Afroleon

By Adeboye Oluwajuyitan, M.D.

"Before my version begins to fade,
Let me relieve what happened today.
Today was not a lifetime of discrimination and shame,
But of celebration as a black man living in Ukraine."

- culled from the EPIGRAPH

 

A brave and explorative Artisan
Calm exterior but he was born a warrior
A Leon not bothered about territory
A Leon who hunted alone.
And a Leon who hurt alone.

 

With a free prefrontal cortex, he came prepared for learning...
And learn he did, as his memory campus would get soiled with complex realities.
In my first anatomy tour, all I saw were dry cadavers,
But by the end of my tenure, I saw my own fresh blood.

 

No tribal marks but you can tell he started out with an Afro.
And in this foreign soil, explorations were his special dish.
To-and-fro he evolved... and no, he didn't hail from the safari.
From a genial ark but he always kept his wits about him.

 

And when he stepped out, he was like a fresh aphrodisiac.
Through his eyes, you could hear all of his favorite tunes.
Black vanilla at his core as he had a thing for interfacing.
General with a stylus brush,
Hankie forever in the back pocket.

 

Like his paws, his heart appears four-chambered,
But on closer inspection, you see a fifth chamber a short distance away from the rest.
A blind Cub walking in the midst of hyenas,
With lesions so deep, they suffocated him where it hurt most.

The pages are filled with art and expression,
As I relive this once-in-a-lifetime experience...
Which shaped me into the man I am today.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Befibrillator Books
• Release date: Jan 25, 2023
• ISBN: 9798215064382

Book preview

AFROLEON

Copyright © 2022 All rights reserved.

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No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations in the context of reviews.

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Designed, Edited, and Published by: Adeboye Oluwajuyitan.

Befibrillator Books

a Befibrillator company.

cover design by

Dr.  Adeboye

cover photograph by

Bogdan Merzlikin

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a big shout out to my family, real friends, and relations (you know yourselves) for all the love and

support they have shown me throughout the years.

CONTENTS

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EPIGRAPH

Une

The ABOMINATION

deux

Embrace your SCARS

trois

‘Friends’ and EARLY YEARS

quatre

Maturity, Independence, & EVOLUTION

cinq

James, the EXPLORER

six

Wasted LOVE

Sept

E-MOTION

9

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13

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31

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49

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67

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83

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113

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143

EPIGRAPH

The belligerent buffalo or the blue wildebeest? He really doesn’t care as he just wants to eat.

Does he think he was anointed, perhaps by a high priest?

The fact remains the fact, he is a true wild beast.

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A silhouette on the horizon, oh yes we all do know,

The rhythm and the mannerisms, the crow doesn’t need to caw.. As the uniqueness which can be found since he was born in the very last month of snow,

Is his insatiable appetite for expression in every cinematic canvas that he steps onto.

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Before my version begins to fade,  Let me relieve what happened today.

Today was not a lifetime of discrimination and shame, But of celebration as a black man living in Ukraine.

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Metamorphosis and pain,

In my backbone there was change,

The revolution of the planets were still the same,  But during the nights, I had to dance my troubles away..

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As I paved my way through the yellow and blue turf,

I created palpable palpitations in every sound waves my artbeats touched..

And even though, in the end, you left my heart with one or two indelible cuts,

In my calmest pitch.. it’s a ‘Thank you’ roar, from Afroleon.

- THE BEFIBRILLATOR

CHAPTER 1

THE ABOMINATION

July 20, 2015. The setting was Kyiv, the capital city of Ukraine. The dreaded spring was over and summer was approaching its hottest. The time read 20:00, Greenwich Mean Time plus three; I, a young man barely initiated into the prime years of his life, stood, leaning over the wooden railing across a bridge and was observing the charming view of the alluring city center while at the same time, monitoring the engrossing scene on display below us as the cool and quiet evening breeze ruffled our garments.

With me was a companion of mine, Maya, which was short for Lubimaya. We had earlier dropped off from a taxi before walking to this spot and were intensely caught in the moment. Our eyes darted to and fro following the movements of the teenagers playing below us as we reminisced about the Ukrainian experience and discussed about our plans for the future.

