Guilt and Redemption.

It's been a while...

2009-03-27T05:52:00.000-07:00

Before you know it, a year has flown by and you sit wondering how comes time flies by so fast!

Well, it's slightly more than a year now since my last post and i can barely believe it!

Unfortunately, the books still not yet out in the market, the reason being that my alter ego pretends to be a busy man and has been sorting out some professional things, which is now near completion, so i had to take a break from the writing.

Anyways, i'm back now. Well, almost.

Going through the post, i realise that there's still quite a lot of editing to do on the book. Quite a lot! May be that's what happens when you take a break and come back feeling fresh-you see things from a better perspective.

I can see clearly that there's still a bit of re-adjustments to be made to the book before it's ready for sending out to the professional editors.

Hopefully, i'll start working on them within the next two weeks, with a view to getting the book out by Christmas!

Get's me thinking whether i shouldn't change the title to 'another christmas story...'!

The revised prologue

2008-02-06T13:23:00.000-08:00

PROLOGUE

24th December, 2000. Somewhere in London.

The on-call bleep, lying on the table just across from where i am sitting, has just gone off. I check my watch and I notice that it’s 9:08pm.I can still hear the footsteps of my colleague, whose shift had just ended 8minutes ago, walking down the corridor towards the lift. He has just handed over a patient who is ‘waiting to be cleared by the medics’ and as I look at the number that is flashing across the screen of my bleep, I am beginning to think that this is going to be another very busy night.

It is Christmas Eve again and as always it was very easy for me to arrange to be on-call. Most of my colleagues always wonder why I like to work on Christmas Eve but I find it difficult to explain to them that I just have to be working tonight. It’s something that just has to be because it was on a night like this, so many years ago that Tanya died. Tanya, the lovely half-Russian girl who loved me had killed herself on Christmas Eve.

I try not to think of it; I tell myself that time would ease the feeling of guilt but my soul remains restless and nothing I do seems to be enough to pacify her spirit that torments my soul. If only I had fulfilled my promises to her. If only I had ignored my own self-pity and told her the words that she so longed to hear from my lips; If only I could turn back the hands of time. But I too was young and so very foolish. And now the mistakes of my youth will live with me forever…

I was feeling cold on the last night I saw Tanya alive. Even though it was early spring, I remember a cold chill come over me as I had stepped out of the bus that had brought me on the twelve hours trip to Pyatigorsk, the Russian town, which is located on the foothills of the Caucasus Mountains, where she was studying English and German at the Pedagogic University. I had come in from Rostov-On-Don, the city where I was a second year medical student.

But as I remember that night, I am no longer sure if it was really the weather that was cold or if it was the cold breeze that blows over me whenever I think of that night. I have relived that night so many times in my mind and I know that there is so many things that I could have made to happen differently. I could have stopped her from killing herself. But I didn’t.

The taxi I took from the bus station had stopped me in front of her hostel, which is located just off Kalinin Avenue. I had gone up to her room on the third floor of the hostel and she had been alone that night. As she opened the front door, I first noticed that she had a bandage tied around her left arm and it was stained with blood. This meant that she had cut herself again.

Tanya had once told me that she cuts herself as a distraction from the inner pains. She said that physical pain is a lot more bearable than 'the thing' that she felt inside and that whenever she cuts herself, it feels as if ‘something is released and the pain is bled away in the blood’.After I saw the blood-stained bandage, I then noticed her eyes. And I knew that something had gone irredeemably wrong. I could not quite define why I felt that way, but I sensed something and it sent a chill down my spine.

It was also then that I knew that I had lost Tanya and that the person who stood in front of me was a total stranger-a cold life-form that was bereft of life.I could sense no more that hope, which had sparkled in her eyes, almost a life time earlier, when we had taken long walks through the romantic green avenues of Gorky Park, where we fed the squirrels and discovered a desire for each other that seemed so pure and so innocent. A desire that roused her to make the promise of love to me, after our lips had brushed in our first shared kiss, under the shower of the water-fountain as the music of Ala Pugachova had played so softly in the background.

I remember how we had gotten drunk in each others laughter as we watched other young lovers, walking by hand-in-hand with no cares in the world, whispering foolishness into each others ears. I remember the lovely sparkle in her eyes as she had asked me about how comes love has the power to make children out of adults and had then started laughing out of the joy of just having me there with her at that moment…

But those same eyes were now lifeless as they stared back at me on that night in Pyatigorsk. They had been staring inwards and had looked so frightened by what they were seeing. And when I had asked her what was happening to her, she had met my questions with the ghost of a smile and then started to respond in monotones; giving away very little and yet…and yet I knew that she was screaming out to me for help. But what she wanted of me I could not give to her because my life was so messed up at the time.

Later that evening, I had walked out of her hostel and into the cold Pyatigorsk night, thinking of the haunting smile that had lingered on her lips as she had shut the door of her room, quietly behind me. And as I walked into the night, I knew that I should not have left her alone.

When I came back to Pyatigorsk four weeks later it was already too late. I was told that she had packed her bags in the week of my previous visit and had left town. And after that nobody-not even her babushka-knew where she had disappeared to.

Eight months later, babushka had come to my hostel and informed me that Tanya had been found by some strangers. They said that she had been lying in the snow and was slowly bleeding to death from a deep cut on her left wrist. The strangers had called an ambulance, but by the time the ambulance arrived, she had lost too much blood and had died a few minutes later, in the early hours of Christmas morning. They say that before she died, she had kept on repeating one strange name, which babushka says sounded like the name ‘Kasi’. She had kept on repeating that name as she bled out her pain and then finally became still in death…

“Hello, it’s the duty Doctor here. Did you bleep me just now?”
“Yes. Is that Kasi?”
“Yes…”
“Did your colleague tell you about the patient in the A&E?
“Yes…”
“She’s been medically cleared”
“Okay, see you in a bit then…”

I have just stepped out of the long corridor of the main building and I have walked into the drizzling rain. I am walking briskly across the well-lit hospital car park and I notice that an ambulance has stopped in front of the large A&E building. As I approach the building, the back door of the ambulance is flung open and two paramedics have jumped out and are trying to lift out a patient who is lying on a stretcher. A very tall black man, wearing the green porters’ uniform, has wheeled out a hospital trolley up to the back of the ambulance, and the paramedics have hoisted the patient onto the trolley.

A male nurse who has just come out of the A&E building has been handed over a drip bag with an IV-line running into the right arm of the patient on the stretcher and as I pass by, I notice that the patient is a pale-faced middle aged white woman and she seems to be in a lot of pain.
I have stepped into the warm brightly lit reception hall of the A&E and I notice that it is crowded as always. A scruffy looking white man, whose offensive smell of alcohol can be smelled from the entrance, is talking at the top of his voice to a middle aged Asian man in a Sikhs turban. The unfolding commotion is disrupting the long queue of people, who had been patiently waiting for their turns to be attended to by the elderly female reception clerk. She was was now standing behind the glass security panel and looked quite flustered by the commotion.

‘Join the bloody line…!” The man in the turban is shouting at the disheveled gentleman.
‘No, you go back to your country you bloody paki!’

I notice that at the far end of the hall, two police men are standing next to a large black man in handcuffs. The man in handcuffs seems to have a swollen left eye and I can see what appear to be blood stains on the left side of his torn white shirt. The police men are talking among themselves and it looks like they are going to intervene in the unfolding commotion.
“Kasi…!” I hear the familiar voice of Kate, the Psychiatry Liaison nurse, calling me from behind and I turn to see her coming towards me, carrying some papers in her hands.

We have now walked into the restricted area together and have closed the reinforced glass doors behind us, shutting out the noise in the waiting area.
“Can you tell me a little bit more about the patient?”
“She is a sixteen year old girl with a recent impulsive paracetamol overdose”
“Has she been medically cleared?”
“Yes, she took twenty tablets and her bloods have come back okay…”
“Is she known to our services?”
“This is the second time she is presenting in the last few months. She has a past history of self-harming and attention-seeking behaviour, basically another PD-in-the-making…”

I winced when she described the behaviour as ‘attention-seeking’. A lot of the staff, working in the front-line services, has come to dislike the personality-disordered patients or the PD’s as they are called. These patients have been much traumatized in their childhoods are now finding it a difficult to cope with the challenges of interpersonal relationships. It is as if their feelings of emptiness and frustration are such that even the staffs, who work with them, eventually end up feeling emotionally drained from the realization that their lives are too complicated to really sort out.
“There she is over there…”

The person she is pointing out to me is a young girl of what looks like a mixed African-Caucasian racial background, possibly Asian. I notice, from her long legs that are pulled in under her chair, that she is quite tall for a sixteen year old. I suppose it’s her very slim frame, of somebody who has been starving herself of food that makes her to appear a lot taller than she really is. She is seated on a blue plastic chair with her head bowed and her long black hair is cascading over her slender fingers that are holding up her head.

As I approach, I can hear the sound of sobbing coming from her. I have checked the name on the case-note, which the liaison nurse has just handed over to me.
“Hello…” I say as she raises her head and looks from me to the nurse. Her face is slender and beautiful and her large brown eyes look so puffed up and tired…
“Amina, this is the duty doctor…”the nurse says“…Kasi, I really have a lot of work to do. Can I leave her with you?”
“You know what the policy is about male staff needing chaperones…I’m sorry”
“I’m Dr Obieze…” I say, addressing the young lady
“…I am the Psychiatrist-on-call and I have been asked to come and talk with you. Is that okay?”
“Yes”
“Can we go to the consulting room over there?”She is nodding and has slowly gotten up from her chair. She is now following me to the adjoining consulting room and the nurse is walking just behind us.
“Please sit down….” I say offering her a seat and deciding to wait for her to settle down a bit, but she remains standing.
“I know it must be difficult for you, but please sit down and let’s see how we can help you…”
“Amina sit down and stop crying so that the Doctor can ask you some questions”

She has decided to sit down, but her sobbing is not abating. The tears continue to stream down from her swollen eyes and I notice that the front of her sweat-shirt is already soaked in tears. I am reaching for the box of tissues on the table next to her.
“Here, have a tissue, okay and maybe you can tell me why you are crying…”
“I want to die and you cannot help me!”!” she declares and starts to sob again.

I have picked up her notes to flick through and have decided to allow her to cry a bit more. I notice that the nurse is glancing at her watch, but I am ignoring her as I flick through Amina’s notes, checking for any significant events in her life that may have been documented. She has already been here before and it is important for me to have an understanding of what her underlying psychological make-up is. I am reading that she was abandoned by her single-parent mother and then adopted by a middle-aged couple. She was then sexually abused by her adoptive father and has since been living in one care home after another for the past eight years. Poor girl.

What really can I do for her? What will my mere words do that will erase the stained slates of her troubled soul? Can I offer her anything that will give her a new beginning and make her learn to trust life again? I am feeling frustration already and I have not even started to talk to her. I am watching her sob and I see how her whole body heaves up and down in fits of pain from her unhealing life wounds.

“My boyfriend has just left me….” She says in-between sobs and starts to wipe her puffed up eyes with the fragmenting tissue-a metaphor for her life-that have now become so soaked with the streams of her unending tears.
“Here, have another one….”I say offering her another tissue.

I am watching her and as always I hear Tanya’s voice calling my name, crying out to me to save her.
What do you want me to do Tanya, that will be enough for you to set me free…?

Amina is groaning in emotional pain and I can hear the words of her unvoiced cry. I can hear her reaching out to me for help, but I am feeling so very powerless before her.
“I am here to help you…”

Snail mail and other matters.

2008-02-06T13:10:00.000-08:00

I got an email from one of the agents a few days ago. She wants me to send in the materials by snail mail.

I had to revise the prologue of the book to something more gripping. I like the new version, which i'll post later, a lot better.

I have sent out the materials and will see what happens in 4-6weeks time, the earliest time i can hear from the agent.

Unfortunately, my alter ego has an exam to prepare for and that will keep me very occupied for the next 2-3months. It means that the earliest time i can start working on the book again is i the summer...

Just another Day...

2008-01-16T11:51:00.000-08:00

I have not gotten any more responses from the agents. Just as well, because i've seen some major changes that i need to make in the manuscript.

Okay, i'll be honest. You know that letter i mentioned that said something along the lines of 'not being gripped enough' or something like that. Well, that got me thinking: since i am aiming for an international audience, i think that the prologue has to reflect that.

I have already changed the prologue and i think it's a lot more gripping. I also realise that i should have written a bit more about the kind of stuff that we learn't in those indoctrination course; you know, the ones on political economics, philosophy, history of the communist party. Not that i should have bored people with ireelevant detail, but i could have given a flavour of what it felt like for Kasi and co. That kind of stuff.

So sometimes, delay may actually mean an opportunity to refine something unto perfection. I'm currently overhauling the manuscript. If i get any agent now, that would be okay but if not, that would be okay as well.

I am already planning a marketing strategy that should get people buying the book. Hopefully, once that's happened i'd have leverage to approach agents to represent me.

A workable idea...

2008-01-11T04:34:00.000-08:00

Okay, i am not a businessman alright, so don't laugh when i say i am going to try to do it my self!

You see, yesterday i was thinking of waiting until i hear from all the agencies i have written to-i am still waiting to hear from about 6-and if nothing positive comes out, then i would send the MSS to writers workshop (you can google and find their contacts, they actually have some good services). The plan was to get them to read and edit the MSS for a fee and then recommend it to agents.

Well, that's what i was thinking yesterday.

Today, an email popped up in my inbox from lulu.com, which i am subscribed to, and i browsed through their site again. And...Voila!

Yep, you guessed it. Why not?

I am confident that i have something that some people would want to read (the polls and comments attest to it), so all i need to do is to get it publsihed...

And that's where the whole businessman thing comes up. Like i said, i am not a business man but sometimes providence nudges us along paths that we didn't really think we'd tread.

I can do it you know. I can get it published within the next month or two and then make use of all the marketing tools provided by the lulu people and also try out my own marketing strategies. And the more i think about it, the more excited i am becoming.

And i am thinking that my alterego may have to postpone what he wanted us to do for the next few months.

Getting Guilt and Redemption out in the market is the priority...for the both of us!

PS: It's Day 7

Day 6...

2008-01-09T07:31:00.000-08:00

Today is day 6.

So far, i have gotten 6 responses; one of them was a failure of delivery. Apparently, the email address wasn't working! Two was from the same agency and they both sounded the same. Looks like they just sent me one of their generic responses. The next 2 were simply not interested!

Only one so far has asked me to send in my manuscript. And how am i feeling?

I am feeling kind of resigned, if you know what i mean. On sunday morning when i got the penultimate reply i had felt a bit low and all those things people feel when they are rejected but as the days have gone by i know that i will not be deterred.

What are my options?
Well, i'll wait until i hear from all of the agents. If nothing positive comes out, i'll consider the various other options to getting published. I'll do a bit of research and post my findings here.

Will i write again?
Hell, YES! But i will get this one puvblished, even if it means self-publishing.
I have learnt a lot while writing this first novel. And though it felt like it was my magnus opus-thats what they call it, isn't it: your best work or something like that-another story is bubbling up in me, which i'll start researching for once i've got this one published.

Unfortunately, my alterego needs my time for the next 3-4months so i won't be able to give Elias the time he needs!

I know, i'm begining to sound like somebody with multiple personalities but what do you expect from somebody with an alterego!

The letters come trickling in...

2008-01-04T08:10:00.000-08:00

Day 2. One reply came in today and it read: ".... I considered it carefully but I'm afraid on balance it just doesn't quite grab my imagination in the way that it must for me to offer to represent it...."

But hang on, i don't remember having already sent this one the material! So what exactly did she read? In my sent-box, all i can see , which i did send to her was a letter of enquiry. Okay, i did send my CV and synopsis and the 3 chapters thing to to an associate of hers, who may have passed on the MSS, but is it likely that she just read my enquiry letter carefully and that it was that which didn't quite grab her imagination?!

Is it likely? I think i prefer a yes to that answer!

How do i feel? I feel like i need a therapist right now!

Well, it's only the second day in the first week of the new year, so let's see what will happen from next week...

Am i optimistic? I am not quite sure anymore....

Waiting for the response

2008-01-03T11:11:00.000-08:00

I sent out about 12 letters to different agents today.

For now, i'm sticking to those ones who accept email submissions: i don't find the whole regular mail thing, in the least convenient. And no, it's not just about the cost of postage!

So, i have sent out 12 and 2 have replied on Day 1. Not bad huh?
One says "send us the first 3 chapters of your book" the other says "sorry, but..."

Let me tell you that this waiting thing is not going to be easy. Why do i say that?
Well, after i punched the last send email, i almost started to panic; what if i have made a lot of grammatical blunders in the initial letters and then the agents see through me that i am just a wannabe? What if all these months i have been living in la-la land, making a fool of myself and my wife- who has read the manuscript-has been too loving to hurt my feelings?

What if?

I have evn thought of making more adjustments to the book and had come back on to the computer when i saw the first email; Dear Elias...That was the good of the two. I would have probably flipped if i had gotten the second one first!

Lest i forget; the interest has come from one of the agents whose letter had a typo in it!

So, there may still be hope for us writers who aint yet mastered the basics of grammer. And as the days run into weeks and the weeks give birth to months, maybe i will yet come into the rest which is the hope of every first-time author...

The journey to getting published

2008-01-03T07:19:00.000-08:00

Okay so the material is finally ready!

It's taken me about 5months to get it to the standard i want but even then it's still not perfect.
I am now at the next stage: to get published.

I don't know how many drafts i have written of this novel. The draft here is no way near the last and since i have gone offline, even the prologue of the novel has changed! I noticed that the end of this story re-shaped its beginning. Strange huh?

Well, that's done now and i have started to look for literary agents.
The first thing i have done was to google literary agents in London and over a hundred have turned up! So, i have had to go through them like with a toothcomb, trying to find what kind of books they're interested in.

One thing that's come out so far and which seems to be the same everywhere is that to get published you need to have the following four things ready:

1. The covering letter. This has to be business-like and straight to the point. I suppose here's the point where they startt to judge you. I have checked a letter, which i have already sent to 2 agenst and discover that there was a typographical error in it!

2. A good synopsis. This also has to be business-like and catching enough to want to make the agent to read on.

3. A good CV. Well i could have sent them the one i have prepared for my jobs in the NHS but i'm thinking that might not be quite relevant, so i ahve had to draft another one.

4. Sample chapters. Most ask for the first three, others say they want something in the range of the first 50-100 pages. I have had to review my first three chapters and have gone through them atleast 10times, each time finding something the delete or to add...I am now scared of the work i need to do on the remaining work. You see my first 3 chapters is just about 16,000 words. Means that i have another 50-55,000 to look through!

I will continue my search for the elusive agent. Who knows i may be the next great thing that happens in the literary world-that's if my letters don't all end up in the rubbish bin!

I'll keep you all posted.

The reflection of oneself

2007-12-17T11:57:00.000-08:00

All who aspire to create works of art are really on a mission to recreate their images in the objective world.
Think about that.
I was thinking about that craving to recreate my image on my way home from work yesterday. I was pondering on what I need to do in order to put the finishing touches to my book in such a way that it would truly reflect my essence. And as I thought of it, I saw images of a potter meticulously crafting his work of art until it achieves the perfection that he craves.
Then I thought of the creation story. Perfection was not achieved until God had recreated his essence in the physical world in the form of the Adam. And only then did he rest.
There’s a restlessness that haunt me as I chisel away on the words that I have created- as I trim the edges and throw away whole sentences; whole paragraphs-searching for the expression that completely expresses me. I cannot rest until I see my self reflected in my work.And then I think: is it not the calling of all of us to create? Because even biological procreation is really a primeval craving to recreate ones image so that the procreator can peer at the reflection of himself as he beholds his offspring’s…
We are all-those of us who dare to be creators of art and those who dare to reproduce themselves-then gods. For it is in that pursuit to behold our image outside of ourselves that the admonition from the voice of the one who is called the Christ rings true: “Know you not that ye are gods?”
And there lies the true calling of man-to be like gods…

Wait for the Book

2007-12-03T06:16:00.001-08:00

I have had to continue with the story offline in order not to spoil the fun for those of you who will be interested in reading the story once it's been edited and out in the market.

This online version gives the reader an idea of the story, but the final version will be different from the story on this blog. I do appreciate the comments posted on this blog and those that have been made on other sites that i have posted excerpts in. Thanks y'all for the encouragement!

I will be updating this blog with the developements in the making of the book and once it's published you will be able to access it from here.

The book should be out by the second quarter of next year.

Beneli.

The last days of Spring/9

2007-11-27T11:26:00.000-08:00

I have arrived at the hospital. But I have been refused to go in because it is well past their visiting hours so I am now walking towards the bus stop where I will pick a bus headed towards Engel’s street. I have gotten to the bus stop and while I stand watching the cars speed past, I am reflecting on the whole mess of love, which is unfolding around me.

I am angry with Tanya. I am angry with her for trying to kill herself over me; how does she think that dying will solve her problems? Or does she think that by trying to kill herself that I will now love her? Does she not know that instead of sympathy I will begin to feel resentment towards her? I cannot be blackmailed into loving her, how can she be so foolish as to think otherwise?

Yet in my anger I still feel a bit of sympathy and a bit of fear and I wonder how comes love can become so self-destructive? And as I reflect on what she has done and I try to understand her motives, I am beginning to see that I am not that different from her; I begin to see that it is the same thing that I feel for Adelaide, which is now making Tanya to think that I am indispensable to her and I begin to understand that I really do not have that right to feel anger towards her.

I do not also have that right to judge her because in judging her I am really judging myself; when she says that she cannot live without me, she is echoing the same way that I feel about Adelaide. And I am beginning to see that her attempt to kill herself is just the same thing as my own self-destructive journey into drinking and whoring.

We are essentially the same. Tanya and I are just the same; she is the bolder one, who is willing to be rid of her anguish at once-to violently be separated from the thing that distresses her, while I-the coward-choose the protracted route of self-indulgence, clinging on to the thing, which I detest. The thing which I detest…?

Can this be the same love that poets write about and romantic movies are made of? Can this be the same or have we both, without our knowing it, fallen victims to something else-a lot more disturbing? Something I detest?
I am now confused; It is beginning to dawn on me that the reason why all along I have not been able to “take things easy and enjoy myself” is because this is really about me.

I need to talk with Tanya and let her know what I am beginning to understand about us…about myself; I need to help her to begin to understand that maybe it is not me that she loves…I am beginning to understand that all this has to do with the way she sees herself and that for her to be able to get home…to Africa…I may not be the one whom she needs.

I will go to her tomorrow and I will talk with her before she tries to hurt herself again.

The last days of Spring/8

2007-11-27T07:35:00.000-08:00

A few hours later, I am sitting in my room and watching Ade. He is staring at a letter, which he just received from home and has just finished reading. He is not saying anything.
“Is everything okay?”
He raises his eyes and looks at me blankly for a few seconds. “She’s gone…”
And I know that he’s talking about his mother…she has lost the fight to live.
“Are you alright?”

He ignores my question and continues to stare at the letter and I recognize that he probably didn’t hear me. I have never been in this kind of situation before; I don’t know whether I should keep quiet and let him deal with his grief alone or whether is should console him-but he is not crying and that makes it even difficult. So I keep quiet.
“Why…God?” I hear the pain in his voice; it sounds like something breaking.
“Maybe she is in heaven right now…” I offer trying to console him. But he doesn’t seem to have heard me.

“Why…?” I hear him groan and I realize that it is best that I leave him alone to resolve his own questions and to grieve alone. Sometimes it is better that way.
I am leaving the room and have patted him on the back briefly to show my commiseration and I leave without saying anything; I don’t really know what to say.
I have gone to Ugo’s room and I meet him packing his bags.
“Ol’boy Ade just got a letter from home saying that his mum just died”
“Na wa! Wetin kill am?”

“She suffered a stroke several months ago and I don’t think she recovered”
“Poor guy…at least him go fit travel during the holidays and not miss any school work…anyway when you go travel?”
“On Sunday”
“We dey leave for Moscow tomorrow morning …we wan pass through Kharkov first”
“Are you going with Eddy?”
“Yes…”

They wanted to pass through Kharkov so that Ugo could help Eddy with some of his stuff as he didn’t want to come back to Rostov after the summer holidays. They planned on going to Nigeria to sell football boots and some antibiotics; apparently they had made quite a lot of fortune in the last few months and they now had a ready market for their goods.
“We’ll leave you and your babes in Rostov…”
“Have you seen Sveta today?”

“She’ll be coming later this evening…I fit leave Sveat for you as well”
“No thanks…Tanya’s problem is already too much for me…she been meet me and Adelaide as we dey waka down the street today and then hin come bolt like person wey dey craze…”
“Bolt go where?”
“I don’t know…”
“So wetin dat one mean?”
“I really don’t know, but I just hope say hin’ no go harm himself…”
“Why…?”
“She just dey behave like person wey get real issues and I just don’t know what to do?”
“And wetin Adelaide come talk?”
“I never talk with am since then”
“You and this your love nonsense! Why don’t you just take things easy and enjoy yourself?”
“I don’t know…”

I really don’t know. That’s the question I have been asking myself and I am wondering whether I should not try to disentangle myself from Adelaide before I get too involved to a point where I cannot turn back. I am just so confused; one moment I know that It feels as if I cannot live without her, while the next I feel so distressed by the thought of her.
Is this what love is about? Why can’t I take things easy and “enjoy myself” as Ugo asks?
“Anyway, you don here the latest with Barry?”

Ah, the man Barry; I heard that he had attacked Omar along the corridor and had continued to punch him until Omar who was carrying a sharp penknife used it on him in self-defense and stabbed him in the abdomen…

Barry had been acting even weirder in the last few days; he had almost attacked Volodya the other day calling him a KGB spy and saying that no matter what they did that they will not be able to plant anything on him. I think most people had realized that something is going on with him, but nobody has been bold enough to do anything about it. He had been literally stalking Omar in the last few days and had been saying that as long as people like Omar-who according to him are an embarrassment to the children of Kememu-walk about freely, then the black man will never know any respect. He says its people like Omar who the white man uses to divide the black man…

I think it’s because of Barry that Omar started to carry about the knife with him. And its lead to this…
“So what happened to Barry?”
“They say they think he is mad and that they’re sending him back to Zaire after they treat his wounds…”
“Poor Barry…I think he just started to muddle up a lot of things from his too much reading…”
“No. I think the guy has always been sick and should have been treated a long time ago”
“But a lot of the things he says make sense…”
“Like what?”

“There are a lot of books he’s asked us to read and I’ll look for them when I go to England”
“You think say you go get time look for book in England? E be like say you think say na holiday you dey go!”

In a way he is right. The purpose of my traveling was to go and look for some holiday jobs to raise the funds to start buying and selling things. So it wasn’t really a holiday in the real sense of the word since I would need to pay him back once I came back.
We were still talking when there was a knock on the door.
“It must be Sveta…if na she then you know say you go vamoose…”
“I know.”

