Say You're One of Them

Say You're One of Them (2008) is a short story collection by Nigerian author Uwem Akpan. Its five stories—set in five different African countries—recount the terrifying and brutal experiences of African children in the face of extreme poverty, religious conflict, and genocide. Hailed by critics as an “almost unreadable must-read” (Kirkus Reviews), the collection won the 2009 Commonwealth Writers’ Prize and was a 2009 Oprah’s Book Club selection.

The collection’s opening story, “An Ex-Mas Feast” is told from the point of view of Jigana, an eight-year-old boy whose family lives in desperate poverty in a Kenyan slum. Jigana’s 12-year-old sister, Maisha, works as a prostitute, providing the family with its only source of income. Today she has earned nothing, and Jigana is desperately hungry. His mother tells him to sniff glue to keep the hunger at bay. When Maisha finds an opportunity for work, her mother offers a prayer to God “for blessing Maisha with white clients at Ex-mas.” With her limited control over the purse strings, Maisha is the most fortunate member of the family, and Jigana’s 10-year-old sister is itching to follow in her footsteps.

Jigana’s father steals presents from another poor family (these gifts include a carefully-wrapped container of insecticide) and exchanges them for a “feast”: some zebra intestines and three cups of rice. As the family enjoys this moment of relative prosperity, Jigana learns that Maisha has come to resent her parents’ spending her income: she is contemplating making her escape.



The second story in the collection is the novella-length “Fattening for Gabon,” which begins: “Selling your child or nephew could be more difficult than selling other kids.” This is the challenge that faces Fofo Kpee, who delights his nephew and niece by roaring up to their squalid home on a flashy motorbike. Kotchikpa and Yewa are long-separated from their parents—who have AIDS—and Uncle Fofo assures them that if they sail to Gabon (from their home in Benin), they too will enjoy luxuries such as motorbikes. To tempt them further, he loads them onto the back of the bike (together with some yams, various fruits, a rooster and several rolls of toilet paper) and takes them for a ride: “My chest swelled with pride,” Kotchikpa remembers, “and my eyes welled up with tears, which the wind swept onto my earlobes.”

The children agree to go to Gabon, and soon they are introduced to their new “Mama” and “Papa,” who sweep in bearing a sumptuous feast—food in a quantity Kotchikpa has never seen before; never even imagined. Mama and Papa keep bringing food, and Kotchikpa and Yewa are so grateful that they manage to overlook their misgivings about the young boy and girl who accompany their benefactors: thin, ill, greedy, and servile.

Slowly it dawns on Kotchikpa and his sister that they are being fattened for a slave auction. Fofo has sold them: the motorbike was his payment. Treacherous Fofo even collects a reward from the children’s parents for his dutifulness as a guardian: “Joy full my belly today because my broder and wife done rewarded me, say I do deir children well well.”



“My Parents’ Bedroom” takes place during the Rwandan genocide. The narrator is a little girl when hideous violence breaks out all around her. Her Tutsi mother instructs her to “Say you’re one of them” before hiding her in the bedroom. From her hiding place, she has no choice but to watch as men enter the house and force her Hutu father to kill her mother with a machete.

Another novella-length story, “Luxurious Hearses,” takes place during another mass conflict, the outbreak of religious violence that followed the death of Nigeria’s President Abacha. Teenage Jubril—baptized as a Catholic but raised a Muslim—has narrowly escaped death at the hands of Christian boys in his community, his former playmates. Now he is on a bus headed for the border with Niger, where he will be safe. However, his fellow passengers are all Christians, so to arrive safely at his destination he must disguise his faith.

It is hard enough for Jubril (or “Gabriel,” as he calls himself amongst Christians) to disguise his distaste for secular television and its images of “hell-destined women.” It is harder still for him to hide the stump at his right wrist, where his hand has been amputated in accordance with Sharia law, for the theft of a goat. Jubril accepts the punishment as just, but if any of his fellow passengers notice the stump, it will be a death sentence for the teenager.



When the bus stalls, Jubril and the other passengers get to know one another better. They discuss politics, oil money, and tribalism, growing to recognize that they each have more in common than sets them apart. Jubril feels “connected to his newfound universe of diverse and unknown pilgrims, the faceless Christians. The complexity of their survival pierced his soul with a stunning insight: every life counted in Allah’s plan.”

However, when Jubril’s true religious identity is discovered, the passengers’ fellow feeling doesn’t save him.

The collection’s final story, “What Language is That?” also explores the theme of religious tensions. Two young Ethiopian girls, one Christian and the other Muslim, are friends when religious conflict breaks out in their community. At first, baffled by the divisions, the girls are ultimately forced to break their friendship.