World Hunger

By Gerald J.A. Nwankwo

World Hunger is one mans hunger which precipitates a world hunger. The hunger for freedom in World Hunger, though individual and isolated, is universal. It is a hunger to go to The United States, understand its peoples and culture, and to eventually become one among the Free and the Proud. It is a dormant dream which is ignited by the Nigerian Military oppression and marginalization of the humanity of the Igbo tribe after the Civil War, commonly known as the Biafran War. It was a dream that nothing but the Statue of Liberty could satisfy. Once aflame, that dream became an excruciating hunger. Neither the laws of London and the British Customs officers nor the New York Immigration officers could stop the roaring flame in the author; he was bent on meeting face to face with the renowned Statue of Liberty. Reading World Hunger is like reading a Catechism of Social Questions; it places God at the center of every endeavor and every hardship, including but not limited to His readiness to follow His own creation as a guide in prison; it is a recreation of Gods eminent presence in His creation.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Dec 14, 2011
• ISBN: 9781463438197

Gerald J.A. Nwankwo

I was born on November 19, 1939. I started school too late in 1948 because Kaka, my father, didn’t want me to go to school; he had a better thing for me than sending me to school. But Mamma D’Obidi, my mother, was relentless in her endeavor to see me in school. When I did go, she didn’t stop there. She and the headmaster, Donatus Nwoga contrived for me to teach the kindergarten class in 1955, immediately after my Elementary school in 1954. And because of her vision, instead of going to the regular secondary school like my siblings and friends, I attended a teacher training high school, the Premier Holy Ghost College, Umuahia, Nigeria for my Higher Elementary Certificate. I graduated in 1962, and taught school for five years before the Civil War broke out. I joined the Biafran Army as Second Lieutenant officer on March 11, 1968, fought at the notorious Calabar Sector, where I dueled with Benjamin Adekunle’s Third Marine Commando but was captured and detained in Kirikiri Maximum Security Prisons. I returned home on March 11, 1970 and was dubbed a ghost. Ghost or no ghost, I went back to teaching; ever since, I have gone into the classroom with a feeling of doing my mother’s job, and I do it with my whole heart in celebration of her vision.

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Contents

DEDICATION

REFLECTIONS

BOOK ONE

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

BOOK TWO

CHAPTER FIVE

BOOK THREE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

BOOK FOUR

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

BOOK FIVE

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

CHAPTER NINETEEN

CHAPTER TWENTY

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

BOOK SIX

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

BOOK SEVEN

CHAPTER THIRTY

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

AFTERWORD

POETRY

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DEDICATION

This maiden book is dedicated to my guardian angels:

The leading angel

Sent from heaven

To bear and nourish my path,

My dear mother,

Mama Obidiya (D’Obidi),

Whose job I still do in the classroom.

And to

The Assisting Angel,

Who looked through my faults

And saw my need,

My dear father, Kaka,

Whose job I did

When I joined the Biafran army.

The Author

REFLECTIONS

My life isn’t a piece of sweet uvune fruit, nor is it a lobe of kola nut. It isn’t like an egusi soup decked with baby Norway-stockfish and Congo meat, nor is it like a bitter-leave soup devoid of mangala fish and succulent achara vegetables. Sometimes it’s a mixture of all that, a perfect blend of This and That, and I embrace it like an Ikot-Four palm wine, strong to the taste but soothing to the mind. And that makes it diffi cult for some people to really understand me because I react to any failure or success with the same equanimity; I do so, knowing that Almighty Chineke who ordains all events has a colorful brush that paints my path with changing hues, and whenever the hue is blurry, I still have the strength to smile at the Old Man’s shaky hand; after all, didn’t Mother Theresa tell us that God writes straight with crooked clay?

I really don’t know why I’m always hungry for something new even when I am down. Sometimes I wonder if it’s a factor of that unalloyed belief and trust in my Maker, or my birth, or better still, of my name. I strongly believe that Almighty Chineke doesn’t fail Himself; the Jesuit priests, who fashioned my early Christian sensibility, made me accept that He made humanity to His own image and promised to be with it always. That has always affected my behavior toward success and failure; I trust that since He is always near, He is going to throw me a lifebuoy.

