| I was born in Lagos – the former capital of Nigeria, just after Nigeria proclaimed herself an independent entity. This was a time my father was working as a cook for some Italian specialist, who handed us the eating-with-fork- macaroni heritage. My native village is called Ikot Ekong meaning the family of warriors, located some 18 kilometers from the shores of the Atlantic ocean on the south eastern delta region of the country. My childhood memories habour vivid moments of feats that would later be classified as artistic manifestations. Everything about Arts came to me so naturally- If my uncle’s weaving of the cane baskets and chairs, or my father’s later being a photographer or even my paternal uncle’s love for hot jokes were anything to be termed Artistic- these were only to be discernable to me later in life, when self awareness would lead to analysis of the genetic concoction, that molded into substantiality that being that is now me.............. chapters one to four(not proof-read yet) Chapter one My Childhood As I recall Those days When mothers Would all go to the farms With their young ones Dragged along by the arms And the little ones Left to cry and play In their homes. I recall When we use to play Hide and seek When ill-fed kids With their swollen stomachs Would refuse to eat I recall When heavy rains Would thunder on thatched roofs When sun rays would pierce through holes on the roofs When drips of water Would soak the mud floor wet And water tracks on the Muddy walls would remain I recall the winds And I recall the flying roofs I recall the fire-baked mud On the walls of the fire-place How alluring it was For calcium deficient under-fed kids I recall the pleasant taste And I recall the rebuking From grown-ups and mothers. +The Return Southern Nigerians have a flair for names that have bearing on the days of the week; it is common to see people bearing Sundays, Mondays and Fridays. You could hardly hear somebody being called Saturday or Thursday or Wednesday .This could be due to their absence in the constellation of the Christian Easter Holy days. However once in a while, you come across guys with names like Saturday and you begin to wonder how bold, funny, and unique their parents must have been. Some of my close relatives call me Sunday, that is to tell you I was born on a Sunday, three and a half months after Nigeria got her Independence from Britain. My mother, born in 1945 was just a little over 16 when she gave birth to me in Apapa Lagos, where my father had been working as a cook for an Italian expatriate. Memories of his second place of work at the European quarter remain so vivid in me. The large compound extending from the service road, dissolved at its rear end into the Apapa canal. Conglomerations of fir trees created heart pleasing shades that protected people from the burning rays of the tropical sun. The murmuring sounds of the air movement under these shades acted like sedatives inducing sleep in house workers, who had completed their shift and just whiling away time in a social strata where physical and not mental labor occupied the very heart of existence. We would stroll along the beach in the evenings hooking and watching, in the distance inexperienced white men and women doing boat skiing; often falling off and disappearing from my childish sight than doing the actual skiing it was supposed to be . I would ask my mother where those white men had vanished; she would satisfy my curiosity telling me they had gone to the bottom to worship “mammy water”-mermaids. If there is one act of generosity that has remained so gratifying to me, it was that of the “Hausa” night-watchman, who use to give me 5 pence for sweets. He was a tall lanky, very dark-skinned fellow that occasionally paid my family visits. His gesture would go a long way in my life to help me understand the real joy of receiving and to foster the desire to give and experience the joy of giving. Swings! Oh swings –the illusive play object of my childhood reality. Francisco and Evilla were children of the Italian my father was cooking for. I would watch them from afar riding on their Janglova- the swings and I wished if one day, I would ever ride on those things that were then prerogatives of the white folks. Yes the time came but too late for my childhood. With my first son, I would while swinging him on the children playground take my turn relaxing my weight on the children swing seat, letting that suppressed childhood desire power the pendulum that was now me, consciously lifting my long legs to increase the amplitude of the calibration. Yes! My revenge -but I wonder how many of such revenges would really compensate the magnitude of my childhood depravity. Writings on my memory disk within my childhood period somewhere are faint making it is impossible to decipher events in their chronological order but some events and moments