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It Flows Like Poison Through Your Bloodstream
Samuel Totten
I am considered a survivor. A survivor of the horror that engulfed my people, the Ibo people of Nigeria, over forty years ago. In 1966. A survivor of what some refer to as genocide, others crimes against humanity. I simply call it mass starvation, which is another way of saying mass murder, isn’t it?
As for being a survivor, well, those are the words of others, not mine. I once read that a Jewish survivor of the Nazis said, “If you licked my heart, it would poison you.” The same could be said of mine.
One million Ibos perished at that time. One million.
One million human beings. One million individuals: men, women, children, the elderly. Even babies!
Can anyone fathom that? I mean, really fathom it!
Anyone can count to a hundred, and undoubtedly many have. Most can also count to a thousand, but probably few have, for what would be the point? It would be boring and take a good amount of time; after all, there are ten hundreds in a thousand. But that’s nothing. There are one hundred hundreds in ten thousand. One thousand one hundreds in a hundred thousand, and ten thousand one hundreds in a million. One million, that’s how many Ibos were killed and perished. That is ungodly, is it not?
Somehow, I avoided being killed or starved to death. Many survivors I know, however, suffered more grievously than me. And many lost much more than I did. Much, much more.
We all, of course, witnessed many horrors. Countless horrors. Of course, I can only relate what I saw with my own eyes and suffered with my own body and heart.
I was very young at the time–eight years old. A mere child. What I remember most vividly is the aching hunger. The pain of that hunger. And the constant fear that I would soon be without food . . . enough food to stay alive. Desperation and hopelessness were constant companions of mine at that time.
After several months I was so weak I could hardly move. You just wanted it to end, to be over with. You actually began to pray for death. I did.
You’ve heard the saying, “Death doesn’t discriminate”? Starvation doesn’t either, of course, unless it is manmade and purposely induced; that is, unless it is used to target a group of people with the aim of destroying them–or at least controlling them, bringing them under control, repressing and oppressing them. You understand what I’m saying?
People’s bodies were so wretched, so miserable that you could see each and every rib of most; it was as though each rib was a dowel sitting upon the skin, not under it. It looked like you could pick the dowel (rib) up and roll it around between your hands. And that was despite the fact that our bellies were swollen, like the bellies of pregnant women, and our legs were three, four times their normal size. If you’ve never seen that then you don’t know how monstrous it looks.
The hunger first began when our people could no longer cultivate due to constant attacks by the Nigerian Armed Forces. People feared being killed, injured or captured. So fields were allowed to go fallow. At the same time, food was not being transported to the markets in the east from Northern Nigeria, as it usually was during peaceful times. Lorries were prevented by soldiers from entering our region.
Me and my brothers, though, helped our family by killing mkpualas, animals like rats. There were days when we killed over a hundred of those mkpualas. We still had energy then, and there were still many mkpualas alive.
We would locate where they were living or hiding, and we would block off all the different exits, and once we had those mkpualas in a single place, we began the killing. Those mkpualas make a very tasty soup. And they helped us to fight off the hunger and starvation because they are rich in protein.
But so many hunted and killed those mkpualas for food that before long they were difficult to find. That’s what happens when millions are starving.
At that time even dogs and cats became swollen.
Before you become swollen, you begin leaning, losing a tremendous amount of weight. Leaning is immense without food, and there is no way to halt it.
You become so weak you have great difficulty even chewing food, should any be found. And even if you could chew, since we had no salt for that which we cooked–such as cassava–everything tasted so terrible it was nearly impossible to eat. But people tried. They tried so hard. We had no choice.
And it was not just the hunger that took such a terrible toll. When you are leaning and bloating, you get diarrhea and begin vomiting. Eventually, you can’t eat or move. You are dying. There is no other way to put it. You are just dying.
And the stench, it is ghastly. It is everywhere. So are the sounds of vomiting and the sounds of shitting. That stench gets in your nostrils and does not leave. It is impossible to wash it out. It is there, with you, day and night. And that, too, makes it difficult to eat, because it makes what you are trying to eat smell just like shit.
And the sight of your own and others’–your mother’s, father’s, brothers’, and sisters’–giant swollen heads, bellies, arms, legs and feet is frightening. The starvation is so horrible, so disfiguring that sometimes you can barely tell who is who. Can one who has not seen that with one’s own eyes even begin to imagine how ghastly human bodies become when deprived of food to the point of starvation? I don’t know. You tell me.
Each new day wrought new ills, new pain, and new losses. And believe it or not, goddamn it, those images, that stench, that pain, those losses never go away. Never! They are not only always with you, they are stamped and tattooed into your brain–and flow like poison in your bloodstream until the day you die.
