Tuk-Tuk Trail to Suya and Stars by Doreen Baingana

Doreen Baingana writes in AGNI Online, about a dance many Nigerians are familiar with--a keke napep ride, and a snack many Nigerians love--suya. Have a restful weekend!

You venture into the dark, and it looms over and crowds your every space, thick, even pushes into your earlobes like cotton wool, this hazy yellow darkness choked with harmattan dust. You are boxed in by solid air and you must breathe it in. You enter a tuk-tuk, the most rickety vehicle ever made, as if banged together from the spare parts of small cars circa 1960, Austins, say, and old saucepans panel-beaten into shape, all loosely held by rusted nails and chains and placed on top of what was once a three-wheeled motorbike, now an ungainly carriage with a snub metal nose. You sit on plastic, which is easy to wipe of dust, but clings like a kid to your sweaty thighs. All the tuk-tuks are painted orange to compete with the river of dirty sand called the road—haze, heat, rush, animal-like hoots and horns. Orange to shock your eyes into seeing.

Still, it provides the miracle every vehicle does: to move, all you have to do is sit, or rather grip desperately, as there are no side walls or doors. The breeze is a blessing; it strokes your cheek and whispers in your ear that you can breathe, it’s okay, but not too deeply. No, your lungs cannot suck air out of dust as fish do out of water. This dust that covers everything in a fine gray layer, gauze-like, sticky.

You realize as you climb into the tuk-tuk that with cars you settle quickly, assured that the solid metal case will protect you from the rush of the busy street, the intense heat and light, the potholes underneath, the direct hit of any accident. For a while, driven from A to B, you have the pleasure of giving up responsibility and you sink gratefully into the cushioned bowl of the back seat. Not in a tuk-tuk. You sit, yes, but unsupported, holding tight to the rusty rail, sweaty fingers slipping as you are shaken from side to side like jelly, shaken inside out. You are in a blender, a coffee grinder, an angry machine that jostles and jangles you. It sets your stomach churning and everything in it is squeezed and kneaded and turns to shit, straining to escape with every hard bump, your ass clenched tight. Oops, you piss in your pants as the tuk-tuk driver swerves to avoid potholes the size and shape of dried ponds. His dark ball of a head bobs in front of you as he does the same desperate bouncing you do: the tuk-tuk dance.

It’s not all dance. It’s real danger, as each swerve to avoid falling into a pothole leads to a motorbike coming straight at you. Read more on AGNI.

Doreen Baingana is the Ugandan author of Tropical Fish: Stories out of Entebbe, which won an AWP Short Fiction Award and a Commonwealth Prize. She has also won the Washington Independent Writers Fiction Prize and was twice a finalist for the Caine Prize for African Writing. Her stories and essays have appeared in Glimmer Train, African American Review, Callaloo, The Guardian (UK), Chimurenga, and Kwani.  She is a guest writer at the GCLF 2012. 

Favourite Five: Abubakar Adam Ibrahim

Abubakar Adam Ibrahim was born in Jos and has been writing for as long as he can remember. He won the BBC African Performance Prize in 2007 and the ANA Plateau/Amatu Braide Prize for Prose in 2008. He is currently the Arts Editor of Sunday Trust, one of Nigeria's leading newspapers. He is the Literary Editor of Nigeria’s wide circulating Sunday Trust Newspaper and his entry, “The Bull Man’s Story” won the 2007 BBC African Performance Playwriting Competition. The Whispering Trees is his first Book.  He tells us about his favourite five books!

Memoirs of a Geisha by Athur Golden
Brilliantly researched story about the lives of the Japanese geishas (or female entertainers) before during and after WW II. Golden, the American, delved into a culture lost even to the Japanese to bring us the moving story of the meek and determined Chiyo and the beautifully evil Hatsumomo. Wonderful tale.

Beloved by Toni Morrison
Morrison tells the remarkable story of a woman who murdered her child to save her from slavery. It is moving and suspenseful and the craft was excellent. That woman is a master storyteller.

Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Imagine your true love marrying someone else and you making up your mind to wait for her husband to die even if it would take the whole of half a century. That is the remarkable premise of Marquez's novel but one incredible thing about this book is that in its almost four hundred pages, there is no more than twenty lines of dialogue or there about. But the prose is incredible you won't even notice.

A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khalid Hosseini takes us on an expedition to pre-war Afghanistan to experience the lives of Mariam and Laila, two young girls whose lives are completely different but find themselves swept together by war. It is a story of unusual love, courage and sacrifice. For people in my generation, we have always known Afghanistan as a war zone, but Hosseini shows us a glimpse of his people before the wars and how they became what they have become. Brilliant.

The Famished Road by Ben Okri. This is an all time favourite for me. It opened my eyes to the endless possibilities of literature, showed me that spirits and the fantastic realms exist also in books. And it was masterfully done, the way he swept the whole of Nigeria's history into young Azzaro's life. This is a book you read and close your eyes, and you truly imagine that the sun above is actually green. Awesome.

The Voice Interviews: Lola Shoneyin

Lola Shoneyin is a poet and novelist. Her collections of poetry include All The Time I Was Sitting On An Egg and Song Of The Riverbird. Her novel, The Secret Lives Of Baba Segi’s Wives is a tragicomic tale of the four wives of a Nigerian patriarch. The critically acclaimed Baba Segi, as the novel is now fondly called, was long listed for the 2011 Orange prize for fiction. In this interview, Lola Shoneyin, one of guest authors at GCLF 2012, speaks with Wana Udobang. 

Reading some of your poems and this novel, sex is an ever present theme. I recently attended a talk on erotica and one of the panellists made a comment that “The ultimate freedom is our ability to come to terms with our own pleasures”. I also remember during a part of your TED lecture, you saying that sex was a metaphor for freedom. Firstly, what is this freedom for you? And secondly, do you think as women around the world, we are groomed without a sense of ownership of our bodies, or understanding of our own pleasures, or perhaps what we should and shouldn’t enjoy is still being dictated to us?

Freedom for me is being able to speak and act in a way that gives me personal fulfilment, without the constraints of a vigorously hypocritical society and without causing anyone distress. Sex, as a theme, is important to me because even though across religions and societies it is an essential ritual that ought to be pleasurable, we have found ways to bleed the pleasure out of it, we have taught ourselves to suppress that which is instinctive. The woman is targeted here. She has become the one who cannot, must not enjoy sex, as if sexual pleasure for her translates to promiscuity and narcissism. This is of great interest to me.

