by Bennet Omalu
Even with the hardships, my father considered himself very blessed because he had the opportunity to go to school. Each day, he had to take care of the master’s children and see them off to school before getting himself cleaned up and ready for class. But he got to go to school. Very early on, my father realized that education gave him his only opportunity to become somebody and improve his lot in life. He worked very hard in his studies and graduated from high school. However, he could not afford college. Instead, he found a job as the personal assistant to the local colonial administrator who worked in the Ministry of Mines and Power. Up until 1960, Nigeria was a colony of Britain. My father’s new boss was English.
With the new job, my father became his own man who made a good living and earned his own income. His boss noticed my father’s exceptional attitude toward work. No matter how tedious or demanding the work, my father never complained. For him, work was a blessing, for now he was free from his past abuse and no longer had to suffer in silence just to stay alive. My father loyally served his boss, so much so that when his boss eventually retired and moved back to England, he asked my father, “What can I do for you to repay you for your faithful service to me?”
My father gave the question a lot of deep thought. He might have asked for some tangible material things, like the man’s car he was leaving behind or some of his belongings he could not take to England. Instead, my father went back to the revelation he had at the missionary school: Through education you can become anyone you want to be. A car will wear out and have to be replaced, but an education sticks with you for the rest of your life and opens doors that will not open any other way. “Can you help me go to college?” my father asked his departing boss. Like father, like son, I grew up to develop the same faith in education. I saw education as an empowering tool that would enable me to become the man I was born to be. I sought after education with all my might.
The man was very impressed with my father’s humble request. “Of course,” he said. True to his word, the man secured a scholarship for my father to study mining engineering at the Camborne School of Mines in Penryn, Cornwall, England. He also gave my dad some of his material things he could not take back to England.
Prior to leaving for England for college, my father met a woman named Chiwude and wanted to marry her. Chiwude means “God provides the ink with which we write our lives.” She also had an English name, Caroline. When my father went to Caroline’s father and asked for her hand in marriage, her father refused. “My first daughter will not marry an orphan,” he insisted. Giving up on that relationship, my father met another woman, and the two were soon engaged. However, the relationship did not work out, and they broke off the engagement. My father was single and alone when he moved to England not long after the end of the Second World War.
When my father arrived in Cornwall, he rented a room in the home of a childless couple who had been trying to have a baby for years without success. Miraculously, a few months after my father moved in, the couple conceived a child. They were overjoyed, but my father had to find a new place to stay, as his room became the baby’s room. My father moved in with another childless couple, who also conceived a few months after his arrival. Word spread. Many childless couples wanted my father to move in with them. They nicknamed him “the Black Cat”—only this black cat brought good luck.
His living conditions aside, my father devoted all his energy to his studies. Four years after arriving in England, this former street child, the once abused orphan, graduated with a degree in mining engineering. For a child of the street to even find a family was and still is remarkable. For that child to graduate from high school was so unusual as to be thought of as impossible. Yet, as my father’s name testifies, you never know what tomorrow may bring. Tomorrow brought my father a college degree from an English university. I struggle to find words to convey to you the emotions this stirs inside of me. My father was abandoned at the age of three, yet when he moved back to Nigeria from England with his degree in hand, he ascended to a position of great authority and respect. Rather than serve as someone’s assistant, my father became his own boss at the Ministry of Mines and Power and the boss of many other men. Only God could bring about such a tomorrow.
During my father’s time in England, he traveled back to Nigeria once to try to convince Caroline’s father to give him a chance. Her father refused to change his mind. After returning to Nigeria for good, my father met another woman and was soon engaged. Once again, the relationship fell apart. Heartbroken, my father poured his energy into his work, earning high praise for his skills and work ethic.
A few years later, my father was told Caroline now found herself in a different situation. Her father had died suddenly from a ruptured appendix. After his death, Caroline had to drop out of school and go to work to support her brothers and sisters. The boys in the family stayed in school because, at the time, it was a better investment to educate boys rather than girls. Boys had more opportunities open to them. Caroline opened a small, street-side dress shop but the business struggled. She found herself alone, poor, and broken.
My father went to Caroline and once again asked her to marry him. Rather than being a poor, abused orphan, my father was now a graduate of an English college, a civil servant with a good job and a bright future. With her father no longer around to object, Caroline said yes to his proposal, and the two were married in 1958 and remained married for fifty-six years until my father’s death in 2014.
Given the way my father pursued my mother, it might be easy to assume that he had fallen so deeply in love with her that he could not rest until he had her. Yet I vividly remember my father telling me, “Bennet, never marry because you have fallen in love. Never come to me and tell me that you are getting married because you are so much in love that you cannot live without this woman. If you fall in love, then you can fall out of love, for it is often nothing but infatuation, a type of foolish love.” He went on to tell me that when you love a woman, it is a conscious decision to love, adore, and accept her for who she is. When you truly love, you do whatever is within your means to bring out the woman she is and the woman she was born to be. You seek to make her happy. “Love should not control you,” he told me. “Rather, you control it. It is a rational decision you make to love sacrificially, even when it is demanding and difficult and painful.” I know this is how my parents were able to have a strong marriage for fifty-six years. For a man who grew up as an orphan, a mistreated foster child, he had a great deal of insight into what it means to truly love someone.
