Shadows Under the Trees

Michael Emeka

The canoe drifted along on the urine coloured river. Preye its sole occupant paddled it as if he’d lost interest in everything, including life itself. The fish he had gone to catch floated here and there in the river, dead. They bumped against the underside of the canoe every once in a while, and floated away, their wide-open mouths coated black with the crude oil that had killed them. The ones he had caught slapped their tails on the hard, wooden bottom of the canoe. Now and again, his eyes flickered to them as he wondered how much oil they’d absorbed. 

The sun’s glare was harsh on Preye’s dry skin. The water he paddled across reminded him of a cesspool. Never had he felt the devastation wrought by oil drilling in his community as he felt it today when he went out to fish. Paddling homeward now, he seemed to come to terms with everything going on around him. The petroleum pipelines, big and small, that crisscrossed their lands and farmlands had devastated them; now their rivers, streams and other sources of water had become the latest victims of this mad scramble for crude oil. 

Getting to his destination, he jumped out of the canoe into the water. He pulled the canoe until it was halfway out of the water. And then, taking the cord at whose end the fish he had caught dangled, he walked up the river bank towards the mud hut nestling between the trees there. 

Deina, his wife, saw him from the dim interior of the hut and came out to meet him. 'Your back.'

'Yes.' He handed her the fishes. 

She held them up and regarded them, her black eyes narrowing. Gripping one fish, a large catfish, she drew her hand down the length of its body. Then she lifted the hand, and looked at the black oil smudge around her fingers. 'I hope they're eatable.'

Preye shrugged in response. He settled down on the wooden bench just by the entrance to their hut while Deina busied herself preparing pepper soup with the fish. As she sliced up the fish on a wooden block, she told him, 'They said over the radio that the youths burst another pipeline today.'

'They have to survive too, don't they?'

Deina spread her hands wide in an expression that said, 'Whatever.' Her husband's taciturnity had worsened since they got married five years ago. Now his responses to her attempts at conversation were gestures, grunts and brief sentences that gave no room for further discussion.

Blue smoke rose from the hearth a little way from the hut. A rough, soot-blackened pot containing the fish, sliced up and covered in spices, was on the hearth. Now and then Deina rose from the short bench on which they sat to fan the fire with the raffia fan on the ground. 

Silence enveloped the couple just as the shadows under the trees grew more profound. The chirping of insects had become even more noticeable, swirling out from every dark and hidden place from among the trees. Sometimes she thought the reason her husband had grown increasingly taciturn over the years was because of their not having had a child in that time. He had grown more withdrawn, always wearing that look of broody self-contentment that often made her uneasy. But wasn’t it possible, she often wondered, that their inability to make children was due to the vegetables and crops and the water they were consuming off of the polluted land?

Preye slanted a look towards his wife seated next to him with her arms resting on her laps. She was a vivacious woman, who delighted in even the slightest of things: in the schools of tilapia darting about in the shallow waters, in the crickets hopping about on the river bank, and in the crabs scurrying around in the marshes. Occasionally, he pitied her for inflicting on her his long and depressing silences. But was there a way he could make her understand? His withdrawal wasn't for anything besides the unseemly events taking place in this beloved land that his forefathers had left them. They had become slaves in their land while strangers owned oil wells in their backyards. No one bothered about the recurring oil spillage poisoning the land not to speak of the members of the host communities such as himself who lived in abject poverty. 

'So, what more did they say over the radio regarding the youths and the burst pipeline?' he asked her just to liven things up. 

'The federal government said it would deploy the navy to the waterways and deploy the army to the creeks.'

'Okay, the army. That's their solution to the youths' restiveness.' He shook his head. 'Soldiers to come and kill them to stop further interruption to their oil supply.'

Moments later, the fish pepper soup was ready. Picking up two dry leaves lying about, Deina used them to bring the pot down. She opened it and a cloud of white steam escaped upwards. Breathing in the delicious-smelling steam, her mouth watered. There was an underlying smell though that she could neither place nor associate with the dish. It was almost acrid, like the smell of burnt rubber or heated petroleum oil. She averted her face from the open pot and after a while, covered it and carried it inside.  She came out not long after holding a large stainless-steel plate containing a large serving of the pepper soup. Two spoons stuck out from the edge of the plate. Placing a low stool in front of her husband, she lowered the plate on to the stool. She got a cup of drinking water and placed it beside the plate before taking up her position beside her husband. As she took up her spoon and made to eat, Preye told her, ‘Wait.' He picked up his spoon, broke off a chunk of fish, and lifted it out of the plate. He picked up the piece of fish with his hand and bit tenderly into it. He tasted it at the tip of his tongue and then chewed meditatively.

