₦airaland Forum

Thanks Banderas, your corrections are well noted.

I'm currently working on the second draft and even that, i'm sure, has some structural and grammatical problems. Fortunately, people do find the story interesting so once i'm happy with the second draft i intend to send it out for professional editing.

I've posted the first part of the second draft under "memoirs of a marginal man" and as you can see, its an improvement on the first one,

Thanks again.

The work is still in progress but enjoy:

Memoirs of a marginal man…
By Elias beneli.

"The marginal man, is one whom fate has condemned to live in two societies and in two, not merely different but antagonistic cultures, his mind is the crucible in which two different and refractory cultures may be said to melt and, either wholly or in part, fuse."
[Robert E. Park, 1937]

Prologue:

The South East coast of England was fast disappearing in the distance as the St Nicholas Sealink Ferry made its way slowly across the North Sea for the second time that day. The ferry was moving towards the Hook of Holland from Harwich. On one of the levels, young people could be seen dancing to the loud sound of the Summer music that was playing loudly in the background. In the dimly lit hall grey clouds of cigarette fumes, seemed to billow from the tables occupied by different sized groups of people, lending  the air a rather dry and almost suffocating pong. This would have been the non-smokers worst nightmare, I thought lighting up a stick of Benson and Hedges as I watched some young people dancing to a UB40 track that was playing loudly in the background, while those that did not seem up to dancing sat in their small groups either quaffing cans of beer or just engaged in animated conversations. Now and then someone would break out in what would appear to be an uproarious laughter, but for the loud music that made the laughters barely audible, leaving only funny contortions of their faces…

A few tables to my right were three young men sitting with several unopened cans of beer on their table. Two of them were puffing away on their cigarettes as the third one, who from the look of  the big Afro he wore could have been of a mixed African-Caucasian background, was talking with a lot of gesticulations to the other two. From the look of his listeners he did not seem to be doing a good job of convincing them of the probably exaggerated stories of the escapades, which he would have had during this summer that was just about ending….
Occasionally, as the ferry would ride on waves of the Atlantic ocean, you could feel a slight swaying of the floor beneath your fleet; so slight that you would be forgiven if for a moment you felt that you were sitting in a nightclub in London’s West end and were having an ordinary weekend night out.

Most of the young people there that evening could have been students, like myself, who were going back to their various universities all over Continental Europe now that the summer holidays was over. There could have also been some young business executives about to start on their holidays; or maybe some backpackers on another leg of their almost irrepressible wanderlust-ing across the globe. 

I was seated at my table with a friend of mine, Akin, whom I had met barely 6 weeks earlier. We had met near a students hostel in West Ham; I had been crouched inside a telephone booth, in a park near the hostel, where I had slept the previous night. I was shivering when he had opened the phone booth to make a call and the site of me had startled him as he automatically closed back the door and exclaimed something in Yoruba, a Nigerian language. I had called him back as he closed the door and managed to explain my plight to him. I explained to him that I was also Nigerian, but a Medical student who had arrived London the previous evening and ended up sleeping in that phone booth as I didn’t have any other place to go. Initially I had decided to sleep on one of the park benches until morning. And had planned that in the morning I would be able to look for somebody, with whom I could squat until I could sort out myself in London. But as I lay there on the bench, it had started to rain suddenly and by the time I could find refuge in the warmth of the phone booth I had gotten drenched in the rain…

After Akin saw the state that I was in that early morning he had told me to meet up with him later that day and had offered to squat me temporarily in the room he shared with several other students;
“ We don dey 5 already for the room” he was saying in pidgin English, informing me that there was already 5 of them in that room, “ but wetin man go do? ; as man must survive… At least there’s still space on the floor for one more person!“. he said and then made his phone call to one of his colleagues to inform the person that he would be slightly late for his early morning  job near the Liverpool street station as an office cleaner,

But that was 6 weeks ago. Akin was now seated opposite me and talking about how he couldn’t wait to get back to his “many babes” in the Ukrainian city of Donetsk where he, like me, was also on a scholarship to study Medicine.
“Ol’ boy we don survive the summer be dat!” he was saying. He had to raise his voice occasionally so that I could hear him above the sound track that was playing. His eyes were already glazing over from the alcohol that we had been consuming since we left Liverpool street station several hours earlier. He started to open up another can of beer as he grinned lazily…“But life fit sweet, when money dey sha!” he declared in Pidgin English, meaning that with money life can be good. He started to gulp down some beer and then light up a stick of Benson and Hedges.  And I couldn’t but agree with him more! I thought as I opened up a can for myself and gulped down a mouthful of cold refreshing beer…Yes, life was good!

