There Was a Country: A Personal History of Biafra

Into objectivity, midair in stone.

I thought the rain, prime mover

To this enterprise, someday would rise in power

And deliver its ward in delirious waterfall

Toward earth below. But every rainy day

Little playful floods assembled on the slab,

Danced, parted round its feet,

United again, and passed.

It went from purple to sickly green

Before it died.

Today I see it still—

Dry, wire-thin in sun and dust of the dry months—

Headstone on tiny debris of passionate courage.1

Refugees

Enugu fell to the Nigerian army a few months after Christopher fell in battle. I fled to Umuahia with my family to stay with my sister-in-law, Elizabeth Okoli, who had moved there from Aba. Lizzy was a nurse working in Umuahia-area hospitals tending to the war wounded. Her story is quite remarkable: Lizzy was educated at Queen’s College, Lagos, and in England, and was known in those days as the “Queen of Sheba,” because of her grace and beauty. She was well regarded for her clinical skills and her intellect and would become the chief nursing officer of Anambra state in a new incarnation following the civil war. Elizabeth was a bit of an enigma and an eccentric, and a former Mrs. Odumegwu Ojukwu to boot, but she never wanted to talk about that! My brother Augustine and his family were also in Umuahia. Shortly after our arrival, as I have mentioned, I was sent abroad as an envoy for the people of Biafra.

Christie reports that Umuahia was subsequently strafed very close to where my family was staying.

After the bombing that barely missed Lizzy’s residence, my family moved to Ezinifite, a town north of Umuahia in the Aguata local government area of present-day Anambra state. I returned from my short trip abroad and rejoined my family there. It was there that we visited a family who in the past had sent one of their sons to live with and be educated by my father.

Now we were refugees, and this family who had received the magnanimity of my parents opened their homes and their resources to us—the three Achebe families—Augustine’s, John’s, and mine—and we moved into the quarters offered to us. It was a large estate. The head of the household lived in the largest of about four houses. The sons, who were also married, had homes built within the family compound. The sons gave each Achebe guest and their families a room and a parlor.

Finding food in Ezinifite was a difficult proposition. The women had to wake up very early in the morning—about 4:00 A.M.—to attend the daily markets to procure food. When the Nigerians found out where the open markets were and started bombing them, the women moved their commercial activities into dense forests. Christie remembers one of the early morning markets she went to—the villagers from the surrounding towns and hamlets would congregate in these markets to sell their fresh vegetables, fruit and chicken, and other household wares. If one had the money—one could use the Nigerian pound and the Biafran pound interchangeably—there were a variety of expensive, locally grown legumes, pawpaw, mangoes, bananas, and plantains, and other vegetables and fruits to purchase. The traders coveted the Nigerian pound, because it was particularly valuable in the black market and for purchasing and smuggling goods and food across the border. The Nigerians bombed the market a day after Christie visited the market. She remembers vividly:

The bombardment from the Nigerian Air Force on this day was particularly heavy, as if the pilots had been upset at not discovering the market sooner. Most of the bombs fell before dawn. In the morning we discovered the most harrowing of sights. One image still haunts me till today: that of a pregnant woman split in two by the Nigerian blitz. That was a horrendous experience for most of us, and we were all very frightened after that.1

The Nigerian air force intensified its bombing exercises soon after this incident. Word had reached the Biafran authorities that the Nigerians had classified information about the location of civilian “hideout shelters.” Our hosts were understandably concerned for our overall safety and built makeshift bunkers throughout their compound. The bunkers were built of mud-and-clay bricks and clearly were not structurally capable of withstanding a shelling, but we were grateful nonetheless, because they were large, comfortable spaces underground, away from the houses that would be obvious targets of the Nigerian air force. Whenever we heard the siren we all rushed to the bunkers for safety and waited out the air strikes.

The Biafran government had issued a public safety warning to all citizens to abstain from wearing clothes of light colors like white or cream or sharp colors such as orange, purple, or red that could be easily spotted by the Nigerian air force. The Nigerian pilots approaching their chosen targets would often switch off the engines of the planes, then fly very low—treetop level—before they would begin the bombing onslaught. One could see that the plane crew was pushing out these bombs with their hands, tossing them out from an open aircraft door or shaft! Occasionally when the Nigerians used their aircraft guns to shoot at civilian or military installations, we noticed that some of the bullet cases were from large hunting ammo usually reserved for wild game.2

On this particular day we did not hear the siren or the planes; no one knew that the Nigerians were in the air. When we noticed a plane zooming in for the kill we rushed into the bunkers and looked around to account for everyone, counting all the children. To our horror we realized that our third child, Chidi, was not there.

We looked out and saw the toddler in his white diaper taking his time, walking from the gate of the compound toward one of the houses. People tried to prevent Christie from leaving the bunker to rescue the infant for fear that her heroism might reveal the site of the bunker.

One said: “Leave him, he is innocent, nothing will happen to him.” Clearly unconvinced and ignoring their advice, Christie dashed out from the bunker, grabbed the baby, and arrived inside seemingly in time to avoid notice.

During our stay we had a number of confrontations not just with the Nigerian army but with nature. As we ran from one zone of attack to another we often ended up seeking shelter in mud huts deep in the hinterland. One particular episode comes to mind: Christie had hung up a brown and black dress on a palm frond door that opened into the room shielded by a thatch roof in a mud building we were staying in. Exquisitely put together, these homes are ideal for the wet, damp weather of the tropics and provide cool solace from the often uncompromising elements.

The one downside of this ancient architecture is the fact that mud buildings serve as an elaborate ecosystem of insects, arachnids, rodents, amphibians, and reptiles—in other words, an entomologist’s and a zoologist’s dream! So on this day, as Christie put on her dress, she received a sting that produced excruciating pain. We rushed to her side and discovered that a centipede had engaged her skin in a tenacious battle. The villagers quickly relieved her of the vermin with a hot object warmed in a coal fire. Though we were reassured that this was not a species that was poisonous, we slept in our car that night. We would have other narrow escapes with scorpions, serpents, and blood-sucking larvae, and became very vigilant.

My nephew, Uche Achebe, had left to join the army from our Ezinifite base around this time. Uche, a bright lad, later became a surgeon and was at one point the medical director of Nigeria’s National Orthopaedic Hospital in Enugu. In any case, things were not working out very well for him in the army during this period. Uche is a practical, rational person by temperament, and he noted that the Nigerian army was quickly approaching, and there were so many bombings that cost the lives of scores of Biafrans on a daily basis. He lamented the fact that the Biafrans were not well equipped and appeared to be in perpetual retreat. Compounding this desperate situation, he observed, was the fact that the Biafran people were becoming disenchanted.

Unfortunately, Uche made his observations known to one of his fellow army officers, saying something to the effect of: “If we are not able to do this, why don’t we give up?” He was subsequently reported and arrested for treason. In the end, after some intervention from several sources, he managed to escape court-martial.

Irony plays a wicked game with life. The Nigerian army took over Ezinifite very soon after the prophetic statements of my nephew, and we fled once again, this time to the beautiful lakeside town of Oguta. We had a fairly quiet spell in Oguta, because the Nigerians had been repulsed prior to our arrival. The locals credited this victory to Ohamiri, the goddess of Lake Oguta, who protected the Oguta people.