It is this lack of courage and ownership that sometimes prompts me to create female characters and poet personae for whom sex is complex. This is the truth. Like freedom, sex has been made complex for a lot of women. This shouldn’t be the case.

The sex in this book is what I will describe as graphically subtle, as though your grandmother is describing sex to you in many ways and you feel the impact of what she is saying without using the words you think she should use. Was this the writer’s less aggressive way of saying something?

The sex scenes are graphic but matter-of-fact, not gratuitous. I struggled sometimes, and toned things down so readers do not engage with sex scenes at the expense of the story. Nevertheless, I wasn’t going to discard my personal style. My friends who read my book say they can hear my voice. The fact that I am a Remo girl who grew up with five brothers means that I am not a shrinking violet when it comes to calling genitalia what it is. I call it by its name while carrying deep respect for it.

When reading reviews and other pieces about your book, Bolanle seems to be driven as the central character but I feel like it’s made of an ensemble cast even though her arrival is what drives the plot. From the reviews you have seen what do you find to be the interesting misconceptions of the work?

To be honest, I don’t read a lot of reviews. They are a distraction. I’m one of those people who cannot watch themselves on the TV or read interviews in the papers. I cringe. Reviews can cut you quite deeply when people misinterpret your intentions. It’s not worth the anguish, especially when you know that some people in Nigeria will write unsavoury things in order to draw attention to themselves.

In the novel, Bolanle has some unsavoury experiences and she spends a large part of her time in the story in a perpetual haze. During your reading at the LifeHouse, you said you wanted to use Bolanle to shed light on the issue of depression. In this space, where we have something of a disease priority list, how dangerous is it that depression is still dismissed as a serious mental illness?

It’s horrifyingly dangerous. In Nigeria where there is a very high rate of employment amongst the youth, where young girls are married off to old men who basically rape them, where women are put through unspeakable trauma when they lose their husbands, where young people do not have access to basic amenities but see development in other African countries on the internet, where girls are blamed for the sexual abuse they experience, inevitably, mental health has been and is going to be a huge problem.

I think religion is doing a good job of masking these issues. People believe you can pray mental health sickness away, they believe that the discovery or worship of Jesus Christ is accompanied by an inexplicable euphoria. Many have become adept at putting on these performances, by faith, even when they are dying inside, but most cannot pretend… so they are dragged to exorcisms and deliverances.

One of the problems is that Nigeria does not have the number of specialists required to deal with the magnitude of the problems. We live in denial. When things explode, and they will if we don’t develop a more profound understanding of mental health, we will not be prepared.

We live in such a judgemental, superficial society. We are obsessed with an unattainable perfection.  When we find that someone in the family suffers from mental health issues or disabilities, we are most concerned about the stigma and those who might laugh at us. Even when we strive for a solution, it is driven by this fear of disgrace. We must start understanding that many people who suffer from mental health problems will never be completely cured. As such, we need to learn to help manage their conditions. That is the sole reason why we are able-bodied and ‘normal’: so we can support the needy, the broken, the depressed, those who society has damned.

The back stories of the women in the novel create a sense of prior history, ambition, emotion and even prior encounters with their own sexualities. But in our highly patriarchal communities, we have labels of daughter and wife and everything in between is meant to be a vacuum. What is your take on the evolution of the female in contemporary Nigerian society and even African society? For you what are the dangers regarding this kind of identity suppression and sometimes lack of it?

The Nigerian/ African society has changed in the last hundred years. Sometimes, I don’t know if it’s for the better. So many elements of our cultures, especially the part of us that lives and let’s live, the ingredient which made us tolerant has been lost. With foreign religions has come a very hypercritical streak. There is a condemnatory tinge in the way we regard other ethnic groups, other genders, other religions. This has fed nicely into the patriarchal societies.

I remember one of your twitter updates, where you had read a review of your book described as Chick Lit. Any responses?

It wasn’t a review. That silliness can be found in an article written by Ellah Allfrey for Guardian UK. Believe it or not, she worked as an editor at JonathanCape for many years and is now one of the editors at Granta. I don’t think Ms Allfrey read the novel, in which case it was totally unprofessional to classify it that way. Either that or she just doesn’t know what chicklit is, which is, at best, disappointing.

I am not knocking chicklit. It is enjoyed by hoards of women and personally, I’m up for anything that encourages people to read more. However, The Secret Lives of Baba Segi’s Wives is not chicklit. I sincerely hope Ms Allfrey knows that now.

In the book, you take on different voices and so the pages shift from first person narrative to third person, so you let each wife tell their story themselves instead of telling it for them. What prompted that decision? 

I wanted readers to ‘hear’ directly from the wives. This opportunity does not come about very often. Women in polygamous homes are often cagey about their personal views because there is too much at stake. A wife seen to be exposing matrimonial secrets could jeopardise her place in the family. Yet, every woman has a story. In my head, I created an invisible character that they could all talk too, hence the conversational tones of each narrative voice.

Baba Segi reads to me like a televised play, that was written in Yoruba and then translated. As the creator of the work, are my assumptions on the right track?

I first heard the story when I was fourteen years old. The second of my five brothers had a girlfriend who was a medical student at the local teaching hospital. She would often come over to our house and tell us about her interesting day-to-day experiences. As soon as she told me this story of the polygamist, I could see the tragic element, as well as the farcical. It had great dramatic potential so I decided that I would one day write it as a play. Twenty years on, I was at a low point because I couldn’t get a publisher for my unpublished novel. Out of frustration, I ran the story of Baba Segi by my agent. She loved it and I started working on it straight away. Most of the ‘scenes’ would be played out before me on an invisible stage before I actually started writing them down. That’s how I write. I see it first.

What kinds of stories do you like to read?

I like short novels that are under four hundred pages where the plot thickens quickly and characters themselves display astuteness and sensitivity, where there’s humour and some irony. I write what I like, in that I write what I like to read.

As someone whose work was long listed for the Orange prize, do you feel any level of validation by winning prizes?

