The Land We Leave Behind

By Akufor I. Aneneba

THE LAND WE LEAVE BEHIND… is the story of one man’s conviction that his civilization, which was once decimated by the effects of the slave trade, is being threatened again. This time, not only from the moral authority of a radical Roman Catholic priest, but from the conflicting views of his own son’s dithering with the very basic tenets of an upbringing he grew up embracing. Torn between his newfound love in a woman he meets in America, and his father’s dream of him becoming the beholder and guardian of what remains of their civilization, the son treads carefully into the unsettling embrace of his father’s closest confidante – his own mother – to entreat himself into something that resonates with his passion, while still honoring the dictates of his culture and his father’s wishes. Johnathan’s journey will take him from the grass fields of Tchou and the urban sophistication of North America, to the Jungles of the Amazon, where he will make a stunning discovery of epic proportions. Using the science of onomatology, he discovers that Brazil’s leading scientist, who is also likely to be one of two brothers boarded onto a slave ship for the New World, is actually from a small kingdom in the tropical rainforest of the Cameroons. There is another twist in this saga, because a slave who successfully staged the first nonviolent escape from the Southern cotton fields of North America, and adopted the name David, as a free man, may indeed be of the same lineal descent with the scientist in the Amazon. This book, also extrapolates the biblical significance of the mythos of the Trinity; and how it was used by the slaves to escape into freedom’s reach. Please take the copy you are holding with you; fleece through it, to immerse yourself into the sating wrinkles of this timeless chronicle, which is a blending of fiction with actual real life events.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Page Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Jul 11, 2017
• ISBN: 9781635682755

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The

Land

We Leave Behind

Akufor I. Aneneba

Copyright © 2017 Akufor Innocent Aneneba

All rights reserved

First Edition

PAGE PUBLISHING, INC.

New York, NY

First originally published by Page Publishing, Inc. 2017

ISBN 978-1-63568-274-8 (Paperback)

ISBN 978-1-63568-275-5 (Digital)

Printed in the United States of America

This book is dedicated to the loving memory of my late mother, Theresia Mangwi-ndoh, and my late father, Michael Akufor—a great mentor indeed. To you mother, especially, for believing in me. First, when I was told by my primary school teacher to no longer bring a rectangular piece of carved wood to school to write on, because I had perfected my writing skills; you untied the handkerchief that was tucked to your waist, and happily paid for my first notebook and pencil—for 25 francs CFA, and then; for seeing me through the O Levels…it seems like just yesterday. Thank you very much.

To my loving, caring, and dear wife, Grace, for all that you mean to me. Thank you. You are my better-half. To our beautiful and wonderful children, Mangwi, Mafor, Aneneba Jr., and Bongnui; you are my rock and inspiration; and you all make me whole. I just can’t imagine life without you all.

Many thanks to all my siblings, and Manyi Fonso Celine, whose varying positions in my life helped to shape who I aspire to be. To my late brother—Joe, I love you very much, and appreciate all the help you gave me. You left us too soon…you will forever be missed.

My sincere thanks go to you, Mary Ngwe Ngu, for the level of dedication you expressed in seeing this work come to fruition. Your tireless and unbending knack in piecing and stitching the lines could only be done by someone like you; with an in-depth knowledge of our culture and history. May the good God bless every strand of effort in your daily grinds.

PART I

EPILOGUE

As we settle into what may be the doldrums of our lives, there is this searing, and sometimes nagging feeling that still keeps the spirit of pursuit in us alive, and we are somehow torn between accepting what our life has come to be and what we thought it ought to be. We are sometimes cornered into an incessant loop where we keep pondering whether we had it right. In that moment of quiet reflection and soul-searching, we are guided not only by the compass of truth but by what the wind of change has made of our life’s vicissitudes. It’s a nascent feeling when you indeed probe the past and are somehow gratified, albeit with subjective conceit, that you mustered every muscle, and gave it your best. Whether it was during a cataclysmic or a subtle and quiet time, we pore into the past to better calibrate and justify what has become of our life’s journey. A pronged approach to life’s changing vagaries is a testament to how the human mind, in a constant quest for gratification, waddles into different and far-reaching horizons in search of perfection. And in the midst of waltzing to the dictates of our own inner calling, we sometimes lose the ability to acknowledge the fact that we may have trampled on someone else’s hard-earned fortunes. And some of the times, inadvertently, because the embryonic purpose of our very own desire to succeed does cast a blind spot, we are unable to perceive the far-reaching consequences of both our actions and inactions.

We have been schooled into believing as true the different historical superlatives, where nations, civilizations, and cultures, in a ceaseless quest for dominance, have triggered machinations whose only clear path to progression and achievement is destruction, power, and servitude at its most convenience. And when the calm trails these tumultuous moments, we are hounded into tricking our minds to thinking that only by accepting the current mantra of palliative subservience as a settled and acceptable outcome of what triggered it in the first place, do we find a panacea for our deeds. The no pain, no gain philosophy of Robert Herrick tends to win the argument as a guarded acceptance of process. He insinuated in Hesperides that if little labor, little are our gains: Man’s fate is according to his pains.

