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Migrants Part 2.

When It Became Clear That We Were Not Willing To Leave Anyone Behind, The Driver Had To Alight From His Hilux And Observed How On ...

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NewScientist! 11 mths 288

When it became clear that we were not willing to leave anyone behind, the Driver had to alight from his hilux and observed how on earth can such number of persons occupy his vehicle. We pleaded with him to consider our plight and do whatever it takes to provide us a lift back to our destination, the Algerian-Nigerian boarder, since he was the only vehicle that have appeared on our route since our journey started. We didn't need to remind him of our inability to survive beyond that day. Everyone was worn out and almost fainting. We needed water and food. He brought out two packets of Biscuit and seven bottles of water for us to ration before loading us onto the vehicle. Thirty-six of us miraculously got stuffed onto the hilux pickup truck and turning the ignition on, brought the the fully loaded vehicle into a slow moving unit, gathering momentum as safely as possible until the cool evening breeze started blowing ferociously allover us . He drove with caution for he was a patient man, a father figure for all of us and most importantly, a saviour!

Many things went through my mind as we were on the return transit. "What if this good Samaritan didn't show up?". "What if we got attacked like Osas and his group?", So many questions that I don't want to feed answers to... They keep erupting irregularly that I really got tired and decided to give it a final stop. Once in a while, the abrupt breaks applied brought me to consciousness, away from the mental circus. Many videos have emerged on the internet about migrants who lost their lives on the way to Libya. I wondered what were their last wishes or thoughts on the point of death. What exactly happened? This is a clear answer to many of such questions. The Sahara desert is not merciful to careless migrants. This route is full of dangerous situations and probability of survival is almost close to zero. When you might have gone too far to the point of no return, you will realize that Exhaustion from heat stress and dehydration kills. The few that passed through this system become hardened and face life with no iota of fear. When they arrive in Europe, they are ready to survive on any condition.

I really felt lucky with my group just as Osas got away with his. I was not happy on the other hand because our dream of reaching Libya and then Crossing into Europe was aborted. Osas, a very tall handsome fair Benin guy recounted his ordeal when he tried to cross to Libya three years ago. Him with his group went further than us, almost close to crossing into Libya before a tribal force raided them. They were all rounded up at gun point and tied up, legs and hands and were to be sold to other groups of traffickers along this dangerous route. The leader of the raiders had to move ahead with his members to search for prospective buyers while keeping one of them to look after us. "He was handed a sharp sword and ordered to slaughter whoever tried to escape in Arabic language", Osas said. However, that particular Arab guy wanted more from his victim. He saw a beautiful lady among the captives and wanted to eat from her bosom. " She resisted his initial advance until I spoke to her in Benin language to cooperate and find a way to pin him down for us to attack and be set loosen", the narrator chuckled and continued. " He made another move and she fought again until the watchman dropped his sword and overpowered her with both hands roughly moving over her sensitive parts, leading to his unzipping and throwing caution to the winds, she showed her tied hands for him to untie in order to allow him better access cum pleasure and he obliged, cutting her loose. Then he continued his rough romance with lesser resistance" She immediately kissed him and caressed his shoulder and neck, then drew closer to his ear and bit him on his left ear. We all struggled to move while they were in a tight fight and fell upon both of them. She gripped him tight and held him while we all used our teeth to tear him apart." Osas bowed his head and said " this is the first time I came face to face with death and I felt no guilt because of self defense, in killing our assailant" She had to cut them loose and they took the sword and ran backwards, never to continue on that route.

What Constitutes A Great Class?

Taking A Retrospect Over The Years, I Realized That What Makes A Great Class Is Not Just The Student Population But A Set Of Mixed...

11 Opinions

NewScientist! 2 yrs 1667

Taking a retrospect over the years, I realized that what makes a great class is not just the student population but a set of mixed mannered personalities. Here, individuals can be easily grouped into different cliques according to their behavior, sitting positions, sense of humour, dress codes, noisy disposition and all what can be observed among the students. For example, we have the *"BACK-BENCHERS"* in most classes, who will always congregate towards the back or last pews in the classroom. It is difficult to break their formations/cliques. Once a member is moved to the front seat in a particular period/lecture, the next teacher coming will always find him/her in the previous sitting position. They are drawn like magnets to their friends at the back rows. One advantage of these guys, they are the first to exit the class once the teacher is done for the day. Some even "disappeared" during boring classes before anyone could noticed it.

