In Agary’s book, the narcissistic, self-absorbed reader is reminded that there was a time when the extended family spawned a culture of service in the interest of one’s offspring and ultimately of the clan. Zilayefa’s mother’s deprivations come across as noble sacrifices to save her daughter from the despair and living death of the oil-soaked delta. The reader yearns for halcyon days of simple needs and big dreams. We also see Nigeria as an increasingly alarming society where people go to church unfailingly - to worship the dollar. Yellow-Yellow mourns the loss of community, of symbiotic kinships and a way of life raped raw by the gushing of crude oil into Nigeria’s greed. And this reader yearns for a return of the old way of life.

Even in the clutter of grinding poverty, funeral ceremonies provide much needed relief, sometimes with tragic results:

“There is usually a lot of food at funerals, especially if the family was rich, and most villagers attended these funerals solely for the food, drinks, and music. Three years earlier, at Chief Tariye’s funeral ceremony, a man was found curled up in a corner outside the house, lying dead in his own vomit. He had gorged himself with food and kainkain for two days.” (p 19).

And in the midst of the devastation, a harried people still harvest joy in unlikely places. A simple bare-bones lovers’ picnic deep in the creeks of the delta reminds us that sometimes more is not the best. Two lovers nestle in a little island armed with only a handful of plantains, iced-fish peppersoup and a couple of coconuts. The romance of it almost wants to make me go down on my knees and plead with my life’s companion to accompany me to Warri to do love me aduli!

When it comes to titillating the reader’s palate with pretty sentences, Agary is no slouch. Listen to this: “When I looked at her, I saw a petite woman with an oval face, big dreamy eyes, a nose that looked like God was running low on clay the day he made it…” (p 20) Lovely. And try this: “As we used to say in secondary school he had yams for legs, perfectly yamulous legs.” (p 23) I love this lady! And this gem: “He picked up a file from the centre table…” (p 118). Centre table! Now, that is Naija English! When Yellow-Yellow’s mother says “My back is not ready for grandchildren,” (p 23) we see a writer with great potential in mastering the art of conversation.

Agary does not pull punches as she languidly darkens a literary canvas with horrifying images of needless devastation in the Nigerian delta. She goes everywhere and methodically outs and lances everybody and every issue. We see the humanity in the prostitutes in the city, the new masquerades turning tricks in an indifferent city just to satisfy needs in their ancestral village – needs that the government of the day has ignored. We learn the pecking order for turning tricks – white men are much sought after for their generosity, followed by Asians, then “stingy locals” who work for the oil companies. We read a careful documentation of how men who were great providers have become in the new dispensation, lazy no good burdens adept only at abusing their women and children. “Cobwebs would fill the pots before the men contributed to the feeding of the household.” (p 40). Damning. But it was not always like that, certainly not in the beginning and the main character Yellow-Yellow points this out plaintively.

“My mother told me of the days of her youth when every husband was expected to give his new wife a dugout canoe that he had carved out and crafted himself. The wife would use this canoe to fish, earn a living, and help to feed the family. Those were the days when boys carved out decorative paddles that carried the legends of the Ijaws in every curve. Those were the days when the Ijaw woman could ignore the nature of the Ijaw man because she had a means of earning a living and providing the needs of her children. Those were the days when Ijaw women cooked a fresh pot of soup every day because the rivers were teeming with fish. Their farms held plantain trees so fertile that there was more plantain than anyone knew what to do with – roasted, boiled, mashed, green and yellow, the possibilities were endless. Those were the days.” (p 39). Frightening testimony to the devastation that has been wrought on the land by unfeeling oil conglomerates and conniving thieving Nigerian leaders.

In Yellow-Yellow, we see a Nigeria rotting in place as its people desperate for affirmation and survival engage in an elaborate okoso system of getting whatever they need (good gr

Sure-footed from the beginning, it grows even more confident and roars in the middle of the book.  I will always remember the quiet urgency of the opening chapter – Yellow-Yellow’s mother dealing with the devastating results of crude oil spillage – on her, on her farmland, on her village, and ultimately on Nigeria’s conscience, if she has one.

