Wole Soyinka Interview (page: 3 / 9) Nobel Prize for Literature	Print Interview

What led you to write your memoir, Aké: The Years of Childhood?

Wole Soyinka: Well, it was not even Aké that I wanted to write. I wanted to capture a particular period that was disappearing, a period which was very important to my childhood. And the character I was going to use for that unique period was my uncle, Oladotun Ransome-Kuti. And he'd agreed that we'd meet and talk. He was quite fond of me and he loved arguing, so he loved me, a kindred spirit. He'd agreed he would give me his papers, which he'd saved, and so on. And then, suddenly, he died on me. I was going to try to see things through his eyes, what that period meant for him, and also aspects of me there. So I abandoned that project, and then one day, in prison, again, this need to recollect and to set down came back to me. And I began sketching out the first few chapters on toilet paper, and between the lines of some books. It's a very strange thing about recollection. When I came out of prison, some time later, I said, "Well, I think I'm ready to write it now."

Get the Flash Player to see this video. I began looking for my notes, the chapters I'd written in prison. Somehow they disappeared for some time. Because I had to smuggle the books out, between whose lines I'd written some things. So getting them back together took a while, and I could not find the documents. And then one day, everything came back, and I began writing Aké: the Years of Childhood. In other words, the project had always been there. I'd always wanted to capture that period. And so I wrote Aké, and the interesting thing was that I later recovered my notes, and almost word for word, the three chapters I'd written when I was in prison tallied with new chapters in Aké. An interesting footnote about the powers of memory. I mean, virtually line by line. Of course, some changes here and there. But it was amazing how the recollection came, total recall, for about three chapters, just like in the notes in Aké.

[ Key to Success ] Perseverance

Let's talk about your childhood. Where were you born? What were the people like in your community?

Get the Flash Player to see this video. Wole Soyinka: I was born in Abeokuta, Western Nigeria. It's a Yorùbá town. I come from the Yorùbá stock. When I was born, it was still under colonial rule -- the whole of Nigeria, of course. So it was an interesting mixture of, first of all, the traditional way of life, the traditions of the Yorùbá people. But at the same time, the Christianized aspect of existence, they had the church. I grew up with knowing the pastor, the catechist, and at the same time being very conscious of the traditional religious people, their processions through town. I grew up in an atmosphere of political contestation because Nigeria, like most colonial places, was busy trying to decolonize, to free itself from British rule. So there was the polemics of nationalism, and at the same time the regular rhythm of existence was captured in the cultures, and so on.

What was home life like for you?

Wole Soyinka: Oh. That is easily answered. Home life was a very disciplined one. I grew up under parents who believed very literally in that expression, "Spare the rod and spoil the child." So it was very disciplined. And at the same time, it was an atmosphere of great exploration. In other words, despite the discipline, one was able to go out on one's own and discover things for oneself.

Get the Flash Player to see this video. My father was a school teacher, in fact was a headmaster in the primary school. Believed passionately in education. My mother was a sort of petty trader, you know, small items, cloths, bit of jewelry, some foodstuffs, some locally manufactured material. She traveled quite a bit. She was also -- I used to call her a lieutenant -- a political lieutenant of a very feisty, politically astute auntie of mine, called Mrs. Ransome-Kuti, who once led a revolt of the women against the traditional ruler, the Alake of Abeokuta, who was imposing some unfair taxation on women's goods. And so that led to some fracas. So I grew up in this really, really exciting atmosphere of politics, real political activism, on the one hand, and then the more, shall we say, staid political discussions which went on around my father. He was sort of the center of the small, lower middle-class intellectuals who would debate everything from the world war, you know, going on at the time, to the price of newly introduced motorcycles in the area.

Your father's position in the community as a school headmaster, did that affect your status or position as a child in the community?

Wole Soyinka: No.

Get the Flash Player to see this video. One thing we were taught as children was the ethos of absolute equality, especially among children. My parents, as I used to say, used to collect waifs and strays, so we had a large family. I mean, some of them were our relations, poorer than we were. And the people, the parents would come and literally donate the child. They'd say, "Look, help me educate this child," or "This child is giving me too much trouble. Can he or she undergo some discipline here?" Or maybe their parents were going away somewhere. Maybe they worked with the railway, because if you were in the civil service, certain departments of the civil service, you were likely to be transferred anywhere, anytime. If you were a teacher, also, with some missionary schools, you could be transferred. There was sort of physical, geographical mobility among many employees of the time. Traders also, people working for private commercial companies. You could get sent, for instance, if you worked for a cocoa exporting firm, you could be sent to the interior for some time. And some of these parents would bring their children to us. So the population of our household was constantly shifting, and they came from different strata of society. And so we were taught, not so much directly, but through the attitude of our parents to all the children, that there was no privilege. Everybody was a child, and if you misbehaved you got just as much punishment as the other children. So if anything, in fact, we were treated even more harshly than the other children because we were supposed to know better and to show an example. So I'm afraid the status, any kind of status, was to my disadvantage as a child!

Besides being a school headmaster, your father was a gardener?

Wole Soyinka: Yes, that's right. He was a passionate gardener. His crotons, his roses, his wildflowers, all neatly arranged in pots and in the ground itself. Meticulous. He practiced things like grafting. For instance, he would graft some kind of rose bush onto another. I developed my early love of nature both from his cultivation and from the fact that we lived in the midst of nature, natural surroundings. There were bushes, sort of semi-forest not far from us. We used to go to farms. When we visited my grandfather in Isara, for instance, we'd go to the farms, and I really developed a very close affinity to anything to do with nature.

Did you like school? Can you tell me about your earliest memory of school?

Wole Soyinka: Ah, yes! That's an easy one, because one has total recall of some passages in one's existence. The first thing to state is that I was, from childhood, a voracious reader. In hindsight I think really I was a precocious reader. It'd be wrong to say I virtually taught myself to read, but I know that I began picking out words before I actually went to school.

Get the Flash Player to see this video. I had a sister who was only a year and two months -- a year and three months older than I was. And when she began school she made my life miserable, because she put on her school uniform and sort of looked at me with a kind of condescension, saying, "I'm going to school. You have to stay behind." It was infuriating! And so one day -- and then of course we lived in the parsonage, which meant that there were some schools, missionary schools, sort of, whose playgrounds abutted the lawn in front of our house. So I would watch these school kids also coming out during their break to play, and then I could see also through the school room windows, not far from us, these pupils bent over their books and their papers. I mean, it was like a conspiracy. So one day I'd had enough and I followed my sister to school. I picked up books from my father's desk. For me it was the most natural thing. If you were going to school you had to have books. So I picked up my father's books, which I couldn't read, and the next thing my sister knew was that I was behind her going to school. And even she was still too young to go to school by herself, so one of the older child relations used to take her to school. And when they turned around, they saw me and she screamed at me, "What are you doing here? What do you want? Go back!" "No! Today school day." A school teacher I remember, Mr. Olagbaju, came out to see what the fracas was about. And he looked at me and he said, "But, Wole, you're not yet old enough to come to school." And I said, "Well, I'm ready." And just decided to indulge me, felt I would get fed up with it after the first day. But no. So I actually began school at two-and-a-half years of age.

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