However, the other school of thought that seeks a natural progression to acceptable standards may take a drag at this onerous mode of thinking. What a great feeling, but if you are in any way haunted by this agonizing feeling of imbalance, then the stalemate scripted by some of these slants of thinking will be unacceptable for human growth and advancement. Antoine de St. Exupery on his part said in Wind, Sand and Stars that, civilizations may, indeed, compete to bring forth new syntheses, but it is monstrous that they should devour one another.

We are creatures of a universe with bountiful potentials. With our egos in check, every single one of God’s children should never be cast into the fallow creed of penury. Just as the human body seamlessly functions as a unit, so too does our universe. Every portion of our solar system plays a special role in the upkeep of the whole universe. From the snowcaps of the North and South poles, to the tropical rainforest of Africa and the wilderness of the Amazon; from the rich oil fields and streaking sands of the deserts around the world, to the beautiful beaches and continental lakes; from the coral reefs adorning the sea beds to the air that sustains our lives; from the vast expanse of the Milky Way, to the boiling springs of Yellow Stone National Park in the US; from the coffee farms of Santa Coffee Estate to the sugarcane fields of Pernambuco, Paraiba and Bahia: these gifts of nature are enough to create a balance and cater for everyone’s yearnings without need for any human species to live in destitution. Learned coexistence becomes the settled modus by which humanity gets the best in this life. Neither does seemed imposition nor a formed debasement of one another, bear any traction in this ephemeral world we live in. Seeking harmony with the environment and with each other bypasses the subliminal virtues we pretend to adhere to. And in the end, we are judged not merely by what we did, but in reality, by what we lived and aspired for.

CHAPTER 1

Ihad just arrived back home for vacation, as the entire village was grappling with much celebration fever. As I always did, I made a brief shuttle around the neighborhood to chat with my friends. It was refreshing meeting them after such a hiatus; which to us was an eternity because of the paucity in communication.

We didn’t have the luxury of cell phone or e-mail technologies that abound today to reach out to one another while in college. An available mode of communication we frequently deployed was to relay messages by word of mouth, if one was fortunate enough to meet a person from their area who was visiting, or one of their school mates was travelling back home for a weekend. This was extremely rare, in either case. And of course, the downside of this mode of communication was its unpredictability, because the intended recipient may never get the message in the first place. And even if they did, the context may be different because it was delivered with a slightly different overture.

A more commonly used method was the hand mail. This is where we all wrote letters, stuffed them in self-made envelopes and addressed them to their recipients. Anyone travelling back home would role as a mail carrier, and deliver them for us. Although this was somehow cheaper, it was also very insecure because some of the mail arrived already opened and its contents snooped at, and some just never got delivered.

And that left us with our most secure means of communication, the postal or snail mail. But one needed the money for a postage stamp or to live close enough to a post office to make use of this technique.

So it is really exciting on this first day to catch a glimpse of old friends and share some chats together, and continue where we last left off.

What I noticed in each of my friend’s compounds that I visited was not only the level of preparation, but also the amount of enthusiasm surrounding the upcoming celebration. You could see each of their father’s faces soaked wet and glistening in sweat as they dusted and oiled their Dane guns. Each one of them was getting ready for the great celebration. They would roll a piece of cloth and shove it into the gun’s barrel to dislodge any remnants of dust and soot that may still be lingering therein since its last use. After making sure the gun’s firing chamber was devoid of any rust and ready to be tested for deployment, they would move the trigger to its firing position and pull it to make sure it snaps. This would be repeated a couple of times without any gunpowder, depending on the type of rifle; in order to mitigate the possibility of the gun jamming when the moment came. They would then coarsen the frizzen a little to guarantee a full blown spark on impact. Those with muzzle loading flintlock rifles would then make sure that the flint was screwed tight to the cock; and those with a hammer for contact would place a flint cap on the eye and test it. They would then load the butt with extra flints as backup before stowing their weapon.

Everyone that I met was nervously grappling to contain their anxiety as the day slated for the celebration of the life and death of Fon Nuka was fast approaching. Fon is the traditional title of the ruler of a clan, and this late Fon was the head of the Nuka clan. Whether this great event would be reflective of the man whose life the entire kingdom was preparing to celebrate was already a foregone conclusion.

He had unflinchingly ruled his people through prosperous times and through very difficult ones. He was well loved by his people, especially after fending off a brutal war launched against the people of Tchou by their neighbor to the west: the battle-ready and tested Tchomba clan. Fleeing from persecution in the Eastern part of Nigeria because of its juju and cultish practices, the warmongering Tchombans had fought and captured land spanning from Widikum, all the way to Bali and Ngembaland. This helped solidify their position as a great military power. The most recently defeated adversaries of the Tchombans were also unsettled neighbors of the Tchousee, and the optics were not looking good for the people of the Nuka clan. The Tchombans, with unmatched fighting skills and an arsenal of sophisticated weaponry, was a force that was constantly on the radar of the Tchousees, and that placed them on a constant state of alert because this unscrupulous foe was capable of sinking their army. The Ngembas, who everyone thought were well prepared for battle against the advancing Tchomba army, were dealt a heavy blow in the crucial Battle of Lake Mborowi. This resounding and excruciating defeat of the Ngembas only heightened the state of nervousness in Nuka land, whose army was almost defeated by the Ngembas, if not for a truce brokered by the Council of Notables from a neighboring kingdom sympathetic to the plight of the Nuka clan.