We had both survived the summer in London. And we were now going back to our different cities with loads of things, which we had bought from the various cheap Saturday markets that sell all over East London and which we were now going to sell for mind blowing profits once we got back to school…

Yes, with money life can be good. Even for us who were going back to our lives as black students in a Soviet Union that was under the leadership of Mikhail Gorbachev and gripped in the teething pains of his Perestroika. You see, this was the summer of 1988, but I think this story should start a little earlier; I think that we should start at the very beginning of this adventure that took place once upon a time in Soviet Russia…

What better place to kick-off the meeting than right here .i.e. virtually ?

For starters there may be people out there interested in the project but who won't be able to make it to any meeting. And there may be others who may want to send in "quality" entries once they've seen that there is a good plan in place.

So, why not start planning here?

My suggestions:
1. Clarify who takes the lead role. Its always important to have a leader.
2. Clarify what the anthology would look like .i.e. any special theme? how many sections and types of poems? etc. those kinda things.
3.Clarify all relevant "money matters."
4. Call for people to send in their poems to a nominted panel for critiques. This panel, which can also be a virtual one, will be mandated to decide whether the entries meet the selected criteriae etc.

If you don't get it going, some way or the other, you may still be discussing this topic, as they say, "until the cows come home".

@Ruudie

The inspiration?  Existential angst.

Thanks for you kind words.
It feels real good to be appreciated .

You've just made my day

I've sent you the link on your email.
Thanks again.

@Jideosik -thanks for your advice.

@Me,Myself-i really appreciate your comment. And will take it on board when i am doing the second review of the book.
I'm more than half way through the first draft and, so far, people who have been following the story where i have been doing it online echo the same thing about wanting to finish it once they start reading. And that's why i'm now planning to actually work on it until it is publish-worthy.
,
If you want to read the rest of the story so far let me know and i can give you the link.
But thanks, in any case.

Dampness
and coldness
Weighed down by a load;
In need of rest

Darkness
and chains
Restrained by fear;
In need of strengh

Food and water,
yet hunger and thirst
as we journey on a road

Aimless
and lonely,
naked and cold

Man on a cross
blood dripping,
life giving
Thorns
then a crown

Torn veils of a temple
Hearing the word,
graves open, ajar

Music!
In the hills
illuminated paths
No more pains
nor chains

Sunlight!
The dance of rainbows
Roses in the fields,
The children laugh

As the Way
and the Truth and the Life is revealed

From my hiding place
i hear the voice;

"unclothedness is not covered by the coat
Adam makes with blemished hands
from the leaves of figs;

Only the lambskin covers the man, "

Apocalupsis!;

Blood
in paradise
followed the fall
It was necessary that the lamb be sacrificed
to make atonement
for the mans sin

His hands work
not acceptable at all.

I hear the voice
And come forth
in my fallen state
I understand now
the meaning of grace

And reach
through faith
to embrace the Christ
the lamb has paid the price,

Captain of my life and soul
Across these turbulent waters
even in the raging storms of life
when all seems to be going wrong
still you lead me safely on

Still you lead me
when i know that i have lost control
having rebelled
against your silent calls to my soul
when i feel i've been left alone
Your strong hands, they lift me up

Your strong hands
uphold me
gently in the valleys
as the thorns and thistles of life try to wreck me
as i choke
on sin and vanity
Yet, there beside me, you still stand to save me

There beside me;
in guilt, and in pain
and in shame
even when i rejected your name
there beside me with love
and with mercy
you remain
The Captain of my life and sweet shepherd of my soul

Captain of my life and soul;
to the still waters
and the eternal lights
to the abode of love and truth and life
Across these turbulent waters
yes, i know!
My Lord will lead me
safely home,

OK people don't seem to find the title attractive enough, or what?!