“It was the first time I saw what crude oil looked like. I watched as the thick liquid spread out, covering more land and drowning small animals in its path. It just kept spreading and I wondered if it would stop, how far it would spread. Then there was the smell. I can’t describe it but it was strong – so strong it made my head hurt and turned my stomach. I bent over, and retched so hard I became dizzy.”  You read this chilling testimony from a child and you feel like screaming “someone stop the madness in the delta!” (p 4).

It goes on and on, this masterful use of simple, matter-of-fact prose to deliver sharp slaps of political consciousness onto the reader’s face.

“And so it was that, in a single day, my mother lost her main source of sustenance. However, I think she had lost that land a long time ago, because each season yielded less than the season before. Not unlike the way, she and others in the village, had gradually lost, year after year, the creatures of the river to oil spills, acid rain, gas flares and who knows what else…” (p 4). This from a child. And you feel like screaming “someone stop the madness in the delta!”

DTALKSHOP, the publishers of Agary’s book must be commended for doing a great job in terms of editing. I loved the cover design by CLAM.  By the way, go to www.dtalkshop.com to see the future (or shall we say the present?) of publishing in Nigeria. Looks to me like Agary is a major shareholder in the business and the business marries her legal profession with her passions to produce an enterprise. Fascinating.  

I don’t mean to imply that the book is not without its flaws, far from it. It is a simple book, with little structural complexity, one that is helped immensely by the urgency or immediacy of its tale. The reader must prepare to endure an abiding aimlessness in the last four chapters of the book where Yellow-Yellow falls hard in love with a wealthy retired Admiral. Yellow-Yellow spends the rest of the book moping around this conceited unprincipled man’s space and in the process almost ruins a good book,. Agary almost falls victim to a desire to please indifferent gods willing a neat ending to a messy tale. But I could argue that the book’s aimlessness in the end is a great metaphor for Nigeria’s aimlessness in the new dispensation – an uncritical acceptance of alien cultures and values and a resulting caricature of what Nigeria once was. Not pretty but the book pulls it off nicely. I love this lady. Now if I can just get me some kilishi and dunk it in a pot of kekefia and osun, that would be yamulous!

August. The heat rises to overwhelm me. And I feel like wilted corn boiling in a peasant’s pot. Ominira, my twelve year old daughter is with me in my rental car, the one that they have given me until my SUV is changed back from an effete trapper of animals to a car. It is a nice car, red hot and as I slide into the driver’s seat, things stir in me, things that remind me of my virility. We are at the traffic lights; here comes an ambulance chasing the fire trucks racing to offer the dying the light of life. Here comes the ambulance barking, sobbing, and wailing its message of hope for a battered soul. We pull aside to make way for the ambulance, heads bowed patiently waiting, praying for the dying and waiting for the signal to for us to continue running for our lives. Ominira says to me, daddy, the ambulance is wailing. And I say to myself:  Great, my daughter is a poet, great, my daughter will not be a rich medical doctor, my daughter is a wretched over-sensitive poet! Who will take care of me in my old age, this poet? I am dead! 

I slip Rex Lawson into the little slot that plays music and soon Rex Lawson lifts my spirits up and I am swaying to the beat of ancient rhythms the way my father taught me to worship with the cheerleaders of the other world. I see Kenule and his pipe on the little path to nowhere walking up to me. Isaac Adaka Boro is in his dugout swigging ogogoro from a Fanta bottle and promising fire and brimstone next time. In the rage of my condition, joy welcomes me to freedom through the call-and-respond poetry of Rex Lawson. Life is good, who wants to die? Ominira takes one look at me and attaches her ears to her ipod. Soon, father and daughter are swaying to the beat of different drums. Life is good.  And I thank Agary for helping me out this time.