, one for every year of her marriage, she was back to where she had begun her marital life: in the village compound of her in-laws. Life was not friendly even with two prized sons. Her previous unforgiving mouth had been tempered by encumbered motherhood and mindfulness. The bleak sleepless nights were incomparable to her overworked mind. Eyes once bright are heavy and sunken, face once full with youth is strained with fear and vulnerability. Her own mother had failed by not warning her of the consequences of parenthood.
The cement floor cools her aching thighs through the bamboo mat after another day of ferrying heavy loads on her head to the market and squatting for a child to climb her back. That was her job early in the morning before her other children woke up. Caroline was paid several kobos a day by her friend Millicent, who owned a food stall at the road on Ninth Mile. Night-time was when she could be at peace with her children. They were asleep lined up on a mat with six-year-old Decima as a buffer between the wall and her five-year-old sister Arike, they lay face-to-face entwined like twins.
Caroline yawns and pushes out her arms to hook her fingers over her toes; she holds her feet for a relaxing pull. In the dark she oils and ties her hair for the night, wondering how best she could watch over her children and work at the same time.
Not the type of person who would leave things to chance, Caroline had already witnessed the harsh reality of living in someone else’s compound, and now her cho