I had been here (to Kyiv) numerous times before but this time felt different. Different in what I wouldn’t say was a good  way, but it wasn’t a bad way either. It just felt calm and relieving, like a gush of wind; a sort of refreshing feeling enveloped with  my aspirations for the future. Even though I was in complete mindfulness, the moment felt like an embodiment of three spheres of time. In my mind, I could feel the past (my ups and downs experienced in life and in Ukraine), the present (this soothing

warmth of freedom, achievement, and optimism), and the future (my idea of a beautiful life full of fulfillment and eudemonia),  altogether. My mind was brimming with thoughts but at the same time, extremely clear, light, and lucid.

It was to be my last day or should I say my last night in  the country. I was to travel early the following morning after eight sturdy years in Ukraine. Eight years of everything really; being  in a different culture, living amongst a variety of civilizations, subpopulations, and ethnicities, and speaking different languages, all the time, learning, evolving, and attaining varying levels of maturity.

Kyiv is a relatively safe city as it is one of the cities in  Ukraine most frequently visited by tourists. An argument can be made that it is also the city with the most enlightened Ukrainian citizens as a matter of mentality and exposure. A very large population there also communicates in English and is somewhat more open-minded than the other major Ukrainian metropolitan civilizations. Whilst there might be bits of discrimination here and there, you don’t expect any serious racial incident, talk less of an assault or attempted murder (by a crew including females; whatever happened to gender equality?), especially when everywhere is still relatively active. This is what I believed at the time.

Throughout my stay in this yellow and blue-flagged nation,  I had already experienced a lot of racism. In my city of Kharkiv, right from my early years till the period when I was to leave the country finally,  I was a regular customer of racial slurs and acts   of discrimination, whether it be people spitting towards your direction, strangers shoving you brashly with their shoulders (my first experience of this was in my first month there while returning to the hostel with my cousin, Tina, the incident happening beside  a popular pizza joint called ‘юси’; a six-feet tall and hefty-looking Caucasian male jammed his right shoulder hard into mine and  shot me an extremely cold stare), children making jest of you or calling you a monkey (I recall one afternoon in my last few months of living in Ukraine, while I was on my way to the supermarket opposite where I lived, when a father who was tying his son’s

shoelaces, looked up as I walked across them and immediately gestured to his son, pointing at me and vocalizing, ‘это обезьянки’ [‘eta obisyanki’ – ‘it’s a monkey’]; what surprised me wasn’t the  fact that he called me a monkey, it was the amount of vigor he introduced into this his act of tutoring, as though this was a rare  life skill his son needed to be armed with in order to survive  in the jungle or wild), or the odd drunken senior citizen (sadly, always a male; gender equality restored) dispatching multisyllabic instructions about how you should abandon the education your parents so dearly sweated to pay for and return to Africa (this  was a frequent occurrence in the years when I lived in the район [raion – district] of Studentska).

Even at the university, racism was well and truly active. First of all, the Ukrainian and Russian students naturally felt superior  to all иностранцы (inostrantsy – foreigners), but even amongst foreigners, blacks were always seen as the inferior race. I recall getting a huge taste of this reality after a few months of living in this country.

While rehearsing and fooling around with the other members of the dance crew at the backstage of a popular theatre before what was to be my first dance performance ever on stage,  I got to experience a moment I would reminisce about for years   to come. The dance group primarily consisted of Ukrainians but there were other Caucasian foreigners as well; Caucasians, but foreigners. This was to be my first close-to-home encounter with xenophobia. I say close-to-home because I considered these individuals playmates. We had rehearsed together and  laughed and joked together in a free environment at the dance studio regularly so you can see why I would think so.

In one of the rooms behind the curtains that led to the main performing stage, there was this shiny object which I have always admired, partly because what emancipates from it is just a wonderful experiential expression of the Creator’s creations, but also because it is the singular musical instrument that I can lay claim to knowing how to play, at least sufficiently enough to make delightful connections in your neural hemispheres.

But honestly, how feasible is it to say that everything came from a huge black hole? Music, lyrics, melody, rhythm, vibrations. Even from these few words or synonyms, you should get your answer. ‘Synonyms’, there it is again. This word in conjunction with the aforementioned just points to the fact that there is a connection in everything in this universe; there is a symphony. Everything is originating from a source and the orchestrator just so happens to be the Creator.

Looking at things from a different angle however, I just wonder if anyone has ever thought of the plausibility that both Creation and the big bang did occur, sometime in the beginning  of all this muddle that we find ourselves, but with one preceding the other. Is this my personal view on events? I guess time will tell.