Samuel Totten
I am considered a survivor. A survivor of the horror that engulfed my people, the Ibo people of Nigeria, over forty years ago. In 1966. A survivor of what some refer to as genocide, others crimes against humanity. I simply call it mass starvation, which is another way of saying mass murder, isn’t it?
As for being a survivor, well, those are the words of others, not mine. I once read that a Jewish survivor of the Nazis said, “If you licked my heart, it would poison you.” The same could be said of mine.
One million Ibos perished at that time. One million.
One million human beings. One million individuals: men, women, children, the elderly. Even babies!
Can anyone fathom that? I mean, really fathom it!
Anyone can count to a hundred, and undoubtedly many have. Most can also count to a thousand, but probably few have, for what would be the point? It would be boring and take a good amount of time; after all, there are ten hundreds in a thousand. But that’s nothing. There are one hundred hundreds in ten thousand. One thousand one hundreds in a hundred thousand, and ten thousand one hundreds in a million. One million, that’s how many Ibos were killed and perished. That is ungodly, is it not?
Somehow, I avoided being killed or starved to death. Many survivors I know, however, suffered more grievously than me. And many lost much more than I did. Much, much more.
We all, of course, witnessed many horrors. Countless horrors. Of course, I can only relate what I saw with my own eyes and suffered with my own body and heart.
I was very young at the time–eight years old. A mere child. What I remember most vividly is the aching hunger. The pain of that hunger. And the constant fear that I would soon be without food . . . enough food to stay alive. Desperation and hopelessness were constant companions of mine at that time.
After several months I was so weak I could hardly move. You just wanted it to end, to be over with. You actually began to pray for death. I did.
You’ve heard the saying, “Death doesn’t discriminate”? Starvation doesn’t either, of course, unless it is manmade and purposely induced; that is, unless it is used to target a group of people with the aim of destroying them–or at least controlling them, bringing them under control, repressing and oppressing them. You understand what I’m saying?
People’s bodies were so wretched, so miserable that you could see each and every rib of most; it was as though each rib was a dowel sitting upon the skin, not under it. It looked like you could pick the dowel (rib) up and roll it around between your hands. And that was despite the fact that our bellies were swollen, like the bellies of pregnant women, and our legs were three, four times their normal size. If you’ve never seen that then you don’t know how monstrous it looks.
The hunger first began when our people could no longer cultivate due to constant attacks by the Nigerian Armed Forces. People feared being killed, injured or captured. So fields were allowed to go fallow. At the same time, food was not being transported to the markets in the east from Northern Nigeria, as it usually was during peaceful times. Lorries were prevented by soldiers from entering our region.
Me and my brothers, though, helped our family by killing mkpualas, animals like rats. There were days when we killed over a hundred of those mkpualas. We still had energy then, and there were still many mkpualas alive.
We would locate where they were living or hiding, and we would block off all the different exits, and once we had those mkpualas in a single place, we began the killing. Those mkpualas make a very tasty soup. And they helped us to fight off the hunger and starvation because they are rich in protein.
But so many hunted and killed those mkpualas for food that before long they were difficult to find. That’s what happens when millions are starving.
At that time even dogs and cats became swollen.
Before you become swollen, you begin leaning, losing a tremendous amount of weight. Leaning is immense without food, and there is no way to halt it.
You become so weak you have great difficulty even chewing food, should any be found. And even if you could chew, since we had no salt for that which we cooked–such as cassava–everything tasted so terrible it was nearly impossible to eat. But people tried. They tried so hard. We had no choice.
And it was not just the hunger that took such a terrible toll. When you are leaning and bloating, you get diarrhea and begin vomiting. Eventually, you can’t eat or move. You are dying. There is no other way to put it. You are just dying.
And the stench, it is ghastly. It is everywhere. So are the sounds of vomiting and the sounds of shitting. That stench gets in your nostrils and does not leave. It is impossible to wash it out. It is there, with you, day and night. And that, too, makes it difficult to eat, because it makes what you are trying to eat smell just like shit.
And the sight of your own and others’–your mother’s, father’s, brothers’, and sisters’–giant swollen heads, bellies, arms, legs and feet is frightening. The starvation is so horrible, so disfiguring that sometimes you can barely tell who is who. Can one who has not seen that with one’s own eyes even begin to imagine how ghastly human bodies become when deprived of food to the point of starvation? I don’t know. You tell me.
Each new day wrought new ills, new pain, and new losses. And believe it or not, goddamn it, those images, that stench, that pain, those losses never go away. Never! They are not only always with you, they are stamped and tattooed into your brain–and flow like poison in your bloodstream until the day you die.