The Scoffer's Song

You took a deep breath

To sigh in sympathy I thought.

But No!

You were beside yourself in mirth!

You were laughing at me!

Gulping air,

You filled and refilled your windbag

Bleating out the discordant chords

Of that ancient score - the scoffer’s song

Puncture your windbags I wish I could

But there I sat well beaten - head bowed

I sat and prayed, you mocked and brayed

I prayed how I prayed

(But you all night brayed)

My wounds were healed

My soul annealed

With a gentle wind, without a word,

He lifted my head

Praying I was dear Jesus lord

Bloodied I am but bowed?

Hell no!

Your braying has stopped –you little fool!

Now I ponder the reason you all night cry

PRESS RELEASE for "of gods and negroes"

iUniverse

Approved PRESS RELEASE

of gods and negroes (by don Kenobi)

©2006

Q: Please supply us with a detailed summary of your book (between one and three pages).

A: How do you carry on when all you are or ever will be is explainable. How do you face life when it seems that everyone wants to lay his or her baggage on you?

Is it wrong to expect nothing from the world and so remain unfazed by the problems you face?

Is it better to cry in pain each time life hurts you?

Can you reject life and taunt it, with each breath you take?

Is it wise?

Why was I even born?

What is life?

Will I ever find happiness?

How happy are happy people?

Do I deserve to be happy?

Why was I born?

Why was I born….

It seems those questions were uppermost in my mind as I wrote this book – over a period of some 20 years. Yet while I wrestled with the thoughts that would form the chapters of the book, I felt a reassurance within that beneath it all was a fun and a loving essence which watched us as we took our first faltering steps and passed from being plain men – to well… men – those who will be men (as God created them to be). Who would swear to an oath and not waver….

In addition to the questions above, the book also seems to be saying:

You can find a better way

I know a better way

Come let us find a better way

Come let me show you …. how I survived.

It is a story of love and the search for love.

It is also a story of the search for self-acceptance

It is the story of a gentle man – lost because he runs a different script.

In the end, it is as much the why I wrote the book as it is about the what is the book about.

Q: Why did you write the book Mr. Don Kenobi

A: The why is simple:

There are many books out there and many stereotypes but you cannot find your story and you do not fit into any stereotype…… This sets up a need and cause, which will nag and tug at you every minute of your life not spent doing it. It will take up a whole chunk of your time and you may even grow to hate it - probably because you have to `relive it to tell it'. While writing the book, I sometimes had no idea if I was writing a book or the book was writing me! Yet the book is fiction.

Q: Is the book really not about you? Thinly disguised? Is it really fiction?

A: [Laughter] Fiction? What is fiction? Phew! I don't know anymore what fiction is - Maybe we all are fiction… fictitious characters taking ourselves far too seriously. We are all stories – fictional characters in Gods story! Who said that? I just did.

What do I think of my own writing?

Pure pain! I hate writing – and I hope when you read the book you will understand the first chapter. I'm so grateful I had a chance to mould a story around Uncle Joe - a real-life character…. I will probably write about him again…. But I love writing too. I really do!

It's everything to me. Its what I am: about 23 years ago, as I stood in line waiting for the letter which would post me out of the military-style camp onward to my primary national service assignment, I said a little prayer "If I get posted to a school to teach dear

Lord, it means you want me to be a writer. If I get posted to a factory, then you want me to be an engineer" I got posted to a cement factory…

I think I owe a lot to John Steinbeck…aha! I can see the nay Sayers looking for similarities – `whole copied pages'… it will not be found. When Steinbeck wrote he was da Createur! I have just created a word to hide my blasphemy. We are tricky we writers….

Steinbeck always made me feel the presence and power of the storyteller… he suffocates me – there is a pureness about his writing which… I can't say any more words really have no use when you want to tell the truth is a deep personal way.

Already I have seen a few ‘mistakes’ I would have loved to correct but I just had about had it and wanted no more of the manuscript. Let it take up its own wings and fly or crash

Why? Because I think I am guilty of overwriting this book!! And I am – it took me 20 years of chiseling and chipping away. Am I satisfied? No! In all honesty I need another 20 years to do justice to the story in my head.

I hope the elected leaders of my country Nigeria read the book especially the last two chapters. They need to know that their actions are being recorded (for posterity)

Q: Will readers love this book?

A: I don't know. What I do know is that I'm glad its over. I need to apply myself to other things…. But if you like it, you will read it more than once and each time you will read a different story. It is the loving story about a lovely man… there are several lovely characters.

I am not qualified to say this because I really do not know the whole story. The first time that I knew what the story was really about, was when the publisher…

I think I have said enough. I have said enough! I must not let too much light into the closet!

Q: What is the setting of your book?