We have the *"TIME-KEEPERS"* too, who always reminded the class on the time left for a boring teacher to leave in peace! "5 minutes more!" is a favorite chorus from this group of accurate time keepers. Most of them have functional wrist watches and may pretentiously act like they mistakenly left their watches on alarm tone when it's time to change periods. Thanks to them when the bell is wrung for break and dismissal!

We also have the *"JOLLY FELLOWS"*. They are the lively stars in each classroom, ready to turn the classroom into a night club or party hall. All learning is made fun when these people are around. Sad events can be given a facelift and converted to laughing shows or comedy series. They are quick to improvise with sitting desks/tables as drums or musical instruments. These folks have a perfect drumming or beats for any song raised coupled with matching dance steps. The jolly fellows are the future comedians and musicians from the class.

The *"BOOKWORMS"* are the intelligent group who may be ahead of the lesson notes or at par with the teachers. They are active in classes and like to ask questions to throw off balance a "not-too-grounded" teachers. Some even show arrogance in class and intimidate others with their brilliance while we have the real genius that remains hidden and humble that you may not even notice their presence. They are always on the top in result sheets pasted on the notice boards and friends help them to check to confirm their positions in every exams. During examinations, some teachers will extract these few and space them evenly in a different hall/classroom to avoid them transferring answers to their friends who may have arranged a sitting formation for ease of doing business in the exam hall! These fellows can write, exhaust their scripts and still be shouting "extra scripts!", sending shivers down our spines when ours are sparingly filled. They are the scholars that mostly make the school proud in each external examinations. Every inter-school competitions record their presence an with academic excellence.

We have the *"RELIGIOUS BRETHREN"* that are on fellowships every week. They kept the moral standards of the school high. They are pastoring the flock in need of salvation and will sacrifice their time in looking for lost souls. Everybody knows a fellow that belongs to this group. They live by example and are highly respected. Even the school authorities sometimes seek for their help in getting recalcitrant students back on track. They are blessed with intelligence despite not been seen "Jacking/Jerking" like the BOOKWORMS. This group produces our Evangelists, Imams, Alfas, Pastors and religious scholars!

We have the quiet/shy group. Also known as *"INTROVERTS"*. No matter how you try to draw them out, they keep humble disposition and shy away from extroverts. Most students came like this and with time, get recruited into the other groups mentioned earlier. Thanks to their friends who want to show them "what-they-have-been-missing" over the years. After "opening-their-eyes" , some went on to top in the league tables of any group they find themselves so that "them-no-go-carry-last". That's the beauty of socialization in the classroom. The introverts are intelligent too, while some are not too gifted like the BOOKWORMS. Many others are going through phases of hardship or psychological trauma at home and may not be able to share with others. These groups make a perfect blend of people and is what constitutes a great class. Special moments are shared and remembered because some people belonged to one or more of these groups. Everybody contributing his talent to make academic activities fun and complete.

What other groups are left out of this piece? Please share with me for update in later editions.

Thanks for your time.

Arts and Education

Destiny Or Luck?

...i Read A Story In The Punch About Two Women Who Were Economically Better Than Their Husbands. The Men’s Families Claim...

11 Opinions

NewScientist! 5 yrs 802

...i read a story in The Punch about two women who were economically better than their husbands. The men’s families claimed said women cornered their husbands’ luck which, added to theirs, made them richer. The husbands became incapable of progress having been looted spiritually.

A familiar story. In some families where one person is more successful than the rest, there have been charges of luck theft. To keep their luck safe, some people refuse rich men’s benevolence.

There was a fellow summoned to his village to defend himself against his brother’s accusation of luck poaching. The matter was to be judged by village people emptier than the accuser. He ignored them and, as far as they were concerned, his guilt was confirmed. *Being intelligent among lazy and ignorant people can be dangerous.*

Societies have their myths, but it is the job of culture entrepreneurs and change agents to drive intelligent civilization. Instead, Nollywood is feeding these insane narratives, deepening ignorance rather than removing it. Movies can be public relations. American exceptionalism was driven by that nation’s cinema culture. Movies can set a society’s sociopolitical agenda and shape the values it pursues.

People still believe their destinies can be stolen. If there’s anything like destiny, it is a course of events—good and bad—beyond human control. Destiny would be both negative and positive. *The person stealing your destiny would have stolen your poverty, with it your pain and death.*

Way back in secondary school, a man was dragged into the premises to restore what he had plucked: a student’s manhood. I had thought the evil man scraped off the member leaving the accuser gender-neutral. *But no, the meat was still there, albeit shy like a young frog.* The boy denied his manhood saying the occupant between his legs was fake; that a diabolical barter had been executed. Fools that we were—teachers and students alike—we all believed, heckling the stranger to restore the missing proportions...

