The ‘Laurette‘ Marie-LuiseWhere do I start really?
Well, by reading you a rather cryptic e-mail which I had to send to Kongi on March 6th last year. It read:
“Dear 'Laurette',
what was your name again in the Geneva Inter-Conti some years ago?
I hereby dutifully transmit the request from Dr. Urbani, so that same Nigerian-German s.th. may not feel obliged to convene yet another 'crisis meeting' in which to deal with MY behaviour! I did, however, tell the German transmitter that it would be quite worthwhile to also state the conditions such as travel, hotel, 'eventual' honorarium – I am still awaiting same!
your non-agent
gerd
end of quote…
To really get the gist of that mail I have to tell you a much older story... Some time during the reign of a certain Sanni Abacha, Kongi is on a visit to Geneva, one of the UN headquarters, where he is being guarded by two plainclothes Swiss policemen. Some time late in the evening he rings me from the Geneva Interconti hotel and asks me to ring him back. He tells me that I must tell the telephone operator that I want to talk to ‘Marie-Luise‘. I seem to remember that I asked Wole whether he had under-gone a sex-change operation or something, but his reply was quite simple: Marie-Luise was the code-name given to him by the Swiss police. So I call the Inter-Conti, tell them I want to talk to Marie-Luise, and they put me through straightaway. And we have used that name on many an occasion ever since.
And that is what the above e-mail refers to... The link?
Well, a certain Dr. Urbani, the head of the ‘German-Nigerian Cultural Association’ somewhere in the German Ruhr district, mailed me with an invitation for Kongi to give a lecture. And he adressed that e-mail to... hold your breath:
Laurette,
L A U R E T T E. Again: L A U R E T T E !!!
What he really meant was: L A U R E A T E, wanting to adress it to the NOBEL LAUREATE.
Some ‘culture’, that!
Well, as far as names go… there is still another story… During Abacha’s reign Kongi also came to Houston, where I lived at the time, for a meeting with Tony Enahoro. Again he stayed in a hotel incognito. My trying ‘Marie-Luise’ and other French female names was of absolutely NO use when I tried to get through to him on the phone. So I started thinking what might do the trick, since the receptionist told me they “had no Mr. Soyinka, Soljanka or Wole as a guest.” „Yoruba“ didn’t work either.
The constant answer: “No, Sir, we don’t have a guest under that name!“ And then I tried Kongi’s preferred Yoruba deity: OGUN.
The receptionist’s immediate answer: “I’ll put you through to his room, immediately!“
And what an evening we had, though not without serious consequences. But as Monty Python often said: “That is an entirely different story!”
(to be followed by: “Mr. Froehlich is NOT amused!)
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