I've been thinking about possibly changing the title to one of the following:

Rite of passage;
First because i have had to sharpen the intro viz:

This book continues the narrative of the African experience in the twentieth century by telling the story of some African students and everyday Russian people through the eyes of a Nigerian Medical student studying on scholarship in Soviet Russia during the years of the Perestroika.

This book is also a love story and tells of the rite of passage into manhood of an African teenager who lived in Russia in the days when the Iron Curtain was finally dismantled…

Another thought is to title it simply;
"Nye'gr"

Nye'gr is the Russian word for Nigger,

PS: It's based on the true experiences of the author.

The African Child,

Proud eagle lost
when it was heaven-bound
is my dignity
departed to unknown orbs

An ego deflated
by loves lost pride
a re-awakening innocence
defiled

Picture a fallen angel
or noble captive
bound
on knees that once knew pride
before you
now prostrating

Picture little cupid
weeping
something tender is breaking
slowly
but surely dying
while i am waiting,

Go wither the wind blows
Captive of destiny
blown
from across generational tragedies

Here again cursed
or blessed
to know pain again

Go
restless spirit roam
your disinheritance is because of your guilt
after you rebelled
why now is your freedom a worse enslavement

You are lost
in living
in search of meaning
your lifes tragedy is its futility

Go wandering spirit
transverse the wilderness of pain
than unravel the riddle of the grave;
mans destiny is not changed
only delayed,

BOOK ONE: THE BOYS FROM NAIJA

1.…
It was raining heavily that day as my uncles old blue Peugeot 504 salon car parked outside the departures lounge of the Murtala Mohammed International Airport in Lagos.

We had been parked for a few minute and I was sitting there thinking of how I was going to escape getting drenched by the torrential rain as I watched the thick slices of raindrops slicing downwards.

It was quite difficult to see beyond the closed car windows but you could hear the occasional muffled rumble of thunder like drumbeats in the distance and the flashes of lightening flashing now and then across the darkening Lagos afternoon sky…

The driver of a white Mercedes Benz who was parked beside my uncle, kept on bleeping the horn of his car intermittently, but the sound was swallowed up by the droning of the torrential downpour, interspersed with the splashing sound of the rain as it kept on crashing to the ground…

My luggage was in the boot of my uncles car and I was unsure of how I was going to get at it under the torrential down pour.

Then I saw one of the airport porters, who was wearing a yellow Macintosh raincoat, looking in our direction while the man in the white Mercedes continued to bleep his horn.

“I’ll probably get that porter over there in the raincoat to help out with the luggage” I said to my uncle who nodded in agreement.

I had gotten out and managed to get to him without getting soaked by the rain.

“Oga you get load in the boot?” he asked in pidgin English as I approached him.
“Yes and you fit help bring am out?“
“No problem, Oga”

He had wheeled a trolley to the boot of the car and then jacked out my large black leather suitcase on to the trolley.

My uncle had horned twice and given me a thumbs up as he pulled out of his parking spot and drove slowly away as the man in the Mercedes flashed him a waka.

And I was left on my own to continue with the rest of the journey to begin a new life as a Nigerian student in the USSR.


It is the dream of most Nigerian students, and indeed most students from Sub-Saharan Africa, to continue with their higher education abroad once they finish their secondary school education.

For those whose parents can afford it these dreams sometimes come true as many of them end up in the different Universities across Europe and North America…

But only very few are enthusiastic about going to Soviet Russia to study.

First of all, nobody seemed to know exactly what was going on behind the so called Iron Curtain and as a result of this lack of information, the little bits and pieces that people did get to hear where evidently full of exaggeration;

For instance, a lot of people believed that once you got to the Soviet Union that you were gradually brain-washed and then indoctrinated with a lot of harmful Communist ideologies that would turn you into a Communist puppet and make it difficult for you to fit in back to “normal” society on your return.


In fact stories abounded of people who had returned from the Soviet Union behaving very, very strangely…

Secondly, it was believed that because of the Communists loathing for the Western way of life that life in Soviet Russia was very frugal, having been stripped of that “joie de vie” that students everywhere in the world are want to engage in as part of their extra-curricular exertions.

