by
Obododimma Oha
Technology is our side, supporting our inclination to remember, and mocking your inclination to delete our past and our reality. Is it the powerful images that the cameras of phones and other ubiquitous technological devices can produce? Is it the circulation of news that you can no longer control as you did when information technology was still in its infancy? My late father, as the vice chairman of civil defence corps in our town and a staunch believer in the struggle, had a walking stick bearing the emblem of the rising sun. I greatly admired how the artist carved this rising sun and spent a long time reflecting on the sun and its rays beautifully carved on the piece of wood. Whenever my father was getting ready for any local meeting and needed to use the walking stick, we, kids in the homestead, had to struggle, each to be the one to take the stick with the rising sun, to him. I always made sure I won in the struggle for the venerated stick. Indeed, on several occasions I would win and those who lost would cry their way back to the kitchens where their mothers would wipe their wet cheeks.
One day, we saw our father cutting the stick and burying it. We were very sad indeed. In fact, I kept a vigil over the grave of the stick with the rising sun after he had finished. He buried his pistol, too. We saw father's face and sadness was written boldly all over it. He told us that Nigerian soldiers had entered the town and that that they whisked off every adult male from any compound where any artform or anything that carried the symbol of Biafra was found. We understood that he needed to be safe but we were very sad for losing a great friend carved in wood!
A week later, we found a vent for our anger. A Nigerian plane was flying low and was dropping documents – Gowon’s end-of-war speech and other things. We roamed the bushes where the leaflets fell and tore them to pieces. I was particularly happy to do this, as a way of avenging my friend the rising sun carved in wood, now buried. I gave up my lunch, same for other children, and dutifully roamed the bushes to find the offending leaflets dropped by Gowon Onye Amu Ibi and to tear them. The children – even adults in the neighbourhood – were engaged on a kind of competition on who should be the most celebrated in tearing the Gowon leaflets.
In the late afternoon, we were done. The leaflets were all torn or burned, but the fire still burned in my heart for losing my friend cast in wood. I thought that tearing the leaflets would calm the rage in me. It did not. But I knew that the image of my friend the rising sun was still intact in my head. The Nigerian soldiers looking for significations of Biafra could not reach there to erase it or whisk me off for keeping the image. It was already part of my consciousness. It was part of me and my main possession.
Now that I am older, and can understand the value of art, especially in struggle, that memory of my friend in wood comes back and I feel very sad again, in fact, angry.
But I am consoled that modern technology is on the side of memory and remembering. The image of the rising sun is, however, better and safer in my head, in my consciousness.
Now, I realise that my friend the rising sun carved in wood was destroyed and buried by my father to his great pain, but never really died, never got buried. If it was buried, it was buried in our heads as we struggled every morning to touch it, hold it, and take it to our father who was preparing for a strategic meeting. It was buried in our heads and has grown with our heads. It never died. It is very much alive in our heads and no soldier ransacking the house or neighbourhood for Biafran images can destroy it.
They labour in vain who try to look for images to erase.
They are frustrated; we know it.
We still touch our father’s great walking stick years after.
Yes; if you look closely, you would see the risen star leading the wise men from the East away from Herod to Bethlehem.
If the soldiers had known, they would not have forced the rising sun to be buried in our heads.
By seeking to down the risen sun, the soldiers have unknowingly set us on the course of anger, to search for Gowon’s deceitful leaflets in the Nigerian bush and to tear them all. If the devil had known, he would not have let Jesus be crucified on the cross! Now, he has even helped Jesus to preach salvation!
Who says art ever dies, particularly the type that remains on the side of truth and justice?
Comments