Let me borrow the title of this post from the late Zimbabwean writer, whose angry novel, THE HOUSE OF HUNGER, navigates the themes of hunger, poverty, violence and madness in contemporary African society. Having read the novel, I discovered that hunger is not just the harbinger of violence, it breeds excessive courage( call it madness if you like) and uncanny street wisdom.
A hungry man is an angry man, so says a popular adage, but he could also be a trickster playing macabre games with stoic exuberance. But more significantly, the house of hunger is a place of utter confusion and absurdity.
The late Gov Moses Adasu once told me an intriguing story of his growing up as an adolescent in a house of hunger along with siblings and distant relations. Dinner time was for the demonstration of the survival of the fittest. Six or seven all-day hungry boys would squat around a steaming hot dish of cornflour foofoo served with atiever drawl soup and little meat. Before you could say, Jack Robinson, the fingers of the bigger, smarter and incorrigible guys would defy the blistering inferno of the foofoo, scramble for its poverty-stricken soul and within seconds, partition it among themselves in the manner, the European nations had apportioned mother Africa to themselves at a dinner table in Berlin in 1884.
With all their strength and greed, none of them would be smart enough to take charge of the soup bowl. It would then be incumbent on the weaker but smarter Adasu to confiscate the soup, without which the huge lumps of foofoo already appropriated would be useless. Negotiations would ensue, angry glances, abusive gestures describing each other’s gluttony, rough tackles and finally arriving at an equitable sharing fomular.
Nigeria is a giant house of hunger. Its hungry citizens have laid siege and are breaking into barns, stores and warehouses stuffed with food items by their leaders. It smacks of a great nationwide conspiracy against the poor. The food meant to be shared as Covid 19 palliatives is being hoarded by the very governors that the poor had elected into power, and is reserved for Sycophants and in exchange for votes in future elections.
The demon of hunger had also sent hundreds of Nigerians into slavery in Libya and many more to drown in the Mediterranean Sea as they regularly go in quest for food in Europe. Nigeria also exports thousands of innocent teenage prostitutes to Western Europe in a trade deals that excite even its victims.
It is ironic that our country holds tenaciously to its obnoxious identity of a poor and hungry country. With the production capacity of 60 million metric tons last yeat our country is the largest producer of cassava the world over. We were also recognized as the leading provider of yams with the tonnage of 48 metric tons in the same year.
Our soil is also very favourble for the cultivation of various crops like rice, beans, citrus, Cocoa, sorghum and others too numerous to mention. A country which produces and sells crude oil on the average of 2 million barrels per day for sixty years has no business being a home of hunger. The same paradox pervades our foreign trade. We find ourselves importing such products as petroleum products and food items we produce in abundance at home.
In Marechera’s novel, THE HOUSE OF HUNGER, the mother of the teenage boys engages in ghetto residence prostitution to survive. One of her dare-devil costumers, unmindful of the two teenage sons were asleep on the mat beside the creaky iron bed, gets into action with animal gusto. The bed wailed as the Madam responded with rapacious yelps, very much like a stoic distress call.
Her 19 year old son quickly woke up and came to her rescue. His feeble attempt to disengage this assailant with his huge assault weapon was unsuccessful.
He man disengaged briefly and gave the young man a beating of his life, and then got back to complete the pleasure trip he had paid for. By the way, it is in Marechera’s Zimbabwe that the local people have a saying that “an erect penis has no conscience” In essence the rapist in action is a rampaging elephant.
Those who rape our mothers in the house of hunger are ever ready to beat us silly if we attempt to complain or resist.
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