THE proverbially universal truth remains that it takes one brave act for alligator to cut itself open one day for a targeted daring task. Allergic to the pains of a fruitless journey I must reveal quite early  like the persona in Wole Soyinka’s  “Telephone Conversation” that I am ‘Chimamandaic’ today.

There is a presumption! This presumption journeys around Adichie. For years I had lived with this presumption. Whether or not I should send this presumption on retirement now that the object around which the presumption is built is no more though the driver of this presumption is alive, I do not know exactly because my mouth now appears to have been infected with a ‘giant’ boil like King Robert Ebizimor. A justifiable presumption it is or not, let the readers critically tell the story after the presentation of the two sides of it as a cautionary guide from the danger of a single story from Adichie.

In the thinking of Adichie,Timiebi does not merit creative ennoblement from any corner of the world as a fisherwoman.Perhaps it is held by Adichie that whatever Timiebi deserves could be granted her by her fellow fisherwomen in solidarity. Only fellow fisherwomen know how to celebrate their own.How to ennoble and  celebrate Timiebi is not supposed to be the business of Adichie!

Timiebi is the daughter of Ferebo Ezetu and Brafinine Ofiriki of Burutu and Warri South-West Councils of Delta State.She is a remarkable  storyteller  whose career of storytelling influenced and positively changed lives. Her numerous stories told people are still being told by people in inheritance up till now. In the unpublished chronicles of the people  Timiebi is a great storyteller.Now this great storyteller is dead, awaiting final burial rites fixed for November 25, 2022 at Oyangbene in Burutu Local Government Area of Delta State.

This woman calledTimiebi actually died in 2020 though her final burial has been fixed for November 25, 2022. From 2020 till now Adichie has not dignified Timiebi with a corresponding literary ennoblement as a fellow storyteller. Literary ennoblements dwelling on the storytelling capacity of Timiebi, the morals in her stories, how the stories have changed the moral perceptions of this generation, how her stories have shaped youths and created a shift in moral decadence and how the stories have influenced the growth of writers in the society ought to have been the emanations from Adichie and her peers.

She would not do any of these because her perception of Timiebi is that of only a village fisherwoman and nothing else who should be content with her death as a fisherwoman without being noised everywhere as when a great storyteller dies.A questionable thought it is from great Adichie!

Adichie is yet to say anything about the retirement of Timiebi from this earth because she is only content with her perception of Timiebi as a ‘struggling’ village fisherwoman.That is the danger of a single story coming straight from the apostle/activist of the danger of a single story.Adichie has become one of the casualties of her own question of  the danger of a single story though she has always admitted that she too is guilty of it, yet this guilt is more ‘performative’ and ‘fuss-carrying’ because Timiebi is first a fisherwoman and secondly, a storyteller.

By this infraction from Adichie, Timiebi’s dignity as a storyteller has suffered indignities from Adichie’s categorisation of her as a struggling village fisherwoman deprived of deserving literary ennoblements at death.Adichie should have considered the other side of Timiebi’s story which maintains that she is also a great storyteller beside being a struggling village fisherwoman.Why have you ignored the storytelling side of Timiebi’s story, dear Adichie?

Now that it has quite been confirmed that Timiebi is a remarkable storyteller like Adichie, from Adichie let the delayed literary ennoblements for Timiebi pour, carrying in anedoctal dishes the echoes of Purple Hibiscus, Half of a Yellow Sun and Americanah.Timiebi deserves immortal ennobling lines from Adichie and these lines will have to come before November 25, 2022.

Definitely, Timiebi must be lullabied to the ultimate sleep by Adichie’s immortal lines. And not until ennobling immortal lines flow like a river from Adichie upon the soul of Timiebi, Adichie remains guilty of the danger of a single story. However, Adichie remains discharged and acquitted in this court of intellectual opinion the moment the ennobling immortal lines flow strikingly upon the soul of Timiebi Maika Ekanpou from the great Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. Now condemned and confined in the world of Adichie, Timiebi’s undeniable stereotype becomes perpetually that of a fisherwoman cut off from one of her celebrated worlds and  silhouetted  against her storytelling background.

Even with the knowledge of the pendency of  Adichie’s  discharge and acquittal,  subject to doing the needful in the intellectual court of opinion, I ‘must quickly add’ too like you that it appears, except for Fide’s story and a few others, it is about Timiebi you were futurologically struck when you admittedly said: ‘But I must add quickly that I too am just  as guilty in the question of the single story’.

I do know that in this expressive pathology displayed here where your own words are commandeered and ‘panel-beaten’ into bizarre shapes  and the bizarre words further forced to maintain their bizarre companies to accommodate and suit my  purpose of communicating to you your deviant fluid two-legged dance on the question of the danger of a single story could label me  as a bizarre case of a disguised but pardonable plagiarism  –   though an expressive pathology weighted to reawaken you to see how disastrous you have ‘broken the dignity’ of  Timiebi’s story supposed to be heard from different sides.

We both settled on a possible three events: Wimbledon, or end of season ATP tournament or the Basel Open, especially as his uncle lives in Switzerland. Now, with the sudden retirement of Federer, I won’t be able to fulfill my promise even though my son has fulfilled his. Can Federer play in Basel Open to bid his home fans goodbye?

It is going to be hard to watch any grand slam without hearing the walk in announcement of the name, Roger Federer! Therefore, as the Swiss maestro retires, I sign off as a tennis fan and hand over the baton to my son. Best of luck to RF!

Enewaridideke, a poet and culture activist, wrote from Akparemogbene, Delta State