I fret when I am nominated for awards; I feel exposed and vulnerable. My partner constantly tells me to just pause and enjoy these moments. He’s right. I feel very lucky that The Secret Lives of Baba Segi’s Wives has done so well in winning the prizes it has won but I don’t read anything into them. I don’t let myself. I still have too much to learn.

Humour seems integral to your writing both as a poet and a fiction writer. If you were forced to analyse your own work, what do you think it adds to the darkness?

A light-hearted interrogation of society that precipitates serious evaluation.

As someone who is a writer, a teacher, a woman, a mother and a wife, what does feminism mean to you?

Feminism for me is about creating an enabling environment for women, especially in societies like ours where the doors have been shut in their faces. It’s is about women regaining complete control of their bodies. It’s about the luxury of having options, the value of being able to make make choices.

Favourite Book? Sula by Toni Morrison

Favourite Movie? Probably Avatar. A lot of my friends hold this against me but I don’t have any hang-ups about its commercial appeal. I like what I like.

Book you wish you wrote? The books I wish I’d written are full of pain and anguish. So, although there is something beautiful about the tragedy, I can’t imagine what it must have taken out of the author. We have to be careful what we wish for sometimes.

What’s your take on writing with a message or writing for art sake?  I believe in the freedom of expression the freedom of interpretation.

Do you think art should always have something to say? Not if it feels like being silent.

This was republished with the kind permission of Guerilla Basement.

Polly Alakija: GCLF 2012 Facilitator

Polly Alakija was born in 1966, in Malvern UK where she completed A levels including art as a subject. She continued studying art at the Oxford Polytechnic and later completed a teaching diploma in the Montessori method. She moved to live in Nigeria from 1990, married, and in 2005 relocated to South Africa. In 2011 Polly moved to the UK , and is now based in Gloucestershire.

As well as pursuing her own art career, she has involved herself actively in community art related projects and painting.

Polly is particularly interested in the human form and the portrayal thereof. Her architectonic figures languish within their laconic environment in timeless serenity, self-contained and unperturbed.

Her canvases are inhabited by gentle giants of nature, whose energy is conserved in a permanent lethargy, where rich colour contrasts, brushwork, form and texture dominate.

She is inspired not only from art historical traditions, but also from everyday life, often cajoling a model from the street to pose in her studio. She has exhibited in France, the UK, the University of Ibadan, Lagos, Johannesburg and Cape Town.

Her work is included in numerous private collections in the USA, UK, France, Nigeria and South Africa and in several corporate collections, including Sahara, AVI, and Laurent Perrier.

Polly Alakija will facilitate the creative workshops for children at the GCLF.  

Favourite Five: Richard Ali

Richard Ali, a lawyer, was born in Kano, Nigeria and grew up in the resort town of Jos. He holds an LL.B from the Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria and was called to the Nigerian Bar in 2010.  He is the Editor-in-Chief of the Sentinel Nigeria Magazine and was a runner-up at the 2008 John la Rose Short Story Competition. In 2008, he was part of the British Council’s Radiophonics Workshop.  He lives in Jos where he practices law and runs an IT-company. City of Memories is his first novel. 

The English Patient by Michael Ondaatje

A touching story of the memories of a hideously burned man, Ladislaus d’Almasy, and one about identity, one also about how war and nationalism rends the fabric of the world he lived in—the last great desert explorers. It is the story of his love affair with the married Katherine Clifton. It is a powerfully engaging novel told in what can only be described as “preciously beautiful writing”.

Prison Notes: The Man Died by Wole Soyinka

This immensely intriguing book on the 1986 Nobel Laureate’s incarceration in the course of the Civil War stretches the very limits just how much power words can be made to pack and deliver. It sides with the indomitable human spirit, and regardless of whether one agrees with Soyinka’s actions, “The Man Died” contains some of the most beautiful sentences in Nigerian writing and one of the most resolute indictments of tyranny ever.

Fountainhead by Ayn Rand

Written by American philosopher, Ayn Rand, this story of architect Howard Roark - who has a unique aesthetic and philosophical vision - is an American classic. Roark stands against a society that demands conformity out of fear, and against the mindset of the “second-hander”. He affirms a positive Egoism, of neither living for others nor living through others. It is a book of great instruction, especially for the creative thinker, writer or artist.

Disgrace by J. M. Coetzee 

In this brilliant novel, Coetzee foreshadows the tragedy of academic David Lurie, in the works of Milton and in the life of Byron—both of whom the soon-to-be-disgraced professor teaches his students. And, just when he thinks he will retire to the indifference of the countryside, a rape of his daughter shows how impossible it is to escape the human incidence of our individual freedoms. A complex, elegant story on many levels—deserves to be read time and time again.

Arrow of God by Chinua Achebe

Perhaps one of the best realised of Achebe’s characters is Ezeulu, he is positively heroic and even when he is crushed and broken at the end of the story, we feel a part of his story, and his loss of dignity is an indictment on us. We are involved. For when Ezeulu stands resolutely against his umunna, in line with his priestly principles, he embodies the artist-in-society. And so what if he loses? The story of all that is all his.

Boats of the Future with Marit Tornqvist

At the Storymoja Hay Festival in Nairobi, children from the Netherlands School Society joined their counterparts from the Spring Valley Educational Centre in a session convened by Dutch Illustrator Marit Tornqvist. 

Marit has worked on the books of popular Swedish author Astride Lingdren, illustrating   titles such as Goran’s Great Escape, In the Land of Twilight, A Calf for Christmas, and many others. 

The children met Marit at the National Museums of Kenya’s Discovery Room; an apt venue, for there was plenty of fun and fact to discover during the session. 

The children received a surprise visit from Mr. Joost Reintjes, the Dutch ambassador to Kenya. Being the diplomat that he is, Mr. Joost introduced the children to each other’s cultures, explaining Holland to the Kenyan children and Kenya to the Dutch children.

Mr. Kennedy Musumba from Kenya’s Ministry of Water, himself a performer of sorts, had the children in plenty of stitches with his tales about water. The children sang together, and then amidst hoots of laughter, opined that bilharzia was caused by snails and that one should not “help themselves” in the bush because one is likely to find a hyena there. 

