Brass was one of the places I wanted to visit again after I lost my son. I wanted to go far away and still be close enough to be certain about what had happened, and learn to live with the fact of the matter. I wanted to visit everywhere I had been as a boy, to traverse the years of my childhood and recapture it up to the moment.
Brass was the farthest island I had ever been to. It gave me my first view of the Atlantic, the famous ocean I’d been reading about in books. I know what the waves did to calm my spirit in times past. I know what the wide frame of the shores, holding the sea in a bodily embrace, did to my soul, and I wanted that experience again.
I bobbed up from sleep that morning, conscious of the fresh ache from the loss of Rembi, and decided to head for Brass. If nothing else, the waters would show me the quantity of tears I needed to shed. The waves would rush in, each lap bringing its consignment of condolences, its message of comfort breaking up into shivering bubbles, and if you were to listen to each bubble, it would break up again into countless sighs of sympathy. I would go to Brass.
My attachment to Brass dates back to my boyhood. In 1974, I was a form six student at St. Barnabas School, Twon-Brass. I was staying with an uncle, my mother’s younger brother, Monday Godwin-Egein, one of the first set of teachers in the college that was to come later, with Marcus Nelson-Ebimie as principal. My dad, Joseph Aye Ilagha, also served as vice principal of the same college many years later, and I had paid repeated visits to Brass on holidays.
I had this post-card image of Brass in my head, but my last visit erased that image considerably. Otherwise, as you break out of the creeks and approach the open mouth of the estuary leading to the Atlantic Ocean, the first sight of Brass would be the pink convex roof of the British Consulate building to the left. That was the first indication that you were as good as home, long before the mango trees lining the shore come into view.
The Brass river itself was always the same good old body of water propping up the ships, boats and canoes, each dancing along with every weave, every bob and every flap of water, wave after wave, stretching like an uneven carpet to the outer fringes of the mangrove trees. Rather than a pink roof in the horizon, however, a shimmer of aluminium roofs rose into the sky like a bright pillar of light that cannot be looked upon for too long in the heat of the sun. Imbikiri, the cluster of thatch houses with enduring thatch roofs, was looking altogether different. More solid buildings had grown up along the shoreline, and every roof was uniformly dressed in brilliant zinc.
Just before Imbikiri to the left, there’s a portion in the mangrove landscape where the trees rise highest, and the water in front of this portion bubbles more than any other part of the sea. It is as if the current concentrates and thickens and renews itself in a swirl that makes the waters froth. Many stories had been told about Opuorubo and the god that causes the waters to swell in front of its shrine. My uncle, Dieghoilaye had often told with a chuckle the story of Obu Egberi, the stubborn man from Fantuo, who insisted on rowing past Opuorubo when the waters were in torment.
When it was clear that his canoe was about to sink, Egberi addressed the waters as though he was addressing a rascal who couldn’t take a mere joke, and then he dropped two bottles of mineral drinks, Fanta and Coke, into the swirl. The stormy waters immediately calmed down. I had seen that happen before, but what really amazed me was that, by the time the bottles were seen again far away on the shoreline, they were uncorked and empty. The god of Opuorubo obviously had an opener in the depth of those waters.
Brass itself was defined by its wealth of mango trees in the Consulate area. It was clear that they were planted by the colonial officers who occupied the British outpost along the route of the Royal Niger Company. Over time, the tender saplings had grown into deeply rooted trees with massive stems and many gnarled branches upon which numberless birds had sat to fine-tune their timeless songs at dawn. What’s more, the mangoes of Brass are among the sweetest I have ever tasted. One bite of a Brass mango will always be fruity, rich, succulent and yummy.
Brass was the island on which I saw tarred roads for the first time in my life, having been born in Nembe. The very fact that vehicles could drive around Brass was enough to bamboozle a boy from Fantuo. I remember the very texture of the road as it was the day my grandmother, Sisi, had taken me on a long trek from Brass to Ewoama. I have written somewhere how we arrived Brass by canoe, just the two of us, in the aftermath of the Biafran war, after the guns had fallen silent but the shells of bullets could still be seen all around.
Sisi must have been rattled by the sight of all those soldiers at the waterfront. They could have called out to us to row in to shore, and anything could have happened. They saw a woman rowing frantically at the stern of a canoe, and a boy swinging his puny paddle up front, and they let us go. Sisi didn’t want to repeat that experience, nor to relive the sight of dead bodies floating like pillows along the creeks. The torment would be too much for a four-year old boy, so she opted to walk the long distance, instead, on our return trip, along the Brass-Okpoama road, stopping midway at Ewoama.
