Mr. Goodman and Other Poems

Growing up, in the 1960s Nigeria, was idyllic. Young Nigerians, who made the fashionable choice "to seek the golden fleece" by pursuing tertiary education in Europe, met with what they had not bargained for. In their late teens and armed only with a highly romanticised but dated English grammar school education and Christian manners, they discovered that Europe was not what they had been made to believe - racism, new moralities and a harsh technological culture they could not have imagined. Most of them went back to Nigeria, which had just ended a three year civil war, after their studies and sobering experiences, in the hope and belief that they would use what they learnerd in Europe to develop the country. The country they came back to, as adults, was a very different country from the one they left, as teenagers. This book is a poetic commentary on the experiences of one person before, during and after this sojourn in Europe.