June 3, 2010:
A Letter from Nigeria

By John Conclivè

Introduction: I'm offering something a little different in this issue: A letter from a writer in Nigeria. But first, a few words on how this came about...

Several months ago, I received an e-mail from Nigeria, asking for a "favor:" he needed help, he said, in buying some books on writing. Now, with apologies to the writer, over here, if one looked up "e-mail from Nigeria" in the dictionary, it would probably say, "see 'scam'". Most of my correspondence from that country consists of heart-felt appeals from warm-hearted "Christian" ladies who have decided I'm the perfect person to share their wealth--if I'd just provide a wee bit of assistance and, of course, my banking details. So I confess that my initial reaction was a bit curt, if not rude.

A few more exchanges, however, convinced me that my correspondent was sincere, not only about his desire to acquire books on writing but about his desire to become a WRITER. (Actually, that's wrong; he is already a writer, as his story will show!) We then began a lengthy process of determining just what books he could acquire on a limited budget (made more limited by shipping costs). We finally settled on a selection (to which I added a book on literary fiction from Glimmer Train that I stumbled across in a used bookstore), and soon an envelope of cash arrived.

The books were duly purchased, and I then had a long discussion with a postal clerk, who would not let me send them the "cheaper" way (in priority envelopes), because this required me to tape the envelopes closed (and they also bulged alarmingly, which apparently meant I had "changed the shape" of the shipping container). We settled on a flat-rate box. My experience in delivering the package, however, cannot compare with my friend's experience in receiving it!

I wanted to share this story for two reasons. First, it is a reminder to those of us who can confidently assume that if we want a book (and have the funds to buy it), we can simply stroll into a bookstore, or click a link on Amazon. Not every writer is so lucky! Second, well, I wanted to share it because it's simply FUN. And so... Enjoy!

-- Moira Allen, Editor

The books are here. I could not believe my eyes. The postmark says May 4, 2010, but it was yesterday I saw the slip. When I got it, I had to approach confidently the clerks in the counter. When I showed a choleric lady who was recovering from a fit of anger the way bill, she directed me to the parcel office, somewhere I have not been. A man sat near a half-door that must be opened for me to get into this strong-room. There was a guest book to sign but when he saw the slip with me, he knew something good might come and asking me to sign the guest book might make my rapport with him too formal for him to ask any favors. So, in the most flattering way I can think of, he excused me the observance of that protocol. I passed through a walkway sided by a mesh-covered structure housing a large generating plant, a pall of silence that created the fiction I was walking through a graveyard falling over the place. Flowers with sleepy foliage stood stolidly around, occasionally lifted by the morning breeze. I thought I have missed the way when I turned the bend and saw a beehive of activity in the distance.

The man I was introduced to had tribal marks on his face that made any facial gesture turn him to a Cheshire cat. He was the one to handle my matter. He looked more like the few civil servants here who are contented by the adjusted civil service salary structure that they might not bother much with peanuts outside their monthly income. But I can't imagine a civil servant here getting so content that, where he is given free rein, won't exploit the least opportunity to extort someone who needs his assistance. Unless he has undergone a divine transformation.

While he searched through the files on the table, shuffling carbon copies of waybills from file to file, I looked up and saw a warning that said I had the right to sue him if he requested any money from me aside the duties I had to pay. A custom officer, I thought his presence was really misplaced, came behind me to ask him in the bossiest manner the waybills for the day, trying, I guess, to let me know that he had some power over the clerk. When we got talking with this clerk, I noticed he was a Christian, for I saw in the backdrop of stationeries, Gospel tracts and pamphlets and a copy of The Treacherous Alliance, but he had not told me that he was. He boasted that the parcel had a tracking system so I shouldn't have thought that it can get lost on transit or be tampered with. Within this interval I had thrice picked up the carbon copy of a waybill that was always blown away by draught from the standing industrial fan that sounded like a banger [jalopy] when it whirled the semicircle.

Before me, someone opened a pack that looked much like mine only it was big enough to house two microprocessors. He brought out some unidentified objects and pounded them on the man's working desk, huffing and puffing that the $16 they asked him to pay to clear the parcel was too much. It came to me that, contrary to expectation, anything could be sent through the postal system and it will get across provided it was registered. But I got so discouraged when I went out to the façade and saw the postmen on a rummage sale of what had been the bulk mails of clients. I had once asked a postman where they got those packages to auction to the public and he said they were mails that their owners refuse to claim over time, but I just couldn't believe that. I saw books on physiology, engineering, Gospel tracts, valuables that missed the recipient because the postage was not registered. I felt disheartened. I remembered how Fisk University sent me a brochure and it never got to me. Over the counter, a woman was proudly showing a friend a NAFSA scholarship brochure she had bought for her daughter from the auction sales, wondering aloud to her friend why the daughter so needed the piece of information when she could not see anything important about it, boasting in the manner most civil servants in the lower rung of the administrative ladder boast of large families and daunting responsibilities.

