Kunapipi XXV:2

KAY WILLIAMSON and CHARLES LOCK

Richard Freemann

Biographical Introduction by Kay Williamson

The Nigerian writer and story-teller Richard Ayeberemo Deribi Freemann died at Port Harcourt on 3rd August, 2002. According to his official records, he was born on 24th May, 1944 in what is now Bayelsa State, Eastern Nigeria, in the village of Ikebiri, formerly within the Southern Ijaw Local Government Area, now in the Apoi/Olodiama Local Government Area. Richard Freemann received his primary education in Ossiama from 1953 to 1957, and his secondary education, from 1957 to 1960, in Bomadi. In the early 1960s he moved to the Nigerian capital, Ibadan, where I was working on the Izon language. The Izon language is spoken in the Niger Delta of Nigeria, with many dialectical variations, and is rich in imaginative stories and expressions.

The first thing I heard about Richard Freemann was that a wonderful story-teller had come to town. As an Izon speaker, he was soon introduced to me. He was looking for a job and thought of joining the army. This was just before my parents came from England to visit me; the very night they arrived he came to my flat clutching a live chicken, which he presented to my mother. She rose to the occasion, accepted the chicken and then sat down with Richard who told her all his troubles. The next day my mother suggested that he needed a skill and paid for him to take a course in typing.

One day, watching me teaching a rather slow undergraduate how to write and tone-mark Izon, Richard Freemann asked if I would teach him too. I agreed, not expecting much, and to my surprise he immediately got the idea and quickly became a very accurate transcriber of his own Olodiama dialect of Izon. With both typing skills and the ability to write Izon, he was qualified for appointment as a transcriber of a Nigerian language at the Institute of African Studies at the University of Ibadan.