stand out so vivid and bold you would think they had been specially highlighted and embossed in dark bold fonts to stand the test of time. This boldness sometimes suppress adjoining events playing down their significance and these events sooner or later fade out of existence or leave indelible traces that would remain puzzles never to be solved. My village in the sixties was too exotic; people lived in mud houses with mat roofs woven from palm tree leaves. There were fruits in abundance; soup derived their names from the respective vegetables used. Thick soup that a chick could stand on, was a trade mark of good grannies, and my grand mother was not an exception. I remember we were living at my grandmother's family hut- a segmented linear mud construction with the traditional mat roofing on bamboo and wooden framework. The "sitting" room was a walk-through to the backyard where a detached kitchen enclosed an important feature of the tropical architecture- the courtyard. This was where all domestic daily activities were carried out, from pounding manioca or cassava to bathing children. The bush behind our hut extended to Ndiko- a pond that was filled with water from overlying streams when they overflow their banks in the rainy season, bringing along, fishes, toads, frogs and snakes and crocodiles. Ndiko was a fish sanctuary. Fishing here was a taboo until a particular date, when the village chief whose name in my childhood was Titus would with his ruling council members perform a ritual declaring the fishing season open to all. Anyone caught fishing before this date was summoned before the village court and made to pay fine of he-goats, cocks and eggs. The first day of the fishing jamboree was a big festive day. Villagers stood around the perimeters of the pond and watch the most daring folks with their large fishing basket descend into the muddy aqueous depression, to frighten off snakes, crocodiles and dislodge the most powerful of fishes from their hide-outs. As the water became muddy and muddy and visibility for fishes reduced, the majority of the village young men and women find their way into the tumultuous water. One could see confused fishes performing acrobatics and flying stunts to escape being caught. Some big fishes caught had propensities to jump out of the fishing baskets and one needed the comradeship of a nearby fisherman to help overturn and cover with another basket as the catch was carefully escorted to land. Palm oil was rubbed over all parts of the body that would come in contact with water. The skin sleekness kept out leeches- blood sucking parasites whose number was directly proportional to the number and quality of fishes in the pond.-the greater the number and size of fishes, the greater the number of those water vampires. Awful sights of these black and sleek creatures sticking their ominous head into some gangrenous wounds of fishmongers were common, or finding themselves into the most sacred interior of the female victims. The abundance of fishes, the festive atmosphere and the assurance of the inevitability of an eventual rich harvest were too strong an impulse helping to ignore hazards that accompanied such fishing adventures. The front elevation of our family hut opened out to the regional 'highway'. Across the highway was a morning market divided into two sections the palm wine sellers’ portion and the miscellaneous sector where anything from crayfish to kerosene could be bought. My first contemplation of God came from the constant sight of the palm wine sellers. The silhouette of figures clad in blue polyethylene rain coats standing under the tropical morning rain forced my childhood brain to conclude that these might be the gods . As it turn out these villagers had to stand despite the rain to dispose their booze as it could otherwise go sour with time. A thatched-roof mud shop stood at the outside boundary of the palm wine section of the market, it belonged to a relatively wealthy village businessman .The shop boasted of rich assortments of village luxury goods like razor blades, needles Chinese made pencils and “Eveready” batteries for torch lights. The veranda was primed with cement presenting a polished cool surface. On very hot afternoons it provided a resting ground for our very young brothers and sisters especially on days when we run on the deserted market ground after a round object made from banana leaves that we called football. The Only disadvantage of such a smooth floor, was its total uselessness when it came to relieving the itching of jigger-infected feet. Children with jigger infected feet often sought solace in places with rough surfaces where they could get the satisfying sedative sensation as they rub the infected part brutally against a friction- laden surface. Our plays were often interrupted by the countable vehicles that plied the sandy highway. These were the few