He is taken to a cell meant for people awaiting extra-judicial killing. While awaiting his fate, he meets the commander of the inmates, a man known for helping politicians foment trouble when it is time for electioneering
By Olukorede Yishau
For those who live in Houston, Texas or are familiar with this oil city, Peter Chika’s story titled “The Pot of Soup” will resonate, if not because of the storyline, but because of its sociology. It is about cultural conflict and seems to scream out loud that one man’s delicacy is another’s waste worthy only of the trash can.
Buchi and his African-American girlfriend, Shaniqua, dine out most of the time. The author introduces us to the streets of Houston. The popular Bissonnet Street, of course, features and he rightly describes it as Little Nigeria because of the huge population of Nigerians who either live or eke their living there. The sex workers of this popular street, who Buchi wonders include Nigerians, are not forgotten in the sights and sounds.
Ghanaians may, however, ask for the author’s head for referring to their jolof as imitation and declaring that Nigeria’s has no ‘part two’.
One day, Shaniqua is out and Buchi hungers for onugbu soup and ignores the stress that comes with it because his palette craves it with fufu.
Shaniqua, who works as a flight attendant with Southwest, an airline that operates out of Houston’s Hobby Airport, deserves some ‘hot slaps’ over the evil she does at the end of this story. The end of this story built around a pot of soup, again, shows Chika’s talent in spectacular climax.
In “Martyr”, the author, in multiple first-person point of view, imagines the thinking of suicide bombers and a suicide-bombing planner. The scene is a mosque. Through this story, we see how people are brainwashed to believe they have some special gifts awaiting them in heaven for killing so-called infidels. This story’s climax proves that what goes around comes around.
With the story titled “The Interview”, Chika, using the setting of a typical American consulate in Lagos, takes a swipe at the bad state of affairs in Nigeria. The story is about Chineze, a 20-year-old, who seeks an American visa. The interview session is unlike the usual with the applicant being rude and deliberately difficult and leaving the interviewer to conclude that she really doesn’t want the visa. The story also examines tricks Nigerians use to get the almighty American visa, including forging documents in Oluwole, the enclave on Lagos Island where any document can be cleverly cloned. It also deals some blows on America and its pretences.
Chika also has this hilarious-but-serious story titled “A Provocation”. It is about a lawyer, Ekpen Seghale, who specialises in proving cases of provocation. The story starts in a law court where judgment is being given in a case in which a CEO and his subordinate are at loggerheads. The subordinate is accused of assault and other related offences after catching his boss having sex with his wife in his living room. The story brings back memories of the molue and their drivers in Lagos. It also reminds us of the state of courtrooms in Nigeria.
In “When It Rained”, we meet Iyowuna, a Buguma boy in Port Harcourt who is job hunting. His arrival coincides with an armed robbery operation and he is arrested by the notorious SARS. He is taken to a cell meant for people awaiting extra-judicial killing. While awaiting his fate, he meets the commander of the inmates, a man known for helping politicians foment trouble when it is time for electioneering. Later in the night, his name is read out as one of those to die. By this time, the police record shows that he has been bailed. Meanwhile, the man whose invitation brings him to Port Harcourt is alerted to his situation and he starts searching for him.
In “Headstrong”, the fear of the truth shakes a Houston-based married man when he opens a copy of The New Yorker and a short story draws his attention. The writer is his Lagos-based side chick and the story she is telling is about their sexcapades. His imprints are all over the story. Though she refrains from naming him, if his art-loving wife reads it the truth could come out. Chika also uses the story to highlight the practice of office holders in Nigeria using fronts to hide stolen wealth.
One very interesting fact about this story is that it is the other side of a short story titled “Songbird” written by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, and published in The New Yorker in 2010. The male narrator here is giving his side of the story narrated by Adichie’s narrator as if to avoid the “danger of a single story”.
The rot in the Nigerian police, once again, is the subject of the story, “Police is your friend”. In it, we meet a fraudster known as Parker Pen Okeke and soon we see his dalliance with the police, and how this relationship ensures he gets away with his crime.
The last story in the collection, “Today is Today”, reads like a tribute to Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart but it is much more. It is about two men fighting over a parcel of land and one turns up dead after succumbing to what appears to be poison. Meanwhile, his rival is from a family renowned for making the most potent poisons in that side of Igboland. It is a matter of the witch cried last night and the child died this morning. Who doesn’t know the witch is responsible for the child’s death? But, in this story, it is not as simple as that.
The stories in Chika’s collection merit being read for their explorations of different facets of life and the skillful way he ensures each character is brought alive in precise, elegant, and accessible prose.
With stories about infidelity, rot in the police, land tussle, politics and clash of cultures, Chika has written a book with the potential to be read and read and well-read!
My final take: Living in a world with issues such as infidelity, rot in the police, land tussle, politics and clash of cultures requires skills, skills that aren’t available in colleges, skills that we have to learn by living through these challenges.
▪︎Yishau is a newspaper columnist and author.