Marit Tornqvist then engaged the children through a captivating weaving together of art forms into one finely-textured, richly-filled basket. The children were literally spellbound as Marit’s animations sprung to life. 

It was the story of a sad little girl who sat on a long pole in the middle of the sea, and who refused to get comforted by birds or balloons or curious, curious people. She sat on her pole through the summer and winter, sat on it and watched ships capsize during thunderstorms. The little girl was inconsolable. 

Marit’s narration, the brilliant animations, and the audio effects all teleported the children to the middle of the sea. They were right there with the sad little girl. They too were sad for a few moments, their gazes trapped by the lapping of water in the sea’s mouth, the dancing of birds in the frills of the lacy sky, and the drifting away of curious people in their curious, fruit-laden boats. 

When they arrived from their trip to the sea, the children were given paper and craft material, and asked to draw their own landscapes, with water as the central theme. 

About the session, Mr. Joost Reintjes said, “It is a remarkable way to bring cultures together. Children get together and learn the issues of water, and they play. It is important not to look at learning from a narrow teaching perspective, but to infuse it with culture and art.”

Betsy, the Director of the Netherlands School Society in Nairobi, echoed the Ambassador’s sentiments, adding that in this kind of holistic learning, children were unlikely to forget their lessons. 

The children had their own opinions about the session too. Bernard Kamau from the Spring Valley Educational Centre described how much fun the learning had been, adding that the lesson he would invariably take home with him was simple: water is life. His friend Mark Chege agreed and added that from the session, he had learnt not to be selfish.

This report was sent in by Okwiri Oduor.

The Voice Interviews: Chibundu Onuzo

In this interview with Ainehi Edoro of Brittle Paper, Chibundu Onuzo, guest author at GCLF 2012, speaks about her writing and her new book The Spider King's Daughter. 

Why did you choose to set your first novel in Lagos?

I grew up there so I know the city quite well and I suppose with your first novel, you want to be writing about home territory. There are so many things you have to grapple with as an inexperienced writer and adding an unfamiliar setting is just an extra difficulty. It’s hard enough trying to evoke a place you know.

I’d never have thought of Lagos as a city of love, but you convinced me. What made you think of a Lagos romance?

Have you ever been to Tantalizers or Mr Biggs? Lagos is the Nigerian capital of romance. Every guy is a toaster and every girl is a babe in Eko.

Abike and Runner G are the two love birds. Can I confess that my favorite of the two is Runner G? I find his strength in the face of so much suffering both sexy and inspiring. Can you tell us how that character came to life?

I just started telling the story from his point of view. His voice came naturally to me because I think in personality, we’re quite similar.  You say he’s strong in the face of suffering but some readers have complained about his passivity in the face of adversity.  If I suddenly woke up poor, I’d hope to be like the hawker, I’d be capable of eking out some sort of living and putting away a few hundred Naira a week. If Abike suddenly woke up poor and was forced to become a hawker, she would organise all the other hawkers and form a hawkers' union and become the State Commissioner for the informal economy by the time she was done.

Why doesn’t Runner G have a “real” name?

I couldn’t find one. I just got to the end and nothing fit so I left him nameless and then his namelessness became a wider metaphor for the faceless poor in Lagos. When I was in primary school, there was an ice cream seller I used to buy ice lollies from almost every day and till today, I don’t know his name.

Isn’t Abike kind of a bitch? Lol.  Not really. When viewed in the context of her childhood, she’s actually quite humane, maybe even more humane than the hawker who had role models and a close family structure. I always tell harsh readers that any kind act you see Abike perform (such as the way she stands up for her driver) must be magnified  because of her upbringing.

My love affair with Abike is a bit different. I feel really drawn to the very things that made Runner G have such a hard time being her lover–her snarkiness, snobbishness, “sharp mouth,” her queen-of-my-domain mentality. Was her character difficult to write? Did you have to tap into your inner bitchiness?  

Giving Abike a narrative voice started off as a plot device. I only had one narrator in my first attempt at the book. As I’ve mentioned, the hawker is in many ways quite a passive character so not much had happened by page thirty. He was just walking round Lagos and describing things and musing. So when Abike came along, she was in the worst instances, not much more than bullet points and in the best instances, very, very obnoxious. So she certainly went through many rounds of editing.

Abike’s mother is a Nollywood actress. Your description of her odd ways is prettyhilarious. Could you talk a little bit about the Nollywood reference? What is it about Nollywood that made you want to say something about it in Spider King’s Daugther?

Abike’s mother is not my only reference to Nollywood in the book. The way I’ve structured the scenes borrows quite heavily from Nollywood filming techniques. If you’ve ever watched a Nollywood movie, the main character will walk in on her husband cheating on her, the camera will zoom to her eyes widening in horror, then the scene will change and we have to wait to find out what happens next. I do this kind of thing quite a few times in The Spider King’s Daughter.

You touch on depression a little bit–Runner G’s mother is a depressive. Were you trying to speak to the popular misconception that Africans don’t suffer depression?

I don’t really like the word depression. There are many shades and manifestations of sadness and depression is such a blanket term. The hawker’s mother has a very deep and quiet melancholia. Her shade of sadness would be mauve. But yes, Africans just like all human beings get depressed.

The story starts out like a Rom-fiction. But things gradually get dark. Were you going for  that? Would you say Spider King’s Daughter is a romance fiction, thriller, or a romance thriller?

None of the above really. You’ll have to come up with a few more.

I think it’s awesome. It’s fun to see what Abike and Runner G leave out or include in their separate accounts of a particular event. You did a good job of not making the telling and retelling tiresome for the reader? How did you do that?

Abike and the hawker are very different people. If my sister and I tell the story of the same event, the second time will definitely bore you but the hawker and Abike notice different things and they lay emphasis on different things because their experiences of life are so different.

Abike and Runner G definitely have great chemistry. But would you say that their romance was pretty PG-13? Why didn’t you give us a bit more steaminess? I don’t mean a 50 Shades kinda steamy. Just a bit more touching, kissing, making out, etc.