The door opened and it was Sveta; she wasn’t looking happy when she saw me!

“Kasi, what have you don to my friend?” she shouted at me as she walked in.
“What did I do?"
“My friend almost killed herself and she’s at the CGB…”
CGB is the acronym in Russian for the Central state hospital but everybody just knows it as CGB.
“Is she okay…what did she do?”
“She took an overdose of some tablets but her grandmother found her throwing up and called the ambulance…”
“Is she okay?”
“They say she is going to be okay, but she wants to see you…”

The last days of Spring/7

2007-11-27T06:17:00.000-08:00

She is staring at us as we are coming up Puskins street towards the hostel. And after what seems like a brief moment of indecision, she looks away and has just scurried off through the crowd and into the hostel.
“Isn’t that your mulatka?”

The paramedics are carrying a stretcher out as I come up to the entrance of the hostel and I have to wait for them to pass before I can continue my chase. Where is she running to…what is she going to do?

I recognize the stocky frame of Barry on the stretcher, with a bandage tied round his trunk and muttering something about Kememu. What’s happened now and what is this Kememu nonsense he’s been saying of late? Behind the stretcher, a limping Omar is being escorted out by two police officers and it’s clear that both of them have had another fight and that Barry seems to have come out worse. I pass through the crowd and run into the hostel and head towards the stairs to the second floor.

I am not sure where exactly she has run to but I have decided to check Ugo’s and Eddy’s room seeing that her friends still came by there sometimes.
I have come up to room and knocking but no one is opening the door; I don’t know where else to start looking and I am thinking that I should go back to the ground floor and wait there since she has to come out of the hostel through that one exit. I am running down the stairs towards the ground floor and Adelaide is walking up…
“I just saw your…er…the mulatka” she says.

“Where did you see her?”
“She just ran out of the hostel…as if she was being chased by somebody…”
“In which direction…?”
“I don’t know I was already in the lobby…”
I ran out onto the street and look in both directions up Pushkin’s street but she is not there. And I don’t know in what direction to go…

She is gone and maybe this is the best thing to happen; may be it is best for us to end this way…I cannot give her what she wants and that is that. Yet…yet I am realizing that I do feel something for her and though I will be able to live without her I will want to see her again and to end properly with her.

Now I am free to go after Adelaide; I am even more convinced that it is our destiny to be together-why else would we both be left behind in Rostov, while all our friends are posted out? Why else would it be today of all days that Tanya chooses to meet us together, if not that fate has decided to intervene? We are powerless in the hands of destiny; we cannot change what is meant to be. Adelaide and I were meant to be-we have now only to confront our destiny.

The last days of Spring/6

2007-11-26T08:55:00.000-08:00

As we left the faculty building and walked on to Varashilovsky Street I found my self thinking briefly of Tanya; it is sympathy that I feel for her, I am sure of that…

It is already late afternoon as Adelaide and I stroll side by side into Pushkinskaya Boulevard. It’s very breezy here because of the trees and the cool summer breeze is now blowing on my face and caressing it gently; it’s so refreshing-the breeze-so invigorating.

Around us the birds are singing loudly to each other and you can see a few people walking their dogs. Some are just strolling hand along the tree-lined boulevard holding hands, while others-the more elderly ones-are seated on the several benches that can be found at regular intervals and watching the late afternoon pass slowly by.

I am feeling a bit uncomfortable because since we left the faculty building several minutes ago we have hardly said anything to each other; we are strolling on like two perfect strangers who are both lost in their own thoughts and who do not want to say what they are thinking; the spontaneity-the one that I always feel whenever I have been with Tanya in these last few months-is missing.

It feels different with Adelaide as if the reality and the fantasy are of two entirely different people. And I am finding it very difficult to be myself in this reality as I struggle to find the words, which would break the ice. Suddenly, a sense of not being man enough to bring out the woman in her hangs over me like a suffocating cloud. And I am wondering whether it is the lingering shadow of that shame, which had thwarted our budding relationship on that very cold night so many months ago that now covers me with such impotence…

What if underneath that lovely smile of hers she still resents me…?

“What are you thinking about?” she asked suddenly interrupting my thoughts.
“You…”
“What about me…?”
“I was wondering if…er…I was wondering if you still resent me….“
“Resent you for what?” She sounded a bit surprised and looked at me with slightly raised eyebrows.
“Because of…er…you know…the party”
“What happened?”

“Have you forgotten that day when we danced and I er…”
“I know but what actually happened?”
“It wasn’t supposed to…I…er…I was feeling…em…“
“You used me….that’s how I felt and that’s why I walked away”
“But I er…that was not my intention…I think it was the...er…you know...I have desired you from the very first day and…honestly I didn’t want it to happen that way”
“How was it supposed to happen?”

“I mean…only a fool would purposely ruin things with somebody….er…what I’m trying to say is that from the first time I set eyes on you at that Beryozka in Moscow, I…”
“Which beryozka in Moscow?”
“The one at that student’s hotel…that was where I first saw you sitting with Pedro and some friends. I had just come in with Ugo and I saw you there…on that first night”
“I don’t remember…”
“I do…I have never stopped thinking of you since…I er…I think it was the excitement of finally being close to you that evening…please forgive me ”

We were approaching the bust of Pushkin and two teenagers stood next to it. It looked like the young man was reciting a poem to his partner and as I saw them the image of Tanya flashed briefly across my mind. I remembered the day when I had stood at the same spot with her wishing that it was Adelaide that had been there with me….

“After I thought about it, I guessed it was not intentional. So It’s okay…”
“There’s the bust of Pushkin…when I came across his poem I knew that it was just right that I send it to you…those words about the wondrous moment when he beheld a glimpse of perfect womanhood…those words feel just right when I think of you…“.

As we walked past Pushkin’s bust she glanced at it momentarily and a slight frown creased her forehead. “I am not really into poems, but I like the one that you gave to me on that day…I told you so at the party”
“Yes…I still feel the same way…“She didn’t say anything.

We have come to the end of boulevard and have just come out onto Pushkin’s street; I notice that a police car is parked outside of our hostel, while just in front of it is parked an ambulance.
It looks like they’re trying to carry somebody out on a stretcher and the crowd of students standing at the door are making way for the stretcher.
“I wonder what’s happened now!” she said.

I hope it’s not Barry again…I am thinking as we walk up to the entrance of the hostel. And at that moment i notice that one of the people standing in the crowd and who has just turned towards us is Tanya…

The last days of Spring/5

2007-11-26T08:43:00.000-08:00

I have been very busy over the last few days with my end of course exams and though I have thought of Tanya and the incident that happened last Sunday I am not that worried she has not visited as she normally does every other day. She is aware of my busy schedule this week and originally we had planned that we wouldn’t meet until Friday evening or Saturday morning.

It is Thursday morning and I need to go to the faculty to clarify which town I have been posted to after that I’ll just come home and rest.

Ugo had promised to raise me the ticket money for me to go and work in England for the long summer holidays. My application to the Gorodsky Soviet for the exit visa has been approved; the exit visa is an essential travel document for all residents of the USSR, which you need to show to the boarder controls whenever you are travelling out of the country-even if you are travelling to your own country. If you are travelling to a third country, you need the exit visa to show to the foreign missions before they start to consider your application for an entry visa into their country.

I am going to pick up my exit visa tomorrow by which time I will also know which town I have been posted for life rest of my education in this country. I have chosen Leningrad as my first choice and I may be posted there since we have been told that they will give priority according to our performance in the just concluded exams; I excelled in all the subjects, so I should get my first choice.

I think it will be good for me to start all over again; I think I need to be separated from Tanya and even from Adelaide; perhaps If I am sent far away to Leningrad I will be able to forget her. It will be a cruel joke of fate if we both end up in the same city again.

I don’t know how Tanya will take it, but I think what has happened on Saturday will make it easier for her to accept my going way; she too needs a break from me to allow her resolve her issues. Because I am sure that she will be able to get over me-she has to.

I have planned to travel to Moscow on Sunday evening so that I can sort out the transit visas within the week and hopefully leave for the United Kingdom by the end of next week. Tanya should be coming tomorrow or on Saturday…she has to start getting over me.

I have entered the faculty building and just joined a queue of other students who have been standing in the hallway just outside the deans’ office on the ground floor.

We want to petition the dean to reconsider our postings as we have just found out about the towns, which we have been posted to.I have just found out that I have been retained in Rostov even though I hadn’t included Rostov in my list and I was able to excel in all of the subjects! I am now feeling as if I have been shafted by the dean…

The door of the deans’ office has just opened and the student who is coming out is Adelaide. She has turned and started to come towards me and I can see that she is not in the least happy.
“Priviet…”I greet her, hoping that fate would once again keep us together"...where have you been posted to…?”
“They have kept me in Rostov and I didn’t even include it in my list of towns!”
“Me too…and…”
“I don’t understand them...after all they told us! Now the dean is saying that the spaces in Leningrad, Moscow and Kharkov are all filled up…“

“Filled up by whom?”“I don’t know…it looks like the only towns left are Krasnodar and Varonedj and she‘s asked me to go and think about it…but that we should remember that the medical school here is one of the best…"

“I heard that as well but Rostov itself is hopeless…and your friend?”
“Which one?”
“You know…er…is it Pedro?”
“He’s been posted to Varonedj…”
“So that makes it easy for you then…I mean…you don’t have a problem then since there‘s still space in there…”She glared at me.” I told her that I don’t want to go to either Krasnodar or Varonedj…I wanted Leningrad”

“Who’s next?!” the person standing behind me is asking and I notice that it’s my turn to go in as the line’s now moving very quickly.
“I won’t be long…can you wait for me so that we can walk home together?…the weather is really nice”

“I’m going to the canteen…you can check me there”I didn’t spend up to five minutes in the deans office since I was no longer in the protesting mood. I had just gone in, expressed my dissatisfaction to her unsatisfactorily and then I left her office in a haste to see if she was still at the canteen on the ground floor…She was.

I met her sitting there and eating some snacks; she and was having some Pirozhki-the traditional Russian small stuffed buns-and had a half full glass of the creamy Smetana on her table as I walked in and joined her.
“Do you care for some?”
“No thanks”
“How did it go with the dean?”
“Nothing’s changed…I am stuck in Rostov…with you”

Her expression didn’t change when I said that. In stead she raised her glass of smetana to her lips and drank from it and it looked as if she was staring through me…
“It’s not that bad…is it?” I asked.“I don’t like Rostov. There are not a lot people from my country here and there’s nothing much to do…”
“But you still accepted it ahead of Varonedj even though…”
“Oh…don’t bring up Pedro again!”
“Why…are you guys not…?”

“Can we not talk about him…how‘s your little girl?!”
“I don’t have any little girl…”
“Yes you do! The pretty mulatka that I see you with all the time…”
“You mean Tanya?…I…er…”
“She is your girlfriend isn’t she?”
“Her dad was from Nigeria but she’s never met him and I…er…”
“You are helping her find her dad…that‘s classic. You men never seize to amaze me!…can we go now?”

The last days of Spring/4

2007-11-25T06:17:00.000-08:00

Tanya has never known a man in her life and she says that she is giving me her virginity because I am the man of her dreams. So I have decided to treat her right-I will treat her like the woman she deserves to be.

I have prepared a lovely dish from a recipe one of my friends who comes Lesotho has given me. He says it’s a South African recipe and he gave me the herbs, which he bought in South Africa during the winter holidays; he says that the herbs “bring out the flavour in food”…and that they are especially good for “meat-based sauces.”

He is right the food has come out very nice and I have had to open the windows so that aroma, which was so thick in the room, could dissipate a bit and I have sprayed the room several times with an air freshener, which I recently bought from the grocery store and which supposed to spread the smell of spring.

I have placed the bouquet of roses on the table and the card on which I have written the little poem is leaning on to the side of bottle of sweat champagne. Unfortunately, I couldn’t get a bucket of ice anywhere, but the whole atmosphere has come out as romantic as is possible.

Tanya should be here any minute from now. I have slotted in a cassette, which I borrowed from one of my friends and which has a collection of popular love songs; I want to set it at one of the tracks that I think is most appropriate for today. I am fast forwarding the tape and then I find what I am looking for-I will start to play it once she comes in.

I check my self in the mirror and I am satisfied with what I see; Ugo gave me a sharp haircut earlier on today and I am actually beginning to look handsome-that gaunt look that I had at the time when I left Nigeria is now gone; my cheeks look a lot fuller.

There’s the knock on the door.

I open the door and she is standing there…smiling and Al is not with her. Tanya is really a beautiful woman and I must learn to love her…I am thinking as i look at her.

“Your beauty takes my breath away…” I am saying and I kiss her lightly on the lips. She smiles and then lowers her eyes.
She is so shy…

“Thank you…” she says as I offer her my hand and lead her into the room.
“Mmm…I like the smell of the food you cooked…”
“I had thought that the smell would have all disappeared by the time you come… I have had to open the windows and spray an air freshener about three times already…”
“But I like it…what is it that you cooked?”
“It’s chicken…I prepared it with some South African herbs and I have cooked some fried rice…there’s ice cream for desert as well…”
“Mmm…I love ice cream…what flavour?”
“Vanilla…that’s the only thing I could find”
“It’s okay”

“I am sure that the food will taste even better than it smells” I say as I show her to the chair and then go to the tape recorder to press the play button. The track I want has started to play; tonight I celebrate my love for you, it seems the natural thing to do…
“Are you ready to eat?”
“Yes…what this card on the table?”
“Its for you…you can have a look”She picks up the card and opens it to read while I try to dish out the food. As I am busy dishing it out I hear a sniffling sound behind me so I turn around to see her trying to hold back tears…she is not succeeding because I can see two teardrops trailing down her cheeks.

“Are they really for me?”
“Yes”
“Thank you…it‘s so beautiful”We have eaten the food and eaten the ice cream. We are now sipping the sweat champagne and listening to the love songs that are playing in the background.
“Let’s dance…” she says and we get up to dance. It is just the two of us here…alone.

And the evening is going so well; I am really enjoying Tanya’s presence and I am so very conscious of where this evening is heading to. I am not going to fight with my desires any more-she wants me and I want her; it is as simple as that.

She is now raising her face for a kiss and we start to kiss passionately. She is pressing her body on mine and I notice that her breathing is become more and more laboured.
The time has come…

And I begin to her slowly; I don‘t want to break the rhythm of the music playing, which is becoming a soundtrack to our unfolding love affair. She has decided to come to my aid and is in a hurry to free herself of her clothes.

She has such a beautiful body…
I have also started to undress myself as she stands naked in front of me, tugging at my shirt…wanting me. But something is not quite right-something is holding me back and I find myself now struggling with an embarrassing limpness, as a certain nagging feeling surfaces and begins to now hang over me, dampening my passion and it suddenly feels as if I am being watched…as if something is speaking to me-telling me-that it is not right; what I am doing is not right.

I cannot break this young girl’s heart…
I know that I am not free to do this to her; I know that I will still run to Adelaide if she were to as much as smile at me…
“What is wrong?” Tanya is asking.
“I am not yet ready, Tanya…I don’t want to hurt you”
“But…”
“It doesn’t feel right…not yet”
“But you said that you love me…don’t you love me?”
The words that I want to say have stuck in my throat; I can not continue to lead this innocent girl on; I might be a lost soul, but I am not yet beyond redemption.
“Kasi….”

She is crying…
And I don’t know what to say to her. What can I say that will make her understand that it is not right.
“Do you love me…Kasi?”
“I…”“You don’t have to say anything…” she says and starts to put on her clothes slowly, reluctantly…like one who is being drained of life.
“It’s not as you think Tanya, I …”
“You can’t even tell me that you love me anymore”
“Tanya I don’t want to hurt you…you have already been hurt so much in your life”

“But…you are hurting me Kasi…you…”
“Please, Tanya…I don’t want to hurt you…I..”
“But you once said that you love me…”
“Just give me the chance to resolve my feelings for you, Tanya…what you want to give me is a very significant part of your life and I…”
“But I have told you that I love you with all my heart….I want to love you with my body as well…”

She has finished putting on her clothes now and has moved towards the door. The tears are still falling from her eyes.
“Kasi, do you love me…please tell me that you love me?”
The look in her eyes was too heartbreaking for me. It was a look of someone who feels rejected; she looked at me and it was as if she was pleading for something but I do not have what she wants.
I cannot give her what she wants...

She had then looked a way with a rivulet of tears now streaming down her face as she opened the door and walked away.

I could not run after her because I was still naked…

The last days of Spring/3

2007-11-25T04:11:00.000-08:00

I want to love Tanya; I want to be able to feel free with her and not be held back by this nagging feeling of my leading her along a path, which leads to nowhere...

And after we kissed by that fountain at the bottom avenue of Gorky Park I have started to see her not just a lovely girl with a sad narrative trailing her but as a beautiful woman. She has aroused in me a sexual fantasy that throbs in me when I start thinking of her-a sexual fantasy that is shed of the guilt that had clouded my thoughts of Adelaide after we crossed that barrier of innocence so many months ago.

I begin to feel that it is Tanya who is bringing out the man in me. It is she with whom I have learnt to be myself and the spontaneity that accompanies our engagements fills me with an increasing level of confidence and yet…yet in wanting her I am realising that I am not quite free to have her; It is as if I am bonded to Adelaide by some invisible-yet enduring chain-that forbids me to love someone else…

I will be meeting with Tanya today and we will be alone since Ade has gone somewhere in the Northern part of Rostov and he will not be back until later this evening. He has been meeting with a group of Russian Orthodox Christians who meet regularly to share the gospel and to pray in one of their members homes since there are no churches in Rostov-Religion has been banned by the state-so those who meet, usually meet secretly.

This is going to be the first time when I will have my room to my self since that kiss that happened last week, which seems to have changed the texture of the relationship between Tanya and myself; it feels as if we are no longer innocent and I can no longer stop my self from giving in to her sensual desire…

She will be here soon and I have bought her a bouquet of roses and I have translated some lovely words-I don’t know where I first saw them-into Russian;

Under the burning sun of Africa’s harmattan,
I have learnt about heat;
In the white nights of Russians winter,
I learn about cold;
But in the warm embrace of your passionate kiss,
I am learning about love…

I feel that I should begin to treat her like a woman-I should begin to act like someone in love and perhaps…perhaps, love will follow my actions and will blossom in my heart, breaking the chains that bind me…I want to love her and today-after we have sipped the champagne that I have bought and eaten the chocolates, which they say acts as an aphrodisiac-I will make love to her and perhaps then the chain will be broken…

The last days of Spring/2

2007-11-20T06:08:00.000-08:00

Spring was fully upon us and Tanya was becoming almost inseparable from me. She would turn up at the hostel unannounced saying that she can't bear for more than two days to go by without her seeing me.

And on weekends we would spend the whole day together as she is always finding something new for us to do or someplace where we could share an adventure.

The other day we spent the whole afternoon strolling along Pushkinskaya Boulevard and then we had sat at the bench next to the bust of Pushkin, where she recited some of his love poems to me. The poems sounded so beautiful in Russian as she recited them.

“Do you know that Pushkin’s grandfather was African?” she had asked me one day.
“Are you sure?”
“Yes!” And she told me of how his maternal grandfather, Ibrahim, who was later renamed Hannibal, is thought to have come from somewhere near Chad. He is said to have been abducted to the courts of the Sultan in Constantinople and from there he came to Russia…
“Interesting. But is it true?”
“Yes…”
“Who knows he may have come from present day Nigeria then.”
“Maybe.”

After Tanya told me of Pushkin’s African background I fell in love with his works all over again.
"Can you recite the one he wrote to Ms Kern?"
"Yes." She said and she recited the poem I had once given to Adelaide. It seemed like an eternity ago when I had stood shyly in front of her door-not knowing a word of Russian-and handing over to her the envelop, which had the love poem inside.

But as Tanya recited the poem, I was remembering that feeling and the reason why I know that my life is incomplete without Adelaide. And for the rest of that afternoon I thought of Adelaide and I knew, without doubt, that it was her whom I wished was sitting with me that late spring afternoon, sharing those lovely moments as the birds sang in the nearby trees…

Tanya has been wanting me to make love to her because she wants to show me how much she really loves me. But I am telling her that love can also flourish without sex and that I am not in a hurry to sleep with her; I have told her that i know she loves me and that she doesn't have to try to prove it. But she is now saying that if i truly loved her that I will not refuse to make love to her.

I am very reluctant to cross that boundary with her because it just doesn't feel right-not yet. I don't want to spoil what is happening between us because I have started to enjoy her company and I look forward to the new things that she teaches me and the new places that we go together.

I have discovered Rostov with Tanya; I have discovered the many green gardens where she has taught me how to feed squirrels from my hands. I have discovered the beautiful Gorky Park, which though I had seen so many times because it is located in the centre of the city just off Engels Street, I had not really paid much attention to.

We have taken long walks through the park holding hands and laughing to silly jokes as the music of Ala Pugachova played in the background.We have discovered the ice-cream parlours and the restaurants and have watched other lovers sitting and staring into each others eyes, whispering foolishness into each others ears. And we have laughed together and wondered what it is about love, which gives it that power to make children out of adults.

And together we discovered the fountains and the wooden sculptures of the out-of-door museums, where we took so many pictures together and where we shared our first kiss.

I think that it was on that day that my resistance to her started to erode; we had stood near the fountain, which is located at the bottom avenue of the park; the water from the fountain had sprinkled on us like a very light shower and seemed to lend the air a very heavy scent of romance.

Around us, a few other young people sat on the nearby benches, while others just walked by. And at that moment she suddenly called for my attention.
“What is it?” I asked a bit concerned.
“It’s so beautiful...”
“What is so beautiful?”

She didn’t answer but looked at me with a mischievous sparkle in her lovely brown eyes; I noticed how her lips looked so full and inviting and I felt the intoxication of the moment, which seemed to beg for something to happen…

“You want to kiss me don’t you?” she said.
I did not say anything. Instead I had drawn her closer and kissed her passionately.

And I remember that after the kiss she had started to cry.
“Was my kiss that bad?” I asked worried.
“No it was very good. It is just that this is the first time I have ever been kissed by a man…”

She had told me that the caress of my lip on hers made her to want me even more. And after that first kiss I knew that I too wanted her and that it was going to happen. But I was not sure that it was the right thing to do; it did not feel right to become iredeemably entangled with this lovely innocent girl who carried with her so much hurting-yet who was becoming more and more obsessed with me as the days of spring crawled by.

It did not feel right for both of our sakes because my heart still belongs to Adelaide.

Book 4. Chapter 8; The last days of Spring/1

2007-11-20T03:52:00.000-08:00

I have told Tanya that I love her and I am now thinking it was a big mistake for me to have said those words.

It was the day after the Ghanaian Independence party and she had come by as she said she would. She was dressed in a pink sweater and stone-washed jeans and she was accompanied by her little puppy; a brown and white Spaniel, which her grandmother had given to her as a birthday present last year after she turned 17. Tanya calls the dog "Al" because she likes that name and it follows her about everywhere she goes.

I am not really a pet person and I did not feel in the least comfortable about having the dog in the same room with me.

In my village back home, dogs rarely come into the house; they sleep outside where they're supposed to and are mostly used for hunting. In some cases, they also do the dirty stuff, like lick the excrement from the buttocks of the toddlers in the yard after they've done their toileting.

And they can also bite you with very little provaction, especially when they smell that you're afraid of them. So i don't like dogs coming close to me and wonder how some people can actually kiss them.

Al had started to bark at that moment.

“Can't you keep your dog outside or something. What if it wants to wee or do something even more evil…? I asked looking for a way to engage her reason.
“It’s already gone to toilet before we came up. So don’t worry; I’ll know anyway…”

The little thing seemed to sense that I didn’t quite fancy it and had started to growl at me and at one point it looked like it wanted to lunge at me as well.
“Al doesn't seem to like you very much!"Tanya said.
"The feeling's mutual"
"He won't bite you. Sit Al!” Tanya said and it obeyed, finding a spot next to her feet to settle down, but it continued to look at me with its big black eyes and didn't look in the least friendly as if he was sensing that he would soon have to share Tanya with me.

“I brought you some food that babushka says that I can give to you”. She brought out some jars.

“What are they?” I was a bit curious seeing that I was beginning to develop the taste buds for a lot of Russian Cuisine and was actually quite interested in trying out some more.

I remember, for instance, that the first time when I tasted the thick sour cream, which Russians call smetana, I had almost thrown up, but now smetana has become one of my favourite delicacies, which i buy everytime i go to the canteen; okay, I still add some sugar to it most of the time but even on those days when the sugar has run out in the canteen I am still able to drink it without the least hesitation. It usually feels so refreshing and filling...

One thing, which I have not been able to get used to, though, is the red caviar, the krasnaya ykra. And I can’t understand why a lot of people are making a fuss about it; I understand that the black one even fetches a lot of money in the West and that some students have been smuggling them out during the holidays…

“They’re pickled cucumbers and salad" I heard Tanya saying "...my babushka’s is very good at making this kind of stuff…”
“Thanks. I really appreciate this...”
“But I’ve told you that I love you and I will do anything for you!”

And as she said those words again, I guessed it was only right for me to tell her the same. And I did;
“Ya todje loublou tebia”I said.
“Eta Pravda?”…she asked, wanting to know if what i had just said is true.
I hesitated a bit, wondering what i had just gotten myself into. “Er…of course.”

And then she started to cry, leaving me feeling really embarrassed. “Why are you crying?”
“Because nobody has ever told me that they love me…”
“But your babushka must love you quite a lot. You told me how she cares for you…”
“Da but…” She then went on to tell me that she senses that her babushka does the things for her more out of sympathy than of love. And that she has never said in words that she loves her.

“It’s not the same when the person doesn’t say they love you…"
“Yes, but action does speak a lot louder than words-words sometimes do not mean anything and are just empty…”I said trying not to let the guilt, which i started to feel to become so evident. And I started to regret ever having said those words.

“Please don’t ever leave me…” she had said. And had looked pleadingly at me as if she sensed what was going on in my mind.

Spring/6

2007-11-18T06:07:00.000-08:00

It is now almost midnight and I am lying on my bed awake and still thinking about the events of the day. Ade is talking in his sleep in Yoruba so I can’t understand what he is saying.

I am feeling a sense of foreboding and I think it has to do with the fact that I am realising that Tanya is a very troubled young lady who I may not be able to provide the emotional anchor, which i sense she needs to soothe her hurting soul. I am seeing her to be someone who will need a lot of reassurance and attention but I am not quite sure that I can deal with that right now.

She put me on the spot as we walked along Engels street and all the way up to Budyenovsky Avenue after we left the Intourist hotel. She wanted to hear from me that I love her and is not satisfied with my explanation that we have just met and that it takes time for love to develop. She tells me that some people fall in love on their very first date and says that this is something which has just happened to her.

But how can I tell her that I love her when I don’t? How can I give her a promise of something that I will not be able to fulfil? Or is it right for me to tell her that I love her, just so that she can feel better?