We had set out early that morning, and the tar was cool to the naked feet. But as the sun appeared and began to climb up the braces of the sky, its heat was absorbed by the road. It was warm at first, and then became so hot by noon that we had to walk along the edge of the road. But always, in the distance, I couldn’t miss the fascination of the sun and the brilliant mirages of light it built along the road, the many shimmering pools of water that disappeared as we approached.
Many years later, on this particular visit after the death of my son, the road is not as long as I thought it to be in my youth. The sun still plays tricks with the eyes, and the road has proven to be enduring. Nothing much had changed about Brass, in terms of the physical landscape. In the seven day period I stayed at Brass, I never ran into a new patch of tar. The road is wearing out in places alright, but its long-standing integrity is not in doubt. Built in the early seventies, the sheer durability of the road gave credence to the landmark legacy of the first military government under a son of the soil.
The air was cool and refreshing at Brass, and every morning all I wanted to do was step out of my room, and look at the face of the sea. I needed a quiet place to think, to meditate, to ponder upon the fact that Rembi was no more, and to ask why. I was glad the day I stepped into a small garden full of thatch huts, an open sit-out of a kind, music oozing out of the reception where a young man tended a bar, just overlooking the vast expanse of the Brass River. The place was called Takwa Bay. I went back there a few more times to watch the waves spluttering from a distance, their crests frothing with answers in every bubble of water, answers I could not fathom. I simply watched the waves break over pebbles and boulders, while I took a sip of faith.
I was on the look-out for familiar faces, too, and they were not many. Children had grown up into adults, and changed the facial landscape of Brass. Visitors had joined in as well, and the familiar face, when it showed up, had changed with passing time. Age had written a rough hand over many faces, and those who were glad to see me again had the same to say about me. I had grown older, wearing grey beards even, but my face was still recognisable, they would say.
Angel Carter and I had taken the motorbike repeatedly, and plied the route between Brass and Okpoama, riding over bumps. Angel was a visiting American tourist who believed that her roots lay in Brass. We had boarded the same boat from Nembe, and she was excited at the prospect of seeing the Atlantic waters beating against the open beach at Okpoama. She only wished her darling husband, Joseph, was beside her. The very sight of the ocean merging seamlessly with the clouds in the distance, dissolving into the horizon, was a spectacle so relieving that I found myself looking forward to the experience again and again.
I could feel the tangible touch of the breeze from the Atlantic, and hear the waves beating against the sprawl of beach sand. The spread of water was wider and more infinite to look upon from here. Unlike Takwa Bay, no music was playing from loudspeakers here, and the chirp of birds was more pronounced. My heart ached with thoughts of my son, and my eyes roamed far out into the vacant horizon before rolling back in with the waves. We sat under the shade of nim trees, Angel and I, on bamboo chairs laid out in the foreyard of raffia huts, and sipped cold drinks while listening to the rush of water. Angel would tune to songs on her phone, her ears plugged with earphones, upon her face a distant look that spoke of grief. I could see that, even for her, the weight was heavy.
But always, the sight of the beach, the endless lapping of water along the shoreline, the expansive body of water stretching out to meet the sky at the farthest fringes the eyes can see, merging with the wide, open space up above, to say nothing of the variable voice of the ocean — all of this was so overwhelming that it took some weight off the loss. I’m grateful that Angel caught me in the lenses of her camera in that detached moment when I flung out my arms, threw my head back, and screamed my pain into the wind.
But before all that, Brass held some highlights that I could not miss. I was glad to set eyes on good old St Barnabas Primary School where I had spent one eventful final year in Form Six. The school bell that used to dominate the sky was not as imposing as it seemed then, but there it was still hanging in its modest tower. The field was busy from the day I first arrived. Apparently, a football tournament was in progress between the various quarters of Twon-Brass.
Shidi-Ama was playing against Kemmer-Ama today. Yesterday, it was Sambo-Ama versus Cameroun-Ama. The spectators were loud and boisterous along the sidelines. Day after day, I could hear the cheering from my room at Eriaria Hotel where I lodged for all of three nights, overlooking the immaculate statue of Ada-Spiff, the ancestral patriarch of the Spiff lineage who counted as one of the Brass elite to interact with the early missionaries.
