Title: We Shall Find Him

AUTHOR:  John Eloeboh

Publisher: Kraftbook, Ibadan

YEAR: 2021

Pagination: 140

REVIEWER: Henry Akubuiro

 

Momentary pangs of despair, though undesirable, do not cause too much havoc to the psyche. But when misery lingers for years, the greatest of will gets wilted. Nevertheless, there are a few who can brave the storms, waiting patiently for the last laugh.

We Shall Shall Find Him, a new novel by John Eloeboh, revisits  familial aches in a contemporary African home. The Igbo society is one that treasures a male child, and, when a married couple hasn’t got any yet after years of marriage, gloom descends on the abode as pressures set in from different corners. It is the most harrowing moment for a wife especially, who the society often makes a scapegoat.

The case of doctor Obi Ikenga and his wife, Adaku, is even more agonising. His late father had a traditional title which Obi ought to inherit, but tradition demands that Obi should have a child to get that title.

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Chief Ude, on behalf of the custodians, informs Eliza, Obi’s mother, the importance and urgency of Obi searing a child: “Obi should come home and take his father’s traditional title. His father’s spirit is restless in the spirit world, because his traditional stool of IKEZE is lying vacant. Should anything happen to you today — our gods forbid — the traditional title will be lost forever. But the problem here is that this cannot be unless and until Obi gets a male child. The spirit world is in turmoil….”

This sets the tone for the web of intrigues in this novel against the couple. The author opens our eyes to the air of despair that hovers around the home of a couple seeking for a child. Also, we are led to the doorsteps of charlatans who exploit the conditions of the desperate to compound their predicaments. The novel also tells us that you can overcome the tribulations if only you can persevere.

As nerve-racking as the plight of the Obis is, the author offers the reader some cultural gigs to relish. In the Oji setting in Anambra State, we follow the culture of this Igbo community, how their festivals bring all together, the attachments to rites by elders and the beauty of bucolic idioms. Readers of We Shall Find Him will surely learn some Igbo proverbs, especially when the elders speak.

While the trajectory of the Obis are the dominant storyline, the cat and mouse relationship between Ejike the drunk and his wife, Nkechi, offers some comic relief, though it paints another inelegant picture of what a poor, childless African wife faces in an abusive, failed relationship. This family, however, is the opposite of the Obis. In the latter, love in the face of adversity, understanding and patience are made to prevail.

Eloeboh’s descriptive power and eye for details are part of the lollipop the reader is treated to in this amazing read. In the opening chapter, “… a drizzle petered out as the sun drifted away, with a gradually darkening sky looking down on the earth with contempt.”

How do bad things happen to good people? You might have asked this question more than once. The Chief Nurse at the Oji based Hope Medical as Diagnostic  Clinic, Adaku, has always provided succour for teeming patients. Her husband, Obi, who manages the hospital, has converted one of his late father’s houses to a health outfit in service of humanity. But their cries for a child remain unanswered for years.

In Eliza, his mother, we see how desperate and combative a mother-in-law could be when her son doesn’t have a child. “I am yet to see any sign of seriousness about the two of you,” she tells Obi sternly during one of her many visits. Obi tries as much as possible to play it down. For him and Adaku, God’s time is the best.

To the author’s credit is the infusion of genuine love into the relationship of the Obis. As hard as the trials come, the bond between the two refuses to be broken, while Ekene goes the wrong way, drinking every night, beating the wife up and will, and even impregnating his house girl, Ebele, as she flees the house.

The fate of that unborn child isn’t resolved till the end of the narrative  when Ebele reappears on discovering that the unwanted child he had abandoned after delivery, Tony, is now a practising medical doctor, having been adopted by the Obis.

Also, the Obis, after many years of waiting, eventually gets what they have been looking for. Patience, indeed, pays. Detractors can now eat their words. Eloeboh’s novel is like a mental balm, so reassuring, well written.