Besides my belief in Chineke, a second factor that affects my behavior is my birth; it was a unique occurrence. I was born when the world was in a terrible insecurity and uncertainty; hunger and fear reigned supreme everywhere like heartless tyrants: in every country, every city, every village, every street, every household, and on every face. There was a constant fear of either dying of an unknown disease or Hitler’s Air Raids. Coupled with all that was the anxiety of bringing a baby into such a world where there was no dispensary or dispenser, no maternity home or midwife, no hospital or doctor. But Mama D’Obidi had to have me; she needed a second child in a family that was growing so fast that any woman in that family, who had any hope of coping with the internal pressures, had to show that she was a necessary and needed member.

Kaka, my father, was a great farmer and a venerable chief, and he needed as many farmhands as he could dream of, and not far from where he stood each morning and night to pour libation to his ancestors and pray to his maker, was his Chi, for his prayers were heard, so when things didn’t go very well with him, he knew that His Chi didn’t mean to punish him but to show him the other side of the day. He neither complained nor showed extreme distress. He succeeded in passing that trait to every one of his eighty-six children and made each one dream high. There’re only two ways, he echoed. You’ll either succeed or fail. So it’s foolhardy not to venture even the impossible when you’re halfway successful even before you ever started. All you need is a big heart that can shun failure, and your dream is halfway through; it’s all accomplished.

Mama D’Obidi was part of Kaka’s dream; she conceived me at a time she had calculated was the best of times; her delivery would be sometime in November or December, a very good time for a woman to have a baby; it would be during the tropical dry season when every woman in the neighborhood and beyond would travel any distance to visit her because there was no planting to do, no weather excuse to give, and no reason not to take some food to a relative or friend who just had a baby. A perfect time, she thought.

Though she didn’t go to school and couldn’t read the newspaper, she had a clear picture of Hitler in her mind because Kaka came in every evening with some news from King George V. King George was the British sovereign who ruled Nigeria at that time, and through his representatives in Nigeria, he put out daily bulletins about a mad man called Heeckla. Kaka’s stories about Heeckla turned Mama D’Obidi’s timing of her conception a miscalculation and therefore a daily concern. Heeckla was the word for every bad omen, including people, things, places, and even time. His name was on the lips of every British subject, and his red face was on every mind because King George did a good job in painting a Hitler who had a red face, a red outfit, and a red name; every British subject ingested that portrait.

Perhaps it was that fact that caused my Unique Entry, November 19, 1939. Mama D’Obidi, Kaka’s favorite wife and cook at the time, had gone out to the farm outside the compound for some Achara vegetables she needed for Kaka’s favorite tapioca pudding. Kaka liked his tapioca pudding decked with succulent Achara, and Mama D’Obidi was an expert in the art. She knew that Kaka would like it when he came in from court that day. He was a Paramount Warrant Chief (whatever that meant to King George, I didn’t and don’t even know). But he didn’t go to court that day to preside over other people’s cases; he went because he was a defendant. A year before, one of his best friends had secretly sent words to the Assistant District Officer (ADO) at Umuduru, Mbano that Kaka didn’t give an accurate account of the tax money he collected from his village, Umulogho, that year, and that was an allegation that the ADO didn’t want to hear about a chief of Kaka’s caliber; it was a scandal, a case King George treated like murder. The ADO wasted no time in summoning a Tribunal, and for nine months, Kaka had to appear before the Tribunal to exonerate himself.

Coincidentally, I was born on the last day of the nine-month-case. For some reason, Mama D’Obidi didn’t know what happened to her; she fell at the center of the largest compound in the world as she came in with the Achara she collected from the farm. And before anybody could help her, I hit the ground.

Unlike some of my siblings, who never made up their minds when they were born, I rushed out as if I was late for a date or something. There were stories of some of my siblings who kept their mothers in bed for hours before their birth; others took a day or two before they finally made up their minds to be born; not me; like a returning spacecraft, I simply banked to the left and to the right, balanced my head, and aligned my limbs and headed for the atmosphere, and before Mama D’Obidi knew what was going on, I was at her feet, looking at a bleak world engulfed by fear and hunger. That’s exactly like me; whenever I had a mind of doing a thing, I did it without much ado, regardless of how ill-prepared I might be.

