Friday, 27 January 2017

ECHOES OF FREEDOM

ECHOES OF FREEDOM

A SHORT STORY ON THE LONG WALK

BY

GLORIA ODIGWE Kitaana




On days like these, I sit in front of the court on my wicker chair under the Walnut tree overlooking the compound and the most part of the streets. From where I sit, I hear the noises of the children playing on the roads, the irritating rattle of ancient motorcycles. I wonder why these men never change it and most recently, I hear too, tinkling sounds and buzzing bees. These new sounds are loudest when no one is around and everywhere is quiet.  I hear my granddaughter whisper that I am deaf and I laugh at her. I am not deaf; the deaf hear nothing in their silence. In my own silence, I hear sounds.

I have been hearing rumors too, not like the sounds, I hear them in the furtive way neighbors glance at me, the way their greetings are infused with patronizing affection and the extra meat Adaeze scoops into my plate of soup even when she knows I do not eat meat anymore. They do not know I see them and hear it when they murmur to themselves, “Old age has made her mad. Mama went mad in the city.” They do not say why they think I am mad because everyone knows or maybe, they are loyal to me and they will not go beyond saying I am mad. They would not say “she is mad because of so and so…..” because then, that would mean an evidence; a confirmation of my madness.

But on days like these, when the sun is stretched like a rubber ring over the horizon and smokes arise from behind huts where pestles are knocking against mortar, I sat on my wicker chair and rock and think, ‘maybe I am mad.’ Some old lady in the compound beside mine is blowing chaff from a tray of millet while her daughter grinds something on the grinding stone, the sounds both comforting and distressing at the same time. It was the sound I was born to, and grew up with, the friction of stone against hard stone and debris billowing in the wind. I could forgive blowing chaffs but grinding stones irritated me. They made people think they had options, that they had a workable alternative and so, nobody fought for something better.

The young ones will be here soon, they will gather round me with their little benches to listen to me speak. For their sweet, eager faces, I will tell them tales from the past, for I had been a writer once. Idly, I wonder what I would talk about tonight. Lately, my mind has dwelt and skirted various topics; madness, deafness, old age and grinding stones. Amadi, dragged his stool to my side and sat quietly. An intuitive boy, he probably knew I needed my thoughts tonight.
By the time I was ready, they were gathered and waiting. I wondered vaguely, if they too thought I was mad or if my stories were rants. I did not have the time to occupy myself with such matters. I cleared my throat.

“We were not the first…..” I began. “There were those before us, who first left Okwata.” I saw recognition in their eyes. They all knew Okwata. It was a fixture in most of the stories I told them. Okwata was always a place, the ancestral home of our people, the house of the first man, the first human settlement but today, Okwata was going to be a time too.

“We were slaves then, one day a group of men in high horses and glistening armors descended on us and made us slaves. It took a long time but the Masters, these invaders began to mingle with our people, employing them to tend the fields; our ancestral fields and milk their cows; our cows. In their homes, they had light bulbs and gramophones, they had drinks in tall bottles and they slept in spring mattresses while we slept in the worst places, the most diseased parts of Okwata. We had no lands to farm and even if we had, we wouldn’t be able. No matter how civilized these marauders claimed to be, the still raided our homes and plundered our farms. Those that spoke in protest, were thrown into prisons carved from rocks and were never seen again.” I coughed a little to get the phlegm from my throat.

“So, we started leaving. At first, it was just a few families. Today, so and so would be gone in the night, the next morning two families are gone. They said the new place they went was better, bigger and one did not use grinding stones there. They used blenders.” The children giggled. I chuckled too.

“Yes blenders! You see, we were using grinding stones then and it was so stressful…” there were a lot more giggles because none of them used blenders. They knew it from the stories I told them.

