In memoriam Fred Oamen

Fred Oamen was born on 9 May 1959 in Lagos, Nigeria, and past away on 24 Juni 2025. He was my friend and we talked every week for sixteen years. If you are family, please contact me (see form on the main page). Here is an forword for his collection of poems I wrote about him in 2013.

Fred O. Oamen was the second child in a family that would eventually consist of seven brothers and one sister. He was born on May 9, 1959, in Lagos, a sprawling coastal city in Nigeria with millions of inhabitants. As was common in those circumstances, the entire family shared a single room.

From an early age, Fred dreamed of becoming a musician. As a child, he was constantly inventing new rhymes in his head. Later, he became a fan of his fellow Nigerian Fela Kuti – at the time, after Bob Marley, one of the most famous Black musicians in the world –and realized that poetry was not only a source of enjoyment but could also exert political influence.

And politics in Nigeria was turbulent then, as it remains today. Radical groups sought to Islamize the country. Fred’s older brother had once protested against this and was intimidated so severely that he was forced to flee to Sweden. A few years later, in 1991, the same thing happened to Fred. His family pooled their money, and he bought a one-way ticket to the Netherlands.

He left behind a girlfriend and a young daughter of kindergarten age. She was the woman he had hoped to marry. He never saw them again, nor any other member of his family.

Fred lived in various cities and reception centers, sometimes legally and sometimes illegally. In Nigeria, he had worked as an insurance agent; now he could occasionally find work in slaughterhouses and warehouses. Then, one day, a voice began speaking to him.

He interpreted it as a witch, as large as a mountain. He lost his room, his job, his friends, and eventually became homeless. He slept in a bus shelter, even through harsh winters. Several times he was taken in or institutionalized, but the voice was powerful, and undocumented people do not always have access to the medication they need. In the end, it took 19 years before he obtained a passport, stable housing, and appropriate medication, as a result of which the witch has now become as small as a dwarf.

His dream is what still keeps him going today: to return to Nigeria, meet his daughter, get married, and then live together in the Netherlands. As he says, “Almost every day I think: what a beautiful country this is, with wonderful people and a wonderful government! At least this government is not corrupt and does not put public money into its own pockets. That is a good mirror for me. I am still getting used to it.”

In Nigeria he had once shown some of his poems to Fela Kuti, who responded with praise. Fred began publishing in the newsletter of the asylum seekers’ center as soon as he arrived there. Later, when he ended up in Utrecht, he also contributed to the local street newspaper, Straatnieuws. The paper has its own street poets’ collective, Klinker, through which the undersigned [Reinier Sonneveld] came to know him. Fred is also registered on several poetry websites, where he has posted more than two thousand poems in both Dutch and English.

Through his poetry, he hopes to offer something meaningful to others. In the Western tradition, poetry is often regarded as a form of self-expression, but in many non-Western cultures it serves as a vehicle for wisdom. It is a way of passing down traditional stories and life lessons. This is how Fred views his own work: he wants to convey a moral message and encourage his readers.

Fred owns four books, all of which have been read to pieces: two dictionaries, a Bible, and the complete works of Shakespeare. Every evening he reads a psalm and a sonnet (his favorites are Psalm 21 and Sonnet 1).

The poems in this collection were written between 2009 and 2012 and are presented in chronological order, with the exception of the first and last poems, which also provide the collection’s title. All of the poems were previously published in Straatnieuws, the street newspaper of Utrecht.

The poems we read on his funeral are after the photo.

Fred Oamen wrote several thousands of poems. These six we read aloud on his funeral.

Hier is een literaire Engelse vertaling die de eenvoud, directheid en emotionele kracht van Freds poëzie zoveel mogelijk behoudt.

The Best Day Ever

That was the day
I saw my little daughter
for the first time

I will never forget it

She looked so beautiful
She was perfect

I loved her, my little daughter

It has been twenty-two years
since I last saw her

What I Never Told My Little Daughter

I love you

I am your father

I miss you

I long to see your face

Epitaph

Here lies Fred O. Oamen

He was a poet

Everyone jumps here
like frogs

He was a good man

Everyone wanted to see him

We

We are precious like the wind

We are all a child

We want to become famous

We have hungry stomachs

We all carry a coffin

We all seem to disappear

We are miracles

We are lovers

We all want to do good

We want so much to stay here

We know where our shoe pinches

We all say goodbye

I Forgive

I forgive my parents

for bringing me into this world

without the money to care for me

I forgive God

who gave my parents the strength

to bring a body

into this world

where so little help can be found

I forgive the government

especially the government of Nigeria

that takes its people's money away

I forgive the white people

who made slaves of us

I forgive

the tongue in my mouth

What I Gave My Daughter (II)

I gave her my face

like a mirror

she reflects me

She is what I leave behind

in this world

I gave her my smile

and oh, I hope

she is not angry

that, far away,

she never received

any gifts from me