For us writers, little things matter. Little incidents in our
lives make big news. Don’t ask me, what is news? It’s the question I
have been struggling to answer all my life. And I am still answering it,
because there is no one definition of news.
On my first day at the school of journalism, I was told: When dog bites man, it’s no news. But when man bites dog, that is news. That has been the classic definition of news. And in the same journalism school, we were advised to keep ourselves out of the news as much as possible and be mere reporters of the extraordinary happening in an ordinary world.
As a young reporter and a feature writer, human angle stories have always been my forte. I have always loved stories of animals making news, animals doing the unusual stuff, animals involved in heroic feats, such as a dog rescuing a drowning girl. Or the faithful dog that refused to leave its master’s grave. Or the burial of the old family dog. Or the story of how a younger Gani Fawehinmi in my days as editor of the Weekend Concord rejected a ram Sallah gift from the then military governor of Lagos State, Buba Marwa and I titled the story: RAM-COUR!
You must have read a story of a goat offered in marriage to a man caught making love with her. And you may remember the story of a goat arrested and detained in a police station somewhere in Kwara State for being a suspected armed robber !
Stories about animals in the news, particularly animals in danger and animals involved in heroism, have poetic richness and human angle dimensions. If it is well written it can be touching. Particularly stories of animal fidelity.
It was the poet Alexander Pope who wrote: “History is more full of the fidelity of dogs than people.” I read Pope many years ago in my HSC English literature class. He is famous for such epigrammatic statements like: “To err is human, to forgive, divine” and “A little learning is a dangerous thing.” He is the author of “An Essay on Criticism,” the mock epic, “Rape of the Lock” and many other famous poems that fill me with the nostalgia of old schooldays gone by.
Talking about poets writing about animals, I remember D.H. Lawrence, one of the greatest writers of the 20th century, writing about his encounter with a snake in a poem simply titled ‘SNAKE.’ The poet had gone to his water-trough on a hot, hot day only to discover a visitor in the form of a snake there before him. The snake had come for a drink and Lawrence was forced “like a second-comer” to wait. As he waited, the poet engages himself in a monologue. An internal dialogue ensues between the poet and his other self on what to do with the snake, whether to kill it or not. The voice of his education was telling him: “If you were a man you would take a stick and break him now, and finish him off…If you were not afraid you would kill him!”
Another voice was telling him not to be hostile to a visitor who had come visiting from beneath the earth, passing through a wall in the hole, to reach down to the water-trough. In the end, Lawrence picked a “clumsy log” and threw it which hit the water-trough with a clatter, causing the snake to quickly snake its way back through the hole into the darkness of the underworld where it came from. It was an action that the poet regretted, wishing he had not been that hostile to his serpentine visitor. How he wished the snake came back, so that he could make amends and treat it like a royal, “like a king in exile, uncrowned in the underworld, now due to be crowned again,” as Lawrence wrote.
I read this poem many years ago in secondary school. It has continued to stick in my memory and whet my huge appetite for literature. After reading poets like D.H. Lawrence, Thomas Gray, William Wordsworth and Pablo Neruda, I wanted to be a poet in those good old days. I spent the best part of my Sixth Form years writing poems furiously in preparation for a vocation as a poet. I remember those days as a sixth former when I met the poet Odia Ofeimun (through my friend Segun Oyegbami now a businessman) in his undergraduate days at the University of Ibadan and he introduced me to Christopher Okigbo and Pablo Neruda, the poet of rebirths and regeneration.
From Odia, I once borrowed an anthology of poems by Pablo Neruda, featuring ‘The Heights of Macchu Picchu’ which I so much fell in love with. I was tempted to keep that book forever. But after much threats and harassments, I returned his precious book after photocopying it all. Every writer has a bad and painful memory of his stolen book or an unreturned book. A book stolen is as painful as a tooth extracted from the library of the mouth. Please, this is not a poem!
I was still determined to take poetry as a vocation until the call of journalism made me to abandon English literature to go and read mass communication at the University of Lagos in 1973 .
As you can see, I have come a long, long way. But all through my life’s journey, I have never seen anything like what I experienced last Saturday as I went jogging at the wee hours of the morning as I usually do.
