ISSUE NUMBER TWO • 1 9 37 • career street youths. While a good number of these actors work in the informal sector (street hawkers, bus conduc- tors, car washers, porters, car guards, beggars) others are involved in illegal activities (pickpockets, shoplifters, area boys, touts, rapists, drug dealers, etc). by While the African partici- pants reasoned that the ma- jor cause of the phenomenon is the widespread poverty occasioned the wrongheaded foisting of Structural Adjustment Programmes on weak African economies, the French par- ticipants argued that the main causal factor should be located in the break up of the family and the progressive erosion of traditional control systems. This disagreement notwithstanding, the sympo- sium noted that the overall effect of street deviance in Africa lies in the generation of stress, chaos and, ultimately, violence. One of the partici- pants, Stephane Tessier, ad- dressed the issue of violence at length. Rather than view vio- lence as a phenomenon gener- ated by asocial street actors as is often the case in social sci- ence practice, he preferred to construct street actors as vic- tims of the psycho-social, sym- bolic and economic violence produced by the larger adult society in the public space. Consequently, Tessier ar- gued that the forms of violence which street children inflict on society should be seen as a re- sponse, a sort of counter-vio- lence to the violence they un- dergo. Examining efforts made in various African countries at stemming the tide of the ugly phenomenon, the symposium observed that African govern- ments, apart from erroneously seeing all street actors as pub- lic enemies, often tend to per- ceive private initiative (by NGOs) as affront. Thus, rather than complement each other, governments and NGOs see themselves as com- petitors. The symposium also noted that government effort is largely ineffective because the African state has col- lapsed and can no longer meet its social obligations. The action of NGOs were also criticised as being 'sympathy- driven.' At the end of the three-day symposium, wide- ranging suggestions and rec- ommendations were made to the appropriate authorities but Jinmi Adisa insisted that 'there can be no solution to all the problems we have dis- cussed in the last three days so long as our society does not learn to invest in its own people.' •Adesanmi. was the rapporteur at the Abidjan symposium A Rhyming Diary Sanya Osha Uche Nduba CHIAROSCURO, published by Yeti Press, Bremen, 1997. 200pp. 6 1 Uche Nduba Bttki 6 EXILE isn't always a pleasant experience for many artists. And this is probably truer in the case of literary art- ists who have to make greater effort in capturing the native smells, colours and textures of their homelands. The fact of exile usually disrupts or severes these nostalgic sensa- tions. But fortunately, Uche Nduka's latest offering of po- etry, Chiaroscuro passes through the crucible of exile and emerges on the side of po- etic maturity. Nduka has cer- tainly grown in stature since the publication of Flower child (1985). In that collection, Nduka had already laid the map of his future preoccupa- tions: life, joy, art and, need one add, individualism. The last characteristic propels him invariably towards a sometimes strident cosmo- politanism. In other words, he becomes the ultimate post-co- lonial/post modernist figure amalgamating and dismem- bering geographical realities and often divergent cultural codes with" random, even if productive, glee. But exile is surely far from the foreground in Chiar- oscuro as Nigena in all its awesome diversity seems to mark out the collection's tra- I ISSUE NUMBER TWO* 1997 jectory. Lagos is especially prominent. It isn't a lousy Lagos that is usually portrayed, in- stead, we glimpse a city of subtle poetic con- trasts and possibilities. Oftentimes Nduka's Lagos is too beautiful to be true, what with all the internal rubbish dumps and the ceaseless violence that all but disembowels that city. Not even these lines 'at Lagos the sea/at Lagos the bridge/at the crowds' portray the city's inglori- ous plight. Nonetheless, Nduka is free to see what he desires and what he conveys is usually very appealing even when not completely accurate. Another point worth noting is his adher- ence to the strictures of discipline he imposes upon himself. The collection consists of two hundred twelve-line stanzas that of course vary in terms of intensity, mood and style. But surely all of them possess the various and sometimes irreconcilable strains that have in- fluenced him all these years. With maturity, Nduka has come to understand some of the mysteries of history: And Lord Lugard named the Virgin land. This babel of a virgin. Oh what knowledge, what imagination from his sweetheart's let ter roused his heart and bade him blend the streams, the roads and forests into one. A feat. A marvellous feat. And Abaji is the poet-persona who traverses this land filled with histories with all the cus- tomary prodigality. To do this he knows he has to maintain his health and sanity: / won't have you outdrink the fish and outsmoke the chimney. I will pull you to where poems snarl at sloth, where poems quell the rage of booze and smoke as the campus eavedrops, humming above the band of pontificating poets. Here, Nduka is obviously referring to one or two gatherings of poets in Nigerian univer- sity campuses who in the name of poetry end up neglecting the art. Nduka's art is a fervent rejection of this alarming tendency. Indeed, he fine tunes his rituals for life and art: He prepares his speech, he arranges his house where guests shall loaf around the painted walls and caiv and croak as such occasions de mand. And to fellow poets who share his creed he writes: May heaven help the poets nurtured by poetry alone. Nurtured by love. By life in-between them. Those who are familiar with the poet's life are constantly provided with notable signposts. For instance: 'Pleasure ruined him,'Biaks noted outside the Arts Theatre. We were chums. Biaks shook his hand, shook the poet of twilights and ruffled a life, ruffled a style as the sly threat became naked in the label of a drizzling morning. Nduka is probably referring to another gifted poet of his generation who is a product of the University of Ibadan and who was an almost legendary purveyor of pleasure. There are other references to poets and art- ists of his generation ranging from Ogaga Ifowodo, Ike Okonta, Izzia Ahmad, Godwin Ede and Carlos Udofia to Greg Odo and Olu Oguibe. They all spice his verses with the follies and triumphs of their lives. In this way, Nduka makes himself perhaps the most generous spokesman of his artistic generation with the possible exception of Obi Nwakanma. In cata- loguing aspects of the lives of those various personalities, his own inner life is also more than abundantly reflected and this makes him an eloquent and rather interesting diarist. Nduka had probably finished the bulk of the work that needed to be done on Chiaroscuro before settling in Germany in 1994. That is, the material had been gathered and anointed by the initial flash of inspiration and what re- mained was the gift and elevation of craft which the German experience has amply supplied. Those poems are unique when viewed within the context of Nigerian literary archive. Unique because Nduka is a poet of numerous sensitivities. In one breath, Africa, Europe and America are merged just as folk rock and acid rock are coupled with Lagos brewed music and it is these colourful divergences that produce a blend quite uncommon to the whole of Nige- rian literature. The only grouse is that the col- lection is rather too bulky, some of the poems uneven and quite a number of the lines a bit too startling. •Osha teaches English a! Ladobe Abintola University of Technology. Ogbomo>o