'It's okay. Go ahead.’

#

Much later that night, Preye heard a loud banging on his front door. Climbing down from their bamboo bed, he picked up the lantern on the floor, walked to the living room and unlocked the door. He held the lantern up against the gloomy faces of the men who stood there. They were youths of the village: Ibima, Jimmy and Perekeme. Their drawn faces shone with perspiration. Their eyes reflected the amber light of the lantern, giving them frightening aspects.

    ‘Is it well?’ Preye asked them.

    Jimmy, the oldest of the three men, shook his head. ‘It’s not.’

    ‘What’s wrong?’

    ‘We need you.’

    Preye looked sceptical. ‘For what?’

    ‘For the continuing campaign against oppression.’ 

    Most men in the community would have stood erect, their backs ramrod straight at the mention of “continuing campaign against oppression”. And they would immediately have made themselves available. But not Preye. As much as he hated how the community was being treated, he equally despised the youth’s approach to calling for the government’s attention.

    The “continuing campaign against oppression” only drew out a pent-up breath from him. ‘What now?’ he asked in a weary voice.

    Jimmy shook his head. ‘That information is unavailable to you. It is only for the committed and you’re not showing that you are.’

    ‘Committed to what? To blowing up pipelines?’ Preye’s outburst took everyone including himself by surprise. A moment of troubled silence followed. The three men exchanged uneasy glances. ‘Look,’ he went on.  ‘The much we’ve done has drawn enough attention already. We only need to leverage it to table our needs as an oppressed community.’

    ‘All right,’ said Jimmy. ‘At least we know where you stand.’ He turned and trotted off, the other men right behind him.

    Preye heaved a long sigh and shut the door. He called his wife, who was already hovering by the entrance to the room. 

     'I have to go with them even if I don’t like what they're doing,' he told her. 'Otherwise, they'll label me a traitor.' 

    The woman nodded. ‘I understand.’

    Preye took his torch, opened the door and walked out into the inky night.

#

He met up with the group at the foot of the giant ogbono tree whose leaves seemed to graze the sky. They were seven between the ages of eighteen and thirty. In the white glare of their torchlights, they looked haggard and hungry, their faces narrow and pinched, their eyes lustrous with tension. Two of the men had jute bags slung over their shoulders whose contents Preye could not fathom. Powerful beams of torches danced about the bushes as they started towards the heart of the forest. High above, beyond the tightly knit overhanging branches of trees, jagged bolts of lightning lit up the black sky. 

    The men lined up along a narrow footpath. They walked for close to a quarter of a mile, then they branched off. They picked their way gingerly through the dense mangrove forest, slashing here with their machetes and trampling down brushwood there with their feet. They twisted and turned around the trunks of masonia, bombax, icheku and shea trees that abounded in the place and squelched around the mushy edges of ponds and puddles, accompanied by the ceaseless chirruping of insects and the throaty calls of toads and frogs from the marshes. Lightning flashed intermittently; thunder rolled around in the heavens. 

    Jimmy, who was at the head of the group, scanned the forest ahead with his torch. The tranquil surfaces of the brackish puddles that dotted the place reflected the beam of the light, scattering it among the trees. Through the limbs of slumberous shrubbery, he spied the hump of the high-pressure pipeline they'd come for. In the glare of Jimmy's torch, they could also see the fat silvery raindrops that began coming down at that moment. 

    Preye touched the man in front of him, who duly inclined his head towards him. ‘If we burst the pipe where will the crude oil flow to? Won’t that be like an intentional oil spillage?’

    The man glanced cursorily at Preye and straightened his steps without answering him. Preye wondered if he had asked a stupid question. But he knew he hadn’t. For the same land they were fighting for, they were also willing to destroy to achieve their aims. 

    ‘We’re here,’ Jimmy announced. His words coincided with a loud clap of thunder. A cloudburst came at that moment, drenching everyone in seconds. The raindrops hitting the leaves of the trees and shrubs sounded as if it was raining pebbles. Jimmy looked at his colleagues and spread his arms wide. ‘I don’t understand this.’

