Valentine Blues

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"Marriage is the only war where you sleep with the enemy"

My friend, you must have been wondering where I have been since all these days. Well, it is Adio, my husband, who has been giving me the treat of my life. Since our reconciliation meeting, he has been showering me with blessings and affections, especially since his thugfather single-handedly made him the new president of the Semovita Kingdom. You need to see how he is now crazy about me. Without me, he cannot eat. Without me, he cannot sleep. Without me, he cannot even urinate. Because of me, he bought a book of text messages and, ever since, it has been messages galore on my handset. I never imagined that Oko mi Adio, without ever having been to Rome, could be so romantic… He has 're-valentined' my life.

You are making me jealous.

Jealous? Just spare me that crap lest you end up inside the well because that's where your type always ends. But, my friend, help me thank Baba Iyaboh, my national father-in-law, for the GSM he introduced to the country. If not for his revolution, I would not be receiving the kind of Valentine messages and calls I have been receiving from my heartthrob. I remember his first message to me the very day he purchased his GSM phone: "My darlin', where were you before you came camping in my heart? You started a fire and now my heart is filled with flames." I couldn't believe it. Oko mi Adio sending me a romantic message? I teasingly asked him to forward his message to the GSM provider or the Fire Brigade. The wonderful blockhead did not get the message. Instead, he sent what he thought to be another love booster: "Everyone wants to be the sun that lights up your life but I, your darlin' husband, would rather be your moon, so I can shine on you during your darkest hour when NEPA strikes". I quickly picked up my phone and told him some home truths. I said I deserved more than a standby generator. "I want you as my constant supply of light till death do us part", I concluded. You know what? Oko mi Adio lifts his text messages, word for word, without taking cognisance of the prevailing circumstance or mood. I have never seen such a pleasantly idiotic plagiarist in my life. The other day when I was on admission at St. Patient's Specialist Hospital, Apongbon, in downtown Lagos, all Oko mi Adio did was to send me this message: "Of all the friends I've ever met, you're the one I won't forget in a hurry. And if I die before you do, I'll go to heaven and wait for you." I read the message over and over again. What's Oko mi Adio up to?

He didn't mean any harm, you know.

You think so? Is that the kind of message people send to their loved ones who are convalescing in hospital? You kuku know me. I managed to sit up in bed and scribble a wait-and-get response: "Obtain your visa fast but make sure you write your will". He thought of atoning for his deed by sending me another fast-food-like text package: "I have a little angel flying around with a hammer, each person he hits gets a little dose of my love. I hope he beats the hell out of you.” I was devastated. Why should Oko mi Adio send an Iron Mike Tyson as angel to me? I called him, “Haba! Oko mi Adio. I know where you got that message from but can’t you use your sixth sense to recycle and tailor it to suit the prevailing circumstances?” He did not allow me to finish when he said he would send another message that I'd definitely like. And what was it? He went through the text book and came out with a message that had recycle in it: "Darlin', it's true they recycle paper till it's as good as new; reproduce cans, jars and old bottles too, but they can never recycle another person as you." I said, "look at this suegbe. Where was he when the oyinbo people recycled a sheep and they named it Dolly? Very soon, they will recycle even Dolly Parton herself. Oko mi Adio was terribly angry and, for the first time in his life, asked the chief of staff, COS, of Government Villa to talk to me. "Is that Her Excellency?" the COS started. I told him, in no unmistaken terms, that I am not Her Excellency. Only God is His Excellency. All mortals are mediocre. Only Oko mi Adio and those who are backing him like his thugfather can call themselves Their Excellencies. I am simply Mrs. Adio.

And what was his response?

He pretended he did not hear me. Instead he launched out like a battering ram, "Madam, do you take His Excellency to be your lawful text mate, to love and to hold, in fine and good lexicon, in poor signal and no service, till low credit do you part?" I said, "I do, I do". He said if I did, then I should not harass His Excellency again over his text messages to me whether they were original or copied, creative or not, pedestrian or motorised, logical or illogical, wise or foolish. I said, "Yes, sir." Afterall, one should learn to say, "Yes, sir" to the mad man so he could make way for one to pass.

