Despite the inhuman conditions in which Nigerians now live daily, they have largely remained calm and unable to raise their voices against the conundrum threatening their existence. Paradoxically, people who have been driven to the brim of patience have chosen to remain resolute in their silence, they prefer to mourn each day away hoping a miracle might happen to them.
We laughed. We joked. We lamented. We remembered books and plots and characters. We talked about the creativity that is needed to write a voice driven novel. We talked about A Brief History of Seven Killings, and the distinct voices of the characters. And when we reached Kabuga junction, we hugged and parted. I crossed the road, and took the shortcut through Kofar Kabuga, the old Kofar Kabuga, with its few heaps of sand that survived the wear and tear of time, and a goat, resting on its ancient back.
After ages of avoiding the shore, I went back again. This time however, I vowed not to wait. I got a ship. The sailor had wanted me on it all along, but when the time to sail came, I left the shore. The ship was good, but I wanted better. What is wrong with waiting for a little while more when you have been waiting all your life?
You realized later that life was giving you a poetry lesson. Teaching you that just because the first line came out right didn't mean the rest of the poem would. Sometimes the metaphors would refuse to come through. The imagery, no matter how hard you tried to paint it, would just not appear right. You would look everywhere for the perfect punchline to end the poem, but you would not find one. Life was telling you that just because you thought you were good with words did not mean that they would always come to you whenever you needed them. And sometimes, you just couldn’t write a poem, just like you could not write your life into poetry.
There is a rawness and a tangibility to this struggle, asserting itself like a shawl over the spirit and engendering a gradual fading away of the substantial, particular (in)carnation we occupy. Essentially, we become apologists in an oppression we neither deserve nor comprehend but in which we are too lost to realize the extent of our performance in the disservice.
I shout your name into the dark night A forest of shadows And there is no hyena around to respond Where are you!?
I shout your name into the dark night A forest of shadows And there is no hyena around to respond Where are you!?
