Stories of African Children in War and in the Street
Stories of wars and children are as old as time and have been told in every sort of form and in every culture. They have even have been romanticized. However when these stories are told by a master story teller like Chris Dahi it takes a totally different tone and develops a life of its own.
Chris being a war child himself with his experience s in the terrible three year Biafran war is able to inject that tangible touch of reality into these stories in the Little Pieces of Trauma. This reality with that style that is essentially Dahi he has succeeded in smoothening its harshness by embracing the eight stories with sonorous poems from his book of poetry.
The issues boldly addressed in this book are unfortunately that aspect of human life that we have decided to close our eyes to, or gloss over, sweep under the carpet or totally ignore. The truth of the matter however being that we can not pretend that this societal anomaly does not exist.
Though Chris has succeeded in making these stories come out as fiction so as to make them acceptable to the millions of readers out there in this generation and the future who will read the Little Pieces of Trauma, it still remains that if the world does not use instruments and tools such as this work to address the plight of war and street children, they will live with us and one day we will be forced to address this problem with red faces and with broken hearts.
When I read a book of fiction, I treat them just as that; wonderful stories and that is all, but the Little Pieces of Trauma is a fiction you just can not treat as that. This book leaves your mouth as you know it is reality in fiction. Though Dahi has succeeded in cutting out the likely gory and lurid details and created literary names of people and places the power of it still captivates one and grips your heart as you are transported into the heat of it and share the pains, sorrows and terrors in it with these children.
I must say that Dahi has really out done himself this time.
Introduction
Now with the pot gone, my lot is a big bag of garri and other foodstuff. When I tried to lift it up, my heart sank. I looked at the horizon over the palm and oil bean tree tops, then I looked back towards our home and without warning tears sprang to my eyes.
Even a child could feel these things.
Unconsciously my ‘hard condition’ sharpened juvenile extra perceptive mind had revealed to me that my suffering has just truly started. Here I am leaving my home, not sure when, if ever I am going to return to it again. Going to a place I know nothing about, to live among a people I probably have never heard of. How these people will take and treat me I do not know. Upon all this I will be carrying a load which is too heavy for me. How long I will carry this load and how far I do not know. The reason for all this trouble on me my child mind can not comprehend. Despite the uncertainty of the future, one fact is sure, it will be rife with suffering. The bleakness of my future clutched at my throat.
I looked up and the tears just cascaded down my face and I immediately looked down. Not necessarily to hide the shame of my fear, but more or less to accept my trepidation with dignity.
However I knew from that hour that something permanent had happened to my psyche. I had become a man, age not withstanding. I had become one of the ever growing population of war molded and smelted man children. I had now concluded my ‘Rites de pasage’ to manhood. Without warning, just like an explosion my views on life, issues, persons, events, societies underwent a total and radical change. I developed an unexplainable sense of strength. From nowhere it occurred to me that my family and I are going off into the unknown. The fate and survival of this family may rest on my shoulders. At that thought, I unconsciously squared my shoulders and lifted my eyes from the ground and looked to where we are going.
That little sensation that started by the stream side in less than one hour had convalesced and the metamorphosis complete. I had lost my childhood and completely missed my adolescence. A sad day.
That night, father did not sleep. He kept watch. I too.
The next day was Christmas. A lost day in the calendar of my life, a Christmas I could have loved to tell all about but unfortunately I am fighting more to forget about than to remember. A dismal day.
These passages derived from one of the eight stories in the Little Pieces of Trauma express the fears, uncertainties and pains of children in trauma laden and prone situations and circumstances the world over.
The Little Pieces of Trauma is not a collection of stories geared towards evoking emotions and sentiments. They are real life stories of children trapped and stranded in societies and circumstances that have made them to take part in situations and issues that have left indelible marks on their psyche and bodies. Children who not to their making have totally missed their childhood and adolescence and become adults in the mind while still trapped in the bodies of children. These are children whom the society view and treat as children, while the condition they are in have forced them to indulge in adult doings.
This book is neither a plea nor a cry, it is simply an expression, an expression of the truth in the lives of these children, an expression of the experiences and woes of children all over the world who have lived and are still living in trauma situations.
The truth of the matter is that contrary to the impression and opinions of a world that has hidden its head in the sand like an ostrich, the pains as expressed by the children in the Little pieces of Trauma is not relegated only to the children of the supposed Third World or developing countries but by many a child the world over.
The child in a broken home feel this pain whether he is in an economically sophisticated society or on the other side. The child growing up in a society of drive by shootings, crime and drugs is a child of trauma no matter how rich his parents are.
So is the child of the ghetto of the great and sky scrapper cities of the world. As this applies to the child of a family of a molesting or molested parent so does it affect the working child in the street of the other country and the sexually abused child anywhere in the world.
Little Pieces of Trauma is either a fiction or a non fiction depending on the state of mind of the one reading it. The stories therein are subject to the reader’s interpretation.
While to the children who told the stories it is an Expression.
To the reader it is a Reflection.
The question however is, what do we do about it.? A piece of the immortal song ‘In the Ghetto’ asks “- – – do we simply turn our heads, looking another way, while the world burns – – – as a hungry little boy with the running nose plays in the street when the cold wind blows – – -”
We have depleted the ozone layer, wasted our forest and virtually endangered every known animal on earth. The last
man standing is mankind. Are we now turning on the vulnerable ones in our society and trying to turn them into that which we will not like to be.
The legacy and heritage we leave and bequeath on our children will tell the story of the footprint we will leave on the sands of time.
Again this book is a reflection, a speck on the conscience of mankind.