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Here I am at the same theater - The Kharkiv State Academic Opera and Ballet Theatre. This was during a subsequent concert in my second year of medical school. The photo was taken during the first few seconds of a popular and highly-expressive Spanish dance form known as ‘The Flamenco Dance’, which was quite the sight.

So, not long before we performed our well-rehearsed Ukrainian National cultural dance (I know; I am not proud of myself), my attention shifted to the grand piano in one of the rooms. In ten lifetimes, the Ukrainian dance or Hopak as it is called would never be my first choice for movement when it comes to dancing,  but you see,  the thing is that I was young and naive;  I merely wanted to dance. Also, as a freshman, this was the only dancing option available to me at the time.

Fortunately, this experience would turn out to be the start of a short-lived but memorable dancing career on stage as I would go on to perform in different concerts at various theaters. I would also be involved in what was undoubtedly my most enjoyable moment on stage; a choreographic hip-hop dance performance within a crew of eight. The group was already formed and ready but the lead dancer went missing for whatever reason so they called on me at the last minute to take his place. I recall that I had to memorize so many moves in just one practice session but it was well worth it.

The crew consisted of three other black guys (besides our black pants, we wore all white everything from our headgear to our shoes) and four backup Ukrainian dancers (three females and one male) in a red, white and black theme. It was in my second year  of medical school and we danced to the sounds of Bob Sinclair’s ‘Rock This Party’ (Everybody Dance Now).

The whole experience from start to finish was an adrenaline rush for me; from the loud music in my ears, to the crowd’s non- stop screams and applauses, to sliding across the stage back and forth and then doing the moonwalk, this was what the young Boye had dreamed about. The vigor inside me was at its climax; I felt alive. I actually made a minor blunder on stage but it didn’t matter as luckily it blended in well. This was ecstasy! This was life! The spontaneity of the whole experience made it an unforgettable time and memory for me. Anyway, this was on another occasion.

Back to the scene where we were fooling around ahead of our Ukrainian dance performance, a few of the guys were pressing some notes on the piano (nothing particularly melodious) as they obviously admired it as well. I, having not played the piano for a

while was naturally drawn to it. I had a keyboard back home but hadn’t touched it for a couple of months before I traveled. I would go on to get a keyboard in Ukraine but that would be much later in my third year.

Anyway, the trigger-happy me strode  to  the  instrument like a magnet calling a steel coin but as I lingered across to this wonderful gadget, not even to show off my skills, but just to have a feel; immediately and in unison, all the white folks bickered at me, ‘не трогай! не трогай!’ (‘ne trogai!’ - ‘don’t touch it!’). It came as quite a shock and I will admit that I felt pretty humiliated. What action did I take next? I retreated and found something else to occupy my attention. An unpleasant moment for me but that was that and it was just the early-onset of my racial ordeals in Ukraine.

Back to the story,  the picture I am trying to paint is that   I had been at the center of many racial insults during my stay  in Ukraine before this said evening in Kyiv. However, up until then, the closest I had ever been to a serious assault was when I lived in Студентська район (Studentska rayon – a district in Kharkiv town; majorly residential), in the Autumn of 2010 when four policemen attempted to hijack me and do ‘God knows what?’. Thankfully, I escaped with only some bruises and a framed story for which I had to pay a couple hundred dollars for to be back on the side of the law.

Something I should mention is that while I lived in Ukraine, Иностранные   студенты  (Inostrannyye  studenti  –  foreign students) were asked to display their documents whenever they encountered a police officer which could be at any time really, sometimes even multiple times a day. I recall an afternoon when  I was stopped by two different sets of police officers on the same street, roughly a minute apart! By the way, this has happened on more than one occasion.

‘Покажи документы!’ (‘Pakazhi Dokumenti!’ – ‘Show me your documents!’) was a usual uproar towards foreigners, especially blacks; we were accustomed to hearing this daily as we walked through the streets of Kharkiv. This could happen anywhere;  inside the train, while alighting from a taxi, or even in front of your

apartment building immediately after opening the door.

I recollect a time when one of my colleagues from university got his arm broken during an altercation with some policemen  in the metro as they rushed to handcuff him forcefully, simply because he protested against how he was startled and harassed while coming down the escalator, for a request to see his