Where We Live, There We Thrive

BOOK REVIEW

Cover Image The Stream Never Dries Up

Chike Momah

ISBN: 9781436321419

ISBN10: 1436321417

Publisher: Xlibris Corp

Publish Date: 2008-06-30

Binding: Paperback

Where We Live, There We Thrive

M. O. Ene

egbedaa@aol.com

Tuesday, October 14, 2008

Reading about the 2008 Nobel Laureate in literature, French writer Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clezio, “a child of Nigeria” weaned in Onitsha, I thought of the great writers that Igboland has produced. Often, we do not see beyond Olaudah Equiano, Pita Nwana, Chinua Achebe, Cyprian Ekwensi, Chukwuemeka Ike, Buchi Emecheta, Dilibe Onyeama, Flora Nwapa, Elechi Amadi, etc. We do not see beyond these giants because our reading culture continues its southward slide. Otherwise, we will not miss the large arena of African literature this side of the Atlantic where Chike Momah (Nnabuenyi Nnewi) reigns.

For the past ten years, Momah has emerged as an elder leader of the pack, the pack of penpushers striving to sustain a renaissance of African literature in diaspora. Notable among them include Ugorji O. Ugorji (From the Belly of the Gods) Cyril Orji (Lamentations), Chris Abani (Graceland) George Kalu (Forbidden Bride), Matthew Uzukwu (Scammers of the Dictators Realm), Rudolf Okonkwo (Children of a Forgotten God) and, of course, yours sincerely (Blighted Blues). In essence, what Achebe did for African literature, Momah is slowing doing for the emerging African literature in diaspora. This genre of literature is very important because it will form the base on which the next generation of African writers in the western hemisphere will base their literary endeavors, just as Achebe did for African literature 50 years ago.

The Stream Never Dries Up is a special work based in and dedicated to the New Jersey Nigerian community, “with whom my wife, Ethel, and I shared a decade and more of fellowship….” The story is simple and straightforward and reads like a Nollywood movie. It was the 1980s. A Nigerian comes to America to study. He does what his mates are doing, socially and academically. By the 1990s, the sweet dream of heading home to a posh position and loads of money has become mere hallucination. He goes to Nigeria and marries a layaway wife who eventually joins him in Somerset, NJ. The story then takes a life of its own. As in Nollywood movies, things take terrible turns and someone dies. Farther down the lane, everything works out beautifully.

And they all lived happily ever after!

Nothing could be simpler, but life does no travel in straight lines. Life throws curves and comes at you so fast sometimes you want to sit back and just think. This is exactly what Momah has done: He lets you sit back and think, just think of the road so far traveled, and take it all in. In the process, he created a solid basis for the eventual history of a Nigerian community in New Jersey, which will come third only to my dozen-years, column articles in African Market News and personal recollections of those who will still be around to tell the story. The Momahs have since moved to Texas for a well-deserved retirement.

Momah presents an interesting depiction of the Nigerian community in New Jersey, especially the Igbo community. In doing so, he avoids all the annoying aspects of Igbo associations: boneheaded backbiting, gutter gossips, blind ambitions, associational angst, amoral affairs, etc. On the contrary, he presents commendable attributes of belonging, especially in the late 1980s and early 1990s. The taking home of the body of a non-member cousin of a member captures the large-heartedness of the Igbo that many abused until recently: You don’t see these characters at any social occasions, but they surface cap in hand whenever a relation passes in faraway Nigeria, calling it “wake”—instead of a “fundraising” it actually is.

I felt so comfortable reading the first chapter of the novel because it touches slightly on an important element in my recently published novel, Nnénna: an open-secret system of surrogacy among the Igbo. The coming of Europeanized Christianity changed many good things in the Igbo society and made a mess of society-sustaining strings. The new order produced many malformed setups, positioning the Igbo society neither here nor there.