When Kaka came home from court and was told of my unique entry into the world, he exclaimed in the most astonishing voice, "Anganante Ihe Ndi Uwa N’ekwu. No one knew what his exclamation had to do with my birth; however, four days later when I was presented to him for a name, he abridged that exclamation into Anganante," and today, I have it as Angante, and everyone in my family, neighborhood, and beyond abridged it further to An’te.

To Kaka, my name meant more than the ordinary could interpret. Although a strange name for a child, I lived up to every meaning of it; I never listened, never cared or minded whatever anyone said of me or to me; I never minded what the world was coming to; I just did whatever I had a mind of doing regardless of the assumed consequence. I even went beyond that; I always had a hunger for some unknown, an un-ventured course or land. As a child, I was restless, wanting one thing or another. As an adult, my hunger became more intimate and intense. It became a burning flame, especially when I realized that success is the grandchild of hunger because success is a constant hunger for a new position, a new height. It is the hunger to move from one fl at position to even the molehill ahead; from the molehill to the little hillock ahead; from the hillock to the ‘ugwu okuko’ or baby hill; from the ugwu okuko to the silhouette of the mountain ahead, and finally from the mountain silhouette to the mountain top where only a few braves venture; it is the hunger and ability to resist every force, including the blizzards of the cold night and the scorching heat of the blazing sun of the afternoon from dislodging you from that sacred height from where you can appreciate the problems and difficulties of those who are at the foot of the mountain; it is a constant hunger to make a commitment to encourage and help the lowly ascend the mountain top where there is abundant room for many who dare to take on the challenge. Success, therefore, is a daily hunger to see a new and better day than yesterday; it is life, and whenever there’s no more hunger, there’s no more life.

Perhaps that’s why I see nothing as impossible: not even joining the BiafranArmy after Enugu had fallen or when Biafran soldiers had been pushed back from the Midwest, a day after it was declared a Republic, or enlisting into the Biafran Officers School of Infantry (SOFI), a day after Major Ihemekwala from Amaogu, a neighboring village, was buried; not even going to America with only two hundred-ninety-one naira and seventy-nine kobo ($630) in my wallet, and there’s still a hunger spot in me whose fire is yet to die, and until it does, I’m going to entertain a serious hunger to move to the hillock ahead of me until Almighty Chineke finishes his work with me. All I know is that I’m still hungry for something new.

My Unique Entrance

I wasn’t born in a hospital; there was none.

I didn’t have a birth certificate; there was none.

My birth was unique; I made no pretense,

Didn’t even bother Mom with labor pain.

My friends enter the world at midnight or dawn;

I came in like a returning spaceship, made a turn,

Balanced my hands and legs, ready to land.

And since I had nothing to hide,

I dropped to the ground

In the afternoon in the center of the big compound.

Everybody witnessed and shouted and clapped,

And indeed, they all cried.

Ever since, I’ve been singular;

I’ve been unique.

BOOK ONE

An Invitation To A Heavenly Party

CHAPTER ONE

Home Coming

I returned home on December 31, 2007. My brother, Patrick Joseph (Paddy Joe) had died of heart failure, and his funeral ceremony, which started immediately after his death on November 29, 2007, would be consummated on January 4, 2008. I had to be there for the final rites. Everybody was expecting me, the man from the US, and I knew it. I was ready.

But I came into a family that had changed so much that I didn’t know who was who. There were too many buildings; some finished many years ago, some nearing completion, and others just taking off and up to the window level. There were water tanks behind some houses, and there were electric generators humming. I thought that I was in a locomotive warehouse, but it felt good to have electric light in a compound as large as mine, especially since the famous or infamous Nigerian Electric Power Authority (NEPA) would supply energy only if there was someone from the largest family in the universe who was ready and willing to give the NEPA employees at Achingali some bribe; oh no! it’s not called by that hideous name; it’s popularly known as "Oga do now-money, which was their popular way of christening bribery with an acceptable name, the big man’s gift."

All my brothers and sisters in the country were home with their children.

