In the 90s, Sierra Leone had a most gruesome and inhuman carnage that completely uprooted the country from an already shaky foundation. Bobby Gboyor’s Novel ‘Clouds of a Ghoulish War’ is a socio-economic and political critique, using the war as its anchor. The novel is strikingly relevant to contemporary Sierra Leone, a nation still struggling to get its acts right. It is a novel that is highly dramatic, a prose that leaves tinges of poetry, with facts, but staying fictional, biographical but not personal. A young Fourah Bay College graduate, Kagbindi is out in a city replete with depravity and corruption, left, right and center, but he doggedly tries to make it in life by sheer hard work and incredible ambition that is hardly characteristic of his generation. He is determined to give his wife Wuya and Little Boy child junior the best that life could offer.
Things start working out well for Kagbindi until a single decision overshadowed by the war turns everything upside down for him… Will ever set eyes on his loved ones again? This novel is too moving, suspense-filled, emotional, nerve-wracking and definitely hard to put down…
Clouds of a ghoulish War is a pungent socio-economic and political critique of Kakpindi’s days around the 90s in Sierra Leone, amidst the horrors of war. To me the clouds are before the war and also after, just like our children and youth who were both behind the guns and also in front, perpetrators and victims, subjects and objects all at once.
The Novel has eleven chapters. The first three chapters take a look at Kagbindi’s family of three, with the wife Wuya and Junior their little kid. It also throws some light on life in Freetown City, especially the dichotomy between the West and the East. Like so many young graduates, teaching is used only as a stepping stone to better paid jobs. When Kagindi gets a UN Job, he tries hard to have this reflect on his social standing. He needs to renovate his small apartment in the East End of the city. Kagbindi takes a critical decision that hunts him throughout the novel. He sends his wife and kid to Gobaru to stay with the Mother-in law for three months to allow him renovate the apartment and provide the necessary entertainment materials like TV and musical set befitting his new status and keep the family happy.
Kagbindi makes very hard hitting social comments on the poor state of Freetown with its perennial transportation nightmare and unemployment. Kagbindi is a very ambitious young man who’s will to forge ahead and succeed is incredible.
Chapters 4 to 7 give us insights into the rebel war in neighboring Liberia, the issue of the importance of the male child in the African setting; the capture, mutilation and death of Liberia’s head of State K. Joe; Sierra Leone’s political oppressions and the Ndogboyusu uprising in Pujehun district; the GMT Kaikai Coup, the trials and executions of those involved including a prominent Pujehun Politician called Moininah.
Chapters 7 and 8 deal with the war crossing into Sierra Leone; journalism in Sierra Leone at the time; work-a-world in Freetown; the rebel attack on Kagbindi’s in-Laws’ home town of Gobaru, near Pujehun, and the disappearance of Kagbindi’s wife, child and extended family.
In chapters 10 and 11 we witness the war in Sierra Leone entering its second year 1992; the return of Multi-Party political activism and the NPRC Military Coup.
In Clouds of a Ghoulish war, Mr. Bobby Gboyor uses a lot of thematic threads nicely interwoven. There is so much beauty in the use of suspense, dreams, proverbs and traditional practices. What clearly runs through the novel is the fact that Sierra Leone’s problems did not start with the rebel war. It is a culmination of years of socio- political decadence presided over by a system that was as autocratic as life-denying, as insensitive as it was brutal. Life before the war had always been rather tough especially after the mid- seventies.
Education is ridiculed in the face of wealth. They used to say, Den say Jamil, you say Yapo. (Jamil was at onetime the richest man in Sierra Leone who even gave loans to government for which he was sometimes allowed to sit in Parliament. On the other hand Yapo was a derogatory name for the Vice-Chancellor of the University of Sierra Leone).Kagbindi was a teacher before the UN job. But let us go back to his decision to send his family away to allow time for the renovation of the apartment. Hear the narrator…
‘The time has now come for Kagbindi to provide a powerful musical instrument in his own home to keep his wife under his roof. He wondered how to make this rehabilitation possible in three months. All of a sudden an idea occurred to him. Wuya and Junior would have to go home to Gobaru, Kpanga Kabonde Chiefdom… They will stay there for three months while he will pool resources together and make these changes possible.’ (Pg. 15).
This decision costs Kagbindi dearly; he never again sets eyes on his family as a result of the war.
The novel touches on custom and traditions, sometimes using dreams to resonate thoughts on the African’s dual allegiance to Christianity or Islam, plus traditional religions. On gender parity, Kagbindi’s family is not a typical African one in the sense that the husband even helps with the house chores like bathing Junior.