    The men stood stock still around the pipeline as lightning flared above and the rain came down harder. Heads bowed, the water flowed off them, ran down their faces and clothes to their feet. They trained their torches on the forest floor, from where the pattering rain drummed up dirty water that stained their legs with mud.  

    The forest smelt like freshly turned earth as the rain beat down on it. It reminded the men of their farmlands, of making fresh ridges and of sowing. These thoughts were uppermost in their minds as they waited for the rain to break. From the estuary close to their location, the water in the creek swelled. It first got to their ankles and then it rose to their shin. 

    ‘Oya, oya oya, make we commot here,’ Jimmy said urgently in Pidgin English and the men began wading their way through the fast-rising water.  By the time they got to the narrow footpath, the area around the pipeline had become submerged in brackish water.

    Preye went home that night happy.

#

Deina woke up the next morning looking thoughtful. Preye returned from checking his traps and found her seated on a low stool outside their hut, her chin resting on the palm of her left hand.

‘What’s wrong?’ 

    The woman shook her head. ‘Nothing.’

    ‘But you look worried.’

    ‘I haven’t seen my period in two months.’

     Preye turned to a statue. 'Isn't that supposed to be wonderful news?’

    ‘I don’t know.’ Her eyes clouded with tears. ‘I’m so scared.’ She recalled the countless times she’d conceived and how it had all ended. She’d wake up in the middle of the night and feel clammy between the legs. Feeling the wetness and bringing out her hand, she’d see what it was––blood. Some days she’d think it would be crude oil, thick, black and viscous, pouring out of her. Afterwards, she would feel so empty, like a scrubbed-out calabash.

    Preye went over, drew her up and embraced her. ‘You don’t have to fear anything,’ he whispered in her ear. ‘God won't allow anything to happen to this one. It will stay and wipe the tears from our eyes.’ 

    The couple broke their embrace when they saw Jimmy, Ibima, and Perekeme emerge from the bushes. They had deep circles under their eyes as if they hadn't slept in days. And they hardly looked any neater than they did yesterday. They wore the same shabby clothes and worn flip-flops, but their gait was still the same––determined.

    They exchanged pleasantries. Deina went inside after greeting the men. Preye looked from one man to the other.

    ‘What can I do for you?’

    ‘We’ll be moving out this evening,’ Jimmy announced.

     'Are we going to the same place we went to yesterday?' Preye asked. 

    ‘Yes.’

    Preye’s brows knitted up. ‘But it’ll be flooded.’

     'Are you afraid of water? Do you know what the outside world calls us? Riverine people. Water doesn't scare us.' 

    ‘So we’ll wade through it to the pipeline?’

    ‘We’ll do whatever is necessary to carry out the task.’

    Preye looked pensive for a few seconds. Then he shook his head. ‘Don’t bother coming for me because I won’t be going.’

    ‘Why?’ Jimmy asked. Then his dour face broke into a knowing smile. ‘Ahh, I see! Pardon me, but supposing your wife is pregnant and bears you a child, what kind of community would that child grow up in?’ He waved his hand around. ‘This one? With polluted rivers, damaged farmlands, partitioned lands with gas flaring fires turning our sky to orange every night? This one, where our wives deliver babies at home because they’re not confident of the services of the poorly equipped and poorly run government medical centres, where most of our youths are unemployed and our parents toil from dusk till dawn to eke out a living from poisoned lands, where people live like paupers when they should live like kings?'

    A drawn-out moment of silence followed Jimmy’s impassioned speech. Everyone gazed now at Preye as they waited for his reaction. But after a short while, he shook his head and muttered, ‘I’m sorry. Count me out from anything that involves further damage to our lands.’

#

With a PT strip, Preye and his wife determined she was pregnant. He pecked her hair, that smelt of the earth after the year’s first rains, and hugged her.

    ‘Stop,’ he told her. ‘You’re shaking.’

    She was weeping because of the combination of sweet sensations in her chest and the despondent feelings that welled up from inside her like the waters of a lagoon in a downpour. The bittersweet experiences overcame her with feverish tremors that swept through her body now and then. Preye’s arms around her tightened. He nibbled at her ear and the woman jumped, laughing, despite the tears in her eyes.