goods and passenger lorries to and fro the Aba Township and the Irish Reverent father's Volkswagen Beetles. We would rush to the 'highway' to gather sand right from under the impression made by the tyres. We then rushed to our respective garden and pour the 'fresh' sand on the pepper plants, it was believed this aided their growth. This trip was repeated until the fuel smell in the air around the collection point died out. The Nigerian civil war broke out in 1967, my father was then at the then Nigerian capital Lagos we were only to see him towards the end of the in 1969. The Eastern State Governor, Odumegwu Ojukwu had tried to secede changing his state to a country called Biafra. The rest Nigerian said no, that Nigeria must be one. The then head of State Lt. General Gowon led the country against the recalcitrant Ojukwu. There was even a song in the village primary school Ojukwu wanted to separate Nigeria Gowon said Nigeria must be one We are standing together with Gowon To make Nigeria one Talking about songs at the village primary school, one funny one readily comes to mind. There was one very strict teacher called Mr. Bong. In our eyes he was tall and handsome; the kind of teachers we thought never ate the foul smelling local delicacies like Manioc. We thought his name was used in composing songs like Bongtuality, Lekularlity Is our motto Bongtuality, Lekularlity Is our motto As the vernacular spiced English song filled the serene atmosphere of the village citadel of learning, bare-footed village boys and girls of our Saint Patrick Primary school dressed in ‘immaculate’ white uniform, singing with all amount of seriousness would parade round the academic block to the assembly ground where morning prayers were said and instructions issued. But in fact I was to know later in my life that the actual lyrics were; Punctuality, Regularity Is our motto Regularity in the village schools was for the books. Children attended schools when their only Chinese made pencil was still intact or when their parents did not find anything engaging for them like looking after younger brothers and sisters or going with them on a community mutual help farm work. But the village school had some mystique about it. As I was awoken very early in the morning and ushered to the stream to bath and fetch drinking water, a sense of direction and responsibility flooded my consciousness, overcoming my little weaknesses each time I deep my body into the cool morning stream, and rushing home with a calabash load of water on my head and be treated to the leftover food of the previous night. Dressed in something that was presumed white because in the beginning, those pair of shorts and shirt were actually white, and off I would go to school. People could tell the time by looking at the sun on sky, and often when the sun was down at the Southern Hemisphere, a bit farther to us than when it is at the Tropic of Cancer, a not too bright morning sun was not always an indication of the sluggishness of real time kept in Greenwich. The consequence was that you would be treated while still at home or on the way to the distant singing of school children -oh! Oh! ,this meant you were already late for school, and that Mr Bong would be there to give you lashes on your tiny buttocks. All I could recall of lessons, it was either children singing in chorus letters of the Alphabet ei: bi: si: or reciting poems in the then official dialect of the South eastern state-Efik with sounds like MUTANDA -OYOM -NAMONDO. As the civil war gradually drew to its end in 1969, partial movement within the war areas became possible. The absence of motorable roads and bridges made distant journeys impossible, the bridge across the Niger river between Onitsha and Asaba had been destroyed, making trips from east to west impossible. My uncle Danson (may his soul rest in peace) accompanied us to Lagos by sea. We had journeyed to Calabar where we boarded a ship. In principle it was to sail along the coast and find its way to Lagos, meaning that one could catch glimpses of the southern coastal landscape as it meandered to Lagos. I had a mixed experience of the ship sailing along narrow canals where one could see natives spending all their life on and in water, with the canoe as the only means of transportation, to go to toilet, they paddled their canoe away from their marine habitat and ease themselves right on the aqueous body that diffused vaguely into the bight of Biafra and straight into the superfluous water of the Atlantic Ocean. For 2 nights we would sail without land on sight. We would see schools of fishes doing their acrobatic shows with the churning sound of the ship's propellers giving them the musical accompaniment. Sometimes distant figures in tiny boats would raise my curiosity and my mother would tell me they were people sailing to Santa Isabel-equatorial Guinea, an island that was