Nigeria: Last News

‘Blessings’
By Chukwuebuka Ibeh
c.2024, Doubleday
$28/288 pages

Sometimes you just need to step back a minute.

You need time to regroup, to think things through, and a scenery change is the place to do it. Get past your current position, and situations can become clearer somehow. Thoughts can be reorganized. Problems pivot. As in the new novel “Blessings” by Chukwuebuka Ibeh, you’ll have a different perspective.

Obiefuna didn’t say much on the road to the seminary.

What was there to say? His father had caught him in a too-cozy situation with a young man who’d been taken in as an apprentice and for that, Obiefuna was being sent away. Away from his mother, his younger brother, Ekene, and from the young man that 15-year-old Obiefuna was in love with.

Life in seminary was bad – Obiefuna was always on alert for Seniors, who were said to be abusive because abuse was allowed, even encouraged – but things weren’t as bad as he thought they might be. He made friends and good grades but he missed his mother. Did she suspect he was gay? Obiefuna wanted to tell her, but he hid who he was.

Mostly, he kept to himself until he caught the eye of Senior Papilo, who was said to be the cruelest of the cruel. Amazingly, though, Senior Papilo became Obiefuna’s protector, letting Obiefuna stay in his bed, paying for Obi’s first experience with a woman, making sure Obiefuna had better food. Maybe Obiefuna loved Senior Papilo but Senior had other boys, which made Obi work twice as hard to be his favorite. Still, he hid.

And then Senior Papilo passed his final exams and moved on.

So, eventually, did Obiefuna. Sure, there were other boys – one who almost got him expelled, a chaplain who begged forgiveness, and there was even a girl once – but Obi grew up and fully embraced his truth: All he wanted was to be accepted for himself, to be loved.

As Nigeria moved toward making same-sex marriage illegal, though, neither one looked likely.

So here’s the puzzle: the story inside “Blessings” is