Wreath of the Dark Days: The Dark Days Series

By Ken Okonkwo

The raging fury of the Nigerian Civil War dubbed the Biafran war mellowed over time but dastardly acts resonated across the war zones as time effluxed. Grief and mourning replaced the afore felt anger and hatred while painful reminiscences saw wreaths being laid in honor of departed comrades. Some were of flowers, others were of blood, flesh, bo

• Language: English
• Publisher: URLink Print & Media, LLC
• Release date: Jul 3, 2019
• ISBN: 9781643674629

Ken Okonkwo

Chuka Ken Okonkwo was born in Warri, Delta State and hails from Obosi in Anambra State, Nigeria. His father was a police man and being subject to frequent transfers, they traversed the southern parts of Nigeria until after the civil war. This enabled him to pick up some of the multiple languages spoken and experience the various cultures first-hand. He went through school and chose the banking career, working for about fifteen years for one of the most prominent banks in the country as an inspector, before branching off into the private sector and establishing one of the longest lasting Finance companies in the eastern part of Nigeria. Chuka was at the helm of affairs of his Finance Company for about 20 years before retiring, but continues to serve on the board. He was always introspective and communicated better in writing, and thus developed the habits of writing out his thoughts, imaginations and stories. Recalling facts of the civil war, Chuka birthed ' the dark days series'- historical fiction reminiscent of the war in Nigeria. In 2007, He produced a short non-fiction narrative titled 'second chance'. The Fictional trilogy titled 'Biafrana 1, 2 & 3' followed in succeeding years, depicting post-civil war Nigeria. Chuka is happily married to his heartthrob and blessed with four children. He presently resides in New York and spends the majority of his time involved in his various charities, with his grandchildren and writing to his heart's content.

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Wreath of the Dark Days

Copyright © 2019 by Ken Okonkwo. All rights reserved.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any way by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording or otherwise without the prior permission of the author except as provided by USA copyright law.

This novel is a work of fiction. Names, descriptions, entities, and incidents included in the story are products of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, events, and entities is entirely coincidental.

The opinions expressed by the author are not necessarily those of URLink Print and Media.

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Published in the United States of America

ISBN 978-1-64367-463-6 (Paperback)

ISBN 978-1-64367-462-9 (Digital)

10.05.19

LET HIM BEWARE WHO READS, THE LURE FOR CONQUEST, IS INEVITABLY ALLOYED WITH PHYRRIC GALL.

AUTHOR’S NOTE TO THE READER

I have no pretensions to being intellectual, a historian either civil or military, a moral crusader, or a great writer. I humbly lay claim to being a storyteller albeit inept at the art. My stories are born of facts woven into humorous sequence and embellished with wild imaginations. I am optimistic that not counting the good laughs, some good shall result from this work of fiction laced with background facts.

Any resemblance or similarity to names of anything, event, place, group, organization, entity or persons existing, past, living or dead is highly regretted. My thanks go to Rod Anyamene of Valdez Publishers [NY] for his sympathetic work of editing and criticism.

Especial thanks go to General Yakubu Gowon whose large soldierly heart had ample space for magnanimity and for his famous three R’s [Reconciliation, Rehabilitation and Reconstruction]. Thank you, sir. I love you. Finally, I say many thanks to you my dear reader for joining me in the laughter I had during the arduous labor of delivering this work from my imagination.

KEN OKONKWO

DEDICATION

THE BOOK ‘WREATH OF THE DARK DAYS’ IS DEDICATED TO ORPHANS AND THE SUPERANNUATED. PART OF THE REVENUE ACCRUING FROM THIS BOOK GOES TO AMELIORATING THEIR SAD SITUATION THROUGH THE ‘KINDNESS UNHINDERED ORGANIZATION.’

KEN OKONKWO

Contents

PROLOGUE

Chapter 1: TWILIGHT

Chapter 2: A DECADE LATER

Chapter 3: ZUBEE

Chapter 4: FREDDIE

Chapter 5: THE SEMINARY MIX

Chapter 6: OPERATION HIROSHIMA

Chapter 7: THE FIGHT

Chapter 8: SPEECHES AND SERMONS

Chapter 9: A TRIAL WILL CONVINCE YOU!