You don't mean it!

I do, but that was the greatest mistake of my life. Oko mi Adio now took liberty for licence. 'Gyraffing' and xeroxing became his real business as if he were a WASCE or JAMB candidate. He started lifting messages indiscriminately to 'impress' me. Only God knows whether he did the same for his thugfather. On my last birthday, Oko mi Adio sent me the most unromantic message any spouse could send to his partner. "I never forget my wife's birthday. It's usually the day after she reminds me about it. Happy birthday, Mrs. Adio." I know he lifted it ink, pen and paper. The only new thing there was my name. I ignored him and his message. Then he sent another after waiting, as through for Godot, for my response. "No man is truly married until he understands every word his wife is not saying." That sounded intelligent to me and I told him so. What he sent the following day was even more philosophical: "Marriage is the only war where you sleep with the enemy". I reflected on this message and wondered aloud whether it's not true, indeed, to always learn to endure what one cannot avoid like Oko mi Adio. As if he was reading my mind, another message just came into the inbox: "Love is not finding someone to live with, it's finding someone you can't live without". I called him to ask why this is so. You know what the graceful pig of a chauvinist said? He said the full meaning of wife is actually: "Worries Invited For Ever". I argued why anybody should live with worries at all. If my husband does not love me again, then I should have the right to seek for divorce.

And what's his take on that?

He said divorce is the past tense of marriage and we should rather focus on the present tense which is love and the future tense which is children. Can you believe that? But he agreed that nobody will ever win the battle of the sexes because "there's too much fraternising with the enemy". I asked if I should be considered an enemy. In his usual chauvinistic, arrogant style, he said even if women were in jet fighters or helicopter gunboats, men would always be on top in any war of the sexes. I quickly called off his bluff: "You may conquer with your sword, but you are easily conquered by a kiss". His response was devastating. "Love is like an hourglass, with the heart filling up as the brain empties". I chuckled to myself, "No wonder some men are empty upstairs despite their huge endowments downstairs".

Sure?!

First appeared in TELL, March 6, 2006.

The Many Sins of Oko mi Adio

My friend, I’ve come again to let you know about the albatross I call a husband. Actually, he is no longer a burden but an embarrassment of the worst order. My husband, alias Oko mi Adio, has not changed from his ways though he promised long time ago that he would try his best to turn a new leaf. He remains his old self — an unmitigated disaster.

You mean Adio, your husband, has not changed at all?

For where? Instead of things being better for the itinerant porter, his head has started getting bald like a vulture’s. Since Oko mi Adio became the Sole Administrator of our local government area, he has turned the whole place upside down, inside out.

Adio, My Husband

My husband is Jimoh Omi Adio but I call him Oko mi Adio, which translates ‘Adio, my husband.’ It is a pet name that has stuck since I fell in love with him heart, soul and body. He is witty, humorous, kind and gentle. My parents love him. My brothers, sisters, uncles and cousins admire him because he is a perfect gentleman. He is the best husband any woman can dream of. But, my friend, I don’t know what has happened to Oko mi Adio of recent. He has become diabolically humorous and, at times, extravagantly upbeat. Initially, I thought it was the same old Adio I knew. Now, I don’t know whether he has become senile or imbecile.

Humour on Wheels

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“Johannesburg is the most tree-planted city in the whole world. There are about six million trees in all, but, honestly, I don’t know who counted them”

The Ali Baba of Soweto

He looks like a mine boy. What else can he look like, anyway, with his close affinity with gauta-eng, the city of gold? Yes, Johannesburg, the city sitting literally on gold, has produced many like him. Kenny, for that is his name, is an educated, yet street-wise homeboy of Soweto, the diminutive for Johannesburg's South-West Township. Wherever he goes the neighbourhood guys seem to know him. A finger salute and a clenched fist are enough to suggest that the Sowetans still imbibe the spirit of solidarity that pervaded the land during the nationalists' struggle for freedom.

