WHEN HALF OF THE YELLOW SUN SETS 💛

“The world has to know the truth of what is happening, because they simply cannot remain silent while we die” - Colonel Madu

It's crazy that after spending my last three years in secondary school studying Government, I didn't truly understand the Nigerian Civil War until I read Chimamanda's Half of a Yellow Sun. It's crazy that even after studying Government in my last three years of college. My Igbo Government teacher packaged the white lies and repeated the version of history they had been taught. To me, the civil war had just been an issue of succession that lasted for three years.

I've never strongly felt for Nigeria until I read this book. I'm also so angry at myself for just reading this book.I'm so angry at the seeds of hate these whites sowed manipulatively amongst Nigerians that is still wrecking us till this day.

I cried proper at how Chimamanda captured the war and its ruins, juxtaposing them with the images of the big-bellied generals (Ojukwu and Gowon) in my textbooks, adorned with stars, instead of the starving children who died in shallow graves.

The book is a striking one about many things. I wrote a poem inspired by it.

If you've read the book, these lines may resonate with you or remind you of a character. If not, Ocean PDF has been restored.

When Half of the Yellow Sun Sets

I have only known war vaguely

from the history I learnt in “Government,”

from the tales of my teacher about the civil war,

how it was about a problem of seniority in the military that escalated,

but never about its ravaging incivility.

I hate the whitewashed narrative of my past,

told by people who never lived it,

who were silent when we died,

and who believed they could tell it

with their civilized jargons,

erasing the parts they played,

cutting the strings off the puppets they made,

tucking away the millions of lives lost,

crumpling them neatly in textbooks,

and forcing me to retell them in my notes.

They who sowed seeds of hate for selfish gain,

won the war they never even fought.

I hate it all - the preventability of it all.

I hate that my father had to live

in a time as cruel as that,

but I hate my ignorance even more.

I painstakingly found my history

as half of the yellow sun sets,

and I learn about the malignancy of war as it foretells:

War leaves us with nothing

but the dead

and the hope that one day

the ghosts will return.

And if there are no ghosts,

they’ll be corpses

singing of their survival.

In all cases,

life is lost.

War leaves shadows of humanity,

as we tear at our flesh like animals,

becoming people

we never thought we would be.

War transforms the world

into a landscape

of unending pain and mourning,

where the rivers run red with memory,

and the wind carries the echo of ghastly screams.

War never really ends.

Peace is not the end

of a war that once started

but a remnant of it,

a shadow that lingers

in every heartbeat.

May we never know war.

May we remember.

With all my love,

IT 🧜🏾‍♀️