It seemed an accurate amount of steaminess to me. From what I remember (and it wasn’t that long ago), secondary school relationships in Nigeria were pretty vapourless. I don’t  know about your school but in my boarding school, kissing your boyfriend was quite a big deal. It didn’t often happen when you were ‘having something.’  You would normally wait until you were officially going out. One of my very close friends who was four years my senior, told me before he kissed his girlfriend for the first time. He planned it a couple of days in advance. You had to be quite savvy about these things and find a private place because there were always teachers prowling around who would swoop down to separate couples if they saw them holding hands for too long.

The ending. Wow! What can I say? I didn’t see it coming. The story takes a rather unexpected turn, leaving things a bit unresolved. Is there going to be a part two?

No part two or at least none is planned.  Even though I refer to Nollywood and borrow some techniques, this is not a Nollywood production.

Read Brittle Paper's review of The Spider King's Daughter

Chibundu Onuzo started writing novels and short stories at the age of 10 and less than a decade later, she became the youngest woman ever to be signed to Faber and Faber, which has published books by 12 Nobel Laureates and 6 Man Booker prize winners.

The 2012 Storymoja Hay Festival in Nairobi

For 25 years, the Hay Festival has brought together writers and readers from across the world in a celebration of ideas and writing. The festival runs in 15 countries. On the continent, it pitches tent in Kenya and South Africa.

On Thursday the 13th of September 2012, the Storymoja Hay Festival officially kicked off in Nairobi. The theme of this year’s festival is Imagine the World. Perhaps in acknowledgment of this, the festival is held at the alluring National Museums of Kenya.

The first day of the festival was mostly dedicated to children.

Lemm Sissay and Imtiaz Dharker held workshops for writing and performance poetry, while JC Niala and Paula Kahumbu showed children how to make their own puppets. Young readers got the opportunity to meet authors Lauri Kubuitsile and Lola Shoneyin whose book The Secret Lives of Baba Segi’s Wives was recently nominated for the Nigeria Prize for Literature.

Caine-nominated writer Lily Mabura communed with young writers in a Manuscript Doctor session, and Dutch illustrator Marit Tornqvist fused storytelling and visual arts to kindle enthusiasm about water in both Dutch and Kenyan children.

At the Publish Your Own Book session, little children became great authors when, with the help of writers and illustrators, they produced their very own story booklets.

In another workshop, Precious Williams, Dinaw Mengestu and Ross van Horn discussed the theme of displacement and identity in creative writing.

Elsewhere at the festival, comedian Eric Omondi delivered career advice to young adults, while novelist Giles Foden held a creative writing masterclass session.

The Storymoja Hay Festival ended on Sunday the 16^th of September 2012. Report by Okwiri Oduor.

Sola Alamutu: GCLF Facilitator

Sola Alamutu is the brain behind Children and the Environment (CATE), an organisation that creates awareness in children about the importance of the environment. She is a co-author of CATE Saves the Ikopi Rainforest, a children’s book that won the 2004 ANA Prize for Children’s Literature. Alamutu, author of two activity books for children aged four to eight and nine to fourteen.

She will facilitate the Children Creative Workshops at the GCLF, along with Polly Alakija. 

Mazi Nwonwu: On his Farafina Workshop Experience

Mazi Nwonwu strikes a pose

It was my third application. I paused a while before I typed the address into my mailbox. Twice before, 2010 and 2011, I had answered the call for entries for the Farafina Trust Creative Writing Workshop. On both occasions, I got an email informing me that though I made the long list of thirty five, I unfortunately didn’t make into the final list of fifteen.

While I was saddened by the first mail, the fact that it came from Chimamanda Adichie, whose “I wanted to let you know how much I enjoyed reading your entry – and to send my best wishes for your continued writing”, eased the disappointment. For me, that mail was a tacit stamp of approval that I was on the right path. In 2011, when I got a similar response, I was mad. How can they turn me down two years in a row? Does this mean I am not good enough or have not improved at all despite my efforts? So, I penned this.

Now, you understand the reluctance with which I applied for this year’s workshop. I felt I did not need any coaching from any writer, no matter how renowned. It was easy to learn about writing, especially with the internet. Having convinced myself that I didn't need to learn from people who turned me down twice, I tried to forget about the call for entries, to ignore the nagging urge to type a small bio, copy and paste one of my numerous short stories and send another mail to Udonandu, whoever that is. 

I sent the mail. And forgot all about it. Instead, I put my effort into getting a place in the Fidelity Bank sponsored programmed headlined by Helon Habila. I didn’t get into that one and no mail came to tell me to continue writing or anything. The depression came then, followed by the usual questions: what the hell am I doing pretending to be a writer? Should I really be wasting my life struggling to write? What have I gained pretending to be a writer? Am I a fraud?

Unlike the past, the depression did not last too long as I found reasons to keep writing and to interact with my writing family—we call ourselves Nerdz 21. Through Blackberry, Nerdz 21 talk about everything; there, I got hints about the Farafina shortlist mails. First, Richard Ali announced that he was in, then Abdulaziz Abdulaziz. I was still hailing their success when an incoming mail alert beeped. I stared at the Farafina Trust address for a while, just dreading another rejection. I had just announced my own good news when Samuel Oluwatosin Kolawole,  indicated that he too is in. We celebrated. 900 entries from across Africa and four people from our group of twenty five made it, worthy of some virtual champagne popping if you ask me. This post is not about Nerdz 21 or its membership, so let’s take a step back and continue along the right path.

Participants at the Workshop

I should tell you how I packed for the workshop, the books I took with me and how I got to Waterside Hotel in Lekki Phase 1 to find most of the participants already waiting before my Lagos-based body got there, but that won’t serve much here. Let’s skip that; what I won’t skip is the hotel room. 

Richard, Abdulaziz and Tosin, my fellow Nerdz, greeted me just as I stepped into the first floor lobby. We all walked to my room near the end of the hallway and they, cheeky guys, stood back as I marvelled at the large room I would be spending ten days in. The room is almost as big as my sitting room and the mirrored wardrobe is one I was sure my wife would bug me about when she sees it, and she did when she came visiting: can’t we get something like this, it’s fine o. 

I love that room, still do. I even miss it. Now I shouldn’t be talking about hotel rooms with nostalgia, but I recall us Nerdz lounging in that room that first day, planning how we would rock the ten-day holiday. That was before the classes started and the intensity of the work caught up with us.