The novel captures the core elements that topsy-turvy our society. After nearly a decade in the Garden State of New Jersey, main character Nwafor Obiako goes to Nigeria. With pressures to marry a local girl from his mother, his uncle Raphael persuaded him to settle for Chigozie. We witness the rushed rituals of traditional wedding, igbankwu, to accommodate the American-based Nwafor. I flaw the tradition of bride sipping the drink before offering the cup to the husband, but that is another matter for another day. The trip to America introduces us to two friends of Nwafor: Ben Ugonna, a high school friend at “St. Bath’s Enugu,” and Erwin Clark, an ex-college colleague at Rutgers in New Brunswick, NJ. The story centers on these three men and their female interests: “Sweet” Josephine and Juliet, with a tragic appearance by Kano-born, Awka indigene called Sylvester Onuorah – a distant cousin of Chigozie and for whom white power has only nasal-cerebral, not cosmetic, value.

Nwafor’s imported wife, Chigozie Nwokoye, is an interesting character. It amazes the curious mind that a village girl with a mere high school diploma, a year or so of primary teaching experience, and a knowledge of piano keys, will come to America and lord it over a Rutgers’s sociology graduate with a wider worldview. Nwafor himself wonders: “I have always found it difficult to pick my way through the labyrinthine twists and turns of the minds of American girls I had dated before Chigozie came into my life. Now, to my absolute horror, I was discovering that Chigozie was not significantly different from her American counterparts, if far less sophisticated” (p. 147)

Nwafor seems to have an explanation in how Chigozie’s “uncanny ability to bring up one contentious issue after another. She could pluck an issue out of thin air and invest it with a gravity that caught me unawares, and that knocked my thinking cap off my head.” Isn’t this what we call “nagging”? Thank God, Momah did not delve into the yet-to-be fully understood contribution of nursing as a profession. No, Chigozie is not a nurse; it is the early 90s New Jersey, the era of community.

Apparently, the daughters of Eve are the same worldwide. It is no wonder Nigerian men who thought that going to Nigeria to marry will guarantee a happy married life. The idea has since fallen flat on its face: whatever is in the hornet’s hive is in the beehive. The answer is in living in Rome as Romans live. Trying to force-change any society is often met with cultural conflicts; a better solution is inculturation—gradually impacting supposedly inferior social aspects of the mainstream as we live our everyday lives… something that Europeanized Christianity failed to do in Africa.

Nwafor argues: “It is arguable that, as a people, we have much difficulty accepting the reality of our Diaspora, or the thought that it could be permanent. The emotional attachment to the land of our forebears is simply too strong for any thought of breaking the connection. And I know that I, for all that I curse and swear at my country, cannot stand the thought that, when I die, I would be buried anywhere else but in Nigeria, and in my own village of Otuto.” (p. 139)

Throughout the book, you find these thoughts played out. While in Nigeria you do not require friends telling you before visiting, the dynamics of American society demands that you know who is coming to your door. Besides, we did not have cell phones then. Again, while Nwafor finds it appropriate to announce his wife’s pregnancy, no one remembers to organize neither a bridal nor a baby shower for Chigozie. Either that or Momah forgot these aspects of Americana.

The book is full of delectable Igbo idioms weaved seamlessly into dialogues and monologues. When Nwafor was agonizing over how to confront his wife over the issue of a five-year-old son from a previous liaison, brought to his attention on his wedding day(!), the boy’s mother showed up at his door. So it was fulfilled that “God chases away the swarm of irritating houseflies buzzing around a tailless cow” (p. 185). Then again, Nwafor should have known the size of his rectum before swallowing udara seed.

Momah did a good job with continued universalization of Igbo expressions. Such expressions as the rhetoric “Did I ask you not to tell others!” (p. 141) stand out. On the other hand, keeping original sayings closer to Igbo roots may be better. For example, “If looks could kill” (p. 193), may be better in its Igbo equivalent: “If eyes were guns.”

Momah made truth-is-life statements through the narrator: “There was – and is — an increasing number of children born to parents both of whom are Igbo, who grow up in villages and towns in Nigeria, but who have little or no proficiency in their mother tongue. It almost makes one weep in frustration and despair” (p. 12). Nothing has changed; it is even getting worse. Momah injected some solutions in "Igbo Union of New Jersey" organizing Igbo classes somewhere in Newark, NJ. The result is replayed in Nwafor’s son from an African-American ex-girlfriend singing effortlessly “Onye tili nwa na-ebe akwa” (an ancient lullaby which English actress Mara Derwent struggled to reproduce in Nkem Owoh’s “Osuofia in London”). The book also displays popular Igbo conversational phrases, although one needed to be rendered more correctly: O di mma (It is well), not “Odimma.”

