The Peace Corps was a wonderful experience for me. I learned more in those two years among the Igbo people of Eastern Nigeria than any other period of my life. In this 50th anniversary of the Peace Corps, I wonder if any of my friends and former students are still alive. I left Nigeria in late 1963. In 1966 there was a coup and then a counter-coup and the murder of an estimated 30,000 Igbos who lived in the Northern Region of Nigeria. Surviving Igbos fled back home to the Eastern Region. They seceded from Nigeria and formed a new nation called Biafra. The civil war that ensued lasted from May 1967 until the defeat of Biafra in January 1970. I don't know if the war killed or wounded any of my students and friends among the staff at Abbot School or Augustine Okemadu, the school carpenter, or Emanuel Obiako Anyaduigwu, our cook. I wonder if the brilliant Edwin Igbozurike survived the horror. In my chemistry class, Edwin, who grew up in a mud hut with no electricity or running water, calculated from his experimental data the equivalent weight of copper. Did Johnny Ikegwounu make it? He was an exceptional athlete on my track team who, at five feet eight inches tall, high-jumped six feet with no coaching. And what happened to my good friends and fellow teachers at Abbot Secondary School: John Okorie Nwosu, Amaraegbu Assic Olumba, Adolphus Amakamara and their families I was privileged to meet? The happy face of Hilary Igwe is still clear in my mind. I hope he survived the war. Many Igbos died and now the federal government controls the oil in the Niger River delta of southeastern Nigeria. Shell-BP and other foreign oil companies are contaminating the Niger delta with oil spills and all the debris and litter that goes with oil drilling. The oil boom has turned the town of Port Harcourt into a wild-west city of bars and prostitution. Eight Ogone men, including author Ken Osiweri, who led resistance to the oil industry's destruction of their homeland, were hanged by the federal government.
Nigeria RPCV Julian Martin writes: Memories of Peace Corps endure
Julian Martin: Memories of Peace Corps endure
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The Peace Corps was a wonderful experience for me. I learned more in those two years among the Igbo people of Eastern Nigeria than any other period of my life. In this 50th anniversary of the Peace Corps, I wonder if any of my friends and former students are still alive.
I left Nigeria in late 1963. In 1966 there was a coup and then a counter-coup and the murder of an estimated 30,000 Igbos who lived in the Northern Region of Nigeria. Surviving Igbos fled back home to the Eastern Region. They seceded from Nigeria and formed a new nation called Biafra. The civil war that ensued lasted from May 1967 until the defeat of Biafra in January 1970.
The oil reserves in Biafra attracted a strange mixture of bedfellows. France and China sided with Biafra. Britain and Russia supported the Nigerian federal government. Mercenaries from several nations rushed in to make money flying supplies into Biafra. The U.S. didn't publicly take sides, but by not recognizing Biafra, we were de facto on the side of the Nigerian government.
From somewhere I heard that Egyptian mercenaries flew MIG jets for the federal government and bombed every hospital and major marketplace in Biafra. And I don't remember how I came to know it or even if it is true, but an account reached me that a 500-pound bomb was dropped on the market place in Okofia, not far from where I lived and taught.
I don't know if the war killed or wounded any of my students and friends among the staff at Abbot School or Augustine Okemadu, the school carpenter, or Emanuel Obiako Anyaduigwu, our cook.
I wonder if the brilliant Edwin Igbozurike survived the horror. In my chemistry class, Edwin, who grew up in a mud hut with no electricity or running water, calculated from his experimental data the equivalent weight of copper.
Did Johnny Ikegwounu make it? He was an exceptional athlete on my track team who, at five feet eight inches tall, high-jumped six feet with no coaching. And what happened to my good friends and fellow teachers at Abbot Secondary School: John Okorie Nwosu, Amaraegbu Assic Olumba, Adolphus Amakamara and their families I was privileged to meet?
I recall showing a film in my home of John Kennedy's inauguration. I heard my friend John Okorie Nwosu repeating from memory the inauguration speech word for word and simultaneously with Kennedy on the screen.
America had great political capital back then. Coming home, my wife and I were celebrated by Egyptians, Greeks and Russians. In Russia the maids in our hotel were weeping as they watched the funeral of President Kennedy on television.
Six years after I returned to West Virginia this letter arrived from a former student:
Dear Sir,
... I entered University in 1966 to study chemistry and could finish a year only before the Nigerians started their plan to exterminate us. We could not fold our arms but took up arms in self defense. Because of the support being given to them by Russia and Britain, we were being bombed even in our market places and private dwellings. With these we have to put up and at the field we have decided to resist till the last man. It is only heart breaking that much destruction has been caused.
All of us are engaged one way or another in winning the war. I hope public opinion in the United States is on our side. We discarded most English ways to embrace Americans as Peace Corps and your dress, the industrious habit you inculcated in us are still with us. We very well remember how you stayed up without siesta to solve chemistry problems for us, the chemistry books donated on our behalf by your people.
Yours obediently Sir,
Hilary Igwe
The happy face of Hilary Igwe is still clear in my mind. I hope he survived the war. Many Igbos died and now the federal government controls the oil in the Niger River delta of southeastern Nigeria. Shell-BP and other foreign oil companies are contaminating the Niger delta with oil spills and all the debris and litter that goes with oil drilling.
The oil boom has turned the town of Port Harcourt into a wild-west city of bars and prostitution. Eight Ogone men, including author Ken Osiweri, who led resistance to the oil industry's destruction of their homeland, were hanged by the federal government.
Martin, of Charleston, is a retired teacher.