A: Nigeria, San Diego, Boeria a fictional place that appears to be in Southern Africa, and Kenya…

Q: Who are the main characters, what are their relationships, and why are they important to the story?

A: Dedan Kimathi, the protagonist, Ollie the beautiful Nun who left the convent to be with him, Ay-ii the spirit guide who takes DK to the spirit world of Lokinanga, and Father A.E Lee the kind prince of the catholic church

Q: Why do you think that this book will appeal to readers?

A: It is a love story. We all love love stories. It is the story of a man determined to be the captain of his fate.

Q: Who is your target audience?

A: People. Spiritual people. People who want a better world.

I shot the Negro! I shot the Negro!

Get supervised! Get a life!

SEPT. 2001: The world is in bad shape and its rats are at it again. Having seen their mighty industries and unsurpassable military might fail to bring them utopia, they turn around and bare their fangs at their perennial victims who want nothing more than a place in the sun. Yes they drop on all fours and debase themselves further.

Compared to those ones, the dodo was a brave beast – for she accepted her fate and only hid her head in shame and waited for the consequences of its faulty design! Not so those who floundering in their folly revert to monkey chants making monkeys of themselves. I truly wish I could help which is why I am sitting behind this tired old desk trying to make sense of it all…

The Rats of ‘Big Shady’ find their every conclusion about their superior way mocked by those whose nirvana was disturbed by the rapacious greed of their own ancestors and like all failed societies, resort to well trodden paths by first selecting docile scapegoats.

The Rats of ‘Big Shady’ were becoming good neighbours I concede but their ranks have been swelled by the scum of the erstwhile second-world who think their passport to the great western way is to bash the Negro (who is that? Have you seen one lately?). I can only admonish them: “You spent the whole of the last century emerging from the yoke of oppression – you have lost precious time and you will loose yet some. Get Supervised!”

In the fall of 2001 I watched a pop video, which was the rave of the whole of Russia and possibly central Europe.

It went something like:

“Yeah! Yeah! Yeah! I killed the Negro! I killed the Negro”

I sat torn between two emotions and bowed my head in morbid shame – and sorrow – that I who has steadfastly sought the face of God and noble behaviour most days of my life should have to occupy the same planet as these persons whose lack of form has no suitable adjective!!

OK! Boris,

You killed the Negro?

Good for you.

God bless you.

Now pick up the pieces of your sodden life

and move Boris!

Get a life.

Get supervised

Here lies the crux of the matter:

The suffering westerner and the unsupervised erstwhile slaves - recently freed from the yoke of communism have been lied to all their lives. Those whose resilience staggers the mind are those who will save them from themselves. My grandfather told his sons this: "Fear the man who has one goal only which is: To prove he is superior to you who thinks you are superior to him for he never loses his mind! He wears you down and beats you with every thing that he is: even his smile and His swagger, his speed when he's fast, and his slows when he's slow...It is in their genes - which spawned yours, and they are uniquely in the position to be your messiah. Thank God for them. They are the meek and as the bible puts it, they shall inherit the earth!"

Goodnight.

PS

You may continue your monkey chants, I shall quote Diogenes. When asked are you not bothered that people laugh at you? He answered “Jackals laugh at people all the time but people pay no heed. Why should I?”

My dut y as a writer is done.

Don Kenobi Sept-2001

SUNSET

SUNSET

Generously splashing orange across the horizons and far beyond,

Painting an endless tail of wonder, photon by photon,

The far away images I commune with in solitude

are snatched from my sight by the gently settling dusk

It is the sun which has betrayed me.

It is Sunset!

Your laws are steadfast!

I am overwhelmed.....

.....What a grand show that sunset was!

Thank you Father

+++

DK Summer 1987 (Ewekoro)

Dear Sir (Letter to GEJ)

Dear GEJ Sir,
Let us concession the roads. Companies should bid for stretches of highway in bundles of say 100 km. They will manage it for a period of say 3-5years, when there will be another round of bidding. As incentive, These companies will have a portion of the initial payments for license released to them - based on performance: Repairs, number of accidents, even security - robbery attacks.
Instead of having civil servants sitting n the ministry of works, they should have designations like "supervisor Lagos-Benin" "Supervisor Abuja-Lokoja" These supervisors will have their teams and they will be in effect contract Holders - supervising the performance of the companies...
That way we know who is not doing their job.
A top journalist said: the Lagos Benin road is worse than any road in Afghanistan. I have not been to Afghanistan. But we should consider these sentiments as evidence of failed government. We believe you can make a difference Mr. President. Best wishes. Your fellow citizen.
Obi

WHAT WAS A LIBRARY?

What was a Library?
Libraries in Europe and elsewhere I hear are grappling with their roles for the future in the new light shed by the information age where information is available at @ the speed of light [1][1].
Here in Africa, we have to explain to our kids what libraries used to be – considering that Libraries in their present state or form are barely recognizable by some of us who came of age in the early seventies.

