I really got into reading when I first started reading African Literature. I’m glad that Ndibe is included as part of the African Writers Series, because Arrows of Rain should be part of the canon of African Lit. African literature is angry, it is sad and more often that not, beautifully written. There is a longing for the past and regrets of actions taken and not taken. It exposes human corruptibility, weakness and ugliness. Ndibe somehow reminds me more of Ngugi than Achebe, if I compare him with other African writers (which I shouldn’t). Arrows of Rain feels nostalgic, about past losses, regrets and an ode to times lost, even though the times may have not as been rosy as you remember.
Arrows of Rain started with a tragedy — a death of a prostitute in the beach. The corpse is smiling, as though death was welcome. The village idiot who was closest to her in proximity before she died was arrested, even though everybody knows that he wasn’t the culprit. Women like these die all the time in the area, violated by entitled soldiers. The village idiot, Bukuru, was arrested as a scapegoat but more prostitutes kept dying on the coast, the rape still goes on.
In jail, a bit later on, he called a journalist, Femi, who had the reputation of being steadfast to tell his story from the beginning. His story ties in the history of the nation, from the time of independence to its first hedonistic ruler, to the current regime ruled by an iron fist general in Bello. Bukuru’s story is the nostalgia of lost times, of women he loved and some who he had lost, and his struggle of being a mere man powerless against such a regime.
It is this story, told by Bukuru to Femi, that is the centrepiece. Right in the middle is a story of an impossible relationship between Bukuru and Iyese who is a lady of the night popular with the elites of the powers that be. It is a complicated love triangle between Bukuru, Iyese and Bello who comes and goes as he pleases and abuses Iyese as he’d like. Bukuru is a journalist whose sense outweighs his sentimentality to the new nation, thus making enemies in the process. Bello in his early days is a soldier of high rank who was about to stage a coup. Iyese loves Bukuru but cannot get rid of Bello. Surely it cannot end well.
More than that, Arrows of Rain is a quintessential African novel. And like the best of African literature, it is a novel which examines thoroughly the notion of identity. Madia is a fictional country, but it may as well have been Nigeria. What does it mean to be a citizen of a country?
He sighed. “Yes. First, we must ask ourselves, what is the identity of the space called Madia? Why does our present bear no marks of our past? What is the meaning of our history? These questions can only lead us to one truth, namely that we live in a bastard nation. Then we must decide what to do with this illegitimate offspring.”
It sounds radical. Most African nations are new nations, and thus the people are in a sense, new. They need to reform their identity based on the new laws, customs and their professions. In the case of Iyese, her professional name is Amelia — an alter ego which allows her to work, hang out with men and above all, to protect Iyese the identity. Iyese is the name her mother endowed to the daughter, a name tied to the customs and unwritten history of the land. It is something worthy to protect.
It is a book about injustices and how we react to them. I won’t spoil much of the book’s tragic turns that would make anybody’s blood boil and which will make you question some of the choices the main characters make. Are they cowards for running away from their problems, going into hiding and taking different identities? But sometimes the individual can never be greater than the situation and I find myself asking myself what I would have done, if I know that the consequences are dire. The main characters have shown courage and cowardice at different times, as we also do. And I personally love this fragility that it makes them believable, and exposes my own hypocrisy.
I am glad to see more African names in the bookshelves in popular bookstores, which tells me that readers are becoming more curious and are ready to open up their reading horizons. African literature, written well, is a rare reading pleasure with its distinctive tone and colour, seething with loss and anger underneath. A joy to read? Yes, but it leaves you with a longing for a continent that you most likely have never visited and know very little about.