    ‘You’re just trying to make me happy,’ she told him after sobering up again.

    ‘If I don’t make you happy, who will I make happy?’

#

Preye tried to catnap later that afternoon but couldn’t. Jimmy’s words kept ringing in his ears: ‘What kind of community will that child grow up in? This one?’ He could see the contempt in Jimmy’s face now and hear it in his voice. But it wasn’t against him. It was against inaction. Inaction was the only thing capable of preventing them and their offspring from living better lives in a safe environment, from obtaining meaningful concessions from the government.

The youths were taking action they deemed necessary. Because inaction in this situation was death, eternal poverty and suffering. But what other action could he take that would save the land from further damage and still win them the concessions they sought from the federal government? 

His eyes snapped open all at once. He climbed down from the bed, rose, pulled on a pair of blue denim and a red T-shirt over it and left the house.

He marched straight to the home of the youth’s leader, Eneteghena, a dark bald man built like a mountain, and tabled his plans to him. 

‘Let’s halt every other thing for now,’ Preye asserted, ‘and hold out an olive branch to the government.’

‘And you think they’ll listen to us?’ Eneteghena asked sceptically.

‘They will. I know they will because this president is a reasonable man.’

‘And if they don’t, you will be with us all the way, no matter the extent we wish to take our fight?’

‘All the way.’

A few days later, just as the day broke, Preye, gritty eyed and sour mouthed, stepped out of their house to the front yard and was shocked into immobility by the naval patrol boat of the Nigerian Navy he saw in the river, chugging past. Uniformed, stern-looking officers standing stock-still and gripping AK-47 rifles ranged themselves shoulder to shoulder on the boat’s deck, gazing towards land. Their backs were ramrod straight, faces pointing straight ahead. 

Preye raised his hands suddenly as the mounted 50 calibre machine gun on the forward deck swung round and pointed in his direction. Its muzzle looked wide and menacing, the bore midnight black, like the brooding shadows along narrow forest paths when the night falls unexpectedly. Breath stuck in his throat, the man’s hands stayed in the air until the boat went out of sight.

A pent-up breath escaped Preye. For as the gun faced him, he had seen visions of himself pumped full with 50 calibre rounds. He had seen himself jiggling, doing a grotesque dance of death as the bullets slammed into him, knocking the life out of him. All at once, a warm sensation started spreading through his body, filling him with bile. His chest grew tight as anger and many negative emotions coalesced inside of him.  He took a deep breath to steady himself, wheeled around and headed for the house. Inside, he changed, went to the backyard, cut a small branch from the medium-sized guava tree there, fashioned it into a chewing stick, stuck it into a corner of his mouth and then dashed off towards Eneteghena’s house. 

He stumbled more than once along the road as he hurried towards the youth leader’s home. Not that the path had suddenly become bumpier, or too dim for him to see his way. It was just that rage had so consumed him he struggled to see the bumps in the muddy pathway and the many roots that broke the earth’s surface here and there.

As he emerged into the open road, he looked towards Eneteghena’s house and saw stony-faced soldiers, brandishing AK-47 rifles, standing around. He backtracked and almost bumped into Boma, a young man in his mid-twenties, who had just emerged from another section of the bushes, holding a dead rabbit in one hand and a machete in the other.

‘Are you seeing them for the first time?’ Boma asked, not impressed by Preye’s reaction.

‘Yes.’

‘You haven’t been listening to the news then.’ 

‘When were they deployed?’

‘A few days ago.’

Preye racked his brain and recalled it must have been around the same time he proposed they reach out to the government.

Boma motioned with his jaw towards Eneteghena’s house. ‘Those came last night, while Eneteghena was sleeping. They invaded his home and bundled him into a waiting van. We’ve not heard from him since.’

There was a moment of silence as the men pondered these events. 

‘So we’re now hostages in our land.’ Preye glanced around as if lost as if the entire place had suddenly become strange to him. His sad, meditative eyes moved from the clump of wild sunflower by the edge of the path, to the bush of Billy-goat weed beside it. They travelled from the quivering fronds of the palm and coconut trees to the leafy opoto and okpa trees, and then to the slender iroko trees that dotted both sides of the path. 

‘All because God blessed us with crude oil,’ he went on, sighing. ‘This is intimidation. But we must not give in to it; we must not allow them to break our spirits. They may try to beat us down, to kill us even, but we must remain strong and resolute in our struggle. 

