„ I have written all your books...“
(The full truth about Africa’s first Nobel)It is a pleasant summer evening and we are wandering through the pedestrian area of old Strasbourg when a shy pimple-faced young French student approaches us, approaches me, to timidly ask „whether this is really Monsieur Sojinka?“
I confirm that he IS.
Whereupon young Monsieur Dupont - with a happy smile - blubbers out: „Monsieur Sojinka, j’ai lu tous vos livres, mais je me rappelle pas les titres.“ And happily walks away.
Some 18 months later, on a cold Berlin winter afternoon, heavily wrapped up against the ‚Siberian wind‘, we are walking home after a late pasta at a corner-side Ristorante in the Berlin university quarter of ‚Berlin-Harlem‘ (=Dahlem), when a black student, heavily loaded with a rucksack full of books sees us walking by. His face lights up, he accelerates his walk, manages to walk alonside me. And then aks me with a soft voice: „C’est bien Monsieur Sojinka?“
I reply: „24 heures par jour.“
Whereupon the student asks me: „Je suis du Cameroun, mais est-ce que Monsieur Sojinka voudrait bien m’accorder un autographe?“ And while Wole puts his signature into a large student’s note-pad, the student – with a happy grin on his face – remarks: „Mr. Sojinka: I have written all your books!“
And happily walks away. We speed up, until Wole slows down just a little bit, looks into the nowhere and dryly remarks:
„Now, at long last, I know who has written all my books!“
(Wole’s family name of Soyinka – phonetically: SCHOJINKA – is written here the way it is – almost without exception – always being mis-pronounced...)
follow-up:
In September 2008 Wole arrives at Frankfurt airport, prior to receiving the 1st Prinzessin-Wilhelmine Prize of the city of Bayreuth.As usual he is the first passenger through the arrival gate. And immediately an African employee of the airport recognizes him, walks up to me:“Isn’t this Mr. Soljanka?”
Me: “Yes, he is.”
The gentleman: “Do you think he will….?” Me: “Yes, I do think so.” Whereupon the gentleman disappears to fetch paper and pencil,comes back rapidly and gets his autograph in the near-by Café which I had earlier indicated to him.
In the car on the Autobahn towards Bayreuth Wole is reading his dozens of mails on his ‘hand-held’, when I interrupt him,to tell him:
“Wole, that Camerounian fellow at the airport was a fake ! Since the fellow who WROTE ALL your books… you remember, we met him in Berlin !”
…
While in Bayreuth there is plenty of free time for conversations with some anglophone Ph.D. students from … Cameroun, whom I tell the story of those – francophone - Camerounianswho WROTE all…
And for the next teen days they went round telling the story of their countrymen stating they had ‘ritten alle jur buks… |
