A few weeks back I regaled you with an account of the relatively privileged lifestyle my folks and I lived in Ikoyi, Lagos – before the Nigerian civil war in 1966. I was going to contrast that with the turbulent but somewhat exciting life the civil war thrust us into, but my cancer diagnosis-inspired trip down memory lane was rudely interrupted by a Boko Haram “ambush.” So I suspended my nostalgic excursions and joined the rest of the world in addressing the cancer that is Boko Haram – eating away the core of our nation’s soul. I have made other detours but I long to share with you the joys of revisiting my past – and reflecting on the good, the bad, the ugly.
Emeka Odumegwu Ojukwu, inspecting Biafran soldiers during the Nigerian civil war
After the killings started, my folks and I often sought refuge in the home of our American church minister while we still lived in Lagos. My father must have had a hard time deciding what to do to keep his family safe and looking back I can see that things could have gone awry. He hired a driver to drive my two sisters and I to Enugu and he stayed back for a while. From Enugu we moved to Port Harcourt and then back to Enugu again. And from Enugu we fled to the joyful embrace of our hometown and from there to countless other refugee spots sometimes spending only a night before the sound of enemy fire forced us to flee.
The flight from Lagos – the first of many we would undertake – went relatively smoothly. At six years old, my only problem was deciding what toys to take because my father put a strict limit on what we could take. My doll just had to go with me but – but I could not take her sewing kit and other paraphernalia.
Back in the East, my father kept us in the same kind of school we were attending in Lagos – Saint Saviours, Ikoyi. We attended All Saints, Enugu and Saint Nicholas, Port Harcourt. But soon all that exclusive schooling came to an abrupt end. The entire school system in the East shut down and we were thrust into the school of hard knocks – deadly air raids, starvation, treks on foot, homelessness and sleeping in the bush.
After the school system shut down, my mother (like many other private citizens) stepped up and opened a home school. She had been a high school teacher before going to the university. She earned income for the family from the school and thanks to her enterprising spirit my siblings and I and our home school mates did not fall far behind in our education. We, the lucky ones, were able to keep up with our counterparts in the safe parts of Nigeria and the transition to federal secondary schools was relatively smooth for us. Many others, including my mother, lost valuable years of education. Many others lost a lot more.
My mother who had been attending the University of Nigeria, Nsukka at the outbreak of the civil war had to start her studies afresh at the university at the end of the war. But she did not lose any of her children. I heard of mothers throwing some of their children away when they could no longer bear them on their heads in baskets.
The war years were not all that traumatic for some of us. Actually, some of us say they were the happiest years of our lives. Ignorance (and innocence) was indeed blissful. Our parents did the worrying. The air raids were indeed scary, we dived under our desks in our home school but after it was over we continued with our lives, a little shaken but not traumatised.
For me and many of my friends and relatives, the best of those happy civil war years were the ones we spent in our hometown. Like many Easterners, we discovered that our hometown was the only place we felt safe and rooted.
Can you imagine the thrill of discovering village life – a life dramatically different from what we lived in Ikoyi, Lagos. I say to friends that my siblings and I would probably have been disconnected from our Nigerian and ethnic heritage if not for the civil war. Sometimes, I think: What were my parents thinking, enrolling us at those exclusive Whites dominated schools. But I must admit they served some purpose and I am thankful for the early exposure to folks from other cultures. Maybe that is why I am comfortable among people of different races.
Nevertheless, I implore my siblings and friends to ensure their children become steeped in some part of Nigerian ethnic culture. Those parents who take pride in their children’s inability to speak any Nigerian language puzzle me. When those children come to American colleges they discover they have little or nothing to contribute to the rich cultural tapestry others around them are weaving.
It is child abuse not to raise Nigerian-culture literate children fluent in at least one Nigerian language.