Kenny was, therefore, the most appropriate tour guide in the circumstance, to lead a group of Nigerian journalists and their hosts on a tour of Soweto this Monday afternoon. January 10, 2005. The reason is apparent. Nigerians are known for their boisterous lifestyle and huge sense of humour. They appreciate same in others. Kenny was no disappointment. Both in content and style, he made the visitors' day with his political anecdotes and exclusive wisecracks. As the party took off from the Holiday Inn in Sandton City in downtown Johannesburg. Kenny was quick to point out an unusual feature of the metropolis, the dense vegetation cover. “Johannesburg is the most tree-planted city in the whole world,” he told the tourists, and added what they thought should be the clincher. “There are about six million trees in all but, honestly, I don’t know who counted them.” It was a comical anti-climax. As the journey progressed to the outskirts leading to Soweto, Kenny took his listeners down memory lane. He reminisced on the bloody struggles by the African National Congress, ANC, to break down the walls of apartheid and how the then racist Pretoria government used every means at its disposal and even at the disposal of others to mow down every opposition, including school children when they rose in 1976 against a policy that compelled the use of Afrikaans as the language of instruction in schools. He took the tourists down to the Hector Pieterson Museum in the heart of Soweto to see history in motion, both in audio and visuals.

They saw Steve Biko talking. Winnie Mandela gesticulating and Desmond Tutu, in his famous cassock, preaching the gospel of non-violence. They heard and saw police shooting at protesting school children in the nighbourhoods. They also saw the famous photograph of a fatally wounded Peterson, 13, being carried by a sympathiser, accompanied by his wailing sister on that fateful June 16, 1976, when hell was let loose on the streets of Soweto.

A solemn occasion truly demands sober reflection. Throughout the stay in the apartheid museum, Kenny kept his ‘big mouth' shut only to remove the chains on getting to Tutu's residence in Orlando West. The brown-brick-wall house, fortified with security gadgets plus spikes and barbed-wire on top of the fence, was a veritable butt of joke to Kenny. "This is the man who always says it is only in God he trusts," he said as a way of introducing Bishop Tutu. Everybody burst out laughing.

His jokes may be caustic but the eternal truth cannot be easily waved aside just like his comment on a cemetery located at an intersection on the outskirts of Soweto. Said he: "Everything there is dead, including the trees." Indeed, the trees had withered and no one needed a coroner to attest to the fact that the inhabitants of the graveyard were as lifeless as cadavers. Was the man poking fun for the fun of it or just playing to the gallery?

What kind of man is this who turns virtually everything into a joke? Kenny, at a closer observation, knew what he was doing. Some of his jokes were apparently tailor-made for the consumption of the micro-rainbow composition of his audience: black South Africans, white South Africans and the visiting blacks from Nigeria. It was left for each group to know which joke scored a homerun on the field of his socio-political past.

How about a joke on segregation? Kenny had just taken the tourists back to the Walter Sisulu Hall (former Freedom Square where he said the ANC Freedom Charter was drafted) when he saw a pack of black chickens placed on top of white ones by the roadside and pointed the attention of everybody to the fact that "there is even apartheid in animal kingdom!" Then he laughed a kind of laugh that always induced other people to laugh. His baritone is almost as deep as that of the legendary singer, Barry White.