Ade has just farted in his sleep. This has distracted me from my chain of thoughts and I am now wondering how most of the people around me seem to be living lives, the narratives of which are turning out to be so tragic. I can sense the image of Philip lurking at the back of my mind but I don’t want to think of him. I don't want to think about death; i prefer instead to think of pleasant things but even she-Adelaide, the only pleasant thing in my life right now-belongs to someone else.

Perhaps I should give Tanya a chance and tell her that I love her. Perhaps in telling her the words she wants to hear I too will begin to believe it and maybe actually start to feel love for her.

Yes, I will tell her that I love her when she comes tomorrow. And perhaps by so doing I will be making her life a little better since I am sure that there can be no harm in telling somebody that you love them…if those are the words that they wish to hear.

I wake up in the middle of the night and I realise that I have been having a nightmare; I can remember that I was falling down a dark bottomless pit and was feeling so scared and I am very conscious of having been alone. I then found myself looking frantically for something in a place that looked like a very run down old barn with some copper jacketed bullets lying about on the ground, yet I am not quite sure what it is that I was looking for.

Then the search took me to a graveyard. It seems like I have come to pay homage to the body of someone but I found that the grave is missing and I suddenly sensed a deep inconsolable sorrow, because this person whom I was looking for is very dear to me. I don‘t know who it is that I was looking for in my dream but I have woken up crying and I am feeling as if I have lost something forever…

Spring/5

2007-11-18T01:57:00.000-08:00

We have been at the party for about 3hours now and I am finding it quite easy to communicate with Tanya; she is so open and easy to talk with, as if eager to be appreciated... eager to be accepted. In these 3 hours I have come to know absolutely everything about her, which there is to know. And the more I know of her, the more I am sensing how so fragile she is and how she is so vulnerable to being hurt in love. I am asking myself if getting involved with her is a good idea after all seeing that I have my own emotional issues to deal with.

Tanya has asked me twice if I have anything going on with Adelaide after she saw us smile at each other as we both danced with our partners. I have told her that Adelaide and I both arrived the USSR on the same day and that we have since remained casual friends. But Tanya doesn't seem satisfied with my answer and has been asking me if I think that she is as beautiful as Adelaide. And she no longer wants to let me out of her sight.

Tanya has just told me that she is in love with me and I am feeling flattered by her attachment to me, but beyond sympathy, I cannot feel anything else for her-not just yet. She is holding my hand right now and has just squeezed it-I am squeezing it back and I am now smiling at her; she is, without doubt, a very attractive woman…a very attractive traumatized woman. And I sense a veil of sorrow in her eyes, which is making me to wonder if I am the man who will be able to help her find the self-esteem and the feeling of security that she so desperately needs.

Tanya needs to go home now as she is not used to being out beyond 10pm; her babushka becomes increasingly anxious for her safety once it starts to get dark and will be standing at the window of the house and waiting for her to come home. She sometimes walks down to the nearby tramway stop, which is located several metres away from their house and will stand in the cold waiting for "maya Tanushka";that’s the affectionate way that she calls Tanya-my Tanushka.

Babushka has always been very protective of her ever since she started coming home from school so many years ago crying because the other children would call her bad names and would sometimes physically abuse her because of her slightly different skin colour. But as she’s grown older Tanya has gotten used to all those unpleasant taunts and has resigned herself to the fact that she is different and that there’ nothing she can do about it. But she knows that one day, when she has met the right man, things are going to be okay. She tells me that she thinks that i am the right man for her…

“Pa’ idyom?” Tanya is asking, wanting to know if we can start leaving. I have told her that I will like to travel with her up to that tramway stop next to her house to make sure that she gets home safe, but she feels it will be a lot safer for her if I walk her only up to the bus stop on Engels street. She says that if some of her neighbours were to see us together they will “…start gossiping again“.
“I understand” I say.

We have gotten up from our seats and are making our way to the exit. I have noticed Adelaide dancing to a slow track with Pedro, with her head placed on his right shoulder and I am wondering whether it is love that holds them together or if they are just two hurting individuals assuaging each others pains.

I have caught Ugo’s eyes as he dances with Sveta in one corner of the hall. He is winking at me and I smile back wondering how comes I am not able to take life as easy as he is doing. He doesn’t seem to be bothered by things around him; he just gets on with his life and he seems so happy and confident about his future-or is he just good at pretending ?

What a coincidence! I am thinking as we leave the hall; the track that is playing seems to be about a great pretender. I am hearing this song for the first time and I am really enjoying it. I have slowed down my pace so that I can listen to it a little longer but I can't quite make out all the words it's singing. I should try and get a copy of the song from the DJ tomorrow since he lives in our hostel.

"...I seem to be what I'm not you see,
I'm wearing my heart like a crown..."

The door of the ballroom has quietly closed behind us and shut out the rest of the song. We are now walking towards the stairs. Tanya is holding on to my hand and it feels as if she is afraid to let go.

Spring/4

2007-11-16T13:44:00.000-08:00

“Kasi meet Tanya my very good friend. Tanya meet Kasi…” Sveta is saying as they come up to where we are standing.
“It’s a pleasure to meet you” I say stretching out my hand. She takes hold of it and I am holding on to her outstretched hands gently, refusing to let go. And she doesn’t seem to mind.

“Well guys lets go and party!” Ugo says and puts his hand around Sveta’s waist.
“Davaite!” Eddy says in agreement and locks his hands with Natasha’s as they too start walking into the lobby area and head towards the stairs.
I am holding her hands as we walk behind the couples in front and I am thinking that she looks ever so lovable. “You are very beautiful” I say “…I am already attracted to you…”

She smiles again like a little child who is being paid a compliment but says nothing. Instead I notice that she is blushing and it is clear that she is a very shy person. I am already starting to feel protective of her as we make our way through the doors and into the large ballroom.

The master of ceremony is in the centre of the room and he is making an announcement about the food that is about to be served. Ugo and Eddy with their dates are making their ways to different seats that they have been able to locate in the long L-shaped table but I am standing at the door and surveying the room with my eyes as soft music begins to play in the background .

The hall is almost filled up and there are very few spaces left to sit down. And then I notice that somebody is getting up in the far corner and adjacent to where the person was sitting, I can see two vacant seats.

We make our way to these seats and I am feeling very proud of having Tanya by my side as I notice the surreptitious glances of admiration from some of the guys who are already seated at the table. I catch one guy staring at her as I pull out the chair for her and then finally sit down next to her.

Adelaide with her friend Pedro is sitting directly opposite me! And as she sees me, she smiles; her smile is one of acknowledgement-nothing derisive or discountenancing-just a simple smile of one acquaintance who wants to acknowledge the other; a simple smile that reminds me of how beautiful she is and which is making me to once again realise how much I need her.

Our story is not yet finished Adelaide, I am thinking as I look at her; our story will remain for as long as I feel this way towards you and it has to be completed...

“Well sit down!” Tanya says.
“Okay!” I say and sit down; I had remained standing after I saw Adelaide and I am now feeling a bit uncomfortable about her sitting across the table from me. Why is fate playing such a prank on me?! Why does it have to be these seats of all the ones in this large hall that are vacant? I am looking at Pedro and I feel a tug of jealousy on my heart. He is just sitting there and is looking past me as if I do not exist in his world.

Tanya is looking at me now with a question in her eyes “Er…so tell me about yourself” I eventually say.
“And what do you want to know?”
“Everything!”.
“Okay.” She says and starts to narrate to me the story of her life. Tanya was born and brought up in Rostov, and had never met her dad who was a Nigerian student studying at the Rostov Institute of Engineering at the time. Her mum was originally from Novercherkassk, the same place that Natasha her friend comes from and which is just a few miles away from Rostov.

In those days, Tanya’s mother would regularly visit some of her friends who lived here in Rostov and on one of such visits she had met her dad. Then one thing lead to another and several months later her mother was pregnant for the African.

Her grandparents on realising that she was going to be born with “black skin”, had bundled her mother out to go and live with her "Babushka"-an elderly distant relative of theirs-who lived alone in Rostov and who had no family of her own. They had threatened her father with death if he didn't keep away from their daughter since for them it was inconceivable for her-their only daughter-to get married to a black man from Africa.

Tanya heard that after she was born, her mother became a victim of regular racially motivated attacks and taunts of being a “prostitutka”. She said that as a result of this life became very difficult for her mother and that she started to find it difficult to move forward with her life. She gradually realised that Tanya had become a burden that she didn’t feel quite able to carry. So one day, she got up, packed her bags and left.

Tanya was 3 years old when her mother left. She has not seen her mother since that day 15years ago when she left her with the Babushka who brought her up and whom she still lives with. Tanya just turned 18 and says that she is looking for a Nigerian boyfriend who will take her back home to Africa one day. And as she talks I am looking at her and feeling very sorry for her.

The waiters have started to serve the food and I notice Adelaide has gotten up from her chair and is slowly making her way towards the exit of the room. I am thinking that she is going to the ladies room and I am staring at her as she walks across the floor.
“What are you staring at?!” I hear Tanya asking. She has been following my eyes and i think she must have noticed the way I was staring at Adelaide.
“I wasn’t staring at anything“ I lie “I am just thinking about the things you have just told me.”

I cannot afford to hurt this girl because she must have suffered so much in her life. I have to make the extra effort to treat her right and maybe I will come to love her and then everything will be alright for the both of us, I am thinking. But I can’t get this need for Adelaide out of me; this need which now pulls on my heart so strongly since I met with her again this evening.

I will have to make the effort to ignore Adelaide for the sake of this poor young lady who is now sitting here by my side...looking at me.

Spring/3

2007-11-16T05:41:00.000-08:00

I have caught up with Ugo and Eddy who are standing in front of the entrance of the Intourist hotel and talking; “I told the babes that we’ll be waiting for them outside of the hotel. They should be showing up any minute from now.” Ugo is saying as he looks at his watch.

“…I’ll see you guys later…” Barry says and continues into the lobby of the hotel, where he catches up with Sampson, the Ghanaian guy, who has started to climb up the stairs. The party is taking place in the ballroom on the second floor and already you can hear music wafting from there into the lobby area each time the front door opens.

“I hope say these people no go say Africans don come again with their noise!” Eddy is saying, commentating on the noise and wondering whether people will complain.
“If say na problem dem for no allow the party at all. And besides na better music wey most of them never hear before…”Ugo responds saying that if the noise were a problem that they probably wouldn’t have allowed the party to take place.

I am no longer as excited about this party as i was this morning. In fact the whole upbeat mood, which I had been experiencing has disappeared with the news of Philips death and I no longer care about this whole issue of finding love. Its all seeming suddenly so frivolous-the party and the love business-when put before the bigger issues of life and death.

I am beginning to see that there are a lot more important things going on around me for me to wallow in my self-pity and be so concerned about assuaging my own selfish desires; there are bigger issues, which have already claimed one casualty and which now seems to be slowly driving Barry out of his mind.

I can almost swear that Barry is losing his mind; i can sense that something is not quite right with him...yet i don't know what i can really do. If i tell him about my concerns and advise him to seek help he will tell me that I am part of the conspiracy and that I want to help "them" get rid of him.

The other day he said that he is convinced that "they" are watching him...and when i asked him to elaborate, he had told me to forget about it. I am worried for him because its difficult to say what he will do to defend himself from the people whom he believes are plotting to get rid of him. And I am also worried about what he can do to Omar if he gets hold of him seeing that he believes that Omar is part of the overall problem, which he has to solve.

I am thinking about these important things and then three lovely ladies are walking towards us. I notice that one of them is smiling at Ugo and I recognise her to be Sveta, Ugo’s new girlfriend. The other two are talking animatedly about something and as they see us standing at the entrance of the hotel waiting for them, they have become more subdued.

I can make out Natasha-the beautiful red head from Novercherkassk that Sveta had introduced to Eddy only last week. And then I notice that the tall slim beauty whose slightly dark features suggests a mixed parentage is looking at me; she seems to be checking me out. And I am thinking that this must be my date. I am thinking that she is beautiful and at the sight of her my heart has started racing…

I am now smiling at her and she has started to smile back as they walk towards us.

Spring/2

2007-11-16T02:54:00.000-08:00

“The more I think about it, the more I am convinced that it wasn’t suicide…” Barry is saying. We are walking across the little park next to the deans office. This park opens out on to Engels street and is a few minutes walk away from the Intourist hotel. Ugo, Eddy and one Ghanaian fellow are walking in front of us and arguing about something. ”…I am beginning to think that he was killed…”he continues.

“Why would somebody want to kill Philip?” I ask.”…he hardly spoke to anybody and even when he’s drunk he was always more interested in women.”
“I’m suspecting that he was involved with the KGB and that when he started to know too much and they felt that they didn’t need him anymore, they had decided to get rid of him…”
“That’s ridiculous Barry!”
“You think so? Then Kasi you have not yet understood how subtle these people can be. And I think that‘s the problem with you docile black people; its either that you guys have sold out or you‘re too damned ignorant to care about the important issues. Look at Ugo, Eddy and Sampson over there-I bet they‘re arguing over something as silly as fighters!”
“Or the problem maybe that you see problems where there are none, Barry. “I say a bit irritated.

He is laughing. “Look around you Kasi, whether you want to accept it or not the white man is on a mission to indoctrinate us with the ideology that we are an inferior people…”

Barry is going off point again. He has become so obsessed with this whole thing of the white man wanting to dominate the black man that his whole life is becoming pigeon-holed into one way of thinking. And I am beginning to worry about some of the things I have heard him saying of late.

The other day he was telling us how there is a global conspiracy by the white man to destroy every remnant of Africa’s ancient history so that they can replace it with the lie that Africans are savages and an inferior species. “They want to make us feel inferior so that they can continue to dominate us“ He said and had then started to speak passionately about Ancient Egypt and about how the white people who discovered the Sphinx in the desert had tried to hide its Negro nose by defacing it.

But “ I now hear the spirit of the ancestors calling me” He said, because the “time to liberate Kememu from mental slavery has come…” He says that “Kememu” is the name the ancient Egyptians used to describe themselves and that it means “black people”.

A lot of the things Barry says sound interesting and show how much he has read on the things that interest him, but others are now becoming a bit troubling; now and then he springs new words on us and say that they are ancient Egyptian words that have come to him. The other day he had used the word “mmiri” for water and said that that it is also Ancient Egyptian but I had decided not to burst his bubble, because that’s the word for water in Igbo.

“…I am sensing that they will soon want to get rid of me Kasi…” Barry is saying as we approach the Intourist hotel. And he was sounding a bit scared.

Chapter 7: Spring/1

2007-11-15T07:24:00.000-08:00

“You hear wetin happen for University?” Ugo is asking as I sit on a stool at one end of the corridor in our wing of the hostel. He is standing behind me and has just started barbing my hair and he's asking if I have heard what happened at the University.
“Wetin happen?” I ask moving my head briefly away from his clipper“…take am easy now, this your clippers need sharpening”. The blades of the clippers he is using feel blunt on my hair and this makes the clipping to be very painful.
“I know, I suppose buy new one but dem no get am for here”
“So what were you saying about the University?”
“ I hear say one black bobo kill himself“
“What?”.
“Dem say one booze-man from Uganda wey dem call Philip been jump from the 9th floor of him hostel after him drink Vodka finish…”
“Are you sure? “I ask. I cannot believe what he is telling me; somebody called Philip at the University has jumped from the 9th floor of his hostel and killed himself.
“Na so me I hear am O…“
“But I know Philip very well! I protested. “ I was with him only last weekend!”
“Yes, but he killed himself 2 days ago. Barry was at the University yesterday and he says its true…”

I am speechless. Why would Philip kill himself? I know he had his issues about his identity but I didn’t reckon that they were large enough to make him commit suicide. Shit! I am remembering his face and the sound of his voice and the sadness when he had talked about his only identity being a shrivelling penis.

I am wondering if that poem was his suicide note to the world and if by it he had been crying out to those of us who were there with him…crying with him tearlessly…when he spoke to us about his feeling of impotence. And I remember how his words had started to reverberate in my soul and had started to sound like the scream of someone who is lost.

Why has Philip killed himself?! I have come to see him as my friend as I am beginning to understand his silence and to see beneath the façade that he tried to build around himself; a facade to keep people from witnessing how vulnerable he really is. And I am starting to see how his pain almost echoes my own existential issues.

But how was I to know that the piercing scream, which I discerned on that day-as he recited his poem-was the piercing scream of one who is petrified because he sees himself sliding slowly but inexorably down a lonely dark tunnel that leads to death?

They say that one of the female students who was waiting at a nearby bus stop had seen his mangled body sprawled on the ground next to the shrubs by the side of his hostel. They believe he fell from one of the balconies of the 9th floor because they had found his key and some empty bottles of Vodka on that balcony.

Some of his course mates say that in the days leading to his death, he was not attending his courses regularly and that on the few occasions when he had managed to come for his courses that he was drunk and quite labile in his mood. They had all suspected that something was going on with him, but nobody could have guessed that it had been as bad as to make him commit suicide.

“Ol boy why you dey cry?” Ugo is asking and he stops barbing my hair because the up and down heaving of my body-from trying not to cry-is making it difficult for him to continue” …me I no go waste my tears for anybody wey kill himself, because the person na real coward hin be and suicide sef na sin…” He is asking me why I am crying and then telling me that he will not waste his tears on anybody who kills himself, because only cowards kill themselves and suicide is also known to be a sin.

No words come out of my mouth because words cannot describe exactly the way I am feeling. How do I start explaining to him that all my childhood insecurities are suddenly bursting forth and that I am now so conscious of death?

But Isn't the fact that my mate has just killed himself a good enough reason to cry? I am trying very hard to hold back my tears but my body continues to heave uncontrollably and the tears continue to flow like a river that is flooding over its banks. And I am wondering if the God of Ade will have mercy on the soul of my now lost friend…

The University/7

2007-11-15T03:03:00.000-08:00

I am walking back from the grocery store across the park and I notice for the first time that the flowers are in bloom. I also hear the occasional chirping of birds from the trees, which have started to sprout new leaves and for the first time in many months I am feeling upbeat .The birds are singing their mysterious songs of spring and I am wondering what they are communicating with each other as they sing. And then I start to hum the tune to one of my favourite hymns about morning breaking and a blackbird speaking…And I am trying to remember the wordings of the hymn but can’t get past the first stanza.

The cold air feels very refreshing. I breath in deeply to fill my lungs and then I exhale slowly-spring is here; there’s magic in the air and it is feeling as if a refreshing breeze is blowing away the stale air of gloominess, which had hung over my daily existence for the past few months and which had until today left me with a nagging sense of worthlessness and filth.

Maybe things are not as bad as I am making out, after all; suddenly I am not able to understand why I had been feeling so low in mood and why I have not been unable to live my life over the past few months without that burden of guilt-like the sword of Damocles-hanging over me. It is suddenly feeling as if a thick veil is lifting inside of me and I am feeling young and free. I fill my lungs again with a gulp of crisp fresh air. It is permissible to make mistakes in ones youth, I tell myself. Because youth has always been associated with folly anyway. I am young and its spring; the time when the earth is reborn and when the scent of love hangs thickly in the air.

I am thinking about love now and with the thought of it, the image of Adelaide is breaking forth into my conscious mind. That image that refuses to go away and which is always there lurking almost imperceptibly on the margins of my consciousness; lurking in the shadows but still very much there. And in the last few months I have been trying to distract myself from her; I have gone to extra lengths to ensure that I do not run into her in the hostel or at the preparatory faculty. I have been mostly successful but sometimes I have caught a passing glimpse of her in the distance and I have realised that I still need her. But it is clear that she belongs to the other fellow whose name I have learnt Is Pedro.

I have resigned myself to the knowledge that I have to move on beyond her and in my quest to forget her, I have come to know quite a lot of women. Yet in this knowing I have also come to understand that I need something much more deeper than the superficial intercoursing of the flesh, which I have been experiencing with the many “fighters“. A lot of guys like Ugo and Eddy-and the guys at the university-seem to be very comfortable with the no-strings-attached fighting as if they do not feel up to engaging with the women emotionally, but I do not feel cut out for that because it feels as if my own journey is different.

I find it difficult not to emerge from the “fighting” without feeling guilt-ridden. And i also find myself loathing the women whom I have slept with to the point where i never want to set my eyes on them again...until I once again numb my conscience with the Vodka and then the desire is there again throbbing strongly in my loins.

I have resolved that I will not continue like this. My heart longs for that pure relationship, which would have developed with Adelaide; my heart needs to love a woman. Because I know that the journey of love is one that I must make in order for me to complete my rite of passage into a real man and I have now decided that if it is not going to be with Adelaide then it will be with someone else; I can no longer be chained to my unattainable fantasies of her seeing that she belongs to someone else and I have blown my chances with her. I must now move on; it is as simple as that.

Tonight the Ghanaian’s are celebrating their Independence Day at the Intourist hotel and they want to have an even better party than the Nigerians. Ugo’s most recent girlfriend, Sveta-who he says is a good girl because she has never really had a boyfriend up until she met with him 2weeks ago-is coming to the party tonight with a close friend of hers. I am looking forward to meeting with this person and hoping that she too is a good girl; I am hoping that with her I can start my love story all over again and that through her I will be exorcised of the image of Adelaide.

I am going to collect the white silk suit, which Eddy has promised to lend to me for this evening. His trip to Turkey went very well and him and Ugo got very good returns on their investments. They had immediately re-invested part of the money in another trip that Ugo's friend in Moscow had made to Nigeria to sell antibiotics to some private hospitals and now they've become the big boys in the hostel with the money to burn and the clothes to show for it...and with an even larger stream of women, trooping in and out of their room at the weekends. I am beginning to envy them two guys.

Oh well, my time too will come! I am thinking as i decide to go and remind Ugo about the haircut that he's promised to give me later on this evening. Tonight I must look special because tonight a new chapter in my life is about to begin and its important that I begin to look the part.

The tunes of another familiar song begins to play in my heart as I begin to think about tonight. I am feeling increasingly excited and wondering what this girl-whom Sveta has promised to acquaint me with-will look like. I am hoping that she is beautiful and that I can fall in love with her.

Love is in the air, everywhere I look around...

The University/6

2007-11-14T04:42:00.000-08:00

I notice a police car parked just in front of our hostel as I walk down the street, which leads from the bus stop on Engels street to 212 Pushkinskaya. As I approach, two very tall police men come out from the hostel and are entering their car. They are now driving in my direction towards Engels street and as they speed past me I am wondering what on earth has been going on in our hostel since I left for the University yesterday evening.

In the lobby area one of the porters is mopping the floor but I can still see some stains of blood near the porters desk. A few students are standing nearby and talking, probably about the incident that must have just happened and I notice one of the Nigerian students standing near the steps conversing with a guy from Ghana.
“ What happened?” I am asking as I walk up to them.
“ Barry head butted Omar and he’s had a noise bleed!”
“Who’s had a nose bleed?“
“Omar…”
“ Na wao for this Barry” I say “…the guy should take things easy. We‘re not at war…”
“What lead to the head butting?” I ask.
“Guys, I’ll see you later I need to go” The Nigerian student says and leaves.
“ Charlie…” the Ghanaian said refering to me with the generic name Ghanaian’s call people “…you know say Barry is always complaining about Omar. I heard that he called Omar an Arab slave. And then one thing lead to another…”
“What did the police do?”
“Took their statements and then left without saying anything; you know, the usual thing they do when it’s a problem between two Africans…”

I am not surprised that Barry attacked Omar; he’s been promising to do that for some time and had even warned Omar to run from him anytime he’s on his own! Omar is from the Sudan and is Moslem. Him and Barry have been having a lot of arguments about Omar’s racial origins since Barry first noticed that Omar prefers to hang around Arabs than with black Africans.

The other day one of the guys from Morocco had mentioned in passing how he finds Omar’s rejection of everything black African to be disgusting and since then Barry has been waiting for an opportunity to have a show down with him.

“How can some body be so self-loathing as to deny his own race?” Barry would ask “…the moron doesn’t know that Arabs don’t really like Africans and that for them, every black African is supposed to be a slave. Even the word for black people in Arabic translates as slave…”
“But why is that your problem?” I asked“…If that’s what the man wants to call himself, who gives you the authority to confront him about it?”
“It is my problem and I’m going to fuck Omar up. I‘m going to take him on man to man and then beat sense into him until he begs for mercy and accepts that he is a black African!”
“Fighting him will not make him change his opinion”
“It will make me feel better!“ Barry said.

I caught up with Barry in his room. There was a group of other guys there trying to calm him down, but he seemed to be winding himself up even more.

“You guys should have let me hit Omar a few more times!" I heard him saying as i entered his room "...I feel a lot of rage at his nonsense; stupid Arab slave! When will we Africans wake up and stop allowing every other race to humiliate us? “
“Ol’ boy calm down” one of the guys was saying“…you cannot change what has been in history. And you certainly can’t change the thinking of millions of people by just fighting one man.”
“I can’t change him, but I can at least make him feel the physical pain of being humiliated as a man, in addition to the shame he feels about who he is. I‘m not yet finished with him though. I want Omar to start having nightmares about me. I want him to wake up in the middle of the night sweating with images of my big black African fist terrorizing his enslaved mind. Because the next time I meet him on his own, my fist is going to smash into his broad Negro nose…”

The look in Barry’s eyes as he is talking tells me that he is not making idle threats; he means everything he is saying and at this very moment I do not envy Omar.

The University/5

2007-11-13T13:06:00.000-08:00

“Comrade…” The man sitting next to me on the bus is saying, distracting me from my thoughts on Philip“…how are you?”
“Fine thanks”
“Where are you from?”
“From Nigeria”
“But you look African”
“Yes. Nigeria is in Africa”
“Is it a village or a town in Africa?“
“No it’s a country…”
“I hear that there’s war and famine in Africa…”he says as if he didn’t hear what I just said.
“I’ve heard that also.”

There’s been quite a lot of talk lately about the famine in Africa. They’ve been showing documentaries with pictures of the poor starving African children with protruding abdomen’s and with flies trying to perch on their cracked lips as they slowly die of hunger under the burning African sun. And they’ve been playing that Bono song that he used to raise money recently for the Children of Africa, where they ask if we know its Christmas time.

“It must be difficult for you poor Africans.”
“Yes…”I wish I had a book or something to start reading to give the man a little hint that I didn’t feel like talking.
“So are you a refugee here?”.
“No, I am a medical student…”
“Medical student?!” he asked surprised “…I didn‘t know you have African Medical students. I used to think that its very hard to become a Doctor these days!”.

Its moments like this that I wished Barry was here with me; much as I don’t like the way he would have become confrontational and start challenging the man but he at least had enough information to make the man go on the defensive and eventually shut up. Barry always finds it difficult to deal with these kind of questions and wouldn’t mince words about the fact that he believes that the person is ignorant…not even if he is the only black man on the bus. Unfortunately, he’s gotten himself beaten up quite a few times as well.

