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Nnorom Azuonye
is the author of Letter to God & Other Poems
and The Bridge Selection: Poems for the Road.
His short fiction, poems, and interviews have
appeared in Agenda, Orbis, DrumVoices Revue,
Keystone and World Haiku Review among other
publications. Editor of SLQ, and Nollywood Focus, he
is Director of Operations & Creative Services,
Eastern
Light EPM International.
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E.C. Osondu’s
“Waiting”
By Nnorom Azuonye
Another quick read
of E.C. Osondu’s Waiting flags it up as a
brilliantly-written tale. It easy to see why
this story won The Caine Prize for African Writing
2009.
Waiting could easily have been titled
The
Tragedy of Acapulco; the boy caught in a seemingly
endless wait for an American family to adopt him and
take him away from the drudgery of life in a refugee
camp. But it is also the tragedy of Orlando –
Acapulco’s campmate – a fictive, aspiring author
whom Osondu would have us deem the author of the
story in Waiting. The story appears to be a
faster-moving mirror of the absurd lives of Vladimir
and Estragon in Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot –
mentioned in the story, which sort of throws us off
the scent a little, but as Orlando and Acapulco play
out the stasis of their sorry lives in that refugee
camp with measured but highly effective pathos,
Acapulco is in reality more like Pepel and Orlando
like Luka is Gorki’s The Lower Depths. With
Acapulco asking endless
questions and Orlando - the wise one having all the answers without
really answering any questions factually.
One thing that is
very disturbing in Waiting is that the residents of
the camp are nameless, adopting names inscribed on
T-shirts, and their back stories are not explored,
perhaps deliberately, giving the lives of people
like Acapulco and Orlando a wholesome rootlessness.
Life in the
refugee camp is quite harrowing; waiting and
fighting for food and water which might not
materialise, as all resources are subject to the
humour of the ‘enemy’ and if they would allow the
Red Cross to bring supplies to the camp. Like the
victims of the plane crash in the film, Alive,
who cooked their friends in snow and ate them for
sustenance, it was horrible to read how the
residents of the camp killed and ate the black dogs
that had been their allies and protectors, and how
this betrayal of the animals turned them into a wild
pack of man-eaters who eventually dismembered a
toddler with savage teeth.
Although Orlando’s
way is quite different from Acapulco’s, the former
reads books, gains knowledge and seems to have some
control of his life and is in the good books of
Sister Nora, while the latter lives inside his head
where there is cacophony, with a diseased ear and a
stench that keeps people away, it is difficult to
shake the feeling that neither Orlando nor Acapulco
would get out of the refugee camp on the wings of
his heart’s desire. Hence in true tradition of the
absurd, there is really neither a conflict raised
nor a resolution achieved. Like those who wait for
God to come and he never comes, or he comes and
walks by and they don’t see him, and they continue
to wait, and wait.
Acapulco has
something going for him though. He reasons that he
may never get adopted and considers joining the
Youth Brigade, but is dissuaded by the stories that
members are given drugs and made to drink blood. It
does appear the Youth Brigade might indeed be his
only way out, like taking his own affairs in his own
hands like Nwokedi in the Esiaba Irobi play who
argues that “When we wait for God to act and God
does not act, we take up the role of God and act.
That’s why he made us in his own image.” For Orlando,
finishing his book and becoming a bestselling author
might be his own way out.
As it is, Waiting
appears to be an excerpt from a longer narrative,
and I suspect E.C. Osondu may be persuaded to
stretch it into full length novel. It will be
exciting to see the directions the lives of Orlando
and Acapulco go. Perhaps, Acapulco would indeed join
the Youth Brigade and rise to become general in the
Enemy’s army, perhaps a rebel leader of the land,
whilst Orlando gets to be the writer with a
conscience and a thorn in his side.
An outstanding
achievement, Waiting is written in
vernacular. I hear the Igbo in the English Language
construction and some direct onomatopoeic
insinuations are cheerful, such as Dakota, which
literally means to fall together in Igbo. For a
piece of prose the economy of words in Waiting is
almost like what one would expect of poetry. In this
story, Osondu displays a matured storytelling skill,
a keen sense of setting and an astute ear for
dialogue. Beautiful.
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