Back in Soweto… On every street, there are latent signs of black youths trying to pull themselves up by the bootstraps in the rainbow nation. The hairdresser, the barber, the welder, the mechanic, the food vendor, the butcher and the sportsmen. Whichever group you belong to, Kenny has a laugh-line for you. For the hairdressers, he cannot help wondering why women always want to change the natural order of things. "Those who have straight hairs want to make them curl. Those who have curly hairs want them straight!", he said as he mockingly stroked his own Kalahari (clean-shaven) head. Will he spare mechanics and welders, the new Soweto artisans? From the look of things, nobody was going to escape his telescopic lens. Well, suddenly, he pointed to a welder near a car-wash depot and praised him to the high heavens for what he called his expertise and creativity in welding a leaking exhaust and making sure he creates another point of weakness. The payoff? "He is not any different from the dentist who fills a hole and digs another so that you can always come back to fill his wallet." It was a coup de grace and the bus almost exploded. But that was a guffaw too soon. Kenny, apparently, was just warming up his humour machine as they later found out. He talked about the new air of freedom, the countless business opportunities that abound in the cities and the drive towards economic empowerment of the new South Africans, some of whom have had a smooth, jolly ride into the middle class in their state-of-the-art automobiles. Today, Soweto and Orlando are full of the ‘waBenzis', the new black aristocrats, so called because of their taste for expensive cars like the Mercedes Benz.

And the journey proceeded... At a corner shop in Dube, Soweto, is a one-storey building. The ground floor accommodates a butcher while a surgeon opens shop on top. Such a scenario would not escape Kenny's wandering eyes. "What a combination!", he exclaimed as he pointed out the unusual bedfellows to his audience. "The butcher and the surgeon can always assist each other. Can't they?" Everybody was too busy laughing to give a coherent response. But Kenny's jokes have not in any way beclouded the fact that many South Africans take pride in self-employment and going places with new ideas. Many have picked up the gauntlet to be truly independent by setting up small businesses. For example, two sisters are said to have come up with the idea of setting up, some kilometres north of Johannesburg, a health clinic called the Mangwanani Spa for women and by women alone. It is reputed to be one of the best in the country. This is seen by fellow South Africans as a shining example of black women empowerment.

So, jokes apart, what could Kenny, himself, have been doing in the new Soweto other than being a tour guide? A tie-wearing Johnny-just-come entrepreneur with a mission of beating Nigeria’s Ali Baba or America’s Bill Cosby hands down at his game in Soweto? Simple. He pointed to a veterinary clinic across the street and said his original plan was to open a Chinese restaurant opposite the clinic but all efforts had proved abortive so far because the veterinary people felt their dogs would no longer be safe with his presence nearby. Why? "They thought all their dogs and reptiles would disappear into my soup pots." You can't just beat Kenny. Then, the mother of all revelations, or so it seems. A sports centre donated by Evander Holyfield, former world heavyweight boxing champion, for the Soweto youths, was the centre of attraction when Kenny went down memory lane again talking about great Americans who had visited Soweto. He mentioned Sugar Ray Leonard, Rev. Jesse Jackson and former President Bill Clinton as the three he admires most. The first, apparently for donating his championship belt to ' the Madiba, Nelson Mandela, which is now one of the prime objects adorning the Mandela family museum at the Vilakazi-Ngakane corner In Orlando West, Soweto. The second for his height. “The man is so tall that I had to look for a podium to stand on in order to shake his hands when he visited Soweto.” And how about Clinton? Wait for this. “I love him for his dexterity on musical instruments, especially the SEXophone.” Everybody burst into a rancorous laughter. Lucky guy. Hillary was not on the bus. Nor was Monica.

If there is madness in Kenny's wit, at least there is method in it. He is cerebral, current, conscious of his socio-political milieu, quick to the draw with his jokes and something, undeniably of a phenomenal version of Nigeria's Ali Baba. He takes pride in showcasing the Soweto of his dream. He will readily point to a new school and talk about the importance of investing in education. “We now educate our children so that we don't have to build more prisons in future.” That's vintage Kenny leaving some food for thought for African leaders.

This travelogue was first published in TELL, February 7, 2005, under the title: Step Out, Kenny, the Ali Baba of Soweto

Birthday - When “Queen Elizabeth” Marked Her 70th Birthday

“You can dance, you can live/ Having the time of your life/ Ooh see that girl, watch that scene/ Digging’ the dancing queen...”

