IB AD AN 
a review 
Wole Soyinka; Ibadan: The Penkelemes Years, a memoir 1946-1965. Spectrum Books, Ibadan; N405.00. 
Being accused 
Discharged and acquitted 
After Ake, his volume of 
childhood memories was 
published in 1983, Soyinka 
maintained that he would not attempt to 
give an account of his life beyond 'the 
age of innocence.' He then wrote Isara 
(1989), 'a voyage around' his father, in 
which he reinvented the world of an 
earlier generation. In February 1994, 
the prize-winning author completed 
Ibadan which he subtitled The 
Penkelemes Years, a Memoir 1946- 
1965 - penkelemes being a rendition of 
'peculiar mess'. From it he emerges 
having fathered four children by three 
women (of different nationalities) and 
having had, by his admission, affairs in 
the Isle of Man, Cuba and Nigeria. By 
the end of 1965, he had had 
confrontations with a variety of 
politicians and 
policemen, and 
was awaiting 
trial on charge of 
holding-up a 
radio station. So 
much for 
innocence. 
Soyinka begins 
his Foreword: 
'Ibadan does 
not pretend to be 
anything but 
faction,' and he 
goes on to 
indicate how he 
has'fictionalised 
facts.' An 
example of his 
method is the 
creation of 
Maren, the 
protagonist of 
the book who, 
he said in a BBC 
interview, 'is 
undisguisedly me.' This is 
autobiography masquerading as 
biography, and since it opens at the 
beginning of 1960 with Soyinka's return 
to Nigeria after five years in Europe, it 
is, at first sight, somewhat confusing. 
However, critics of Nigerian writing 
have admonished to let the mask 
complete its dance before they pass 
judgement, so.... 
The memoir is highly selective: Soyinka 
has dipped his hand into the bulging 
bag of his life and pulled out just a few 
of the extraordinary episodes he has 
been involved in. Many events which 
loom through the harmattan dust 
hanging over the volume have been 
selected because they reveal his sense 
of destiny, his narrow escapes from 
death, orhis experience of meeting'fire 
with fire.' But there are also other 
principles at work in organizing the 
material. 
Each page of the book testifies to the 
skill of the storyteller, and fascinating 
tales, told with wit, energy and a good 
deal of special pleading unfold within a 
complex structure. Context is only 
vaguely established and factual 
information is thrown out in an 
apparently haphazard manner. As often 
as not, narratives are cut short and issues 
are not resolved, leaving readers 
intrigued and only partly satisfied. Those 
looking for achronicle of Soyinka's life 
will be disappointed: as will those who 
want a page by page account of his 
creative writing. In 1965 Soyinka 
published The Interpreters but there is 
no reference to it, or the writing of it in 
Ibadan. Readers will be surprised that 
the professional Nigerian who emerges 
from these pages had time to write 
anything longer than rallying cries or a 
speech to deliver over usurped radio 
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waves. 
However, those interested in his time 
'down and out' in Paris or in his visit to 
Cuba will find plenty to mull over. This 
Memoir - one of several that could have 
been written, places Soyinka as 
playwright, theatre director and teacher 
on one side - and we hear nothing about 
his lectures, seminars ortutorials. Instead 
we are pulled through key encounters, 
rites of passage, learning experiences; 
we are tugged into abysses and taken on 
hunting expeditions through bushes of 
ghosts. 
The narrative technique employed 
means that readers have to abandon 
themselves to the flow and pick up such 
clues as are offered. The author expects 
his reader to look between the lines, to 
see, for example, the passion for justice 
which is present in the diminutive Maren 
facing the bullies at Government 
College, and to detect the quickening of 
interest in the boy seeking new Religion 
of Human Rights when he encounters 
Blake's Jerusalem and Lincoln's 
Gettysburg Address. Those who ask 
such questions as 'Where did he get the 
Land Rover he travels here, there and 
everywhere in?' will be repeatedly 
frustrated: it is not that sort of a memoir. 
The abuse of power and the ways in 
which language can be used to attack, 
transform, and ridicule are other 
recurring and organizing concerns: 
apparently in the confrontations with 
pompous seniors, con-men, pickpockets, 
administrators and with 
politicians who want to hijack an election 
and with it a country. Notoriously 
Soyinkaoften acts alone against injustice 
and this book does nothing to dent the 
impression that has been created of, 
essentially, a single-minded and often 
lone crusader. With him the description 
'writer - freelance' takes on a new 
significance. However, he does have 
people - some of whom he treats 
disgracefully - and he does need people 
- to act in sketches, drive getaway cars 
and keep him informed. 
For the period covered by this book 
Soyinka had both his parents: Essay and 
Wild Christain who dominated Ake are 
both presences. However, fearing they 
will restrict his ability to act freely, 
Soyinka keeps them at a distance: his 
attitude to them often offhand and deeply 
wounding. Clearly, it is a terrible burden 
to have a political idealist who is also a 
womanizer for a son - or a husband. 
When he starts his own families, it is noi 
clear what Soyinka expects or what 
commitment, if any, he gives: there is 
one exchange with his first wife which 
suggests a meeting of minds, but there is 
not a single scene with his second wife, 
'Laide, which gives any indication why 
he married her. In order to give some 
balance to the portrait of her which 
emerges from Ibadan, it should be 
remembered that she fought tenaciously 
for him during the Nigerian Civil War. 
