Good literary works benefit from serendipity. Serendipity was at play in the coincidence of the ending of Chinua Achebe’s fiction in A Man of The People and the real-life first coup in Nigeria. It is an interesting coincidence that the storyline of Where the Waters Recede, embedded in history, coincides with the happenings across Nigeria and in the South West featuring Fulani herdsmen and the indigenous people.
Rotimi Olaniyan’s first novel is a masterful historical fiction that takes in several epochs in the history of South-West Nigeria. It deals with the transatlantic slave trade, the invasion of Yorubaland by the Fulani, banditry, the Yoruba Wars, as well as the incursion of the foreign religions of Islam and Christianity. It shares the myths and details of the strengths and weaknesses of the many gods of the land and the deities the people worshipped.
The life and times of Omitirin, a young woman devoted to the goddess Yemoja, is the vehicle for exploring many issues in history.
Upon attaining puberty, Omitirin’s parents’ hand her over to the service of Yemoja. She goes into a convent for preparation for over three months. As she gets ready with the traditional ritual bath at the river at the end of her initial training, her first, slave raiders kidnap her. They take her on a bewildering journey. One trader passes her over to another, and thence to another. She escapes rape the first time at the hands of drunken sailors by the assistance of a woman ostracised for witchcraft on the false allegation of a trade debtor. The lady kills the sailor as he fights to rape Omitirin but ascribes the murder to Omitirin.
Young Omitirin, age 14, is branded. Her protector hands her over to the palace of Oba Osinlokun, son of Ologun Kutere of Lagos. The king brings in Ifa priests who advise that they handle Omitirin with care and show mercy. Oba Osinlokun would not but rather hands her over to an Oyo warlord, Balogun Ijeru. She suffers through a failed effort to escape the warlord’s harem because of his brutality.
The story takes a turn when fate brings Omitirin together with the captured missionary Graham Thomas. Balogun Ijeru assigns her to the task of nursing Graham back to health based on her knowledge of herbs. Based on the counsel of the Ifa, Balogun Ijeru releases Omitirin and Thomas the missionary. Twenty-five years later, they return to Akindele, her village in the Egba heartland only to learn of the destruction of the community by an infestation of smallpox.
The novel is set in the 18th century but stretches to today. We meet the Abolitionist Movement that fought to end the slave trade, William Wilberforce, Samuel Adjayi Crowther and the early kings of Lagos as well as the warriors of the Oyo Empire.
Where the Waters Recede teaches about the 400 Orishas of Yorubaland. It dwells only on a few. They include Oya, “goddess of the Tapa River and deity of the tempestuous harmattan wind” who was also the wife of Sango, the god of thunder and Osun, “goddess of the Osun River who protects her worshippers from epidemics, loves children and gifts goodies to people”. Then there is Yemoja, the deity of the Ogun River who blesses women with fertility and the land with abundance. Also treated is Ori, “the Yoruba deity in charge of one’s destiny who amongst the Yoruba was represented by one’s head”.
Details enrich this novel. Rotimi Olaniyan goes into great descriptive details that provide picturesque views of things. The Yemoja figurine has a face “etched with Ile-Ife tribal (identikit) marks, a torso with ample bosom and cowrie beads on her neck” while it carried a boy and a girl in her hands.
Where the Waters Recede benefits from prodigious research that breathes in the rich details. The enquiry covers the history of the slave trade and the abolitionist movement, the creation of Freetown as home for freed slaves, and the church movement in England. There is much study and interpretation of the Yoruba Wars, the infighting of the children of Ologun Kutere of Lagos and the impact of the conquest of Ilorin.
The many wars also make this book a mini treatise on leadership. Each ruler must watch his back, calculate his moves and loyalties. Leadership is fraught with many trials, including the vaulting ambitions of persons such as Balogun Ijeru.
Where the Waters Recede runs through a prologue, four parts and an afterword. It is a book of many stories. As Iya Agba, wife of the Balogun Ijeru tells Omitirin, “Stories celebrate the moments of our lives. We might be blessed to live through each in the present, but how quickly they are spent, to become only memories that we spend the rest of our lives protecting with all our might, from fading with time. So, let us create memories worth fighting for” (p287).
Where the Waters Recede “creates memories” and lends itself to explication deploying several theories. Theories deepen understanding of phenomena as well as organise the existing knowledge in specific areas. The obvious ones are the Narrative Paradigm theory of Walter Fischer and Albert Bandura’s Social Learning Theory as well as Lev Vygotsky’s Social Development Theory.
In his afterword, Dr. Olaniyan states: “The themes that I have explored in this novel are ones that have fascinated me and I hope that in some way, the telling of this story helps them find a valuable place within your thoughts and conversations. It is important that Africans come to terms with the need to reconcile their culture with their history. It is even more important that these powerful human stories from our past, locked within the ethos of Africa’s various artefacts that were mostly lost or stolen duing the colonial era, and now lay imprisoned in the various museums, galleries and private collections in the West, be allowed to find their way back home. Because it is only then tht Africans can truly finish telling the stories of their past”.
Against its noble mission, Where the Waters Recede occasionally falls into usages that put down Africa such as “in the dark African heartland” on the blurb, “primitive art” and “Ile-Ife tribal marks” rather than Ile-Ife identikit.
Rotimi Olaniyan schooled at the Universities of Ife and Lagos, as well as Lagos Business School. He received his Doctorate in Business Administration from the Nottingham Business School in 2015 and now teaches there as a member of the Marketing faculty. He worked in brand management at Cadbury Nigeria plc and Colgate Palmolive Limited and owns an experiential marketing business in Lagos.
