There is a difference between a song writer and a singer.The song writer may have all the emotions poured out into a piece of paper but the singer is like an evangelist who spreads the Gospel he did not write. He lends his voice to something he believes in and in a magical way manages to give the writer's emotion life.
Reading through Chinua Achebe "There Was a Country" leaves me with several questions but something is certain he intended to let the world hear the truth, and in that process he has done something which Nigeria will eventually pay for. He has given history life. Should this book be read by children with minds like mine, we are headed for war, a war of thoughts, a war of questions, a war of "what ifs", "what went wrong", a war to find Justice. On the other hand depriving children of the knowledge of their history is day light robbery_ just like an adopted child fumes with anger rather than appreciation even if he was picked from the dustbin. The first question on his mind is, why did you not tell me? He goes on a voyage of discovery trying to find his roots.
His book and made me re-think the one Nigeria mantra. The embarrassing statement by a monarch of Lagos and the appreciation of such thoughtless expression by an artiste of no mean, repute_ has left me wondering what the civil war did to us as a people. In my opinion it simply pushed us farther away from each other, Achebe is merely fuelling that fire with gory tales of History.
Though this book has failed to mention the contributions of my people asides the general impression that we participated in adding to the rising number of casualties. Let me ask Achebe a huge question, where was the space for Southerners?
#girlfromthesouth
No comments:
Post a Comment