Thinking about it now, I can’t help but wonder if the facilitators had not planned to ensure we work hard for the comfort provided. I remember complaining to a friend that the time I had spent sleeping on the large bed in my room wouldn’t have amounted to ten hours, and this was five days into the workshop. We had piles of stories to read, assignments to do and little time to do it. Ok, I am doing it again, running ahead of you. 

From the first day at the workshop, preconceived notions started falling like ripe mangoes whose host branches are under the ministrations of an eager youth. First, though the introductions did not say much about the abilities of the workshop participants, once we started reviewing entry stories, the quality of each person started to emerge, and the mark for each person was astonishingly high. In the group were Nigerians, a Nigerian-American, a Ghanaian, a Cameroonian, an Indian American and a South Africa based Nigerian. We had published authors and others whose work had been accepted for publication, but then there were greenhorns whose workshop entries were their first stab at writing. We had people from the middle class and upper middleclass, with degrees from universities overseas and we had serious ajekpako types who are products of the worst Nigerian education could offer. With this mix, you would be forgiven for thinking there were underdogs in the group. Well there wasn’t, not one. At the end, I could not point to one person and say, he/she has a brighter future on the literary scene. It could be anyone, or everyone. 

Second, Chimamanda defied all preconceived notions about her person, we knew we were coming to see an intellectual, but met a genius. One hour after I met her, I knew I was fooling myself thinking I only came for the networking. The lessons came, flowing through her soft words and finding willing receptacles in my hungry mind. She opened my heart to the craft in ways I never thought possible and she did it not by teaching in the conventional sense, but by talking to us as equals, as writers in our own right. After Chimamanda, it was easy to flow with the other teachers: 

• Aslak Myhre, the Norwegian who showed us the dangers of allowing outsiders write what should naturally be our stories; 
• Jeffery Allen, the black American that embraces his African heritage more firmly than we do, who taught the importance of writing with confidence; 
• Robert Spillman, the American writer and publisher, who opened our eyes to the possibilities that exist for our writing and showed us not how, but why our writing should be worth something; 
• and Binyavanga Wainaina, the force of nature, whose intellect can only be experienced, not described.

From them, we learnt valuable lessons about ourselves and our place, as writers, in our communities. Beyond lessons, we bonded. I can’t recall anyone in the group who wasn’t sad when Aslak had to go back to Norway days before the end of the workshop or who wasn’t touched by his “intelligence quotient” video that the class watched and reviewed. With the other teachers, we had our goodbyes at the literary evening that marked our graduation from Farafina Trust Writing Workshop. 

It was just ten days, yet it seemed like years. In all, it took ten days to make us not just better writers, but better chroniclers of our individual realities. We have been Farafina certified, and our work henceforth will speak this truth.

The Garden City Literary Festival features writers workshops yearly. This year, the prose workshop- would be facilitated by Doreen Baingana; poetry workshop by Lola Shoneyin and the children creative workshops would be facilitated by by Sola Alamutu and Polly Alakija. 

Favourite Five: Emmanuel Iduma

Emmanuel is a writer of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry, and has received recognition in each genre. Emmanuel is the co-founder of Iroko Publishing, which publishes Saraba.  In 2011, Emmanuel participated in the Invisible Borders Trans-African Photography Initiative, a road trip aimed at creating photographic and written material that addresses Africa from a more individualistic viewpoint. Farad is his first novel. 

He has this to say about his favourite five (plus one) books: This is really difficult for me. So I decided to find a pattern - the best five books I've read (or reread) since 2012 began.

The English Patient by Michael Ondaatje: Ondaatje is a favourite of many writers, and I think it's his language, the disarming way he uses words; he makes you feel like there's something you should uncover, some meaning that you'll keep searching for. The English Patient is a book that brought me to a new relationship with language.

Girl in The Hyacinth Blue by Susan Vremeer: I think it's this book's style that drew me in. I have been keenly interested in ways in which the novel can be rendered formless and yet not losing it's linearity. So in this book by Vremeer you find that a narrative is formed around the ownership of a painting across several generations. No character's story is told in more than one chapter. Very sexy, as they say.

Dreaming In Public: Building The Occupy Movement (various) - I received my copy of this book less than a month ago, yet it has become dog-eared. Anyways, this book brought me closer to the meaning of  the global Occupy Movement. My favourite essay in the anthology is by a blogger I admire, Keguro Macharia. It's amazing how he finds  an intersection between Kiberia and Washington DC.

Fine Boys by Eghosa Imasuen: This book is a favourite because I didn't have the kind of adolescence described in the book. Then of course, Eghosa's obsession with New Englishes is endearing as well.

My Journey As A Witness by Shahidul Alam: Earlier this year my friend and boss, Emeka Okereke, returned from Amsterdam with this book, signed by Dr Alam himself. It is a collage of photographs and text by Alam taken since the '70s. Reading through, and viewing the photos, I found myself captured by the sharpness of his eyes - the fact that sometimes the only thing that should be of interest to an artist is to ensure that he speaks to, about, for, his immediate environment. Shahidul Alam is a 'majority world' photographer from Bangladesh.

Night Train To Lisbon by Pascal Mercier: I love this book because it is infinitely quotable. I will not say more.

CATE Organises CleanUP&GreenUP

Children and the Environment (CATE) is organising its Let's Do It! Mushin, Lagos as its annual Cleanup and Greenup Your Neighbourhood Campaign.

Date: Saturday, 15 September. 

The cleaning exercise is supported by CATE members and friends-green organizations like Lagos State Waste Management Authority (LAWMA), Keys To Wellness (KTW), Positive Development Foundation (pdf), Youth Pioneer for Development Organisation (YPDO), Youth Vision Alliance Network (YVAN), Olaokecity Ventures and ICStudios. 

CATE's Sola Alamutu will facilitate the children creative workshops, along with Polly Alakija at the GCLF 2012.  

NLNG Prize for Literature 2012

An initial shortlist of ten books has been announced for the NLNG Nigeria Prize for Literature, 2012.

Lola Shoneyin, one of the GCLF guest writers is on the list. Hearty congratulations from the GCLF Team! We look forward to seeing her during the festival. She will facilitate the poetry workshop.

GCLF Writers' Workshop: Deadline Extended

Entries for the 5th edition of the annual Garden City Literary Festival Writers’ Workshop are now being accepted. The workshop will hold in October 2012.

