A Flop as a Cultural Diplomat

Encouraged by the total support of “24 Hours of Unseen American Television” by the Royal College of Art in London during the spring semester 1968, I approached Dr. Howard Springer, Executive Secretary of the Commonwealth Education Union, to sponsor my showing the hour-long film, Nigeria: Culture in Transition at their annual meeting scheduled that year for Lagos, Nigeria, still the country’s capital.

I had been pioneering the rubric, “International English Literature,” ever since I had added Canadian and Caribbean Lit in English to African American studies. When I broached the subject of International English Lit in the Canadian Journal of Commonwealth Lit, I was mocked as a covert CIA agent! Absurd allegation.

I had recently founded The CIE with inherited money, with the mock goal of subverting the real CIA with world English poetry. I was serious, in a playful way! My 1973 “Wake Up to Whitman!” calendar had forecast that strategy with Chinua Achebe’s elegy to the promising Nigerian poet, Christopher Okigbo, a victim of the Biafran War. We wanted the other Commonwealth countries to follow Wole Soyinka’s lead and start to create a global library of International English Lit. “Commonwealth Lit plus U.S.” sounded subversive to the touchy Canadian!

Springer told me to feel free—“just don’t get in the way” was the way he put it. An announcement that there would be a free flight to Kano to see how the Emir’s enlightened son and heir apparent was creating cultural news. My first encounter with Islam. As the plane revved up to leave, there was one free seat free. I took it, and little did I know that the Educational Minister from Ghana arrived a few minutes after our flight’s departure—enraged that his place had been taken by an American freebooter! Only later did I learn of his setting the CID in search of my bona fides.

Some days later, the film was shown at the American Embassy to a reasonable audience. But at the end I was puzzled by the existence of a separate group, identified for me by others as a hostile minority. I took a scary ride back to the Federal Palace Hotel with the Lagos Times reporter covering the screening. At the hotel I was met by three CID officers who wanted to examine my hotel room.

They turned on my Uher tape recorder first, to hear the voice of Major General Gowon, the head of state. “Why?” they asked suspiciously. For God’s sake, he opened the conference with this speech! An hour later, after more such fatuous queries, I was led to a police cruiser, and my camera, recorder and audio and film reels confiscated. As we drove in darkness to the police station (the Biafran war!), I suddenly remembered that yesterday a BBC stringer had tried to buy my gear. Because of the war, he hadn’t been able to use normal access. I began to believe I was going to be dumped for my gear! I’ve never been so relieved to be arrested! For two hours I was grilled about my bringing a film with a war prisoner as M.C. (Wole had been imprisoned for trying to settle the Biafran War personally.)

It wasn’t until a few days later at a Canadian celebration that their Ambassador shamed them into returning my gear. It was six months later in London before I got the developed film. I was a flop as a Cultural Diplomat!