When did the issue of climate change get personal for you?

Either towards the end of my fresher years or my early years as a sophomore at the University of Nigeria. It’s more likely to be the former. Before then, the issue of climate change wasn’t a real thing to me. It was just an abstract secondary school science class topic. “Burning things emit certain gases; these gases go up to gnaw away the ozone layer; the ozone layer depletes and the sun releases some of its more violent rays the ozone layer had been shielding us from; these rays stump our skins and then there is cancer — skin cancer.” It was taught us as evolution was taught us in Biology. Just a science thing, parroted by nerdy science people who want to play God. If the teachers ever believed that climate change is a real thing, they never showed it. They taught us as if it was just something to be taught only because it is something in the curriculum.

Because of that, climate change wasn’t a real issue not to talk more of being a personal one, till I got into the University.

Funnily and ironically enough, even as an Engineering student, it wasn’t inside the lecture halls that I learnt to take the issue of climate change seriously. No. It was outside of the locked Faculty lecture theatre — locked because it was a Saturday and lectures are rarely fixed on Saturdays — that the issue took a real face. I mean, for me.

It happened that a fellow undergraduate student, Kelo Uchendu, who had founded an NGO called Gray2Green had invited volunteers passionate about climate change issues to join members of the NGO to plant trees around the campus. I was one such volunteer. To be sincere, I wasn’t passionate about the issue then, so I didn’t go there because I felt it was a needful thing to do. I went there filled with curiosity. I wanted to know about this climate change — abstract to me but real to people like Kelo who took the pains of founding an NGO because of it. Such a curiosity could exist because it was a lecture-free day and I didn’t have anything to keep my restless spirit busy.

To be more sincere — you know sincerity comes in levels, so, this is the second spoon of my sincerity; growing up, the second spoon is always the apex to what we need to get the syrup strong enough to fight — it wasn’t just the curiosity that pushed me. Materialism provided the more effective push. The call had included that the first twenty volunteers were to receive a free polo from the NGO. I looked at my wardrobe and saw that I needed a polo that doesn’t have an “Adieu Mama” or “Adieu Papa” label on it. Sure, this one too will bear a label but isn’t it better

to have a label that has to do with that science stuff, climate change, than to have only those ones that bear pictures of dead people on their front and farewell messages to the dead on their back? That, the acquisition of a new shirt, at no cost, added to my curiousity, pushed me to attend the event — and thirty minutes before the time. I later found out that there was no need for my being an early bird. We weren’t up to twenty.

Before we took off, Kelo delivered an engaging lecture on climate change, especially the need for the tree-planting exercise we were to engage in. That lecture, short as it was, made climate change real to me. Wanting to verify his claims in that lecture made me see climate change as a serious human problem.

Statistics is real to me. It doesn’t look human though, at least to me. But because of my field of study, I live with it. I understand it. Wanting to verify Kelo’s claims in that short lecture led me to reading lots of scholarly papers on climate change. Trust those papers — they sure do contain more charts and figures than texts. But one of the papers I had gotten from Google Scholar made the issue not only real but human to me. The paper didn’t pay attention to statistics. The paper was on climate fiction.

The paper made me discover that there is a place for Climate issues in the literary world and the literary is always the most appealing to me. I started to devour short stories and poems and creative nonfiction pieces having Climate Change and the Environment as its theme. I still read the ‘hard’ papers though. Some of these stories were so striking they still live with me — like Mbuze by Kasimma which treated flooding and erosions and this poem — I have forgotten the title and the author’s name but I still remember it was shortlisted for a climate-themed competition — that had the ocean, an ocean, as its persona, lamenting on its ill treatment by humans.

That poem moved me to my writing desk. There, I produced Ocean which I entered and was longlisted for the Africa@2050 Cli-Fi Contest and was later published by Brittle Paper.

These events made the issue of Climate Change personal to me. Personal because I now know that it is a case of human survival. The earth is dying and when it dies, we all die with it. The Igbo will say that it is only a tree that hears about its planned murder and still stands, rooted to the ground. I am not a tree.

Nostalgia has a strong presence in your story. Could this sense of nostalgia be of loss or of hope?

It’s a bemoaning of things lost and a hope for regain and recovery. You see, while at Nsukka, never do two weeks pass without me spending a night or two at Greenhouse. Few of the friends I made there still live there. So, there’s also a direct human angle to it. The environment: the hills that has become Jerusalem to many Christian folks, the green grasses which I once believed gave it its name, the appetizing farms that know Agric students more than anybody else, I miss them all. I want to continue to see them, maybe because I grew up in a rural area and that somehow reminds me of home. Surely because I prefer it to the littered, noisy environment of Behind Flat where I now stay. Behind Flat has got a larger human population and a mini market and that means more noise. The flat from which the area got its nickname is in ruins and its compound turned into a garbage dump. The wastes are not only irresponsibly disposed inside the flat though; behind it also is in communion with it on the altar of wastes.

