His Silver Lining

Rebecca Ejifoma

 

When it is argued that wisdom has nothing to do with size or age, young Olatunde Chidera Obafemi is a case in point. The 17-year old, student of English Language at Babcock University, Ilishan, Ogun State was the centre-stage attraction, last weekend, where his new literary effort, a 275-page book, Silver Palm Frond, was presented at a launch held at the Silver Bird Galleria, Victoria Island, Lagos.

 

Bold and daring, Olatunde stood before his audience and began to satisfy the curiosity of those who wanted to know how he took to writing when his contemporaries are mostly glued to the social media and video games. For starters, writing poetry was his forte. But his travels in recent years formed a source of inspiration that compelled him to consider another literary genre.

 

“Shortly before I turned 15, we started living in Accra, Ghana. Since my parents are missionaries, we travelled a lot – from Ghana to Lagos and vice versa on land and by air. These trips, to my teenage fantasies, were thrills of adventure and inspiration for creativity.”

 

That experience gave birth to Silver Palm Frond. He recalled that he encountered some “under-privileged children” and it finally dawned on him that he was privileged. Those children had to survive by running around travellers, begging for food and alms. To his surprise, travellers didn’t give heed to their pleas.

“It certainly wasn’t a new thing for them to beg, at least in that area, but I was stunned because they were children below the age of 10 and some as little as five. That wasn’t all, I had seen students returning from school, walking under the sun, perspiring,” he recounted.

 

For the author, it was heart-breaking. It was not the kind of life he was used to. He decided to write about it in the best possible way that it would convey the intended meaning and emotions; moving the readers to empathise with the characters. 

“Silver Palm Frond is interesting, thought-provoking and inspiring. The book is written in a simple everyday diction but rich in striking coinages and expressions that will hold the reader by the jugular right from the first page to the last page of the novel,” said the reviewer who is lecturer at the Department of English and Literature, Babcock University, Mr. Solomon Iguanre. He added that the plot moves from the family house to the school and back to the family house, where the narrator, in a bid to express some air of freedom while unwittingly exhibiting his family’s opulence, falls into the hands of the abductors.

 

The anxiety, the intrigues and the desperation that ensue form the content of the piece. Leaning on the subject matters of torture, anguish, desperation and loneliness, his succinct and imaginative description of the plight of the abducted young ones inevitably reminds the reader of the predicament of the Chibok girls which attracted global outcry.

 

The story ends with the abducted subject re-uniting with his family. Sadly, the lid of a can of worms opens, and he discovers, a little too late, that the woman he had grown to regard as his biological mother is an impostor, who is the brain behind his abduction.

 

Other issues addressed in the work include bullying among school children and siblings; parental favoritism as well as social consciousness. It also probes into the challenges of inter-tribal marriage, kidnapping, corruption and other myriads of seemingly intractable problems bedeviling this country. Other aspects deftly treated in this very engaging novel are the aspects of self-discovery, forgiveness and philanthropy.

 

“The descriptive prowess of this young writer, Olatunde, must have been informed by his early exposure to literature and his precocious artistic sensibility to the written words,” said the reviewer.

 

Olatunde, who wrote Diary of a Dormitory War, also launched his Silver Palm Frond Initiative to help educate the under-privileged in the society. He vowed to use the proceeds from the sales of his book to fund the foundation.

“It is built along with a belief system that there are no ‘less privileged’ children. They are privileged with endowments that can take them through God’s will while on earth,” he said.

 

His book leaves a food of thought: “You don’t have to own the whole world to save at least a life.”  The work is expected to be the silver lining for the clouds of the “down-trodden” whose lives preoccupy the plot.