When Dreams are Deferred in Patrick Oguejiofor's Displaced

By Isaac Attah Ogezi In his famous poem, 'Harlem', the renowned American poet, Langston Hughes, poses the question of what happens to a dream deferred. 'Does it dry up/ like a raisin in the sun?/Or fester like a a sore—/And then run?' This forms the central theme in Mr Oguejiofor's latest children's novel, Displaced. Set in the fictional town, Sabon Birni, a metaphor for present-day Nigeria, the work explores the effect of wars and terrorism on children and women who are usually the most vulnerable victims. This coming-of-age story follows the trajectories of the major character Naomi's dreams in the midst of unfavourable circumstances. Born into a poor family, ten-year-old Naomi lives with her parents and five other siblings in a house 'made of mud and bricks' (page 6). Not daunted by this humble background, she dreams of attending a Federal Government College instead of the Day College where her older siblings all attend. Her ultimate dream is to become either a pilot or, to use her words, 'an aeroplane mechanic' (page 8). It is not a wishful ambition for Noami as she works assiduously towards the actualisation of her dream through unwavering dedication to her studies at school. She rushes home gleefully in the opening pages of the novel to tell her father that she came first in her class. Unfortunately for her, Sabon Birni is like the Harlem in Langston Hughes' poem, a land where dreams are not allowed to grow to fruition but 'fester like a sore' in their deferment. The tension that grips her world is antithetical to her dreams. A world where the inhabitants daily live 'on borrowed time' with the knowledge that 'it was only a matter of time and Sabon Birni would join the list of communities that had been wiped out by the reign of terrorists' (page 12). Sadly, the free descent of the land into a harrowing killing field could not be arrested by the impotent government which shirks in its constitutional responsibility to protect lives and property of the citizenry. The people are helpless in the face of hoodlums and insurgents who terrorise the land, kidnapping people at 'farms, worship centres, and on the roads while travelling' (page 14), and have had surrounding towns like Hankuri 'reduced to relics' (page 13), oftentimes wiping out more than eighty per cent of the inhabitants, killing livestock and razing down markets, schools, worship centres and residential houses. It is in this climate of fear, where living in Sabon Birni for the residents is akin to living in Harlem with a black skin in the 1950s, that Noami dares to dream. She has reckoned without the philistinic society which she hails from, a society that revels in truncating the dreams of its inhabitants. Little wonder that the long road to this dream is fraught with dangers which nearly cost her her life. During one of the night attacks, she is kidnapped by some armed terrorists, along with other children and women only to be left in the middle of nowhere in the forest when pursued by some brave soldiers who want to rescue them. Instead of pursuing her dream of going to a Federal Government College, Naomi finds herself in an IDP camp in a deplorable condition. Like the biblical character Joseph, Noami learns that in such a society like hers, she has to go through the crucible of being mistreated in the house of her adopted parents, escape by running away from there before officers of the Welfare Department come to her aid and eventually hand her over to the caring arms of Mr Yahaya and his wife who are desirous in ensuring that she fulfils her life's dreams. Written in a lucid language that befits the linguistic level of children in upper primary and post-primary schools interspersed with the occasional unfamiliar words that will send them to the dictionary, Mr Oguejiofor's anti-war novel is a timely work aimed at raising public awareness to the plight of children in a dysfunctional society, as well as the negative lifelong effect of bringing them up in IDP camps as a result of displacement from their parents and homelands. While it is a tale of resilience, the triumph of hope despite obstacles, with the happy ending on all fours with the guiding rules of writing for children, the question is how many Noamis in real life go through such harrowing experiences and emerge, unscathed, to fulfil their dreams? Perhaps no passage in the work brings out so poignantly the theme of the futility of wars like the authorial intrusion at page 14 when he bemoans the defenceless state of Sabon Birni residents and how their neighbouring towns had been horrendously decimated by a senseless war, a war 'they knew nothing about, a war that was thrust on them', a war 'where nothing is sacred, a meaningless war' where 'both the victims and the combatants do not know why they were fighting in the first instance.' The consequence of this war is the total dislocation and disconnect it forces on formerly closely-knit families like the Nuhus which end up being scattered all over different refugee camps without any hope of reunion except by rare happenstance as in Naomi's case when her father is able to reunite with her and other members of his household at the end of the novel. One of the misconceptions about writing for children is that since it thrives on simplicity of language and plot, it is often viewed as a less demanding genre. It is not enough for the language to be simple and the story arresting for easy comprehension by children within the age range in focus, does the work conform to the psychology that they will relate with? With over nineteen novels to his credit, including such classics as Cobwebs in the Sky, The Secret Place and The Haunted House, Mr Oguejiofor's Displaced further solidifies his well-earned place in children's literature in Nigeria and a worthy successor to the undisputed maestro, Cyprian Ekwensi.