The Famished Road

Book 2 is notable for its understanding and depiction of the grinding despair of poverty. Mum’s forays into the market are mostly futile: “She was wondering whether walking the streets of the world, day after boiling day, crooning out her provisions till her voice was hoarse, was worth the little she earned at the end of it all” (93). Dad’s terrible suffering, bearing the heavy loads of various materials, is also a metaphor for the suffering he bears underneath the weight of his family’s persistent poverty. He, too, understands how significant their lack of resources remains: “If I had money I would be a great man” (94). This despair explains, at least in part, Dad’s addiction to alcohol; before he makes the above pronouncement, Azaro notes that he “stood in the doorway like a drunken giant” (94) and, later, as he sits in his chair, Azaro fears “it would disintegrate under his drunkenness” (95). Dad takes refuge in the oblivion—and false bravado—that alcohol offers.

Madame Koto’s bar becomes a refuge for Azaro—at least for a time—away from the troubles and torments of home. Once the politicians invade, however, the bar becomes a dangerous place. Azaro’s life is defined by splintering pathways and difficult, if sometimes thoughtless, decisions and constant wanderings. Like John Bunyan in Pilgrim’s Progress searching for the correct path, or Redcrosse Knight in The Faerie Queene fighting the monster Error, Azaro is on his own pilgrimage to find himself, discover truth, and deliver justice. When the politicians carry him away, it is described “as if they were merely setting out on a pilgrimage to a distant land” (111). The kidnapping is rendered as an allegory: “They took me down many roads” (112), Azaro remarks, a journey as much of the mind as of the body. The more he struggles against the politicians’ restraints, the more tightly he is trapped. When he finally frees himself, he is still yet lost: “The road became my torment, my aimless pilgrimage, and I found myself merely walking to discover where all the roads lead to, where they end” (115). This early in the novel, Azaro remains in the process of discovery, lost in the psychological and philosophical wilderness.

After he finds his way home again, politics, politicians, and the political climate are still dominant concerns in his and everyone else’s lives. The politicians—never named, as they are generic archetypes of general greed and corruption—show up at the compound, campaigning with promises that they can never hope to fulfill. Among their sloganeering are such avowals as, in all-caps, bullhorn-loud type, “WE WILL MAKE YOU RICH LIKE US” (123). This promise comes, of course, from the Party of the Rich—versus the Party of the Poor, which vows to bring dignity to impoverished working men like Dad. The politics are as divisive as one could imagine between two diametrically opposed parties; there is no middle ground: “Dad, who supported the Party of the Poor, quivered during the argument, unable to contain his rage; our relation, who supported the Party of the Rich, was very calm, almost disdainful” (128). Though the book was published in 1991, anyone paying attention to early 21st century politics will find resonances.

The incident with the free powdered milk is telling. It induces a frenzy in the hungry crowd that either the politicians planned (nothing like a good riot for some publicity) or were woefully unconcerned about. At one point, “[b]lood mixed with milk on the earth” (125), revealing the unintentional sacrifice required from the impoverished villagers in the wake of the politicians’ faux generosity. Azaro’s sensitively tuned understanding recognizes something is wrong with the milk even before people begin to get sick: “I heard a noise in the cupboard and as I looked I saw something growing out of the milk. It grew very tall and white and resolved itself into a ghostly agbada [traditional robe]” (127). The milk has a (ghostly) life of its own, ending up causing massive sickness—representing the taint of politics, the corruption of empty promises—throughout the compound. Later, when the van returns, the residents burn it in revenge and render its politics meaningless: “all the big flaking letters of the party’s insignia were obliterated, and nothing was left to identify the vehicle, or to rescue it from forgetfulness” (155).

Meanwhile, the peripatetic Azaro continues his restless wanderings, even when not being held against his will. His place in the world is insecure, caught as he is between the realm of the spirits and the material world: “It took me hours to get lost and many more to find my way back again. I began to enjoy getting lost” (144). He is still on some sort of pilgrimage, on a journey to find meaning—and freedom—for himself, his family, and his country, which is the author’s central preoccupation. When he happens upon his father working as a load-bearer, his pretensions are momentarily suspended. He does not like what he sees: “My wanderings had at last betrayed me, because for the first time in my life I had seen one of the secret sources of my father’s misery” (149). It is a moment of illumination, of maturity. Mum recognizes this herself when she tells him, “[N]ot everything grows in this place. But at least you, my son, are growing” (170). Azaro has begun the long, slow process of coming of age.

In the end, though, the world Azaro inhabits is one of poverty and divisive politics, corruption and cruelty, violence and fear; this is the stark reality. However, Azaro also maintains a sense of hope through his fantasies and visions, and he—like the author—finds comfort in a “world dissolving into a delirium of stories” (182). These stories, it is implied, are what will rescue the world from the cold, hard realities of postcolonial, post-civil war Nigeria.