‘And what is it we’re struggling for, in case people misunderstand us? For fairness. We’re asking for fair treatment.’ 

Boma glared at him. 

‘Where’s Jimi, Perekeme and Ibima? Have you seen them today?’

Boma shook his head. ‘No. Why are you looking for them? What do you have in mind?’

‘We can’t lie down and get steamrolled in our land and over our resources no matter who we’re up against.

‘If you’re not busy, come with me, let’s go find the others. The fight must go on until the government does the right thing.’

#

By a combination of circumstances, Preye became the unlikely leader of the youths after Eneteghena’s arrest. The invasion of their land by the federal forces, haven stoked the fires of their anger, pushed him into this unintended leadership position and galvanized other men and youths who, like him, had sat on the fence while all the drama unfolded around them. Their warrior spirits aroused now more than ever, they vowed to continue their campaign against oppression.

    A wave of attacks against oil facilities that came close to crippling oil production in the area took place two weeks into this new phase of the crisis. Preye masterminded the operation and carried it out with extreme prejudice. In response, the government declared a dusk-to-dawn curfew and banned gatherings. 

    An uneasy calm hung like early morning mist over Membe, Preye’s community, following the declaration of the curfew. The rain-laden wind that blows onshore for most of the year, whistling through the canopies of leaves and setting them quivering, ceased blowing suddenly as if in reaction to the tense atmosphere. The leaves themselves hung limp and etiolated, the air heavy and oppressive.

    People spoke in whispers even within the confines of their homes, gazed out on the world through half-open windows, and wondered in their hearts if their own case was unique or if people in other oil-rich nations suffered the same fate as them.

    ‘You’re getting too involved in this whole thing, and I don’t like it,’ Deina groused to Preye one morning. The man had snuck out of the house as the day broke and returned complaining that someone had smashed their boats and fishing equipment to bits. 

    ‘We have a child on the way we should plan for,’ she went on. ‘But you spend your entire day complaining about oppression.’

    Preye went and wrapped both of his arms around her waist. Her baby bump had become noticeable, so he didn’t try scooping her up as he would have done. But the woman, not sharing his excitement, looked away, frowning.

    ‘My love,’ Preye called, ‘it is our duty as parents to make this community a better place so that when he comes, he’ll live freely, drink clean water, fish in healthy streams and rivers, farm in a good land and raise his own children in a safe environment. What manner of parents would we be if the legacy we leave to our children is this very one of oppression, disregard and outright servitude? While the resources from our backyards feed the entire nation.' 

    Deina swallowed, her face still averted. ‘What will I do if I lose you?’

    ‘You will not lose me.’ He shook her gently. ‘Do you understand?’ The woman said nothing. ‘I promise I’m going to do everything in my power to keep myself safe. Do you understand me now?’

    ‘Yes.’

#

That very night, an unknown number of men kicked down the couple’s front door and poured into the house. Dressed in muftis, their professionalism showed they were highly trained. The powerful white beams of their torches cut the air to bits as they searched every nook and cranny of the sparsely furnished living room before dashing into the bedroom from where they dragged Preye’s drowsy form from his matrimonial bed. Deina’s cries and questions of, ‘What did he do? What has he done?’ tailed them as they manhandled their quarry out of the house. 

Outside, the men lifted him bodily and threw him into the back of the unmarked Hilux van parked a short distance from the house. They piled in after him, and as the vehicle pulled away, Deina’s loud wails filled the night. In the distance, backlighting the bushes all around them, gas flaring fires turned the sky to orange.

Preye appeared in court the following day. They accused him of sabotaging government properties. But scarcely had the trial begun when a truce was called between the federal government and the youths. To cement the ceasefire, the government promised not to persecute the young men for the various crimes committed against the state. These initial steps towards lasting peace would eventually give birth to the amnesty program launched by the federal government later that year, bringing to an end the long-running sabotage of oil facilities in the region. 

The benefits of the program included opportunities in education through scholarships to Nigerian or foreign institutions, small loans to start businesses and a monthly allowance.

When her time was due, Deina bore Preye a bouncing baby girl. They named her Braibi, which means “Victory” in Ijaw. Indeed, the baby’s birth didn’t just symbolize their victory over childlessness, but also their community’s over oppression and neglect.

The End