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Okey Ndibe

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Brooklyn Bugle Book Club: “Arrows of Rain” A Novel by Okey Ndibe

April 10, 2015

Note: I didn’t post last week, partly because of the holiday weekend, and partly because I was so sad to learn that John Loscalzo, Brooklyn Bugle’s founder and publisher, had died suddenly. Writing for this blog has been a pleasure, and I will miss John and his openness to what one obituary called “the writers’ random cultural obsessions.” I can’t think of a better memorial to John than to continue it. Thank you, Claude Scales, for encouraging me to post and to everyone for reading.

Screen Shot 2015-04-10 at 10.10.18 AM“A story that must be told never forgives silence,” according to the grandmother of Bukuru, the main character of Okey Ndibe’s debut novel “Arrows of Rain.” Femi Adero, a young reporter, is sent out to cover the story when a prostitute’s body washes up on a beach. Set in a beachfront city in the imaginary country of Madia, “Arrows of Rain” tells the story of one person’s experience of political and personal corruption. A local homeless man, known as Bukuru, claims to have witnessed the prostitute’s rape by soldiers, and tried to rescue her when she walked into the sea. Despite his claim Bukuru is arrested for murder. Femi witnesses the arrest, and then attends a legal hearing. At the hearing, Bukuru, who represents himself, insists that he is not crazy, that the prostitute was raped, and that General Isa Palat Bello, the country’s leader, also raped a prostitute, who Bukuru names.

Weeks later a court-appointed psychiatrist brings Femi into the prison where Bukuru is held. Bukuru has asked to meet him, and the psychiatrist is willing to bring Femi into the prison, under the ruse that he is also a doctor. To Femi’s surprise, Bukuru tells Femi “Like you, I started out as a young man working for a newspaper. But I was weak.” Now, Bukuru says, he wants to tell his story – a story that must be told – to Femi.

Bukuru’s tale, which he tells in a long letter to Femi that takes up most of the book, contains several parallels – to the post-colonial history of their young country, and to Femi’s own history. Femi is adopted, and his girlfriend’s parents will not allow her to marry a man “who was unaware of the source of his own genes.” Both Femi and Bukuru describe themselves as underdogs. In telling it, Ndibe moves from the cities of the coast to villages deep in the countryside and back again. He tells of love found and lost and of children separated from their parents. The themes of death and the arrival of Western ideas run hand in hand throughout the novel. In an epigraph, Ndibe thanks Chinua Achebe for “opening my eyes to the beauty of our stories,” and there are many echoes of Achebe’s “Things Fall Apart” here in the collision of the old and the new, the European and the African.

Throughout, the writing is graceful, clear, and often exceedingly funny. Here’s an excerpt from one person’s description of komanizim (communism) as something that makes everyone wealthy.

“So if I’m hungry . . .”
“You can go to your neighbour’s house and share his food.”
“I like it,” announced Iji. “Where can people find this komanizim?”
“It was invented by a man called Karl Marx.”
“God will bless him.”
“There is no God in communism.”
“Really? No God?”
“No. The people are their own god.”

Despite his humor, and despite his grandmother’s wisdom, Bukuru has waited a long time, perhaps too long, to tell his story, which touches Isa Palat Bello’s history and also, possibly, Femi’s. Bukuru was weak, and his weakness cost him a lot, and others more. It’s a fine metaphor, and Ndibe makes it into a moving and compelling novel. Let us know your thoughts in the comments.

Have a book you want me to know about? Email me at asbowie@gmail.com. I also blog about metrics at asbowie.blogspot.com.

Update: This post has been updated to correct the spelling of Mr. Ndibe’s name.

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Books

Brooklyn Bugle Book Club: “Foreign Gods, Inc.” by Okey Ndibe

January 31, 2014

One culture’s guardian deity is another’s objet d’art, design inspiration or kitsch. Objects that might be worshipped, cared for, and even fed in one location or culture (a shrine in Africa) might still be venerated in another (a vitrine at the Met) but if the context has changed so dramatically, what does that make the object? These and similar cross-cultural currents provide the themes for Okey Ndibe’s intriguing new novel “Foreign Gods, Inc.”

Ike Uzondu left the village of Utonki in Nigeria behind many years ago in order to attend Amherst College. Ike was a successful student, earning an economics degree cum laude. Unfortunately, he has been unable to translate his academic success into a job. Despite all his efforts, Ike is told that his accent is too strong for the jobs he wants. Instead, he drives a cab in New York, using his meagre earnings to pay for a noisy apartment above a store. Ike has an ex-wife and sends money to his mother and sister back in Africa, and there’s never enough. Inspired by a magazine article, and ever a rational actor – or is he? – Ike hatches a scheme to steal his village’s war god, Ngene. He will sell it, he hopes for many thousands of dollars, at a New York City gallery called Foreign Gods, Inc. And that, he trusts, will solve all of his problems: the financial needs of his mother and sister in Africa, not to mention those of his American ex-wife. And possibly even his own.

Ndibe shows the action in some detail, letting the reader experience the sights and smells, small putdowns and daily humiliations of Ike’s daily life. It’s a bit slow for the New York sections, and the novel really gets into gear as Ike lands in Lagos on his way to Utonki. Ndibe is adept at getting across the pace and heat and smells of Africa. There are many petty bureaucrats, each of whom needs an equally petty bribe before Ike can pass. Ike’s mother has become a devotee of a Christian priest who Ike quickly concludes is a fraud.There are many, many encounters with old friends, unknown nieces and nephews, former girlfriends rendered prematurely old by their difficult lives, and Ike’s mother, sister, uncle, and grandmother. Everyone wants a piece of him, but Ike, of course, wants to take a piece of them too.

Ike has risked everything on this scheme: he’s maxed out his credit cards, quit his job, ignored the signs that he might be the next high priest. He is willing to alienate himself from and even betray his family: His uncle is Ngene’s high priest and keeper of the statue and the shrine. Yet “misunderstanding” doesn’t begin to describe the consequences of Ike’s actions.
Naturally, Ike’s problems are only compounded, as he discovers when he returns to his tiny Brooklyn apartment. He’s detached himself from Africa, and discovers, only too late, that he’s evidently detached himself from America too. Is his crime the result of his detachment? The consequence? Let us know what you think in the comments.

Have a book you want me to know about? Email me at asbowie@gmail.com. I also blog about metrics at asbowie.blogspot.com.

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