Abety Gwandi

Traded for a Trifle Abety Gwandi

Ayo is a demobilised WW2 soldier of the Royal West African Frontier Force (RWAFF) who returns home to a broken family. He is believed to have died at war; by tradition, he must be cleansed before he can fit into mainstream society again. His life is bedevilled by a succession of misfortunes and turns into a living nightmare, not made any easier by his suffering from trauma. Finding life among his people unbearable, he goes on self-exile to another village in the hope of a new start. Things do not go as he had expected when he meets Nyarong - a ruthless medicine-man with an attractive daughter, and Moka - an ambitious school head teacher. These men exert a profound influence on their society, and are at the centre of a sub-plot with tragic overtones. Many years on, new circumstances push Ayo to go on the offensive and, with support from his war veteran comrades, he battles in and out of court to reassert himself. Set in pre-independence West Africa, Traded for a Trifle is the story of an ex-serviceman of the RWAFF for whom the end of WW2 is only the beginning of the battles he would fight to survive an uneasy peace. It is an overdue tribute to hundreds of thousands of 'forgotten' African soldiers of the British Empire who fought bravely in North Africa and the inhospitable jungles of Burma, contributing to the success of the Allies in WW2.