Chike and the River Read online

  Chike and the River

  Chinua Achebe

  A children's story by Africa's best known and most widely read author whose novels, poetry, essays, lectures, etc… are considered representative of contemporary Nigerian life.

  Chinua Achebe

  Chike and the River

  © 1966

  For my daughter, Chinelo,

  and for all my nephews and nieces

  1 Chike Leaves His Village

  Chike lived with his mother and two sisters in the village of Umuofia. His father had died many years ago. His mother worked very hard to feed and clothe her three children and to send them to school. She grew most of the food they ate-yams, cassava, maize, beans, plantains, and many green vegetables. She also traded in dry fish, palm oil, kerosene, and matches.

  Chike was now eleven years old, and he had never left his village. Then one day his mother told him that he would be going to Onitsha in the new year to live with his uncle who was a clerk in one of the firms there. At first Chike was full of joy. He was tired of living in a bush village and wanted to see a big city. He had heard many wonderful stories about Onitsha. His uncle’s servant, Michael, had told him that there was a water tap in the very compound where they lived. Chike said this was impossible but Michael had sworn to its truth by wetting his first finger on his tongue and pointing it to the sky. Chike was too thrilled for words. So he would no longer wake up early in the morning to go to the stream. The trouble with their village stream was that the way to it was very rough and stony, and sometimes children fell and broke their water-pots. In Onitsha Chike would be free from all those worries. Also he would live in a house with an iron roof instead of his mother’s poor hut of mud and thatch. It all sounded so wonderful.

  But when the time actually came for Chike to leave his mother and sisters he began to cry. His sisters cried too, and even his mother had signs of tears in her eyes. She placed one hand on his head and said, “Go well, my son. Listen to whatever your uncle says and obey him. Onitsha is a big city, full of dangerous people and kidnappers. Therefore do not wander about the city. In particular do not go near the River Niger; many people get drowned there every year…”

  She gave Chike many other words of advice. He nodded his head and sniffed because his nose was running. Chike’s nose always ran when he cried.

  “Stop crying,” said his mother. “Remember, you are now a big boy, and big boys don’t cry.”

  Chike wiped his eyes with the back of his hand. Then he took up his small wooden box which his mother had bought from James Okeke, the local carpenter. Inside it were his few clothes and schoolbooks.

  “Let us go,” said his uncle who had been waiting patiently. “If we don’t hurry now, we shall miss the lorry.” [1]

  Chike set the box on his head and followed his uncle. They were going to the main road half a mile away to take the lorry that passed by their village to Onitsha. It was a very old lorry called Slow-and-Steady. It always had great difficulty going up any hill. Whenever it got to a steep hill the driver’s mate would jump down and walk behind it with the big wooden wedge. Sometimes the passengers were asked to climb down and help push the lorry. The forty-mile journey to Onitsha took Slow-and-Steady more than three hours. Sometimes it broke down completely; then the journey might take a whole day or more.

  Chike was, however, lucky on the day he made the journey. Slow-and-Steady was in good form and did not break down at all. It only stopped after every hill to take a tin of water.

  2 Chike in Onitsha

  At first Onitsha looked very strange to Chike. He could not say who was a thief or kidnapper and who was not. In Umuofia every thief was known, but here even people who lived under the same roof were strangers to one another. Chike was told by his uncle’s servant that sometimes a man died in one room and his neighbor in the next room would be playing his gramophone. It was all very strange.

  But as the months passed Chike began to feel at home in Onitsha. He made friends at school and became very popular among them. His best friend was called Samuel. They were about the same age.

  Samuel was very good at football. [2] He could dribble past any opponent. Whenever he played particularly well his admirers clapped and shouted, “S.M.O.G.! S.M.O.G.!”

  S.M.O.G. was Samuel’s nickname which he gave himself. His full name was Samuel Maduka Obi; so his initials were S.M.O. Then one day he saw that if he added a “G” to his initials he would become S.M.O.G. He immediately did so. In Onitsha the letters S.M.O.G. were said to bring good luck because they stood for Save Me O God.

  Chike was also pretty good at football and very soon his friends gave him a nickname too. They called him “Chiks The Boy.” Chike liked the name very much and wrote it in his new reader.

  It was from Samuel that Chike first heard how easy it was to cross the River Niger and come back again.

  “I have done it many times on the ferryboat,” Samuel told him. “All you need is sixpence to go over and sixpence to return. Finish.”

  “But I have no sixpence,” said Chike.

  “What?” said Samuel, “a big boy like you has no sixpence. Don’t let people hear it. It is too shameful.”

  Chike was really ashamed and so he told a lie to cover his shame. He said, “It’s not that I don’t have money. I have plenty but my uncle keeps it for me.”

  “Then tell your uncle to give you one shilling out of it,” said Samuel. “What is the use of having money that you cannot spend?”

  “I shall ask him sometime,” replied Chike, “but not yet.”

  “Time and tide wait for no man,” said Samuel in English. It was their teacher’s favorite saying. “And have you not heard,” continued Samuel, “that they are building a bridge across the river? They will finish it soon and then there will be no more ferries.”