“I was a little child then. I was so small, the only thing I can remember was that I was always hungry and did not know why. So, one night, my mother strapped me to her back packed a tiny bundle on her head and followed my father’s lead into the darkness. It was a good thing they had no other children because the journey was so long and tortuous and I was very hungry. By dawn, we met another family, they had three children with them and they were all hungrier than I was. We joined camp and continued our journey.

“By midday, after a rather hasty, tasteless meal, we continued our journey. I refused to get back on my mother’s back, choosing rather to walk with the other children. That was when I first noticed Zain. He was a tiny, baby with head as huge as the mound of fufu all of us had eaten from and arms and legs, as thin as the stalk of the elephant grasses by the side of the road. He was always weak and hungry and was always suckling his mother. His father was the designated leader of our group. He could talk very well even with an empty stomach. He told us we were better off on our own than being led by the invaders and we believed him. He told us we would be able to build our own cars and discover electricity for ourselves.

For months, we walked, skirting the towns and busy roads so no one would see us. He called it  freedom. The first time, he said it, we were seating round a fire and Zain was suckling his mother again. Every one hailed. My father’s face shone with the torch of liberation as the word, freedom was passed around, sampled, turned this way and that as one does a new acquisition and most of them smiled in approval. Even Zain for a second, stopped suckling and looked up. It was the first time he ever looked up.” I paused, as that particular memory seared my mind.

“Painfully, the next day, he crawled away from his mother’s side and was never seen again. We spent the entire day searching for him. His mother shrieked like a vixen, his father bowed his head and spoke to nobody. I was angry. For the first time, I was not so hungry. I blamed him and his freedom, it was his freedom that made Zain look up. If he hadn’t looked up, he wouldn’t have seen the hypocritical misery of us all and he wouldn’t have wanted to leave.

 By nightfall, we still hadn’t found him. The adults had combed every bush around but there was no sight of him. Someone suggested that we continue on our way, someone could have found him, someone would find him. His mother refused to move, she continued to look for her child so we left them behind.  It became a sad, solemn journey from then on; we had to move on. We never heard what happened to them but I keep hoping that somehow, they found him.”

“It was a long walk indeed, a walk to freedom until finally, we arrived in a place called Batata. My mother saw her aunt who had gone two years before us. They had a house now, they used light bulbs in those houses. We stayed with them until a van came to take us to our own settlement. There were all people like us; free men and woman. I realized the reason for the lust for this freedom, to walk the streets without fear of looking back, to play with children your age without fear of your mother scooping you up and scolding your ears full of how a high horse could trample you to death. We lived there. I attended school with other children with our black slates and white chalk. My father found work as a clerk, my mother sold akara balls and I went to school. When we were out of school, we were sent out to learn more.”

I stopped and looked at their faces. They were not so eager anymore. My stories were often boring when I talked about myself. It was too laced with nostalgia, about times they were never part of so I was actually tasking them, asking them to understand the stories their grandfather told me. In those days, we were happy, we were hopeful. There were news that the Invaders had been sacked from our towns and the other towns they took over and some of the folks that left started going back to take over their lives. They had seen the light bulbs, the tarred roads and they were going to do the same back at home. At the time, I was heading to the city, my parents were planning to go back. A long time had passed and they wanted to go home. They believed in those that went back before them.”

I was nearing the end of my story. I looked at the young faces and it struck me that they were the end of my story. They, their parents and the lives they lived, the live they have made peace with was the end of my story. My heart was heavy as it usually got when I thought back to the walk, the long walk to freedom and those that were lost in the fight. They were so many of them, good men, brave women, enduring children. They had hope and fire but it was a disappointment that their legacy had been crystallized in the present blame. It has been years since the Walk and the departure of the Invaders yet not much had changed since. The light bulbs have since gone extinct, they have become relics in the museums of those that met them and everyone uses grinding stones again.

“What happened next?” Amadi asked.

What happened next?

Those days passed away, as days do and sometimes, when I am back from a hectic day at work, I remember the Old stories and I wonder if Okwata was a real place. They had called her mad and she had hated grinding stones. Amadi asked again, what happened next.

