ktravula – a travelogue!

Another Kind of Poverty Gap: The Erosion of Language Diversity

(Being a paper delivered at the PyeonChang Humanities Forum at the Seoul National University Seoul, South Korea, on January 20, 2018 by Kọ́lá Túbọ̀ṣún. The audio recording of the talk can be found here)

 

Ẹ káàrọ̀ o. Good morning. Annyeonghaseyo.

First of all, let me express my profound appreciation to the organisers of this event for choosing me out of many to be here, among all these important people from around the world, to give you my own perspective on an important discussion. These are precarious times. And to be here in this place at this time to give a talk on a topic that is dear to my heart, is an honour. So, thank you. As we say in my language, adúpẹ́. I bring you greetings from West Africa.

I am here to speak about poverty. But before you assume that I am going in a predictable direction you have been familiar with from watching cable news from your different parts of the world about Africa, let me advise that you set a different expectation. My talk is about a different kind of poverty, one caused by exclusion, and one relating to one particular type of exclusion: language.

I come from Nigeria, a country of about 170 million people with over five hundred different languages and cultures. It is a place that offers as diverse a landscape in terms of both viewpoint and attitude to life. On the one hand, binaries can be found: The north is mostly conservative while the south is mostly liberal. The north is mostly arid and desert while the south is mostly rainforest and humid. On the other, we have an assemblage of cultures and languages which range from mildly intelligible dialects to distinct languages with no discernable cognate, even when they live around each other. This has made my country, Nigeria, a country created from a British colonial experiment, a very interesting place. From what I have read, this is not the same as what obtains here on the Korean peninsula, where Korean is generally described as a “language isolate”, with no discernable genetic or genealogical link with any neighbouring tongues.

Human migration and mandatory inter-mingling of tribes ensured that we are all exposed, in some way or the other, to characteristics of each other’s culture. Through warfare, conquests, and other forms of domination, a number of us have also become subservient, linguistically, to some larger languages around the country, such that, before the British came to colonize the whole swathe that makes up the country Nigeria, a certain linguistic mosaic had emerged. A mosaic, because it was not just one language which every others must speak, but several big languages, and several small ones, each occupying a particular space in the society, fulfilling particular roles in facilitating contact.

I bring up the linguistic character of my hometown to create an image in your minds of both diversity and richness. Even many decades after the colonial processes that were set in place to create a homogenous society out of colourful and diverse peoples, the mosaic is still evident, though not in as bold a colour as was many years ago. The changes started with colonialism, and the prevailing mindsets of the invading strangers from Europe and newly “educated” Africans that our languages could be discarded without consequences. It was a gradual change, reinforced with every government policy, every textbook recommendation, every change in the educational syllabus, and every recommended dress code in government offices. Today, we are a people whose worldview is being conditioned and defined by competence in a new language, English, to the exclusion of our own.

Let me address an important irony: that which concerns the fact that I am presenting this talk in English and not in my own language. I have, after all, advocated that Nigeria’s president use his own language (Hausa/Fulfde) whenever he is out of the country. If I were the president of Nigeria in this instance, Yorùbá nìkan ni mo máa sọ. Aá fi sílẹ̀ fún àwọn ògbifọ̀ láti ṣàlàyé (I’ll be speaking only in Yorùbá, leaving it to the translators to explain). This is a suggestion borne out of my belief that the head of state represents the country and its multilingualism. His or her decision to speak the nation’s language outside shows a pride in the language and provides jobs for translators living in that foreign country while portraying a complexity of that country’s cultural landscape.

The irony comes because the purpose of my talk here is to advocate for a return to the local language use and support, and to explain why I believe that the poverty of imagination is equally as tragic as a poverty of the stomach. You, my hosts in Korea, don’t seem to have this dilemma. Your language is one (unless we discuss the widening gap that is happening between the version spoken here in the South, and that one spoken in the North). You don’t have too many dialects of the language, and citizens of this country do not have hundreds more competing for attention. But you are also lucky in another way. Even though English is spoken here as a second language, Korean still holds an important place as a vessel for the culture of the people. You can think in the language. You can conduct all your daily activities in it. It has a distinct writing style, and children are taught how to use it. And big technological giants care enough about it, and your buying power, that they carry it along with every new tool they create.

This is not the same for the languages in my country.