The birthday woman was everything in “Dancing Queen,” that great song of ABBA, the sensational Swedish group that took the music world by storm in the 1970s. A lover of songs, a great dancer and a lady fondly called “queen” by fellow student nurses in the 1960s, not only by virtue of her being pretty but also by having many things unusually common with the reigning Queen of England. She bears Elizabeth like the queen, both share the same birthday, April 21 (she was born April 21, 1943 while the queen, her namesake, was born April 21, 1926). Again both were born on the same weekday, Wednesday! Still they seem to have a common passion for music. One of the queen’s hobbies is dancing. So is her fairy tale alter ego.

Elizabeth Ayodele Oderinde, retired nurse and Iyalode Ijo of St. Mary’s Catholic Church, Ayetoro, Osogbo, was indeed a dancing queen on December 21, 2013 as she belatedly, due to what family sources described as unforeseen circumstances, marked her 70th birthday. She regaled her audience with fanciful dance steps and a flamboyant display of joy at reaching the remarkable 70th milestone after such a long walk in life.

Tagged a celebration of “God’s Goodness,” the two-part event was an opportunity to go down memory lane. An offspring of migrant workers who literally traversed the length and breadth of the old Western Region in search of greener pasture, little Ayodele was born in Gbongan and had her primary and post-primary education in Agege, Lagos, Otan Ayegbaju (her hometown), Ile Ife, and wherever the call of duty took her parents. She later enrolled at the Sacred Heart Hospital, Abeokuta, for a course in midwifery and another in general nursing qualifying as a state registered nurse. She started work as a midwife at the Igbaye Maternity Centre, Igbaye, near Inisha in present day Osun State before crossing over to the popular Jaleyemi (Our Lady of Fatimah) Hospital, Osogbo. She eventually retired as a senior matron in 2000 having earlier transferred her service to the state’s ministry of health in 1977…

Inside the St. Benedict’s Cathedral Church hall, Popo, Osogbo, venue of the reception, the bandstand had a busy day beating the drums and singing songs of praise in high decibels. The celebrant could not help displaying some few more dance steps to the admiration of her husband, a retired principal, children and grandchildren in tow. Other relations, guests, former colleagues and teeming well-wishers did not miss out on the spectacle. Like in ABBA’s song they watched the scene, saw and clapped all the way, “diggin” the dancing queen. It was happy time and she had the fun of her life.

Wreaths of Paradox

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A kaleidoscopic interplay of some happenings and historical events on the life and times of Nelson Mandela

By FIDEL BAM

* Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela was born July 18, 1918, towards the end of World War I, into a royal family. Paradoxically he chose rebellion and embraced revolution later in life on the wings of the African National Congress, ANC, to wage war against apartheid and its patrons.

* His name ROLIHLAHLA literally means, “pulling the branch of a tree.” His other less known name but of much traditional importance is his circumcision name, DALIBUNGA, which means father of the BUNGA traditional ruling body of the Transkei, the rural area in Eastern Cape where he was born. MADIBA is more of a term of reverence than a name per se. It is a clan or communal name used for older people, especially men deemed fit to be so honoured. Thus Mandela’s ancestral MADIBA name is also a preference for Nelson which is seen more as a colonial legacy hung on his neck by a teacher who could not actually pronounce his jaw-breaking but more meaningful ROLIHLAHLA.

* His father expected him to grow up in the village and tend the cattle. He was a troublesome and restless youth often indulged in traditional stick fighting. He eventually left Qunu to look for greener pasture on the other side of the fence in the city and thus began his long walk to political relevance in the annals of South African history.

Ironically the man who left prison in 1990 apparently to come and bury what remained of APARTHEID chose to be buried in his ancestral homeland of Qunu among his fellow blacks! Hendrik Frensch Verwoerd, architect of apartheid, would be happy in his exclusive white graveyard.  

