My host is a character that reminds me so much of my younger brother 
There is a way he carries himself that tells everyone that this is someone with a plan, focus and a destination in mind. He brings people together in ways that shows that he is someone who understands not just human beings but also how the world works.
For your information, my host is my publisher (we will discuss that matter some other day) and I would like to also see him as a friend. He is different in a type of way that I cannot explain yet. He tells you this is not a democracy, and that he is in charge then he goes and does the nicest things. Yeah, I like him. We have not met before now but he has welcomed me like we have been friends for ages. This means a lot to me.
As someone who has taken it upon himself to watch people live their lives and find pleasure in their joys and pain in their sorrows, it has been a pleasure to be enmeshed in the midst of creatives for over a week. I mean you need to be in the discussions we had into wee hours. We talked about all sorts and through my host's efforts I have come in contact with some of the most intense people, the most self motivated people and I can say that my life as a writer has been enriched in this period.
Calling myself a writer would have felt weird some weeks ago but my host would say own it, it is yours. So I own this shit. In our discussions, I realised how isolated I was. As a someone who creates stories out of nothing, I have stood out as the odd one in my community. Whenever I said I am a writer back in warri, there's this look I get as if I am making jest. I know folks who call me writer and I hear the laughter in their voice. It is as if they say nothing good can come out of my generation, nothing good can come out of warri.
This is doubly painful because I do love warri. I love that town not for the oil or the supposed wealth it has. I love warri for her history, her food, her culture, her language, the resilience of her people who strive despite being rubbed into the mud for several lifetimes. Despite the poverty, the misplaced priorities, the fleeing of her educated children to other more prosperous places, warri is my home. It is where I have lived most of my life. I have loved and hated there, had my first kiss and first bottle there. It was in warri I had my first fight and wrote my first lines. Yes warri is everything.
Thus my interaction with these gentlemen and women made me realise how much work needs to be done for warri to be taken serious. We have creatives living in warri who do not have the exposure that their Lagos counterparts have despite having as much or even more skill than the later. It makes me wonder why or if there is, where the collective of writers, artists, photographers, actors, cinematographers, etc is in the town. Where do they meet? Where do they exchange ideas? Are there organisations that are pooling creative resources of the indigent population into a group? Can we have festivals, meet ups, projects through which the warri identity can be resurfaced?
I do not have the answers but while I enjoyed the hospitality and friendship of my host, his friends and staff, I realised that we needed to change the narrative in Warri. We need to create a safe place for our children, our families to interact and exchange ideas and in such a manner, we can evolve a generation that is learned and grounded in the traditions of their people with strong ties to their community that would ensure that they make the right choices in politicos, policy making and development.
To be continued...
©warpedpoetic, 2019.
