Memories Of A Young Man As A Teacher (34)

In case you missed the previous episode. Read here

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I got two queries on my desk the day after the Christmas Party. The first one was aiding and abetting a demonic dance move. The second one was for holding jollof rice hostage (I still have this one on my desk as I write this and it never ceased to crack my ribs into many pieces).

Everyone was sympathetic to me for query number one because there was no how, they believed, I could tell how bad the dance would be executed/received – a dance whose idea I didn’t conceive, a dance which rehearsals I didn’t coach.

But for holding jollof rice hostage, everyone was asking for my head. Even Mrs. Anozie wasn’t by my side. I would grapple with this alone.

So I sat at my desk, weighing my options. I did what I did for my class, boys and girls I loved and cared for, all of whom paid the 1000 naira for the party, the only class with 100% payment. The least you could do was give them jollof rice whether or not they brought cooler or not.

I had the mind to just stand up and leave and never return.

I was a hero and heroes don’t quit. If I quit, what would be my excuse, that I left because of jollof rice? Not for the benefit of my belly, I can quickly add but what good would it do? Even Bismarck will not understand.

If I had headbutted MC Somebody who was actually a Nobody and broken his insipid nose, or if I had floored him on the dust pressing his potbelly on the sand and filling his lungs with dust, or if I had removed his leg and beat him on the head with his shinbone, then I leave afterward, it would be worth it. Bismarck would have been proud of me.

Something told me to take this battle to the kids and like Mark Anthony stir them to revolt. But I dismissed that immediately. I wouldn’t ask kids to fight for me. I wouldn’t bring bazookas to a knife fight.

An actor leaves the stage, they say, when the ovation is loudest. Not when the ovation is about jollof – who got and who didn’t, who brought cooler and who didn’t. I was the actor, better than the proverbial actor even. I was a legend. And a legend is not a food nutritionist.

I am a man of letters. I would never run at the sight of words. That would be my Literature degree in the mud. Moreso, I was no rebellious staffer. I would lose my right to demand obedience if I made nonsense of any form of authority. The kids may never know but I would know and it would diminish me.

I decided to answer the queries. For the girls dancing a “demonic dance” that “embarrassed” the school (although I can count and exhaust all the fingers in my hands and all the toes in my feet, parents and guests who were genuinely entertained and were sorry that it ended, shut down by an outraged proprietress who screamed her gullet out at the DJ), I took responsibility.

I am an artist, a poet, and a man of aesthetics. I was wrong in giving art a chance, I was wrong in allowing the musical expression of the next generation to manifest.

For the jollof query, I wrote the following:

Dear sir,

Some teachers are born great, some teachers attain greatness in the classroom, and some give a leg, an arm, and a tooth for greatness. Today, I am thrust with an unwinnable task. I have to dig the tooth, the arm, and the leg. This is not preposterous, this is not ludicrous, this is not horrid, but this is not an over joyous act: It is antithetical to the spirit of candor, of duty, of sacrifice.

Not the leader of the Jewish Exodus, not the Nazarene, not the beloved, not the apostle from Tarsus, not Cranmer, nor any of the beatified of Christendom, nor of Classical persuasion have been put on a lever where they have to expound with words an art that which was inscribed in blood while still dripping with crimson oil.

Not since the Wollof founded Jollof has one man been put on Abacha’s highway, chained in the manacles of Fela for standing up for kids in a messy world made so by adults. Authority belies consequence and there is justice for only those who seek and seek and seek, but not for those who dig and dig and dig. For an arm given is taken, a tooth buried is gone, and a leg forwent is only to be spoken in past verbs.

Nothing can be unburied, nothing can be ungiven, nothing can forth come that forwent. Martin Luther Jr shall not be shamed, not Lincoln, not Sartre, not Gandhi. But today, there is a noose for every one of them from Socrates to Saro Wiwa, for better for gore, nay, for gore, gorer – for the gored.

The chopping board gives a worthy fight. It is not a win-win combat.  

Accept my apologia.

Yours sincerely,

M.K.O, B.A (Hons), Litt., Eng., Thap, etc.

To be continued…

So My Big Brother Wrote a Book

Writing a book is a noble act, up there with paying your debts in Nigeria (Yes, an average Nigerian hates paying their debt; when they do, usually it is because they want to borrow another day.) Writers are a bunch of smart people and they own a lot of debts, so whenever they write a book and publish it, they have paid one of their debts. And they keep paying till they die. This is the burden of being a writer.

Ogundare Tope is a fine writer and he has paid his debt. He wrote The Book of Pain. It is a book of poems which makes it a special one. Poetry is a difficult genre of art. So difficult yet so easily seen as simple, that is why there are so many bad poets around and why the internet is littered by very poor attempts at poetry.

Topazo is one of the few good poets in Nigeria. He is among the school of poets who understands that poetry is about meaning, making meaning of situations, of emotions, of life. Words that make beautiful appearances on paper, words that mean something. Topazo is not a poet for poetry sake. He doesn’t delight in weaving webs of enigmas for the readers. He picks mostly simple words and creates giant imprints on paper.

This poetry collection accomplished many things. There are 38 poems in all. Speaking and connecting many fields.