But I am beginning to understand why Barry feels he is engaged in a battle and why he feels so angry with most of us, especially the Nigerians whom he says are "squabbling over petty tribal issues" while the rest of Africa waits for us-"as the most populous black nation on earth"-to lead. “You guys are an embarrassment to the rest of the black race...” Barry would say.

He also says that all white peoples minds are made up about Africa and Africans anyway and that asking them to change that opinion would be challenging them to "change their conceited opinions about themselves".

"Why would a people want to stop thinking of themselves as better human beings anyway?" he would ask...."It is such beliefs that keeps them from confronting their own vacuous lives, so tell me why a person would replace a feeling of security with nothing. Most of them are either too conceited or too ignorant to believe in God so what is left for them to believe in? Tell me."

I usually don’t know what to say when he begins to talk about people's beliefs because i have my own unresolved issues. But I am beginning to see that its human nature to want something to believe in and that it doesn’t matter whether its true or not because what‘s most important, at the end of the day, is the function of that belief for the individual-or group of individuals.

“How did you become a Medical student?…”the man is asking.

The bus is trying to park at the central market where we all need to get off and I don’t want to answer his questions anymore, so I pretend that I didn’t hear him.

The University/4

2007-11-13T06:30:00.000-08:00

I am on my way back to the medical hostel. I left while Philip and the fighters were still sleeping as I didn't see any point in staying on any longer; with morning people should get up and get on with whatever remains of their wretched lives.

I am thinking of Philip now and wondering how come he is such a quiet person when he is sober; a totally different person from his inebriated self. And I am wondering what really goes on behind those sad dark brown eyes of his that always looks down when you try to meet his gaze. The only thing I know about his past is that he is of mixed race and that he never knew or liked his white father. He also usually felt uncomfortable around white males but until a few days ago-when he had decided to recite a poem, which he'd recently written-I didn’t really think that he had any serious identity issues.

I was sitting with him and two other guys in his room and we were drinking as usual, trying to get slowly drunk while we waited for his fighters to arrive. And then he suddenly announced that he is working on a poem and that he wants to entertain us with it because he heard the rumour that was going around about him having a big penis.
"I have written a poem about my penis!” he announced.

I am not suprised at his choice of topic. I thought as i quaffed my Vodka ,waiting for him to hit us with the expected punch line of what i assumed would have been a crude joke.

But he suprised all of us; he came out instead with something very profound and very sad. I am now trying to remember the exact words,which he had used but most of his words are gone. And I know that I must get hold of the rest of the words of the poem because as long as I don't have them, their silence will continue to haunt me.

I have met up with him twice since then but he has always been too drunk to care and would laugh at me calling me "Oga...", the Nigerian way of refering to someone in authority "...why you like this penis matter sef?" he would say in his broken pidgin English.

I remember that he started off by saying something along the lines of him being just an appendage to his penis! And then he continued in a beautiful recitation, which his East African accent lent a certain cadence that could only have come out of Africa. And which keeps on reverberating in my innermost being like the piercing scream of a friend lost in a dark and lonely tunnel.

I watch the trees running past the windows of the bus and around them I see the white snow-capped landscape of southern Russia; but in my heart I hear his voice...
“It is my penis that defines me
It gives me a sense of belonging
not my colour...

I feel lost
in the eternity
which separates these two colours that have birthed me…

I don’t dare to call myself a man
for i am dispossessed of the pride of manhood
when I ponder the humiliation
that my mother felt at the point when she was raped;
the point when I was conceived

I am not coloured;
i will not let colour to define me….

Now you spit on my humiliated face
and tell me
that i am not a man;
You then remind me of my impotence
on the bed of history
where you ravaged my innocent black mother

No; I am not a man-men do not sit back
and watch their mothers defiled
I am just a creature
that is attached to one shrivelling colourless penis…”

There was a lot of sadness in his voice and I remember that we had all remained silent after he read his poem; not even the sound of clapping was heard. Instead there was the sniffling of restrained tears as we all sat looking into our glasses of Vodka not wanting to look at each other; African men are not supposed to cry.

Perhaps this is the silence that Philip carries with him in his moments of sobriety; perhaps this is the silence that he is always seeking distraction from when he reaches for his Vodka and for the embrace of his many fighters.

The University/3

2007-11-12T13:55:00.000-08:00

I wake up with a start. It is still very dark in the room as morning has not yet broken and I am finding it very hard to get my bearing. My head is throbbing with a pulsating ache and there’s somebody lying in the bed beside me…the person has just started to snore. I try to peer through the darkness to see if I can make out the form of the person and I notice-as I begin to edge closer-that the long tangling blond hair, which is slightly visible from beneath the duvet, belongs to a woman.

I move even closer to the warmth of the body and my groping hand connects with bare flesh; she is naked and I am suddenly aware of my own nakedness. Where am I and who on earth is lying here beside me? The effort to remember the events of the last few hours is making my head to ache even more intensely-but I must remember. This is not the first time in the last few days that I am waking up like this.

What happened last night?…I am beginning to remember now:

Our winter holidays started almost 2 weeks ago and I’ve been spending a lot of time at the University since Ugo travelled to Moscow to meet up with some of his old friends last week. He heard that one of his class mates from College is studying at the Patrice Lumumba University and he‘s gone to discuss business with the fellow. Eddy travelled to Kharkov to meet up with his brother with whom he is to later travel to Turkey to buy leather jackets.

I have been finding the rest of the guys in my hostel to be too boring; especially my room mate Ade, who thinks that I am now “a lost soul”. I have also been finding Barry a bit annoying because he’s always talking about racism and the black cause. I am beginning to think that the guy has some serious issues because he is damned too rigid in his thinking and sometimes comes across a bit belligerent when anybody disagrees with him.

Clements and Ken have also travelled for the holidays but I have been hanging out at the University with Philip-a 3rd year Law student from Uganda who loves his Vodka and his women. He likes to call the women "fighters" and is not concerned about the fact that most of them have done the rounds of most other guys in the hostel. But he seems to be particularly successful with them as he is always having a constant stream of them visit him; to the point where people actually come to him for help. And I am beginning to think that I know the reason for his popularity with the women; the other day I had accidentally caught a glimpse of his manhood and the size of it has left me feeling very very insecure about mine ever since.

I am in Philips room now and I am sure that he is in the bed across the room with one-or two-of his fighters. Yesterday evening I had come round to the University to meet up with him and as always he was drinking in their company. And as always I decided to get drunk in order to free myself from my reservations about fighting-a freedom, which now feels like an even worse enslavement because as always when I emerge out of my labyrinth of drunkenness and I am confronted with the reality of what I am gradually becoming, I am overcome by a certain sickness of spirit. I feel like one who is held captive in the grips of carnality and who is completely yielded to seducing spirits who now lead me deeper and deeper into a dark pit of depravity from which i will not be able to come out…I am a lost soul, Ade says-a person in need of salvation.

But where lies this salvation that Ade talks about? How can I, by just listening to the words he tells me, be cleansed of the darkness that torments my soul? How can my polluted spirit be purified? How can the memory of my childhood injustice and the pain from this guilt, which gnaws away at my soul, be washed away?

What will fill this emptiness that seems to be ever enlarging with the passing of each day; this dark and encroaching emptiness that is seeking to completely engulf me…and which seems to always linger with me until I can find something to distract me?

I am now reaching towards the softness of the body that is lying next to me; I am edging even closer and I am beginning to feel the hardness in my loins as my hands are now finding her warm moist softness. She is turning towards me and is now beginning to part her legs as she begins to moan-I need this distraction…

The University 2/

2007-11-11T13:01:00.000-08:00

It’s a quarter to midnight; the room is now very crowded and I am beginning to feel really drunk. I really should have taken Ugo’s advice and kept to one type of alcohol but I had started to sample the Champagne and the Cognac and then tried a few bottles of the Djugulovsky beer after Bertha had taken a fancy to someone else.

I can make her out now dancing with the Latino fellow who chatted her up almost 2hours ago…undoing a lot of the work that I had done. And from the movement of both of their hands on each others bodies as they stand in the corner pretending to be dancing I can see that they are making quite a lot of progress with each other.

But they don’t bother me any more as I begin to see the funny side in everything; life is a load of shit anyway. I mutter to myself as I take another sip of the Cognac in my hands. I just tried chatting up the girl sitting next to me but she glared at me because I had started to laugh after she told me that she can’t understand what I am saying-when it was so clearly Russian language that i had spoken. At least it sounded that way to me!

“Its Africansky Russky” I told her and started to laugh.
“You’re drunk!” she responded and turned away hissing. And I can swear that I heard her say something about a drunk abezyan and that got me laughing even more as an image immediately flashed through my mind of what I might look like for her to have said that; can you imagine a drunk abezyan?; very funny indeed!

But now I am feeling really pressed to go to the toilet before I wet myself; this is going to be like the third time in the last one hour and I’m trying to wait until the last moment because the thought of having to press through this crowded room is not looking very appealing; the last time-barely half an hour ago-I had pushed into a fellow standing near the door and he had spilled his glass of wine onto his shirt and then wanted to start a fight with me if not that some people intervened.

I don’t like fighting and am looking around the room to see where some of my friends are in case I run into the guy again and he wants to start another fight. I can’t see Ugo or Barry in the crowd but Ken is standing next to the DJ at the corner of the room and seems to be giving him some instructions.
I check my time and notice that It’s less than ten minutes to midnight. Maybe I should wait until we toast to the new year and then I’ll go to the toilet…Shit its coming…I can‘t wait any longer!

I’m getting to my feet and suddenly I’m feeling really queasy. Shit! I hope I don’t throw up here. I push my way through the crowd and make it to the corridor just outside of the door but there’s a queue waiting to use the effin toilet! Shit. I’m finding it very difficult to keep the vomit and the urine from embarrassing me in front of everybody. I‘m rushing to the nearby balcony but I start to throw up just before I get there and I notice that I’ve been equally unsuccessful in keeping in the urine so I‘m unzipping to do it from here onto the ground below.

I start to hear people shouting; "S' novim god'om!...Happy New Year...!” They’re welcoming the New Year; so its here already, I am thinking as I watch my stream of urine make its way from the balcony and disappear into the snow covered ground six floors below; 1987 is being born and I am a f!@ked up drunk pissing from the balcony of a hostel in the heart of Russia...my stepmother would be so very proud of me.

BOOK 3. Chapter 6: The University/1

2007-11-11T05:07:00.000-08:00

“Gorby is a member of the illuminati…” the guy sitting just to my left was saying as we sat talking about the unfolding events in the USSR. This was Wednesday 31st December 1986 and almost 3 month since the day of that incident.

Ugo and I had come to the University earlier that day for a party that was going to take place in Clements room later that evening to usher in the new Year. It was supposed to be a small party and none of the students from the preparatory faculty had been invited but Ugo had heard of it anyway and invited me to gate-crash with him. Eddy had initially wanted to come along but him and Ugo decided that it would make more economic sense if he travelled to Kharkov to meet with his brother and to plan for an upcoming trip to Istanbul. They heard that you could buy good leather jackets in that city and then make lots of profits from selling them to the Russians. So they had agreed to pull together their resources-in order to maximise profits-and that Eddy should discuss with his brother about getting buyers for the goods in Kharkov since Rostov was still a bit unsafe for business.

I am sitting with a glass of Vodka in my hand in Clements room. This room is quite spacious as the bed and most of the furniture has been taken out to create space for the party. Ugo has just gone out with Ken to buy more drinks and some food while at the far end of the room, Clements is bent over trying to set up the music system. Sitting just to my left and smoking a cigarette is a guy called Barry or Bartholome-as Ken prefers to call him.

Barry is also in the preparatory faculty of the medical school and is originally from the Republic of Zaire. He is very fluent in English and French and seems to be very interested in politics and African history. I watched him as he talked about yet another conspiracy. I wonder where this guy gets all his information, i thought. His hair cut was low cut giving him a military look and he wore the type of-almost characteristic-oversized designer clothes, which was casting the Zairian’s as the best dressed Africans in town.

Barry believes that there is a grand plan by the white race to discredit everything that people of African origin have ever done and for him Cheik Anta Diop is an African hero-“a modern black Pharaoh” he likes to call him. I had never heard of the man until I met Barry who would say that apart from the fact that Cheik Anta Diop was an all round genius, his works also challenge the “Eurocentric lie that Ancient Egyptians were not black Africans”. Barry seemed to have a lot to say about so many other things as well.
“…you people are naïve if you think that Gorby’s perestroika has not been orchestrated by the illuminati…”he was saying.
“Who are they?” I asked
“The people who control the FBI; the people who control America; the people who control the world…Kasi, you want to tell me that you have never heard of the illuminati?”
“No…”
“I have…” Clements said still fiddling with the electrical appliances across the room “…but I don’t believe they exist; I do agree with you that Gorby is an agent of the West though”.
“Why do you say that he‘s an agent of the West?” I asked never having been previously interested in politics until I started listening to the things that Barry-and a lot of the other guys at the University-had to say. I am starting to realise that I have been reading the wrong books…

“Well. Look at all this Glasnost and Perestroika business that the man started to introduce since he came into power last year; he is re-structuring Communism, for crying out loud! He wants to make the USSR to become a more market driven economy and then to make the system more democratic; Aren’t market-economy and democracy mantra’s of the Capitalist West?” Clements was saying.
“Yes, but things are even a lot more covert than you think Clements! Perestroika and Glasnost are ideas whose times have come in the grand scheme of things for the powers that be. The so-called cold war and indeed the world wars were all gimmicks to distract the gullible from the Illuminati’s agenda to consolidate on power before gradually moving on into the next socio-economic era-the era of the new world order. And that‘s why Gorby‘s doing what he’s doing…”
“ But I don’t understand how the world wars or even the cold war could have benefited their cause…”

“Kasi, your ignorance amazes me! “ snapped Barry sounding a bit irritated, “…even in the political economics classes that they’ve been teaching us so far in the prep faculty have you not heard them go on about the thing they call dialectics. What do you think that it means in practical terms. Do you think its only about arriving at truths through arguments?; Its about making progress through the creation and resolution of conflicts…”

I couldn’t respond to what he was saying because I lacked the information to be able to say anything.
“Interesting angle you have there Barry…” Clements said"....but i believe you're really talking about dialectical materialism. Right?" And at that moment there was a knock on the door.
“Dver Otkrita!” Clements shouted saying that the door is open. The door opened and three women came in.
“Hello krasavitsi! Come right in and sit down” Clements said…” Ken has gone to buy some more stuff for the party“.
The women stood just inside the door looking a bit unsure if they should come in.
“Did we come too early?” One of them asked.
“ Not really. People will soon start trickling in, so the earlier you come the better so that you can get a good place to sit down. Because its looking like we’re going to have a lot of gate-crashers today”. Clements had looked at me when he’d mentioned the word “gatecrashers”.
“Maybe we go and come back later?” she said.
“You might as well start settling down. I’m almost done with the music system. Once I’m done its kicking off. So what’s the point of going? . Meet Kasi and Barry from the medical school. Kasi meet Heidi, Gretchen and Bertha from East Germany”.

The three women were part of a group of University students who had recently come to Rostov for a few months exchange programme to study Russian Language at the University. Ken was already dating one of them-the one who had done the talking and whose name is Gretchen. He had invited her to come with two of her friends to the party. While Clements had done the introductions I found myself attracted to the one called Bertha and had tried not to make it so obvious that I was checking her out. But she caught me looking at her and had smiled.

Bertha did not look German. Well not to me she didn't; I used to think that German’s were all big with blonde hair and blue eyes and were always serious. But she was petit with very dark short hair and full lips. I could not quite tell the colour of her eyes from where I sat but they looked a certain shade of brown. Her hips looked a bit small while her large chest gave her the figure “9” in profile. You probably wouldn’t describe her as being beautiful, but she certainly was very sexy and was now filling me with a lot of lust…
“Ah! Its done,” Clements announced and he slotted the popular Eurhythmics song-sweat dreams are made of this-that had come out just a few years ago. “Let me get you beautiful ladies something to drink. What do you want?”.
“ Do you have sweet Champagne?”. The one called Heidi asked.
“ Sure. And Gretchen…Bertha?”
“The same thanks”
“Some sweet Champagne coming up!” Clements announced.

The month of October/6

2007-11-08T12:22:00.000-08:00

For many nights I have stayed awake trying to understand what happened to me on that evening and I ask myself how comes I failed in the one test of my manhood that i needed so much to pass.

I grope for the excuses, which i can use to justify my weakness or which can explain away the fact that i have now ruined my chances with her. And i try to tell myself that we were not meant to be together...and even then the shame lingers and the ache in my heart refuses to go away.

I have tried to push the memory of that day out of my mind and i have tried to believe that I am moving on from her but she continues to haunt me like the ghost of a person whom i must have violated; I wake up in the middle of the nights with her image so strong in my mind but then I also feel the same hardness in my loins and notice the same drops of shame...soiling me.

I can no longer think of Adelaide now with that same purity that had once made me to believe that the love of her is the key to my redemption from the guilt that was birthed at that moment of my transgression with Betty. When i think of her now, I remember the image of her soft body that had rubbed so intimately against my hardness-and the the way in which the last drops of my pride had drained away on that night...

My dreams of her have also become corrupted; I always see her through thick clouds of smoke in the poorly lit hall of a brothel where there is no smile on her lips or joy in her eyes when she looks at me. And I see her always beckoning me to follow her as she moves towards the familiar doors, which leads to the squalid little room where i had become a man in the arms of Betty, the prostitute.

I now feel bereft of the innocence to truly love a woman; i feel bereft of the inspiration to want to become a better man...I feel so very lost.

The month of October/5

2007-11-04T02:05:00.000-08:00

I discern a hint of a smile on her lips and a glint of recognition in the surreptitious glance that she gives me as she passes by; she has recognised the common destiny that is attracting us and which is poised to ultimately bring us together. It is meant to be that way. And It is now left for me to make the next move by rising up and playing the man; I must ask her for a dance before this night is over.

Another track has started to play, but the song doesn’t sound familiar and very few people are getting up to dance. I notice that the fat fellow is making his way out of the dance hall, while she and her other friend remain seated a few rows of seats behind me. And I know that the time has come for me to make my move now that he is not there.

I have gotten up and I am moving towards her, where she is engaged in a conversation with her girl friend and she looks up as I approach.

"Can I...em...have a dance with you?” I say a bit hesitantly in English, hoping that she understands what I am saying.
She looks at her friend who shrugs her shoulders and says something in Portuguese.
“But music not good!” she responds, indicating the almost empty dance-hall.
“I know but...”I am hesitating because I am not sure what to say that would be convincing enough; I am also aware that her girlfriend is listening.
“Em…Okay”, she finally says and then offers me her hand as she gets up smiling.

We make our way to one corner of the half-empty dance floor and I am feeling a bit awkward; all the bravado, which had welled up in me just a few minutes ago have seeped away and I am now feeling like a deflated balloon. The unfamiliar music is playing in the background and we begin to move our feet to its rhythm; she is looking at me and then starts to smile. And I smile back, knowing that I need to say something, but not quite sure what it is I have to say because all of a sudden my mind has gone completely blank.

“Kak tebia zavut?”She finally says in Russian, breaking the awkward silence by asking after my name.
“Menia zavut Kasi” I respond slowly.
“I like poem you give me. I read it in Portuguese” she says a bit hesitantly in English.

And I love you, I want to say but can’t find the courage to say it.
“Yes, it’s a lovely poem and I think of you when I read it”
She is smiling. And I want to tell her that her smile is the most exquisite thing that i have ever seen and that the thoughts of her have accompanied my every heartbeat from that night at the beryozka in Moscow when I set eyes on her for the very first time…but my tongue is tied.
“You are...em...beautiful” I manage to say.
“Spasibo!” she responds in Russian.
The music has stopped and she wants to start going back to her seat.
“That was too quick! Can we dance one more?” I ask desperately.
“Shto?”
“Can we dance to one more song” I ask a lot slower this time.
She nods.
And I notice that the DJ has given a sign for the lights to be dimmed; he is about to play a slow track and I smile knowing that this confirms my earlier thoughts that it is destiny that is bringing us together.
“Tonight, I celebrate my love for you…” the track of Peabo Bryson’s popular song begins to play.
I know that I now need to hold her hands and to pull her gently to me; this is no longer the time for words because once we are locked in a warm embrace and she begins to feel the beat of my heart caressing hers, she will understand.

She is not resisting as I pull her in towards me and close my eyes, relishing in the fleeting warmth of her breasts that begin to brush against my chest. A feeling of slight discomfort overtakes me as I notice a mounting tension begin to throb in-between my legs. This is not supposed to happen; what i feel for her is a lot purer than this but my body as if it has a mind of its own begins to respond to her sensually.

And she does not pull away even when it is clear that my hardness is brushing against the softness of her body; Oh! She is so very close to me now and I can feel her lovely softness touching me; ever so gently.

She-who is the object of my fantasy; the lovely dream that has been transformed into my reality and moulded just for me-is now here. Her head is on my shoulder and her body is locked in my warm embrace and I can feel her tender heart beat against my chest...speaking to me.

“What I want most to do is to make love to you…”I hear the track playing in the background.
And I have now placed my left hand firmly on her back, while my right one is moving ever so gently downwards and lingering at her lovely bottom; I am pulling her a little closer to myself and I begin to feel the warmth of her body-separated from mine by just a few layers of thin clothes-as our groins begin to brush against each others ever so gently; lingering together ever so longer. And she is not resisting.

The tension in my loins is begining to mount and my breathing is becoming more laboured. And it feels as if It is only the two of us here as the music playing in the background becomes the soundtrack to our unfolding love story; this was meant to be.
“Tonight there'll be no distance between us...”

"Aaw!" I grunt. And suddenly it feels as if a levee is giving way and a rush of embarrassing warmness is erupting like a volcano in-between my legs and it begins to spread in my groin area; the muscles of my body become suddenly tense and at that moment-as the track finally ends and the lights are coming on-she pulls away.
“I...” The feeling of warmness between my legs is turning into an uncomfortable sticky wetness.
And she is now looking at me with a frown on her face.
“I…”I don't know what to say.

An intense feeling of shame overwhelms me as she leaves me standing there, without saying a single word. She makes her way slowly back to the row of seats where her friends are sitting and waiting for her. And I lower my eyes.

I am feeling too much shame to look in her direction; I have lost the pride to be able to look at her face ever again. And as I stand here, I have noticed one or two people throw furtive glances in my direction and I know that I must leave this place of shame as quickly as possible; because my pride has disappeared with the last drops of this sticky emission that I now feel defiling the space in-between my legs.

The month of October/4

2007-11-03T06:56:00.000-07:00

She is at the far corner of the hall, standing with her two friends and waiting for the music to start playing. Her back is turned to me and her girl friend is standing slightly to her right. From the slight gesticulations of her hands it appears that she’s saying something and then they begin to move their feet and to sway their bodies in rhythm with the Makossa music that the DJ has just started to play. I decide to go and sit down in a place from where I can continue to see her.

Other people have started to come on to the dance floor and it is starting to be crowded. I look around on the rows of seats behind me and I notice that Ade is sitting alone and also watching the people on the dance floor. He got a telegram 3days ago from one of his maternal uncles that he should face his studies and not come home since his mother is now stable. She is now paralysed on one side of her body and can hardly talk but the healer at the spiritual home where she had been taken to assures them that “the enemies have been taken care of” and that she will gradually recover the use of her paralysed arm and leg.

Ade still cries now and then at nights but he says that he has faith that “God has answered my prayers”. He is sitting there now and not smiling; there’s that distant look in his eyes; the same look which was in his eyes when he had been singing his song of thanksgiving. He sees me looking at him and he makes a sign with his hands that he is about to go back to the hostel. He wants to know if I am ready to leave but I respond with a wagging of my right index finger.

I turn my attention back to the people dancing in front of me as he gets up from his seat and starts to move towards the door. Another man has joined Adelaide and her friends and I notice that they have split into two pairs; Adelaide is now dancing with the fat fellow. He is holding her hands and their dancing resembles a Tango; as he occasionally rotates her on her axis and occasionally embraces her with their chests brushing momentarily against each others. She is now laughing to something he has just said and I am hoping that the music comes quickly to an end.

The music comes to an end but they refuse to go back to their seats; they are waiting for the next one to start. The DJ gives a sign to somebody to dim the lights even more as he starts to play a slow number.
"I heard he sang a good song; I heard he had a style..." the track starts to play. And I see him pull her closely to himself. And I begin to feel a certain inexpressible hurting inside of me; I have never felt like this before and It is clear to me that something is going on between them and that I must move on…yet, I just cannot let her go; I am addicted to her.

She has become like an obsession to me and I cannot imagine what my life will be like without those thoughts of her-those lovely thoughts of her that come to me as I retreat from the world every night-plaguing my soul; she has become a reference point in my life and a new meaning for me to want to become a much more better man. I need her for the sake of my sanity. Because without her I will remain a mere shadow of a man.

“Killing me softly…” I hear the track continue to play as they dance slowly just a few metres away from me. She is facing me now and as I continue to stare at her she opens her eyes, which had been closed and sees me looking at her. I will not remove my eyes from her; I must begin to play the part of a man. Yet I am not able to smile at her because I do not feel like smiling; You see, I know that she is supposed to be with me and not with him. She is now looking at me and a slight frown begins to crease her face.

If she could hear my thoughts, she would understand from the words that scream so strongly in my soul that she belongs to me; this is the moment of truth Adelaide; I love you, my heart is saying, as our eyes remain engaged. And then her dancing partner suddenly waltzes her around and steals away the moment of magic when her soul had briefly intercoursed with mine.

The song has come to end and as they make their way to their seats she is looking at me.

The month of October/3

2007-11-02T08:24:00.000-07:00

“Nkasiobi, that was a nice poem you recited earlier on” Ken was saying. For some unknown reasons, he had the habit of calling people by their full names. We were standing near the counter of the bar, which is located in a different hall from where I had recited my poem earlier on that evening. The bar is a dingy place with several small tables at which groups of different people were seated and trying to get drunk as more spilled over from the party in the adjacent room and others-mostly gatecrashers-trickled in from the outside.

The official part of the evening had ended just over half an hour ago and the party started immediately. The show was good and it got Ken commenting that he was happy at “the quality of Nigerians that have been sent to the preparatory faculty this year”; after my recitation there was a fashion parade and then Ade sang a very soulful gospel song in Yoruba, which he said is a song of thanksgiving but which came across as very sad; It reminded me of the requiem that we sang at the memorial service of my grandfather 2years earlier.

Ugo and Eddy had later livened up the evening with a performance that got everybody in the dancing mood; it was an impressive variant of the break-dance-the rave of the moment-which was both comical and unique in the way they incorporated some traditional dance steps from the Tiv people of the North Central part of Nigeria into the conventional break dance steps. Ugo said that he learnt the Tiv dance while he was a student at the Federal government college in Gboko.

