Forgotten lessons threaten future

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

The red-grey dust of a dry Nigerian landscape almost seems to settle on the phone line. Twenty-eight-year-old writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, author of the extraordinary debut novel Purple Hibiscus, is talking about her Nigeria — in particular her town, Nsukka.

Hibiscus is about a 15-year-old girl's coming of age. Playing in the background of Kambili's story is political unrest and the contradictions of religious belief. In stark relief is the story of a family steadily falling apart.

At the epicentre of the family's destruction is Eugene, Kambili's father. Eugene lives a double life. He is a truth-seeking journalist and community pillar — and an abusive, autocratic parent.

It is a story told from the heart. As her voice struggles over the faulty Nigerian phone lines, Adichie hides little about Nsukka. It is both the town of her novel and her town — where she was born. Nsukka, says Adichie, is important because of what it means to her.

"For me it becomes this celebrated place where I became who I am. It is really an unremarkable town but it is what it has meant to me that makes it important."

With her West African accent bouncing across her words, Adichie explains. "I'm very aware when I'm writing that I don't want to sugarcoat my memories. For example in Purple Hibiscus, I made an effort to portray Nsukka as very much a town that is in decline.

"I have wanted to capture that because there is something for me that is moving about the decline. So I try very hard to not make it perfect when it isn't.

"I think it is typical of small towns in Nigeria. It is the sort of town that I'm not sure anybody would know about it if the university had not been built here. My parents live here and when I'm here this is where I'm most at peace. When I write here, I write really well. I think it is that sense of being connected to the past, I suppose.

"I spend a lot of time talking to my parents. I wake up in the morning and I have breakfast with them and talk to them for a while then I'll go up to my room and write until about dinner time. I'll have dinner with them and then write until about 2am, then go to bed and repeat the cycle."

Adichie's life is almost reclusive, in both her hometown and when living with her sister in a small Connecticut town in the United States. In Connecticut, the long talks with her parents are exchanged for sessions in the library where she avoids the burden of "being a black person in a small town that is very white".

No matter where she is, her mind inevitably turns to Nigeria, a country on its knees economically, as it grapples with the most corrupt form of democracy, poverty, HIV/Aids, and the plague of heroin and cocaine. It is also not long free from civil war.

Adichie says she is starting to lose optimism. "I care very much about Nigeria but at the same time I think I'm slowly losing hope. I think I was a lot more hopeful, maybe two years ago, that Nigeria would pick up soon but it just happens to be unfortunate the number of wrong people in Nigeria. It will be a long time before things get better."

Her questioning about why her country is the way it is will frame her next novel, a story about Nigeria in the 60s set against the backdrop of the Nigerian-Biafran war. It was a time when the Republic of Biafra went to war with Nigeria over the oil-rich territories in the northwest.

Adichie explains that the second novel, still un-named, is about people changed by the war, and the process of writing their story has changed her. "It has made me a lot less hopeful because a lot of the things that happened in the 1960s in Nigeria are happening now. I think they are in some ways more serious and worse. We had corruption in 1960 and we have it now but it has escalated."

She also worries that this next novel will start Nigerians talking about subjects they would rather forget. "They don't really want to explore and prod and see below. There are people who feel that digging up the history might trigger off violence and war because a lot of the issues have still not been resolved."

* An evening with Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and Patricia Grace, Lower NZI Conference Room, Aotea Centre, Friday, March 4, 8pm