I think I will be late to work if I should continue. Let's conclude it when I return. Let me know if you wanna read it all...

© Salem Ezeorah

Communications and Entertainment

Nollywood

...every Man Has His Own Vanity. A Village Joker Used To Say That If A Woman Were To Be Cut In Two, He’d Take Whichever P...

18 Opinions

NewScientist! 5 yrs 762

...every man has his own vanity. A village joker used to say that if a woman were to be cut in two, he’d take whichever part had the waist. If I were to choose between the story and the prose of a good book, I’d choose the latter—the juice. With movies, I’d choose the acting over the story. Good acting is when you cannot tell the actor apart from the character; when acting is so real as if a secret camera were hidden to catch regular people leading their normal lives—like when you watch “24” and wonder if those guys were actors, or real CTU agents doing their thing and getting filmed.

The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind—a memoir, now a film. Chiwetel Ejiofor is Trywell Kamkwamba, the Malawian father whose teenage son, William Kamkwamba, exploited the wind and generated electricity, solving drought and famine. A father who, though initially, even fiercely reluctant, finally gave his only bicycle to be cannibalized for a schoolboy’s dream.

Ejiofor is a poor farmer and there’s no single doubt about it: his energy, looks, emotions. So dissolved into his character is he that, at first, I fail to recognize him. His home, the village, the people—nothing seems like it’s a movie. His wife, Agnes—played by the popular Senegalese actress, Aïssa Maïga—looks, in every detail, the image you know about that kind of woman in your village. Photography replaces dialogue in many parts, such that you see rather than hear the story. I find myself clapping as I watch the movie last night.

It is a familiar story of African grit but, undearneath, also a story of the politics that has kept the continent in darkness: that of its democracy as a conspiracy of thieves. But acting makes all the difference, validating the acclaim that has attended the Ejiofor movie. Reminds me of Nollywood.

The major Nollywood challenge, in my view, is not infrastructure—which can be explained away in terms of funding. Acting is the beast here: where Olu Jacobs grunts his way through an entire career, and Pete Edochie speaks the way no one speaks in real life. The same goes for nearly all the rest: they bring stage-drama performances into every movie, so much that it FEELS like they are acting, like they are playing, literally. Sadly the drama-stage acting tradition has become entrenched and is now too late to change. Even the audience now understand and compensate for missing emotions most times.

Colour is good, as is gele, Ankara, heavy makeup and the new obsession with cinematography. But can we really have the basic called good acting? Maybe that is why only about 5 of our actors have made it to the global stage. Maybe good acting can improve our Oscar aspirations. And it doesn’t cost a lot for a start.

*~keeping it real with Salem Ezeorah.*

Motivational

Life

...my Hair Covers A Tiny Shame Etched Permanently Upon My Head From Secondary School. I Was A Smallish, Final-year Student And Per...

13 Opinions

NewScientist! 5 yrs 770

...my hair covers a tiny shame etched permanently upon my head from secondary school. I was a smallish, final-year student and perhaps the youngest in my class and new because I had transfered to Union Secondary School Awkunanaw Enugu from Boys' Secondary School in my town - which made me an easy target for bullies. From being bullied for too long in school, I became fairly brave. Brave, but not enough to face Ray, a mountainous junior student that inherited notoriety from the defeat of its original owner—my own classmate who used to be a terror to everyone.

Ray was ten-percent human, the rest of him cut from satan's flesh. It was hard not to find him implicated in any vice in school—rape, theft, fights... That Friday morning, I was late to class, walking in proud steps as a senior. There was Ray with some of his classmates sitting under a tree. "Hey! Heeey!! Come here!" I ignored him and walked on, my swag evaporating with fear. He sprang to his feet and soon caught up with me, dragging me to the corner where his accomplices sat. "Kneel down! Why are you late to school?" Kneel down before a junior student? I wrested my tiny wrist from his grasp and next, he sent a stool crashing on my head. Blood had no power to draw pity from a bully who's malice had grown too familiar with it. He punched me further in the head, as if intent on manual perforations. He was mad that, rather than receive his punches with obedient courage, I was warding them off and even threw a few retaliations.

