The Stream Never Dries Up

Book Review

Oseloka Obaze^*

Saturday 7 March 2009

The Stream Never Dries Up

Chike Momah

(ISBN: 978-1-4363-2141-9: Xlibris Corporation, USA, 2008; p.212; Price, $19.99)

Available at: http://www.xlibris.com or http://www.amazon.com

The Stream Never Dries Up, Chike Momah’s fourth book is one that would in time firmly place him in an enviable class: as an authoritative voice and chronicler of the lives and challenges of the Nigerian Diaspora, and especially the Igbo community in the United States.

Before joining the engrossing literary fray, it needs acknowledging upfront, that The Stream Never Dries Up is unquestionably a story of most Nigerian Diaspora communities – a ‘Coming to America’ of sorts. It is also a story of unfettered love, life, expectations, tragedy, and redemption. Naturally, in this book, life mimics itself with the ubiquitous boy-meet-girl saga. Love reigns supreme, but so too does controversy, suspicion, and other human idiosyncrasies, that are endemic in matrimonial relations. Cultural variances play a critical role in the mindset and posturing of the characters.

When the time arrived, Nwafor Obiako, a Nigerian immigrant of Igbo extraction, returns to Nigeria, his native land, to seek a life partner. As required by custom he fulfils the traditional marriage rites and the attending civil court registry rite before journeying back to the United States, to await his new bride.

Soon and as planned, the bride, Chigozie Obiako, nee Nwokoye, arrives and seamlessly settles into Nwafor Obiako’s already existent life pattern and his circle of friends and acquaintances in New Jersey. This is where the story plot begins to unfold.

Inevitably, Chigozie, who for her age and background possesses the rare talent of being an accomplished pianist, enters into the embrace of Nwafor Obiako’s closest friends: Ben Ugonna, an attorney, Obiako’s childhood friend and high schoolmate and his wife Josephine, as well as Erwin Clark, an African-American. Naturally, Chigozie is also introduced into Igbo Community of New Jersey.

At the outset, Chigozie’s blissful sojourn in America is not exceptionally remarkable. Between her and her spouse all seemed well, but for the daily ethereal concerns and Nwafor Obiako’s intermittent anxiety over Chigozie not being in the family way, a reality further exacerbated by the tactless prodding and reminders from Ben Ugonna, that Obiako seemed to be failing in his conjugal responsibilities. Unknown to Ugonna, Chigozie had made a choice between her love and aspirations to be a professional pianist and starting a family, a decision to which Obiako had acquiesced.

Enter Sylvester Onwurah , the proverbial less-fortunate cousin that epitomizes the saying, “a friend in need is a pest.” Along with his beau Juliet, Sylvester would soon become an influential accomplice on Chigozie’s design to play piano professionally. Sylvester is precocious, wily, intelligent, and a tad insensately ambitious. By a curious twist of fate as much as by design by Sylvester; Chigozie becomes a pianist for a nightclub act. All was smooth sailing until the fateful night when a mêlée broke out during the annual banquet of Igbo Union of New Jersey.

Chigozie’s affinity to Sylvester lacks clarity, yet was understandable, despite being bothersome. Their relationship fell well within the ambit of familial support group that most Nigerian are accustomed to in their native country, but which, invariably, is lacking in America, no matter how hard individuals try to replicate the home environment, often to their own detriment and eternal regret.

However, beyond the fraternal affinity, it soon becomes obvious that the chemistry, care, and magnetism between the cousins may well be beyond the agape. Momah plays Chigozie and Sylvester like a seductive fiddle, such that the reader is lured into thinking that something untoward is afoot. The reader soon becomes suspicious, after being unwittingly drawn into thinking of the possibility that the two were “kissing cousins” or erstwhile paramours masquerading as cousins. The former would constitute an incestuous liaison; yet, the lingering interplay -- so well exploited by Momah -- intrigues.

In time, Sylvester run into trouble, first by dabbling into drugs and, eventually, by running foul of his drug underworld interlocutors. His concerned landlord renders Sylvester homeless by evicting him. With no abode or shelter, Sylvester does the next best thing by becoming a squatter in the home his cousin Chigozie and her husband, Nwafor Obiako. Aware of his affiliation with drug dealers and fearful that Sylvester’s disreputable lifestyle might put his family in harms way; an unyielding Nwafor Obiako throws him out of their house. Not long after, Nwafor Obiako receives a phone call from the police, informing him of the tragic and ostensibly drug-related death of Sylvester Onwurah.

By default, Nwafor Obiako becomes the unenviable and disinclined next of kin to an itinerant but deceased Sylvester. More out of obligation to Chigozie than by customary dictates or choice, it falls on Nwafor Obiako as Sylvester’s cousin-in-law, to accompany Chigozie to the hospital, where he must partake in yet another unenviable task of making decisions relating to organs donation, terminating Sylvester’s his life support and, eventually, making repatriation of the remains and related funeral arrangements.