flowing with milk and honey, where returnees had been the first to build cement houses in their respective villages. My mother once pointed to the horizon where the waters of the ocean kissed the sky and said "that direction goes straight to the end of the universe," this would throw me into some thoughtful journey towards this infinite limit of our physical universe, and I would seem to get lost at the point where the end seemed possible , only to come to my senses as I tried to catch sight of the immediate space beyond the limit. Chapter two Ajegunle My beloved slum I recall Ajegunle I recall the crowded streets The dirty untarred roads I recall the unplanned streets And the smelling stagnant waters Of the gutters I recall the houses In which people lived I recall how a man With 2 wives, 5 kids Would cluster within A 3x4 room I recall rainy days I recall rainboots inside tiny living rooms I recall how faeces from the toilet Would float right inside Tiny sleeping rooms I recall household items Stacked one on top another I recall with tears the agony The sadness on the faces Of the family men I recall football matches On the untarred dusty roads I recall tennis games On broken toilet doors I recall the redigging of gutters And I recall the hips of sand On the sides of the roads I recall our cowboy games I recall “kpaking” and “ikoso” I recall our regular visits To the refuse dumps I recall the rush Without shoes And I recall the pains The overzealous search for treasures I recall broken bottle pieces And I recall the wounds, And lest I forget I recall “Elewa” “Oni Rice” their “ishun” and “kpomo” And also “dankwa” and “Elede” , Famous delicacies of my childhood days. Ajegunle of the seventies embodied all the attributes of the typical city slum: haphazard conglomeration of substandard dwellings, stinking water from overflowing sewage pits, rubbish-ridden untarred roads, swampy backyards churning with snakes frogs and tadpoles. The most popular houses were the corridor-type houses where 3 x 4 m rooms would line the 1.2 m wide corridor that was often cramped with household items that could not be accommodated in the tiny overcrowded rooms that served the living, bedroom dining and play rooms . In the absence of spaces in the general kitchen in the backyard, the corridor served as a kitchen for many families. The tiny rooms would house families of one to 10 members. It was common to see men with two wives and five children living in just one single room. People lived The morning saw “army” of low-income workers marching vigorously towards the nearest Ajegunle central market – “Boundary” – this place was the nucleus, the melting point, a point where the aura engulving this slum district crystallized into tangibility. Bloated self confidence and audacity were weapons that could help one overcome the oppressive aura of this danger-laden precinct. These weapons were to be seen in the facial expressions of the smallest to the mightiest; the meaner the facial expression, the more the induced fear in others. Courtesy and western ethics were non-existent; the bus conductor to get the fare would open his mouth so wide, with his eye brows raised so high only to shout out just two words – ‘ owo da” meaning “where is your money». Innocent buyers were at the mercy of subconscious hypnotic skills of sellers. In the meat section, bargain skills were more than necessary Dusty bumpy roads radiated from here to the very rear of this “God forsaken” sub-human enclave. The density of people was such that when walking through the human jungle, one had to be good at fast-shoving the shoulders, otherwise you would go bumping people walking head-on. This was a sanctuary for rogues and pick-pockets. My father’s friend Udia had conspicuously placed a bank note in his chest pocket while hiding a wrapped mighty weapon, hoping to hit hard any one that tried to steal this money. He started walking from one end and by the time he got to the other end of the market, the money was nowhere to be found. Our house address was 50 salami street olodi Apapa, Lagos. As a photographer, my father occupied the shop that opens out to the street. The shop was partitioned to provide space for the bedroom, the studio and the darkroom. From time to time depending on the financial well-being of my father, we would rent additional room adjacent to the shop or at the backyard to decongest the “business center” As children we were sleeping on the floor on sleeping mats. My parents had the bed. As there was no effective cross ventilation, the ceiling fan was constantly working and the churning sound served as lullaby singing us to sleep. Great disturbers of sleep were mosquitoes and “mat-wetting”. For mosquitoes the weapon against them were the smoldering Chinese-made mosquito coils, the foul smelling insecticides that had us spending sleepy hours outside as we waited for the