Over a decade past and, one day, I was driving out of a new estate in Maitama, where I had gone to discuss business with the construction firm in charge. A group of labourers stood at the gate, pleading entrance, swatted off by baton-wielding guards. They flagged me down, the labour crowd: Two familiar faces, one of them, Ray! They wanted to know if I knew the site manager, so I could put in a word for their employment. They could lay paving stones, they said. Are you not...not...Ray? From...Awkunanaw Boys' Secondary...? Classmate to....? Recognition! Shock! I alighted and gave him a hug, struggling to make him feel comfortable, seeing as he looked withdrawn from old guilt. He looked spent, his past aura and might conquered by poverty. We exchanged numbers and for some time, I made efforts to see how he could be engaged in any construction opportunities, no matter how small. But then I remembered the crimes, the impunity by which a secondary school boy committed evil and got away. Had he been sufficiently transformed by experience? Should kindness be so irrational as to recommend present skill without concern for ugly past? Does such ethical discrimination not worsen things, by pushing a man who is ready to work back to the streets? I shut that door violently, for caution, not for revenge.

Later it struck me how most of those guys we feared back in the day are now suddenly empty. We look at them now and wonder how they rose to social power merely on the back of our own fear. I watched Ray leave the last time we saw at an eatery. Stripped of all artificial significance, he returned to his true, banal self, magnified in the past only by circumstance. Ray was, finally, a human being: mere meat with skeletal support on random locomotion. *It then dawned on me how, upon leaving any form of power and limelight, people are restored to common humanity.* All along they had been kept aloft by fellow humans who mistook power for substance. *Life.* ©Salem E

Stories and Poems

Migrants Part 1.

We Have Gotten To Tamaransset pronounce As / *Tamanghasset* / Is The Capital Of Tamaransset...

9 Opinions

NewScientist! 5 yrs 1499

We have gotten to Tamaransset pronounce as / *Tamanghasset* / is the capital of Tamaransset Province in southern Algeria, in the Ahaggar Mountains.

Mostly dominated by the Algerian Tuaregs. Getting here in trickle from various countries, we heard there is still a long way to go before we could get to our destination. News filtered in that Rebel forces are increasing geometrically to topple the government of Colone Muammar Al-Gaddafi and we may encounter hostility ahead of the journey. This migratory route have led many Africans to Europe. through Libya. We have heard of horrible tales from migrants who survived the long torture of the Sahara Desert. How some tribal forces along the way launch attacks on travelers and stripped them of every possession.

I was drawn to these group of young men who were determined to escape from the harsh economic blows in their home countries. Thirty six (36) of us happened to have a common goal. *To cross the Mediterranean sea.* Our group comprises of *six Ghanaians, Seven Nigerians, three Chadians, two Togolese, three Malians, four Cameroonians, five Senegalis, four Burkinabes, One Benin and me, the Only Nigerien*. We all have fragmented knowledge of the mission ahead and relied heavily on each other since some of us are multilingual, helping out in asking for directions from the locals as we advance our course.

We have maps, routes marked out with few tips on the routes given us by some agents who escorted us earlier on but have to return to lead others coming behind us.

We camped at Tamaransset, exhausted our provisions and could not advance further. The tribal indigenes, mostly Tuaregs, could not offer us any job since we were strangers and could hardly be trusted. The lack of funds delayed us here for almost five days. Individuals have to sell phones and pooled resources together to purchase food and drinking water.

We got used to the communal life and started getting interested in knowing where each person came from. Mr Chinedu one of the Nigerians came to be fond of me because he noticed i speak pidgin English like a Nigerian. I told him I have been to Lagos and Port Harcourt. Also, I have travelled as far south as Calabar the second time I visited Nigeria from my country, Niger Republic. He was the last to sell his phone after removing the Sim card, secured it in his backpack and bought food and four bottled water for our usual rationing. We had nothing save the four bottles of water which was rationed until the last bottle. It dawn on us that there is no way we could make it to Tahifet or even Idlès as instructed on the maps. We had to turn around and journey on foot towards the border town of In Guezzam, close to the Algerian-Nigerien Border. It took me more than two hours to persuade the group of a retreat to my home Country since we can't survive more than few days under the hot scotching sun in the Sahara desert.

We trekked non-stop from sunrise the following day till about past 5pm, exhausted and decided to observe rest along the lonely road. The last bottled water was rationed, each persons drinking few drops and passing it on until the very last left the orifice.

Few minutes later, flashes of light beamed from a distance. A vehicle was approaching from behind, heading toward us. With the last vigor we could summon, we flagged it down, praying that it stops for our rescue. Luckily, it stopped few distance away and i walked sluggishly towards him, hands on my head. If you have watched the *Walking Dead*, you will understand how we looked like then. I sighted in relief upon seeing the plate number bearing Niger Republic. After exchange of greetings with the lone driver, i pleaded to him to save us since we were stranded and could not help ourselves. He looked with an inquisitive face and agreed to help us with a free ride to the Niger Border. However he expressed regret that not all of will board his Hilux Pickup. To be continued.

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