Out of nowhere came a goat that decided to be my jogging partner. Believe me, this is no fiction. I wasn’t dreaming. If it had been a dog, I would have understood. A dog is said to be a man’s best friend. But a goat? Running after me? The whole thing is still a puzzle. It’s a mystery. I am not that superstitious to start reading meaning into this little drama, this trivia .
As a journalist, I don’t know what else is news, if not this drama of a complete stranger, this uninvited visitor following me as I jogged down on this deserted street. This co-jogger clothed in a snow white fur. This goat dressed in a coat of two colours— white with some small patches of black around the eyes and beneath the neck.
Because it was still dark, not many people witnessed the breaking news of a goat trailing a journalist. But I heard the derisive laughter of a small boy who was the sole witness of this abnormality. From a distance, I could hear the echoes of the boy’s loud laughter as he watched this theatre of the absurd.
Initially, I too found the whole eerie scene funny. I thought after a short while, this aberration would quickly end and the goat would turn back, but the stubborn fellow was determined to finish the race with me. The voice of my education was telling me to stop, attack and drive back the intruder. But I am not the violent type. How can I attack a goat who just wants to be my friend?
Next, the voice of my religion was telling me to “bind and cast” the poor goat and “plead the blood of Jesus” upon it. But isn’t Jesus Himself the Good Shepherd and a lover of goats? Isn’t Jesus the Lamb of God who came to lay down His life for sinners like me to attain salvation? Didn’t the Book of Psalms say: The Lord is my Shepherd? Why then must I invoke a spiritual curse on a supposedly young, innocent goat just out to have play, just out to exercise its body with a new-found human friend?
I would pause and the goat would pause. I would cross to the other side of the street and the goat would cross the street after me, not afraid that it would be knocked down by the fast-moving fleet of vehicles—cars, trailers, danfos, molues and commuters all rushing menacingly to work with their full lights on. I would cross again and the goat would cross. At this point, I started getting afraid. I started getting worried. I started feeling like a prisoner to the goat. I was the prisoner and the goat was like a warder or a policeman pursuing me for what I have not stolen, pursuing me for a crime I have not committed. I started feeling like the captain of a ship held hostage by a little Somali pirate. It wasn’t funny.
I started watching and guarding my legs in case the goat attempts to bite. I know dogs can bite. I have never heard of a goat biting a man. That would be the biggest definition of news ever: Goat Bites Man! God, I wasn’t ready to hit the headlines on account of a stubborn goat.
As I raced with the goat, all kinds of thoughts raced through my mind. Could this goat be a spirit? Could it be a phantom? Could it be a human being transformed into a goat? Was I attracted to the goat because I was wearing a white vest? Could this be real? Or am I just dreaming? No, I am not dreaming. This is real. I am panting and the goat is also panting, bleating: meeeh, meeeh, meeeh. Two tired souls locked in an energy sapping race.
After almost a fairly long distance of jogging trailed by the goat, I made a U-turn. And the phantom goat equally made a U-turn. God, what is this? This is no longer a laughing matter. In the name of Jesus, I bind and cast you stubborn goat! Whoever sent you after me, I bind you and break your yoke. Suddenly, I found myself speaking in tongues, such as I have never spoken before. Who shall I tell that a goat forced me to speak in tongues? Who shall I tell that a goat brought me salvation of a rare kind while jogging along the street of Lagos? Who shall I tell that I had a Saul-to-Paul experience and spoke in tongues on a highway with a goat pursuing me?
My dear reader, the Egyptians that pursue you, you shall see them no more. All your enemies shall be drowned in the Red Sea as you read this column. To cut a long story short, I miraculously discovered that God had answered my prayers and the goat had temporarily diverted to an adjacent street corner perhaps in search of water. After running such a long, hectic race, the goat needed water. We all depend on water and oxygen as common creatures of God, in this brotherhood of man and mammal .
It was at that point of respite, I smelled freedom. Freedom from my captor. Then like Usain Bolt, I bolted fast into freedom, sprinted fast and moved far, far, from this goat. And that was the end of my encounter with this beastly fellow who wanted to be my friend by force. Even if I want a friend from the animal world, it is not a goat. I have no pact with a goat. A goat is only good for hot pepper soup. Not as a running mate. (First published on Saturday, May 02, 2009)
NEXT WEEK: AN ENCOUNTER WITH PASCAL DOZIE, ANOTHER BANKER OF OUR TIME
On my first day at the school of journalism, I was told: When dog bites man, it’s no news. But when man bites dog, that is news. That has been the classic definition of news. And in the same journalism school, we were advised to keep ourselves out of the news as much as possible and be mere reporters of the extraordinary happening in an ordinary world.
