African Tales of a Green Planet

"The History of modern West Africa is largely the history of five centuries of trade with European nations commerce was the fundamental relationship that bound Africa to Europe."

—Kenneth Onwuka Dike

African Tales of a Green Planet is a fictional work set in the Niger Delta area of West Africa roughly between 1730–1850, among the Igbo speaking peoples of the Niger Delta. The Niger Delta area of Nigeria is an area blessed in economic terms and has played a pivotal role in the economic history of Africa as a whole. It is an area, which in the first four hundred years of trade with Europe produced, first gold, then slaves during the period of the slave trade, and palm oil after the prohibition of the slave trade, and finally crude oil in modern times.

This tale explores one man’s attempt (Nwosisi) to preserve the African way of life in the Sacred Forest away from all foreign intrusion. He falls deeply in love with a very beautiful girl (Ugonma) and that changes not only the course of his life but that of his environs as well, a metaphor for Africa. This tale is recounted by an old Iroko tree five hundreds of years old. In true oral tradition it captures a story of love, trade and politics, power struggles, foreign intruders, mysticism, and the daunting task of one man’s attempt to preserve ‘a way of life’ in danger of extinction. This attempt seemed doomed from the onset; just as the notion of preserving a green planet is doomed in the context of so-called modern civilization.