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S
TARK
I
LLITERATES
 
AND
J
UNKIES
3
1STARK ILLITERATES AND JUNKIES
As I looked across the water from Abonnema jetty, at the heart of the Niger Delta, I felt like a frontiersman standing at the edge of theknown world. Behind me stood the tiny town, a waterside strip of buildings dominated by a neatly compact church and mobile-phonekiosk antenna that seemed to scratch like a giant finger at the sunlesssky. Across the river from me were the creeks, where white egretsand other water birds patrolled the exposed mangrove roots and mudbanks. I was at the barrier between urban development and the landof nature, remote villages and big oil beyond. From here, my journey– begun nervously by car two hours ago in Port Harcourt, Nigeria’soil capital – would continue by boat, jagging through waterwayswhere oil pipes wended like submerged snakes.I was tense because I’d come to meet Alhaji Mujahid Dokubo-Asari, self-styled scourge of the oil industry and emblem of theviolent resistance that was increasingly coming to define the Deltain the eyes of the world. Earlier in 2004, he and his cadre of armedfighters, known as the Niger Delta People’s Volunteer Force, saidthey’d begun an armed struggle for control of oil stolen by theNigerian state and handed over illegitimately to the international oilcompanies. Protests against big oil in the Delta had gone on for manyyears, but Asari had stepped up the violence and the rhetoric. Fromhis self-promotional talk, expertly fed into the international media,you would have thought he was Nigeria’s Robin Hood, the creeks andmangroves his Sherwood Forest.
 
4 A S
WAMP
F
ULL
 
OF
D
OLLARS
I’d already almost blown the chance to see Asari, whom I’d metfor the first time a few months earlier. In a snatched mobile phoneconversation the previous day, he’d told me to wait for him at theAbonnema jetty at eight in the morning. Unfortunately, I’d misheardhim on the crackly line and gone instead to another jetty, calledAbuloma, on the outskirts of Port Harcourt. He’d exploded whenI’d called and told him where I was. ‘What nonsense is this?’ he hadyelled, so loud that I had had to take the phone away from my ear.As I stood waiting now, watching the wind whip up a swell, Iwondered whether I had unwisely piqued a warlord. Then I noticed aspeedboat making its way towards me. As it came closer, I could see itwas filled with fit-looking young men. They seemed unworried aboutattracting the attention of the local people on the jetty who wereshifting fish and other produce into boats. The new arrivals appeareda known quantity, their visit met with indifference.Once the speedboat driver had moored, he beckoned me silentlyaboard. He lifted one of the footboards to reveal an AK-47 riflehidden underneath. Then he opened his coat to show me a magazineof ammunition strapped to his torso. At all times he moved freely,without fuss and with little apparent concern about whether hisweapons were seen by passers-by. When I asked if he was expectingtrouble, he replied matter-of-factly, ‘Any moment, at any time. Butin this case, no problems.’We cast off and headed for a wide-mouthed tributary off theriver’s opposite shore. Bouncing across the water, I felt a freedom andfreshness far removed from Port Harcourt’s dankness and constanttraffic congestion. As we entered the tributary, I could see a furtherset of smaller waterways opening out, part of a network of creeks thatbranched like the stem of a bunch of grapes. Suddenly, the boat’scommander pumped his arm with machine-gun rapidity to directthe vessel sharp right, down a narrow mangrove-flanked corridor.Everyone crouched to avoid overhanging branches, as the rapid move-ments and tight turns made the air around sing with a windy hiss.As we ducked and dived, I didn’t know whether to be unnerved orreassured by the sticker on the hull that claimed our vessel was – likethe
Titanic 
– unsinkable.
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IBTauris

Michael Peel's book about the oil crisis facing the Niger Delta - A Swamp Full of Dollars - has been shortlisted for the Guardian First Book Award 2009. It is the only work of non-fiction on the short list, but the book award's London reading group was particularly impressed by A Swamp Full of Dollars, praising its "accessibility, insight and integrity". Find out more: http://bit.ly/4kaNJA

reply10 / 30 / 2009
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