The man with tribal marks received the waybill from me, wrote some unintelligible codes on it and took it into a room abutting on a very large hall with parcels sitting in large sacks. When he came out, he was carrying a white box with so much red and a cartoon sketch of a bald eagle's neck in blue, the unmistakable emblem of the United States Postal Service. The red-white carton, taped all over with figures and letters scrawled carelessly on the cardboard, smelled of ink and Maryland.

The postman looked at me uncertainly. "Have you collected a parcel here before?"

At the moment, I was too biased to think that he had any other motive for asking this question than to extort me. I remembered I had collected a parcel in the office when my brother-in-law traveled to London and came back shouting all over the house that the book I asked him to buy cost as much as hundred pounds, which was about half the travel allowance the company that sent him on training gave him. He was not surprised at a book costing so much as at me knowing such a book. I am coaxing the title into view now but it still lies in disjointed pieces in my brain. I remember the publisher as R. R. Bowker, and it seemed it was something of a directory where writers could find a market for their works. You know those good old days when anything written about Africa attracted British publishers. Now they place all of us in the same footing. I am not intimidated by that, anyway. He couldn't get the book, my brother-in-law that is, but detailed one of his British friends to buy me the Writing to Sell by Scott Meredith I ordered along with it. Incidentally Scott had offered to represent me (I still have a copy of that letter in my collection) and I had dreams of getting rich like Norman Mailer and Margaret Truman when the package arrived and it wasn't the literary giant's book but some how-to stuff for insurance men which had confusingly taken the same title. I could not contain my anger. My brother-in-law insisted I should apologize for throwing tantrums, saying I ought to have appreciated the gesture first before looking for anyone to blame for the mistake, that it wasn't Neil's fault, because, after all it was Writing to Sell I ordered and that was what I got.

"Yes," I said to the postman, implying that I might not be a greenie he can fleece if that was what he had up his sleeves. He pushed an open notebook to me and pointed to a column I should sign.

"Make copies of this" he said handing me the waybill, "and attach it to a copy of your ID card."

The identity card he wanted was not the one the post office issued me but my official ID which, luckily, I took with me. I paid roughly $3 which I questioned and which the man took time to explain as the cost of all parcels received by the office. He let me know the difference between a parcel and other classes of mails, what I understood as registered packages compared to other categories of mails that may exist. But Moira, thank you: it cost you so much of a fortune to ship! And thank you so much for the psychology stuff that is a guide to characterization. What I just do is to look for where my characters belong and form a canvas on which I can paint almost everything about them. Nancy Kress is out there to tell me what they can do and what they cannot. I am having so much fun, though distantly, because of my choked schedule. God bless you, Moira. Without these titles, my writing would have been immeasurably poor.

Getting to the security post, the janitor (we call them 'security' here) looked at the parcel longingly and said, "My friend, can I see what you have with you?"

I placed the maximally secured box on the counter. I don't think he saw the priority mail on it or he would have been more curious as to what the content was. He rolled it around for a while, I guess, trying to find a doorway to seeing what was inside. He looked down slyly at me, not knowing if to ask me to declare the content.

"Where is the waybill?"

He looked away as I retrieved it from where I stashed it between a copy of 1984 I was reading and used to secure my ID and other documents that might be needed to clear the parcel. He had wished I didn't have it so we start the bargaining from there. I proffered the frail paper at him. He pretended he didn't see what was in his view and kept swirling the box on the counter.

"So what do you have for us?" he asked finally. I searched the envelope and found the equivalent of 75 cents in our local currency, handed it to him. I noticed that he was surprised I could give him as much. Then a woman whose presence I didn't even remember to notice, and whom I felt might be against me being extorted, for her dress looked homey and sanctimonious, reminded me that, as a sign of respect, I was excused from signing the guest book which was, I noticed, her own way of showing appreciation for this forced show of generosity though she might probably not share in the windfall, which goes to show how much Nigerians appreciate corruption.

So, Moira, the books are here and so I am. I think my book will take a new shape now though I've tamed my writing speed to a canter because our school just scheduled our exams to start by 14th of June, against my wont. I now write 250 words a day. I also see how much I have to read.

Thanks so much for the Glimmer Train book. I am happy to hear the writers' experience though comprehension is still a little distant for one who has not experienced American Standard English at first hand.

God bless you, Moira! I don't think I will ever forget this contribution you have made to my career as a writer. I don't think I will be able to repay you as God would. I sincerely believe that God has put a treasure in your sack!

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