The sound of Yvonne Chaka Chaka’s Umqombothi is blasting loudly from the dance-hall and it almost completely swallows up the noise in this room, the cadence of which is interrupted by the occasional dry coughs and uproarious laughter of the people sitting at the different tables. The overpowering stench of cigarette smoke hangs in the air, but now and then somebody opens the outside door and a gush of refreshing cold breeze is felt felt blowing in and ventilating the room.

I came into the bar because I saw Adelaide come this way a few minutes ago. She had made her way towards the bar on her own just as her two friends-the fat fellow and the other girl-hit the dance floor to dance to Umqombothi and as I saw them start dancing, I was overcome by a sense of relief; things may not be quite the way they seem with both of them, i thought as I summoned up the courage and started to come after her in the bar area. Though I wasn't quite sure of what I was going to say, I just knew that it was the right thing to do.

But she is not here in the bar at the moment because she walked straight across and through a door, which leads to the toilet area. And I am now waiting for her to come back.

The poor lighting in the bar makes it difficult for me to see those coming through the door, where I am expecting her to walk through and I strain my eyes each time somebody walks in, hoping that she has not already come through and i did not recognise her.

I am standing at the bar with Ken and another fellow whom he has introduced to me as Clements; a second year student of International law from Zimbabwe, who lives in the same hostel as he does at the University. Ken has just ordered a glass of Orange juice for me because I have told him that I don't feel like having any alcoholic drinks; I can't afford to have alcohol smelling in my breath when i will talk to her.

Once she comes through that door, i will call her and greet her in Russian and then i will tell her my name and then tell her the words for "I like you" that Volodya has taught me. And i will tell her that the way Pushkin must have felt when he was writing the beautiful words of that poem, which i have given to her is the way I feel towards her.

“The only problem with the poem that you just recited is in the use of the Russian word plemini which you translated from the English word tribe in your rendition.” Clements was saying interrupting my thoughts. I am not quite sure what he is talking about. And i am wondering when i used the word plemini. What does plemini mean?

I notice Ugo and Eddy come into the bar area accompanied by 3 Russian women. They locate an empty table, a few tables away from where we are standing, and Volodya walks in through the door to join them. Ugo is making his way towards the counter and I recognise two of the women who are sitting at their table to be Marina and Olya; the two women whom they met in the park over a week ago and who have been visiting the hostel ever since to see them.

“I guess it’s that colonial mentality thing of us going along with the white people to describe all non-white ethnic groups as primitive tribes, while its okay for them to use the term nation to describe themselves" Clements was saying." I bet that anthem was written by a white man or a brainwashed African.”
“It was actually written by a British expatriate woman who was living in Nigeria at that time!” Ken said “And I understand what you mean about the choice of the word tribe“

“Kasi, you fit join us later at the table” Ugo said as he walked up to the counter, winking as he places his order for the drinks.

"Ugochukwu, I enjoyed your dancing earlier on!” Ken said.
“Its Ugonna, not Ugochukwu! But wetin man go do!” Ugo responded.
"Sorry, I don’t know why I thought its Ugochukwu. So where did you learn the Tiv moves?"
"At FGC Gboko. I just find the moves to be different and they've helped me win a lot of break-dancing competitions..."

Adelaide has come in through the door and is walking towards the dance-hall. I must catch up with her before she goes back to join her friends, but for some reason I am unable to leave the spot where i am standing. I watch her walk across the room, shaking her hips ever so slightly...ever so seductively...then disappearing through the door and leaving me desiring her even more. She is so beautiful; she is the perfect woman for me; she is that " glimpse of perfect womanhood" that Pushkin has written of in his poem.

"The problem with white people is…” Clements was trying to explain something to Ken, interrupting my chain of thoughts as Ugo walks away to join his group.

I need to go back to the hall and look for another opportunity to accost her after having just blown this opportunity; “I’ll see you guys later” I said and walk away from them as they continue to talk about issues of race and ethnicity.
"But Africans are..." Ken is responding but i don't hear the rest of what he is saying because his voice is swallowed up by the noise in the room.

I pass by the table where Ugo and his group are sitting and I notice that Volodya is saying something, while one of the women start to giggle.
“I dey come” I say, making a sign with my hands to indicate that I will join them later. But I am not sure that they heard me because at that moment Eddy and one of the women start to laugh uproariously.

I walk through the door and into the dance hall, where the DJ is trying to put another song to play. And I stand at the door-scanning the room with my eyes-searching for Adelaide.

The month of October/2

2007-11-01T06:07:00.000-07:00

The month of October is very important in the Russian psyche. According to the Julian calendar, the Bolshevik revolution took place on 24th October 1917 and that’s why the revolution is also called the “Great October Socialist Revolution” or “red October”. But instead of marking the great revolution in October, “red October” is commemorated on November 7. This is because in 1918, the Russians changed over from the Julian calendar into the Gregorian calendar that is in use in most other parts of the world.

In Rostov-On-Don the weather is usually quite chilly in October; there’s usually that hint of imminent winter as the temperature begins to occasionally dip beneath the 10 Celsius mark (51F) and the hours of daylight increasingly shortens. This is the period when some people, start replacing their leather and jean jackets with warmer woollen coats, while others would start piling on new layers of clothes underneath the ones they wore at the beginning of autumn.

On the first Saturday of October of that year-and slightly over 3 weeks since I first arrived Rostov-we were celebrating the Nigerian Independence day. All the Nigerian students in the town were wearing different African traditional costumes under their thick woollen winter coats. The clothes people wore did not necessarily coincide with the places in Nigeria they come from since some people, like myself, had borrowed from others who are from entirely different ethnic groups; I was wearing a brown Senegalese costume and i noticed that the president of the Nigerian students union wore a complete Fulani attire. He too must have borrowed his costume because it appeared a few sizes too small for him and gave him a rather strange look!

Since my recitation is relevant to the occasion, Ken had slotted me in to make my presentation immediately after the speeches from the Gorodsky soviet and the president. And I was starting to feel nervous as the time ticked closer. What if i forget the lines?! Shit!

I had managed to translate the work with a lot of input from Sergei Nikolaivitch. The task turned out to be a lot more complicated than Volodya and myself had previously thought; I had taken a draft of my translated work to Volodya a few days after we had agreed that he would help but on seeing my draft he had exclaimed that it was a load of nonsense; literarily. He was not able to make any sense of what I had written and according to him It appeared as if i had transcribed the words directly from English into Russian without considering the fact that Russian language is structurally very different from English. And since he is not yet very good in English he suggested that I either drop the idea or get Sergei Nikolaivitch to help out. And I chose the latter option.

It was very interesting for me to see how the whole concept of what one wants to say can change with the choice of words, and how my original infantile attempt was so different from the fluidity and imagery of the finished product. And at the end of the translation i had to agree with Volodya that my draft attempt had been a load of rubbish!

But I am ready now as i sit in the hall looking around. My heart is pounding away and I wonder if people can smell how scared I am feeling. I notice that she is not yet here as Ken starts to talk in Russian for the benefit of the dignitaries sitting in the first row of seats. There were representatives of the Gorodsky soviet and from the various schools, which have Nigerian students. Presido is also seated on the first row of seats and all of them are backing us. He starts to put on glasses probably to help him read the speech he must have prepared and he stands up to face us.

“Men presido get real complex issues!” I heard Eddy whisper to Ugo as Presido faces us. Ugo and Eddy were seated just to my right and I guessed that Eddy was commenting on presido’s rather peculiar appearance; his reading glasses were massive and had spherical lenses that would have given him, what some might call, an owlish look if not for the poorly combed afro that sat on top of his head.

“I feel embarrassed for the man and i sure say hin no well ! “I heard Ugo respond. He was suggesting that the president may be mentally unwell.

Some people came through the door as Presido was making his speach, but she was not one of them. And i start to wonder why she is not yet here. I invited her as I had planned with the bouquet of roses and the copy of Pushkin's lovely poem, which he had written to a certain Ms Kern. Adelaide had been surprised to see me and had said something in Portuguese. But she had smiled as i gave her the roses and the card; a smile that won me over because I had been a bit unsure before then whether i should still go ahead and give her the poem; a smile that turned into a slight frown, which creased her face once i had given her the envelope that contained the poem. She had said something again in Portuguese and had looked at me enquiringly but I had blushed and then lowered my eyes and then turned away...without uttering a word; what was i to say?

I had then hastened away from her presence as quickly as can be considered respectable, hoping that she did not think that i am a bit strange! And at one point during my escape I had needed to look back briefly because I had a momentary very strong feeling that she might aim for the back of my retreating head with the bouquet of roses, which i had just given to her; but she didn't!

Now I am not very confident that I will be composed enough to talk to her about the meaning of the poem and my feelings if I see her today. I am realising that that giving her the poem may not have been a very bright idea after all. Shit! May be I should have just left it simple by just giving her the invitation card and then letting things develop on their own. Now I am hoping that she had thrown the poem in the bin and that she doesn’t turn up. Shit! I should have paid more attention to my cousins lessons in "raps".

Ken just called my name and is inviting me to come to the front. Shit! People are now clapping their hands and have started to look in my direction.
“Ol boy na your turn be dat!” I heard Ugo say as he nudged me with his elbow.
“Shit!”I can’t get this silly word out of my head "Shit!". It’s intruded into my mind and now refusing to go away “Shit!” What if I don’t remember the words I have crammed!

I am making my way in front of the hall and I feel butterflies in my stomach. My mouth and throat are feeling so dry and I need to go to the toilet really badly. It looks like I am going to wet myself! I am standing in front of the hall and the clapping is gradually subsiding. And there are hundreds of eyes now staring at me. “Shit!” I can’t remember the first words of the poem.

They have started to clap again, perhaps, to give me more time to compose myself without the oppressiveness of the distracting silence.
“Shit!”
Sergei Nikolaivitch, who is sitting in the front row, is whispering something to me;
Nig-eria, blagoslava'yem Sebyia'…” I hear him whisper; those are the first lines of the old anthem. Yes! he has wrestled the rest of the lines out of the darkness of my memory and i remember now;
“Nig-eria,
blagoslava'yem Sebyia'”
Doraga'ya naroda', svaya’…”

It is there now; it is now visible on the slates of my mind and I am reciting each word- each line-which I had previously crammed over and over again in the preceding few days.

Nigeria
we hail thee!
Our own dear native land
though tribe and tongue may differ
in brotherhood we stand
Nigerians all are proud to serve our sovereign motherland
Our flag shall be a symbol,
That truth and justice reign,
In peace or battle honoured,
And this we count as gain
To hand on to our children
A banner without stain..."

From the looks on the faces of some of the dignitaries, I know that I am mispronouncing some of the words, but Sergei Nikolaevitch is nodding with approval. So it must be alright. And suddenly it is over; the guests are standing on their feet and applauding and i know that I have pulled this one off!

I take a bow and start making my way back to my seat. I notice that the hall is a lot more crowded and that more guests have arrived. I am looking for her face as I get to my row of seats and in one corner of the hall I catch a glimpse of her sitting with another girl; she is smiling at me. But beside her is that fat Portuguese speaking fellow. And at the sight of him my hearts sinks.

Chapter 5: The month of October/1

2007-10-31T14:06:00.000-07:00

I was feeling a bit uncomfortable as I lay on my bed later that night. I have already made up my mind about the strategy, which I am going to use to invite Adelaide to the party and also to get her to start thinking about me; I have decided that I am going to buy her a bunch of roses and then send it to her with the invitation card and a love poem written in Russian. I will send her a poem by Alexander Sergeivitch Pushkin that i had stumbled on with its translation and which describes exactly the way she made me feel the moment i set eyes on her for the very first time. Yes i know that she will not be able to understand the poem just yet, but the mystery of its meaning and her excitement from trying to find it out will keep me in her mind for a long time. And then by the time of the party in 2weeks time, perhaps she will have found out what the words mean and there I will tell her that this poem expresses exactly what I feel for her.

I should really be happy thinking about how far I have come since those days when my cousins in the village had tried to teach me about their so called “raps”, but instead I as i lay on my bed i was feeling uncomfortable; my roommate, Ade, was making some strange noise across the room; he was speaking in tongues.

Ade was knelt beside his bed in his usual night time ritual of praying but today he is a little louder than usual and he is also crying. Usually by the time I come in to sleep after spending some time talking in Ugo's room, he would have been done with these rituals. However, a few days ago he got a letter from home, which said that his beloved mother had just suffered a serious stroke and since then he has been praying into the early hours of the morning. Just before he started crying i had overheard him trying to “bind the demonic spirits of stroke“. He is still binding them now and he is making quite a lot of noise and I am finding it difficult to sleep

But I feel sorry for Ade so I won’t tell him to keep his voice down. I feel sorry for him because he is an only child and his mother is all he has. His father, a relatively rich man with a Chieftaincy title-from a place called Ogbomosho-had kicked him and his mother out of the home when he was barely a year old; the story is that one of his fathers’ numerous wives had made false accusations against his mother, saying that she had slept around with different men each time the Chief had gone on one of his long business travels and that Ade was a product of such illicit liaisons. And as a result of the questions about his paternity he ended up being brought up alone by his mother who, because she comes from a very poor family, had sold tomatoes in their local market to ensure that he got a good education. She was also a very strong Christian and because of her, Ade became“born again” several years ago and has remained so until he came to Rostov where he‘s been trying to convert the rest of us.

Some of the guys, like Ugo and Eddy, make fun of him saying that he’s deceiving himself and that all he needs is a “good Russo babe to straighten him out”, but he makes me a bit uncomfortable and I find it difficult to put my finger on the exact reason. There‘s that feeling of my having lost the innocence to continue believing in what he believes in; you see, my “kind” step mother is a leader in a Church and as a result of her, I lost my religion. And yet for some inexplicable reasons, i still find myself envying Ade his innocence.

As I watch Ade kneeling there, I notice that he has started crying again. And I wonder how comes God seems to keep silent when we want Him the most; how comes He was silent through out the nights when I had cried out to Him, on a stomach that hadn’t eaten for several days, begging Him to rouse my father from the protracted spell of witchcraft, which had kept him oblivious of the cruelty of his beloved wife towards me; I wondered why God withheld His answer from the tormented child, that I was, who would scream out to Him almost every night and plead for justice?

I have decided to turn towards the wall and cover my head with my duvet so that the sound of his weeping will be muffled; I really can't bear the sound of weeping as it tends to strum unpleasant chords in my soul. I turn my face to the wall and move my head away from the spot of dampness that is forming on my pillow and I am wondering where these warm tears have come from.

The muffled sound of weeping continues to be heard in the room as I wait for sleep to come quickly to swallow me up in its dark embrace. I notice that the warm dampness of my pillow is spreading and I am hoping that God answers his prayers, because he desperately needs it for the sake of his faith.

The Africans/7

2007-10-29T08:48:00.000-07:00

We were drinking Vodka in Ugo’s room after we came back from the grocery shop. Volodya had joined us and had brought along some tomatoes and a large piece of sausage, which he called a "Kalbassa". And which he said was to prevent us from getting drunk quicky. He was now sitting across the table from me and trying to teach Ugo and Eddy some Russian swear words.

I was feeling a bit excited and it had nothing to do with the Vodka. I still had my glass of Vodka on the table where i left it after having taken a sip and found the taste to be quite unpleasant. I was feeling excited because of the idea that was playing in my mind; I have made up my mind that I will push myself to do something impressive for the Nigerian Independence Day party since I will be inviting Adelaide to come. I need to do something that will make her have a high impression of me and I have decided I am going to translate the old Nigerian anthem into Russian using the English-Russian dictionary that Sergei Nikolaivitch gave us. I will ask Volodya to help me with the translation and then I will recite it without any prompting at the party.

I know that it seems like a very difficult task, but I can pull this off. You see, books are my friends. It has always been that way since I found a way through them to escape into the beautiful world of make-believe. It is they who have always been there to rescue me when I have nothing else to turn to. They have given me advice on what to do and protect me from a world where otherwise I feel so insecure and lonely…

Everybody except my father knew that my step-mother was a wicked woman. It was a known secret in the yard that she was the one who called the shots in our home from the very start. And people would whisper that she has used witchcraft on my father, which empowered her to run the household the way she deemed fit. And this was usually to my detriment because as far as she was concerned I was an unwelcome presence in the home. And she never failed to let me know that left to her she would give me away as a houseboy in somebody else’s home, if not for the fact that she is a “kind woman”.

She was so "kind" that she would feed me stale food and say that there is no money in the house to buy enough to go round seeing that her own children are still growing and that they are the ones who needs to eat the scarse fresh food. She was "kind" enough not to whip me every single day in spite of my "stupidity". And she had the "kind" knack of changing her definitions of right and wrong;I was always wrong while her children were always right.

And it was during those days of her "kindness" that I discovered the power of story books. I was about 9years old when I fell in love with the Lamb’s tales from Shakespeare and then stumbled on to others; books that were able to transport me to worlds where I was able to drop my sorrows behind and become whatsoever or whomsoever I so wanted to be. And the more my step-mother told me that I was an abandoned child who nobody loves, the more I found salvation in my books. And then I discovered the pride from excelling in my school work and the accompanying look of respect that other students would give me whenever I was called out year after year in front of the whole school to recieve my prize as the best overall student. This was something which nobody, not even my step-mother, could ever take away from me.

Books; they give me meaning and allow me to draw strength when I am low. They enable me to experience power when I feel weak and they give me the tools with which I can hold up my head anywhere, even in the company of those who would otherwise look down on me. Books are magical and the potency of their magic is all so pervading, except for the fact that the magic always seems to dissipate into thin air whenever I am in the presence of my father…

But books are my friends and I will turn once again to the magic within their pages in order to capture the heart of the lovely Adelaide.

“This Russo boy wan finish dis Vodka!” Eddy was complaining as Volodya took his third successive quaff.
Volodya started laughing “You people drink Vodka like Djeshina!” he said “Real men drink Vodka like zis!” he said quaffing yet another glass and then laughing.

“Volodya” I said after convincing myself that this is the way to go."I will need your help to translate something into Russian. I’ll get you the rough draft before the weekend and have you look at it. If that’s okay with you”
“Nyet problema!” he stated.

No problem but i still need to think of a way to invite her to the party, I was thinking as i reached for my glass of Vodka.

The Africans/6

2007-10-29T06:33:00.000-07:00

“Ol’ boy check out those babes wey tanda over there!” Eddy announced to Ugo. The excitement in his voice jerked me back to the moment and I as looked in the direction he was indicating, I noticed two young Russian women standing next to a statue of Karl Max that was just a few metres in front of us. They were having a cigarette and from the way they smiled at us, it seemed as if they had been discussing us. We came abreast of where they stood but I continued to walk on and later stopped a few metres ahead of where Ugo and Eddy were now talking with the women.

I have to find a way to proceed with Adelaide. I was thinking. And it seems that the best place to start would be to invite her to our Independence Day party, which was just two weeks away. Yes, I will invite her. And on that day I will dance with her and though we cannot yet communicate with each other in Russian, she will know by the look in my eyes and by the way that I will hold her close to my heart that I love her. Yes, she will know of my feelings for her because love is communicated by other means other than just words…

“We just got ourselves a date for Saturday!” Ugo announced proudly as they came up to where I had been waiting for them. “Now we suppose begin buy booze as I hear say na booze be the trick with these Russian babes!” He stated that they now had to look for alcohol since it was said that the way to score with Russian women is to get them drunk.

We crossed over to the other side of the park where the shops were located and we found the one where, a few days earlier on the day we had arrived, we had witnessed the incident with the drunken man next to the queue for booze. The shop was quite big inside and as we entered we noticed a little queue at one end of the otherwise empty shop.
“You sure say dem dey sell booze for here!” asked Eddy.

An elderly woman who was carrying a bag walked towards us as we stood near the entrance trying to decide where to go. She had just come off the front of the queue which, from the two loaves of dark brown bread that stared back at us from her open bag, was probably a queue for bread.
She gave us a toothless smile as she came up to us and then started to say something in Russian. “We don’t speak Russian” Ugo said smiling back as Eddy and I looked at each other.
She smiled again and then took out one of the loaves of bread and then said something again in Russian. And I’m sure that somewhere in her sentence I heard her say Africa.
“No thanks!” Ugo said “We have bread in the hostel. But thanks anyway!”
She looked disappointed and then, shrugging her shoulders, walked away.

A middle aged woman sat at one corner of the shop looking at us. Behind her were stacks of empty crates piled hapharzardly next to the wall. She was wearing a long white coat and a cap that reminded me of the clinical coats, which medical students wear for the clinical courses in Nigeria only that the hat that sat on her head looked more like a witches cap than a clinical hat. She was looking at us as we stood near the door. And she wasn’t smiling. But we still decided to walk up to her and make our enquiries about the drinks.
“Good evening” Ugo said.
She looked at her nails and then looked away as if somebody else was trying to get her attention. “Hello!” Ugo greeted again.
She got up from where she was sitting and still pretending that she hadn’t seen or heard us, walked away towards another similarly attired woman who wsa sitting several metres away in front of shelves that were bare of groceries.

“Which kain dismissal be dis?!” Ugo asked turning to both me and Eddy who had been standing just behind him.
As we stood there trying to decide what to do a young man walked towards us. It was Volodya, Seyi’s room mate. Volodya was a very lively 2nd year medical student who was from the neighbouring town of Novocherkassk. Because he spoke some English and wanted to improve on his spoken English he had specifically requested to stay in a room that had English-speaking students. But from the very first day that he heard Seyi speak, he started to complain to whoever cared to listen that the language Nigerians speak and call English certainly did not sound like English.
“You mother f....ers speak Anglisky like you speak African language!” he said “I want to learn to speak American English not Africansky!”
However he got over his initial shock of our "Africansky" and from the second day decided that his job would be to teach Seyi and the rest of us poor "Nig'erisky studenti" how to be proper Russians. So he started off by teaching Seyi how to swear in Russian.
“You haven’t learn Russian if you haven’t learn how to swear. So start with the swear words!” He advised Seyi.

“Hello you Africansky Mother f…ers!” he announced smiling as he came up to us.
“Yo banna vrot! Volodya” Ugo responded with a Russian vulgar expression that Volodya had taught us. Some people looked at us amused at the exchanged of greetings between us and Volodya.
“We want to buy some Vodka but the shop’s completely bare!” Ugo complained.
“I know that you people will become good Russians very quickly! You’ve learnt how to swear now you want to graduate into Vodka!”
“Yes, we want to do some foki-foki with some Russian girls on Saturday and we need as many bottles as we can buy.”
“You mother f…ers! I told you give me nice Africansky girl to do foki-foki with and I find you cheap Russian woman!”
“We’re serious about the Vodka, Volodya. And besides you’ve already said you don’t like most of the Nigerian girls because you’re scared of them!”
“Yes. Most of them are very hard like men. They don't look like djenshini! But anyway, give me money I buy you Vodka. As many as you want”.

Ugo gave him some Roubles and he had gone up to the two women in the white coats who were now chatting away in a corner of the shop. He spoke to them for a while and then handed over the money to one of them. Several minutes later the woman came back with a bag which she had stuffed with newspapers and handed it to Volodya.

“I got you your Vodka, but we must drink one bottle today!” Volodya announced as he handed the bag to Ugo.
“How did you do that?” Eddy asked.
“I have my ways.” He said grinning “But I also do foki-foki with that older one!” he added winking.
“Disgusting!” Ugo responded, but Volodya just grinned and walked away.

The Africans/5

2007-10-28T06:14:00.000-07:00

I need Adelaide even if, for now, she is unattainable. This is what I was thinking as I walked home later that day with Ugo and Eddy, as we came out of the Russian language class that we had just finished with Sergei Nikolaivitch. I couldn’t quite understand the strong sense of connectedness that I was starting to feel towards her; she didn't yet know me but it was as if I was developing a feeling of love for her! How can I love someone who already belongs to someone else and who...from the way she always looks composed and classy...I was starting to feel is out of my league? Yet i felt drawn to her; as if there is something about me that destines me to wanting those things that exist beyond my reach and which are able to hurt me.

The guilt started to flood back. The guilt has always been there really; lurking in the shadows, and waiting for that opportunity to present itself when it would remind me that I am less than a man: you see, real men do not become emotionally involved with prostitutes the way I did with Betty.

It happened at the University of Jos. After my registration on that first day...when I had crashed into Funmi near the admission clerks office...I was allocated a room at the Bauchi road hostel. This temporary accommodation was the only available space for most of the new students as the Naraguta hostel complex and the students village were already filled up. And it was located next to a noisy motor park on the very busy Bauchi Road. At the back of this hostel was a densely populated slum area where students visited for their groceries and for some leisure activities.

One Saturday evening, barely a week after I moved in, my room mate had invited me for a drink and pepper soup at one of the beer parlours that can be found on the long stretch of unpaved road running right through the neighbourhood. The beer parlour turned out to be a seedy brothel. And as we entered the large dimly lit hall we had been greeted by the oppressive smell of cigarette smoke and bodily sweat hanging thickly in the air. Loud music blared from the speakers, that hung at the four corners of the large hall and you could see men and women dancing lazily in the centre of the large hall, holding their bottles of beer in their hands as they danced. We sat at one of the few unoccupied tables and my roommate had ordered some beer. And while we waited for our drinks to arrive, two scantily clad women hastily made their way towards our table possibly to get to us before their competitors.

“Una wan f…ck?”The larger of the two women asked, wanting to know if we wanted sex. The one that spoke was plump and was verging on the boarders of being obese. Neither of the women would ever pass as being beautiful as they both stood trying to strike a pose, which i am sure they believed was seductive. I was speechless, never having been confronted with such boldness from women, but my room mate who had been glaring at them both hissed. “Make una commot here, useless ashawo!” he spat out at them asking them to get lost.

Our bottles of beer came and we finished them and then went back to our hostel without really discussing what had happened. It was as if my roommate was used to the whole scene so didn't see anything worth talking about. But the very next day I had gone back alone. And it was there that I made the acquaintance of Betty…the smaller of the two prostitute who had approached us the previous day. Betty was in her late 20’s and had been in the trade since her late teens. And it was she who dis-virgined me and introduced me into manhood, after she had collected her price for the privileges; leaving me also with a lot of guilt and a vow not to ever return to that brothel again.

But I did; again and again. And each time, I would feel even more defeated from the time I sneaked out of my room under the cover of night…with my heart forcefully pounding against my rib cage in beats of anticipatory excitement…hoping that nobody would see me in my moment of weakness and in its inevitable aftermath; an aftermth characterised by a lingering feeling of intense guilt, which would remain until the very next time.

It was always on those days when I had a close encounter with Funmi that I would find myself craving the warmth of Betty’s embrace; on most of our lecture days I would sit at a corner of the hall from where I could relish in the flashes of her smile and in the fleeting caress of the gaze from her lovely brown eyes; rare privileges that she would dish out to me unconsciously but which always left me weighed down by a realisation that those endearing looks and the smiles were not inspired by me. And on those days, after the darkness of night had encroached, I would sneak out in search of recognition in the arms of Betty the prostitute; because It is there alone, that I have come to know what it feels like to be accepted as a man. And it is there, in the warmth of that acceptance as I was receiving my fix of flesh, that my guilt was birthed.