toxic suffocating aerosol to take toll on the anopheles and culex mosquitoes. The most pleasant of these weapons was setting our ceiling fan to the highest number “4” as this would prevent those flying “Draculas” from settling on us and doing their sucking games, while at the same time relieving us from the stuffiness that characterizes a hot humid climate. For mat-wetting, one was made to change pants if one was the culprit, if your younger ones were to blame, one had to look for “distant” dry lands on the hard nocturnal resting platform. Such feats of “irrigation” were preceded by dream episodes ranging from playing with village folks and then easing over to the bush edge to release some pines of “urea” or swimming with folks in the village stream and suddenly being engulfed by a strong wish to get the liquid waste diffused in the aqueous mass only to be awaken by a chilly feeling as the skin comes into contact with the wet mat. As the space was very congested, it was a nice polygon to play hide and seek with my younger siblings and house maids. The area was very swampy, our backyard was jungle with water was that sprawling with fishes. There were no sewage disposal system and to fasten land reclamation efforts everything from faeces to needles were dumped here. We often go fishing, but the fishes caught within the vicinity of our backyard, no matter their sizes were never honoured as nutritional items for the obvious fact of their habitat being polluted particularly by our own faeces or were they victims of the commonly held notions that prophets are not honoured in their homeland?. Jungle justice was at its worst manifestation here in Ajegunle. The subconscious desire for tragedy was everywhere in the air – tragedy seemed to release extra souls that soon joined the cosmic substratum upon which the living fed from. children took delight in slinging stones with catapult and watching lizard heads being splashed against the greenish mosses-covered walls, so were the rest of the folks eager to see thieves lynched after being caught for offences that ranged from stealing a radio set to stealing food off the head of vendors. Running in the crowded slum streets in an attempt to escape was as futile as trying to swim across the ocean it took the repeated shouts of “ole” meaning thief in Yoruba dialect for any soul running to be studded caught, impatiently beaten stoned “tyred” and burnt. Football was played on any available space ; The Otobrise’s family house - # 49 Salami was opposite our house. There was an open veranda in front measuring 3 x 8 m but in our childhood eyes it was some vast polygon for realizing our play fantasies; we played mini football matches with tennis balls here and often on the roads only breaking to allow the few vehicles plying this rugged dirty untarred to make their way from time to time. Chapter three THE SCHOLARSHIP My choice for the Soviet Union was somehow accidental, When I applied for the scholarship, I categorically filled in only Architecture, canceling the spaces for the other two choices- it was to be architecture or nothing. Coming to the country of choice, Italy came first as a country that I have always associated with arts, and to be on the safe side I filled in Soviet Union and India. To remain in Nigeria in 1985 at a time when corruption was eating deep into the marrow of the society would have been suicidal. It was a time when the dirty hands of poverty was gradually pulling innocent able souls into the gloomy shanty bosom of involuntary indigent existence , a time when gifted foreseers would shed silent tears for sorrows yet to befall the nation. One day in my Ajegunle*. A messenger had come from the Cross River State Liaison office with tidings to my very threshold, it was a packet for me containing the congratulatory letter that I was among the Lucky 30 candidates selected from my state for the interview, I remember jumping up for joy and my father giving the messenger some money for his fare and I recall also his solidarity joyfulness that I had been selected. Entering the scholarship contest at this point in time induced in me the stiffest spiritual fortification my soul had ever known, it was the Shakespeare's case of screwing your faith to the sticking point and knowing you won't fail-I screwed my faith to leaving that country at that point in time, and I did it. Port Harcourt, the then capital of the Rivers state, was the regional headquarter of the zone to which my state was affiliated. I travelled to the village en route to Port Harcourt. My mother suggested I visit the local preacher for prayers, but I made her understand it was not necessary as I was just too much inside ready for the event ahead and I meant it. As the night threw its translucent violet blanket over my village, the thought of the next day trip filled my mind. After a meal of Manioca paste and vegetable