The Writers’ Workshop is a creative platform where aspiring writers sit under the tutelage of their established counterparts. It is recommended for anyone who wants to improve their writing skills. Each applicant must indicate their preferred choice of workshop.

Application to more than one class will not be considered. Participants are required to submit samples of their writing (in line with requirement for the different genres) to info@gardencityfestival before Thursday, 13th September 2012, to secure a place.

More information here

Chika Unigwe: On Writing Night Dancer

The first time I heard the term, "Night Dancer", and had its meaning defined for me, I knew I had found the title for my then work-in-progress. "Night Dancer" is an Acholi word which means "witch". A witch, not necessarily in the sense of a broom-flying woman with a beaked nose and the  black cape, but of any woman who refuses to stay within the boundaries prescribed for her by Acholi culture. I am indebted to my good friend, the Ugandan writer, Monica Arac D'Nyeko for that information.

I thought of writing the story of Night Dancer long before I actually began writing it. When I was very young, there were always stories of men marrying second wives because their wives 'could not' give them sons. Those kind of stories were everywhere. It was obvious to me -even at that age- that there was something unfair in this (as not all of the older wives consented to sharing their husbands with another woman)   but somehow the men seemed to always get away with it blameless. It bothered me that many grown-ups I knew seemed to be understanding. I thought perhaps, such understanding came with adulthood. Yet the older I became, the less understanding of it I became. Night Dancer became my way of exploring why some people make those kind of choices and to imagine what happens when a woman refuses -in that kind of culture- to remain.

Every time I give birth, I am overwhelmed by the amount of love I feel for the new born. That love never goes away. I am aware that there is very little I would not sacrifice for my children. I also wanted to explore that kind of love. The one that keeps giving of itself. I started writing Night Dancer in 2008 at a residency in Italy. Thanks to a UNESCO fellowship, I had six weeks of freedom from household chores and daily worries with four children to dedicate myself to reading and writing. I wrote the first 10 000 words at that residency, cooped up in my room in the castle and only taking breaks to eat delicious lunch (thanks to the amazing trio of cooks), play ping-pong (with Daragh, a visual arts fellow), shop (with Jo Shapcott and Gabeba Baderoon, amazing poets) and eat dinner with everyone else. By the time I went home, both my story and I were fit enough to continue our relationship. I wrote in between school runs; shopping; cooking; laundry; helping the children with their homework. I synced my bedtime with that of my youngest's and woke around 1am to work for a few hours before catching a few more hours of sleep. It helped tremendously. By the time I went on a Rockefeller fellowship in 2009, I had a draft I could work on. The draft was reworked several times (I had a wonderful set of friends who read and made comments as well as my agent) before it was sold. And then with my editor, we tweaked it some more (removed some passages, replaced others) until we were as happy as we could be with the result.

Finishing  a book is always an emotional moment for me. The characters I have come to know so well begin to take their leave so that others can occupy the space they once occupied. They get ready to be released into the world, nurtured, and rounded and perfected as much as they possibly could. Every book demands a lot of its writer: time, dedication, love. The same as any good parent would give their children.

Chika Unigwe is an Afro-Belgian writer of Nigerian origin. She is the author of fiction, poetry, articles and educational material. Her second novel, On Black Sisters' Street, was published in Dutch in 2008 (as Fata Morgana) and in English in 2009. Night Dancer is her latest novel. 

TODAY is the International Literacy Day 2012

According to UNESCO, today is the International Literacy Day, 2012. This year's theme is Literacy and Peace. This theme was adopted by the United Nations Literacy Decade (UNLD) to demonstrate the multiple uses and value that literacy brings to people. 

Literacy contributes to peace as it brings people closer to attaining individual freedoms and better understanding the world, as well as preventing or resolving conflict. The connection between literacy and peace can be seen by the fact that in unstable democracies or in conflict-affected countries it is harder to establish or sustain a literate environment.

About the Day

For over 40 years now, UNESCO has been celebrating International Literacy Day by reminding the international community that literacy is a human right and the foundation of all learning. 

Tell us: how do you think that literacy can promote peace? 

Happy International Literacy Day from the GCLF team!

GCLF 2012 Bookfair

Kola Tubosun: on the NT LitMag

Oh well, here you are. I am going to tell you about the LitMag anyway, whether you want it or not.

The project began as an email from one editor to another. But that's not what you want to know. You want to know what we do, why we do it, how often we do it, and what the relevance of all of this is. So here it is: the LitMag is our baby from Nigerianstalk.org. I am the editor, which means that I get entries from all over the continent, read them, and prepare them for publication, and then publish them. The LitMag is published every two weeks.

You asked about reception? It has been fantastic, in fact. To reach more people, we got a twitter account at @NTLitMag through which we post newly published articles, as well as other literature related information. We have also been receiving entries from all over. 

My aim for the magazine is that we one day produce another Caine Prize winner. As an editor, I am biased for contributions that challenge expectations and form. You see, one of my favourite times as an undergraduate was sneaking into creative writing classes taught then by Professor Niyi Osundare. I wasn't registered for the class, but I was interested in getting an idea of what guys were writing during those times. The class was about poetry, and I learnt a lot. More importantly, I gained a better appreciation for variation in form and style. When I publish poem or prose on the LitMag, I am looking for work that give me that level of literary satisfaction.

So far we've published Kolade Ajayi, Richard Ali, Efe Okogu, Benson Eluma, Rotimi Babatunde, Dami Ajayi, Emanuel Iduma, Temitayo Olofinlua, Anja Choon, Olumide Abimbola, Peter Akinlabi, Temie Giwa, Ikhide Ikheloa, Teju Cole, and a number of authors some of whose names you haven't even heard before. It's true. Check out our back issues here. Again, it's important to note that the magazine is aimed at showing new work by new writers, or old writers writing in new ways. I seek poetry by authors known for prose. I seek prose from authors known for drama, etc. Something new, something fresh, something different.

So far, we've also published one tribute issue to Ify Agwu who died a couple of months ago. The next tribute issue will be for Rotimi Babatunde, the winner of this year's Caine Prize. Depending on the literary environment of the weekend when the issue is published, each edition will feature new work by new writers. Those work will include photography, poetry, prose, and plays.

