A Biafran Soldier Fetching Fodder for Goats

By

Obododimma Oha

When the Nigeria-Biafra war broke out, I was under ten. I was of not even in school yet, for I was underage; my hand was still unable to touch my ear on the other side, even if I wanted to follow other ọta akara (consumers of akara balls, as our first grade was nicknamed) to school. Nevertheless, I hungered to wear the starched uniform and to join in singing the songs school-going youngsters sang at school. But the Nigerian war planes saw it differently; we toddlers were all Biafran soldiers and deserved to die a painful death. I got to realise this and the fact that war had started one day while fetching fodder for goats in our akabọ (communal land) behind our house. As was the tradition of the home, my duty whether I was school-going or not was to collect leaves for the goats, if I wanted to eat too. It was no child abuse to the rural Igbo; it was a very important education I needed to have and to complement formal schooling. Do they teach how to fetch fodder for goats at school? Do they even know the leaves goats can eat to grow fat or their names at school? What they were teaching at school was only what was in the books and the childish songs. So the villagers thought and I had no choice but to agree with them and do my duty – fetch fodder – without complaining. I did not even know that I was a Biafran soldier, even though I was fresh from the womb.

A Nigerian warplane taught me that I was an adult and a rebel soldier fetching fodder in akabọ. The plane hovered. Nearby, women were weeding their farmland and sweating. Once in a while a woman got up and retied her cloth. That amused me, for I remembered the story of one short-tempered kinsman who was said to have gone to the farm with his wife. As village women often did – maybe to show off their cloth or just by habit or both – his wife stood up in-between her task and retied her cloth. This kinsman got infuriated and went to the nearby palm-tree, cut a frond and quickly got a rope out. With this rope, ekwere, he rushed at her and tied the cloth very tightly and firmly; in fact, almost killed the poor woman if help had not come in time. The rope was fast eating into her flesh and not just holding her cloth firmly. His explanation was that he was helping her to secure her loose cloth! As I was thinking of the story, the hovering plane went a distance from us, then turned back like a leopard charging at a prey. Before I knew what was happening, it had rocketed us, rocketed the foot of the oil-bean tree where I had heaped the fodder I had collected. The oil-bean tree had vanished, and with it my fodder. A couple of women working on their farms nearby either lay dead or were bleeding badly. The cutlass that I was holding had left my hand. Cutlass? I did not even know where I was, not to talk of what I was holding. I continued running in the bush, until I burst out in another village and was panting madly like a little hare. Over there people were also running. The market for that day had come to an abrupt end. And so our farmwork and fetching fodder for goats.

Fortunately for me, somebody listened to me and I was able to tell my father’s name. That name saved me and the man took me home. Everyone at home had a sad story to tell. Everyone. But I was thinking of the dead and bleeding women and their children weeding their farms. I tried to put myself in their position and shivers ran through me. Assuming it was my mother lying in her pool of blood there on her farm, dead, or my siblings! It could have been anyone. In fact, I lost appetite and needed no other confirmation for the fact that those that flew the steel birds were heartless. It was not blood they had in their veins! Maybe it was something else. That evening, I asked my mother at meal: “Were those women and children lying in their pools of blood on their farms going to cook and eat supper like us? Were they soldiers weeding their farms?” Too  many annoying and silly questions. I had to shut my mouth when someone shouted me down and stomach the experience.

That was how I got to know that I was a Biafran soldier, even though I was just a toddler who hadn’t started formal school. I didn’t get that lesson from the bearded man called Odumegwu-Ojukwu. I got it from the pilot of the Nigerian plane that rocketed our farmland. After that experience, whenever I heard the war songs on the lips of elders or we young ones had to use bamboo sticks to mimic guns, the reality sank in. It was clear to me that there was no difference between the child in me and the bleeding soldiers that returned from the warfronts. Secretly, I nursed the idea of wearing a Biafran army uniform like my uncle, especially since I was already a commissioned soldier. At the playground, I shot the enemy and sometimes played the role of a wounded soldier who had to be helped back to safety. But I did not like that role, especially because another brave person had to shoot Gowon, onye amụ ibi (the hernia man). I did not like how I was disabled and the honour was given to another child!

Anyway, the important thing was that the Nigerian plane had recognised me as a soldier, even though I was just fetching fodder for goats instead of being at one of the warfronts. Sometimes, we mimed how the plane flew overhead and I had to shoot it down with explosions from my mouth, buffers and shells. Good for that evil plane. I had hit back and shot it down, a little Biafran soldier fetching fodder for goats near an oil-bean tree.