This collection speaks of love. The poem “Smitten” dwells on lethal love, the kind that drives a lover to put their head in a cooking pot.

“She danced on nimble feet,

Pranced and jabbed

You parried

Twisted

Pounced”

Then “You loved her/It killed you.”

There is also the “City of love”, but Topazo will not just talk about love. No, the low key sadist-poet had to talk about “Rivers overflow from broken heart springs” and “Searing pains” and “Demons with claws unleash the stench of death”.

The poem “Impedance” is one poem where the poet showed a glimpsed of his medical cloth. “Soon, there will be no rise

Fibrosis of the Corpora Cavernosa

Loss of girth –

Peyronie.”

The writer also spoke of dead affection and zero “Intimacy” in the face of love, façade of love to say. This is life, our life, of pretenses, of appearances, of patching, what Igbos refer to as covering the world with a George wrapper.

“Sleeping on the same bed

Bodies touching

Hearts separated by a wall –

Traveling in different directions.”

The Book of Pain is a collection with a strong philosophical hip. The poem which most connects to me in this regard is “Toilet musings”.  It reminds me of my service years, me and my guy in the middle of the Osun, relieving our bowels and swapping gist about the lodge, who is crushing on who, who is crushing the other, what the crazy LGI wants, what the tricky future hold.

“Jungle Morning poo comes/In pairs like eyes,” the poet muses. “We make haste to/Dump waste Rush into the /Waiting arms of the day…” He paints how life can be like using the toilet, never in a hurry, except for an emergency—“Diarrhea”. This poem in explaining the inexplicable nature of life produces my best quote in the book: “Life works in selective inhibition.”

The crucial 2019 election is around the corner and the poet didn’t leave us hanging. In “Hopes of a thousand nights” he talks about

“The earth has embraced darkness

Cold now rules with the rod

Of despair”

If this is not APC then it is APC for me.

Tope went on to declare:

“Nightmare has returned from the abyss

Look, how fast the darken Lord has overthrown the sky!”

If this one is not Lai Mohammed, let goat eat palm fronds from my thigh.

The poem equally weighs a big wand of emotion as amply seen in the poem “Catharsis” where the poet-persona aches for an emotional release: “I want to scream,/To hit something,/Anything but sit calmly/And smile” and pretend that everything is going well while “A storm roils within” while “Fierce winds are raging” while “I see red”.

In the title poem, Topazo opens with a powerful question: “Can you tell the colour of pain?” I have never thought of pain as a matter capable of such attribute. I have always seen pain as a wilderness of agony and regrets and self-pity. but the poet expands on these, takes the reader into many features of pain but not in a way that forces it down the throat; he presents them in a series of rhetorical questions, calling out pains without calling it out, describing it while confessing that “The pain you feel is indescribable,/Words do not do it justice, and fall short”.

I have seen pain but thankfully the pain my friend describes is one I have never suffered. That is the merit of literature, it takes you to a world you have only imagined which you might never experience personally and makes it your shared experience.

“It fills your heart and squeezes your chest,” the poet says of pain, “Till breathing becomes a chore”. This one is strange to me but it exists, thousands if not millions are passing through it as I type this. People I will never get to know but whose woes I have now been made aware of. By Ogundare. By the power of words.

It is disservice to this book to give each poem a singular meaning. While most of the poems have diverse meanings, “Emerald” speaks to me of the diversity more than most of them. In one breath the writer talks about singing a song “In words of worlds/Where magic lives:/The magic of love”, on the other breath, he muses about Fate:

“Destinies are set in stones,

Hidden in the sky

Among the stars;

When the stars align

Destinies are merged as

Designed by Fate”.

You know how we all glorify handwork, dedication, persistence and all those one-liners they throw at you in seminars, well, the truth is that these things are man’s attempt to make sense of success. But these amount to the single story of success. You start a pig farm; your friend starts a pig farm. You guys buy impigs. Your impig gives birth to four; your friend’s impig gives birth to twelve. No amount of hardwork and dedication will make a pig carrying four piglets turn to a pig carrying twelve.

You go to an interview with your third class, the HR falls in love with your carriage and you get the call. You

Christians call this favour and grace.

You study literature, like I did, you don’t know how to do poetry, Topazo who studied medicine kills poetry. This one is not Fate. This one is mastery, talent, some study. In a way, Fate. Because if when he was a boy somebody came and hit him on the head with a bottle and he goes to the hospital and they tell him to avoid literature, he wouldn’t have done this. So for nobody hitting him with a bottle on the head, as a boy, Topazo’s stars aligned and we are the winner.

I am beginning to ramble.

All I am saying, in essence, is that this is a collection to be read and enjoyed and learn from, that would echo the reality, and the scam and the ache called life. If you are a beginner, this is a book of poetry to inspire your art.

In most reviews, you have to say what you do not like about the book. I don’t like that I am getting this book for free. As a boy, I remember my mother’s women association come to our place for a meeting and sing “let good thing eat my money” when someone presents them with a gift. Like King David, they understand that items that cost you money have a special place in your value-scale.

I got this book because Topazo is my brother. Yes, all wealthy people are related. We writers too are. Me and Topazo drank from the same breast of Muse. Don’t be like me, go to Okadabooks and buy this book. Read it, keep it, and bring it out from time to time and read it some more.