There you have it. I hope this helps. You know how we do it, why we do it, and how many times we do it. You didn't ask if I think it's worth it, but the answer is yes. I like this new chance to add my voice to the literary environment of the continent.

Kola Tubosun is a linguist and fulbright scholar, editor-in-chief of the NTLitMag, online. Contributions should be sent to litmag@nigerianstalk.org

Onyeka Nwelue: On His Writing Journey

I became a writer before I knew I was a writer. It started when I was eleven years old, back in the seminary, where my parents sent me to fulfill their wild dreams for them: they told me that they promised their God that I would serve him. I had no right to argue with them. I joined forces and went to the seminary. After six years, when I was supposed to head to Trinity College, Okigwe, I headed straight to India, to write.

In India, I was attending the International Writers’ Festival. I was 18 years old then. I knew no one in India and I had no family, but I was determined to survive. I flew from Lagos to Mumbai. It was a direct flight. By the time I was in Mumbai, I took another flight to Delhi and when I got to Delhi, I took a taxi to Kurushektra, a state in the northern part of India. There, I met Abha Iyengar, one of India’s finest writers, who brought me back to Delhi and put me up in her home. I lived with her mother who found time to read every single thing I wrote. She treated me like her son and she reminded me that I was her son. 

Months after, I left India, I travelled down to Ethiopia and then I was back in India, depressed and broke. My father was happy to see me. My mother cried the day I walked into the house. My aunts and uncles hated me. They whispered to themselves: “He just went abroad to waste money we don’t have.” They annoyed me, because they didn’t give me any money. They annoyed me, because they didn’t say these things to me. Only one did an honourable thing: she threw me out of her house in Lagos honourably, by waking me up one early morning and saying, ‘Take this money. Go to your parents.’ I left.

My father invited me for a talk. We talked about India and slowly, we started talking about university education. I saw reasons with him and wrote JAMB, then got admission into the University of Nigeria, Nsukka to study Sociology & Anthropology. I was going to live with a professor and his wife. They are cool people. I had no problem living with them. They even started making me uncomfortable, with their pampering. I don’t like to be pampered. I left their house, without them knowing. I just packed out. I stayed on campus with some friends for a while. Same time, I was working on my novel, The Abyssinian Boy, rewriting pages and chapters, forcing the manuscript on my friends, Eromo Egbejule and Osondu Awaraka. They read and made delicate notes and since I had set my mind on getting my book published while in the university, I constructed a positive mindscape that I lived in. 

One day, while sitting in Osondu Awaraka’s room and arguing about religion with his roommates, Ayodele Arigbabu, publisher of DADA Books called me from Cape Town. He wanted one thing: to buy the West African rights to my book. He said he loved the book. I was more than excited. Was it not better to sell every right to him? I couldn’t control my excitement. We started work on the book and good things started happening. 

On the 24th of January, 2009, The Abyssinian Boy was launched in Lagos to a handful of Indians and Nigerians. Politicians made promises they couldn’t keep. I forgot about them. My father spoke to the audience and told them how elated he was. He was proud of me. I was also proud of him. My aunt that gave me money and threw me out of her house was there too. She was also proud of me. I was also proud of her for throwing me out bravely. At least, one dream had come true.

I’ve met everyone in The Abyssinian Boy. I have, at least, been to many of the locations I wrote about and everything that happens in it I imagined, but my imagination doesn’t deny the fact that they were inspired by things that happened to me. I created a people, a society that are at once, believable and magical realist. Wading through the streets of Delhi in real life, I needed to recreate the streets in the book; at first, I wanted to make it look like they are in real life, yet description in fiction is one thing you need to be careful with. For me, there was no single negative review of the book when it was released. Everyone loved it. Reviewers hailed it as ‘out-of-the-box’ and many people compared the style to that of Salman Rushdie. I was humbled. I knew I had been challenged. Why? My second book is expected to be better than the first. 

The Abyssinian Boy blessed me. And also cursed me. It brought instant fame that I didn’t imagine could come with a first book. I won some awards, prizes and nominated for another major youth award. I made radio and TV appearances. I spoke to high school students who were not interested in creative writing and kept begging them to accept writers and love them. I travelled from Nsukka to Kaduna to Abuja down to Awka and all over Nigeria. I met politicians who told me they were proud of me, but I knew they were mocking me. 

As the perfect opportunist that I am, I took advantage of the love people showered on me and moved on. The CEO of Africa Movie Academy Awards (AMAA), Peace Anyiam-Osigwe blessed me years after, by then, The Abyssinian Boy had been republished in India by Serene Woods and asked me to direct the first edition of Bayelsa Book & Craft Fair. It was a huge and challenging event. I was under a storm. I was not going to fail. I was going to host a community of writers and writers are not people you can please at all. What almost hampered me was my age: each moment I tried to do something, I thought about my age, but that was the greatest opportunity I ever got to ride on the back of success and I grabbed it. I organized the event in Yenogoa and the writers had fun. They went home, wrote about it and praised me so much. I almost cried. I was proud of myself once again. I felt like Pablo Ganguli, the organizer of Liberatum Festival, which hosts the biggest names in the arts and culture industries in the world. 

Back in Lagos, I became the editor of Film Afrique, the online film magazine. Sitting in my spacious office, I began to reach Pontas and today, I am signed to one of the biggest literary agencies in the world, Pontas Literary & Film Agency in Barcelona. But, I had to travel to Barcelona to sign. It was a beautiful experience. I went to Barcelona to sign my two year contract, not as a Nigerian footballer, but as a writer.

Sitting in my spacious office, I got my admission letter into the prestigious Prague Film School in the Czech Republic. I am writing this from my apartment in Prague, so believe me, this story, as simple as it sounds; it has not been an easy journey.

Onyeka Nwelue was born in 1988 in Nigeria. He has contributed reviews to Farafina magazine and other publications. His writings have appeared in The Sun, Wild Goose Poetry Review, Kafla Inter-Continental and The Guardian. He is the editor of Film Afrique, a primer on African film initiatives, he manages Blues and Hills Consultancy and is currently studying film making and directing. He was nominated as artist of the year for The 2009 Future Awards. The Abyssinian Boy is his first novel. He tells us about his favourite five books!