My mother and father settled into a middle-class lifestyle and soon started a family. Two years after my mother and father married, Britain granted Nigeria her independence. My father continued in his same position with the Ministry of Mines and Power. He worked in several towns across Nigeria but spent most of his time in the northern city of Jos. Over the next eight years, he and my mother had five children. My father, who now went by the English name John, believed that the emerging English culture and economic system of the West would eventually dominate globally. Therefore, he thought it socially and economically strategic for each of his children to have an English name. He named my five oldest siblings Theodore, Winnifred, Henrietta, Ignatius, and Edwin; my only younger sister, Mirian. But my parents also wanted to bestow a blessing upon their children and give them names that were, in essence, a prayer over each of them. They named my oldest brother Onyekwelu, which means, “Who believed I would become somebody in life?” Winnifred they named Chinyelu—“This is God’s gift to me.” Henrietta is Uchenna—“This is the will of God.” Ignatius is Ikemefuna—“May my strength not be taken from me.” Edwin is Chizoba—“May God save and protect us.” And finally, Mirian is Ekenedilichukwu—“To God be all the glory and thanks.”
My parents had a good life, and it might have continued forever if not for events they could not control. Most of the boundaries in the countries of Africa have nothing to do with traditional tribal areas. Nor do they rea
lly have anything to do with the way people historically self-identified. The vast majority of the boundaries on the continent were created by the European powers that colonized them. (Ethiopia is the biggest exception, as it was the only African nation that fought back successfully and was never colonized.) As a result, people of different—and sometimes warring—tribes and religions found themselves thrown together because of treaties negotiated between governments thousands of miles away that took nothing into consideration except lines on a map.
In Nigeria, the arbitrary boundaries established by Great Britain left the nation with a predominantly Muslim population made up of the Hausa people in the north and a predominantly Christian population in the south primarily composed of the Yoruba and Igbo people. During the colonial era, tensions between the north and south did not boil over into violence, because both still saw themselves as separate. Britain treated each area differently from the other. However, once the English left, the two very different parts of the country were thrown together into one. The newly independent nation got off to a rocky start. In May 1966, General Aguiyi-Ironsi, an Igbo general in the Nigerian army, took over the government after a foiled coup. A few months later, Muslims from the north launched a countercoup and killed General Aguiyi-Ironsi.
As tensions grew, my father moved his family four hundred miles south to the predominantly Igbo town of Enugwu-Ukwu. Jos was in the Muslim north. My father continued working in Jos and came home to the family as often as he could. At this time, my parents had their fifth child, Chizoba, which means “May God save and protect us,” a prayer for our family, which needed protection—as did all the Igbo people. Fearing they would be marginalized in the government, the southern tribes of Nigeria, led by the Igbos, declared their own independence on May 30, 1967. They created a new nation in southeast and southwest Nigeria called Biafra, which was Christian. Civil war with the north and west (which were predominately Muslim and mixed Muslim-Christian, respectively) broke out almost immediately.
When war broke out, my father was in Jos. It was the worst place he could have been. The war was not fought on faraway battlefields. Nigerian government forces and northern Muslim tribes started slaughtering Igbos wherever they found them in the north. Since Jos had a large Igbo population, the slaughter was fierce there. My father immediately went into hiding, but he knew he could not hide forever. He had to get to the south, but he could not just jump on a train with a ticket to Biafra. The moment he showed himself in public, he was in danger of death. He did not know what to do.
Thankfully, God sent an angel to carry my father home. Even though the British had officially pulled out of the country, many still remained in important jobs. My father worked alongside an expatriate British man, and the two had become friends. As the slaughter started, his British friend told my father, “I will get you home.” The friend had my father lie down in the back of his Land Rover and covered him with a blanket, clothes, and even luggage. He made sure there was a small opening to give my father air to breathe. With no other option, my father agreed to his friend’s plan, while also surrendering himself to the will of Almighty God. When he climbed into the back of the Land Rover, my father prepared himself for the very real possibility that he would not get out alive.
Military checkpoints were set up all along the roads between Jos and Biafra. My father’s friend had not driven far before he came to the first checkpoint. The tribesmen manning it carried automatic rifles, spears, bows and arrows, and machetes. They motioned for my father’s friend to pull over, but when they saw that he was white, they waved him on without searching his car. The same thing happened at the next checkpoint—and the next and the next.
About the time my father felt like he could relax, the car stopped again. Angry voices barked out orders. Then my father heard a key go into the trunk lock. He held his breath. The back hatch of the Land Rover opened. More angry voices chattered away. The luggage lying on top of my father moved back and forth. If the angry person conducting the search were to dig down a little deeper, my father would be found. O God, protect me. Take me home to my family, my father prayed as he tried to calm his heart and not move a muscle. Then, without warning, the hatch slammed shut and the car was back on its way down the road.
