FROM THE BOUNDARY - Centenary

“Oyibo pepper, if you eaty pepper you go yellow more more”: pidgin English for ‘O white person, if you eat peppers you will be even more yellow than the peppers you’ve eaten’. Little kids cavorting round oyibo in Warri, delighting in his pepper-ness. The Ngozis, angels of the night and fresh from a prayer meeting, defying darkness with ‘My God never fails’. Suya at the Club with Amankwah. Six wrapper yards, lace shirt and coral beads. Oyibo is Itsekiri. Road blocks on the Lagos road. Campus robbers confronted by oyibo with Hausa sword. Black snake “bad one” in roof free-fall insinuates ‘Gonna getcha lata’. Bushful 20 foot flames scream ‘run’. Oyibo screams ‘B.O.’ back and rescues passport. ‘No-name’, beloved four-legged porch dweller, follows oyibo to school and occupies his desk chair – OK mate? Tendrils of times past. Never forgotten, ever being and becoming. Was I really once the daughter of a missionary? Yeah for dream jokes.

And then Ipi Tombi London-wise and Boney M, Randy Crawford tender rain-falling and Billie Holiday blessing kids; yes, and later still beloved Josephine banana-skirt-wise leaping from a cage. Now Kirk and Julia. They’re helping oyibo to write this – his 100th column. See, I told you this week is special to me.

Kirk came as a thought-codicil. Fact is I’d been pondering the latest literary adventure of Black Spider Press – me. A volume of love, well, love poems, written by Bajan mavourneen, Kim, and Welsh boy, Steve, tomorrow’s Taliesin. The impress of Josephine of the curling fingers to soldiers, black and white, at the Liberty Club – listen on Youtube. It’s a shadow of me. J’ai deux amours. My two loves. Hers, home, St Louis, and Paris. Mine, the buzz of Bim and Borth, the womb of Wales. But more: male and female, black and white, but one love, the leitmotif of life trumpeting that eternity’s put away childish things. The poems are good. Bless you, Josephine. You turned J’ai deux amours into a prayer.

But then Kirk, unpushy, gentle and soft spoken. Kirk’s a beggar. Money passes. “Thank you white guy.” What? “White guy”? What’s ‘white’ got to do with it? Kirk, are you ‘black man’ to me? ‘Black man beggar’? Give over. Poverty’s anaemic, bleached. “Come, Kirk, put your arm on mine. Rub them together.” Love him, he did. “They feel different to you?” “No.” “Me neither.” Kirk smiles. “See ya Kirk.”

What’s wrong with black dogs? Do dogs tilt noses at difference? Fourteen year old Clifford – beloved son. To whites, he’s black. To blacks, he’s white. “What colour are you, Son, black or white?” “Neither, Dad. I’m ME.” Good on ya, kid. Proud of you.

Sunshine, remember Erstwhile Ewe? Rendezvous on Harrow’s Hill. Met Dorothy Boux there. Bless, she inscribed a copy of her Golden Thread for me. She’s worth researching. Erstwhile must be nearly 60 now. Lordy, life’s a b*tch. Well, she’s resurrected – Ewe, I mean, not Erstwhile. Nukunu. She lives in Colonnade Mall and everything shop-wise spells HOME, Ghana. Why isn’t African Appreciation Month – Black History Month, do sort it out – a 365 day job? It is, isn’t it? The Mall’s festooned with Kente and Obama, coloratura over the stair wells. Nukunu’s flying. Her smile spells YES to every white man in agbada and every black man in city suit. Nelson meets Nelson.

But then macushla, Julia, the pulse of my heart and as old as the Romans. Now I know it doesn’t sound much, but Julia said “hi” to me in the street as we passed. Not ‘hi, white man’, just “hi” – a surgical, cure-ful, kindly, well-meaning ‘hi’, simple good manners laced with affection for the human race. No sub-plot. A knife exposing the voice of the heart trilling ‘I’m a person like you, Clifford, and Kirk, and Nukunu, and the Ngozis, and Josephine, and Billie, and Randy, and Kim, and Steve, and Erstwhile, and yes, you my reader.’ It’s the voice in the horn of the hunter trumpeting the moment we arise in our beauty as children of Jesus, just children, not black, not white, just child stars in the night of life.

And then it hit me in the coffee shop. Zonk. It’s not my ‘whiteness’ that’s the problem. It’s the ‘non-whiteness’, the Tesco honey “from around the world”. Rubbish the arrogant white man, yes. Despise the fawning white man, yes. But the white-less white man? Help! He’s DANGEROUS. He only has eyes for YOU. His two loves are just LOVE. He’s just a DOG-man. It’s a hard act to follow.

Odd thing is, I’d just scribbled this when Astra, my Pythian princess, said “hi” too. Geez, what are my angels up to? Filled her in. Merciless, gob-smacking stare. “Yes, you’ve got it. We’ll talk.” After fifteen years, she still knows my number.

Well, there you are: my 100th column – in its way, the macushla of me. Now, what about you, the pulse of you? Search it out, why don’t you. It’s yours. “Arise, shine; for thy light is come, and the glory of the Lord is risen upon thee.” EMI KE! Me – you. One world. One humanity. Winter’s gone. No more frozen misery. That upstart SPRING is here. Listen now to the song of birds and the voice of the turtle.

Go safely, then – until the next time.

Journey from the boundary: “Free your heart. Travel like the moon among the stars” (Buddha).