Chapter 10: THE LADIES GROUP

Chapter 11: HIROSHIMA

Chapter 12: CONVALESCENT CAMP

Chapter 13: FOUR FOR ZERO FOUR

Chapter 14: FINALE

EPILOGUE

GLOSSARY

PROLOGUE

The world loves a winner.

I muttered quietly while pretending to study an unusually bright star, but fighting to blank out my ears to the sound of the mournful heart-rending cries of the motherless baby inmates of the home. I would rather call the place an orphanage.

Why do you say that often? Can you prove it? asked my cynical friend Agwu.

I looked at him in surprise because I did not suspect that with the noise, anyone would have heard me. ‘Noise’ in the sense that three, out the fifteen of us sitting around four tables quaffing ice-cold beer, were not contributing much. The other twelve were sweating profusely despite the chilly weather, in their bid to excel in the onerous task of arresting and detaining for keeps, my friendship and financial loyalty. All the others, except Ofere smiled conciliatorily while Agwu furrowed his brows, his thinning hair giving the impression of a wizened look.

Listen and tell me what else you can hear I requested of Agwu.

The cries kept wafting through the hilarious laughter, tales of womanizing, smart business operations and politics. Without doubt, all the tales were lies sparsely spiced with half-truths. Agwu listened by angling his head, emptying the bottle of beer into his glass and draining it.

I can hear nothing, but I sense it will soon rain said Agwu.

Your sense of hearing is not as sharp as mine otherwise you would have heard the movement of the rain clouds which I hear so clearly.

He paused long enough to uncap another bottle of beer and said:

One thing though is obvious, you are great. You should know that as body grows on food and drinks, so does the mind grow on information and the spirit by giving. You are great Agwu intoned.

Our drinking partners, most of them customers to my bank, acquiesced loudly. Ofere shook his head and drank from his glass. Agwu continued:

I can tell you now, and quickly too, that you are going to be the next General Manager of your Bank.

Agwu raised his forefinger to the sky and the table reverberated, pinning down the prayer as if already confirmed by the deities.

I could stand it no longer and hastily delivered a vote of thanks, weakly promising that the party, with exactly the same participants, will be re-enacted within a week. Except for Ofere and I, who chose to hurry away from the odious atmosphere, and the heart-rending cries of the orphans, the others left rather reluctantly. They were not sure that the ‘game’ was trapped. Ofere went home to his ‘mourning’ wife. He was my colleague but had lost his job. I went back to the sanctuary of my hotel room with my friend Agwu trailing faithfully behind.

I was transferred recently to manage a branch of the bank I worked for in Onitsha. The cries of the children seemed to follow us as we left the ‘Agbakoba Park’ named after the retired Judge of the State High Court, designed and donated to the community by the Lions’ Club. I thought of the wisdom in citing the park directly behind the ‘Motherless Babies Home’. It was sure to make carousers stop and think of the plight of these unfortunate children, conscience stricken, they would imbibe less and keep some left over to offer for charity. On second thoughts I wondered if the learned Judge would ever know that this ploy only enjoyed partial success. If, like I surmised, of the fifteen of us that partook of the nights’ carousal, only two got the message, then it would appear that the good learned judge did not come close to his expectations. However, some good was done all the same. Before I drifted off to sleep, I heard my friend’s voice repeating like a cracked record.

Why? Great Ken why?

He often tells me though, that the reason why he keeps repeating himself is because he is history personified.

Early the next morning, as I was getting ready to leave for work, Agwu while brushing his teeth started asking ‘Why?’ all over again. I brusquely ordered him to change his tone, pointing out that monotony kills interest. He replied that I was unique, and that from the time I mumbled my remark about ‘winners’ tears did not cease flowing from my eyes. He thought it rather disgraceful that ‘great’ men like me should cry when drunk. I forgave him because he did not know the depth of my sorrow. He had no knowledge of the various disjointed happenings that were tearing my soul apart. He could not fathom the spectacle I beheld earlier:

‘An eighty-year old man, a retired engine driver of the Nigerian Railways, holding onto a thin walking stick was standing beside the tarred road that snakes between the Prison Yard, Mission Hospital, Ose market, Union Bank into Bright Street and the Niger River, was scanning the far off bush islands dotting the river, result of the dams up north, and looking for the remains of a son.’

