A Review of Marianne Worthington’s Ibrahim Babátúndé Ibrahim

HERBICIDE by Jake Villarreal

A friend said: Your garden is for you And no one else. Keep what you like And kill what you don’t

I kept the rudbeckias, the milkweed, The salvia with its myriad conical buds, Purple and perfect for proboscises

I killed the nettle and thistles, The wild grasses that made my ankles itch, And even a tree, whose foliage blocked my sun

I built anthropocentric Eden As the squirrels and deer watched. They never came back to my yard

SWEETGUM ELEGY by Jake Villarreal

The sweetgum tree down the block Was felled by the wind overnight I thought he’d live forever

He survived the snowstorm six years ago Which eroded old brick homes Broke flowerpots, scattered marigolds

Four years ago, a tornado raged Tore down fences and highway signs Leaving us disheveled and lost

The sweetgum stood, folding west Where he used to bend north His east side bears a scar

He fell yesterday, a Sunday In the middle of the night I heard him collapse to the ground

I thought his scars were proof of strength That what could bend would not buckle But I’m still here and he is gone

June 22, 1995

DIARY ENTRY: VERNACULAR by Ibrahim Babátúndé Ibrahim

I do not hate school. There are just some things about it that I wish away so bad.

The noisemaker list is a constant tormentor, never mind that I am no noisemaker. A burly junior

from Primary 3 always want my lunch. I’ve told no one about this. My class teacher caught me

with storybooks in my desk during classes a number of times. She switched my seats from back to

the front row, losing me an inestimable seatmate – a class crush. Now I’m stuck with a stammering

talkative at my new desk.

At first, the midday mandatory pause of the Angelus was a welcome escape. Since a senior from

Primary 5 violated it and got punished for the rest of the term, it has become burdened with anxiety

and fear.

Oh, how I dread being beaten. Here in school, the teachers find every excuse for it. The most

annoying one is ‘vernacular’ – where speaking our local dialects is taboo and everyone has to

pretend English is ordained by God. I have a special name for them. Nothing ingenious. They’re

called teachers because they teach, right? I call them beaters because they beat, but only in my

diary.

The morning assembly bore me, and on days when they stretch longer than usual, it is torture. For

the most part, I am jealous of the pupils who beat drums to the school and national anthems. Their

enthusiasm, their vigour, their passion, all loom large in every bang of the thin hides on their sets,

oftentimes much louder than the uncoordinated chorus of our numerous – some eager, some docile

– voices.

I-if it pi-pi-pisses you off so-so-so much, you-yo-you sh-should try out a-an-and join them.

Like many other things about me, my stammering, talkative seatmate cannot understand this. I am

not jealous because I want to beat drums. I am jealous because the lucky bastards get to do what

they love.

Dad and Mum do not like me watching TV. They prefer me reading. This should have been

perfect. Much more than eating, visiting friends, receiving gifts, reading is one of the things I love

most in the world. But I have to always hide my books away beneath my desk in school, and

beneath my pillow until after lights out at home.

My choice of books contains stories. In a different way from the charms-and-incantations-filled

Yoruba tíátà on our small, black and white TV, they transport my young 10-year-old mind to

places I can only explain by having the other person read them too.

The books they want me reading, however, contain jargons – text, diagrams, pictures, all things

that can have me stagnant in thoughts, rooted on one line for several minutes. I jot questions

underneath the lines I want more clarity on, but I’ve learned to stop asking them after the questions

riled a beater or two.

How do they want me to read these things when even they sometimes struggle to explain what is in

there?

I’ll write textbooks one day and be as explanatory as the storybooks I read. Perhaps I’ll just leave

textbooks alone and write storybooks altogether.

But the school term just ended, and the headmistress is smiling with my parents, again. It feels

good that my report card says as usual that I came first in class. Maybe I love report cards more

than I do storybooks. What I love more than holidays though, probably do not exist. The best of

them are the ones that come with festivals – Eid Fitr, Easter, Eid Mubarak, Christmas.

There could be food baskets of all kinds knocking on our door. There could be plenty of balloons,

whistles, hand-crafted paper crowns and ribbons, maybe even knockouts and bangers. There could

be meat, introducing itself in different forms and different tasty sensations. There could be

readymade clothes or ones birthed from earlier trips to the tailor. There could be loud music, no

go-and-read-your-books admonitions, no guilt for being young and free.

Sometimes, out of the blues, all these could be cancelled for the long, tiring, homecoming journeys

through countless towns, cities, villages, bushes, hills, plains, from Ado-Ekiti to Ilorin, at the end

of which I get to see just how similar I am to the people at the destination, yet how different. The

initial euphoria of traveling melts into the anxiety of meeting, and then into the joy of belonging,

and then into the confusion of culture shock, and then into the mental settling that sees a part of my

heart break when it is finally time to pack up and leave it all behind.