In times past, it would have been Shidi-Polo against Kemmer-Polo, but Brass had evolved beyond the days when it was delineated by compounds. Each compound had since grown to become a town of its own, with its own paramount ruler, all coming under the overall rulership of His Royal Majesty Alfred Papapreye Diette-Spiff, Seriyai II, Amanyanabo of Twon-Brass.
I grew up in Brass, as I said, living with my uncle. Before Godwin-Egein inherited me, I was staying with his elder brother, Dieghoilaye who told me the story of Obu Egberi and the god of Opuorubo. We lived at Shidi-Polo then, and I worked with my uncle as an apprentice carpenter. Our shed was just across, inside the premises of Otonye Ololo, who later became Chief Dimain.
Imagine my surprise when, at the end of the football tournament, on the very last day, I ran into a young man who introduced himself as Inowei Ololo, a son of Dimain. He wondered what I was doing in Brass, commiserated with me over the loss of my son, and offered to accommodate me when I told him I was lodging in an hotel. He moved me into a well furnished apartment in a small estate known as Abuja. To say the least, I felt privileged to stay in an exclusive portion of the Federal Capital Territory, so close to the Atlantic ocean. All of Abuja used to be part of Imbikiri in times past.
Many years ago, when my father became vice principal of the secondary school, we moved into our official quarters at Imbikiri, permanent site of the college. So I know Brass, and Brass is familiar with the shuffle of my feet. But the city itself is no longer the Brass I used to know as a boy. All the sandy paths have become solid cement walkways, leading from one end of the town to another. Otherwise, Twon-Brass was well known for the menace of jigger, that tiny little pest that overran every sandy stretch of the streets. To walk on bare feet was to risk the invariable attack of jigger. It bore into the thick sole of the feet, ate up the flesh, and grew into round balls full of pus. To pluck it out with a pin and a blade is to be faced with a hole in the toe or the sides of the feet.
There were school boys and girls in good number afflicted by this menace. At St Barnabas in those days, Munaboemi was famous for his wealth of jiggers, so much so that his name went into everyday singsong. The toes of his feet were a web of craters dug up by jigger. I had my share of jigger infection too, and got to know that the only treatment for the sore was salt, as hot as it can get in the wounds. I wonder what really happened to all the jiggers in Twon-Brass. Nobody talks about them anymore, and no one suffers from swollen feet occasioned by jigger.
Come to think of it, nobody talks about the burrow pits that used to dot the island in times past. Those pits used to be the regular haunt of young adventurers out for inland fishing. I think they were dug long ago when the roads were being constructed, when pure earth was needed to grade the brand new highway leading to Ewoama and Okpoama. They were also the hollow outcome of work at the Agip terminal at the other end of Twon-Brass, overlooking the Atlantic Ocean. So much had changed over time. That much I noticed in the course of my last visit to the city by the sea.
Even more noticeably, the population of visitors in Brass has increased substantially, so much so that the Nembe language is not as predominant as it used to be. Gone are the days when you walk up to a shop, ask for something in Nembe, and get a reply in Nembe. Now you get a blank stare from the seller, and a compulsion to repeat your request in English or Pidgin. Brass has become home to families from far beyond Bayelsa. You couldn’t say the same for Fantuo, my childhood home. I had not been to Fantuo since May 2013 when I was there to bury my mother. Here was I at Brass, virtually next door. I could pass through Fantuo on the return trip to Nembe, and I was glad I did.
The wild threat of the Atlantic waters, the bold muscles of the Brass river softened visibly as our boat turned right, heading for Fantuo. Already, I could see signs of the difference to come. A tall cotton tree used to mark the location of Fantuo. It was a guide to every sailor. It was visible from a distance. But now, that giant tree which rose into the sky like a leviathan was no longer there. Our boat slowed to a crawl as we entered the main artery of the creek that would lead us to Coconut Island. I recognised the spot because I had plied it repeatedly over the years.
Legend had it that, in times past, a huge crocodile and a boa constrictor had a fierce confrontation in those turbulent waters. By the time both creatures lay dead, their remains floating on the river, the banks of the creek had widened. And now our boat driver was telling us to raise our hands. We were approaching a military check point at the same historic spot on the route to Fantuo. Expatriates from Shell were expanding the shoreline, and the army was there to protect them with guns at the ready.
We soon brought down our hands and resumed the journey with the wind in our faces, when the army was sure that we were all harmless civilians in a boat on a regular afternoon. The very thought that I was going to step on the soil of Fantuo again was enough to overwhelm me. My mind went right back to my youthful days there. They were days of adventure in the daytime, and grand tales by moonlight. They were days when I had gone fishing with my grandmother, or else with her elder brothers, my grand uncles, Apollos or his younger brother, Kaizer, whom we fondly called Tada.
