Wole Soyinka Interview (page: 6 / 9) Nobel Prize for Literature	Print Interview

You were a young boy -- age eleven -- when you left Abeokuta for Government College Ibadan. When did you return?

Wole Soyinka: We always came home on holidays when I was in Government College Ibadan. At least three times a year: the Christmas holiday, the long break, and sometimes some holidays in between, special holidays, a long weekend. I left for Government College Ibadan before I was eleven, so I had to come home on holidays. But some holidays I did spend with our relations in Ibadan. For me, going to Government College was freedom! It's another phase in my life. And then when I left Government College, I went to work in Lagos. I wanted to work first, before going to college, and I worked in the Medical Stores for a year-and-a-half before going to college.

I was always going to go to university. In fact, I should have gone earlier, straight from school if my father had his way. But I left secondary school at a very early age. Now it's nothing, but at that time to leave school at 16-and-a-half was a big deal. My father wanted me to go straight to university, and I just felt I needed some experience of the world before going to college. So I refused to take the exams the first year, to University College. I went straight to see my uncle in Lagos. He was a pharmacist. I wanted to get a job in a newspaper. I wanted to be a journalist, a newspaper correspondent. But somehow we compromised. They still felt I was too young to strike out on my own.

Get the Flash Player to see this video. I left Abeokuta and insisted on being in Lagos, so I went to work at a pharmacy, the pharmacy department. My uncle was the chief pharmacist, and eventually I was put in charge of a store. Probably the youngest person ever to be in charge. It was rather interesting. I was in charge of what you call Section B. It was actually called the "Medical Stores," the full complex, Medical Stores. Section A was a pharmacy, of course, nothing -- I wouldn't go there. But Section B, I eventually became the head of that division and was sending things like dressing, catguts (sutures), surgical equipment, to all corners of the nation -- Bauchi, Lagos, Enugu -- where the government hospitals were. Sudan Interior Mission, that's when I first came across expressions like that, and that was a missionary organization which had hospitals up north, and we'd fulfill their indents (orders) and we would put them in bales and boxes, send them to the railway station for delivery. It was very heady stuff. I came to that position of responsibility very, very early and purely by accident. I was just another sort of clerical assistant in that store, and then something happened to the head of the store, whether he was transferred or he left to go to study in England. And by default, I was the next senior, most educated person in that store, and so I stepped in there and somehow I remained there. I took a photograph, I remember, in my apron, telephone on the one side. Very proud of that photograph. I was about... just under 17.

But you eventually decided to sit for the exams?

Wole Soyinka: Yes, yes. I couldn't resist any longer. In any case, I felt I was ready now. I wanted to earn some money first, quite frankly. I didn't want to go into college completely dependent on my parents, and also I wanted a scholarship. My father was ready to pay, but I knew how much he was earning, and there were other children and so on. I felt that I'd be more secure in myself if I had some pocket money. Anyway, I had to sit the exam. I got a scholarship, and so I went to University College Ibadan.

What was the "Pyrates Confraternity?"

Wole Soyinka: Ah. That controversial organization!

Get the Flash Player to see this video. University life had always fascinated me. Maybe that's one of the reasons why I wanted to be quite mature -- at least to develop some maturity -- before going to college. I'd studied university culture, and I knew about fraternities. The fraternity culture in Germany, in the United States, in France, everywhere. So when I went to college, that's the University College Ibadan, and was shocked and rather -- there was an elitist mentality about the first-comers into the university sticks. Many of them were children of rich people, what we call the children of colonial aristocrats, and they brought that mentality of colonial aristocracy into the college setting. Totally divorced. They considered themselves divorced from the rest of the community. That sense of responsibility with which I grew up, it was just not there. They had these clubs, a number of clubs. There was the social club, for instance. Mimicking British -- what they considered British -- culture. Always dressed up in ties, jackets and so on. The college atmosphere was modeled on Cambridge and so on. You went to dinner, high dinner, high tea. You had to wear robes to go to dinner. I hated all that stuff. I didn't mind the occasional ceremonial, but to mimic British manners and so on, for me it was ridiculous. So we started, as a rebellion against this staid British formalism, we started the "Pyrates Confraternity." And one of its mottos was "Against Moribund Convention." And we used to dress as rough-and-ready pirates. We used to "sail," quote unquote, on top of a flat surface of the bookshop. We'd climb up the bookshop and we'd then knock off the ladder and sail into the horizon. It was all typical student fun. Unfortunately, in later years, mimic organizations began, which were rather nasty. Complete debasement of the confraternity idea.

Did you graduate from Ibadan?

Get the Flash Player to see this video. Wole Soyinka: No. I didn't finish there because the course I wanted to take was English literature, not just a general degree. By this time I knew exactly what I wanted to do. I hated mathematics. I had no time for physics or chemistry. Even though I managed to struggle through, it was a struggle in school. Once that was done, I threw my books -- all my mathematics books -- out of the window. Concentrated on literature. And then, when I was ready to go for the final years, the honors course in literature had not been started. And so my scholarship was extended to go to England. That's how I came to go to England.

How did being a young Nigerian man in Britain in the '50s differ from your life in Nigeria?

Wole Soyinka: First of all, there was the fact that you were now totally independent. You're now fending for yourself, something I'd wanted from childhood anyway. But then you were in a different culture, with a lower sense of community. Or maybe I should say, with a sense of community diffused. A more isolated kind of existence. You had to make new friends. You had to study the natives and see how you could fit yourself into it. You experienced also the racial discrimination, which was still very strong at the time, even though the British are very hypocritical about it. Even then, they always tried to pretend it wasn't there. But then you gradually began to form your own community, which meant that during the holidays you went to work in places like Hull, Liverpool, London. The West African Students Union, for instance. You have your own community. That was the main difference.

When did your childhood interest in theater, including the Yorùbá traditions of ritual and storytelling and festival, become your reigning passion?

Get the Flash Player to see this video. Wole Soyinka: From childhood, I'd always been interested in theater. I used to gather my siblings and perform sketches based on stories, folktales, and sometimes even improvised comic turns in which we mimicked the adults around us and their peculiar ways and so on. And then I took part in a school operetta quite early, very early. I took the lead part. It was called The Magician. And so I'd always been -- and around, as you already remarked, around me was theater, different theater forms.

[ Key to Success ] Passion

That interest in theater continued after university. Did you finish at Leeds?

Wole Soyinka: Yes, I finished at Leeds. Took my degree there. And then...

Get the Flash Player to see this video. I was supposed to start working on my doctoral thesis, and so after, but then after the first year I found I was more -- again, I knew what I wanted to do, and somehow I got my -- I wanted to write. I sent a play to the Royal Court Theatre in London, and it was not immediately accepted for performance, but sufficient interest was generated for the artistic director to invite me over. So I spent most of my time just watching rehearsals, reading plays in London instead of doing my thesis in Leeds. So I consider myself a doctoral dropout.

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