The novel poses an incontestable indictment on the governance. The novel has no kind words for the management of various spheres of life at the time by the then political elite. Listen to this:
“Standards have dropped to the lowest ebb in all spheres of life health, education, culture, socio- economic, development, food production, you name it. The country is being mortgaged to foreign merchants in unholy alliance with greedy politicians…”Pg 40.
These are hard words but you will agree with me that they are true and perhaps even true today
The narrator does not spare any societal ill. There is doubt placed on the need for educated elites like Kagbindi to have toiled hard for a university degree when their chances of climbing up the social ladder were doomed. Most of our schools are still low rate. The mediocre pupils moved up to the university, trade their mediocrity and manage to stagger through. Kagbindi’s friend Joe sees the degree as a stigma, He says…
“This stigma of a degree hanging around our necks like an albatross means to them (parents) everything is all right with us. They do not inform us when they are coming. I felt so nasty when this uncle told me about his mission that tears trickled down my chin. I was not crying because I lost an uncle; far from it. I cried because after a thoughtful reflection on the hopelessness of my own situation, i felt sorry for our people whose hope for a better future depends on us.” (Pg 49).
Food security gets a swift bashing also. We are told that the PL480 American Rice scheme was set up to help boost our agriculture, but rather unfortunately, we are told it only boosted the pockets of politicians and their cohorts. This was period rice chits were given to cheats over lined in their mouths.
Kagbindi,s work at the UN gave him great insight into the health sector and the priority that children were supposed to get. While kagbindi praise Unicef,s fair recruitment process, he doubts whether Humanitarian and development workers give beneficiaries their due.
The stories of the war in Liberia get Sierra Leoneans very worried. There was the account of the Rebel attack in Katakata in Liberia as told by Kadi, Wuya’s relative.
“The Rebel who came into the room stood there in front of the bed looking into my eyes, his machine gun tucked under his shoulder… weh your meh, he asked, cocking his gun. I don’t know, I said crying… take that off, pointing to my skirt. I looked into his eyes which were then as red as those of a monster, I obeyed his command. I took off my skirt and pants altogether and lay flat on the bed, naked…” (Pg94.)
As Kadi and Wuya discuss the conviction and execution of the prominent Pujehun politician who was implicated in the Kai Kpakra coup attempt, Wuya says…
“(Power)…it’s like a honeycomb. The moment you have a taste of it, you would like to have more and more of it. The want of power make people do things inspite of yourselves…”
At the time of the Bomaru and Siaga attacks our military was terribly ill equipped, no modern military hardware and no proper communication gadgets. The news gets to Freetown through the Unicef Radio. Prior to this, a man called Kota Kota had given the government of James Moiwo 90 days to give up power or face an attack. The levity with which this was taken made it easy for the rebels to quickly take both the Kailahun and pujehun Districts. The attack exposed the corruption in the Army
“Between 1980 and 1990, the Defence budget had been continuously on the increase, higher than Health and education, even though the country had never seen any major wars. Some of the brigadiers and the major- generals in the army had never killed a fly, yet they claimed to have been building an army to defend the country using a chunk of the country’s resources”
Although generally women are said to be very vulnerable during wars but a stranger from the war front said that women were safe since the young women could be taken as prisoners of war. This belief makes some men run away and live their family behind rebel lines. Dreams are used in the novel to foretell an impending doom. Kagbindi’s last dream takes him to the land of the leaving dead where he sees his wife without Junior.
The Gobaru rebel attack heavily devastates Kagbindi. A rebel leader called Kill Mortal takes Wuya and family towards Liberia. Kagbindi never ses them again. The meeting the rebels had with the people in Gobaru drove fear into the inhabitants and cleared every doubt that the rebels did not come to liberate them. The rebel Leader addresses the crowd in a very intimidating manner.
“The rebel leader raised his head up and looked around the crowd. He put his gun on the table and brought out a bottle from his pocket and sipped from it. The liquid in the white bottle was red…there was deadly silence over the place… the rebel leader sipped again from his bottle and said, “you see this” holding up the bottle to the crowd. Everyone lifted their heads to see what he held in his hand. “This is human blood. This is what I now drink for water… I sometimes ask for human flesh when I need a decent meal. Those who refuse to take my orders are the people whose flesh I eat for a meal”. He bent down on one side and brought out a skull from a bag beside him. He displayed it on the table in front of him and continued his speech. “This is the skull of the last man we ate. We carry this with you as a warning to those who think we are here for a joke….” (Pg 187/188
The novel rounds off on a balanced note of Kagbindi’s contract at UNICEF not renewed but then later he gets a scholarship to do a three month course in journalism in Germany.
By Ben Cambayma
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