By Handel Wright
“Dennis Nelson-Streeter. Lord Streety. Clever. Funky Jay. Parker Power. Popcorn. Street Life!” My friend loved that I knew and greeted him with what he claimed as his “full name.” He would inevitably smile and reply to that final moniker “Street Life” by completing the phrase from the lyrics from The Crusaders’ song…. “It’s the only life I know!” This exchange, this purposeful elongation of his already compound name with his addition of a string of additional monikers, some of them hilarious because they were so ridiculous, others because they were so very apt, summed up Dennis- outrageous, witty, irrepressibly sociable, lover of parties and the odd Guinness or three. It is so hard to believe that he is gone, that such a lofty cotton tree has fallen.
When a person of particularly significant stature and accomplishment passes, we are wont to say in Sierra Leone, “a cotton tree has fallen.” I have said this of many luminaries from the older generations when they have passed on but could never imagine it an appropriate thing to say of someone my age, someone I knew very well, someone with whom I went to school and roomed at college, someone with whom I shared many a pint of Guinness and parties that seemed would never end. Yet it is particularly apt to say, nay to whisper, aghast, at the enormity of the passing of my dear friend Dennis Nelson-Streeter, “a huge cotton tree has fallen!”
Streeter was very widely known and beloved as a comedian- he was simply hilarious, a man with the most spontaneous, wicked, and ready wit. When we were in Sixth Form he once asked me to join him in taking the biggest, heaviest books we could find from the school library – dictionaries, atlases – and walking (supposedly purposefully) with them under our arms, up and down in front of the windows of the Form One classes. I went along even though I thought this was a meaningless exercise. I was quite wrong. The poor first formers were clearly shocked and intimidated. “Oh my God,” one wide eyed student declared to the others, “do you see the size of the books they study in Form Six?”
His jokes and skits were legendary and he seemed to have an endless supply of them. And what was particularly impressive was how spontaneous he was (none of us, Streeter included, had ever heard of “sketch comedy” or “improvised comedy”- he just did it all naturally, effortlessly, and we thought he would, endlessly). Once when we were in college a group of male students was chatting away at a popular meeting spot called “boss tik” [the gossip tree], when we were approached by a passing group of female students. Upon noticing Streeter amongst us, one of them demanded, “Streeter, make us laugh!” to which the others enjoined, “Yes, Streeter, make us laugh.” This was clearly a most awkward and improbable, indeed unfair demand. Instead of demurring as one would expect, Dennis got up, waved his hands as if conducting an orchestra and with a straight face simply said, “Ok, after two…. one, two….” and stared at the women and they all burst out laughing. It was the most masterful comedic act I have ever encountered: he had made them laugh simply based on the knowledge he knew they had that he was funny rather than by telling a joke or actually doing anything funny.
This is the Streeter everyone knows- the fun loving, always bubbly, outrageously funny character. And I say character because there was so much more to Dennis than that character. He was also a devoted member of his church at which he sang in the choir and more lately became deacon. And he was a Freemason.
Notably, he was an accomplished actor- we both acted in school plays and developed our craft under the tutelage of the talented Julius Spencer. We were thrilled when no less than three of us at St. Edwards Secondary School- Streeter, Maurice Jagne-Shaw and myself, got noticed and were invited to join the semi-professional theatre group, Tabule Experimental Theatre and to work under the direction of the legendary Dele Charley and act alongside the luminaries like Raymond d’Suza George. Streeter was the stand out talent of course and was the most devoted. When we were cast in Tabule’s “Wan Paun Flesh” (“A Pound of Flesh”- a Krio adaptation of Shakespeare’s “Merchant of Venice”), I had the bit part of Solanio while Streeter was cast in the major role of Sajoh (Shylock). His portrayal absolutely stole the show and brought audiences flocking to the play night after night. Once we entered university, I could no longer keep up with the rigour of Tabule but Streeter somehow managed to juggle full time studies and full time commitment to the theatre, all through college and after. He earned a certificate in theatre studies from an institution in Paris and contributed all his life to the continuation and development of the theatre in Sierra Leone. Only last year he was awarded a lifetime of excellence award for contributions to theatre by SLAAM- the Sierra Leone Association of Artists and Musicians.
Streeter the comedian was universally known and Dennis the actor and dramatist somewhat less so. What is much less known about Streeter is that he was academically gifted (the moniker “Clever” was about his humour not about his mental acuity) and that he was unassuming about his academic prowess. When we were in Sixth Form he would easily memorize lengthy passages of Shakespeare and the only apparent use he made of this was to recite the passages from memory in front of the class, as if he were an actor on stage, a display of a vast storehouse of knowledge and ability to perform it that had the effect of terrorizing other students into studying harder (which he found hilarious). He did very well in other subjects too but always found a way to make fun of what we were supposed to study. I distinctly remember that he found the names of the types of clouds we learned about in Geography (nimbus, stratus, cumulus, etc.) somewhat pretentious and took to stringing them together and to making up new ones that he employed (and encouraged me to employ) in casual conversation for comedic effect. He would declare loudly in class that his lunch was nimbostratic, to which I would say it seemed more cumulus to me, to which he would ask whether I was cirrus or merely cirrostratic since from the altrostratus, lovadocious, parambelistic and gingygoshic nature of his lunch one could only conclude that it was nimbostratic (a “conversation” which impressed and confused and amused our classmates all at once).
As his roommate at university I know that he spent almost all his time socializing (it seems he could not abide being alone) and hardly ever cracked a book open but sailed through his studies nonetheless. This was a man who, after graduation, went to Paris for a year on a scholarship to study theatre and came back fully fluent in French (including having written his graduating paper in French, a language he did not know at all before getting to France). He studied Economics at College and got a management position at the West African Bankers Association (working in both English and French), a prestigious position he readily abandoned in order to reunite, sans employment and prospects, with his wife and children who were living in England at the time.
And in recent years Streeter and I engaged in long, deep and serious conversations, especially about developments (or lack of development) in Sierra Leone. Inflation spiraling out of control and the galloping increases in the price of everyday goods, the lack of opportunities for even the well educated like himself (to say nothing of those with little education). He was a patriot who was increasingly frustrated by the state of the nation and who wanted to make a difference but was completely uninterested in getting into politics. He was also concerned about his health and the difficulty of maintaining his standard of living. All of this made for a much more serious and contemplative Dennis. Someone remarked to me that they saw a video of his acceptance speech of the lifetime award and were very surprised that it contained no jokes from Dennis. I smiled wryly because I was not surprised: I understood that lately Dennis had become much more introverted and contemplative. When our conversations of late turned to the perennial topic of the options of staying in Sierra Leone or leaving for the diaspora, he was always resolute that he was altogether too patriotic to seriously contemplate leaving. He had lived in France and England and was convinced and declared forcefully that Sierra Leone was where he belonged and the only place he wanted to live and the place (prophetically) where he would die.
And so, on March 27th 2024 a very big cotton tree fell. For me it roared the sound of his name as it fell- “Dennis Nelson-Streeter. Lord Streety. Clever. Funky Jay. Parker Power. Popcorn. Street Life!”
And all was quiet. And then the wind blew gently over the fallen cotton tree and the leaves rustled in that effervescent voice the reply, “It’s the only life I know!”
(Culled from Facebook)