Forces Of Adversary

It’s true that when certain forces set their eyes on you, most of the time, your peace, enthusiasm flies out of the window.

That’s what you are going to see happened in this story I will narrate to you. I think I have to start from the very beginning for you to understand it well. 

I think that I consider myself a bookish fellow. I have been reading since my first year in secondary School. You might say that I started late, but I really swim in them from that year. I think also that it was from that period that I started reading and understanding 60 Percent of books I read that has no pictures. 

It was that same period that when I read, ideas, pictures of what I was reading will start forming in my head and heart, yet, the book has no illustrations in them. Once I start reading any book, my next assignment is for me to start forming the images of what I was reading in my mind. Not that the authors are wonderful in their works, Nah, never that. It was that my innocent and inquisitive mind was helping their work and my enthusiasm along. 

Where there is will, there’s alway a way. 

Another catalyst that spurred me on that period was my paternal uncle who was living with us then when I entered my teen. He was into James Hardly Chase series. He will buy, read and pack them in his box in their room. 

One day, one was laying around and it ended up in my hand, that series never left my hand again. In fact, I was the one that sparked a kind of reading outside school recommended novels in the school dormitory where I lived. 

I found out that at that age, any genres you are exposed to remains with you. That particular genre would stimulate your mind and create a particular liking in you of that particular work. I was and still am in love with detective genre and I believed that it was due to my exposure to that genre by my uncle. 

Shit!, I was really carried away by Hadley Chase works and I started saving my pocket money for them. I was into some works of romance that had detective actions in them for my elder sister was into them and was buying them in high numbers. I think she was one of those that channeled my mind into reading books for she was always with one. She was buying all those Mills and boom work and heaping them in a cardboard box that became our family archive of sort. 

Outside the two foreign influencers, there are other African works both ones recommended by the school and those you buy on your own that aided my transition into book world then.

Many are good, rich in history especially the Biafra civil war. It was then I started to learn that just like beauty, reality, facts are also in the eye of the beholder. My nation Biafra supposed to be the loser of that civil war, but almost all the novels written on that war by the Biafra authors, in all, we were the winners.

I really believe that the authors and they were many were mainly psychologist or Maybe, they were paid by some intelligent silent people to come out with those encouraging story lines to lift up the spirit of the defeated and it worked like magic. 

My generation that came not long after the war found ourselves in those novels and believed everything inside them. What the writers set out to achieve was achieved 100 hundred percent. Both in my local language and those in English were handing over victory to Biafra. 

As you mature, you came to realize that the move was more than intelligent and they deserve commendations for their psychological foresight. I believe that Biafra land had more bookish inclined people before, during and after the war. Story tellers were everywhere in the land then. Many books were written on that particular war and culture of Igbo people. 

So, that was my encounter with book world in that my young age. It was at that particular period I learnt how to read Igbo language too. 

           Isn’t it funny? 

Imagine learning how to read a foreign language before yours. That trend remained well into 90s and I still considers it a hiccup on the education curriculum. Emphasis was overly on the Queen’s language instead of ours. 

As I advanced in that secondary level, I was advancing and diversifying into other genres. But man, I hated plays and poems. I couldn’t understand what they were all about but now, I suspect it was due to the fact of the teachers not teaching them well. 

I think those two requires deeper thoughts to comprehend and teachers of that era refuses to think. That era also saw the in flush of local dramas and plays in the TV, documentaries and they helped in shaping and building interest. 

But when I finally found my way into tertiary institution, I regressed in reading novels and was focused not by choice but circumstances into reading newspapers and sports magazines, drinking and girls. I guessed I was overwhelmed by the environment and people I found myself with. But it wasn’t actually a bad period as such in my life.

It was those football magazines that enlightened me more on the geography of the world for I never did it as a subject in school. It was through those sport mags and analyses in them that I came to learn during qualifications where each nation is located and even what they do best. I never learnt them from fiction works or in class room. 

So my hiatus period wasn’t all that bad. It was nature at work I suspected. I think I was being educated in reality outside the make belief world of fiction I was engulfed in.

Years later, I found myself in Asian nation. I came to realized that the story circulating in Africa on why they don’t appear in soccer world cups wasn’t true. We heard that they were banned from taking part due to their goalkeepers possessing advantage of flying like they do in karate movies and they don’t allow any ball to pass them. I learnt first hand that those guys don’t know anything outside table tennis and badminton. No one banned them from soccer. 

Over there, I found it a little difficult to see anything written in English. Outside few stations and computer that speaks English, most written things were in Chinese. My personal economy wasn’t in good shape then too. Earthly headache dampened my enthusiasm for written works. 

Few years into that wilderness like journey, I landed in prison. It was a kind of bittersweet life in there. Swing and roundabout kind of life. I found myself face to face with hundreds of works, wonderful ones written in English. 

Man, they really made my days there. In fact, those books and magazines were vehicle that propelled me for more than a decade inside there. As I jumped inside them, some forces were observing my every move alongside others for their own selfish ends. As I read and jot, those interested forces were observing and jotting too. A year, two, three, four, five, six, the trend from me and them remained the same.

Then, one day, one of the those forces decided that they had observed enough and decided to make a move. 

“ Boy, do you know that you can’t leave the prison with anything writing in ink”

“Why, sir. There’s nothing concerning prison in them”

“ Nothing concerning prison?—well, boy, you’re in prison and everything you do inside here concerns prison even your laughter”

“Ah!, I see. As of now, let them serve as aiding my learning”

“ So, all this your jottings, tell me, how do you intends to use them?”

“ Just reading and clamming few lines just all”

After eyeing me for what looks like ages and smirking to himself, he asked again.

“ What do you say in court was your level of education?—and have you lived in any western countries before coming here?”

“ I finished secondary School sir, I never been to any other nation outside here I found myself”

“Sure!, Outside here you found yourself, ah?”  

Another round of eyeing up and down and that smirk of his before heading back to his office. Man, you learn from experience in prison that keeping certain utterances and quest to yourself is wisdom. I decided that my certain knowledge quest needs to be kept in the cooler too. I cut off library visits and book works. 

I heard that unnecessary attention always leads to unnecessary problems. My enthusiasm simply packed up intelligently. I turned to TV as an alternative. My host seems to be paranoid.