Scenes from the violent twilight of oil
It succors and drowns human life. And for the last eight years, oil — and the people and places that make it — was my obsession. 
By Peter Maass The canoe that carried me into the Niger Delta had an outboard engine that conked out several times before reaching Tombia, which was then the latest target in Nigeria’s long-running oil war. Tombia was a shambles, half its homes burned or bombed beyond repair. A dozen survivors came to the creek, and their manner was not warm. They were young men, fighters, some with soiled bandages. Fingers and hands were missing; limbs were swathed in pus-caked gauze. Government forces had attacked Tombia in the brutal way they usually do, with helicopter gunships strafing anything that moved and speedboats disgorging soldiers who shot their way through town. A dozen people were reported killed, and most of the town’s population was too frightened to return — but in any event, there was not much to return to. The leader of these survivors, whose nickname was Prince, angrily pointed out the town’s destruction with the stump of what used to be his right hand. Even the Lutheran cathedral, St. Stephen’s, was destroyed. Its timid pastor, living in a shack and shivering from malaria or fear of the bitter youths who now ruled this wasteland, said it had been constructed by British missionaries in 1915. A sign by the church declared in English, “Tombia is dedicated to God. Jesus the King over the land. Holy ghost in charge.” A boy who looked 12 years old and was blind in one eye stood in front of a house that had burned to its concrete foundation. His older brother had been killed, he said, and the town was now dead and his river was dead too, tainted by oil. Because of the pollution, he could not possibly catch enough fish to nourish himself and his dead brother’s family. He was angry and hopeless; the result was listlessness. The government, the Army, Royal Dutch/Shell, the warlords, the writer who would leave in a few minutes — they would not help. His only hope was, it seemed, the Holy Ghost. …