Let us ask ourselves again: What is a library?
A library is a place in which literary and artistic materials, such as books, periodicals, newspapers, pamphlets, prints, records, and tapes, are kept for reading, reference, or lending. A collection of such materials, especially when systematically arranged could be referred to as a library, so could a room in a private home for such a collection or an institution or foundation maintaining such a collection.
A library could also be a commercial establishment that lends books for a fee, a series or set of books issued by a publisher or a collection of recorded data or tapes arranged for ease of use.

Why do we need libraries?
Frankly, this is one of those questions about which it is said: "if you have to ask the question, you wouldn't understand the answer"
I will like to talk about a few libraries which molded my life and to which I owe a debt of gratitude.
The first library I remember was in the early seventies in my house. My Dad a civil servant with the ministry of education had bought 12 volumes of very heavy books which I could barely lift – bound in beautiful red cloth-like material. These books I have never forgotten and being a very considerate human being I managed to appropriate just 4 of the 12 volumes to myself and that only after the demise of my Dad. I thus left 8 hoping that they shine light into the willing head, heart and mind of some fortunate child or teen. Those books became even dearer to me when in my adult hood through an internet search I realized they had not been written for people of my ilk. Being a child, I'd failed to notice the subtle racist innuendos.
So much for my first library which imbued in me a lifelong love for leisurely, unforced studying. Memories of my next library are shadowy. This was in my primary school in Benin-City. We had a library and all I remember doing there was watching a demonstration of how to make ice-cream. I remember the gentleman whipping egg with a whisk so thoroughly that when he turned the bowl containing the egg upside down, the whipped egg defied gravity! I don't recall ever going into that library for anything else!

My next library was the State library on the Oba Market road opposite what was then the Kingsway store. I remember the very kind lady in charge of the library Mrs. Oronsaye probably because she had a son at Edo College where I schooled or maybe her genuine interest in kids made us like her. At that library, which we went to on Saturdays, when we were on holidays, I do not remember reading much there but I remember the joy I got watching old Black and White Laurel and Hardy comedy sketches. Ironically in this age of cable TV and internet, I do not recall ever seeing another Laurel and Hardy movie. Thus when John Kerry and John Edwards were referred to as Laurel and Hardy, I understood! A tiny inconsequential facet of knowledge but important all the same.

Before continuing with the Libraries of my life, I will like to go back to the question "Why do we need libraries? I will drop one answer right here: “We need libraries to speed up globalization. ..” and if you need to ask what globalization is.....

Back to the great libraries of my life.
We had a lovely library at Edo College. Here I would bury myself and read about the stars and the celestial bodies. I read books by Robert Moore? I could check his name up in one second on the internet but will leave it at that. All I know was that his last name was Moore. This writer did more to fashion my sense of being and my relationship with the universe than probably all the preachers of my youth. I got to know a universe which responded and could be predicted perfectly by the laws of mathematics and physics. Whoever created the world was worthy of adulation. I often times would get so completely lost in this outer world that looking at the pictures of the earth from space, and determining the position of Benin-City, I would peer down to see if I could actually see men on the ground scurrying hither and thither seeking to do things big or small, good or evil and wonder what could be so important to people so inconsequential as to occlude the greater meaning of life. (Bribe takers and perverters of social justice beware!!)

The words of Christ had full meaning to me after this truly enlightening experience: “Be anxious for nothing” I never have been.

There was another library at Okhoro road – just adjacent to Eghosa Grammar school – this was a very important library in my life. It was government owned. I read for my JAMB exam there and borrowed several Buffalo Bill cowboy books. There was also the great Library at the then University of Ife. Here I read for my degree exams, made photocopies of relevant documents, used microfiche to search for documents and…very importantly was able to get lost in books from a section of the Library totally unconnected to my studies. For instance I read comprehensively about Cecil B De Mille the Hollywood mogul, several volumes I must add (while my Laplace and Leibnitz functions stood impatiently by – tapping their feet no doubt, probably with their arms akimbo!) I went with Cecil B De Mille through the ups and downs of his life, attended his wedding to the very beautiful Mrs. De Mille, and went on holidays with them; Cecil was a very handsome man and maintained his very good looks to the end. He had a very long and evidently very loving relationship with his wife. It was sad in the end to see such a beautiful woman looking so old, with hardly a trace of the great beauty she once possessed. Mr. Demille on the other hand remained handsome. It was also sad to return to the dreary life of mathematical functions and complex numbers……

One of my most beloved libraries was the University of Benin Library. Though never a student at that great library, I would visit the library during holidays and perfected a means of bluffing my way into the library – a practice I started in my own university at Ife – for I could be counted never to have in my possession my student identity card. Why people should be kept out of libraries I have never known – similar in my view to keeping people out of Churches. Why are churches locked at night??!!