As a young reporter and a feature writer, human angle stories have always been my forte. I have always loved stories of animals making news, animals doing the unusual stuff, animals involved in heroic feats, such as a dog rescuing a drowning girl. Or the faithful dog that refused to leave its master’s grave. Or the burial of the old family dog. Or the story of how a younger Gani Fawehinmi in my days as editor of the Weekend Concord rejected a ram Sallah gift from the then military governor of Lagos State, Buba Marwa and I titled the story: RAM-COUR!
You must have read a story of a goat offered in marriage to a man caught making love with her. And you may remember the story of a goat arrested and detained in a police station somewhere in Kwara State for being a suspected armed robber !
Stories about animals in the news, particularly animals in danger and animals involved in heroism, have poetic richness and human angle dimensions. If it is well written it can be touching. Particularly stories of animal fidelity.
It was the poet Alexander Pope who wrote: “History is more full of the fidelity of dogs than people.” I read Pope many years ago in my HSC English literature class. He is famous for such epigrammatic statements like: “To err is human, to forgive, divine” and “A little learning is a dangerous thing.” He is the author of “An Essay on Criticism,” the mock epic, “Rape of the Lock” and many other famous poems that fill me with the nostalgia of old schooldays gone by.
Talking about poets writing about animals, I remember D.H. Lawrence, one of the greatest writers of the 20th century, writing about his encounter with a snake in a poem simply titled ‘SNAKE.’ The poet had gone to his water-trough on a hot, hot day only to discover a visitor in the form of a snake there before him. The snake had come for a drink and Lawrence was forced “like a second-comer” to wait. As he waited, the poet engages himself in a monologue. An internal dialogue ensues between the poet and his other self on what to do with the snake, whether to kill it or not. The voice of his education was telling him: “If you were a man you would take a stick and break him now, and finish him off…If you were not afraid you would kill him!”
Another voice was telling him not to be hostile to a visitor who had come visiting from beneath the earth, passing through a wall in the hole, to reach down to the water-trough. In the end, Lawrence picked a “clumsy log” and threw it which hit the water-trough with a clatter, causing the snake to quickly snake its way back through the hole into the darkness of the underworld where it came from. It was an action that the poet regretted, wishing he had not been that hostile to his serpentine visitor. How he wished the snake came back, so that he could make amends and treat it like a royal, “like a king in exile, uncrowned in the underworld, now due to be crowned again,” as Lawrence wrote.
I read this poem many years ago in secondary school. It has continued to stick in my memory and whet my huge appetite for literature. After reading poets like D.H. Lawrence, Thomas Gray, William Wordsworth and Pablo Neruda, I wanted to be a poet in those good old days. I spent the best part of my Sixth Form years writing poems furiously in preparation for a vocation as a poet. I remember those days as a sixth former when I met the poet Odia Ofeimun (through my friend Segun Oyegbami now a businessman) in his undergraduate days at the University of Ibadan and he introduced me to Christopher Okigbo and Pablo Neruda, the poet of rebirths and regeneration.
From Odia, I once borrowed an anthology of poems by Pablo Neruda, featuring ‘The Heights of Macchu Picchu’ which I so much fell in love with. I was tempted to keep that book forever. But after much threats and harassments, I returned his precious book after photocopying it all. Every writer has a bad and painful memory of his stolen book or an unreturned book. A book stolen is as painful as a tooth extracted from the library of the mouth. Please, this is not a poem!
I was still determined to take poetry as a vocation until the call of journalism made me to abandon English literature to go and read mass communication at the University of Lagos in 1973 .
As you can see, I have come a long, long way. But all through my life’s journey, I have never seen anything like what I experienced last Saturday as I went jogging at the wee hours of the morning as I usually do.
Out of nowhere came a goat that decided to be my jogging partner. Believe me, this is no fiction. I wasn’t dreaming. If it had been a dog, I would have understood. A dog is said to be a man’s best friend. But a goat? Running after me? The whole thing is still a puzzle. It’s a mystery. I am not that superstitious to start reading meaning into this little drama, this trivia .
