Review of Canoe Town
A novel by Opusam Ekinisam Ete
I
BECAME a fanatic of the novel as an art form when I met Professor
Charles Nnolim at the University of Port Harcourt. Nnolim is reputed to
be the foremost authority on the novel in all of African literary
exegesis. If Nnolim says your novel is good, then it is good, and if
Nnolim condemns your novel outright, he means it fell far short of the
standard expectation. But, in either case, he would give you cogent
reasons, so that if your novel is good, you want to write a better one
next time, and if your novel is bad, you want to brace up and write a
good one next time.
Nnolim would be the first
to laugh at himself, and tell you that he has never written a novel, yet
he can tell a good novel from a bad one. He will tell you that the
critic is like a man who knows the way to a given destination, but can’t
get there himself. That definition of the critic pretty much describes
me as well because I have never written a novel. I have a book of six
short stories entitled A Birthday Delight. But while the short story is a
clip of life, a slice of life, the novel is an extended narrative, and I
have never been able to summon the stamina to write one. Even so, I
have read a good number of great novels, so much so that I can
confidently tell a good novel from a poorly written one.
That
is why I mustered sufficient confidence to tell my good friend, Opusam
Ekinisam Ete, that his first novel could do with some revision. He had
given me a complimentary copy of Aru-Ama: Town Of Canoes, in the course
of the last international convention of the Association of Nigerian
Authors, ANA, at the Writers Village in Abuja, and I was grateful.
We are here today,
ladies and gentlemen, to celebrate that revised edition. In the
sentiments of Jesus Christ, new wine should be put in new bottles, so I
went so far as to suggest that this revised work should go with a new
title. For reasons of wider marketability, I felt that Canoe Town would
be a more appropriate title for the book, and I even took the trouble to
design a new cover concept for the book. The author gladly accepted the
new title, but decided to stick with the old illustration for the
cover. The composite result is what we have in hand today, new wine in
old skin.
For the critic, the strength of a
novel lies in some basic elements in the text itself. To start with, the
critic looks out for a good plot, a fascinating story line, in a given
setting. He looks out for characters that come alive, a selective
attention to detail, credible dialogue, and sheer narrative power that
is compelling enough to keep the reader awake and turning the pages till
the very last full stop. In the hands of an accomplished novelist,
these ingredients combine to make a good broth, if not a delectable
feast altogether.
Let’s not search too far from
our shores in Bayelsa. I have never hidden my admiration for the craft
of Michael Afenfia. As a novelist, he has a great sense of plotting,
characterization, dialogue, attention to detail and compelling narrative
power. He understands the aesthetics of fiction, with particular regard
to the novel. My favourite Afenfia novel is entitled Don’t Die On
Wednesday. The subject matter, the engaging thematic interest of that
novel, is unique.
Afenfia, in short, is adept
at working with sub-plots, adroit at creating suspense, and qualifies to
be called a believable story teller in his own right. He remains a good
example to follow. As far as memorable novels from Bayelsa writers go, I
will always vouch for Condolences by Bina Nengi-Ilagha, an
award-winning novel that deserves all the commendations showered on it
so far, simply on account of the deployment of those vital elements of
artistry and language control that go into making a compulsive read, if
not a great novel.
I am concerned right now
about the potential of Canoe Town, the novel under review, precisely
because it takes on a very ambitious subject matter, namely the
trans-Atlantic slave trade. If Professor E. J. Alagoa, perhaps Africa's
foremost living historian, were to read this novel, he would see reason
to convert the vast raw material at his disposal, offered by history,
and make capital of it by elaborating on the human involvement with
everyday situations, the dilemmas faced by individual characters, and
their efforts to resolve them. Opusam Ete has done what the respectable
professor would not even contemplate at his age. He has told a story
around an infamous historical subject, the subject of slavery, and he
has done this by naming one of his principal characters Alagoa, no less.
The
novel begins with Alagoa fleeing his fishing settlement with his
pregnant wife, Omiete, when slave raiders invade the village. The woman
gives birth to a baby boy on the high seas, and dies in the process.
Confused about what to do, and in pain over the sudden loss of his wife,
Alagoa paddles his canoe in the dead of night to the nearest parcel of
land, all the while holding his newborn son. It is a tragic scenario
that calls us to suspend disbelief as we witness the boy, Owei,
virtually grow up in the course of one day, crawling away from his
father and distracting him with various antics beyond the dictates of
infancy, as the man tries to dig a grave in which to bury his wife.
