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ENGLISHMAN IN BENIN CITY, 1981 (Part Seven)
Rufus froze when he saw Obaseki moving towards our table. His jawline tightened. The grotesque was unmasking. I understood the meaning of that facial reaction. When a cobra flattens its head and its neck while lifting up its body off the ground to the torso level, even a baby knows what that means. We had crossed the red zone. I immediately got up and picked up the tumbler in front of him before it became a scud missile. My movement also distracted him for a moment. This was the climactic moment that had been building up for a year.
The COVID-19 goes beyond a biological virus.
The COVID-19 goes beyond a biological virus.
It is a total systemic collapse.
Everybody thought December 31, 1999, was the date of crisis–when all the computation programs would break down and we would have nothing to hold on to.
Folks were worried, and getting ready for 12-31-1999.
But we did not prepare for 02-20-2020.
ENGLISHMAN IN BENIN CITY: (Part Thirty-Three).
Madam Ngu looked at my most recent painting and from the expression on her face, I could see that she did not like it.
She sat on the big chair in the center of my studio in the Ekenwan campus. I had arranged my paintings around the wall as she requested, ready for her critique.
“Muyo,” she said, “you need more life drawing classes.”
“Yes, madam,” I responded.
Mungo Park Discovering River Niger
As the Chinese launches successfully the second wave of the colonization of Africa, after learning from the techniques of divide and conquer that Europe used for the first wave of conquering the continent, it became necessary for me to do this painting.
I also want to refer to the poem I wrote a couple of months ago, titled, “My Teacher Taught Me Nonsense.”
1202021
Read it from the beginning to the end.
And from the end to the beginning.
From front to back and back to front.
The same thing.
It is January 20, 2021.
My art class before the Coronavirus.
My art class before the Coronavirus.
I dreamed about it last night–I was teaching, and there was this really brilliant student who did everything perfectly.
As I went to take a closer look at her work, I woke up.
What really happened was that I had fallen asleep with my music playing. And what really woke me up was Peter Tosh, singing,