soup, I spent some time outside watching the star studded African sky. Thoughts of witches and wizards crossed my mind. Darkness is often associated with fright, but then I was in full control of the darkness , and I was the object to be afraid of. "Hey! Lions, snakes, ghost, crocodiles and all the beast that often hide in dark labyrinths of the village Landscape, where are you?" I was throwing ephemeral challenges to any being that could put a stud in the wheel of continuity that should roll off the nights blanket and inevitably usher in the dawn. My spiritual composure had endowed me the hardest and hottest armour to shield against any offender. If evil forces had dared come near me, they would have rebounded with fifth degree burns. I went to bed not because I was feeling sleepy, but because it was customary for people to sleep in the night and wait for the morning to come, and the morning came usually faster only if you had slept, and if there was one thing I wished so much then -it was a morning, so I forced myself to sleep. I got up before the sun could raised its radiant head above those thick overgrowths that lined the horizon - bushes that seemed to be shielding the sun from being seen kissing the horizon on its way to and from bed. I was to take a short cut to Port Harcourt, and this was through Andoni-some 18 kilometres away from my village , a delta town at the shores of the Atlantic ocean. My people called natives of this area "Obodom" a word synonymous with stupidity, but after my brief encounter at Regina Coeli college with Georgy Owikor, Jonathan Ofor and Lucky Amakiri -all guys from this area, changed that village legend, I now associate people from this area with intelligence. At Andoni I boarded a boat that took me through canals with Mangrove tree edges, crocodiles were common in these areas, thank God none surfaced during the short trip. In Port Harcourt I found my way to Maxwell Ekot's house. Maxwell Ekot (May his soul rest in peace) was the Regional marketing manager of a building material company who had just been transferred here from Lagos . He was my father's close and respectable friend. His First daughter Maggie was a girl I must have fallen in love with, if not, how do I explain my total inability then to understand differential equation on having been handed a letter from Maggie through the window on the lesson of applied mathematics, conducted by our beloved Indian teacher. She was light skinned, she conformed to those category of girls we would christen Aje-butter -literally meaning butter eater, indicating that someone is from a well-to-do family. The pair of glasses she was always on bore evidence to this fact, since wearing spectacles everyday and every time was somehow considered the prerogative of the rich, something that was very common among children leaving in European quarters and government reserved areas, giving them some touch of academism and tender looks of children who wouldn't throw stones, as against Ajegunle children whose rugged heavily sun tanned faces and dusty legs bore reminders that these kids had regular stone-throwing plays or fights, having nothing to fear since they weren't living in glass houses. His brother Emmanuel was my close peer. During holidays, Maxwell Ekot’s Family would travel to the village, I would have time to speak closely with Maggie either at their house or at their beer parlour often trying to please her majesty speaking in Yoruba - the dialect of the natives Inhabiting Lagos and south western part of Nigeria. This would often arouse the envy of village guys like Bob Satan (real name- Monday Job Umanah) who felt I was unduly using my Lagos upbringing to outplay them, regarding access to township girls. Maxwell Ekot gave instruction to his driver to take me to the Ministry of education where the interview was to be held. Other candidates had arrived, everybody was burning with optimism. We strewn the corridor, majority of the candidates were city-bred. I met Ime -the Only girl in my class at the architecture department of the Calabar Polytechnic. Ime had expressed sympathy for my choice of Italy as evidenced in the Cross River state newspaper-The Chronicle, informing me that Italy had space for only one candidate that year. Nevertheless I was bent on success. My turn came ,I had hardly settled down on my seat than I was told by the spokesman that Italy in fact offered only one chance for a Post graduate student and that I needed to choose between Bulgaria, Romania and the Soviet Union. I went for the Biggest from the Socialist club, not wanting to take chances and spend another year in the then Nigeria. I had brought along a rather imposing pencil, it was fatter and longer than the usual pencil. It was to send a message across to the interviewers that I needed to be tested in fine Art, an attempt to treat them to my lines, lines that had grown