They encountered a few more checkpoints. One or two other times, people looked into the back of the Land Rover, but only for a moment. No one dug around. No one really searched the vehicle because the driver was a white Englishman. I guess the tribesmen from the north assumed that no white man would risk his life for an Igbo.
Eventually, my father’s friend drove through the final checkpoint and entered Biafra. He went a little farther into the country and stopped at a major crossroad called Ninth Mile Junction, about nine miles outside of Enugu. My father climbed out of the back of the vehicle and embraced his friend. “You saved my life. I will never forget what you did for me and my family,” my father said.
“I will write to you to make sure you are okay,” his friend replied. Their good-bye had to be fast. Even though my father was near home, he was not completely safe. He caught a bus at the crossroad and went home.
The British friend saved my father’s life, but my family was not safe in Enugwu-Ukwu. Nigerian armed forces invaded the seceded Biafra. Because Enugwu-Ukwu was a major town in Biafra, it came under attack. My father led our family as they fled south and west as refugees to the town of Nnokwa. The war intensified. Nigerian forces encircled Biafra and set up a blockade. No food or aid could come in or out. Hunger and starvation became weapons of war. Biafran people, most of whom were Igbo, began to suffer from malnutrition and starve to death. Every day, hundreds and thousands of men, women, children, and babies died of hunger and disease. Of the more than two million casualties in Biafra during the war, nearly all were civilians.
Word of the crisis spread to the world. Life magazine featured two young Igbo children on its cover with the headline “Starving Children of Biafra War.” Even today, when I see photos of the war, I weep. The United Nations responded by holding talks about the war, but that’s all they did. They talked and talked, but nothing was done. Britain, the country that had ruled Nigeria for so long, did nothing to bring the two sides together. Instead, they supplied weapons to the northern Nigerian armed forces.
My family suffered through the war. Even though my father was a graduate of an English college and had faithfully served as a government civil servant for many years, when war broke out, he was just Igbo. Nothing he had done before mattered. My family moved in with relatives as refugees, losing everything my father had worked all his life to attain. At the refugee camp, my family, like nearly everyone else in Biafra, relied on food drops from the Red Cross and CARITAS, the international Catholic relief agency, to survive. At first, trucks were able to get through and deliver the food, coming up from Port Harcourt, Biafra’s primary link to the outside world. However, on May 19, 1968, Port Harcourt fell to the Nigerian forces. After that, food had to be dropped out of airplanes and delivered via parachutes to the refugee camps.
The Nigerian armed forces increased the severity of their attacks. Not only did the Nigerian air force bomb military targets, but they also bombed agricultural areas and other places where civilians lived. Biafran officials pleaded with the world to act, but no one did. For the people of Biafra, including the Igbo tribe, the war went from bad to worse.
And in the midst of the worst part of the civil war, my mother discovered she was pregnant with her sixth child. Me.
Chapter Two
Child of War
When I run into people these days at the airport or grocery store or gym, wherever I go, many people recognize me. They have seen me on the news or in the PBS documentary League of Denial or in photos with Will Smith connected to the movie Concussion, where Will played me. Almost every time someone recognizes me, they tell me how much they admire me. “Oh my gosh,” they say to me, “you are a hero to me for what you have done.” Many young ones tell me they want to be
like me when they get older. Most want to take a selfie with me.
I smile and pose for the photograph and thank them for their kind words, but I do not feel I belong on the pedestal on which they have placed me. They only see the Bennet Omalu of today. In their eyes, I am a success, a polished, finished product. What bothers me after the photos are taken and the admirers walk away is that they do not know the whole story. Much of my life has been filled with struggles and failures, weakness and doubt. Yet these difficulties, my Calvary, made me the man I am today and give substance to my life’s work. I may be a success today, not because of where I am in life or what I have done, but because of where I began and the path I have traveled. Our journeys define us, and my journey was rocky from the start.
• • • •
Because the Nigerian army and naval blockade of Biafra kept most supplies from getting through to the south during the civil war in which I was born, food was very, very scarce when my mother discovered she was pregnant. Why my parents chose to conceive me at this time I will never know. The fact that I survived long enough to be born is a miracle.
Another miracle occurred the week of my birth. When my mother went into labor with me, my father was delayed at work at his Biafran government post. She went to the refugee hospital and tried to get word to my father to join her there. Not long after she arrived at the hospital, the air-raid sirens sounded. Nigerian war planes flew in low overhead and dropped bombs on the town of Nnokwa, where we lived as refugees. The planes arrived just as my father walked out into the street from where he had been posted by the government of Biafra. He took off running as bombs exploded all around him. An explosion knocked him to the ground. He tried to move but couldn’t. Shrapnel filled his body. The air raid lasted only a few minutes. When the planes flew away, rescuers found my father’s bleeding body. They assumed he was dead and were surprised when he let out a low groan. Since he showed signs of life, they took him to the closest hospital, which also happened to be the place where I had just been born. They took him to the emergency room, but no one expected him to live.