The compound was heaving with men and women, old and young; children and grand children. The Nwankwoness in the physical physiognomy of the grandchildren was my greatest headache, especially as they seemed to be of the same build, have the same voice, and almost the same gait. I couldn’t differentiate the boy I asked his name a minute ago from the one that was standing before me for the first time. The girls posed their own challenge. Their hair-do and dress taxed my memory and imagination to a zenith. I stopped asking their names because it made no difference if they told me a thousand times. I was unable to take stock and register effectively. The number was astronomical. So I gave up and took a seat in front of my brother, Paddy’s house where the young replicas of Chief Joseph Nwankwo Anowi Eligwe milled in and out to welcome their great uncle from the U.S. (It isn’t America; it’s the U.S.) As soon as I changed position or moved from one place to another, the children came up to me again as if they hadn’t seen me before.

Of course, they hadn’t seen me before that day. They were born maybe twelve or fifteen years ago, and during that time, I had gone home only once. Those who were born before my visit in 1995 were so small to remember who I was. This time, they couldn’t get enough of me; they had heard so much about me that they couldn’t believe that they were looking at the person everybody talked about as if he owned the family.

Indeed, there was a time I owned the family, and that was many, many years ago, when Kaka’s name alone ruled Umulogho, Obowu, and beyond. That was the time when anybody who wanted to avoid Kaka’s wrath would make certain that he was on my good side; otherwise, I would paint an ugly picture of him or her before Kaka, and the resultant consequence might be painful. I never cared about what anybody did or said to me because I would get even one way or the other because Kaka didn’t rule his family like any common man who asked for cause and effect, or like a court judge who needed witnesses to determine right or wrong. I was the prosecutor and Kaka was the attorney, the judge, and the executor, so any defendant who didn’t want the hard side of Kaka’s law had to avoid my accusation because while I wasn’t accurate some of those times, it didn’t matter because all Kaka asked for was the smooth running of a family that was larger than some villages.

He needed someone who would be his eye everywhere and every time, and that was when I became more invaluable than twenty surveillance cameras. When I left for America in 1974, I knew all my eighty-five brothers and sisters, (not of the same mother, though) and when I returned in August 1995, some of them weren’t able to come home from all over the country to see me. It was easy to identify the children of a few brothers and sisters who were home at that time. This time, everybody was home; only those who died since my last visit weren’t, but their children were, and because a family icon had chosen to go to his Maker during the Christmas season, a time when every family member had to return home for the yearly reunion, even those who could have given some excuses for being unable to come home had a stronger reason to be there.

CHAPTER TWO

Consummatum est

I have fought a good fight,

I have run the race,

I have kept the faith…

There is laid up for me

A crown of justice…

—2 Timothy 3: 14

The final day of Paddy Joe’s final rites went well. The esse music makers were marvelous. They created a scintillating mood, as if Umualibara, my Erima, was getting ready for a war campaign. They lived up to the Igbo adage, "A good Okwukwu ceremony is seen and felt from the sound of the esse on the preceding evening." The esse group came in at twelve midnight, January 3, 2008 to mark the beginning of a wonderful day, a day when the known world among my people would rally to pay their final homage to a respected, wonderful son of Chief Joseph Nwankwo Anowi Eligwe.

As soon as the esse tore through the silence of the approaching day, twenty-one sounds of the kurusu canon lit off and roared at a timed pace. The neighborhood was afoot; the twelve electric generators in the compound went to work, and the dull haze of the harmattan season dissipated, and before the first crow of the rooster, throngs of relatives and friends came to offer their services in every needed capacity. Shortly after, three more groups of music makers arrived and took their designated stands, rolled out their cables, and set up their instruments. It was the longest and busiest morning

I ever experienced. All the young men and women in the family took to their appointed chores; Ifeoma, (Omalicha), Paddy’s first daughter, led the way for a group of ten or more girls who went to the water tanks to draw water; watching them was like watching the storyteller of Akuko-gbara-afo. Akuko-gbara-afo is a story that lasted a year; it is about a mouse who discovered a silo full of palm nuts; he decided to carry all the palm nuts from the huge silo into his own little abode, and to demonstrate the going and coming of the mouse, the storyteller went up and down in a slow motion from one end to the other until he became excited of the mouse’s frantic journey to and from the silo, so he added a song to the movement: ya je vuru otu, y’eje taa. ya je vuru otu, y’eje taa. ya je vuru otu, y’eje taa.