cleaner after a two-year brush with Arts Appreciation at the Architecture department of the Calabar Polytechnic. With the excuse that there was no Artist in the panel, questions were limited to physic's diffraction of light rays as it passes from one medium to another and some general talking. As I left the room ,I bade farewell to guys in the corridor with the words "see you in the Soviet Union". About 30 candidates came for this interview. The month was June, 3 months lay between now and when my anxiety and great expectation would mature. That confident that foresaw that I would be one of the 10 successful candidates overwhelmed me suppressing any conscious attempt to doubt my success and to that moment I was parting with acquaintances with words like" probably I might be leaving for the Soviet Union by September". Something in me told me I was leaving , it would have been natural to make alternative arrangement for my future, like going to enroll in time to continue with the Higher national Diploma at the Calabar Polytechnic , but I made no move towards meeting the dateline. I think I must have screwed my faith so firm to the winning point, leaving me with no choice other than winning , and the victory came. Shomolu was a rapidly transforming slum, with the new well-to-dos and people of average income intermingling with the seemingly predestined slum dwellers. "Shomolu -Bariga- Morocco road" was popular cry of bus conductors as they ushered us in into their Volkswagen mini bus traditionally dubbed 'Kia-Kia bus'. My uncle Ufort Bob had moved in here from Ajegunle in the late seventies, so my mother usually took us along to pay his brother visits. When my first cousin Sunday Bob completed His Secondary, in search of the golden fleece, he moved to the city and put up at Ufort bobs two-room 'flat'. Sunday retained one room when Ufort Bob had to move to a more comfortable habitat. As Shomolu environ marched my status then as young modern office worker, it became my second home. The news at 8 on TV ended with calls for candidates who had applied to study in the USSR to check their results at the Bureau for External aids office at Nathaniel Iyala street. I started jumping in the room with the words - "I am going-I am going-boy! I am leaving" even still unaware of my being selected. I left for the External aids office the next morning. A large crowed had gathered outside before the notice board. I didn't look at faces nor did it take me time to figure out where my state's result had been pasted. I Pushed my way through the crowd of anticipating, disappointed and successful people to be greeted with 'Usoroh A.P -USSR- Architecture under Cross River State. Yes! I made it. Successful applicants were issued special letters to facilitate the issuing of Nigerian passport at the respective state passport offices. I took an airplane for the first time in my life to my state Capital, Calabar. The primitive sight of the local wing of the Muritala airport was rather disappointing, I was expecting to see flashy environment that should conform to my impression of what I thought an airport should look like, going by TV film episodes that had nurtured my fantasy with imageries of places my humble self would have hardly set foot on. I saw wooden benches,, the likes of the palm wine bar of the Ajegunle slum district. Yoruba Businesswomen of tremendous girth in their traditional colourful buba attire sprawled here and there on the load-darken tormented seats uttering words that might have sounded mgbati-mgbati to the untrained ears. When I took my seat inside the Plane, I ran into some trouble-that of fastening the seat belt. When the announcement was made, People around me just did it so casually as if they flew by plane every now and then. I made some movement that resembled that of fastening a seat belt, but only Heaven knew my belt was not fastened. I shielded the metal buckles with my wide palms and sat confidently and quietly trying not to expose my ignorance, meanwhile my brain was doing some serious mathematics trying to figure out the mechanism of the seat belt. Just before the plane was to take off, I leisurely rolled my hands over the seat belt buckles and finally snapped them together. uh! at last . mama The plane took off and in 60 minutes time, I was already in Calabar. This journey would have lasted 3 days in the early sixties,7 days immediately after the civil war in 1969. In Calabar. My Cousins, Samuel and Emmanuel from my father's side assisted in the processing of the necessary documents. I underwent the vaccinating procedures against malaria and other required illnesses. I had taken my guitar along to present to my good friend Emah Emah. E, as a promise I made if I should be leaving that country. I returned to Lagos by plane immediately after receiving my Passport. | 
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