One of my childhood friends who got a Scholarship to the Soviet Union to study Medicine a year earlier than I did had refused to go as he preferred to remain in Nigeria than to venture on a trip to that “unknown world“ that would turn him into a “zombie“…

But one of my distant relatives, the “Uncle” who had taken me to the Murtala Mohammed Airport that morning, had actually studied Engineering at the Patrice Lumumba University in Moscow about ten years earlier.

Much as he accepted that life could be difficult in the Russia, he had discounted a lot of the things that were said as being the products of "Western” propaganda;

“No body is going to brain-wash you!” he would say. “…Yes, they’ll feed you a lot of their Communist propaganda but they don’t force you to accept any of their views. It’s left for you to choose if Communism as an ideology is bad or not…”

And since he seemed to be doing relatively well professionally and was actually quite rational in his conversations, my dad was not opposed to him applying to the Nigerian-Soviet Friendship Association, to which he belonged, for one of the yearly Scholarships to the USSR that they had going at the time.

I didn’t mind either as I was no longer very enthusiastic about continuing with my University education in Nigeria.

You see, after my secondary school education I had gotten an admission into the University of Jos to study Medicine, but ended up spending more than half of the academic year at home because of the “Ango Must Go” students protests.

The “Ango Must Go protests” occurred on the heels of the political killings of several students who had been on a peaceful protest at the Ahmadu Bello University in the Northern Nigerian city of Zaria. As a result of this students all over the country had erupted in anger, staging demonstrations in all the Federal Universities and in some cases actually becoming very violent, as was the case in the University of Ibadan where they burnt down a police station.

As a result of this the then Military government of General Ibrahim Babangida was forced to close down all the federal Universities indefinitely…

And that is how I ended up at the Murtala Mohammed Airport on a rainy day in September of 1986 going to Russia on a Scholarship to study Medicine.

I'm relatively new to this forum though i've been visting Nairaland on and off for several months now.

I'm writing a book (trying to, okay) and was wondering if y'all could read through if you find the time.

Please be as harsh as you want. I am only on the first draft and need a lot of critiques!

About the book:
This is a book that tells the tale of the lives of the everyday people, including thousands of Nigerians and other Africans, who lived behind the "Iron Curtain" during the last days of Communist Russia,

But this book is also a love story and a tale of self-discovery for an African boy who makes his own journey into manhood under the shadows of that "Iron Curtain".


Prologue:
The East coast of England was fast disappearing in the distance as the St Nicholas Sealink Ferry made its way across the North Sea on its journey towards the Hook of Holland from Harwich.

On one of the levels, young people were dancing to the sound of the Summer music that was playing so loudly in the background and occasionally, as the ferry would ride on waves of the Atlantic Ocean, you would feel a slight swaying of the floor beneath your feet; so slight that it was so easy to forget that you were not at a night club or at a disco somewhere on the shore having a night out…,

Sitting in groups and quaffing cans of beer or racing down shots of spirits were young people, mostly students, of all colours and sizes, going back to their various bases all over Continental Europe and beyond; laughing to their own jokes or just talking very loudly of their escapades during this summer holiday that was just ending…

There were two of us, Nigerian students who sat at my table occasionally glancing at the people who danced below.

The guy sitting opposite me was a young Nigerian medical student, who I had met for the first time just a few weeks earlier at the Students hostel in West Ham.

He was talking about how he couldn’t wait to get back to his many “babes” in the Ukrainian city of Donetsk, where he was a student and had to occasionally raise his voice so that I could hear him above the sound of the UB 40 track that was playing so loudly in the background.

His eyes were already glazing over from the volume of alcohol we had been consuming since we left Liverpool street station several hours earlier, but he was opening yet another can of beer and grinning lazily…

“Life sweet Oh!” he declared in Pidgin English,

And I couldn’t but agree with him more!

We had both arrived London barely six weeks earlier penniless and with no family in the UK, but were now going back to our different cities where we were both medical students with loads of clothes from the various cheap Saturday markets that sell all over East London and cheap electronics that we were going to sell for mind blowing profits…

Yes, life was good even though we were going back to our lives as black African students in the Soviet Union, which was still under the leadership of Mikhail Gorbachev and still gripped in the teething pains of his Perestroika…


You see, this was the summer of 1988, but I think this story should start a little earlier;

I think that it should start at the very beginning of this adventure that took place once upon a time in Soviet Russia…