The problem, like I mentioned earlier originated in the over-simplistic tools we chose for dealing with diversity, and in colonialism. But it has also been carried along by an attitude of the population that rather than assert individual identity or spend valuable time developing each language through use in literature and other means of transmission, we might as well surrender and adopt English as the only “uniting” language. Don’t ask me how successful that drive for unity is. But the result is a gradual attrition of local languages. As at the last count, about twenty-seven languages in the country are either vulnerable, critically endangered, or severely endangered. It doesn’t look like the situation will improve anytime soon because unlike what obtained in the country a couple of decades ago, we no longer teach local languages in schools. The new students we produce from schools each year will only claim English as their first language. This doesn’t mean that they will be accepted abroad as first language speakers since the term “native speaker” is imbued with more than mere language competence, but with both political and cultural characteristics. I’ve spoken about this in other forums. This leaves us, Nigerians, and many other post-colonial outposts around the continent, at a terrible psychological, social, economic, and even political disadvantage.

A more noticeable example of this kind of poverty comes with technology, which is my current focus as a writer and linguist. In some ways, it will be proper to look at the progress of today’s modern inventions through the lens of colonialism, carried into every part of the world on the back of convenience. From my part of the world, where we consume technology much more than we create it, a pattern has emerged. The new technological tools created to make life better for us are monolingual in nature. For an environment where thousands of languages are spoken, this is grossly deficient. And there’s no poverty as great as one that prevents a person from interrogating life in the language with which they are intimately familiar.

When I was in the university between 2000 and 2005, I used to wonder why Microsoft Word underlined my name with a red wriggly line whenever I typed it. But the answer was simple: Microsoft simply didn’t recognize a Yorùbá name. As long as the name wasn’t an English name, the red wriggly line showed you that something was wrong. So when I wrote my long essay, I did it on a project called a Multimedia Dictionary of Yorùbá Names. It was my way of introducing Yorùbá names to technology. Ten years later, I expanded the project to a fully functional and crowdsourced multimedia dictionary to which people can add new names, and improve current ones. And I did this not just for Yorùbá this time, but under the umbrella of what we called the African Language Project, we want to document all African languages and other intangible cultural materials like names, customs, norms, and words. As at this moment, there is no multimedia dictionary of Yorùbá on the internet. None that Africans can access on their phones at a moment’s notice. We are trying to create one. If more Africans who do not speak English at all, or as a first language, cannot interact with technology in their own language, then they are being left behind in the progress of technology. And that’s a powerful kind of poverty.

Around Nigeria today, there is barely any ATM machines that one can use in a local language. This means that people who only speak a local language will not put their money in banks, since the process of getting it out is onerous. Because of this, they are excluded from the big economy and thus remain poor. In a part of Northern Nigeria, poor farmers who need to work with modern implements have to first learn English before they can understand how to read the manuals. I know a couple of my friends who are working on artificial intelligence applications that can help these farmers communicate in Hausa and get access to all they need in a language they speak. But these efforts are far in-between. There’s a lot of work to be done, not just with widening the access that technology provides, but also in reading and producing literature, in engaging with participating in and discerning the details of our politics, and engaging with our everyday life. Like we say in Yorùbá, ọwọ́ ara ẹni la fi ń tún ìwà ara ẹni ṣe (“we have to use our own hands to fix our own issues”).

There are different kinds of poverty, all of them damaging to the dignity of man. A deprivation of language is one that is more pernicious than the rest because it deprives not just the body, but also the mind. The world is a colourful and delightful place to be in because of the multiplicity of languages and culture. I do not want to live in a world where only ONE language is spoken. That is a world that has lost its storehouses of wealth. We are all richer by the experiences we share from participating in each other’s cultures, language, worldview, and way of life. By working hard, and fighting hard in my own part of the world, to make sure that the movement of technology does not leave us behind in our own languages, we attack poverty, and build a new and exciting future that better reflects the mosaic; the colours, and the realities of the African – and our global – existence.

Thank you for listening. Kamsa hamida.

Another Kind of Poverty Gap: The Erosion of Language Diversity was published on January 21st, 2018, under the Academic, Linguistics, Observations, Opinion category. There are currently no comments on this article so far.