  Chike had indeed heard of the bridge they were building. He was greatly troubled by what Samuel said.

  A few days later Chike’s friends were again talking about the river. They spoke about Asaba on the other side.

  “Do you know,” said Samuel to Chike, “that as soon as you step out of the ferry in Asaba you are in Midwestern Nigeria?”

  The others agreed excitedly. They all had been to the Midwest. “And do you know,” said another boy whose name was Ezekiel, “that once you are in Asaba it is one way to Lagos?”

  “Yes,” said Samuel. “Lagos. Second-to-London. I have not been to Lagos. But I know Asaba which is poor-man’s Lagos.”

  His companions laughed. Samuel sometimes talked like a grown man; this was one of the reasons why he was so popular with his companions.

  Chike’s mind was far away-in Midwestern Nigeria. He liked such flowing phrases. Midwestern Nigeria, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, The Isle of Man.

  3 Chike on the Banks of the River

  Chike’s uncle was a very strict man. He rarely spoke and never laughed except when he drank cold beer or palm wine with his neighbor, Mr. Nwaba, or with one of his few friends. He did not like to see Chike playing with other children. He called it a waste of time. In his opinion children should spend their time reading and doing sums. His neighbor, Mr. Nwaba, agreed with him. His children played only when he was not around.

  Chike had a different opinion. According to his teacher: All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. Chike agreed completely with this saying. He wanted to tell his uncle about it but lacked the courage.

  One Saturday morning Chike felt very brave. He stood behind his uncle and asked for a shilling. His uncle, who was shaving, turned round. He had a small mirror in his left hand and razor in his right. His lower face was all covered in white soapsuds.

  “What do you want a shilling for?” he asked.

  “I want to go on the
ferry to Asaba before they build the bridge,” replied Chike, fearlessly.

  “Have you gone off your mind?” asked his uncle in great annoyance. “Run away from here before I count to three. One! Two!…”

  Chike fled from him. For the first time in many months tears filled his eyes.

  “I will write a letter to my mother to send me the money,” he said to himself. But then he remembered that his mother had warned him not to go near the river. So he became very sad.

  Later that day his uncle told Mr. Nwaba about Chike’s request. Mr. Nwaba put down his glass of palm wine and laughed. Then he said: “Asaba is too near. Why does he not want to go to Lagos?”

  Chike’s uncle was as yet unmarried. His servant, Michael, was a very big boy and he did all the difficult work in the house. He split firewood, went to the market, cooked, washed clothes and ironed them. Chike washed the plates after meals and sometimes swept the rooms.

  They lived in two rooms. His uncle slept in one of them and kept all his boxes there. The soup-pot and other cooking vessels were hidden away under his huge iron bed. The other room had chairs, a round table in the center, framed photographs on the walls, a radio on the wooden pedestal in one of the four corners, a bookcase against the wall, and many other things. It was here that Michael and Chike slept. At night they moved the round table aside and spread their mat on the floor.

  Chike did not like sleeping on the floor and he longed for the bamboo bed in his mother’s hut. There were other things he did not like. For example there were bedbugs on their mat. Sometimes Michael sprinkled kerosene on the mat to kill them off. But after a few days they were there again. Another thing Chike did not like was the large crowd of other tenants living in the same house. There were ten rooms in the house and more than fifty men, women, and children living in them. Many families lived in one room. Because there were so many strangers living together they were always quarreling about firewood and about sweeping the yard or scrubbing the bathroom and the latrines.

  There were only two latrines in the yard for the fifty people. One was for adults and the other for children. Both were filthy but the children’s was worse. It swarmed with flies bigger than any Chike had ever seen at Umuofia. They revolted him. And so he learnt that a big town was not always better than a village. But there were things he liked in Onitsha.

  Every Saturday Michael went to the big market to buy provisions. Sometimes when he had many things to buy he took Chike with him. Chike did not help in the buying but in carrying some of the things home. He did not mind this at all. In fact he liked it. While Michael bargained with the traders Chike stood aside watching the great river as it flowed peacefully down to the sea. He watched the fishermen in their canoes coming down the river or struggling up against it. Some of the canoes were houseboats; they had roofs of thatch over them. Chike was told that the fishermen lived for weeks or months in these boats.

  But what Chike liked most was to watch the big ferryboats. They looked enormous to him. He wondered what big ships would look like. His class teacher had told them that big ships could only be seen at Lagos, Port Harcourt, or Burutu. But surely these ferryboats at Onitsha were big enough. What did anyone want bigger boats for? Even the canoes were big enough for some people to live in.

  The more Chike saw the ferryboats the more he wanted to make the trip to Asaba. But where would he get the money? He did not know. Still, he hoped.

  “One day is one day,” he said, meaning that one day he would make the journey, come what may.

  4 Ezekiel, the Spoilt Child

  Chike was so anxious to find the money for his trip across the river that he very nearly went into bad ways.