Amidst all the disorder, Chigozie ribs Nwafor Obiako with galling guilt trips; reminding him, as if he cared to know, that Sylvester would still be alive had he not evicted him from their home. One reminder too many, results in an exasperated Nwafor Obiako getting physical with Chigozie, which in turn, resulted in a visit to the emergency room and deep fears of a possible miscarriage. Miraculously, the husband and wife weather the storm and Sylvester’s exit, confirming to some degree, Chigozie’s confessional: “Sometimes I ask myself how in the world I deserve a husband like you.”

Whoever said that life is fair and that tragedy at any possible junction is not part of life should read this book. The greatest twist of the plot emerges as a wedding-day dilemma. Against counsel, but to appease Chigozie, Nwafor Obiako agrees to finance an elaborate and expensive church nuptial to his bride. However, in the midst of the wedding reception conviviality and jolliness, Nwafor Obiako is confronted with an unknown past, when his erstwhile girlfriend, Deirdre, shows up to inform him that he had fathered a now five year-old son during their earlier relationship. As in all such quirky instances, the product of that liaison is an adorable young boy. That reality throws Obiako, Chigozie, and Deirdre into a tempestuous setting befitting their convoluted and inextricable lives.

The Stream Never Dries Up objectively explores interpersonal relations, matrimonial and otherwise in US-based Nigerian communities. These are juxtaposed with accepted and controversial community ideals that frequently border on the schizophrenic, since they are neither purely American nor faithfully African.

The presumptive Nigerian community in New Jersey depicted by Momah in The Stream Never Dries Up is as close to reality as it gets. Clearly, Momah posses the bona fides to conduct such introspective foray, even if in fiction form. Effortlessly, he captured for posterity, the very essence as well as the imponderables that continue to shape the temporal transition of Nigerian immigrants into American citizens. Thankfully, he did not miss the cruelties, fractiousness, and certain incivilities that are also prevalent. Concisely, the plot encapsulates the familiar but destructively egregious maxim: “This is America,” which is commonplace in the lexicon of Nigerian communities in the US.

Momah highlights how in keeping with traditional Igbo customs, when the time came, Nwafor Obiako like most Igbo men sojourned in the US, did the expected by journeying home to Nigeria to take a bride. Such an endeavor is honor and time bound. In Momah’s book, poetic license permitted several liberties, but that is what gives any fiction its soul. As such, the oddity and rarity of Chigozie Nwokoye, Nwafor’s wife, being a piano playing “sophisticat” rather than a “local chic,”remains exactly what it is – a fiction. In truth, however, as Nwafor Obiako noted, “Chigozie was not significantly different from her American counterparts, if far less sophisticated.” This point begs the question, why Nigerian men go home to marry local girls who on arriving in America become derisively more American than natural-born Americans.

Though entirely novelistic, this book is a worthy addition to several others by Momah, which will eventually aid historians and sociologists to grasp fully, the critical transitions, complete with the culture shock and conflicted existence that Nigerian immigrants underwent in America in the 1980s. In unearthing the defining essence as well as hubris of such existence, and offering the reader a glimpse into what will be a bygone era, Chike Momah has yet again claimed his honored place as a respected voice and ardent observer of the Nigerian Diaspora.

In all candor, however, The Stream Never Dries Up is a good but rather tedious read -- not necessarily due to the writing style or storyline, but because the novel is overloaded with strong but avoidable characters that detract from the key protagonists. The mix of robust supporting character with malleable lead characters clearly drowned out Obiako and Chigozie’s respective protagonist roles, reducing them, as it were, to mere transients. Yet, such a beguiling twist of obdurate characters adds to the complexities that indeed are constant hallmarks pervading the Nigerian Diaspora in the United States.

Another main weakness that gives rise to reading tiresomeness is Momah’s involuntary attempt at providing stark details in minutia. What could have been an arresting novel replete with everyday challenges is fraught with the heftiness of too many details. Such an inadvertent slip may have been the undoing of this otherwise fine literary work. This, however, is forgivable considering that Momah essentially writes for two audiences; Nigerian and non-Nigerians. His use of English is masterly, as is his use of Igbo flourish and idioms. Both, thankfully, gives the novel its well-deserved balance as well as the requisite cultural and contradicting flavor.

I must confess to having read this book twice before summoning the courage to do the review, mindful that I may say one or two unkind things of the work. Nonetheless, this work grows on the reader, the second time around. That, too, is the hallmark of a good but new wine.

------------

Mr. Oseloka Obaze is a founding member of the Kwenu.com Book Review Forum, which is dedicated to the promotion of books with Igbo and Afrocentric themes. He is also a supporting Member of the African Writers Endowment (AWE). From 1999 to 2005, he served on the editorial board of INYEAKA, the journal of Songhai Charities, Inc., a New Jersey community-based charity founded and run by Nigerians based in New York Tri-state area in the United States, first as its founding Publisher and later as the Editor-At-Large. He is also on the editorial board of The Amaka Gazette, the journal of the Christ the King College, Onitsha Alumni Association in America. His collection of poems, “Regarscent Past: A Collection of Poems” was second among the top three finalists in the poetry category in the African Writers Endowment Publishing Grant Program for 2004. He is working on a novel titled “Happy Eulogy”. He reviews books and arts strictly as a hobby.