"...& Other Stories By Our Stolen Children"

The youngest of us were forcefully taken from our classrooms. Spirited away by ideologues who believed only in what they could wrench from the praying hands of people who sought peace. Elsewhere. When the virus swept through our town, it dragged us from the embraces of our mothers' arms, and into the sterile sadness of hospital wards that could not conceal us from the dark. Meanwhile, at the edges the Mediterranean, some of us were washed-up on the shores. Separated from homes that were miles across the desert. Separated from families that were miles beneath the waves.

We are the children of migration. Some of us were the victims of cruel circumstance and crueler men. Many of us were taken before our time.

But we are here. And from beyond the skies, our voices will guide you, if you listen. As we forever sing.

Photography by Rog Walker.
Cast:
Kamau Hosten
James Jean
Stephen Obisanya
Walé Oyéjidé
Rog Walker

...& Other Stories By Our Stolen Children.
Chapter II.

A meditation on the global cycle of media (in)attention when tragedy strikes on the continent of Africa.
1. "An Angel Returned to Chibok."
2. "The Passing Moment of Global Concern."
3. "The Darkness of Diplomacy."
4. "The Coronation."
5. "In the Court of the Crimson King."

Medium: Silk tapestry.

...& Other Stories By Our Stolen Children.
Chapter III.

A study of the commonly disregarded people whose lives are salaciously dissected in search of news-worthy sadness to satiate the appetites of a voyeuristic West.
1. "Portrait of a Mother from Chibok."
2. "Portrait of a Father from Chibok."
3. "Portrait of the Nobles."
4. "Portrait of the Ambassador's Illegitimate Son."

Medium: Silk tapestry.

For sales/general information, contact hello@ikirejones.com.

"The epidemic of gossip was proving more deadly and contagious than the disease. What began as a benign tale of a farmer coughing in the back of a bus quickly metastasized into a lurid account of a man struggling to barricade blood in his mouth with five futile fingers as fellow passengers clawed at themselves and tore at the square-windowless spaces of a danfo careening through the mass of human traffic referred to as the Lagos/Ibadan Expressway. If one believed the eager talk of women at the local bukateria, the crowded commute we were all accustomed to braving had conjured a creative new method to lure Nigerians into an early embrace with an unexpected doom.

Undeterred. We cozied in crowded bars sipping beers as round-table panelists on American cable news debated how long it would take for the end of the world to climb over their borders after those unfortunate Africans had been decimated. The bright side, as always, would be all that poor abandoned oil with no one to look after it."

"These were strange men. The kind of brutes that roamed the streets like wolves and battered opponents' supporters bloody in back alleys for being caught wearing the wrong jersey after the wrong outcome of a football game. I had seen men do unspeakable things to each other where I was from. But even then, they still treated each other like men.

The first time I heard the now familiar monkey chants directed at me from the crowd, I was setting up for a corner kick. The ball never made it onto the pitch. Before the whistle blew, I had gone flying into the stands with blood boiling and fists looking for a grinning culprit.

Later, I would learn to resist their goading. I had fought through deserts, waves and a government abetted prophecy that spoke of my early death. But I had not done all of this to be treated like an animal while playing football in Italy. Today, when the banana peel landed at my feet, I decided I had had enough. I picked up the ball and strode toward the stands with an index finger to my lips. A thousand spectators were silenced. To everyone present, it felt like the whole world was waiting to see what I would do next."

"They arrived by the cargo load. Endless rows of boxes littering the shores like a passive aggressive reaction to the migrant crisis that had recently befallen the southern tip of Europe. There, Africans had braved bitter crossings of the Mediterranean with hopes of finding better lives on the other side. Here, benevolent American corporations had bravely bought safe passage under tax shelters with dreams of depositing deductions in a faraway place, where no one would notice that such charity wasn't actually needed. Indeed, this invading army of tasteless t-shirts did more harm than good.

We affectionately referred to them as obruni wawa or 'dead white men's clothes'. But in truth, no self respecting white man would be caught wearing them...dead or alive. Which is how they ended up here in Ghana. This was presumably a place where no one would be bothered by the act of donning a pre-printed shirt celebrating the assumed championship victory of a team that would later choke at the finish line. Of course, It hadn't occurred to any of our generous benefactors that we might actually have televisions.

As a struggling garment worker, I watched with disappointment while former customers with no shame and less self esteem paraded around adorned in these aberrations. It wasn't an unfamiliar sensation. Eye-rolling at condescension from the West was an age-old tradition passed down from our forefathers. And this wouldn't be the last time "well-intentioned" foreigners would wreak havoc on the very people they prided themselves on helping. It was just another Tuesday."

"Life at home quietly embraced then smothered us, like the hands of a 19th century alleyway strangler emerging from an English fog. Amidst peers who promised well-pointed AK-47s were more profitable than piddling about on a pitch, I held my dreams of being a footballer aloft. For some reason or the other, all of us sought an escape from an estranged country that entangled us because it knew no other way to love.

Like too-many others, I paid what portion of a king's ransom an Eritrean pauper could dredge together, and climbed aboard a Libyan fishing boat pointed toward the Mediterranean Sea. All of us had heard of the barges that didn't make it across. The bodies that littered the bottom like deep sea sculptures molded by someone who had only seen terror. We thought that things would be different. That if we held each other tightly and stared at nothing but the horizon, it would eventually draw us ashore like some accelerated Darwin illustration inspired by a geopolitical nightmare called "Today". Less than a mile off the coast of Lampedusa, the boat's engine stopped. Mass panic ensued. As the edges of the barge began to tip into the water, we realized that we were wrong."

Our fathers' generation was deluded into thinking it knew hard work because those men had to brave a lifetime in the fields while their hands bled, and their backs wilted under an oppressive Nigerian sun. But they never had to face the burden of conjuring a barrage of blissfully deceitful emails to hundreds of gullible Western retirees before lunch.

This was work for men with nothing to lose. Because we had nothing to start with in the first place. Nothing but the dreams we invented for a living, and the collection of lives we would leave in shambles after ransacking their inboxes, savings and stock portfolios with the keys that they had given us to their own homes. Each of us was Shakespeare & Sheharazad. A thousand yarns to spin around the necks of a thousand fools who would be strung along for a thousand nights at the cost of thousands of dollars.

Every morning I waited. For the moment of divine inspiration which would guide me to the end of a new Master Work that would eloquently begin: "Dear Sir, It is a pleasure to meet you. Please let me tell you of a great financial opportunity that involves my sweet cousin Muyiwa and a wire transfer from your account..."

Photography by Shawn Theodore.