REMINISCING YENAGOA

The moods
Like a human, Yenagoa had moods. It had a soul, a body that required intelligence to comprehend. During her extrovert days the entire town would be bursting in a carnival of sorts. So much colours, fancy cars, night clubs and parties ready to rock into infinity. There is always a neighbour with that huge speaker blasting your ear with owigiri music. And even as you complain inside, your body attempts to wiggle agreeingly with the tunes somewhere between your grumblyings and the albums eventual end. Another neighbour, maybe a politician fallen from favour, might force you into one or two shots of Kai Kai. I loved such moods when the rains were far away and the roads, unlike the pockets, were dry. I found such times satirical. Those basking in exuberance were not particularly well to do, they seemed to me people who wanted to strike a temporarily devastating blow at poverty. Then, suddenly, the town falls into its shell. No colours, few smiles, no owigiri music ( that's the point you realise you actually liked the music) no spice and twist, just everybody getting along with their business, trying not to get in trouble. These are the times I call the " introvert days". A somewhat scanty town clouded by sombre faces. Apart from the swift mood swings something else that beats my imagination was Yenagoa's reaction to new trend. If skinny pants were come into fashion you only had to wake up one morning and find the entire town on skinny pants. In Yenagoa there is no such thing as a fairly patronised thing. Something is either over patronised or completely left alone.

Swali market
The biggest market in Yenagoa. There was a certain picture quality there, a certain clash of diversity, a certain reallnes, a certain force of nature. It was a rallying point of people from different walks of life. Government officials and manual day labourers, preachers and prostitutes, thieves and students, all with genuine countenance. There is a high level of urgency and self awareness, afterall, nobody likes being conned. At swali market you can find beauty and poetry and cynicism all blended into one. The fish seller might present you a smile, a smile so real its not sacharine, but check she may have short changed either you or the customer before you. Beautiful people. Decent people. Cynical people. You can't find a place more sincere than that, even if the rumours were manufactured right there in the market.

The beer parlours
That's were you get the main gist. The events happening at Creek Haven, especially those that will never make the news. A governors embarassing mistake, a commissioners slapping, a lawmakers betrayal, a judge's secret meeting. And of course why wount I believe? These were slipping out of the mouths of government house insiders. There is so much loose talk and your job as an inbelong, a nobody in government was to laugh and sip your beer lest you find yourself at the mercy of the SSS. Sometimes the aguement gets so heated and chaotic you can't resist contributing. Pro Sylva and Pro Dickson. Pro Rebirth and pro restoration. Such debates ended up sour, violently, or at the very least a strained friendship for Bayelsa is a state cruelly divided by political allegiances. For all its lesions and violence, the beer parlour was a place to let out the pressure building in you, to cool off, to temporarily lay away burdens. There is always a good amount of honesty and a small dose of exaggeration. And then, when the night has progressed, the beer will inevitably take away coherence from all the many talks, leaving only fragments of logic.

1996
You can stretch, disect, butcher gen. Sani Abacha all you want but a bayelsan, if any is around will counter you. Its nothing very personal, its simply the case of one man's meet being another's poison. We knew the truth beneath the farcade. To simply put it , Bayelsa state was created to calm the nerves of the Ijaws after Ken Saro-wiwa's politicaly motivated execution. Yet to many in these parts the man remains hugely celebrated. I love reminiscing that year. The large crowds in front of government house, port harcourt hoisting tree branches and singing songs of freedom at the watch of the military. The adrenaline that followed Kanu Nwankwo's famous goal against Argentina that subsequently brought us the atlanta 96 gold. Live footages from Dr Congo, liberia and Somalia. Footages that terrible warped humanity and more disturbingly reminded us of our own gory days. I remember the endless night parties in celebration of the creation of a "new state exclusively for the Ijaws". I remembered that first ride to Yenagoa, the anxious faces, the golden dust, the endless bushes. We carried a blind optimism on that first ride, like the English alighting from the Mary Rose to behold a dream, to behold a free new world. Yenagoa was our America.

Timipre Sylva
Under him Bayelsa became like those Greek city-states after their fall from glory, or we can use the example of a child who had learned to walk suddenly creeping again due to malnutrition and sickness. In our memories there is always a Sylva before Obama, otherwise, we would have taken him as our own Obama during his 2007 elections. A young man with excellent oratory skills, good looking, not particularly popular at the time. Wole Soyinka said ' I do not know how monsters come to be, only that they are and in defiance of time and pundits'. Dictators have a special way of endearing themselves to the people and a better technique of sustaining power amidst very conspicuous inconsistencies. Until God intervenes.

The lights, sun, moon and stars.

Now that Team Restoration is in power its easier to traverse the town and come back in one piece. Previously if the cultists didn't get you then the dreaded famou tangbei, the unpopular police group formed by the former administration to kill and intimidate any perceived foe, had you. With all that gone, I am back to my habit of sky-gazing and romance with nature. At night the beauties seemed deceptive, watching from the sides of shell ramp road i see the street lights, shimmering and gay, like one of those imported potraits from Europe or America. Its much more better standing on the swali bridge, especially before dusk. From that vantage point i see the city clear, beneath, faint and different. I like the view of the St. Peters anglican church from the distance, reminds me of one of those renaissance paintings. I like the rhythm, I like the poetry of a people who has rejected oppression. Its easier to reminisce there. With the majestic sun melting before your very eyes, with the sky's flourescence fading away by each fleeting second, i start a slideshow of images in the screen of my heart begining from the first frantic days of Bayelsa's creation, from the drums of the military to the winds of change and horns of war, I measure up things as it should be and as it is, and although the inbalance is discouraging, I am gratefull to be part of a much needed change.