Known for their puffed-up proclivities, the Ngembas, rather than take this blow and retreat in quietude, blamed their loss not on the almost invincible battle tactics of the Tchomba warriors, but on their use of cultic practices on the battlefield. As they retreated to their bases after ceding captured territory to the warring Tchomba people, and hoping to fight another day, the Tchomban’s were preparing for another battle against a foe they were very certain to easily crush.

Fresh from victory, and tall in fighting mode, the Tchomba leader decided it was time to attack the kingdom of Tchou. His war emissary was dispatched to warn Fon Nuka of the impending invasion. This unconventional manner of forewarning your enemy was both a sign of intimidation and a show of superiority. This war tactic of trussing your enemy to cower into a retreat or cede territory without putting up a fight had been used by other regional powers; and sometimes it worked to achieve its intended purpose. But to Fon Nuka, this was not just an enemy he was prepared to fight; it was one he was very willing to fight to death for the sake of his people.

Faced with this challenge that may take a whack on his reputation, he summoned his top military brass and the locals schooled in traditional war science to fashion out a modus operandi on how to tackle this advancing foe.

After days of meetings, the Fon’s war planners decided to forge an uneasy alliance with the recently defeated Ngemba clan. From its military commandos, they learnt the various tactics used by the Tchomba warriors. They had to deploy every means available to break and ultimately defeat the battlefield invincibility of this raging adversary. Some paid elite fighters of the Ngemba legion were enlisted both in the preparatory and in the later fighting phase of the war. Their counter insurgency techniques and knowledge of the enemy’s battlefield tactics, was a dearth Fon Nuka wished to accomplish from this pact.

With this added stealth as part of its fighting force, the Fon was buoying in confidence, something he had been a little short of just a couple of weeks ago. So, rather than send an emissary in response to the threat from the Tchomban leader, he launched a full-scale offensive assault against this formidable army from the breakaway eastern part of Nigeria. The battles were very bloody, as casualties were mounting on both sides. When the Tchombans realized they were fighting against a well-equipped army with arduous prowess, they upped their operations and resorted to a more sophisticated fighting format using newly designed spears with poisoned heads.

Specially trained snipers of an elite legion of the Tchousee army recounted stories of how difficult or near impossible it was to kill or capture a Tchomban warrior. According to these fighters, when they took aim at a Tchomban warrior on the battle field with their weapon, the latter would transform itself into five different images of the same soldier. And in that fuzzy state, the advancing fighter became dazed as to which of them was the real enemy soldier. This image-splitting technology, unheard of in modern warfare, was now being deployed on the battlefield for the very first time in human history.

With a well-structured code of superiority from the foe, the frustration was layering on the people of Tchou. Although the war was proving very costly and wringing not only the finances and morale of the Tchousee citizenry, it was also a rallying call for them to stand firm behind their leader. And the one thing that remained unshaken was their steadfast backing of this great leader who was fighting an uncontrolled adversary.

The visual effects of this image splitting tactic not only confused the Tchousee snippers, but gave the opponent a tactical advantage to reposition and take aim at them. These stories have been corroborated using enhanced interrogation techniques on captives during this long and costly war. The captured prisoners of war, though valuable in terms of the information they provided, were still unable to provide information on how to concoct an antidote to the poison that was coated on the Tchombans’ spears; which was another rung on its already deadly arsenal.

With such a valuable trove of information, the Fon summoned all members of the Council of Supreme Military Commandos to work out a new front. At the helm of that council was the fearless Ndaah-Mukong a.k.a. The Wasp. Or Manawa, the Tchousee name for a wasp. They spent the next seven weeks fashioning an agent and getting it ready for deployment on the battlefield. When blended with their weapons, this new agent not only made the Tchousee soldier invisible to the approaching enemy, it was also capable of jamming the guns and spears used by the enemy fighter. The newly designed spear heads also had the potency of changing its trajectory in midair to avoid any counter launch, but still strike its intended target with precision. Equipped with the new and unparalleled sophistication of stealth and firepower, the supreme commander of the Fon’s army launched a formidable new assault on the Tchomba fighters. With such a blend of ferocity and superiority, Fon Nuka was able to turn a war they were almost losing to the Tchombans into a resounding victory. After the war, Ndaah-Mukong with his newly won accolades was the most decorated fighter in the history of the Tchousees. With this victory the Fon was now, not only a regional super power with high recognition, but equally commanded a lot of reverence from his people. He then presided over a relatively prosperous and calm administration until his passing. In the