Title: Ribblings in Youthhood
Author: Udenta O. Udenta
Publisher: Kraft Books, Ibadan
Year: 2014
Pagination: 189
Reviewer: Henry Akubuiro
Ribblings in Youthhood, the sixth volume of Udenta O. Udenta’s collected boyhood works, is an omnibus collection that contains different literary genres: short stories, short plays and a novelette at once. In them, Udenta offers us a mirror to see the portrait of the artist’s imagination as a young man, containing both the fantastic and the fantasy.
Some of the short stories herein can be classified as short-short, while one of the plays qualifies as a skit. For the young Udenta writing this pieces, length doesn’t matter; what matters is him managing to magic words that create worlds both realistic and nebulous. However, some of the pieces in this collection are extensive in character development, which goes to show the progression in the creativity of the emergent writer at different times of boyhood.
Udenta’s juvenilia sometimes betrays naïve plotting, weak narrative and turgid diction, which is expected, for, if otherwise, it would have been difficult to convince anybody that these pieces were the products of a young boy still learning the ropes of storytelling.
Nevertheless, these scribbles are not throwaway stuffs. They range from witty and surrealist short stories to works of critical realism interrogating the Nigerian civil war, especially the sufferings in the ill-fated Biafran republic, as well as a patina of magical realism.
The major works in this book are The Quarrel, a drama skit; Personality Clash in Hades, a play; and Some Stories Told, a general title for twelve short stories. But they are not the only short stories in this book. Three other short-shorts come up at the beginning of the collection.
Between when the Nigerian civil war broke out in 1967 and the time it ended in 1970, Udenta was merely under 10, but the effects of the war has remained indelible in his mind. Little wonder that, some of the stories here pay witness to the brutalities and bastardy occasioned by the civil war. The stories feel us with empathy on what went down, though there are fictional resources appropriated here and there, which are not far from the experiences of some Biafrans during the war.
Fear, deaths and miseries are a given in the first of the civil war tales, “The Air Raid”. It depicts enemy bomber descending on an Igbo community at the beginning of the civil war. At first, curiosity is evident as naïve children focus on the circling bomber in the air. Before long, the bomber has done its worse: “…flung away the tree branch which damaged a vehicle, killed a pregnant woman and her child, destroyed many things and was about to go when the full force of the anti-aircraft hit its left propeller….It fell heavily on the ground….” (p.37).
In “The Return of the People”, the war has ended, leaving in its wake deaths and destructions, but, to those who survive the war, it is time to go home and salvage what is left of the ruins. Everything is ill at ease. Even the bus conveying the returnees is in a sorry shape. It echoes with “sounds of creaking benches”, “loads falling”, and a lorry that “rattled this way and that…”, amid the “long years of suffering, subjugation and counter subjugation … drawing to an end.”
When the travellers finally arrive at their destination, joy is unbidden. While the war lasted, many were inflicted with leprosy, kwashiokor, a reign of terror and a recourse to rejected food. Now, they are free. As expected, “The whole universe looked deserted, except for the chilly, weird and eerie clamour of different beasts. Forests were everywhere, pathways, unrecognisable. Some homes were burned down, while some were doorless and windowless” (p.41).
The poetic drama entitled Personality Clash in Hades has a metaphysical makeover, set in a deep abode, a bottomless vision, shrouded in myth and legend, buried in the dim past, about the reincarnation of sea-beings. It is a work steeped in Greco-Roman mythic lore, with King of Spirits, King of Demons, King of Demonical Spirit, Procanius, Invisible Spirits, Kantange, Lutos, among other satanic archetypes, who glory in their destructive powers.
Stories in Some Stories collection of short tales show some kind of maturity compared to the first three stories published, yet the blushes of juvenile scribbling is writ large. For instance, “The Mysterious Story of Okemini” ends with the line, “So ended the mysterious story of Okemini”, while “Ukeje”, in chapter two, ends with “So ended the story of how brilliance, bravery, and fearlessness were proven by a man who possessed these qualities.”
Back to “The Mysterious Story of Okemini”, it is yet another civil war narrative of nameless misery. Okemini, we learn, is a young man of 22, who is able to buy a bicycle for himself while working at Enugu after his Cambridge education. But he is taken unawares by the civil war, which approaches Enugu so soon, claiming the life of his visiting brother. He himself is half buried alive by the impact of a shell until help comes his way. He suffers further harrowing attacks from bandits, including losing a hand.
Most of the stories here are set in the village, and happenings in them are full of mysteries. In “The Mystery of the Changing Boy”, there is a hoopla created by a mystery woman who, with her charms, cause the death of many people in the community of Omenaya in eastern Nigeria.
In “Two Foolish People”, another woman, uses her magical power to punish two young men who attempt to set her husband’s house ablaze by commanding fire to roast them to death. Among others, “The Ghost of Evil Priest” continues to explore the supernatural realm adjacent our very own existence.