Caught
between mourning his wife and celebrating the birth of his first child,
Alagoa paddles away from the deserted settlement he calls Aru-Ama,
finds refuge in Igbogene where he leaves the new born child with his
long-standing friend, Sorgwe and his wife, Izibefien. In the course of
paddling through the creeks, grieving all the while for his wife, he
stumbles upon fabulous fortune that would command a fair bargain even in
the eyes of local slave dealers. He journeys on to Mbiama where he
finds favour in the eyes of the Headman after courageously saving the
princess, Ada, from slave raiders. The princess is duly given in
marriage to Alagoa who goes on to become the father of three other
children, but the memory of his first son, Owei, is so strong that he
brings the boy to stay with him.
The princess
sees a threat in her step-son, with particular regard to ascending the
throne, and plots his downfall. She succeeds in mobilizing the youth to
drive Owei into exile, but the young adventurer has a date with destiny.
He survives great hardship and torment in the rain forest, and is
rescued by the guardian spirit of his mother, who leads him to confront
the slave raiders with the help of Nabia, a clairvoyant priestess of
the wild. The resolution of the story comes with the eventual arrival of
Owei in Aru-Ama, the resting place of his mother, where he is
proclaimed king over the people, given his heroic exploits to overcome
the slave dealers with the symbols of power in his hand.
In
this first novel, Opusam Ete revisits the nineteenth century and
recreates the response of coastal communities to the havoc of the slave
trade, underscoring its disruptive effects on life among the first
people to come in contact with the colonialists along the Niger Delta
coastline. By popular historical accounts, the slave trade was stopped
by William Wilberforce and other explorers of his ilk.
In
this work of fiction, the viewpoint alters dramatically, and the
treacherous role played by greedy chiefs and local merchants comes in
for scrutiny as exemplified by Chief Ekundayo Ogundele, the middle man
who shuttles the creeks from Arogbo in the Yoruba axis to the salt water
territory in Ijaw land as typified by Nembe, Ogbia, Kaiama and Mbiama.
It is even more refreshing to know that the hero of the struggle against
slavery is a hapless boy rejected by his people who goes out of his way
to free captives, reverses the status quo, and holds the slave raiders
in bondage.
The novel comes in seven
sustained chapters, and an epilogue that presents a satisfactory
resolution. The events are circumscribed within a time bracket which
takes its initial pillar in 1807 and ends with the relative close of
slave trading activities in 1832. It is safe to say that, in this novel,
Opusam Ete underscores the power of the younger generation to bring
about change in society, even if they act on wrong advise.
The
author also gives pride of place to women of great activism in the
mould of Tari, the voluptuous Nembe lass who runs away from home to
escape capture. She provides succor for Owei in her solitary hut in the
jungle, and gives the young man a greater resolve to hunt down the slave
raiders when she is kidnapped at the point when their feelings for each
other begin to flourish. But the real heroine of the novel may well be
Nabia, the Ogbia-born priestess with the temper of a tigress who leads
Owei on a dizzy expedition across mysterious short-cuts to the hide-out
where the slave raiders lie in wait to export their human cargo.
Needless
to say, the author shows a commendable familiarity with the Niger Delta
terrain. We can virtually follow him as he navigates the swamplands,
traversing Nembe kingdom, Ogbia kingdom and Epie kingdom at large,
recreating cultural patterns of life and living. He goes from one
fishing port to a palm kernel outpost in an era when the plate and spoon
had not replaced fingers feeding directly from the floating calabash.
The sea itself becomes an inevitable character in this novel.
Chapter
after chapter, the author does well to capture the changing temper of
the creeks and rivers as they pour into the wider waters of the Atlantic
Ocean, marked by calm and sobriety as much as the occasional tempest in
due season. The swampy mangrove vegetation of the Niger Delta, with its
rich and variegated content of marine life, is evoked to great effect
in the body of this work in much the same way as the range of characters
are portrayed in recognizable terms by their actions, the thoughts
which propel them, and the credible dialogues they articulate.
It
bears repeating that Canoe Town celebrates the heroic adventures of
Alagoa, the brave fisherman who loses his wife in the throes of giving
birth to their only child, Owei, a son imbued with greater mettle,
destined to become king of his people, in spite of truly gruelling odds.
Like every worthwhile odyssey, the younger protagonist arrives at a
point of fulfillment when he steps on the shores of Aru-Ama twenty-five
years after he was born, and is duly acknowledged by the kingmaker,
Ebele, who recognizes the totems of authority in his hand.
Ultimately,
the strength of this novel lies in its unrelenting spirit of adventure,
the promise of the crusading youth to change the future for the better,
the intrigues conceived by traitors, and the faithful evocation of
pristine nature in a rugged terrain. Canoe Town will count amongst the
few historical novels to have emerged in this day and age from the
annals of Niger Delta literature. This review is by no means exhaustive.
The least I can do, therefore, is to recommend it to the individual
reader who may be curious as to how our forebears confronted the menace
of slavery in nineteenth century Africa, along the Niger Delta
coastline.
Mingi-Yai Nengi Josef Owei-ilagha,
Pope Pen The First
August 18, 2024. Yenagoa.
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