Preface

No matter how exquisite a piece of opera is, tears are all it awakes. Tears traveling along roadside gutters will never make any contact with me. Where I am vulnerable is along the information superhighway. And that was where I met this opera and shed my tears.

I still do not know why I did not log out of my computer and go home that spring of 1998. My decision to read that email which popped up as I was about to leave my office made no sense, considering the fact that I had read altogether 42 emails for the day.

The email forwarded to me from Pan-African News Agency, PANA, came from one Dana Wilson in Norfolk, Virginia. Her mother who listens to National Public Radio, NPR, on the FM frequency asked her to email me through PANA where I once worked. Ms. Wilson’s email said she had a story she was obliged to write but would like me to help her. She did not say what kind of story it was but she volunteered to come to Washington DC the next day to see me.

“Why the urgency,” I asked. The reporter’s instinct in me took over. I sat down and sent her an email asking her to come over to my office the next day. I missed reporting. I missed the excitement of breaking news. I had sent out a reply to her email before I started thinking.

By day, I am a media consultant. By night, I am an aspiring novelist. I claim to be an expert on African affairs. My small office in Washington DC survives from patronage of Capitol Hill lobbyists on behalf of African governments and people interested in the affairs of that ignored continent. I used to work as the Washington Bureau Chief of PANA. I branched out to start my own consulting firm after I broke the biggest campaign funding scandal of 1997. It was the story of how the brutal regime of Nigerian dictator, General Sani Abacha, funneled money to the Democratic Party campaign of 1996 to reelect Bill Clinton gave me modest fame.

One of the first rewards I received after I broke the story was an appearance on Talk of the Nation program of the public radio in D.C. I had since become a recurrent guest. Any time news from Africa becomes the lead story of American news media, I am called upon to give an analysis. I look forward to such appearances even though I do not know anyone who listens to the public radio. My appearances raise my profile and that translates into more money per hour I charge my clients.

In September of 1998, an oil pipeline fire in Nigeria killed over 700 people. It made front page news of all major newspaper in America. Once again, I was called upon to give my own spin. That story was a difficult one because it happened few miles from my home town. But like politicians all over the world, political consultants like me have learned to speak without emotion. That was exactly what I did on the news program. As I left the studio of NPR, I thought it was all over. Little did I know it was just the beginning. The opera singer had been awakened.

A big time political consultant who had appeared on a big time radio or TV show would have returned to his office and await calls, emails and letters from political associates and junkies in reaction to his utterances. I had no illusion as to the usual silence that would follow my appearance. Like I said before, I know nobody who listens to NPR.

On September 29, 1997 at precisely 10 am, Ms. Wilson walked into my office. Six feet tall with a well built body, the 28 year old white girl who teaches at Booker T. Washington High School in Norfolk, Virginia, started her tale and I listened. She came along with pieces of papers on which Emeka had written verses and stories. She printed out emails she had received from Emeka. And she had tapes she made when Emeka was hallucinating, which happened on the 11th of every month.

Her story was not my kind. It was deeper and darker. I asked her why she felt this story should be told and she replied that it was Emeka’s last wish. She had made a promise to the dead to write his story, I found out. I asked her why she chose me to help in writing the story. I traveled to Norfolk, Virginia, week after week looking at the scenes of the events that transpired there in the summer of 1998.

I talked to a lot of people whose names were mentioned in the story surrounding Emeka’s life and death. I spent more time talking to Nikki. In more ways than one, she was the girl who triggered off the whole chain of events that took place. Nikki was forthright in her stories. Like Dana, she was very eager to see that Emeka’s story did not go unwritten.

In the course of my research, I found it so remarkable that an inconspicuous African boy had touched the lives of so many people in the Hampton Roads area of Virginia. People were always helpful anywhere I went in search of his essence, except for Martin. Martin now serving a two-year jail term was uncooperative. For months, he refused to talk to me.

It took such a long time to write this story because the characters involved in it were diverse. The story outgrew Dana who brought it to me, outgrew Nikki who made it possible. It did not take time before I found out that the death on Mount Trashmore was more than just the death of Emeka, but a metaphor for the death of several dreams of several people whose lives came together by virtue of Emeka’s arrival in Norfolk.

Despite the volume of documents I have about Emeka, he remained as exclusive as ever. As part of my effort to unravel the man, I traveled home to Nigeria. I visited his home town of Nnobi, talked to his family. I could not reach his father. He was a political prisoner in a maximum security prison where he was unaware of his son’s escape from Nigeria and his eventual death on Mount Trashmore.

The task of putting together pieces of these stories from different participants was delayed twice. The first was when Martin called to say that he changed his mind and would like to talk to me. This happened at the point when I had finished talking to his friends as an alternative source of his story. The second delay occurred when at the tail end of my research Dana discovered Emeka’s hotmail account password. In each case, a new set of information were unleashed.

Amongst all the places I visited in search of Emeka, the place that moved me so much was Mount Trashmore in Virginia Beach. It was not really a mountain as in Mount Rushmore. The spot used to be a trash dump for years. After a while, the Virginia Beach council covered the trash with sand and made a mountain out of it. The landscape was developed into a park with a fish pond, trees, flowers, volley ball courts etc.

I was told that one day the fish in the pond started to die one after another. Some scientists investigated the cause and found out that the poisonous chemicals from the trash underneath the mountain were leaking into the pond and killing off the fishes. The day after the report came out, the Norfolk based Virginia Pilot newspaper declared on its front page, Death on Mount Trashmore. Two years after, the same newspaper used the same caption for a three paragraph story in their metro section to report the death of Emeka.

Despite the best of my efforts, there were different aspects of Emeka’s story that I could not reach. For instance, how he got to the United States could not be confirmed. There were several versions of the story none of which could be substantiated. What I have done was to put together pieces of stories from several sources to explain what happened in Hampton Roads on the summer of 1998 that led to a death on Mount Trashmore.

This project has had a deep impact in my life from the day I met Dana to the day I finished the final draft of this book. My wife had become pregnant and had a baby boy. I named him Emeka. No one around me understood why. My wife thought I had become obsessed with a dead man. But like Emeka did to everyone who came in contact with him, he had a way of occupying a place in their hearts. He got mine, too.

Because of Emeka, I have learnt that the obituary of every life is worth more than three paragraphs. From pursing Emeka’s story, I have learnt that some people leave this world but in the hearts of those who met them, they leave a desire to see their story preserved.

I do not know what this story will do to you. But for me, it was like a long night at an opera. Sometimes the language eluded me. Sometimes it is the plot. And sometimes too, it is the emotion. Yet, in its tragedy and its joy, I saw the strength of the human spirit. I have never looked at life the same ever since I looked at the story behind the death on Mount Trashmore.