A LAZY PERSON’S REVIEW OF ELNATHAN’S BOAT

I’ve met him once. It was a great experience. He has a diction similar to the gutters of Lagos, clogged with all the swear words (or maybe he was just happy to see me). But he is at the same time kind enough to warn you before he lets rip. I found him totally likable and delicious in a cerebral kinda way. And so I keep him in my KIV box. And I tease him ever so badly.

But this is about his BOAT. Yes, a book he wrote titled ‘Born On A Tuesday’. For which I hate and love him to bits at the same time.

I don’t know how to explain this without his persona for to know him is to understand why he is eminently qualified to write this book. He was born and raised in Northern Nigeria and has a voice. Twice nominated for the prestigious Caine Prize, he is sort of already well-known as a writer to a number of people around the world.

If you inhabit Twitterville or read his blog, you already know that he is passionate about women….’s rights to their bodies and has zero tolerance for the priviledge that some men think their male anatomy confers on them.

He shouted himself hoarse on Twitter at a time about how the mishandling of minority groups or those with dissenting voices in the North fuels the terrorist agenda. He has warned about the newer issue of Fulanis being blamed for every killing/kidnapping that the Police is too lazy to look for the perpetrators. He counsels that minorities should be integrated instead of hunted down or punished for existing.

He is actually a lawyer who used to work for an NGO. I remember those days. His frustrations with his job made for very many interesting tweets. He gave me quite an education about the NGO-sphere in Nigeria. Much of what I had always suspected about the NGO game, he confirmed without meaning to.

His stand against the criminalization of sexual tendencies is also very well advertised. He started to describe what he imagines the alternate sexual experience could be to me when we met & teased my over-inquisitive mind but sadly, I lack the right equipment to enjoy what he describes either as a receiver or a giver.

Anyway, I doubt there is any part of this book that he is not qualified to write.

I started to read and thought I would make quick work of the less than 300 page book. After all, I go through tomes several times that size and more technical during some work days but I read the first chapter and almost stopped breathing.

Elnathan drew me in with words. Beautifully crafted and picturesque. I walked beside Dantala. I breathed in as he smoked wee wee and I needed to pause before I was lost to my reality.

I put the book down and eyed it from a distance for a few days but the pull was strong and I came back. Almost every time I picked BOAT up again, I literally had to shut it and throw it away to come back to life.

It is such a poignant truth of the life of a kid in the North and what my imagination says is the reality of the sequence of the events that birthed real terrorism in the North, it’s not even funny!

I had seen a tweet from someone saying that everyone involved in the security of the nation should read the book and I totally agree. Aside of being such a resource, it is so evocative. Pulls you into the experience of the young man.

I just spent a very stressful two weeks wrestling with the urge to read or not to read this book. To read only a few pages and walk away and stay away. I took to reading on the sofa and leaving it there so as not to exceed the number of pages I had allotted myself each day.

I finished it today because I am struggling with controlling other urges and so I gave in to the one that would not leave me full of regrets at what I had done and I just want to kiss and slap El at the same time!

The pain, the hurt, the difficulty in understanding, the confusion and the stark clarity.

Read the book. 

It explains today’s Nigeria, the North of it in ways that no history book can. This should be required reading in our Secondary schools as Ikhide in his review opined. My only worry is for the highly imaginative student whose life will be subsumed by the hands that will reach out from BOAT and hold him/her in its thrall and how school work will suffer while they read. Sigh. Maybe for students of higher institutions then.

I am sure I am doing a poor job of reviewing the book (Its intentional!). 

I see it in my mind’s eye in technicolor and I am trying to remind myself that I read the book. ‘No’, my mind responds, ‘you watched the book’. Yes. That’s it. I watched Elnathan’s BOAT. And I still do not know how I am ever going to get those images out of my head.