THE GATHERER

I once encountered a novel in the African literature section of a London library. It was about an out-of-luck black Nigerian man, Furo Wariboko, who went to bed and woke up transformed into a white man. Nothing else about Furo changes (held the same undergraduate degree, spoke in  Pidgin English  and even retained a  Black ass ), yet his social interactions in the vibrant city of Lagos improved overnight: from offers of high remunerating jobs to excessive deference towards him from his fellow Nigerians; all because of his newly-acquired skin colour. I remember sliding that novel back into the library’s bookshelf, thinking the synopsis around Furo’s life was outlandish even for a work of fiction. Not until I immersed myself into James McBride’s demure memoir,  The Color of Water , in which the author unfurled the life-world of his mother, Ruchel Dwajra Zylska, did I realise that I’d been limited in my imagination to think back then that Furo’s story was outlandish, and that reality can,