That was what it looked like that morning as the girls went up and down from and to the water tanks—an endless movement. At the far end of the compound, at the bottom of Brother Dr. Abraham’s homestead, was Chisom, (D’Obidi-incarnate), Paddy’s second daughter who had just completed her degree work at Nsukka University; she led the group that swept the largest compound in the universe. They raised more dust than twenty trucks through the desert, but the smell of that early morning harmattan dust made me wish for my coffee pot in the U.S. There was no coffee maker at home; all they had was instant Nescafe, which they fixed in a kittle of hot water. It had a good taste but lacked the aroma that used to fill my house before I came downstairs for the coffee. Indeed, their coffee deserved its name, ‘Instant;’ it comes instantly without any prior sense of it. Ubaku, (Ngelenge), the third daughter still working on her degree at Nsukka University, led those who went to bring in the fire wood that was heaped about half a block away. Chiebuka, (Regal), Paddy’s third son and third child at Nsukka University, commanded the squad of grandsons who arranged the seats.

The professional catering group arrived in a big buggy van and began deploying their resources: pots, tripods, plates and utensils of sorts. It was pleasant to know that the catering superstar among them is one of my nieces, Juliana (Julie), Brother Chief Michael’s first daughter. (She was neither expensive nor cheap. Just for her services, I had to cough out two hundred and forty-five thousand naira.) Everyone said her price was conservative and reasonable.

I developed short nerves. I itched everywhere: my ears, my palm, fingers, even my underarms. I began to see doubles, and I robbed my eyes so much and so hard that rheumy gums formed at the sides. My voice was gone; I could hardly form audible words. Every word I uttered came out as a whisper as if I was afraid of some unknown gods. And indeed, I was; I had been sick in the U.S. for nearly ninety days before the news of Paddy’s passage, and I wasn’t fully recovered. I was really afraid I might be following him to the same Christmas party up there. While I tried not to exhibit a fearful emotion, my appetite was gone. And because this day was particularly singular among other days, I became singularly different, too. An elderly man from my mother’s home (the most versatile of all medicine men who knew how to use the herbs to cure any mysterious illness), noticed my awkwardness and walked away to the nearest bushes. When he came back, he concocted some drink for me. It will help you, he said. Reluctantly I sipped it. It had the pungency of alcohol but tasted bland. I mustered some courage and drank it. It worked. A warm sensation drifted through my system, and within twenty minutes I became calm, my voice came back, and I began once more to direct the order of events.

By six in the morning, the ambulance pulled up, and we went to Mercy Hospital to bring home my brother’s remains. A procession of about fifty cars followed. One group of the music makers came along to alert the neighborhood and distant travelers that a kin was leaving; the other music makers entertained the surging crowd at home. The parish priest, Reverend Nwachukwu, was waiting at the morgue. He blessed the corpse. I gave my brother a final touch on the forehead; it felt calm and peaceful but firm like a determined soldier in steel helmet at the battle front. Humbly, I signed what seemed like the book of life, turned around and looked at my brother’s first son, Osita-Di-Mma (Ossy),and I know he got my message; it will be his turn to sign off for me someday.

We drove past the village church and went home where the multitude had reached unimaginable number. A second round of Kurusu canons boomed. Twenty-one timed set. The music makers went frenzy and the multitude of mourners went crazy, shouting words of praise and dancing and clapping. Tears rolled down every eye like beads of Nkalari. The ambulance that conveyed the hearse did as instructed. It passed Paddy’s house, which was one of the houses at the entrance of the compound, and drove straight to Kaka’s tomb which stood at the center, where Kaka’s house used to be. I stepped up to the hearse. The music makers stopped. Everything came to a standstill. An eloquent silence descended from where God lives and surrounded the mourners who had come to see my brother off to the celestial party. Kaka’s statue on the tomb seemed to be looking and listening intently. Following the custom of my people, I raised my voice, saluted Kaka and showed him what I had brought home.

"Kaka, this is Ihueze, the twenty-fourth of your eighty-six children. He, too, has completed his journey here and is coming over for eternal rest. Before he came to the