I was walking through the park with Ugo and Eddy who were chatting away about “Russian babes“, and I was thinking of how fortunate it is that we can not read each others minds and glimpse at the secrets that we all hide. But it was the image of Adelaide that was the strongest in my mind. Because it felt as if she is the one who holds the key, which will liberate me from the guilt that gnaws slowly away at the fabric of my fragile soul.

The Africans/4

2007-10-26T06:03:00.000-07:00

The next morning was a Monday and we were met at the hostel by Sergei Nikolayevich, our new teacher. Sergei Nikolayevich was a bald little man whose size dispelled the myth-which i was starting to believe- that all Russians are huge in size. He had that hair colour, which is common among the Russians and which i was later to understand is sometimes described as the colour "rus"in Russian. He also had those characteristic high cheek bones.

Sergei Nikolaivitch had already introduced himself to us on the day after we arrived when he had turned up at the hostel and later taken our group to buy some of the clothes and boots, which we needed for the fast approaching winter.

As it was not so cold that monday morning, Sergei Nikolayevich had suggested that we walk down to the faculty by way of the the park, which is located next to the hostel and which runs all the way up to Varashilovsky street; the very wide street on which the faculty building is located. He said that the faculty was about 30 minutes-of a reasonably paced walk-away from the hostel, but he had also wanted to use the opportunity to talk to us about the statues and their significance in Soviet history.

As we walked through the park I noticed that the busts of Vladimir Ilych Lenin-the leader of the Bolshevik revolution of 1917- were seen at very regular intervals. There were also some other statues of him standing and pointing with his right hand in front of him; Alexei Sergeivitch said that he had been pointing to the future. He showed statues of Karl Marx and Frederick Engels and talked about their contributions to the Communist vision.

He then talked about the ills of Capitalism and how the revolution was the turning point in human history. And then he talked about how all human politico-economic development will eventually evolve into Communism after a transitory Socialist state. “The Vest knows that they are fighting a lost battle." he said "Nothing can stop the Socio-political evolution of mankind into one Communist Vorld…”He announced.

We had just emerged at the top end of the park on to Varashilovsky Street where the rectangular shaped cars were beeping their horns in the traffic jam that was forming on the carriage way leading towards Engels street. There was a bus stop just adjacent to where we had emerged from the park and a crowd was waiting for the trolley that had just pulled in to the stop. As the doors opened, the commuters struggled to push their way into the already crowded bus. After a while the doors tried to close but were obstructed by some passengers that were hanging on to the door and trying not to fall out. The driver tried to close the doors again and then started to shout something at those passengers obstructing the door but they seemed oblivious of what he was trying to do and continued to push their way in. Others passengers inside of the bus later joined the now irrate driver in the shouting, which continued for several minutes until the passengers started to step down. And the doors eventually closed.

"What does baran mean?"I asked Alexei Sergeivitch as I watched the bus pulling out of the stop. One visibly irritated elderly man who had been standing patiently at the bus stop had spat out the word at one of the obstinate commuters who had been refusing to step down from the bus. After he spat out the word, he had then shaken his head in apparent disgust.
"Baran is the Russian word for sheep" said Alexei Sergeivitch as the bus sped away towards the next stop.

Somebody's bag was still hanging out of the bus, whilst the owner struggled unsuccesfully to pull it in by the straps through the closed doors.
"Baran!" the elderly man spat out again.

The faculty building was an old three storeyed baroque brick building sandwiched in-between some other old buildings built in the same style and located next to the busy bus stop. The building looked like something that had weathered many storms and was now falling apart.
“Ve vill be moving to the new site very soon” stated Alexei Sergeivitch.
He then started to explain how the school had stopped expending money to maintain the building since they were planning to relocate to a new bigger and more modern building, which was located next to the hostel. He said that we were likely to be the last batch of students who will use that building.

We entered through the front door and I noticed that there were some cracks on the walls. We stepped on to the wooden stairs and they started to creak as we climbed our way to the second floor, but Sergei Nikolayevitch didn’t look concerned.
“I hope its not about to collapse!” Ugo said.
“No. It alvays creaks like zis” said Sergei Nikolaivitch trying to reassure us.

He took us to our classroom on the second floor. The room was just large enough to sit nine students and a teacher comfortably. There was a large blackboard in front of us on which he had already written the date in English and written it out in Russian words. He informed us that in addition to Russian language we were also going to take a few hours lessons in courses such as the History of the Communist party, Political Economics and Philosophy.

These courses would all be taught in English language for the first three months, after which we would sit for our winter exams. When we come back from a two weeks winter holiday, we would then continue with science-related subjects, which would prepare us for the medical school.
“These subjects vill all be in Russian language”. He stated.
"So what you're saying is that we'll learn Russian language for only three months?!" Eddy asked in disbelief.

"No" Sergei Nikolaivitch answered " You vill continue to learn Russian language for the whole academic year, but the focus for the first 3months vill be to teach you the basics on vich you vill be able to build but after the 3 months I vill stop understanding English!".
"That's not possible!"
"You vill see..."

After the preliminary talks we got down to the serious business of learning the Russian alphabet with the phonics.
During one of the break times, I caught a glimpse of Adelaide in a room several doors away from ours and for the rest of the day I couldn't concentrate on anything else but her sitting there looking ever so radiant; ever so desirable.

"What are you smiling at? Sergei Nikolayevich asked, interrupting my mid day reverie.I didn’t know what to tell him. How could I let him know that my mind was somewhere else; somewhere, a few doors away, locked on to someone that I certainly wasn't supposed to be thinking about?
“I em…”
“You need to pay attention or else you vill miss the basics”

But my mind was still on Adelaide. I wanted to believe that she was available in spite of the fact that in the last few days since we arrived I had seen her about two times in the company of that her male friend from the beryozka.
I knew that if she was involved with someone else then there was no point to continue dreaming about her, but that realization did not take away the fact that I desired her. And there was nothing much I could do about that; my mind knew that I should just let her go, but my heart could not. It was as if my heart was telling me that she is so within my reach and If i let her go, then I will lose her forever…

The Africans/3

2007-10-26T04:22:00.000-07:00

We were eating manka and cow leg stew in the 4th medical hostel.

We were still in the same little groups that we had been divided into after the student’s union meeting. The plan was based on the fact that it was a lot more manageable for each of the older students to take the new students in their group to their rooms for a meal of manka. Manka is the affectionate name that is given to a flour-based meal, which is called mannaya and which was the favourite food for most Nigerians in the USSR. The first commers to the USSR from Africa had discovered this food and developed an ingenious method of making it into a semi-solid swallowable meal that reminded them of the West African pounded yam flower.

The locals usually made the manka into porridge for their growing children and did not always express happiness at the way some African students stocked up on it, leading to a recurrent shortage of manka anywhere that there was a student hostel nearby. Of course, there was also a recurrent shortage of a lot of other essential food items in places where there were no student’s hostels…

The president of the Nigerian students union was lecturing us on how we had to be exemplary students and not get into any trouble with the Russians.
“A lot of people get into trouble because of fighting” he was saying. And I thought he was talking about physical fighting. “The fighters are everywhere and some of them are government agents. So you need to stick to your books and not involve yourselves in fighting…”
“Which fighters are you talking about?” I asked a bit confused.
“Fighters are a group of wayward girls who are just interested in having a good time.” He said and then told of how the person who had caught the Nigerian who had been sent to jail was one of the fighters. And he then talked about how it was necessary for some to stay abstinent from sex for the whole duration of their stay in the USSR. "It's possible. I am a living example."

As he talked I noticed that there was an occasional ticking of his head, like somebody who had some neurological problems.“So you must stay away from fighters and be serious with your books. Here the assessments are continuous and your marks at the end of the year are a sum of your cummulative performance for the duration of the course and what you score in end the of course exams”.

The president, it turned out, was one of those people who have always excelled academically. He was the best all-round student for his year and was heading towards graduating with a krasniy diplom, or red degree; something that was used to distinguish the very best students from the rest.
“In this town we keep our heads like this.” He continued, raising up his head and then looking at an imaginary person standing near the door through his nose…”And we will not want you people to abandon your studies and start drinking Vodka. If you focus on your studies you won’t have any problems in this town.”

The president continued on this lecturing mood for the rest of the evening and told us about the do’s and don’ts of living succesfully in Rostov-On-Don the way he had done.

Later that evening most of us had congregated in Ugo’s room which he shared with Eddy. Earlier that day Ugo had been elected as the representative of the Nigerians in the preparatory faculty.
“Most of the Africans in Rostov look like say dem be bush men!” Eddy was saying “All of them look wretched and defeated. But man-me, presido takes the cake!”
“I wonder how dem take elect am?” Ugo asked.
“This must be the work of the gorodsky soviet to tame Naija people for this town” Eddy continued “ but to elect an imbecile na real insult be dat!” he said.
“He’s not an imbecile per se.” I offered “the man is actually a genius. He’s the best student the school has had in the last 5years!” I didn't want to bring up the issue of his head ticking and his abstinence.
“Yeah right! The man’s a complete joke and still looks like an imbecile to me. You no notice the bongo wey hin wear. Common, who dey wear bongo these days. This is the 80’s for Chrissake?” Eddy continued making a reference to the bell-bottom trousers that the president had worn at the meeting stating that people don’t wear such things anymore.
“If the man wan wear bongo na hin problem be dat. But I like Ken and I notice how hin been dey look presido each time wey hin talk about Nigerians being a proud people”. Ade, who had been quiet for most of the evening, added. He was talking about liking Ken and his observations that Ken seemed to always look at the President whenever he talked about Nigerians being proud.
“Are you suggesting that Ken is not proud of the President?” I asked.
“Are you?” Eddy asked.
I kept silent.

The Africans/2

2007-10-25T08:04:00.000-07:00

Nigeria’s Independence Day celebration comes up on October 1st and this was slightly more than 2 weeks after I arrived Rostov-On-Don with my batch of 9 students. And on the first weekend after we arrived the Students Union organised an impromptu meeting, which was to formally welcome us to the town and also to inform us of their plans for that year.

During this meeting Ken, the events manager, who was also the Social secretary of the Students Union had encouraged each of us to think about putting together some kind of performance for that day, which should have a very strong cultural flavour.

“We need to do something different that shows that we have a rich culture.” Ken was saying. He was in his penultimate year at the University, where he was studying for a Russian diploma in International journalism, and had come in the year of the demonstration. He appeared to be the only outspoken member of the student leadership.

When he stood up to talk i noticed that he was not as tall as Ugo or Seyi but that he was well-built. He was of a dark skin complexion that had a shine to it, which was different to those of us who had just come out of Nigeria. Maybe it had something to do with the cold weather. He also had a well-trimmed goatee beard and that look of somebody who actually lived abroad; the akata look. The kind of look that a lot of Nigerians dream of achieving once they've managed to come abroad, but which remains so very elusive for so many; a look that was lacking in the rest of the tense looking members of the student union leadership. One of them, who nursed an Afro looked like somebody who forgot to shave that morning. His bell-bottom trousers, which looked a bit tight at the hips, gave him the appearance of somebody who had been specially picked from a village stuck in a Nigeria of the 60's and then dropped into Rostov-On-Don. This fellow introduced himself as the president of the Nigerian students union.
"Ha!" was the only comment Ugo made after he had finished introducing himself earlier on. I didn't quite understand what Ugo had meant by that, but i guessed he must have been thinking the same things that were going through my mind. Was this a joke or something?!

“So I want you guys to come up with ideas for the celebration in the next few days. And then you need to start practicing from like yesterday because we have to show these people that we can deliver a show of a very high standard!” Ken was saying sounding so confident and polished with the president sitting to his right. “We need to show these guys that Nigerians are a proud people…” Ken said.

After the meeting, the executives invited all of us for dinner to the 4th hostel where the bulk of the older Nigerian students lived. Most of the students from the University including Ken couldn’t come with us, since their hostel was located in a different part of town that was a bit far away from the Centre. We then split up into small groups with me ending up with the President and two other new students like myself; one of whom was my room mate Ade.

The 4th hostel, which is one of the hostels of the Medical Institute, is a 9 storied building located with its twin...the 5th hostel...in a little residential close that is just off Lenin's street. And it was here that most of the undergraduate medical students and a few postgraduate doctors lived.

To get there we needed to travel on electric trolleys and then on the autobus. The trolleys are electric buses that are attached to electricity by their own cable systems but unlike the Trams do not run on rail lines, while the autobus is the usual bus that runs on fuel.

As we left the venue of the meeting we walked down towards Engels street to the nearest bus stop. And as we approached, a bus was just pulling in and it looked relatively empty. The president advised that we make a run for it. The driver saw us sprinting towards the waiting bus and as soon as Ade got close enough and was about jumping in, he’d quickly closed the doors and then pulled out of the bus stop. And as he drove away he made a gesture with his hands, which he showed to us. He had stuck his thumb in-between his index and middle finger and pointed it us. Most of the passengers had kept a straight face as the bus pulled away but i noticed one little boy towrads the back laughing and then repaeting the gesture with his fingers, as some of us were bent over still trying to catch our breathes from that very long Olympic-paced sprint...

“What was that all about?” Ade asked still trying to catch his breath. “Didn’t he see us?”“ Of course he saw us. Didn’t you see him waving at us?!” I said.
“He wasn’t waving at us” said the president “that’s one of those gestures Russians make when they want to act funny. Just like we have our waka in Nigeria”
“Did he do that because we’re black?!” asked Ade.
“I don’t think so. Sometimes some of the more foolish drivers behave that way, when they’re having a bad day. And they do it even to their own people”. The good old president said.

By now most of the other groups of Nigerians had arrived at the bus stop. I noticed a few of the natives who stood nearby throw furtive glances at our group as we continued to jabber away very loudly in pigeon English. A young man who had staggered to the bus stop in a drunken wobble belched loudly and then made a face, which suggested that he was disgusted with the taste the belching left in his mouth. He then said something loudly in Russian and stood defiantly in front of the president who peacefully walked away from the man.

“The man said we should shut up!” reported the president from a relatively safe distance.
At that moment a trolley pulled into the bus stop and we all pushed our way in.
"Dis come be like say person dey catch Molue for Lagos" muttered Eddy as he pushed himself into a comfortable position, stating that it all felt like trying to get on to one of those dilapidated tin buses, which are used for mass transit in Lagos and which people simply call Molue.

The drunken man had remained on the bus stop apparently not able to push his way in. And as the trolley slowly pulled out of the stop my eyes briefly locked with that of the man; he raised his right hand and showed me his thumb stuck inbetween his index and middle fingers...

BOOK 2. Chapter 4: The Africans/1

2007-10-24T12:03:00.000-07:00

In those days the foreign students in the USSR were encouraged to belong to a Union of students from their respective countries. And though the membership of these unions was considered voluntary, all the students ended up belonging to them. The leadership of these Unions was usually elected by the students themselves to represent them at meetings of the gorodsky soviet or town councils, which concerned their welfare in that town. And the gorodsky soviet, on their part, would represent the wishes of the government to them. In this way the gorodsky soviet was able to have access to...and supervise...the activities of all the foreign students in each city of the USSR.

The members of the Soviet were also voluntary. And they were usually representatives of the workers, peasants and soldiers in each town, all of whom would be Communist Party members and from whom delegates were drawn for the All-Russia Congress of the Soviet government.

In the year that I arrived Rostov-On-Don, the leadership of the Nigerian students Union planned to mark the Nigerian Independence day with a socio-cultural event, which they hoped would become the talk of the town for many months to come. Apparently this was going to be the first time in 3years that new Nigerian students were posted to Rostov and in such a large number! A total of 18 new students had arrived in two batches of 9 each. So there was need to organise a party that was not too flamboyant; which would give the authorities the wrong impression, yet prestigious enough to give the Nigerian population in Rostov a little bit of respect after their image had suffered a serious battering, which later resulted in 3 years of a strained relationship with the gorodsky soviet.

The story has it that the Nigerian students union did something unimaginably wrong; they had organised a peaceful demonstration along Engels street...the main street of the town, which passes through the city centre...carrying placards that were written in Russian and in English and demanding for one of their students to be released from jail.

The official story is that this incarcerated student, the then President of the Union, was a spekulant; somebody who engaged in the buying and selling trade. The story goes that he had gotten so rich from this illegal activity to the point were the authorities started to take a keen interest in him. This lead to his being caught in the act of trying to sell some tovari, products, to an undercover agent. And since this was considered an act of economic sabotage, the punishment was an indefinite spell in a Soviet jail.

But another version, one that the students prefer to believe, is that the authorities were concerned that the Nigerian students Union was becoming too challenging and that the leadership was refusing to listen...something that certainly had to be discouraged, even among foriegners...so somebody had to be made a scapegoat and the best candidate happened to be the very outspoken president. And he got himself framed.

The outcome of all this is that the Nigerian population in Rostov-On-Don was drastically reduced from well over a hundred students to less than 30 by dispersing the leaders of that demonstration to other towns, such as Baku and Tashkent and then making sure that no new students were posted to Rostov until most of the older “corrupted” students had graduated. They also made sure that the subsequent leadership of the Student Unions were properly vetted.

So this was the Rostov in which we had arrived; a city that had not seen any new Nigerian students in the preceding 3years and where the older students were battling to redeem their reputation as law abiding students. This was a city where most of the foreign students, especially the Nigerians, were still under a lot of scrutiny.

Rostov-On-Don/5

2007-10-21T06:51:00.000-07:00

The bus stopped in front of an old four storied brick building, built in that baroque-style architecture that seemed to characterise all the buildings in this old Russian city. This one…one of several buildings that constitutes the hostels of the Rostov State Medical University…is located at No 212 Pushkin street next to a very long park.

This was early autumn and the trees and the shrubs seemed to be adorned in an Autumn show of colours ranging from green through golden brown and yellow, with occasional splashes of red in-between. And for as long as the eyes could see there were benches scattered throughout the length of the park, interrupted here and there by dark grey and black statues at regular intervals in the park; I recognised one of the statues to be the bust of Lenin from the bald head and the long goatee beard.

On the other side of the park, and running parallel to it, are located several large retail stores. And from the traffic of people that could be seen going in and out of them one could tell that they were already open for business that morning. In front of one of such retail stores a queue was already forming and you could see people...mostly middle aged men and women...standing patiently, with faces that gave away so little about what was going on in their minds. They were dressed up in dark autumn clothes and were all carrying their large bags or briefcases; modjet be'it bags, Eddy had called them.

At that moment a man staggered out of the store. He wasn't carrying one of those large briefcases, but instead he was clutching several bottles of...what looked like...wine to his chest. He stumbled forwards then regained his balance but dropped one of the bottles, which then splintered into pieces as it crashed to the ground. The people who stood near the entrance of the store immediately scuttered aside to avoid the splintering glasses. And I watched them start to reprimand him but he just shrugged his shoulders and sauntered away.

“So na booze dis people dey wait for!” I heard Ugo, who was sitting in front of me say, commenting on the fact that the queue seemed to have been for alcohol.
As we watched the drama playing out outside, Alexei Sergeivitch had gotten up from his seat in front and stood facing us.
“This is the second hostel” he announced. “And it is where you will be staying for the next one year”.

We all got off the bus and followed Alexei Sergeivitch. The air outside of the bus was very chilly that morning even though the sun had started to climb higher into the sky. The rays of the sun seemed to dance on the tree tops, playing in-between the autumn leaves and casting funny shadows on the wall of that old baroque building. There was something surreal about the way the golden orange rays of the sun cast those funny shadows on the wall, while the people-who had now lost their animation-moved slowly forward and silently in their long queue.

I suddenly had a deja vu experience; I have seen all this before! I thought. I have seen these middle aged people in their dark clothes; the faces and eyes bereft of emotions. The silence. Yes! this was the image of Russia that was always lurking on the threshold of my consciousness. And it suddenly felt as if an old motion picture was playing out around me, where i was just the casual observer.

But this was my reality now; this was Rostov-On Don, a city in the Southern part of Russia which I was going to call home for the next 7 years of my life.

Rostov-On-Don/4

2007-10-21T03:36:00.000-07:00

Morning was breaking as we started to get our luggage’s together. The train had pulled in to the main railway station of the city of Rostov-On-Don and people had already started to disembark from the train.
The Portuguese speaking group of students were in front of us as we all made our way onto the corridor and towards the exit. I managed to catch a glimpse of the lovely girl and had overheard somebody call her by the name “Adelaide”.

Adelaide; I had never heard of that name before but the sound of it to my ears was so melodious and befitting of her. It was as befitting as a garment that has been painstakingly chosen and made just for her.

Our group had started to congregate at one corner of the railway hall where we were to wait for Alexei Segeivitch who had gone to sort out the bus that was to take us to our hostels. And as I struggled with my luggage I had purposely brushed passed her in the crowded chaos of that cold hall and she had turned and looked at me. And in that fleeting moment, as the butterflies started flying about in my abdomen, our eyes had connected. But she had looked past me as if I didn’t yet exist in her world.

I was now looking at her standing just several metres away with the rest of her group as she engrossed herself in a conversation with one of the girls. I was hearing them, just above the noise in the hall, chattering away in Portuguese. And then I noticed for the first time that standing not too far away from her was that mixed-race guy; the same guy she had sat next to in that beryozka on our very first night in Moscow. Now this is definitely not good at all. I thought as I watched to see if I could notice anything in their interaction, which would suggest that something was going on between them. But I could see nothing as he was busy talking with somebody else in their group.

I looked around the hall; This one was a lot smaller than that of the Kursky train station in Moscow. And it seemed almost unable to accommodate the swarming crowd that was thronging around as you could see a lot of people standing just in front of the entrance to the hall. The noise here was unbearable; with the sound of people shouting and talking all at the same time, in that language that was sounding so hard to the ears. The population here… though still predominantly Russian…seemed to comprise a lot of nationalities with darker Southern European looks and also a lot with mild Oriental features, like the two girls whom we had met in the canteen the previous evening.

People here looked a lot less affluent than those in Moscow; in Moscow the younger population had worn clothes, which looked like they had come from the Western countries. Here the clothes came across slightly tackier…slightly shabbier…giving an impression of things mass produced in factories where the equipments didn’t quite work. And most of the people seemed to be carrying briefcases.“I wonder why everybody seems to be carrying a briefcase” I said.
“ They call them modjet be'it bags here!” Eddy said. “Modjet be'it are the Russian words for maybe. My brother told me that people carry these sacks around with them everywhere they go, in case they run into one scarce commodity or the other. You see practically everything is rationed here and always in short supply.“ Eddy’s older brother was a student in the Ukrainian city of Kharkov where he was studying Medicine on scholarship. He had arrived the USSR a year earlier.

As we stood there waiting for Alexei Sergeivitch, one young man with a strong smell of stale alcohol on his breath had walked up to us and started whispering something in Russian to Eddy. When he realized that he was a bit taken aback by his uncouth approach and that he didn’t have the faintest idea of what he was on about he had pointed to the jean jacket that Eddy was wearing and tried to whisper something again “You sell me?...I have plenty man'ny?” I heard him say.

At that moment Alexei Sergeivitch started to walk towards us, and as the man saw him coming he hastened away.“I thought they said that buying and selling things are illegal in this country!” I said.
“Hm. Its illegal officially, but that’s the business people do here to survive” Eddy said. “My brother says there’s loads of money to be made buying things from the West and then selling to the Russians.”

One bus was to take all the groups of students that arrived from Moscow on that train to their various hostels. The groups comprised Nigerians, some Portuguese speaking students from Mozambique, Angola and Guinea Bissau and also a few Ghanaians. As we made ourselves comfortable in the bus, I noticed that Adelaide was engrossed in a conversation with her fellow Portuguese speaking students at the back. But she was sitting next to that fat guy with the spectacles. And as I saw them sitting there together, something seemed to start hurting inside of me.

Rostov-On-Don/3

2007-10-20T15:19:00.000-07:00

We eventually left the restaurant and got back to our coach without any more untoward incidents. On our way back to our cabin, we passed the cabin that the Portuguese speaking girl shared with another female student and as we passed by I heard her laughing inside her. So I decided that I would stay outside a bit in the corridor, in the hope that she would come out briefly.

Half an hour later I was still waiting in the corridor and looking out into the darkness, outside of the windows, as our train spread towards the Caucasus mountains when she eventually came out alone into the corridor. She had paused and then smiled at me as she looked in my direction. In that instant, as I had tried to respond to her enchanting smile, my dry lips had suddenly frozen on my face and they started to feel all rubbery and funny! I had looked away quickly so that she wouldn't see the confusion that must have been emblazoned on my face at that moment. And I had quickly turned away and hastened back to my cabin in case she said something…
“This wan wey you run come back into the room wetin happen?” Ugo asked, wanting t6o know why I had run back into the cabin.
“Na dat girl!. She been commot for corridor and I no come know wetin to do; I no even fit smile sef.” I said telling him what had just happened.
“ Well, you for at least ask am hin name and then ask am other tings about hin self”. He advised saying that I should have started to ask her about her name and other things about her self.
“She left me feeling confused and I just had to get out of there!”
He laughed. “I bet you’re still a virgin. And make I tell you, my man, babes no dey like men wey slack. So if you go continue like this you no go see dat babe pants!” He said, saying that if I continued behaving in the way I was then I certainly wasn’t going to see her underwear.
“But no be hin pants I wan see”
“Na you sabi”. He said, meaning that what I wanted to do was my business. He then started to lecture me on “what women really want“; and talked about how they want a man who is in control and who is “confident enough to show it“. And that it is such real men who will always get their ways with woman.
“So Kasi, if you wan nyash dat babe, then you go need to begin behave like dat kind man. ”He said, ending his lecture with the admonition that if I wanted to sleep with her, then I needed to start behaving like a real man.
I had wanted to tell him that this was more than just about sleeping with her but realised that we he had just said would have still applied anyway.

Later that night as I lay on my bed in the cabin thinking about the events of the day, I was feeling restless. The sound of that word “abezy’an”, which had punctuated every sentence the fellow in the canteen had made kept on coming back to me, like the echo of a scream reverberating relentlessly in a dark tunnel, while the image of that lovely girl and her laughter struggled to push it to the fringes of my consciousness. And It was her face that was on my mind as I cuddled up under the duvet and succumbed gradually to the pull of sleep

That night my sleep was troubled. At one point I woke up from a nightmare in which I had been chased by a large black monkey along a lonely road flanked by some houses. Some eyes had peered at me from behind their curtains as I ran by. And I recognised that a pair of those eyes were those of the lovely Portuguese-speaking girl.

Rostov-On-Don/2

2007-10-20T07:04:00.000-07:00

A few hours earlier Ugo and I had been sitting just a few seats away from two Russian girls in the almost empty canteen of the train. The canteen was located about 4 coaches away from ours and we had been seated for about 10minutes after having placed an order for a two course meal. There was not much to choose from as the only things on the menu was the pelmeni...a Russian dumpling filled with mince meat...and a Russian traditional soup called borsht; a red coloured vegetable soup, which people prefer to eat with bread.

