An Unpublished Memoir Pt. 3

The need to travel was an urgent desire I couldn’t stem down. Like a fire burning in my gut I felt would consume me had I not set my mind toward it. My date of travel was set on June 12. My birthday was a few days away and I was determined to  spend it in a foreign land.

Was I afraid to be doing this? Very much I was. I was so afraid some nights as the inevitable day approached, I thought I felt my blood boiling underneath my skin. It was a big risk I was taking: quitting my job and setting sail for a world I’ve never been to before, all to see about chasing after a dream of becoming a published writer. Some might argue (and really, a lot of my friends already did before I took this decision), against my going all the way to the U.S., to see about getting my book published. The irony is that I know few people around me who indulge in the habit of reading anymore. Creativity is something that’s lacking in my society, and even then it’s hard getting normal folks to understand the magic behind stringing a pair of words together to create a thought process.

The day arrived, and I boarded a flight from Port Harcourt to Lagos, and spent several hours in a lengthy queue before getting my passport stamped at the Lagos Muirtala Mohammed Int. airport. Plenty of travelers there, though I doubt any of them had the same journey mentality as I had. The hour arrived and we all filed into the plane an hour before midnight. I must have held my breath when the plane took off into the air, and plenty of fellow Nigerians occupying the Economy class section of the Arik flight burst in high spirits of hand-clappings and praising as the plane’s wheels left the earth and took us into the sky. I looked out my window and the city’s disappearing lights, wondering if I would see everything again in the same way as I was then leaving.

I remained in my seat soaking up everything in disbelief. I had a novel in my hand, but I was too caught up in the moment to think of opening a page. Moments like this, you feel your life flash before your eyes: everything you’ve been through before and how it all possibly somehow led to this moment, to this action happening. You weight every choice you’ve made against choices you didn’t take, and you keep beating yourself over the head about it: Am I doing the right thing or not?

That question has never left my head since I arrived in the U.S., and even after I left. Even as I sit down to write this, I still don’t think I’ve arrived at the answer. I can only take a cue from that classic movie The Sound of Music:

“Somewhere in my youth or childhood,

I must have done something good.”

 

 

An Unpublished Memoir – Pt. 1

This is the marking of a memoir I’m yet to begin work on. It details my one year travel experience in the States starting from the summer of 2012 to the summer of 2013. My reason behind the travel was simple: I had written a full-length novel several years ago that I wanted to see it become published. Of course, such is never an easy to do feat, and besides, the manuscript had being sitting neglected in a folder in my laptop. If it were a desk drawer, it probably would have gathered as much dust than it ought to. Needless to say, I wasn’t successful in my quest, not as a result of not trying, but rather actions that were far beyond my control. But another thing I’d like to point out is this: One doesn’t attain success in a day. I make no excuses for what happened, even though a lot of what happened to me were on the wrong side, I still am grateful I made the journey, and somehow I know the journey is far from over.

The novel in question is titled THE RABBIT’S MAN. It’s an espionage thriller that is more in the style of Graham Green and John LeCarre, two of my favorite English authors, and it is based on the militant terrorism that still plagues the southern part of my country, Nigeria, and has deep undertones that reach into its political and socio-economic background.

I will be posting excerpts of the work here on my blog, but before I get to that part, allow me to first narrate my early life of how the novel came into being, and of my former work here in my country.

I was born in Port Harcourt, Nigeria. Pretty much a city I’ve learned to hate and love as I got older. Two years after graduating from the university, I was met a German writer who’s now based in the U.S., called Peter Brendt.

He’d read one of my online manuscripts and he persuaded me to write something bigger, something that speaks more on the goe-political background of my country. In other words, he wanted me to write a novel. I’ve prior to that time attempted once at writing something bigger, but my computer crashed on me and I lost everything I had. I tried talking him out of it, but he kept on with a thorough persuasion until I was forced to do it.

