There Are No Heroes Here

Ifediora said the time had come.

Because the herders had moved into our farms, and their cows had begun to covet our crops, as our mothers had feared; and their bullets had begun to find new homes in our skulls, as our fathers had predicted. Nobody knew when they moved into our village. Our king had assured us they’d only stay for a few days, but then the days turned to weeks and the weeks turned to months; and the killing and coveting began. The police had no one to arrest because they never found them guilty; If you’d get proof, we’ll make an arrest, they had told the chiefs who filed the report, “Now, we’ll keep investigating.” Nothing has come from their investigation.

“But what if it backfires?” I said.

“Then we’ll keep trying. How much more will we endure?” 

When I met Ifediora 5 years ago, he sat folded into himself at the edge of the stream; though there were a litany of kids around, he was alone. He was a thin boy with cold eyes, who walked with a certain urgency (or so my Mother said), and few kids sought him out; few parents encouraged the kids who attempted to try. But compelled by my curiosity, I walked to him, and noticed that subtle tear marks lined his cheeks; when I said, Hi, I expected him to walk away. He didn’t. This interaction happened 3 weeks after he and his father returned from Jos, after the villagers speculated that they fled because of the Jos riots and that his father, who was a carpenter, had lost everything he owned. It was odd that no one had mentioned his mother, but I never asked why. 

“Maybe it isn’t as bad as we’re making it out to be,” I said. “Maybe they’d leave as they came? Or maybe we’d learn to live with them. We’re all compatriots.”

“No. We don’t have that liberty.”

In the darkness that swallowed us, I couldn’t see his face, but his eyes flamed through the lantern placed between us, as though he had been awakened from a slumber – like he had been baptized and had found his purpose.

“What if someone gets hurt?”

The only time I was ever part of a protest was 6 years ago, my brother, Nnamdi, had instigated it to remind the police that the people of Umueze were people, too, he had said; to show them we needed not to be treated like pariahs. He had told his friends, who had told their friends; and they were to march to the local police station that oversaw the affairs of the entire Awgu community. It would be a peaceful riot, he had assured our parents, who were skeptical; no children would be around the station, no elderly people, just a score of angry youths. At 14, I figured I wasn’t a child, so I went with them. It was the first intense activity I had ever taken part in, and my flushed cheeks were the only proof I needed that this was something I had to be doing. I could hear my heartbeat mirrored in the chest of the others who were there. We were fighting, I’d thought, like youthful men and women who defended their communities did. Except I wasn’t a youthful woman, and the only person I had to defend when we’d got to the station was myself. Peaceful turned aggressive and then violent as the police charged at us, tear gases in hand, and I lost an eye. But I couldn’t tell Ifediora this, not with the volcano erupting in his eyes.

“We have to. We’ve had enough! I refuse to lose my father like I lost my mother! If it’s war they want, war they’ll get. I am not a scared little boy anymore,” he said to no one in particular. And then he was silent. Somewhere in the stillness, a woodpecker was ferocious as it pecked at one of the palm trees in my compound, which wasn’t peculiar because our town is notorious for the palm trees guarding most compounds and street corners. That’s an exotic orchard, most strangers would say when they visited or passed through; my father had told me once that before our people took to farming, we had been the most prolific and famous palm wine tappers in the area. Sometimes, I wished I would’ve seen that. Sometimes, I wished I would’ve been born at that time, maybe there wouldn’t have been too many wars to fight.

“What if no one volunteers to follow us?”

“I’m sure if we started, we’d get people who’d join in. People are tired. We’re tired of wondering about whose farm would be maimed next, about whose body would be discovered next. We can’t give up on ourselves, on our home. Amaka,” he turned to me, “you don’t have to be at the front lines. I know what happened to your eye, Nnamdi told me, so all I need from you is to write–you’re good at that. Write letters, some to our peers, to help rally them; some to the children, some to the elderly, for hope, maybe, I don’t know. Nobody would know they’re from you, if you don’t want them to. You can visit them, too. But you won’t come to the front lines, if you don’t want to.”

It didn’t matter if I were writing letters or holding cardboard made placards or brandishing weapons in their faces, someone would find us out. Someone always discovers the instigators, and they always get rocks thrown in their faces. Nnamdi was arrested 6 years ago, and Mum lit a candle at church for him, and I thought that was it, that he’d be killed, that my stolen eye wasn’t the only casualty of our heroics. I am not a hero. I was never made to be a hero, none of us were, but then I turned to him, and said, “Okay,” because that was the only gift I could offer.