“Those days were better days, we were no longer slaves but we came back and met another form of slavery. The masters this time, were those that spoke of freedom.”

I should end my story now but I was not sure there was any end insight anywhere; not to their misery, neither to my stories or as long as what should be is not, words will not cease from my lips. Suddenly, I had no desire for food. My thoughts were haunted and heavy. I wanted silence and yet, I wanted to speak for words were running far and deep in my head. Whenever Adaeze complains to me how hectic standard of living is, I always reassure her it would be alright.

But I wonder to myself, “Would it ever be?”

It has been ages since the returnees came back; mother and father came back and with the others, they began to build our town back. They had seen freedom, held it and tasted it and they came back to show it to their people. After years of protest, violence, imprisonment and fight against the social and political injustice lashed out by the discriminatory system of the invaders, we had thought we got it all now, all figured out. It felt bigger. Much more bigger than what we had. I mean this is the end of this freedom struggle. We could vote now, have our own people be in charge, literally do what we want and even decide what should and should not be written as laws.

Then suddenly, our leaders and brothers from the headquarters came and made promises, so we ceased our labor and in our naïve trusts, handed our futures to them. There were saboteurs.

In the end, like the Pigs in Animal Farm, they pretended not to be part of us anymore, they exploited what we had, and our hopes, our fears. Everything went askew.

So sometimes I think, what is left? I thought this was it. Maybe the question is why didn’t it get better?. Some of the most promising young men and women that we all grew up together are bitter with what is happening now. I thought about Amadi. In the university, he and some of his colleagues built a prototype of a next generation aircraft and after he graduated, he was whisked off by a company abroad.

So the question remains, what went wrong?

“This is the question I always ask myself and this is the question we should ask ourselves.”

She looked up at the crowd, of so many young people, their eyes as eager as she imagined Amadi could have been in grandma’s verandah, or as hers could have been when her father told her those stories. The days of her old, ranting grandmother was long gone. But her father’s day was still present with them; days when we all we have is HOPE. Hope for a better future.

“So, what is the future?”

Hope surged in Lady Latifah as she finished her reading and prepared to say her final words.
“My grandma started the story and told my father who told me as I have read to you tonight. When the rest have gone home or retired for the night, my father would sit and listen to her for on nights like those, she was burdened with words. I imagine in those early days that the hope of our future must have been tightened around the neck of the returnees, that maybe they failed because so much was expected of them but today, as I look up at all of you, I have cause to change that view. The future of our future, lies in you all. The past may have failed but that does not mean we will fail as well.”

You are a lucky generation. The hard part of this freedom struggle has already been done. Nobody needs to go to prison like Nelson Mandela or get shot like Martin Luther King Jnr while opposing oppression. All you need to do is to raise your consciousness and start “THINKING!!”.

You need to question our values and traditions and think of ways to reform them. Maybe that's why we are such a divided people.

You need to question and rethink our systems and institutions. We don’t have to force ourselves to fit into the western default. Maybe that's why they are not working because we are not western, we are not whites, we are WE!.

You have to question the world and try to naturally understand how it works. The scientific quest of splitting the atom, discovering galaxies and introspecting the biological fossil progenitor of life is not a western destiny. Maybe that's why we have not technologically advanced much, no matter how much we try to produce.

You have to think!
You have to ask BIG questions!
You have to plan!
You have to execute smart plans!
We do not need more free dom, we need more free thinking, more far thinking.
We have to totally be in charge of our technological and economic destiny!

A time is coming, indeed, we stand in it when from this shore, hope shall rise once more for the world, when the black nation will no longer be mocked for disease, starvation and war. But for science, technology, innovations and hope for the entire world.”
The people were stirred, as stirred as I was. They began to chant the title of my book, “We will Rise,” “We will Rise.”
“Yes, let’s shout it together,”
“WE WILL RISE!”






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