The day the world gathered in Johannesburg to pay tributes to the memory of Mandela was a day full of drama, irony and paradox. The main backers of the apartheid regime, for example, Britain and the United States, US, with their huge investments in the white dominated territory, took the centre, waxing in eloquence and praise singing Mandela.

* Up till five years ago, 2008, the person they were eulogising was still legally on a US terror watch list. Before then Mandela and some ANC leaders, including the foreign affairs minister, could only enter the US with a special waiver from the secretary of state because the ANC had been designated a terrorist organisation by South Africa’s former apartheid government.

* Amidst tributes, eulogies and elegies from fellow world leaders, Jacob Zuma’s voice was hardly heard. The political chief mourner hit a wall of jeers and boos any time his name was mentioned over the public loudspeaker. While the sporting nations were turning the traditional one minute silence in honour of the dead to one minute of seemingly unstoppable applause for Mandela, the angry crowd inside the First National Bank, FNB, Stadium were giving the referee’s substitution signal for change. Has Zuma hit the rock in his race for political relevance in post-Mandela South Africa? What could have made South Africans clap for FW de Klerk, former apartheid warlord, and jeer at an incumbent black president?

* But Zuma is a fighter and fighters are no quitters. Like Mandela, he is likely to fight on. It took his mentor (Mandela) years before he could get his law degree. He enrolled for the course in 1939 but he serially, by design or default, failed his law examinations until 50 years after (1989) and that was while he was in prison. Hitherto he was able to practice law in the 1950s with his friend, Oliver Tambo, with his two-year diploma which he got after his first degree.

* Winnie Mandela had a standing ovation when she was called to the stage. To most ANC supporters, she is the Mother of the Nation. She fought with both body and soul to sustain the momentum of the struggle in the townships while her husband was in jail and the men were in the trenches.

* The artifacts of the Nelson and Winnie Mandela Museum in their former home on Vilakazi Ngakane Corner in Orlando West, Soweto, attest to the relevance and popularity of Winnie. Mandela himself once jokingly remarked how famous Winnie had become in his absence that he was forced, on his release from prison, to be introducing himself as Nelson, the husband of Winnie Mandela, to world leaders and friends!

* President Goodluck Jonathan was equally hailed by the appreciative crowd not because of him per se but because of Nigeria’s unflinching support for liberation struggles throughout Africa. ANC was the biggest beneficiary of the nation’s gesture right from the days of Tafawa Balewa to Murtala/Obasanjo military regime. At the UNO, Nigeria was at the forefront of the diplomatic onslaught against apartheid. It was the Sani Abacha regime that almost made nonsense of the nation’s contributions in this regard when it confronted the big man, MADIBA, over the latter’s humanitarian intervention over the execution of Ken Saro Wiwa, the Ogoni environmental activist.

Postscript

Rain beat a tattoo rhythm on mourners who came to the FNB stadium as early as 3am for the 11am event. They wore rain boots, raincoats and shared umbrellas for further protection against the biting cold. Asked why they had to expose themselves to such chilly weather, they were quick to quip back: “What is one day in rain compared with 27 years in jail?” It was a response that captured the true essence of the man called MADIBA. December 10 was payback day, a somewhat surreal global farewell for an individual once labelled a terrorist by the Western world.

INHACA, the Mozambican Fantasy Island

The tourists come to sunbathe, swim and snorkel midmorning, and, in the afternoon, dine and wine in the splendour of a 'fantasy’ hotel while the 'natives' spend the whole day eking a living out of fishing… and ferrying stranded visitors on their backs to the often submerged jetties

The aircraft finally taxied to a stop. As usual, the air hostesses formed a guard of honour and beamed artificial smiles as they bade everybody goodbye. Some of the passengers were in no mood, though, to return artificiality for artificiality. They hurriedly went down the gangway to land on a long stretch of macadamised platform that looked like a disused tarmac. In twos and threes, they plodded their weary legs to the terminal building and meandered their way to the kiosk that passed as arrival hall where stern-looking immigration officers and customs men and women were lying in wait. Welcome to Maputo International Airport, Mozambique.