At the UniBen Library, I read mostly Electrical Machines and guess what? I discovered to be the best book on this: an encyclopedia! !! I do not remember its name and will not mislead my readers but reading this book, I discovered that my university lecturer had a less than complete knowledge of the subject of electrical machines – but that’s another story.

I also at this library discovered one of the strangest books authored by any one. The book was “I must show you my clippings” and the author was Wopko Jensma. I suspected he was a white South African only because of a picture he had of a half naked white man sitting on a chair. It had to be Wopko! But Wopko to my West African ears was definitely an African name though I felt it should have been ‘Wokpo’. Again, Jensma did not sound like an Anglo-Saxon name neither did it sound like a Dutch name – not to my West African ears anyway! I was intrigued by his writings which were decidedly anti-Apartheid in 1986; apartheid was to Africans what Osama bin Laden is to the west today! I loved him (Wopko) and hoped he was white in order for me to love him even more. Sadly some 18 years later 2004 to be precise in the summer, I made a search on Google for my old friend Wopko and confirmed he was white but had a history of mental illness and had simply walked out of the institution where he was held and was never seen again! Was I glad to have known him? Yes I was.

Why do we need libraries? I’ll drop another answer right here: Libraries foster brotherhood. For if we study the same books, we may get to think alike and understand each other…

I was surprised that after I got a well paying job working on an off-shore rig, where I spent 14 days between tours, I found myself gravitating towards libraries on my off days!! There I was a young bachelor boy, financially independent – yet preferring to go to the library (the University of Benin one!) where I had perfected the art of sneaking past the centurions at its entrance. At that point, I’d found that books nay libraries were my inner temple and its portals the gateway to the information highway…….I knew this long before the information age and certainly long before the term Information highway was coined.
These days on visits abroad, I have walked past several libraries and looked enviously at people as they walked in and out and have made it one of my ambitions is to visit the British Library! Low ambition? Probably, but…. The British Library is the national library of the United Kingdom and one of the world's greatest libraries. The collections include more than 150 million items, in over 400 languages, to which 3 million new items are added every year. We house books, manuscripts, maps, newspapers, magazines, prints and drawings, music scores, sound recordings, patents and philatelic items.

Sneaking in is not an option. Not in these awkward times!! I thus plan to register properly, and thereupon make my grand entrance, and make the first section which captures my fancy the outer courtyard of my temple and proceed to adopt a row of shelves around which I shall do a lap of honor. If no one is looking, I shall plant a hurried kiss on a book. Any book and feigning short-sightedness will pretend to look closely at it - only, I shall be drinking in their smell.

Closing my eyes, I shall pick at least 5 books at random, and proceed gingerly to the nearest table and thereupon sit as quietly as I possibly can and opening the first of the 5 books, smiling, proceed to the content page and find out what I am about to know….

It is important at this point to note that Social and technological changes impact our understanding of literacy. Our challenge is to prepare our children for the new literacies (NOT illiteracies) of the future. And while we are at it, we must remember that the term ‘Literacy’ has been redefined and identify if we need to prepare ourselves as well.
Whereas Literacy was defined loosely as the ability to read and write, today, it is “the ability to locate, evaluate, use, and communicate using a wide range of resources including text, visual, audio, and video sources” (From the The Evolving Definition of Literacy)

DK

Wopko Jensma

I discovered Wopko Jensma in 1986 at the university library in Benin-City Nigeria. I could not tell if he was white or black. I did not think he was white but thought to myself: if this crazy guy is white! He is the best man - white or black in South Africa. It is easy in these days of Nelson Mandela and Barack Obama to forget the non-person status of blacks across the globe - even as recently as 1986!! "I must show you my clippings" - that was the book!! He inspired me to write. He told me through his work that I did not have to write prose as wonderfully as John Steinbeck or Wole Soyinka to want to be known as a writer. Fast fwd to the recently past present, I remembered my old friend and thought: "Hmmm, where's Ol' Wopko. Time to find out if he's white or black" I now worked in Oil & Gas and the Internet had since ceased being a fad - it was a 'part of life'. Wopko you must understand to my Nigerian ears sounded very much like WOKPO...

Sadly I found this out: "Artist and Poet, Wopko Pieter Jensma disappeared without a trace in 1993..." I think I might have known subconsciously that he was white - because there was a picture on the cover of one of his books that showed the "JENSMA MOTOR COMPANY' - none of the workers standing under the banner was black! Yes I must have known he was white – I think I knew deep down that he was white and loved him for being South Africa's best kept secret…

Goodbye Wopko. You inspired me. You did.

Don Kenobi

Author: “of gods and negroes”

Dk@myncnc.org