Such was how I began work on ‘The Rabbit’s Man’. However months later, I got a job working as a security operator in the security division of a multinational French company that specializes in oil and gas production called TOTAL/ELF. This was in late 2007. I did a training program and began working with ex-Nigerian Navy personnel. At the time, the southern part of the country was rift with militant rebels and pirates who’d morphed into vigilante gangs who kidnapped and pillaged oil structures within and around the south-south region. Years ago, such gangs had taken up this task as a means of fighting the Nigerian government against  mis-leading the multinational oil companies into destroying the riverine homestead of the indigenous tribes, stealing their oil-infested lands and polluting their waters. But over the years, the gangs had turned their maleficent glare upon the civilian population.  Even till this day, the communities are yet to recover from this tragedy.

Our mission was to secure traffic of the vessels from their land base to their offshore locations and back without any auspicious threats from the militants, most of whom roamed the creeks and various waterways from sight of the Nigerian Navy patrol vessels. It wasn’t always easy. The militants had far superior fire-power, and the work got too dangerous, myself along with my colleagues were transferred to desk offices.

In the mean time, I had plenty of hours fermenting ideas that would lead to the fictional heart of the novel I was working on.

 

 

This Writing Thing of Ours . . . Pt. 2

Truth be told, I never attended a writing school or program. Where I’m from, such things don’t exist. Even back in my secondary school days, I can swear I never learnt or doubt if I was ever taught the fundamentals to the rules of Grammar. All I new was the difference between a Noun and a Verb, and sometimes what an Adverb was, because that one was always easy to know. I often mistook what an Adjective was. Sounded like a lost cousin of the Noun. And don’t even go beyond that. I still get confused what a Preposition is, or where a Gerund comes into play.

Yet I still wanted to write.

Growing up in the eighties in Port Harcourt, Nigeria, reading was the least thing on a young kid’s mind. It’s even worse presently. Most kids find it hard picking up a book to read than they would reading the sports pages of a newspaper. I remember how mine started: my eye sight got blurry until my primary school teacher deemed it necessary that I started wearing glasses. My Dad wore glasses, so I guess it was only natural I’d get to follow him. The glasses changed me in more ways than I didn’t expected. I realized I couldn’t play sports anymore. I became a bench-warmer while my friends became soccer fanatics on the field. Often I remember sulking back home.

My Dad had a lot of literature books, some Shakespeare, Charles Dickens, and Nigerian literary greats like Chinua Achebe and Elechi Amadi. A lot of his books were becoming food for rats and roaches. I decided to start taking care of them as only a bibliophile naturally would. And then I started reading them. I read Achebe’s classic ‘Things Fall Apart‘, and it showed me what the heart of a Nigerian man was like. James Baldwin’s ‘Go Tell It On The Mountain‘, castigated the religious aspect inherent in a lot of African-Americans. ‘Black Boy‘ by Richard Wright made me cry. I hadn’t even read Alex Haley’s ‘Roots‘ at the time.

At the time I was learning a lot about American Pop Culture, almost the same time I was investing my simpleton mind in the artistry behind Marvel and DC comic books. I remember the first time I heard about Malcolm X, the first thing I thought of was he was a member of the X-Men. What sort of man anywhere would go by a last-name called ‘X’? Got to be a super-hero, wasn’t he?

American movie culture, too, invaded my world. As kids, we all loved ‘The Godfather‘. We all wanted to be Pacino in ‘Scarface‘. Throw punches like Balboa in ‘Rocky‘, and grow ape in a city like DeNiro in ‘Taxi Driver‘. But we all loved Eddie Murphy, too. Who wouldn’t want to dream being a prince like he was in ‘Coming to America‘?

Growing up as a kid in Port Harcourt, Nigeria, we were in love with the idea of America even before we knew about America. It was the idea that provided us the dream of someday making it big. Of becoming a star: for me, I wanted to shake Marlon Brando’s hand, and attend a Springsteen concert and listen to him belt out ‘Born in the U.S.A.‘ Though that was before I discovered Prince.

The years went by, and we grew from kids into manhood. Dreams died, and life gave us reality. We hated the reality that was the military rulership in my country. Never did I know such dreams would remain locked inside me, bidding their hour of birth. Never did I realize that when the time came when I would pick up the pen to write, first with poems and then later graduate into short stories and full-length novels, that these dreams I thought I lost a long time ago were growing inside me, waiting their moment of sunshine.

Sure thing it’s still growing. I’m not there yet. Hopefully soon . . . but first, allow me to remember where to put this lousy Past-Participle.