My friend Agwu did not know the man. How was he to know that this man ever had wives and sons? He was not to know that this man now had a family of only one? He did not see the man. How could he, when the cries of destitute children so close to him had eluded him? As the tears came flooding again I hurried off to work. I swore I was going to find Freddie’s son, legitimate or not, a son would help octogenarian Hezekiah Olingo have a family of two. Five minutes later, driving distractedly at top speed with the hope of burying my sorrows in the quagmire of man’s financial problems, I got held up in a traffic jam. The confusion at the road junction was so much that even pedestrians, not to mention cyclists, were locked tight. The traffic wardens eyed the men from the shelter of a cafeteria. They uttered a stream of profanities to one another. Irate drivers swore oaths of great profanities to one another.

I remembered my earlier oath and smiled. I had in my brief existence, a catalogue of unfulfilled oaths, but this time, the futility of escaping an oath was apparent. I must find Freddie’s son and tell the story as Bosah Ike told me on the Christmas Eve of 1987.

CHAPTER ONE

TWILIGHT

Once upon a most unhealthy time there was a sparsely populated land area that only on rare occasions suffered the indignity of being threaded by the feet of human beings. The swamps and forests in pious collaboration with the beasts, were the main occupants of this land, and needed no deterrence to maintain their territorial integrity. The most daring of brave hunters showed the wisdom that made them brave by not remembering this particular area. Once or twice in a generation, the urge to excel and remain in the mythical annals of future generations drove some unusually strong and agile youths insane, and a hunt in the area would be hazarded.

There is not much need to say that but for the one or two survivors, these insane brave hunters took up permanent residence in the intestines and sinews of either the beasts or the numerous species of giant reptiles that abound there. The rare occasional returnee on his sick couch beside the fire, while regretting some lost limb, and nursing a badly emaciated frame, would often tell tales of the great hunt and unimaginable bravery. However, in his delirious moments, the distance covered would be much shorter, and it will all turn into an intended hunt, which was aborted by the brutal attack of a weird beast. Mournful moans that bespoke regrets were never heard when the area was attacked. The sounds that assailed the ears shortly after the departure of such insane hunters were blood cuddling, short-lived screams, mingled with gurgling snarls.

The Ibo’s, kin of the Hebrews, as claimed by some local sociologists had long since lost interest in this land area. The Portuguese with their spirit of adventure and unholy alertness for trade opportunities arrived at this area north of the Ethiope,but fell back from there to the less attractive areas south of the Niger, on the West coast of Africa. The British came up the Niger and despite their losses, conquered the area. The beasts retreated to higher grounds and denser forests. The ubiquitous insects took over. This proved worse, for the sudden death by laceration under the fangs and claws of beasts and reptiles meant a short period of suffering, not so the slow death baptized Malaria. This was characterized by cold, shivering, loss of appetite, emaciation, memory loss, weak eyes, incoherence, disjointed and uncoordinated actions, inaction and finally a revolt by the heart, which bespoke of a long drawn out torment. The British withdrew licking their wounds fortuitously. Soon however, they were back, blazing a trail with their guns and machetes. They sought out the inhabitants. Apathy at first made communication difficult and near impossible. However, higher ground proved less lethal and survival was for longer periods. This bad area of sickness and death was later conquered, but the area now had a name bastardized from the Igbo word ‘Aniocha’ meaning ‘White Land’. The Ibos saw the whites emerging from this land area to trade with them and believed it was their land, furthermore that only they alone could survive there. The white man’s accent twisted ‘Aniocha’ into ‘Onitsha’ and the town Onitsha was born. Slowly, painfully and with loads of caution, which did not avert all the skirmishes, at snails pace, trails were blazed into the hinterland.

CHAPTER TWO

A DECADE LATER

About five kilometers from Ose on the outskirts of Onitsha, stands the seminary. In front of the seminary is the highway that leads to towns like Nkpor, Obosi,