So, yes, there is a sense of loss there. Especially knowing that, due to issues of proximity to Campus, Behind Flat has become a necessary evil. But there is hope also. It seems more of the Behind Flat residents are becoming more environmentally sane. We are now having people dump their wastes at the designated areas, and properly so. Maybe, through concerted efforts, we can make the place green and I am contributing to that in my own very small, largely insignificant ways.

What inspired your story for the Green We Left Behind Nonfiction Anthology?

It’s funny how we get inspirations. Like how a poet’s choice of persona can inspire another to write a story, or how the theme of a contest can do the same. My story for the anthology was inspired exactly by the contest theme. You see, I had not only left behind a place of natural greenness. I have also left behind a place that bears the nickname, Greenhouse. That theme was both metaphorical and literal to me. So I knew I wanted to write about climate change, of course, as prompted by the contest. I also wanted to write about loss: the loss of greenness, the loss relocation brings, and of longings.

As an artist, how are you able to merge beauty in language with such a dire theme on climate change?

Beauty is not something I normally think about while drafting a story. I simply tell the story as it comes. The second and subsequent drafts take care of the issue of aesthetics. How was I able to

achieve that? I do not know. I think that in the conscious attempt to tone up the aesthetics of a written work of art, the subconscious assimilation of other beautiful letters guides the artist in ways he cannot explain. Like I said earlier, I have read really beautiful, brilliant literary pieces on Climate Change, most of them being on the longlist or shortlist of one competition or another. Those rub off on me so that while I am not making any attempt, at least consciously, to imitate any, I end up creating something of similar quality with them. I think it’s the highly acclaimed birth of a writer from a reader.

Apart from that, I will like to think that it is in human nature to understand tragedy through comedy, stress through relaxation, ugliness through beauty. Nigeria today, as depressing as she is, teems with many wonderful, creative, funny comedians. Nigerians are laughing. This is “the land of the happiest people on earth.” This is the “poverty capital of the world.” That we merge beauty with such dire occurrences like the issue of climate change is because we have to. It’s a coping mechanism. It tightens the nut thinking about depressing, dire issues like climate change, loosens in our brains. Like Fela said, “why I dey laugh? Because man no fit cry.” The artist must always seek art. Art is beauty.

As you release your story to the world, what is your wish or hope for the story?

I wish it does for its readers what the other stories and poems with the theme of climate change that I had read did for me. I wish it awakens the interest of those who still think of climate change as a conspiracy theory and makes them try to find out, by studying real research data on climate change, the true nature of things. I hope it sustains the interest of those who are already interested in helping our planet heal. I hope the readers enjoy it.

Apart from writing, how else do you intend to contribute towards the curbing of global warming?

Just before this current ASUU strike, Kingsley Obasi, a graduate of the University of Nigeria had invited me to take up a crucial post in his newly founded NGO, Green Stealth Network. The Green Stealth Network is in a kind of partnership with Gray2Green. While Gray2Green focuses mainly on raising people’s awareness on the issue of Climate Change, the Green Stealth Network focuses “on climate change and sustainability in food systems.” They take farming seriously, creating their own farms and educating other farmers on how to engage in farming practices that doesn’t affect, negatively, the environment. So,

he had wanted me to take care of the issues that has to do with writing. You know, publicity, messages, grant applications and stuff like that. We couldn’t conclude before the strike which took me out of Nsukka.

But that’s still writing right? Apart from writing, I wish to get committed to the Green Stealth Network and become more active in the Gray2Green Movements. These two are the only climate activist groups I know that exist on the campus. Beyond that, wherever I find myself, I take it as my duty to continue to educate the people around me, and I believe in making a difference in whatever small way I can, even if it’s just not dropping products wrappings wherever I unwrap them. That’s a common sense thing to do, right? Unfortunately, not here.

Biography

Ugochukwu Anadị is a student of the University of Nigeria. His writings which explore themes of human sexuality and sexual orientation, climate change and traditional Igbo beliefs, majorly, have been published in Brittle Paper, ANA Review, Brilliant Flash Fiction, Afrocritik, Literary Yard, Nantygreens magazine, Kalahari Review, Arts Lounge, amongst others. They have also appeared in print anthologies. His essay on the abuse of LGBTQ people in Nigeria got him the Nelson Mandela Peace Prize as awarded by the International Human Rights Arts Festival. His fiction had been longlisted for the Africa@2050 Climate Fiction Prize. And his poem, How Do I Carve My Ikéngà, was named as a 2021 best by Brittle Paper Submissions Editor. He believes that through texts, one can come to a better understanding of the Self and the Universe.