The Passport Of Mallam Iliah As Seen By Today's Children

The first thing we noted about Cyprian Ekwensi's The Passport of Mallam Ilia was it's similarity with his other book, 'An African Night's Entertainment.' Have you read that?

Check out that outing Here



Both are stories of revenge. Revenge for love. The Passport of Mallam Ilia follows the sad life of the Mallam who won his love, Zarah in a deadly game organized by her father. One of his opponents in the game, Mallam Usuman who lost to him, kept a grudge about his loss.

In a last battle with Usuman on a train, he won by chance, getting fatally injured. He ended up telling his whole story to a young man who sat opposite him on the train. After his story, it was revealed that the young man was his son but he died before he could even process this news.

He framed Mallam Ilia, got him imprisoned, harassed Zarah and ended up getting her killed in a fight with Ilia. Ilia, after swearing to avenge his wife, spent the better part of his life searching for Usuman.

Even when he had a chance to move, after remarrying, a change encounter with Usuman set him on his vengeance path again.

We also learned about the phrase "Calculating your odds". How do you know when you are making the right move? At a particular point, Mallam Ilia got disabled in a fight with Mallam Usuman and his left arm became useless.

He met with Mallam Usuman again and attempted to fight him. A battle he would have lost so easily. We agreed that he didn't calculate his odds, and that was a foolish move.

Many of the children found Ilia's anger justified. But I was happy to hear that they also wondered why he spent so much time dwelling on his revenge plan. This made it easier for us to discuss the dynamics of letting go. Whether it's letting wrong done to us, or it's something we want and we can't get, letting go is a good option.

In all, we learned so many lessons from the story, but the kids agreed that they prefer An African Night's Entertainment. Oh well, I didn't.

The younger kids went over the historic comic they'd received and read from last class.

We discovered that Amina, who was a princess, but eventually became a queen, was so brave and liked to fight because she wanted to protect her people. Even though she was reminded that her mates were getting married, and told she had no business on the training ground, Queen Amina knew her mission as a monarch was to protect the interest of her people even if it meant physically doing so.

This caused us to discuss women excelling in male dominated occupations and vice versa. During this time, someone pointed out that girls aren't good at football, but we informed them that there's a league for women's football as well as all other sports.

We touched on being nice to people and not taking revenge when someone hurts you, especially with words because anger and the need for revenge will eat you up just like it did Loki in Marvel Avengers, a comic we've been reading.

A couple of the kids found the conversational style of the comic a bit burdensome and were quickly growing uninterested, but Marion (who also helped out with the younger kids) did her best to guide them through the storyline of Queen Amina as they focused more on their reading.

Snack time was great. The kids can never get enough of Kay's Pastries' Puff-Puff snack so it was a successful Saturday as usual.

Special thanks to every one who makes this outing a success. @ThoughtpyramidArt Gallery @Kayspatries  @Purplediva aka  @Ski_exotiq aka Ufuoma