Asylum writer will return to Africa

Friday, Jan. 17, 2003 | 9:47 a.m.

Exiled African poet/novelist Syl Cheney-Coker plans to return to his troubled homeland of Sierre Leone at month's end, and says he has accepted that his fate may be that he never can stay in any one place for too long.

"I always keep an overnight bag packed," Cheney-Coker said at a news conference Thursday at which Las Vegas Mayor Oscar Goodman gave the local resident of 27 months a key to the city.

Cheney-Coker stayed in Las Vegas through the City of Asylum, an international program to provide a safe haven for dissident artists. Cheney-Coker, who completed a novel and wrote a book of poetry while in Las Vegas, had fled Sierra Leone in 1997 after revolutionaries toppled the government.

"Being in exile is never justifiable nor tolerable," Cheney-Coker said.

He said he longs to return to his residence and watch the birds land in the trees and the kingfish jump in the river outside his home. But if he finds his life is in danger, Cheney-Coker says he will be ready to again go into exile.

The recipient of the 1991 Africa Best Book award, Cheney-Coker writes primarily about political themes. He is an outspoken critic of the military government that rules his homeland.

Cheney-Coker acknowledged that it is not totally safe to return home, but he said the current political climate offers "some relative stability. It is the best time to go back."

In 2000, Las Vegas was named the first City of Asylum in North America by the Paris-based International Parliament of Writers. The program is funded through the Las Vegas-based International Institute of Modern Letters, which was founded by Mandalay Resort Group President Glenn Schaeffer.

Schaeffer said all "great cities" have literature and culture and that Cheney-Coker brought his "unique talents" to Las Vegas. Schaeffer said that Syl (pronounced "seal") won't be the last writer hosted by the program.

Schaeffer initially gave $20,000 of his company's money to the City of Asylum project, as well as $5,000 from his own pocket.

Asked what he found most interesting about Las Vegas, Cheney-Coker said "its vitality." He said the city has "the best and worst" of what the United States has to offer -- the fun of gambling and golfing and the problems related to gambling, such as, "dreams that never come to fruition."

When Cheney-Coker arrived in Las Vegas in October 2000 accompanied by Nobel laureate Wole Soyinka and University of Nevada, Las Vegas professor Richard Wiley, Goodman hailed the event as a cultural milestone for the city.

"We're welcoming a genius to our community," Goodman said at the time. "He takes this to a level where Las Vegas has never been before as far as culture is concerned.'

Cheney-Coker has written four poetry books and three novels, including "The Last Harmattan of Alusine Dunbar" and "The Blood in the Desert's Eyes."

After the coup in Sierre Leone, rebel troops came to Cheney-Coker's home in Freetown and killed a dog but could not get through the gates around his home. He fled to the United States.

Soon after his arrival in the United States, Cheney-Coker received a two-year writer-in-residence appointment at City University of New York's Medgar Evars College.

From there, Cheney-Coker went to the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts on a grant before coming to Las Vegas to live in a townhouse under the program that provided him a car and a $30,000 annual stipend.