Adventures into Koko… what happens to our memories

One evening in 2008, while listening to music in my tiny 10 square meters apartment in Milan, I was hit by an unexpected image: a woman holding a baby in a country where it hasn’t rained for eight years. I took a pen and scribbled something down. A few days later the play Verdilizzante/Fatlaizer was born. A play about a land forsaken by rain and the struggles of the king to find a solution.

At a point during the initial stage of writing, I realised I was dealing with the memory of Koko. 

Koko, a land I never visited, came to me as a woman in faraway Milan!

It was as if the whole event was stored somewhere in a safe house, so I began to dig.

While growing up and serving my uncle at Alaba in 1988, his container of hairdyers arrived from Italy. Nothing extraordinary in it, after all we are Igbos, famous for our containers. But that particular one had something interesting in it: crates of apples. Apples were exotic fruits at the time, unlike now that my aged mother living in faraway Ekwe tells me confidently that she bought “apụl” at local market! So, my uncle came home with those strange fruits with perfectly hollowed bottom, a round body and a head as sunken as the bottom. In a word, I didn’t know what an apple was then. My uncle distributed the bizarre fruit to us with a curious presentation. 

 “Your body will shine better after eating this fruit,” he said. Now, I was a teenager and didn’t have any need for my skin to look younger, unlike now unfortunately, but I still wanted my skin to shine. I challenge anyone to say that as a teenager, presented with such wondrous opportunity of maybe having Ngozi, Bose or Amina to say “see as you de shine” wouldn’t take it! So, I launched into eating my apples, once in a while going to peep at myself in the mirror, but I must say I was quite frankly disappointed: there were no visible changes! Then that same week an event that created an immediate link between Italy, Koko and toxic waste filled the newspapers.

ToxicWaste from Italy to Koko filled papers in capital letters! My apples became bitter! I began to read everything about the toxic waste saga. I read of external affairs minister Ike Nwachukwu abandoning the then OAU meeting in Addis Ababa, swearing to deal with whoever was involved; of the Italian importer running away through theland border. I also followed the story of an Italian ship and mariners seized by the then military government.

In short, the coincidence was uncanny and I swallowed everything. But once the furore died down; I soon forgot like many. So years after living in Italy and working as actor and director, memory presented itself in the form of a metaphor.

I wrote, directed and produced a play entitled Verdilizzante, a neologism of two Italian words: Verde and Fertilizzante/Green and Fertilizer=Fatlaizer.

But not satisfied with going from to city to city reminding Italians of Italians in Nigeria, I decided to produce a creative documentary of that memory. And here I came face to face with the other aspect of memory: what do we do with our memories? How does memory deposit individually and collectively?

I began to make contacts in Nigeria to get into Koko. I called friends and soon made contact with someone who agreed to lead me into Koko.

The arrangement was that I would go into the village as a journalist. I wasn’t too comfortable with camouflaging myself. When I arrived to Lagos, I illustrated my plans to the executive producer Mr Sly Kuna, who looked at me and said:“bros, if you enter dat place like dis na die be dat o!”I had to change plans immediately. I called a family friend, an army colonel who knows somebody that knows another somebody that knows yet another person from the village.

So, with such clear, watertight arrangement we headed to Benin City. There was myself, the executive producer Mr Kuna, the director of photography Sunday John Nwoko and a soundman. We met my contact person but he said he couldn’t lead me to the village because he wouldbe entering “dry fasting” the following day. But he introduced another young man whom he said is like a brother to him. The problem is that my creative mind had built a story around his voice, so I had to make quick adjustments, which is normal in a documentary.

 We had an appointment to meet my contact person at the Koko junction the following morning at 6.30 because I wanted to have a first look at the village whose story had been haunting me for a quarter of a century. I wanted to see Koko before deciding the angle from which to observe my own personal memory of a place I knew from newspapers and my theatre play–– I didn’t have expectations, yet I wasn’t expecting what happened afterwards. We got to the junction a little earlier than the agreed time. I was eager, Mr Kuna was worried, Sunday narrated that he had been held hostage somewhere around there in the course of his work. The soundman was a much younger guy; his major interest was in chatting with his girlfriend, which provided some normalcy to the building tension. At about 7.30 am, I called my contact and it was evident from his voice that I just woke him up, but he said he was on his way. One hour later he said he was buying fuel. At around 9.45am he said his fuel finished and I reminded him he was buying fuel earlier on. He said,“Bros, give me a few seconds” and I thought, “Well, few seconds don finish as we speak naw!”

Meanwhile my worries rose to a height I never imagined would be possible. So many “what if” began to play in my head:

“What if someone raises an alarm about four men parked at a filling station since 6.30 am?

What if we were mistaken for kidnappers or child abductors watching schoolchildren hustling into available kabu kabu?”

It was 2013 after all I told myself, playing out unhappy scenarios in my head. Then at some minutes after 10am the guy finally found his fuel and showed up with a fear-inducingyoung man, apparently bodyguard I would rather not describe his physical features. I asked Sunday to put away the camera. My contact’s first words were, “Why you de video me? You think sey I be kidnapper?” I assured him the camera was off.

To make a long story short, he refused to take me to Koko and said we neededto speak to the person that put him on the job. We agreed to speak to him and my contact person later. They turned to go towards Sapele, we to Benin City. But as we were driving back I asked the driver to turn back because I wasn’t sure I would ever enter Koko from the look of things. We hid cameras, sound equipments and went into Koko, crossed two military checkpoints and there I was finally in Koko!

We drove around, I took a quick around and since our hearts were sounding danger, I decided we should go away, but as we were driving close to the first military checkpoint out of the village, low and behold, there they were! The guy and his bodyguard had followed us into the village! They stopped in front of us and began to raise their voice saying he did not permit us to enter the village. At this point Mr Kuna delivered a statement that I will never forget, “Bros, with due respect, Nigeria is still a free country and we can enter anywhere we want!”

We entered the car and zoomed off and they did not raise an alarm!

*Nze, actor, director, filmmaker, writes from Milan, Italy