55 pages • 1 hour read
Under the Udala Trees
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BetaPart 3, Chapters 20-23
Part 3
Chapter 20 Summary
The narrative moves forward to Ijeoma working in her mother’s store and then back to her time living with the grammar school teacher. Just a “pail of dirty laundry” (95) can take her on a journey of reminiscence.
Ijeoma remembers hiding from bombers in bunkers. 13-year-old Ijeoma is sent to fetch kerosene, and sees corpses on the way. When a living boy emerges from the pile of dead bodies, the police inspecting the corpses scare him off.
When she reaches Okeke’s shop, Ijeoma discovers he’s out of kerosene. She remembers she still owes him money from a previous visit and thinks about Okeke’s family, including a son who had joined the army, who reminds her of the boy she just saw. Her thoughts hop “from one box to the next” (99) and land on a folktale.
The folktale of Ogbuogu is about two warring villages: one has warriors and weapons, while the other has Ogbuogu, a magical boy. Once they discover the secret of Ogbuogu’s call to battle, the opposing villagers call him out in a trick and kill him. But then Ogbuogu’s fellow villagers prop up his corpse to ride into battle, and their opposition flees in fear, thinking he is a spirit.
In Okeke’s shop, Ijeoma’s stomach growls, and he gives her some of his personal kerosene and bread for free. On her way home, she stops under an udala tree and finds Amina. Ijeoma takes her back to the teacher’s house.
The teacher and his wife reprimand Ijeoma for being late and order her to cook some yams before noticing Amina. They allow the girls to cook together. After dinner and cleaning, the girls bathe together and share Ijeoma’s mattress in her hovel.
Chapter 21 Summary
Amina’s continued presence upsets the teacher and his wife because she is Hausa and they are Igbo. The teacher repeatedly asks her if she has someplace else she can go, and Amina responds that she has no living family. Because she can pass for Igbo, they eventually agree to keep Amina as a second housegirl.
Chapter 22 Summary
One evening, while Ijeoma braids Amina’s hair, Amina asks about school. The teacher, “Oga,” the Igbo word for boss, agrees to educate them both. Before the war, Amina learned to read Arabic and English, and her marriage was being arranged. She hasn’t attended school for a very long time.
When Ijeoma says she’s happy that things turned out so she met Amina, Amina gets upset over the deaths of her family members. She describes coming back from an errand to find her home being burned down, and Ijeoma apologizes.
Chapter 23 Summary
In early 1970, Ijeoma and Amina hear on the radio that the war has ended. Biafra leader Ojukwu has surrendered, abandoning the cause of Igbo independence. Ijeoma imagines flying away like Ojukwu, which confuses Amina.
A few days later, Gowon announces the official dissolution of the Biafra. The teacher and his wife yell at the radio as the girls listen from the kitchen. Soldiers parade by that evening, shouting “One Nigeria” (116).
Chapters 20-23 Analysis
Though most of Part 3 of the novel occurs chronologically before Part 2, the beginning of Part 3 takes place much later than the events of Part 2. Okparanta’s play with time emphasizes that memories run asynchronously to external chronological flow.
Another kind of time, or timelessness, is found in folklore. Ijeoma again embeds a “once upon a time” (100) story in her narrative, though unlike the story of the “girl” who turned out to be Ijeoma herself, the story of Ogbuogu reflects the very specific political event of the Nigerian Civil War. The battle of neighboring towns reflects the fact that Ijeoma and Amina are from different ethnic groups. Amina is Hausa Muslim—she reads Arabic, references Persian books such as Aladdin and Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves (112), and is expecting an arranged marriage. All of this runs counter to Ijeoma’s Igbo Christian practices.
Ijeoma and Amina’s budding young romance carries the language of love poetry. Ijeoma notes how “fireflies glowed green, like luminous droplets of grass” (106) when they bathe together in the moonlight for the first time.
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