For the itinerant journalists among the passengers, it was another opportunity to know more about Africa, their continent. One of them was particularly ecstatic. He had longed to visit the country since he missed a golden chance to do so in 1986 when he was a member of the media team that accompanied the then foreign affairs minister, Professor Bolaji Akinyemi, on a whirlwind tour of the frontline states. The itinerary had included visits to Angola, Mozambique, Tanzania, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Botswana and a stopover in the then Congo (Brazaville) on their way back home. Somehow, they managed to visit all the countries except Mozambique for what they later gathered to be security reasons. The country was engaged in a civil war and flying on the periphery of the South African airspace (then under the grip of the apartheid warlords) to reach Maputo could compromise the safety of the entire entourage. After failing to secure a safe passage to Mozambique, Lagos (then Nigeria’s seat of power) ordered a detour. A few months later, the Mozambican president, Samora Machel, was to die in a mysterious plane crash along the same route while on his way back to Maputo from a neighbouring country.

Today, apartheid is officially dead in South Africa. The civil war in Mozambique has ended. The Mozambican people are out of the trenches, salivating their freedom on the major avenida (avenues) of Maputo and the lanes in the ghettos. Tourists and mercantile opportunists are hovering around what remains of the poor country after the Portuguese settlers had run away with the capital and skills that could make the crippled nation stand upright again. While the market-driven economy is still being propped up by donor nations, the country, itself, is taking advantage of its tourism potential.

Mozambique, like some African countries on the fringes of the Indian and Atlantic oceans, is blessed with natural, beautiful beaches that spread over 2,515 kilometres on the Indian seaboard. The beaches, coupled with an array of magnificent mountains and ‘fantasy islands’, constitute a magnetic pull of sorts that draws tourists to the country with a force which Isaac Newton, the discoverer of the Law of Gravitation, may even find difficult to explain.

It is this unexplainable force that probably drew the Nigerian journalists invited to witness the 2006 CNN/Multichoice African Journalist of the Year Award ceremony in Maputo to undergo a sea trip to Inhaca, one of the much-advertised ‘fantasy islands’. The promo was too inviting to ignore: “(Tourists) depart from the Maputo Mariner or Catembe Jetty (tide dependent) at 0800 hours. On arrival at the island, you can visit the beach or swim and snorkel in the lagoon or enjoy a walk to the east side of the island to see the pelicans and flamingos…”

They all jumped at the offer, oblivious of the ominous warning that the “tour may be cut short due to weather conditions”. Even if they were aware, there was no stopping this bunch of crazy, adventurous, bubbling journalists. Would they have cared a hoot about the unfolding re-enactment of the age of discovery which their journey to Inhaca symbolised? The euphoria was too much and off they went to brave the waves to seek a new world which is just a mere dot on the mighty Indian Ocean! They wanted to see the legendary birds that feed on fishes and swallow snakes, the coral reefs that look like pre-Cambrian sedimentary rock formation on the beach, and the ever-changing coastline subject to the whims and caprices of the tidal currents that sometimes kiss the shoreline in a dazing, even idyllic, romance or, if in a foul mood, hold it in a ‘tsunamic’ death grip.

They saw hell!