As a journalist, I don’t know what else is news, if not this drama of a complete stranger, this uninvited visitor following me as I jogged down on this deserted street. This co-jogger clothed in a snow white fur. This goat dressed in a coat of two colours— white with some small patches of black around the eyes and beneath the neck.
Because it was still dark, not many people witnessed the breaking news of a goat trailing a journalist. But I heard the derisive laughter of a small boy who was the sole witness of this abnormality. From a distance, I could hear the echoes of the boy’s loud laughter as he watched this theatre of the absurd.
Initially, I too found the whole eerie scene funny. I thought after a short while, this aberration would quickly end and the goat would turn back, but the stubborn fellow was determined to finish the race with me. The voice of my education was telling me to stop, attack and drive back the intruder. But I am not the violent type. How can I attack a goat who just wants to be my friend?
Next, the voice of my religion was telling me to “bind and cast” the poor goat and “plead the blood of Jesus” upon it. But isn’t Jesus Himself the Good Shepherd and a lover of goats? Isn’t Jesus the Lamb of God who came to lay down His life for sinners like me to attain salvation? Didn’t the Book of Psalms say: The Lord is my Shepherd? Why then must I invoke a spiritual curse on a supposedly young, innocent goat just out to have play, just out to exercise its body with a new-found human friend?
I would pause and the goat would pause. I would cross to the other side of the street and the goat would cross the street after me, not afraid that it would be knocked down by the fast-moving fleet of vehicles—cars, trailers, danfos, molues and commuters all rushing menacingly to work with their full lights on. I would cross again and the goat would cross. At this point, I started getting afraid. I started getting worried. I started feeling like a prisoner to the goat. I was the prisoner and the goat was like a warder or a policeman pursuing me for what I have not stolen, pursuing me for a crime I have not committed. I started feeling like the captain of a ship held hostage by a little Somali pirate. It wasn’t funny.
I started watching and guarding my legs in case the goat attempts to bite. I know dogs can bite. I have never heard of a goat biting a man. That would be the biggest definition of news ever: Goat Bites Man! God, I wasn’t ready to hit the headlines on account of a stubborn goat.
As I raced with the goat, all kinds of thoughts raced through my mind. Could this goat be a spirit? Could it be a phantom? Could it be a human being transformed into a goat? Was I attracted to the goat because I was wearing a white vest? Could this be real? Or am I just dreaming? No, I am not dreaming. This is real. I am panting and the goat is also panting, bleating: meeeh, meeeh, meeeh. Two tired souls locked in an energy sapping race.
After almost a fairly long distance of jogging trailed by the goat, I made a U-turn. And the phantom goat equally made a U-turn. God, what is this? This is no longer a laughing matter. In the name of Jesus, I bind and cast you stubborn goat! Whoever sent you after me, I bind you and break your yoke. Suddenly, I found myself speaking in tongues, such as I have never spoken before. Who shall I tell that a goat forced me to speak in tongues? Who shall I tell that a goat brought me salvation of a rare kind while jogging along the street of Lagos? Who shall I tell that I had a Saul-to-Paul experience and spoke in tongues on a highway with a goat pursuing me?
My dear reader, the Egyptians that pursue you, you shall see them no more. All your enemies shall be drowned in the Red Sea as you read this column. To cut a long story short, I miraculously discovered that God had answered my prayers and the goat had temporarily diverted to an adjacent street corner perhaps in search of water. After running such a long, hectic race, the goat needed water. We all depend on water and oxygen as common creatures of God, in this brotherhood of man and mammal .
It was at that point of respite, I smelled freedom. Freedom from my captor. Then like Usain Bolt, I bolted fast into freedom, sprinted fast and moved far, far, from this goat. And that was the end of my encounter with this beastly fellow who wanted to be my friend by force. Even if I want a friend from the animal world, it is not a goat. I have no pact with a goat. A goat is only good for hot pepper soup. Not as a running mate. (First published on Saturday, May 02, 2009)
NEXT WEEK: AN ENCOUNTER WITH PASCAL DOZIE, ANOTHER BANKER OF OUR TIME
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A goat came jogging with me |
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