Momah chose a first-person narration approach, which many writers find troublesome, and he delivered it in such a way that you soon insert yourself in the place of the narrator and chief protagonist, Nwafor Obiako. I do know why Momah chose the name “Nwafor” —which is not a common first name à la mode. I bet it gives the main character a unique personality that makes him appear hazy in how he sees many things, always depending on the inputs of others. He is rarely sure of anything, which is why the two friends played major roles in the plot.

Momah chose curious and uncommon names that give the novel its own identity. “Chigozie” is actually more popular among males. Then again, many Igbo names are unisex. Nwafor’s father-in-law is “Meshach Nwokoye,” and his sister is married to “one Hezekiah Ofoeme.” Talking of names, Momah chose appropriate, bell-ringing names for the African-American characters, notably “Erwin” and “Deirdre.” In choosing a middle name for his son, Nwafor’s wife chose a tightly knit name “Raleke” (from Raalu Eke), but she drops the ball in hoisting the jaw-breaking “Okaiwukaibeya” on Ben, a lawyer. Ben is not impressed. She should have adopted a simpler “Okaibe” (“First among equals” or, as in Latin: “Primus inter pares”).

The book is a very good read. I would have preferred “The Stream Never Dries” as a tighter title, but the question would come: never dries what? The phrasal verb “dries up” is quite popular and conveys that the stream slowly recedes -- just as things fall apart, but no stream dries down! The funny nature of English apart, the title is very indicative of what marriage should be: a trip to a stream that never stops flowing – not to a bush, where firewood soon vanishes due to relentless exploitation. Momah threw in a few vocabulary-enriching lexical items for even the widely read, as expected from a former librarian.

As is well known, there is no perfect book. The editors did not relent in their liberal use of commas, and there are small typos they must catch and correct in subsequent editions. Erwin Clark becomes “Edwin” on page 166. There is no major mistake to take away from your reading pleasure, but some editorial faux pas cannot be blamed on “printer’s devil,” and the typesetting should have allowed the pages to breathe more. With publish-on-demand, which most publishers now prefer, it will take one week to make these typos disappear.

Albeit fiction, it is not out of place to convey a sense of verisimilitude. I have not heard of “St Paul’s Hospital” in New Brunswick, NJ and St. Bath’s Enugu is not a high school. There is no reason not to use names of real places, such as St Peter’s Hospital, New Brunswick and, say, Union Boys, Akwunawnaw, Enugu, an Anglican high school for boys. After all, we used Rutgers and assigned Sylvester to Awka. If art was trying not to imitate reality, reality will imitate art: When the Momahs lived in New Jersey and three years after they left, there was no “Igbo Union of New Jersey”; there is now one—after “The Stream Never Dries Up” has been published!

Finally, Momah renders some memorable phrases, truisms, and quotes through narrator Nwafor. For example: “If this title [Omemgbeoji] was somewhat flattering and perhaps hastily bestowed on me, it was certainly not pompous or pretentious as some I have heard. I am, I believe, a modest person and rather dubious about my people’s penchant for empty and boastful titles.” (p. 24)

Then this: ”Church music can be melodious and sweet, and can uplift the soul and haunt the senses, but the ambiance is the essence” (p.147). Time was when melodious church music pulls people to attend services. Not any more; it’s now all about money, money, money. Creativity has taken a backseat; charlatans now crowd the podium for every dime they can cream from unsuspecting, gullible followers.

But this is a review of a novel? Right!

“The Stream Never Dries Up” is a timely publication. At a time when many Nigerians communities are coming apart at the seams, at a time when the World Igbo Congress is unraveling, at a time Nigerian leadership in Abuja is in a race with legendary Mr. Tortoise, it might be just about time to sit back and ask ourselves some serious question. Read Nwafor again, “It is arguable that, as a people, we have much difficulty accepting the reality of our Diaspora, or the thought that it could be permanent.” This is the key to building new Nigerian communities in America. We must decide that although “[t]he emotional attachment to the land of our forebears is simply too strong for any thought of breaking the connection,” where we live is where we thrive.