  One of his friends called Ezekiel was a very bad boy. Like Chike, Ezekiel was his mother’s only son. He had four sisters. Ezekiel’s mother was a well-to-do trader who sold cloth in the Onitsha market and made much profit. But she was not a wise mother. She allowed Ezekiel to do whatever he liked. So he became a spoilt child. His mother had three servants who did all the housework. Sometimes Ezekiel’s sisters were asked to wash plates or draw water from the public tap. But he never did any work. His mother said that housework was only for servants and for girls. So Ezekiel was developing into a lawless little imp. He would sneak quietly to the soup-pot at night and search with his fingers for pieces of fish and meat. By morning the soup would go sour and Ezekiel’s mother would punish the servants. One day one of his sisters caught him red-handed. His fingers were covered with egusi soup. But Ezekiel denied it all, and his mother believed him.

  When Ezekiel grew bigger he began to steal little sums of money from his mother. With this he bought akara, mai-mai, and groundnuts at break. Sometimes he was even able to buy whole packets of sweet biscuits or a tin of corned beef and a shilling loaf of bread.

  Needless to say he was very popular at school. He was called Tough Boy and his friends thought the world of him. Of course they had no idea that he stole from his mother.

  Then one day Ezekiel did something really awful. When he told his friends about it they thought it was very clever until their headmaster told them how wrong it was.

  Ezekiel had somehow got hold of the names of three boys in England who wanted Nigerian pen-friends. He wrote to them asking one to send him money, another to send him a camera, and the third to send him a pair of shoes. He drew a pattern of his right foot on a piece of paper and sent it along. He promised each of the boys a leopard skin in return. Of course he had no intention of fulfilling the promise. For one thing he had never seen a leopard skin in his life.

  After a month he received a ten-shilling postal order from one of the boys. He showed it to his mother and she called him Clever Boy, which was one of the many fond names she had given him. Then she took him to the post office to cash the postal order.

  Ezekiel told his friends at school about his exploits and they were all highly impressed. “Tough Boy! Tough Boy!” was shouted on all sides.

  The same day many other boys rushed off letters to England. Chike obtained two addresses but could not write straightaway because he had no money to buy postage stamps. He decided that as soon as he could find sixpence he would write to England and ask for ten shillings or even one pound. Then he would cross and recross the Niger as often as he liked. He thought how rich England must be when even a little boy could part with ten shillings. He had seen the letter the boy wrote to Ezekiel. His name was John Smith and he was aged twelve. Imagine that! Only twelve and yet he had ten shillings to throw away. What did he want a leopard skin for? English people must be crazy, thought Chike.

  It was fortunate for Chike that he had no money to buy a postage stamp. If he had he would have been in serious trouble along with Ezekiel and the others.

  One day at school the headmaster called Ezekiel out and took him to his office. Later he sent for five other boys. They were away for about an hour. Then the school bell rang and classes stopped. The headmaster, stern and full of anger, spoke to the school.

  “I have just received a letter from the headmaster of a school in England,” he said and held up a blue letter for all to see. “The content of this letter has filled me with shame,” he continued. “I did not know that among us here are thieves and robbers, wolves in sheep’s clothing…” He spoke at length about Ezekiel’s crime. “Think of the bad name which you have given this school,” he said, turning to Ezekiel and the five boys; they were all looking at the floor. “Think of the bad name you have given Nigeria, your motherland,” he said, and the whole school sighed. “Think how the school in England will always remember Nigeria as a country of liars and thieves because of these six scallywags here.” Some of the pupils laughed because of the new word scallywag.

  “Yes, they are scallywags,” said the headmaster, “and they have spoilt your name in England. Some of you will go to study in England when you grow up. What do you think will happen to you there? I will tell you. As soon as you open your mouth and say you come from Nigeria everybody will hold fast to his
purse. Is that a good thing?” The whole school shouted “No, sir!”

  “That is what these nincompoops here have done to you.” There was laughter again at nincompoops, another strange word.

  Chike shivered to think that if he had had sixpence he would have stood there on the platform with the rest. He was sorry for Ezekiel and the others but especially for his good friend, S.M.O.G.

  The headmaster was still speaking. He said that Samuel’s punishment would be the lightest and Ezekiel’s the heaviest. Samuel had merely begged for a camera; he had not made a false promise to send a leopard skin in return. But the headmaster reminded the school that begging was a bad thing by itself. He said, “A person who begs has no self-respect, he has no shame and no dignity. He is an inferior person. In this school we do not want to produce inferior people…”

  Afterward Ezekiel was given twelve strokes of the cane and he cried. Samuel was given six strokes, and the others nine strokes each. Ezekiel’s mother went to the headmaster’s house that evening and rained abuses on him.

  From that day on Ezekiel got new names in the school. Some called him Leopard Skin; others called him Scallywag or Scally-beggar. Only his closest friends still called him Tough Boy.

  5 Those Who Answered to “Abraham”

  After the incident of the leopard skin Chike lost some of his eagerness for crossing the Niger. He did not see how he could obtain one shilling without stealing or begging. His only hope now was that some kind benefactor might give him a present of one shilling without his begging for it. But where was such a man? he wondered. Perhaps the best thing was to take his mind off the River Niger altogether; but it was not easy.