- PenAfrican is Mphuthumi Ntabeni's regular column for LitNet.
Title: Vagabonds!
Author: Eloghosa Osunde
Publisher: Riverhead Books
ISBN: 9780593330029
This book is blurbed as a story about God, faith and queerness, among other topics. To get a complete and more precise picture, you must add the subplot riffs on African mythology, superstitions, modern love relationships and complex city lives – in the Nigerian city of Lagos, which the locals call Èkó, in particular. The greedy spirit of Èkó is possessive; it takes people’s eyes and senses and makes them feel and see itself through them. Like the Lucifer of the Bible, it is the fallen angel of light that was supposed to bring guidance and developmental consciousness to the people, but got seduced by greed and power. “Vagabonds are the ones Èkó could not do without, even as he is fond of uprooting them from the ground” – the rejects who live on the peripheries. They’re the unseen of the city, the ones who don’t fit the conventional mode – your queers, religious freaks, criminal businessmen and night workers.
........
Mythscape – the desire for interpreting reality through native mythology – as a narrative form is becoming common in books of our era.
........
Mythscape – the desire for interpreting reality through native mythology – as a narrative form is becoming common in books of our era. This is understandable in the case of African literature, since our continent’s sense of self and development of organic narrative structure was interrupted – almost truncated – by the occidental colonial project. But national myths are having a field day even in the West. There has been a paranoia around the reinterpretation of Greek and Roman classical myths, especially from the female voice point of view – again understandably so, since most Western mythical stories were told during the era when Western patriarchal hegemony was at its worst. But I recently read a competent book, Storyland by Amy Jeffs, which is a retelling of British medieval mythological history. Could it be that this resurgence of myth narrative is informed – or is a tell-tale sign – of the loss of power by dominant religions in our post-everything era? Whatever the case may be, Vagabonds! also successfully employs Igbo mythscape to interrogate in depth the lives of Nigerians in our era.
One of the characters says that vagabonds are “the power circuit of the cities”. Another says: “Take it from me: hard-walled as it is, there are cracks in power that can be crawled through. And if there’s anything vagabonds know how to do, it’s to live in the cracks, to grow tall and thick as unfellable trees.” When one of the characters recruits his homeboy to come to the city, he warns him that to be a good driver in the city of Lagos, “you need to learn how to be deaf, dumb and blind: wear mute buttons and eye filters”. It turns out that he would work for a harvester – a criminal businessman who supplies private hospitals with body parts. The horrors that emanate are all that has made me scared ever to buy food whose source I’m not clear on. When I spoke to Eloghosa Osunde recently, she told me that this is partially based on real life, and reported instead in Lagos. There goes my love of street food, especially shis’ inyama.
.......
At some stage, you get the feeling that the author is accusing our African culture and spirituality of being obsessed with spells – what one of the characters calls “a desperate energy”. Who can blame them? Africans seem to have been dealt a double blow by the colonial double-edged sword when it comes to religion.
.......
The book has a running thread of people getting possessed by the devil, to the extent of having a deep theological questioning of the belief in free will. They seem to lose agency when under the spell. Nina Simone’s song “I put a spell on you” even features. At some stage, you get the feeling that the author is accusing our African culture and spirituality of being obsessed with spells – what one of the characters calls “a desperate energy”. Who can blame them? Africans seem to have been dealt a double blow by the colonial double-edged sword when it comes to religion. First, it was a means of silencing the need to question white supremacy and to make Africans pliant as slaves to Western oppression and hegemony. Africans bore the brunt of what Søren Kierkegaard called Christendom, the misuse of religion for imperial purposes of dominance and oppression. And now, through evangelical churches in particular, religion is self-misused by Africans to suppress native organic thought of self-development. In this manner, religion is now used as a weapon of superstition and impotent magic, to ukudodobalisa ingqondo (to deaden authentic thinking).
Waru is my favourite character in the book. We first meet her in the chapter titled Rain. She is a strong character, a wind/wave that can easily bruise and crush those whose sense of identity and self-worth is dependent on a superficial grasp of religion as a wand of magic – like her friend Ms Kolawole. Ms Kolawole is a Bible-wagging religious fanatic who doesn’t really understand any of Waru’s choices, especially the need to exit without drama and fare. Think Meursault in Albert Camus’s book The stranger, then make him female and African, and you are close to understanding Waru. Her deeply self-detached melancholic spirit refuses to be manipulated, whether by religion or in love circles. She has a profound sense of self that is fresh and reassuring. More wonderful yet is the way her former lover nostalgically remembers her, in my favourite chapter of the book, “The only way out is through”: “You didn’t do drugs, so I couldn’t dump my head in them. We didn’t have sex, so I couldn’t throw my body on the issue. I had to look at myself, and maybe that was the problem.” From all that, you get a eureka moment: perhaps our age’s obsession with substance abuse and sex comes from our failures to communicate properly with each other by other means? So, we throw ourselves into instant gratification as a means of shutting down or avoiding authentic channels of communication.
........
Think Meursault in Albert Camus’s book The stranger, then make him female and African, and you are close to understanding Waru.
........
I love that Waru is a seamstress by trade. Of course, weaving has been associated with the female power of cunning since the beginning of storytelling in the West – from the Homeric era. I think the term “spinning a yarn” comes from that. As someone who learned to read at the feet of my grandmother with her Singer machine, I still associate the movement of the Singer machine needle and the fresh smell of fabric with security and peace. Those were the most peaceful years of my life. Waru is no Penelope, and her daughter, Rain, is no mother-bashing Telemachus who thinks glory is something to be pursued by men. Rain is adaptable, immortal and gentle in her ways of answering women’s greatest needs.
I said that the book is about cities – well, it is about leaving them also. One of the characters, who is in love with the spirit of Èkó, even though it hurts vagabonds for their unrequited love, says: “I could not survive an insanity that vast.” Perhaps this is what it all boils down to – when we take a fright from our city lives and realise we are tired of the vast insanity that threatens to sweep us up into vast psychiatric wards we call cities. We get the itch to leave. The word “itch” is used in different wonderful ways in the book. Sometimes it is used as a compulsion by men to beat their wives. Sometimes it is some form of restlessness to flee to or away from the city. Other times, it is the evil that one does under the spell of Èkó.
........
As much as the book is about cities, religion and relationships, it is also about us growing false skins to cope with the demands of modern life.
........
Another thing that you as a reader will love about the book, besides being immersed in Nigerian culture and spirituality, is learning about the cuisine. I wished there was a glossary of recipes and a playlist at the end. Osunde told me that there is an iMusic playlist for those who can access it. The songs are great at invoking the emotions created by the book narrative. As much as the book is about cities, religion and relationships, it is also about us growing false skins to cope with the demands of modern life. And about what happens when that false face starts obliterating the authentic one. It gives an impression that we are condemned by our post-everything lives in modern cities.
In “The only way out is through”, Waru’s crush – who, she says, taught her how to be a partner (“to choose a person with abandon”) – writes a letter: “I know for a fact that it can kill a person to become and remain the exact thing they’ve always feared.” In the book, this refers to something else, but I couldn’t help seeing the extension to our modern politics – the state of Israel in particular. She also says: “I know that if you want to live a man’s life, you have to be willing to sacrifice beauty in order to reach for power.” That, to me, is too high a price to pay for an impotent ladder of success that is empty and fog-like at the top.
Also read:
PenAfrican: Call and response by Gothataone Moeng – a book review
Moederland: Nine daughters of South Africa by Cato Pedder: a book review