As we waited for the food I could hear the giggles from the two girls, who kept on glancing in our direction. The girls...one a brunette and the other a red head...would have been in their late teens or early twenties and both had a lot of make-up on them, which gave each of them a rather tacky look; underneath the make-up they would have been naturally pretty, with the slightly slanted eyes of people from the Orient and yet with other facial features that suggested that in their veins coursed through the blood of many generations of inter-ethnic mixing.

“Now that’s what I’m talking about!” Ugo said under his breath. He was smiling at the girls and had nodded back to them as they giggled at us.

I looked around the canteen and a young dark haired man, wearing a black leather jacket and sitting at one corner of the canteen, was occasionally puffing away on a thick wrap of tobacco. He was glaring at us with blood shot eyes that peered through the whiff of dirty grey smoke that curled upwards from the tip of his tobacco wrap. And he seemed to get angrier each time the girls giggled at us. A few seats away from him an elderly man, wearing a worn out black suit that had several large medals pinned near the breast pocket was also sitting. And he didn't seem to care about what was going on around him as he continued to eat; he would alternately bite a piece of brown bread that he held in his left hand after each spoonful of soup from a bowl, which was on the table in front of him; the soup must have been borsht because there was nothing else on the menu.

The red head was smiling at Ugo after he winked at her. “Do you speak English?” he asked, raising his voice a bit for the girls to hear him.
“Nyet!” I heard her say, shaking her head.
The dark haired man got up suddenly and sauntered towards the girls. From the slight wobble in his gait it was clear that he was a bit drunk. He stood in front of the girls and started to say something to them angrily in Russian. And the word “abezy’an” seemed to punctuate his every sentence. The girls got up from their table and started to argue with the man but the elderly man with the many medals suddenly barked something in Russian at the drunken fellow.

Whatever it is he had said to the man seemed to snap the fellow out of his drunkenness. Because he stopped arguing with the girls and, looking at Ugo and myself with a lot of contempt in his blood shot eyes, had spat out the word “abezy’an!” and then stormed angrily out of the canteen.

The elderly man had continued to drink his soup and eat his brown bread, while the girls who were now quite subdued had sat back at their table to finish their food. They had hurriedly finished their food without looking in our direction again and then left the canteen as Alexei Sergeivitch was pushing open the door and walking in.

Alexei Sergeivitch had heard of the little incident and had come to take us back to our coach once we had finished eating in order to avoid any further incidents. After finding out our version of what happened he gave us a little lecture of how every society had their own fare share of miscreants who misbehaves under the influence of alcohol. He emphasized the fact that things are a lot worse in the “Capitalist world where the exploited masses unleash their frustrations in acts of aggression”.

After he had exhausted himself talking about the problems in the “decadent West” I asked him the one question that was bothering me;
“So what does the word ‘abezy’an’ mean??
He had paused as If to grope for the exact meaning of the word in English.
“And where did you hear that word?” he eventually asked.
”The drunken guy had kept on saying it whenever he was referring to us.
“Well, he is uninformed and lacks the intelligence to properly express himself.”
“Yes I know, but what does it mean?” I insisted.”
“That’s the Russian word for monkey.” he said eventually.
"Hm…so we looked like monkeys to the guy ehn?!" Ugo had asked and burst out laughing. “No wonder he kept on looking at Kasi whenever he used that word!“ he said.
I winced when he said that. Of course I knew that Ugo was trying to make light of the whole thing, but he didn’t know that by his indirect, possibly unconscious, reference to my appearance, he had spoken to my insecurities…
“There’s nothing funny about being called a monkey!” I muttered.
“Na you sabi. The man is a fool. And fools are supposed to be ignored”. Ugo said as a frown gradually creased his face.
Alexei Sergeivitch had looked very puzzled at Ugo's initial reaction but had started to nod in agreement when he started to talk about the need to ignore fools. Its easier said than done, though. I thought as we sat in silence, still waiting for the food, which we had ordered and that seemed to be taking an eternity to arrive.

Chapter 3: Rostov-On-Don/1

2007-10-19T04:58:00.000-07:00

Rostov-On-Don is a city of over a million inhabitants that is located on the banks of the Don River. There is, however, another much older Rostov-with a wealth of pre-revolution artefact's and architecture-that forms one of a group of towns known as the Golden ring; a group of several towns with a lot of history, which are located on the outskirts of Moscow. The Golden ring is one of Russia's Tourist attractions. This other Rostov, though much more smaller in size, has been known as Rostov Veliky or Rostov the great in order to differentiate it from its namesake.

I was posted to the Russian language preparatory school of the Medical Institute in Rostov-On-Don with 8 other Nigerians, which had included the warring pairs of Ugo and Seyi; Musa and Eddy and some others. Grace was retained in Moscow.

We had been allocated a guide Alexei Sergeivitch. Alexei Sergeivitch was a very tall young man in his early thirties with the slightly high cheek bones and the dirty blond hair that was almost characteristic of the average Russian and most people of Slavic origin.Though he had never travelled outside of the Soviet Union he spoke English with an almost indiscernible Russian accent.

Alexei Segeivitch preferred to be called Alexei Sergeivitch since in Russia calling a person by their first and middle names was a sign of respect. This is unlike in the West where people preferred their surnames preceded by the prefixes Mr. Mrs. Ms and so on.Alexei Sergeivitch said that in most Slavic cultures, a person’s middle name would be the person’s fathers’ name. So in his case, because his father’s first name was Sergei his middle name is Sergeivitch. His sister‘s middle name is Sergeivna…

He was to travel with us up to Rostov and then would hand us over to another person who would then be responsible for coordinating our settling down in the new town. For the trip we were given 3 Roubles each, which would be enough to buy food in the trains canteen.

I was sharing the same cabin with Ugo for the 17 hours trip to Rostov-On-Don. We were becoming very comfortable in each others company even though we were very different; Ugo came across as one of those confident young men who had a lot of exposure to life. It was clear that he was a lot more experienced than me, even though we were almost the same age; I was going to turn 18 in a few months time, while he was already 18 years old. Apart from that, our physical appearances were remarkably different; while he was tall...at well over 6 feet and a lighter shade of brown...I had always been among the smallest and darkest in my class. In fact I had startled all my cousins when I grew to a height of 5’ 8 in the last 2 years. And I liked to tell people that I was still growing. I was also a lot more introspective, while Ugo came across as quite verbal and outgoing.

Our train had departed from the Kursky vokzal in Moscow…the station for trains bound for Southern Russia and the Caucasus mountains…well over 5 hours earlier. Ugo was talking about his life and what he wanted to do;
“Sam been tell me say people don dey make money for dis country now. And me na money I come make first before studies.”Sam had told Ugo that there were increasing opportunities to make money in the USSR. This he said was top on his list of priorities. He then started to talk about why making money was so important to him.
”My popsi been get money well-well and hin come try politics during the Shagari era, but loose everything!”. He said that his dad was once very rich but dabbled into politics during the government of Shehu Shagari where he lost practically all his money. He later told of how his dad had amassed a fortune in the haulage business within just a decade from the civil war and how in those 4 cursed years of politics his family was transformed from people who could afford to go on holidays to any part of the world to people who can barely eat 3 square meals a day.

The Shehu Shagari government was the ill-fated first Civilian government after the Nigerian Civil war that was overthrown in a military coup lead by General Mohammadu Buhari on New Year’s Eve in 1983. During that government, and indeed ever since, wealthy individuals would pump in a lot of money into the rigging of elections in order to secure contracts later. Unfortunately for so many of these money bags, the elections of 1983 were marked by a lot of electoral fraud which prompted the military to take over the government. Money bags, like Ugo’s father, lost out and ended up bankrupt.

“My dad wey everybody been de respect before, come turn into person wey nobody dey wan acknowledge for village meetings, as hin no get money again…” Ugo said. Apparently his dad was once a much respected person in the community until he went bankrupt. And now nobody acknowledges his presence in any of their community meetings.
“But making money in this country is illegal” I offered
“I don’t know about it being illegal, but making money everywhere is risky! The important thing is knowing how to go about it and I am going to learn”. There was a lot of passion in his voice as he talked about making money.
“And again dem say without money for dis country you no go fit chase the fine babes wey full am” he said with a twinkle in his eyes making a reference to the fact that you could only chase the beautiful girls in this country if you had money. "Me no be Afriko babes i come chase for dis country O, so people like you wey dey fall in love with dem no go get competition!". He was making a reference to the fact that he knew of how besotted i was with the Portuguese speaking African girl and stated that he wasn't interested in African girls, so people like me would not have a lot of competition.

But I wasn't quite sure about the competition thing.

Moscow/6

2007-10-17T13:39:00.000-07:00

“I beg make una stop dis una Ngbati and tok in English!” Ugo exclaimed to the two guys after we had come back to the room from the beryozka. The guys, Seyi and Ayo, had been talking loudly in Yoruba as if completely oblivious of the fact that we were in the same room with them. So Ugo had told them to stop talking in Yoruba and to speak in English and had used the word “ngbati” an Igbo term for the Yoruba language. “Abi na only una dey for dis room?” he continued asking them if they thought that they were the only people in the room.
“And why must we talk in English to pleasure you?” responded the bigger of the two guys. His name was Seyi, a bespectacled young man who was as tall as Ugo. His complexion, which was not as dark as mine belied the stereotyping of Yoruba’s as very dark people. ”English na ya papa language?” he asked whether English was his fathers language.
“English no be my papa language, but since no be only una dey dis room una for show us some respect” Ugo was arguing that though English wasn’t his fathers language that they should at least be considerate of the fact that they weren’t the only people in the room.
“Listen, I don’t have to talk for you to understand what I am saying. If you have a language, why don’t you go ahead and speak it and stop showing how brainwashed you have become by the Oyibo man!”
“Anyway, I don’t blame you. You're just a village man!" Ugo responded "Because I have a lot of friends from your place, who understand basic social etiquettes, so I won‘t waste my time arguing with the obstinate fool that you are.“
“You’re the fool!” Seyi said hissing and said something in Yoruba. And dismissing Ugo, he carried on with his conversation with Ayo in Yoruba.

Ugo said something to me in Igbo along the lines of this being the kind of things that perpetuate tribalism, but not wanting to be drawn in to the discussion I muttered something in English.

It is so difficult not to start thinking along tribal lines when you are in Nigeria. I was thinking as I lay on my bed later that night. It’s there all around you, no matter how broad minded you try to be. Somebody will almost always provoke you into going on the defensive or alienating you into seeking refuge with your own kind; your tribe. But I didn’t feel comfortable with that because I realised that there is a world beyond the stereotypes that we use to limit ourselves in Nigeria; a world that I wished to escape to and which I had hoped I would start to experience by having travelled on that 9 hours journey to the USSR.

And as I lay there contemplating on the bonds that had just been broken in our room because of the exchange of words between Ugo and Seyi, I wondered whether the friendship that was developing between Ugo and myself was based on our identical ethnic origins or whether it was just an accident that we just happened to be Igbo’s; would we have become friends if he had been Hausa or would he have gravitated more towards Musa, who was the only Hausa person in our group. And who had remained to himself, for the duration of our flight from Lagos?

While I hoped that it was not just because we were from the same tribe and that we would have become friends all the same, given that we lived in the same area in Owerri, I realised that to any outside observer the most obvious conclusion would be that Ugo and I were drawn together because of the tribe thing. I felt uncomfortable about that thought. And wondered if friendships among Nigerians in the USSR and abroad are built predominantly on tribal affiliations. And I hoped that over the next few days, that we did not start forming subgroups based purely on those primordial sentiments.

Fortunately, that did not happen. Instead we ended up with two groups of guys having personal squabbles with each other; Ugo and Seyi continued to have personality clashes that was built on the argument, which they'd had on that first night. While Musa and Eddy...the guy with the goatee who had fallen out with Musa at the airport...continued to have pseudo-political debates that always ended up with both of them hurling insults at each other. The interesting thing was that Musa and Eddy also shared the same room.

Over the next 3 days we had to be screened for different infectious diseases, which we could have arrived with from our third world countries…including a mandatory screening for what the Russians call SPID. None of us was sure what SPID was at the time. But it was clear that it was an incurable viral disease that had come out of Africa.

Those few days flew by like a haze as I found myself preoccupied with thoughts about that beautiful dark brown girl with her long Senegalese braids whom I had seen in that Beryozka on our first night in Moscow. Everything else…the petty tribal arguments, the tests…whizzed by in a surreal blur; like one long grey dream, in which an inconsequential part of me was party to, while the real me lived on in the reality of the image of those lovely eyes engaging briefly with mine; and the sound of that infectious laughter, floating on the edges of the Russian music that played softly in the background. And for the next three days I had searched for her…hoping that I would once again catch a glimpse of her…but it was as if she had disappeared out of my life the same way she had appeared; like a fleeting apparition that is destined to haunt me.

On the third day those of us who had been deemed medically fit, were now ready to move on. Some of the students had to get medical treatment before they could be posted out to their various schools; one of the Nigerian student who came with us was said to have Tuberculosis and would need to be in hospital for several months; two had Malaria and needed to be quarantined for a few days. But nobody in our group was sent back.

We were now ready to be posted out to the cities where we were to travel to for our language preparatory course. Rumours had been circulating about which cities where more friendly to foreign students; It was said that those cities that were more favourably disposed towards Gorbachev’s Glasnost and Perestroika were also a lot more progressive and easier for foreigners to live in than in the others. The rumours had it that the worst cities for African students to be were places like Tashkent, Baku, and Rostov-On-Don.

And as I waited for my name to be called so that I could receive the slip that stated what city I was going to, I was very anxious that it wasn’t going to be to any of those 3 cities. And certainly not Baku or Tashkent since Ugo, Eddy and Seyi had already gotten their posting and were unfortunate to be going to Rostov-On-Don. This meant that I would at least have company there if i was unlucky enough to share in their misfortune. I also heard that the lovely Portuguese speaking girl, had also been posted to that city. So while i waited for my posting to come out I started to secretly pray.

And my prayer was answered. On my little slip was written in English the city; Rostov-Na-Donu.

Moscow/5

2007-10-17T06:33:00.000-07:00

I had always been shy and insecure, especially around women, for so many reasons:

The Obieze family compound is located in the Ovom area of Aba and houses 4 generations of the family. My great grandfather, a wealthy yam farmer, married 6 very fertile wives from whom he produced more than 60 Obieze’s; and that’s just counting those from my age and above. We could have been a lot more than that if not for my cousins and uncles who had been killed during the Biafra war…
A lot of the extended family had moved out of the compound and made their homes in other parts of the country and as a result some of their houses had been put up for rent. One of such houses, a 4 bedroom bungalow, was usually rented by girls from the neighbouring Ovom girls’ high school, who by their presence had turned our compound into a place of pilgrimage for a lot of the young men that lived in neighbouring compounds.

Most times, on weekends my nuclear family would travel back to the village on weekends from Owerri…a town that was about 90minutes drive away from Aba…and my cousins would regale me with stories of their escapades with the girls. They would then encourage me to try to have my way with them; apparently most of them where cheap and some of my younger cousins had gotten themselves dis-virgined by them. But I could never find the courage to approach any of them. “You need to learn the raps” Emeka, one of my closest cousins would say “once you learn the raps, everything falls in place”. And he would try to tutor me on the “raps”, but somehow the words didn’t quite click with me.

One day he had arranged one of the girls for me and had asked me to wait in a room while he got her for me. “Kasi, she likes you because you look different, with those your dark Yoruba features and she’s willing. I’ve done all the work for you…” he said winking. But I had escaped through the back window immediately he left me in the room to go and bring the girl! I simply didn’t know what to do or say!

I later decided to start reading up on a lot of romance novels to improve on my raps. And read all the Mills and Boon and Harold Robbins that I could lay my hands on, to the point where I became an authority on raps. I even started to compose love poems for some of my cousins to impress their girlfriends, but was never able to use any of them myself. I think one of the problems was the fact that I was darker than most people around me; certainly a lot darker than everybody else in my compound. And this always made me feel insecure around the people I came in contact with. You see in the village everybody was always equating beauty with the colour of ones skin; the lighter ones skin colour, the more handsome one is considered. And as a result of this a lot of people would spend loads of money on very expensive skin-lightening creams.

To make things worse for me, the old women in our compound liked to refer to people by different names, which they had coined based on one physical feature or other attributes that they noticed in any of us. I was called nwoko oji, which means the dark one in Igbo. Some others in the village would call me nwa Yoruba. meaning Yoruba child, if I had done something wrong, I am not sure if the intentions were to consciously make me feel ostracized but it always made me aware of the fact that I am different. And much as I didn’t like this identity, I couldn’t quite bring myself to tell people to stop calling me by names other than the name that my parents had given to me. Because each time they did so, they would re-enforce in me that sense of alienation from everybody else.…

Moscow/4

2007-10-15T14:58:00.000-07:00

The building we were taken to was a 4-storeyed brick building located a few minutes walk away from the main hotel. Outside of this building and in some of the corridors you could still see some evidence of work in progress as there were still some scaffolding here and there. But the rooms we were taken to were quite big and surprisingly very neat; each of them could accomodate up to 4 students. And I ended up sharing mine with Ugo and two other Nigerians.

After we finished sorting out our beddings, Ugo had suggested that we go and look for something to eat. None of us had eaten since our last meal on the Aeroflot airlines almost 24hours earlier!“Hunger wan kill man pickin!” Ugo had stated, expressing how hungry he was. “I sure say if we go back to the main building somebody go fit tell us where the nearest shops dey” He reckoned that somebody should be able to tell us where we could go and buy something to eat at the main hotel building.

“But what about money?” I asked. I hadn’t arrived with any money on me from Nigeria. My stepmother said that by giving me extra money that my dad would be encouraging me to lead an “extravagant” lifestyle once i arrived Russia. According to her, the scholarship offered to me was supposed to be a full one, which was meant to take care of tuition, feeding and necessary miscellenous expenditures. Anything extra would amount to "spoiling" me, she said.

“Sam been give me some Roubles at the airport” Ugo said in response to my question. Apparently Sam had given him some Roubles before they parted at the airport, “ and I fit always change some dollars if the money no do” .

The other two guys had some money of their own to spend and had decided to come along with us to look for something to eat. So we had all strolled over to the main hotel building where we met a stern looking stout elderly woman wearing a scarf and a long worn out brown coat. She was standing at the entrance of the hotel foyer and could speak a bit of broken English.
"Only place near to buy food is beryozka" she had said. There was one such Beryozka located inside the hotel. These beryozka or “hard currency” stores were state-run retail stores that sold goods to foreigners in such convertible currencies like the US Dollar, the Pound Sterling, Deutsche mark and the French Franc. The type of goods they sold were goods that had been specially prepared for export out of the Soviet Union and also Western consumable goods, which only the foreign tourists and top communist party members could afford.

We located a beryozka at the far end of the lobby area and as we walked in it i was reminded of the bars i had seen in Western movies. The place looked more like a bar than a retail store. It had some stools built into the side of the counter and there was a large lounge area at one corner of the room that could sit up to 10 people and there was music playing in the background. Behind the counter was shelves of different types of drinks and chocolates, while in one corner some souvenirs were on display. There was a group of about 6 African students already seated at the lounge area and you could hear them chatting away. Their voices were barely audible above the sound of the Russian music that played in the background but their language sounded like Portuguese.
"E be like say na bar we come enter " I told Ugo.
"Make we find out " He said.

We went up to the counter and Ugo bought a can of coke and some biscuits for both of us after confirming from the guy that this was the beryozka. The other two guys, who had come with us, decided to go back to the hostel without buying anything after having complained that the cost of things there was too expensive for them. Ugo and I made ourselves comfortable on the stools near the counter and started to munch our biscuits. Ugo took a sip from his can of coke and then nodded in the direction of the lounge area. “ Check out that babe wey siddon near that fat guy over there!” he said asking me to look at one of the girls who sat next to a rather plump looking mixed-race guy in glasses.

The students there had several cans of beer on their table and were engaged in a very spirited conversation. One of them, the girl he had asked me to “check out” was, without doubt ,beautiful. From where I sat her dark brown skin looked smooth and I could see that though she was slender, the impression of her breasts on her cream-coloured jumper, was such that my eyes were tempted to linger just a little longer at her chest. Her black hair was done up in long, shoulder length, Senegalese braids and there was a sparkle in her eyes as she laughed. She was beautiful. And looking at her I was suddenly reminded of somebody else.

I was reminded of Funmi, a girl whom I had met about a year ago. I had literaly bumped into her on my first day at the university as i had come out of the admission clerks office. She had been rounding the corner in a hurry and we had run into each other with such impact that her bag had gone flying across the corridor, crashing into the adjacent wall. I had apologised to her and as i was handing her bag back to her just before she hurried off again...in a bid to meet up with the admissions clerk...our eyes had engaged for a fleeting moment, leaving my heart beating a lot faster. She had such lovely brown eyes that left me craving to be embraced by them, long after she had disappeared into the admission clerks office. And for the next few weeks, i found myself fantasizing of the possibilities; yet not being able to approach her even though we attended the same lectures daily. Then one day i summoned up the courage and accosted her in the corridor next to one of the canteens at the Naraguta hostel complex. And i ended up stuttering my way through a confession of love! The memory of that day leaves me feeling embarrased; and i am sure i must have left her thinking that i am a blabbering fool. Because she had walked away to join her friends who had been waiting for her at the end of the corridor and i could hear them laughing loudly as they disappeared round a corner.

This was just before the riots engulfed the Federal universities and we had all been sent packing, leaving me no chance to redeem myself. Several months later we were all called back to sit for our exams and given only 2 weeks to prepare for them. During those 2 weeks the whole atmosphere in the campus had been extraordinarily tense as everybody was under a lot of pressure to pass their courses without any carry-overs. However I did meet her a few times though and each time that she had looked in my direction, her lovely brown eyes would look right through me as though i am invisible; a nonentity who does not exist in her world.

The lovely Portuguese speaking girl across the hall was laughing again. I sensed something infectious in that laughter, which was able to mellow down the embarassment that was almost blushing across my face as i remembered Funmi. And for a fleeting moment my eyes had engaged with hers; a fleeting moment which was to seal my destiny...

“She’s beautiful isn’t she!” I said under my breath.

Moscow/3

2007-10-14T08:30:00.000-07:00

I noticed a grey haired Russian man in a black leather jacket and stone washed jeans walking towards us as Grace had made her speech about tribalism. And I wondered if the noise our group was making had annoyed somebody into putting in a complaint…
The man said something in Russian as he walked up to our group but we looked at each other, wondering what exactly he was asking. I know I had heard something that sounded like “Nigeria” and “student“, but wasn’t quite sure. Grace who had been standing a bit further away stepped closer to the front and asked him something in Russian.
And he responded. The look on her face at first gave away the fact that she did not quite understand what he had been saying. “Shto?” I heard her say.
“Viy Nig’eritskiy studienti?” the man repeated his question.
“Da” she replied.“But I speak very little Russian” she said “so you need to talk very slowly, or talk in English…”
“Okay, I Oleg. And I come take you to hotel” He said in broken English.

Oleg had turned up almost 2 hours late because the bus he had originally arranged for us had developed some problems at the last minute and as a result he had to make alternative arrangements for another one. After apologising for keeping us waiting, he took us to the waiting bus, which was to take us to the International Students hotel. According to Oleg, we were lucky because the hotel, which was located about 50minutes drive away, was one of the best in Moscow and had been one of those used to accommodate athletes during the Moscow Olympics 6 years earlier.

Our bus left the airport premises and drove towards the Leningrad highway or Leningradskoe’ shose’ as it is known in Russian. This is the main highway that leads to the city from Sheremetyevo and as we entered the highway we found ourselves locked into a traffic jam.
“We lucky we not go in opposite way!” said Oleg. Those heading towards the airport were in a worse traffic jam than us. If not for the rather peculiar models of the cars, the beeping of the car horns left me feeling that I was caught up in a traffic jam along the 3rd mainland bridge in Lagos!
“Reminds me of being caught up in a go-slow in Lagos!” Grace said. She was sitting in the seat next to me…
“That’s the second time you’ve done that!” I said.
“Second time I have done what?”
“Read my mind. You just said almost exactly what I was thinking “
“Really, and when was the first time?”
“When those other guys had started the tribal war earlier on and you had asked them to stop being stupid”
“Well, I don’t read peoples minds.”
“Anyways, How comes you understand a bit of Russian?” I asked.
“It’s only a very little bit! But its because my dad studied in Russia and I’ve been practicing the very basics with him from the time I was told about the scholarship.”
“I am impressed!”
“Don’t be. My dad says that everybody ends up speaking the language anyway. And that within a few months we’ll all be quite fluent!”
Me?; becoming fluent in Russian Language? in a few months?! This was hard to believe. It was just that the Russian language sounded so very difficult; Russians even have their own alphabet, which would take like ages to learn!

Our bus eventually pulled into the parking spot of the International students’ hotel. The hotel was a very tall building probably up to 12 floors located in a complex that had several nearby smaller buildings. The entrance to the very tall building, which I guessed was the main building, was swarming with students. They seemed to be spilling out from the foyer into a long queue, which was snaking its way into the car park. The time was now almost 4pm and I realised that it had taken us about 2 hours to negotiate the 50minutes trip from Sheremetyevo airport. As we got out of the bus I noticed that the weather had become slightly warmer than it had been when we arrived over 7 hours ago.

We joined the queue behind a group of students from Ethiopia. The long queue was made up of students, grouped according to their countries of origin with their luggage’s clustering all around them and babbling in a cacophony of languages. As I listened to the chatter I wondered if it had been like this during the last days of Babel, when the people were said to have abandoned the building of the tower because of the confusion in languages. The Ethiopians in front of us were talking in a language, which I was hearing for the first time while just in front of them stood a very large group of students chatting exuberantly in a language I guessed must have been Arabic going by the fact that the students looked like some of the Lebanese people I had seen in Nigeria.

We were all queuing up to get registered at the hotel. Registration would involve confirming that the names that were forwarded to the authorities from the embassies, corresponded with the ones in our passports. And following this clarification, we would then be assigned rooms in the hotel and given food vouchers, with which we could eat in the nearby canteen. We were to remain in Moscow until we are medically cleared following from which we would then be posted on to the different Russian language preparatory schools all over the Soviet Union.

The queue continued to move forward very slowly at a pace that even a snail would not have considered challenging enough. And by the time that it got to our turn, the hotel was already filled up and as such we had to be sent to a nearby hostel-type building, which was at that time undergoing renovation.

Moscow/2

2007-10-14T01:15:00.000-07:00

“Do svidania!“ The tall blonde unsmiling air hostess, who stood near the exit of the door, greeted each of us as we walked past her. I heard one of the older students translating to Ugo as they walked up behind me; “ What she said actually means; until we meet again. But that‘s the Russian way of wishing you goodbye“.