Those were days when I had gone swimming with my play mates after kicking the ball around at the Mission Field of St Michael’s School, Fantuo. They were days when I played the masquerade, garbed in the expensive cloths my mother and grandmother had stashed at the bottom of their portmanteaux. I would step out, mirrors glittering all over me, and amble my way into the arena like a confident player in an entrancing drama, my waist swaying to the drum beats from the Ofirima ensemble.
Christmas was particularly colourful in Fantuo. It was a season when all the masquerades in the Sekiapu parade would show up one after the other, day after day. The hippopotamus would appear as Otoba, the monkey masquerade would appear as Angalayai, and Opulopulodudu would step out in the colourful feathers of a peacock. At midnight on New Year day, Imgbila, the furious masquerade would go about with a groan in his spirit, whipping anyone along the way, and pursuing every remnant of the old year out of town with bonfires.
Fantuo was also the first and only settlement where I learnt to climb a coconut tree with bare hands and legs. It was a test of endurance, and a sure sign that you have come of age. The first time I climbed to the top of a coconut tree, every nerve and every muscle of my being was involved. Your mates were watching to see whether you could make it as they did. Get to the top, pluck down coconuts, and come right down. I bled for three days on my bare chest, my arms, and the tender inside of my thighs. The remedy for the bruises was the water from the coconut, as peppery as it can get in the wounds. But then, you would have to climb six more coconut trees again, and after the seventh climb you no longer bled.
Some of the most exciting times in Fantuo came with the days when long-distance boats would sail from Port Harcourt, and dump their merchandise along the stretch of villages and fishing ports lining the route to Brass, through Nembe. Sometimes they came through the Odio-ama route. Everyone would come awake to stories of adventure on the high seas when MV Abadida would drop anchor at the Fantuo waterfront. The same excitement would come with the arrival of MV Soubite, or MV Sambo or MV Nembe. The final terminal was Akassa, across the Brass River. Day or night, canoes would race out, hold the sides of the big boat, and off-load passengers alongside goods of every description for a small fee.
Fantuo was also the stage for some of my early romances. I was a teenager, and the long-range arrow of love from Cupid had left me with a growing consciousness, a bubbling feeling. Silky nights left me writing poetry. In 1978, in fact, I wrote seven Shakespearean sonnets in Fantuo, complete with iambic pentameters and appropriate rhyme schemes, and began to embark on translating them into Nembe. Fantuo did a great deal for my infancy, as it did for my boyhood. I missed it for many years, until that year when the remains of my mother were diverted for burial in Fantuo.
The empty space left by the giant cotton tree was evident from the distance, and became even more obvious as the boat turned into the final lap leading to the village of my youth. I still held in my head a picture of the shoreline, but my grandmother’s four-room bungalow was no longer the major attraction at the waterfront. Behind it rose a three-storey building overlooking the three islands covered with coconut trees, namely Azanapiri, Orupiri, and Giadili.
That impressive storey building stood on a parcel of land that used to hold the thatch hut of my great grandmother, Ikemu, the deep ancestral root of our family. Behind the thatch house were the graves of the most illustrious forebears who constitute the royal family. The graves are still intact behind the new storey building, and my mother’s remains were laid to rest in that royal cemetery.
As soon as the boat anchored at the jetty, I alighted, gave a helping hand to the visiting American tourist, and walked straight to sit on the lap of my mother. In a quiet tone of reverence, I whispered to her spirit that my son, Rembi, her beloved grandson, was dead. I called on her to guide his spirit aright in the land of the dead, and lead him to the foot of salvation in Jesus Christ. Then I posed for a photograph atop the slab of my mother’s grave, my bag by my side, and stood up to explore Fantuo, starting with the new storey building constructed by my younger brother, Fakuma. I spent two nights there, and left on the third day for Nembe.
Rembi had grown up partly in Fantuo. He did not stay long enough to get involved with the youthful adventures that defined my boyhood days, but I did watch him swim at the waterfront, and attempt to paddle a canoe. I watched him attempt to cast hooks for fish, and grab crabs for breakfast. He was a tender, young sapling then, and everyone in the family, from my mother to my grandmother and her brothers, saw him as the pet of the moment. As I returned to Nembe after giving my mother a report of the tragedy in the family, I felt somewhat lighter in spirit.
