The Biafran Recruiters: Memoirs of the Nigerian-Biafra Civil War, 1967-1970

Chapter 1, Section II: Uncle Gilbert’s Arrest, August 8, 1968

Inside the pit toilet where he had foolishly entered to urinate and defecate, the two recruiters cornered him. Realizing the situation he had gotten himself into, he admitted how reckless he had acted, knowing full well that it was a time of war and that he was the only young man of fighting age left in Eziama. All the others had been killed or were at the time fighting for the Igbo and for Biafra.

Later, he rationalized. Who would have blamed him for getting up at three in the morning to tiptoe to the pit toilet? Who would have known that recruiters would come into his house out of nowhere, to recruit him, to force him to fight?

Four months after the war began, he had stopped going to church. Churches and markets, especially churches, were generally places where recruiters loved to go. They would tear men from the presence of God, only to send them into the darkness of the devil. The home was also not safe. Still, it was better for him to die in the town of Eziama than on the battlefield where his corpse would never be found, where there would be no priest available to give the last rites.

‘Out! You’re under arrest!’—Bang bang, bang—- It was the voice, and the sound, of one of the recruiters banging on the zinc door of the toilet.

Gilbert held back his thoughts momentarily and waited in silence. ‘Why are you so angry?’ he wondered when he might start thinking again.

If men like you hid, who would the bullet kill? the recruiter yelled angrily.

Gilberto did not answer. He was straddling the round, dark hole in the toilet when they collided. Then, by sheer force of will, he quickly cut off his urine and bowel movements, zipped up his pants, and stepped back to lean against the back wall of the pit latrine.

In addition to his right leg were two cement blocks, one on top of the other. Above them, a family of small apprentice spiders and suicidal black ants posed as cronies. With foreknowledge of how their collaboration would end, Gilbert sighed and cruelly sat on top of them as if they were worthless.

So he made a decision. Neither prayers nor heavy sighs would save him. There was a way to outwit these recruiters, for even though they might have a weapon and some imaginary authority given to them by a faceless area commander in Enugu, they were still playing on their territory.

A casual glance up made him think fast. Between the tin roof and the back wall of the privy was space, a small opening through which a breeze blew and a glimmer of light came from the aging moon. What if he, Gilbert, threw himself into the bushes behind the wall? Then he would have a head start before the two recruiters could jump over the fence and go after him. Knowing the terrain of the thick undergrowth gave him a recognizable advantage, so he had a short-lived celebration.

But then she remembered the size of her head and her overgrown hair. Once he began to poke his thick head out of the crack, the recruiters didn’t hesitate to yank open the zinc door, grab him by both legs as he hung from the wall, and toss him like a sack of cassava.

Gilbert sat down on the two blocks again, and without any particular objective began to group together in search of an object of any kind. First, find an item, and then the use would be revealed. Luck was on his side when he felt a sword. It didn’t matter that the knife had no handle. Weeks before he had heard the story of how Bartolomé, a young man almost his own age, had been discharged from the Biafran army because he had cut off the fingers of his right hand.

While thinking about the success Bartholomew had had, Gilbert began to cut his hand, starting with his left little finger. He had broken through the skin and started to draw the first drop of blood when the angry recruiter began to rip the bottom of the zinc door open with both hands. In a panic, Gilbert dropped the knife.

Whats Next? She didn’t have time to cut a finger. On the other hand, coming off as a fool wasn’t that hard to cut your fingers off. No army worth his blood and treasure wants a madman on the battlefield. Why he had never thought of the silly game, the only ploy that came naturally to him, baffled him. Without his active participation, the circumstances thus far, while humiliating, had been mysteriously set up perfectly for him to play dumb.

If the recruiters judged him without prejudice, without considering that his delay had made their job more difficult, they would release him with the conclusion that no sane person could stand on a toilet for an hour or more.

Who but a madman would bear the stench? Who but a madman would put up with loads of toilet flies, some landing on his hair, others crawling up his nostrils? Who but a madman would not raise his hand to hit them?

Terrified of death, Uncle Gilbert staggered to the tin door, unlocked it, and gave up.

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