Yes, hell they saw. Ocean waves hit their boat at speedy intervals with a force strong enough to torpedo their dreams but, like the early explorers who set sail to discover Africa and the new world, they persevered and pursued their once-in-a-lifetime chance to sail out of Africa to ‘discover’ their own ‘new world’. They saw the massiveness of God’s creative imagination in the ocean waters that spread endlessly to seemingly nowhere. The more they looked, the more they saw. Water, water everywhere but none to drink. These latter-day mariners were teased to no end. What a paradox! The salty ocean waters could not quench their thirsty minds. That was even the least of their worries. Marooned in the middle of ‘giant’ waves and predatory sharks cruising somewhere in the deeps, they began to understand the full meaning of life. It takes only the brave, the courageous and the daring to embark on kamikaze trips to conquer new heights. The history books and the famous Guinness Book of Records are full of examples of brave men and women who defied the deeps, the heights and even the force of gravity to rediscover the essence of man in the universe. Great explorers like Christopher Columbus, Amerigo Vespucci, Vasco da Gama, Mungo Park, David Livingstone, John and Richard Lander and a host of others once dared the consequences to expand the frontiers of their immediate environment by plunging into unknown waters and territories. They dared, like the modern-day scientists who have put men in space, on the moon, and now in a floating station thousands of kilometres away in outer space. The trend continues even on a personal level. For instance, a woman has sailed round the world in a solo effort. Multimillionaire Richard Branson (of Virgin Airlines) has attempted to fly round the world in a hot air balloon. It is all in the quest “to strive, to seek, to find and not to yield” like Ulysses, Alfred Tennyson’s poetic character. For the advancement of learning, men of ideas will continue to experiment and raise the stakes for the rest of mankind.

The journalists, many of whom are admirers of late Tai Solarin, the renowned educationist and writer, took a cue from the old master and model who once said that if man had to be looking and looking all the time before leaping, many a man would remain transfixed while the rest of mankind would have leapt and conquered new territories. They damned the consequence by setting sail across the Indian Ocean in an open boat with rain coats as lifejackets! And, like the old explorers, they endured the turbulence of the waves to ‘discover’ an island where opulence and poverty compete for attention. The tourists come to sunbathe, swim and snorkel midmorning, and, in the afternoon, dine and wine in the splendour of a ‘fantasy’ hotel while the ‘natives’ spend the whole day eking a living out of fishing, selling coconuts and ferrying stranded visitors on their backs to the often submerged jetties.

The story of Inhaca is like the story of Africa, of which it is a part. For centuries, the continent remained unknown, unexplored and unexploited by the outside world. Then came the age of 'discovery', Vasco da Gama and company came calling and the continent’s destiny changed, culminating in the infamous Berlin Conference of 1884/1885 and the partitioning of the continent into British, French, German, Belgian, Spanish and Portuguese colonies. Mozambique, as a Portuguese colony, was fully exploited and drained to the dregs until 1975 when the ‘natives’, under the political aegis of FRELIMO, finally secured their flag independence after waging a guerilla war for 11 years.

But it is not easy to shake off 500 years of political, economic and, even, mental colonisation. The Portuguese hold on post-independence Mozambique is all-encompassing. Once listed as the world’s poorest country in terms of per capita income, Mozambique is a country whose economy is still being largely controlled by the Portuguese, the Arabs and, lately, the Asians who own most of the big companies and control the support services.

With the death of Marxism, the country has opened its doors to foreign investors, a euphemism for capitalists, though the avenues (avenida), lined with red acacias and lilac jacaranda, still bear telltale signs of the past experiment championed by the late Samora Machel. Most of them are named after Marxist-Socialist leaders like Vladimir Lenin, founder of the Soviet state, Cuba’s Fidel Castro, Ghana’s Kwame Nkrumah, Guinea’s Ahmed Sekou Toure, Tanzania’s Julius Nyerere (of the Ujamaa socialism fame) and the father of the nation himself, Machel. The usual Marxist slogan — “The Fatherland or Death” — is no longer etched on public walls and billboards. What remain standing are the statues and mosaic murals of the much adored Machel.

Today, reality has crept in through liberalisation of the economy, thereby “opening sesame” for international wheelers and dealers. And once again, the brave, daring but, of course, rapacious entrepreneurs who had once fled to safety in Portugal and South Africa during the war of liberation are back to “strive, seek and find” new opportunities in Mozambique. For latter-day adventurers like these entrepreneurs and the never-say-die journalists who braved the odds to seek new frontiers, Inhaca Island will always remain a metaphor for courage.