As I stepped outside on to the mobile stairway, I was hit by a cold stream of air , making it feel as if ice cold water had just splashed across my face. And I noticed how mist formed around peoples mouths and nostrils as they breathed and talked in the cold, giving an impression that we were all puffing away on invisible cigarettes. I zipped up my jacket and turned up its collar in order to make myself warmer, and started to walk a little faster. Ugo and the other guy, whose name I later found out was Sam, had continued with their conversation as they walked past me and were now walking briskly in front as we all headed towards the waiting airport shuttles.

I caught up with them and heard Sam saying that he came to the USSR 2 years earlier to study Aeronautics Engineering and had been fortunate to be posted to the Latvian city of Riga where there were about 8 other Nigerian Engineering students.
“Riga na betta place, but dem no dey post Medical students come there…” he said extolling the virtues of Riga, saying that it was a good place to be, but that Medical students were not sent there to study. “Generally for the Baltic states you no go feel like say na inside Soviet Union you dey as life there be like you dey for the Scandinavian countries…”. According to Sam, living in the Baltic states was like living in the Scandinavian countries and very different from life in other Soviet cities.

We got on to the first of the two shuttles and were taken to the airport terminal where, on entering the poorly lit receiving hall, we joined one of the two queues. Our queue was the one for foreigners while the other one was for the Soviet nationals. The two noisy queues were slowly snaking up to five glass screened cubicles that constituted the boarder controls. As the queues moved closer I saw that inside of the cubicles sat young looking immigration officials kitted up in what on first glance looked like military uniforms. They appeared to be very meticulous in their duties…or perhaps inexperienced…as they were spending a long time in scrutinising each of the passports that were being pushed through the little windows in the glass screen. After about two hours I was attended to by a stern looking male immigration official. He had looked at my passport with a lot of suspicion and each time he looked from the picture in my passport to me I had tried smiling, but he had completely ignored my smile and waved me through to the customs section. As I passed through the space in-between the two cubicles I was left with the impression that the man didn’t like his job very much and perhaps liked me even less…

Getting through the customs was a lot less of a hassle. From there I had picked up my luggage from the baggage controls and then made my way through to the big lounge area where some other Nigerian students had already started to congregate. In all there were 21 of us who arrived on that flight. And we were to meet with a Russian official who would then coordinate our movements. But nobody was waiting for us in the lounge area.

I looked around the cold poorly lit hall where we were waiting for our guide. The hall was crowded and there was no place to sit down other than the floor as the few seats had already been occupied by other passengers who had arrived a lot earlier than us. Some people sat on their baggage’s, while a rather noisy and chaotic crowd were trying to push through to the different check in counters at the far end of the hall. Every so often you would see passengers who had just come through from the receiving hall pushing their trolley's towards the exit , while those who were not fortunate enough to find trolleys would be seen struggling with various sizes of baggage’s. Watching them I was reminded of the image that had been in my mind before; there is a lot more colour in real life, I thought. And more noise…lots of noise…of people talking in loud voices and others who appeared to be exchanging a lot of expletives! Here people were a lot more animated and a lot more angry.

Outside I could see several cars parked in the drive way. I noticed that all of the cars had the same box-like look, resembling things that had been assembled in so a hurry that very little consideration had been given for comfort. Nearby men, wearing mostly black leather or stone washed jean jackets, looked like they were soliciting for passengers and seemed to be approaching almost everybody who came out of the hall pushing a baggage trolley.

I checked my watch and realised that it was already after midday. We arrived just over 3 hours ago and had been waiting for about 30minutes.
“I sure say una wait no go long pass our own when we arrive two years ago…” Sam, was saying interrupting my thoughts. He was trying to reassure us that our wait may not be as long as theirs had been 2 years earlier. “Dat time, we been stay for dis airport for over 4 hours because the person wey suppose pick us up been drink Vodka com forget the time when our plane suppose arrive!”. Apparently, the person who was supposed to have picked them up at the airport had gotten drunk and forgotten about their time of arrival and ended up coming 4 hours late!

Sam eventually left us after he had given his contact details to Ugo and invited us to drop in anytime we found ourselves in Riga.
“Na wa! dis people wan behave like some Nigerian civil servants. Wetin be to get drunk and forget work?!” one of the students, a rather rotund light skinned fellow with a goatee beard was saying. He was asking how somebody could get drunk while he had work to do and said that this was almost reminiscent of the attitude of some Nigerians working in the civil service.

“Which part of Nigeria be dat one?” A gangling dark youth challenged him, asking him to clarify what part of Nigeria he was talking about. His challenger, Musa, was wearing the kind of hat that was more common to people from Muslim North of Nigeria, “How many Nigerians you don see wey dey get drunk for work? Maybe na for your state dat wan dey happen!” . He said in an accent that suggested that he was of Hausa origins. He was asking the first speaker if he had ever seen any Nigerian getting drunk at work and stated that unless it was in the person’s own state that such things happened.
“Commot for here you village Hausa man…! The rotund guy responded. “…You tink say na nama we come pursue for dis place. When reasonable person dey talk, you wan put your mouth wey you dey take suck nama breast finish!” He asked him if he thought that they had come to Russia to become cattle rearers, making a clear reference to the other persons origins and their negative stereotyping as illiterate cattle rearers who are brought up sucking the breast of cows..
“Nyamiri! Na because of una foolishness and greed wey una lose the Biafra war!” the Hausa guy was now telling the rotund fellow, whom he assumed was Igbo that they had lost the Biafra war because of their greed and foolishness.
“Idiot, na because of your own stupidity wey you no fit see say I no be Igbo man!” the guy was saying he was not Igbo. ”I be Bini man!”

As I watched them I couldn't help feeling ashamed; apart from the fact that they were talking in loud voices that made passers by to throw glances in our direction, I couldn't help wondering why any arguments that involved Nigerians from different ethnic groups always seemed to turn into inter-tribal bickering. I was getting a bit sick of it and had not thought that we would bring our inter-tribal warfare with us to the USSR.
“I beg make una stop dis una stupidity! Una don carry this tribalism ting come all the way to Russia…!” Interposed one of the women who had arrived with us from Nigeria, speaking out loud what I had just been thinking. The speaker, Grace a rather heavy set woman who looked a lot more obese than plump, had kept to herself for most of the journey but must have now felt it her duty, as the oldest looking person in the group, to bring back a bit of sanity. ”Una tink say Oyibo go fit tell the difference between Igbo, Yoruba and Hausa?. Yeye people! Make I tell una, no be Naija we dey now and for here all of us na Africans and na so dem dey see us be dat…“ She said, stating that the white man is not able to tell the difference between the various Nigerian ethnic groups and that as far as they are concerned we are all Africans and that’s how they see us…

Chapter 2: Moscow/ 1

2007-10-13T06:59:00.000-07:00

The Russian aircraft flew into the Sheremetyevo-2 International airport in Moscow after a 9 hours flight from the Lagos Murtala Mohammed International Airport. We had briefly stopped over in Libya’s Tripoli for a one hour transit and as we were flying into the airport I checked my watch and noticed that the time was just approaching 6am.

The cabin crew made an announcement in both English and in Russian, welcoming us to Moscow the capital of the Union of the Soviet Socialist Republics. They announced that the local time was a few minutes to 9am! “How comes?“ I thought and then remembered that Moscow was on a different time zone and that it was probably 3 hours ahead. They also announced that the temperature outside was 10 degrees Celsius!
“We go freeze be dat!” I heard Ugo exclaim in pidgin English from behind me. He was stating that he believed that we were all going to freeze.

In Nigeria it had been difficult to get really warm clothes, which would have been warm enough for the cold weather in the USSR. So most of us had been able to buy some sweaters and jackets, which were certainly warm enough for the cold Harmattan mornings. The Harmattan season comes up between December and March in West Africa and during this time the temperature would usually drop below the yearly average and could dip below 20 degrees Celsius in the mornings. But 10 degrees Celsius? That was almost as cold as being in side of a refrigerator!

I was wearing a very warm jean jacket that had some patches of leather at the elbows and the shoulder, which I had bought at the famous Ariaria market in the Nigerian South Eastern town of Aba. Though it was not meant for very cold weathers, this was the warmest thing I could get my hands on that didn‘t looked like something discarded somewhere in Europe and then sent to Nigeria to be resold as the second hand clothing’s popularly known as Okrika in Nigeria.

“It gets a lot colder than this in Winter…!” I heard somebody say behind me, in response to Ugo’s comments ”…In winter the temperature can fall well below minus 10 degrees Celcius. And that’s even when its not a cold winter…!”
Most of the passengers in the front rows had sat quietly, waiting for the cabin crew to give the final instructions to start leaving the aircraft. At the back, you could hear the excited chatter of the rest of the passengers, the majority of whom were, like me, young Nigerian students coming to the USSR for the very first time. Some, like the person who had responded to Ugo, seemed to know what they were talking about. And I assumed that they were older students who were returning from their summers holiday in Nigeria.

The aircraft taxied on the runway and finally came to a stop. I looked out of the window again and saw a mobile passenger stairway being driven towards us to attach itself to the side of our aircraft, while several metres away two airport shuttles had now parked waiting for us to disembark.

In the distance the building of the Sheremetyevo-2 airport terminal, which had been built only 6 years earlier for the Moscow Summer Olympics of 1980, stood imposingly in its earthen brown colour. The colour of the building was partially obscured by the morning mist, overhanging the city of Moscow and lending its atmosphere that same sort of ominous greyness, which always clouded the images of Moscow that were imprinted in my mind. The only thing missing here was the snow and the unsmiling elderly people who were always walking about sullenly in their drab black winter coats…

The final announcement was made for us to start getting out of the aircraft. And at that moment It felt like butterflies were flying about in my stomach.

The boys from Naija/5

2007-10-13T03:28:00.000-07:00

So we were headed for Moscow. The immediate images this city conjured up in my mind were of the Red Square, St Basil’s Cathedral and of the Kremlin. And of the bald headed moustachioed man with a goatee, whom they called Vladimir Ilych Lenin. There were also images of unsmiling fat elderly men and women wearing thick black winter coats walking about in a place, which was overhung by dark grey clouds, and where nobody could own anything, except for those things, which they were permitted to own by the government. And for some reason, all the images would always be in black and white, except for the red flags, which had a hammer and chisel engraved in them as symbols of Lenin's revolution. There was also the KGB, shrouded in so much mystery and evoking so much fear...

In order to get more factual information about the place, I had gone to the Owerri Central Library immediately after i was informed of the scholarship. This library, which was relatively well-resourced...but with very outdated books...was located at a trekkable distance from where we lived at Ikenegbu layout. Unfortunately, there had been very little information about Russia and the little that i was able to lay my hands on had been hidden away between the pages of very voluminous and tedious to read books.

I gathered that Moscow is an ancient city that gets its name from a similar named river, the river Moskva, on the banks of which it is located. This city has been the capital of Russia since Vladimir Ilych Lenin and the Bolsheviks ousted power from the Tsar and the bourgeoisie class in the bloody revolution of 1917. The capital of Russia before the revolution was St Petersburg, which was later renamed Leningrad; the city of Lenin.

According to history, Lenin died in 1924 and Josef Stalin took over the reigns of power and ushered in a regime, which was notorious for its use of widespread arrests, tortures and executions to brutally crack down on people opposed to the system of beliefs. The state apparatus used for maintaining this status quo was the secret police or the Kommitiet Gasudastveniey Bezapastnost better known as the KGB. After the Second World War the area of influence of Stalinist Russia is said to have expanded into the Baltic and neighbouring East European Countries, while an impenetrable geo-political enclave was created that was cut off from the West by an ideological wall, better known as the "Iron Curtain".

We boarded the half empty aeroplane and as I stepped into the cabin I noticed that the front rows seemed to have been completely taken up by the Russians and other Caucasians, while most of the Nigerians sat towards the back. I saw the pimple faced youth, who earlier on his mother had called by the name Ugo, sitting alone in one of the window seats near the back. Since i also wanted a window seat and being that I didn’t really feel like talking to anybody at that moment, I had taken up the empty window seat just two rows in front of him.

We tightened our seat belts and after several minutes the plane gradually picked up speed on the runway and then lifted into the sky, climbing higher and higher into the African night. Out of my window I could see the buildings in the crowded city of Lagos below get smaller and smaller until they became like little dots of light in an otherwise large sea of darkness.

As the Aeroflot plane continued to climb higher, I reclined on the seat and closed my eyes. I was wondering what my life was going to become in this land behind that ominous Iron curtain where I was about to call home for the next 7 years. It was starting to dawn on me as the dots of light from the city of Lagos below had gradually faded into a dark blur, that I was not only leaving behind my family with all its contradictions, but I was also leaving behind my childhood and about to start on a new chapter of life in which my gradual transition into a man would be finally completed…

The boys from Naija/4

2007-10-13T02:27:00.000-07:00

I joined the queue behind a tall pimple faced young man who was standing with an elderly man in Agbada and a middle aged woman who must have been his mother because of the similarities in their facial appearance. The woman was saying something to the young man but her voice was at that moment swallowed up by another voice announcing something on the public address system;
“Can Olugbenga Thompson please come to the information desk…” the heavily accented femaile voice announced.
I wonder if Olugbenga was the same person that the woman had been frantically looking for when she had been yelling out the name “Olu“ earlier on? I checked to see if she was still standing where I had last seen her, but she wasn’t there anymore.

There were several other young people standing in the queue in front of us who were accompanied to the airport by their families members. And looking at them I couldn’t help being overwhelmed by a feeling of sadness; it felt sad that I didn’t have any of my own family to see me off at the airport. And at that moment I found myself struggling to keep back the tears…

Tears always well up in my eyes whenever I think of my own family. You see, my family and the circumstances of my birth is a bit peculiar. My parents are from different the two Nigerian tribes that seem to hate each other the most; my mother a Yoruba woman from a place called Akure died in child birth while she was giving birth to me in a village near Umuahia where my family had been displaced to during the Biafra war. My dad, a proud Igbo man who still considers himself a Biafran…even though the war ended 16years ago…had relocated his family from the city of Kano immediately after the uprisings against the South Easterners in the Northern part of Nigeria.

This was just before the outbreak of the civil war in which two of his brothers, who had been traders in the same town, were killed but he had managed to escape with his pregnant wife, my mother. On arriving Aba, our hometown, my mother had begged him to allow her to go back to stay with her parents in Akure, because she believed that she would be a lot safer outside of Biafra, but my dad had refused. For him the idea of being separated from her was inconceivable. She gave birth to me in the bushes where they had been hiding from the bombs, but died a few days later because of complications of child birth; she died leaving my dad with a lot of guilt, a lot of hate and one wailing sickly child who had taken away the woman he loved so much…

My father eventually remarried 3 years after the war to a woman who gave him 6 children in a period of 10 years all in a bid to produce another son. Her first 5 children had been girls. Then the last child, Obinna, was born 4 years ago. Obinna means “the fathers desire” and it was as if with his birth I was completely forgotten. Not that I was really ever there. My step-mother had made sure of that. She had ensured that the relationship between my father and I remained strained to the point were I gave up trying to get his recognition. He didn’t seem to care that I had always been tops in my class nor did he say anything when I won medals in athletics during our school’s inter-house sports contests; sports that I became interested in simply because I had found out that he too had been an athlete during his secondary school days. It was as if my dad had stopped caring from the time when my mother, the Yoruba woman whom he had loved so much, died as a result of his foolish pride. And also because I had to be born…

I was at the airport now and there was none of my family members here with me. According to my stepmother, It was a lot cheaper for me to travel alone seeing that the family needed the money to send the younger ones to school. So I had boarded an early morning Luxurious bus at their Owerri terminus 2 days ago and stayed with my Uncle until this morning when he brought me to the airport…
“Ugo, you have to write us a letter immediately you arrive Russia, OK?” the middle aged woman in front of me was saying to the tall pimple faced youth.
“Mummy you’ve told me that so many times already…” he protested.
“I know, but I just want to remind you; I don’t want you to go there and forget your family…”

The young man looked embarrassingly at me when he realised that I could hear what his mother was saying from where I was standing.
“Nna. Are you travelling to Russia as well?” the woman asked directing the question to me.“Yes”
“And you came to the airport alone?”
“No, my uncle dropped me off and had to rush back to work. My parents couldn’t make the journey from Owerri”
“Owerri? Are you from Owerri?”
“No I am from Aba, but we live in Owerri”
“Where in Owerri?
“Ikenegebu layout”
“Eziokwu…?“ meaning, is that true, “…We live in Aladinma Estate. But you don’t look like an Igbo person!”I kept quiet. I didn’t know how to respond to that because I had become tired of having to explain my tribe to Nigerians as if that was all that mattered in this country. Everything had to do with tribe here. The quota system ensured it. Whatever that meant.

I had a first hand experience of this quota system after I got my admission to the University of Jos last year with a score, which was well above the average mark. With that score I should have been able to get into any of the Nigerian universities without any problems but the first thing that I had been asked after presenting my result slip to the admission clerk was about my state of Origin.
“Why is that important” I had asked the clerk a bit irritated.
“Because of the quota system. Candidates from some states need to score higher in order to get into the University of Jos” he explained.
The quota system was just one of so many other such political interventions to “ensure equity” but which only ended up re-enforcing divisions along tribal lines…
“So, Nna what is your name?” she asked me in Igbo.
“Kasi. That’s short for Nkasiobi”
“Nkasiobi onye?” she asking wanting to know my surname.
“ Kasi Obieze”
“Is that from Professor Obieze’s family?”
“No, we don’t have any Professors in my family”
“Nne…” The man in Agbada, whom I assumed was Ugo’s dad was calling his wife and started to say something to her. We had approached the Aeroflot counter and Ugo had to put his luggage on the scale…

The boys from Naija/3

2007-10-13T00:14:00.000-07:00

Professionally my uncle was doing relatively well and apart from his love of long words he was actually very rational in his conversations. And when he had told my dad that he could get me a scholarship to go to Russia, my dad was not in any way opposed to the idea. Obviously, for him that would be one less burden to bear since he would no longer have to be scratching his head to find the money for yet another fee or levy that the university authorities continued to impose on the students even though university education in Nigerian was supposedly free.

I was not that keen to go. When I dreamed of going abroad to study, I had dreamt of places in Canada and the USA and in England. In fact I had written to dozens of Universities in those countries and some of them had actually sent me there brochures. But I knew that my dreams would remain just dreams. You see my dad was not one of those who could afford to send me abroad not on the pittance he was paid as a Civil servant.

I had managed to get into a Nigerian University a year earlier to study Medicine. Fortunately we spent the greater part of the academic year at home because the military government was “forced“ to close down the universities. I say it was fortunate because my dad had a lot of the difficulties coming up with the money for the innumerable fees that we had been levied. To the point where there was no money to cater for things like feeding and books. But then my uncle had stepped in and helped out. And now here he was coming up with all this idea of going to Russia on scholarship. Okay I didn‘t have much of a choice…

The universities had been closed down following a nationwide students riot, which broke out several months earlier on the heels of the political killings of several students who had been on a peaceful protest at a University in the Northern Nigerian city of Zaria. The riots then spilled into other neighbouring universities until students all over the country eventually erupted in anger, staging demonstrations in all the Federal Universities. In some universities the students became very violent; as was the case in the University of Ibadan where they were said to have burnt down a police station. As a result of this chaos the then Military government subsequently closed down all the federal Universities indefinitely.

So while I was not too keen on going to Russia to study I could see some positive things in being able to escape from the problems that had now started to creep into the Nigerian University system…

The porter pushed the trolley along with me walking briskly behind him as we tried to make our way through the crowd milling around in the hall, which seemed so poorly lit that it crossed my mind that NEPA had struck at the airport. NEPA was the government parastatal charged with provided light to the country and the acronym stood for “Nigerian Electric Power Authority”, but due to their level of incompetence people would say that it stands for “Never Expect Power At all…”

“E be like say NEPA don take light again.“ The porter said, confirming my thoughts.
“So, even at the airport they take light?!” I asked surprised.
“Yes, but dem go bring am back quick”. He said and as if that had been the cue, the lights came back on. “Commot for road!” The porter shouted at a group of people blocking our way, asking them to get out of his way.

A passengers trolley had tipped over after having crashed into another one; apparently both trolleys had so much luggage piled on to them that the porters pushing them had not been able to see where they were going;
“I beg make una commot for road. Yeye people!” My porter said again, this time adding some insult to the request by using the adjective “Yeye” , which means “silly” or, if you prefer, “idiotic.”

We negotiated our way pass the people who, though had piled back their luggage on to the trolleys, were now shouting at each other over who was to blame for the incident.
As some soldiers, flanking a rather short stoutly built man in white flowing Agbada, approached from the opposite direction the arguing crowd grew silent…

Though the dictatorial government of Mohammadu Buhari, which had been famed for the “War Against Indiscipline” mantra had been overthrown barely a year earlier in a palace coup by the smiling gapped toothed General Babangida, a lot of people still were very frightened of soldiers; In the Buhari days anybody seen to be behaving in an undisciplined way in public would be humiliated with some sharp whips of the koboko’s; a very strong long whip that is made of animal skin and which was used often by the soldiers to discipline the “bloody civilians“.

These soldiers paid no attention to the now dispersing crowd as they walked by trying to keep up pace with the man in Agbada who, from the pace of his power strides, must have been in a lot of hurry .
As we approached the end of the hall, where the Aeroflot counter was located, a little girl straddled on the back of her mother with a wrapper was crying rather loudly. Her mother seemed to be searching frantically for someone as she looked from one side of the hall to the other and was calling out a name; “Olu!…Olu!…”

I was wondering whether Olu was her husband or son as we finally located the Aeroflot counter. The crowd that stood in front of the Aeroflot counter was not as large as the ones I had seen checking in to other airlines; they were a handful of Caucasian men, some people who looked like North Africans and mostly young Nigerian men and women who were probably students like me.
“Oga, make you find me sometin’ now”. the porter declared, asking me to give him a tip for his efforts after he stopped near a queue that was forming in front of the counter and started to offload my luggage. I reached into my pocket and gave him some of the coins I still had left on me.
“But Oga, as you no go use your money for where you dey go now, you for give me the Naira wey remain for your pocket now!” he said, obviously not impressed by the amount I had given him. He was now requesting that I give him the rest of the money I still had on me since I wasn’t going to use them again.
“I’m not going forever you know!…and besides I don’t have any more money on me”
“Anyway, thank you sha, and safe journey” he said.

The boys from Naija/2

2007-10-12T10:19:00.000-07:00

This was September 1986 and I was on my way to Russia on a scholarship to study Medicine. Usually most Nigerian students, and indeed most students from Sub-Saharan Africa, dream of travelling abroad to continue with their higher education once they finish their secondary schooling. For those whose parents can afford it these dreams sometimes do come true. And many of them end up in the different Universities of Europe and North America. But only very few are enthusiastic about going to study in the Soviet Union.
“Russia?! Who on earth would want to go Russia with all this business of communism?!” most people would ask.

The problem is that nobody seemed to know exactly what was going on behind the so called “Iron Curtain”. And because of this general lack of access to accurate information, there was a lot of exaggerations and scare mongering going on; 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.“ They want to turn you into a Communist puppet or at least a revolutionary…“ some people would say. Or they would ask “ how many people come back from there and are able to fit in to normal society when they come back?“.

It was also believed that because of the Communists loathing for the Western way of life that life in Russia was very frugal and stripped of the opportunities for those frivolous engagements that students everywhere in the world are want to exhaust themselves in as part of their extra-curricular exertions and that everybody just exists bereft of that “joie de vivre” associated with youth. “When you come back from Russia, you’ll be a complete mugu!”. Some would say. Mugu, is one of the Nigerian pidgin English words for a fool.

But people who had actually been there came back with a somewhat different story. Like the “Uncle” who had taken me to the Murtala Mohammed Airport that day. He was actually a very close relation of ours from the same village, and had studied Engineering at the Patrice Lumumba Friendship University in Moscow about ten years earlier. And much as he accepted that life in Russia could be difficult, he had discounted a lot of the things that people were saying as being the products of propaganda from Capitalist apologists. Whatever that meant. My uncle liked such words, but to me that didn’t make him strange in any way. It made him sound educated.“Brain-wash you indeed. That‘s farcical!” he would say. “They’ll teach you about communism and their way of life. But they don’t force you to accept any of their views. They have as much right as the West to defend their views with as much propaganda as they wish. And It’s left for you to choose if you want to sympathise with their ideologies or not…”I had wanted to ask my uncle if he was a Communist apologist. But I decided not to as it didn’t sound very respectful.

BOOK ONE: Chapter one; /1.

2007-10-12T09:58:00.000-07:00

It was raining heavily on that day as my uncles old blue Peugeot 504 salon car was parked outside the departure lounge of the Murtala Mohammed International Airport in Lagos. We had been parked for a few minute and I was now contemplating on how I was going to escape getting drenched by the torrential downpour outside.

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 sky as the thick slices of raindrops continued to slice downwards.

A white Mercedes Benz car was parked beside my uncle and the driver would bleep his horns intermittently. But the sound from his car was almost completely swallowed up by the droning sound of the torrential downpour, interspersed with the splashing of the water as it crashed with so much ferocity to the ground. The sound of the rain reminded me of a documentary that I had once seen about the Victoria falls. This must be what a waterfall sounds like. I thought to myself.

My luggage was in the boot of my uncles car and I was unsure of how I was going to avoid getting drenched in the rain. An airport porter, who was wearing a yellow Macintosh raincoat was standing in the shelter of the airport and looking in our direction as the man in the white Mercedes continued to bleep his horn. “I’ll get that porter over there in the raincoat to help out with the luggage” I said to my uncle who nodded in agreement. I managed to get out of the car and was able to get to the shelter where he was standing. The jacket I was wearing was immediately soaked in the rain so I had to take it off. “Oga you get load for the boot?” he asked in pidgin English as I approached him, wanting to know if I had any luggage in the car.“Yes”“ Make I help you go bring am?“ he was asking if he could help me to bring it out.
“Yes, please”.
He wheeled one of the trolleys towards the boot of the car and then jacked out my large black leather suitcase onto the trolley.
The horning of the Mercedes car was a lot louder from where I was standing. And the look on the drivers face was that of somebody who was about to explode from anger. My uncles car was obviously obstructing him from moving out of where he had parked…

As the porter wheeled his trolley back to the shelter area, my uncle had horned twice and then given me a thumbs up as he pulled out of his parking spot. The man in the Mercedes car raised his right palm at him spreading his fingers in an offensive gesture known as waka in most West African countries. My uncle ignored the gesture as he drove slowly away, horning one last time as he made his way out of the airport parking space.
“Where you dey go?” the porter asked inquiring where I was travelling to.
“I am going to the Aeroflot check in counter. I’m travelling to Russia this evening.”

Prologue

2007-10-12T03:23:00.000-07:00

"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]"

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 on the faces of his listeners you could guess that he was not 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 that!” 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…