My lover swoons over Professor Wole Soyinka's poem, Telephone Conversation. Whenever she is upset, I find that poem and read it to her. GBAM! Like magic, she is healed and the dog house is not my portion.
I suspect that my lover would die in the arms of Wole Soyinka. One reason I can't stand the man. Oga Kongi is not coming to my house for dinner... I don't even know why my lover likes the poem o, it is not exactly a Pulitzer Prize winning poem... No accounting for good taste. Life is mysterious like that.
Yup, Telephone Conversation is one of the most brilliant poems I have ever read, a prophetic riff on ethnic/racial cleansing in the 60's UK. I go back to it often - because it reminds me of my own painful experience with ethnic cleansing, not in the West, but in Nigeria.
I remember this one day during our Youth Corps stint in the North of Nigeria. 1979. Kaduna State. Kagoro, near the railroad hub, Kafanchan. We had just been paid our corper allowance - N180 a month for university graduates. My two room-mates, both from Yorubaland and I decided we would go to Kafanchan for some iyan and maybe a cold beer.
We entered this lean-to and my room-mates greeted the owner in Yoruba. She eyed me, and asked where I was from. She referred to me as "omo kobokobo!" a pejorative for the Igbo. I am not Igbo, I am a technical Yoruba. I was born in Yorubaland and christened Babatunde. (Heh!) My room-mates, knowing I could understand Yoruba piped up, "Omo Bendel ni won!" Unfazed, she piped up, in Yoruba, "They are all the same!"
To this day, whenever my fingers massage too-smooth pounded yam, I remember that day, and wonder, what would have happened to me, if certain choices had had to be made. I am embarrassed to say this; I have suffered my share of racial indignities in the US, but I have survived to whine about them. I doubt that I could say the same about the land that houses my unbilical cord. It is what it is... America is a great country, warts and all.
Oya, read the poem here and tell me, woman wrapper, do you agree with my lover? I salute you, Kongi. Always...
- Ikhide
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