Freedom And Friendship In Amang Goes To The Village

The universal experience and search for joys through friendship finds classic expression in the animal world.

Some of the most memorable African children’s stories have always been those with moral slants, offering a lesson or more for young and adult audiences alike. These sort of stories find ready audiences and interpretations in a number of ways, readily submitting themselves to critical and artistic studies. Namse Udosen’s Amang Goes To The Village stays true to the author’s earliest commitments to moral narratives. It follows in the path of Silly Sally and Fundamental Etiquette for Young Nigerians, his earlier books, where the author emphasizes the need for inculcating morals into young minds. In Amang Goes To The Village, Namse Udosen engages with the eternal themes of freedom, friendship, and captivity.

The author engages with the theme of captivity, subjugation, and the ill-treatment of animals in remarkable ways that elicit empathy and troubling resentment towards the maltreatment of animals and pets. There is a subtext in Amang Goes To The Village. This subterranean message is at once visible upon a reader’s first encounter with the text and its enchanting illustrations. In very sensitive ways, the author calls for compassion, love, and kindness in the treatment of animals. Again, this may be interpreted as a creative memo to humanity, the writer imploring that all creatures, whether animals or humans, be handled and treated with assuring love and concern.

Amang Goes To The Village is a charmingly illustrated book, a reading and visual delight that gives satisfaction to adults and kids alike. The international cartoonist, Abdukareem Baba Aminu beautifully renders the author’s creative vision in pleasing artistic colors, lines, shadows, and images.

For instance, the fright, shock and comprehensive nightmare in Amang as he stands helpless before his captors is profound and agonizing, conveying a feeling of the character’s misfortune in the hands of his handlers. Bound on all fours, Amang cuts the cruel image of a dangerous creature that must be brutally restrained for its own good and that of those around it as it embarks on a strange and painful journey to the village. But Amang is far from the harmful creature that his captors think he is. Respite comes for Amang in the village when the cords that held him bound give way and he bolts into the surrounding forest in search of freedom and his old life of bliss on the city farm. But the goat doesn’t become truly free despite this release and moment of joy.

The author celebrates the Nigerian and African culture through the book’s lead character and cultural practices in subsistence animal husbandry practice. Part of the book’s setting is a tribute to the Kaduna-Kachia highway. It is a book that should be held aloft for its didactic commitment, local and relatable content, names, and places. Namse Udosen shows an inspiring willingness to name and promote Nigerian and African objects in his literary and artistic engagements.

Inspired by the author’s expedition to a farm and his acute observation and interaction with the natural world, Amang is an adventurous goat wedged between two choices: extensive freedom in the village and intensive captivity on a city farm. Amang desires happiness but finds himself in a disarming dilemma. He desires the old life on the city farm, yet he finds himself trapped in the village with his new friend Bororo, a brand around his neck, and a new master.

Amang Goes To The Village is worthy of critical acclaim for a number of reasons. In a subtle way, the book advocates for the wellbeing of animals often at the mercy of loveless handlers. Again, part of the appeal this book holds is that it is conceived to entertain and teach. The author has crafted a compelling and convincing story of the fate of a goat whose adventures and experiences find ready expressions in the universal human condition. Namse Udosen succeeds in provoking a reexamination of human-animal interaction within the context of the master-beast relation. He calls for new methods of engagements, emphasizing that we can be more compassionate. Herein lies the subtle plea for animals in Amang Goes To The Village. This is the subterranean message in this delightful children’s story that has captivated audiences in Nigeria and further afield.

After a critical reading, one can make the judgment that Amang Goes To The Village is the story of the fate of a goat bristling with textual and subtextual pleas, meanings, and morals. The social, cultural, and ideological forces that shaped this delightful children’s story and renders it the way it is, are rooted in the author’s cultural bias for an empathetic engagement with creatures beneath man in the natural pecking order of things. Whether in intensive or extensive systems of animal husbandry practices, the author makes a passionate plea for animals in Amang Goes To The Village, emphasizing the place of compassion.

An educational development expert, the author captures human experience and predicament through his imaginative use of the animal idiom. The universal experience and search for joys through friendship finds classic expression in the animal world. Amang’s friendship with Bororo offers him a chance to learn new things, presenting him with choice grasses for food, and knowledge of the natural world.
Namse Udosen’s book is a useful tool for early childhood education in an African society where children need useful role models for proper development. The book underscores the value of friendship, even in captivity.