As a result, he wrote as follows in The 
Man Died: 'This book is deservedly 
dedicated to 'Laide who rejected 
compromise and demanded justice.' 
Since then, and it should be remembered 
that the couple had a fourth child in 
1971, family lines have been redrawn. 
In Ibadan 'Laide is presented as a 
materialistic harridan, heartlessly 
dumping her children on her detained 
husband and driving so recklessly as to 
endanger the life of one of her daughters. 
It is necessary to read closely to see 
what prompted her decision to'abandon' 
the children with their father at the police 
station. The reference to 'repatriating' 
(page 373) his eldest child holds a clue: 
Soyinka had returned from London and 
the Commonwealth Arts Festival with 
his six year-old first born in tow. He 
added the boy to his daughters by 'Laide, 
and within weeks had gone on the run 
from the police. The sort of woman 
capable of rejecting compromise and 
demanding justice took action when the 
errant husband could eventually be 
located. 
While distancing himself from his 
parents and untouched by a sense of 
equality within his marriages, Soyinka 
haspeople:his 'crops,' his special breed 
of followers, to borrow a term from 
Season of Anomy, the men - almost 
invariably men - of Aiyero. At school 
there was, on the evidence of Ibadan, a 
camaraderie which united the small and 
virtuous behind Soyinka and against the 
bullies ('One for all and all for one' - to 
sound a familiar note); later there was 
the Credo Group, and various associates, 
including members of Orisun Theatre 
and the Mbari Club, whom he could call 
on for support. 
The book provides numerous insights, 
pen portraits, parodies, and accounts. 
For example, it is fascinating to learn of 
Soyinka's contact with the Akintola 
family while in Lagos, of his 
involvement with the Officers'Training 
Corps in Leeds, and of his commitment 
to the University Idea. It is amusing to 
read the words he puts into the mouths 
of Harold Hobson and Joan Littlewood, 
and to get his observations on dozens of 
topics. 
But there is also much here that all 
observers, however much they admire 
his writing or sympathize with his stand 
against corruption and for democracy 
will regard as hostages to fortune. For 
example, Maren is variously described 
as a walking catastrophe, a runt, a 
trouble-maker, a bohemian, and a ne're 
do well. Joan Littlewood, coming from 
a different angle, strikes a note which 
the Chinweizu faction will delight in 
when she describes him as 'too much of 
a po faced Britisher.' There are many 
occasions when, on the evidence 
presented here, Soyinka is arrogant and 
selfish, inconsiderate and reckless, 
melodramatic and unnecessarily 
apocalyptic. Occasions when he is quite 
simply wrong; he sometimes acts from 
ignorance and finds himself involved in 
farce. 
Given the 'factional' character of the 
book, it is difficult to know at what 
point to draw attention to inaccuracies. 
43
But it seems to me there is no point in the acknowledges his role in the radio station 
repeated misquotation of the opening of hold-up. Note, however, that, 
Lincoln's address - it does not begin terrifyingly and at about the same time, 
'Fourscore and twenty years ago....' and he had contemplated setting fire to the 
I see no reason why Gerd Meuer appears Sketch building in Ibadan or killing S. 
as Gerd Mayer or David Piper as John L. Akintola, and that he doesn't complete 
Piper. However, it should be mentioned the story of the trial. Those who followed 
that he does not dress himself in an agbada events will know that he got off on a 
of infallibility and is quite prepared to technicality and was carried shouldertell 
stories 'against himself: in Paris he high from the court. His political 
is not sure who he is going to meet - judgement is fallible, but in this instance 
Prime Minister or Sardauna, or, indeed, he certainly succeeded in keeping 
who he has met. important issues before the Western 
Region: the trial was front page news 
Soyinkacan certainly be infuriating, and for days. 
one is constantly balancing his manifest 
vices against possibly redeeming virtues. Soyinka's books about his life and his 
It is particularly encouraging that in this 
book he acknowledges faults, mistakes 
and weaknesses, and refreshing that, after 
years of coy denials, he now
family have purposes beyond the 
obvious concern to capture a period of 
time and reduce it to writing. Ake was 
part of an exchange with critics who 
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Tel. (234)01-2692762. 
called into question Soyinka's 
Africanness, and Isara used the 
achievements of an earlier generation 
as a standard by which to judge the 
present. Perhaps because he wants to 
justify the 'self-indulgence' of 
autobiography, Soyinka has suggested 
that Ibadan is relevant because in 1993 
and 1994 Nigeria relived some of the 
nightmares of the sixties. Soyinka has 
sometimes spoken as if drawing this 
parallel were the main purpose of the 
book: such a statement should not make 
us insensitive to the pleasure of taking 
in the crafting, telling and self-projection 
that has gone into the writing. Despite 
immediate reactions to the way it opens 
in media reviews and the apparently 
rambling construction , there is , as one 
would expect from Soyinka the poet, 
playwright and raconteur, a strong sense 
of shape: it is not a penkelemes. 1££J 
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