DANGEROUSLY HOME ALONE!!!

...One day, we arrived at the river, nobody was in the water. All the children we met there were standing by the river bank.


Blood was flowing in the water. We had to return home.

My sister Meg was already back home when I got home. She was visibly worried. She was angry I had gone out, but kept telling me not to worry, that everything would be alright. I did not understand why she was acting that way, but by then, the sounds of heavy guns were much nearer.

She went to the kitchen, fried some meat, and with the meat, packed some other foodstuff like garri, some roasted bush meat, powdered milk and some money, into a basket with a string around its neck with which it could be pulled closed. She then put a few of my wears into another small leather bag and said that whatever happens, I should not panic, but should carry only those two items, the basket, and the bag, and follow people in whatever direction they moved. She repeated that I should not carry any other thing from her room. She held me very close to her, very emotional, to my utter confusion. I had never seen her act like that. She is usually, a very strong person.

She then went into the compound and spoke with some of the neighbours, and came back later to say she was going to the war front.

She left.

By about six in the evening, the gun sounds were very, very heavy and very, very close!

The Kwara nu, kwara nu, unu dum! sound, I could hear it for real now myself, and not from a story told by my sister.

Soon, people began to shout and run about in a confused manner.

In all of the war time, this was my first experience of being in a place, when the inhabitants had to move away from the place because the war had reached that place.

So, I had no previous experience of what to do, and I was all alone!

This must be late in 1969, or early 1970.

One of my sister Meg’s neighbour’s –a woman, in the house came into the room to ask what I was doing. She was quite panicky. She asked me to start packing our things that we had to move out.

I remembered what my sister Meg had said before leaving. But before I could say anything, the woman started to help me with the packing or so I thought.

I on my own, I  put some of my sister’s wears into the bag she had packed for me. The woman, after packing, took a suitcase out; she came back with her husband to carry more things.

They asked me to get ready to move out. I was still putting some wears into my bag.

By the time I got out of the room into the courtyard, they had gone, with my sister’s things!

Suddenly, there was a very loud bang nearby, people started screaming and running. I took the basket and the bag and ran in the direction that people were running, as my sister had said.

Everyone seemed to be moving in the same direction, as the guns sounded heavier and closer. There was immense panic. People were shouting the names of their family members, most were carrying heavy loads. I was busy looking at people’s faces as I saw those with heavy loads, thinking I would some how, see the people that carried my sister’s things. I never saw them again. But I remembered where they were from, a place called Ugwa.

As we moved on, the crowd became so large that movement became almost impossible because everyone was headed in the same direction.

As I am writing, I remember a discussion that I had in Abuja with two of my friends sometime ago, as I tried to tell them that a crisis of the type that I am describing would be in nobody’s interest.

One of them said he had made it a habit for all his cars to have full tanks every Friday, so that should anything happen he gets to drive off!

I laughed.

When it was not possible for people walking on foot to move, where would cars pass?!!!

Those who are beating drums of confusion, division and chaos really do not know what they are doing. It is either that, or they just do not care because they feel they would escape...

----BIAFRA:LEST WE FORGET!