API AND THE PITAKWA GANG

Battles every Saturday.Cause? Fruits from the compounds of the white colonial masters. Battle ground? European Quarters. African kids, from town, wanted the fruits. African domestic servants of the whites were determined to keep them out and to assure quiet siestas for their masters. This is the exciting story about growing up in Port Harcourt, (Pitakwa), Nigeria during the dying days of colonial rule. Api and his friends, Sunday, Iwu and Kelechi, have a clear cut programme of how to live their lives, which includes swimming, fishing, hunting, masquerading, playing soccer and having a whole lot of other fun. But their parents, (expectedly and, specifically, their mothers) and society had their own programme for the kids and this included schooling and doing household chores. This “culture clash” was the gang’s biggest problem. How the boys solve this problem, as they move in and out of hair-raising adventures, is the stuff of this fast paced novel, the first from Desmond E. Ohaegbulem.