Title: Where the Rain Started Beating Us Author: Ugochukwu Agballah Reviewer: Lizi Ben-Iheanacho

The phrase and title of this book is derived from an Igbo adage which says that a man who does not know where the rain began to beat him cannot say where he dried his body; made popular by Chinua Achebe in Things Fall Apart. It is often the assumption in African sociocultural and political discourse that ‘the rain’ started to beat Africa with her ‘discovery’ by Europe spanning through the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade to the Berlin Conference of 1885. With this foregrounding, Agballah’s title throws the reader into introspection and interrogation mode as he conducts historic investigation on when the rain started beating Igboland using the creative landscape of Udi as his literary worldscape. The overt answers to what constitute ‘the rain’ in this fascinating historical fiction in the style of James Michener, embraces domestic slavery, colonialism and the inevitable conflict of values.

Agballah’s narrative is a paradigm of a walk back in time to unravel the root of several contemporary malaise. The book seeks answers to social injustice perpetrated by new-fangled leaders and the atrocities unleashed on hapless citizens by their leadership style. This central concern is to be gleaned from the dedication of this result of his twenty-six years of painstaking research and verification of details, to professional petition writers and women activists of Oloko whose avant garde activism is likened to social crusade and a strike against the injustice unleashed by the warrant Chiefs, court officials and all instruments of British Native Authority in Eastern Nigeria. This thematic pursuit crystalizes in the trampling to death of Chief Onwu who is the personification of the vulgarity and callousness of Warrant Chiefs, by the enraged women of Udi. The valorisation of Eze the returnee slave as the people’s champion and petition writer to liberation gives indication of Agballah’s support for the people in the nascent class struggle at Udi.

Another ‘rain’ that continues to beat Ndi Igbo and dog her cultural discourse is the issue of Osu caste system especially its place in contemporary social construct. Interrogating this, Agballah introduces twists to the dialectics in two ways. First, one of his major characters, Eze, is sold into slavery and, though he is not ritualized into an Osu by being dedicated to a deity, his return to his native Udi is fraught with similar psychological dread seeing that his society marginalizes and ostracises anyone sold into slavery. Eze’s re-entry into the fabrics of his homeland is facilitated by his educational accomplishment as he is appropriated as the face of the new warrior who would help slay the new predator - the White Man and his ways, through reading and writing. Second, Agballah confronts the reader with the problematic wilful transformation of a prominent citizen into an Osu when Chief Oji, one of the warring warrant chiefs, seeks the protection of Ani deity by dedicating himself, his household, property and generations unborn as sacred servants of the deity. Such act of selfimmolation hitherto unheard of in Udi introduces new dynamics to the Osu in Igboland discourse as Raymond, Chief Oji’s son, under the guidance of the priest of Ani, reverses the Osu rituals with counter rituals and relevant sacrifices thus reintegrating his father and family back into social reckoning. This resolution is as interesting as it is intriguingly worthy of adoption as Ndi Igbo struggle to conduct the burial of the fossil of Osu as a construct that has outlived its purpose.

Agballah’s unflinching forensic analysis heaps the ‘where’ of the rain of slavery not superficially on the need to feed the demands of Europe for cheap labour, but on the greed of Igbo men made mad by ambitions and crass materialism, egged on by the craftiness of Aro mercantilism and their fraudulent Ibini Ukpabi cult. The value principle is that if there had been no thriving internal slavery, the very abominable idea of trading in human beings to unknown buyers and uncharted lands would not have caught on. The entwining of former slave dealers with the emergence of new leaders and authority figures that are the villains in this book is its core dilemma as these leaders, long used to dehumanising others for lucre, inaugurate a reign of unbridled avarice and dread. As Udeji laments ‘…since they became Chiefs, we have known no peace. We do not know who to be more afraid of, whether it is the White man or the Chiefs. They rule us in the manner they ruled their slaves.’ Inevitably, the personal armies used for slave raiding and suppression of dissent on the slave trail transform into militias, vigilante groups, opposition assassination and kidnap squads; another ‘rain’ associated with South East Nigeria.

Agballah’s creative manipulation of history presents us a kaleidoscope of Igbo life and culturescape of humanity. It paints picturesque images of men who shed tears but are no less warriors, of women fiercely defending their men, families, and land Agballah’s narrative is a paradigm of a walk back in time to unravel the root of several contemporary malaise. The book seeks answers to social injustice perpetrated by new-fangled leaders and the atrocities unleashed on hapless citizens by their leadership style

Review

but are no less ill-treated and ostracized for bearing twins. It regales us of a land of music and love where the artist is celebrated as is the warrior. Finally, it is the story of forceful displacements and the making of new communities by man in time, each a carrier of cultural indices.

Ben-Iheanacho is an author, literary critic and Director, Research and Documentation at the National Council for Arts and Culture.