More than Ashẹ́wó: Kalakuta Queens Remembered

by Ọpẹ́ Adédèjì

 

One of the living Kalakuta queens, Ọláídé is on stage with Fẹ́mi Kútì and Yẹni Kútì, two of Fẹlá’s children. They are passing the microphone around reminiscing about a time when Fẹlá was alive. They speak fondly of him, as if he stepped out of the room and would be back any minute. They are smiling. It feels like we know Fẹlá personally, beyond the music and stories we have read of him. Bọ́lánlé Austen-Peters looks tired. She stands by the trio who keep praising her genius and creativity. She has just explained to the audience that intense rehearsals had been on since October and that the show started airing in December. They have one last show before they come back in April during the Easter break. Behind them, the complete cast and crew of Fẹlá and the Kalakuta Queens stand, still in their beautiful costumes, smiling at the audience. In a bit, we are allowed to climb up the stage to take pictures with the cast.

Ọláídé, one of the surviving Queens from Kalakuta Republic, seated to the far right in blue, while Fẹ́mi Kútì speaks and Yẹni with Bọ́lánlé Austen-Peters look on.

I particularly find the man who played Fẹlá – Ọláìtán Adéníji – intriguing. Apart from the fact that he did a great job with producing a close imitation of Fẹlá’s voice, mannerism, and movements, it is commendable that he has had no history or career in acting. He is an afro-jazz vocalist and saxophonist and prior to this time, definitely not an actor. The audience is awed when Bọ́lánlé says that his role as Fẹlá is his first acting role. Fẹlá, or rather Ọláìtán, smiles a modest smile. I take a picture of him. He is darker than the real Fẹlá but the resemblance is there.

On Terra Kulture’s website, they describe the event as a thrill of a lifetime. While I agree with this, I wish they had used a more adequate description. Fẹlá and the Kalakuta Queens was a thrill of a lifetime and more. It was a spiritual experience. I feel that this is the only way to capture its essence in a few words and evoke a true emotion.

In the wake of the #MeToo movement, the unveiling of several sexual harassment conducts against well-known members of the public and celebrities, especially in Hollywood, and the conversations around consent and feminism on social media, Fẹlá and the Kalakuta Queens is a timely production. It seems almost like Bọ́lánlé saw what 2017 had in store for women when she started preparing and doing research for the show a year ago. I can only imagine what extensive research and investigation she must have put into it because of Láídé and Fẹ́mi’s remark that the play is exactly what happened in real life. There is an emphasis on the ‘real life’. This leaves me short of words.

Bọ́lánlé explains that, while Fẹlá is continuously being praised for his incredibly unique music that has outlived him and promises to outlive us, no one ever talks about the women who stood by him. After his death, they sort of became relegated to the background, and their roles ignored. It was almost as if they had never existed in the first place. Every year in October, Felabration is celebrated widely in Lagos, and perhaps other parts of Nigeria, with musical performances, art exhibitions, stage plays, film shows and several other acts. But none of these acts recognize the 27 women who became his wives, who were an entourage of his band and more than anything, the inspiration behind some of his music. Bọ́lánlé’s introduction of this narrative to Fẹlá’s living story is brilliant.

The play details the scorn these women faced from being with Fẹlá. Láídé says this. She tells us some of the adventures she had with Fẹlá and the other queens. She narrates the story the way a grandmother would tell stories to her grandchildren. This is not to say Láídé is in any way an aged lady. She is merely in her 60s but looks at least a decade younger. It is almost impossible to imagine her as the troublemaker Fẹ́mi calls her. (In return, she calls him “Ọmọ-ọmọ Ìyá Àjẹ́” – a nickname that continues the moniker that used to be attached to Fẹlá himself: Ọmọ Ìyá Àjẹ, meaning “the son of the witch-godmother”. The witch-godmother was Fúnmiláyọ̀ Ransome-Kútì. Ọmọ-ọmọ means “grandson”). She tells us of the numerous times the police arrested her and the queens, of how the queens beat the Ghanaian police officers who had arrested them, and how they were eventually deported to Nigeria. She says this amidst our laughter. Many times during the play, the women were referred to as prostitutes – ‘ashẹ́wó’ the policemen often screamed into their faces. Láídé who has probably heard this one too many times in her life, reminds us blatantly and continuously that the queens were not prostitutes. ‘We were not prostitutes,’ she says. But the relevant question here is not ‘who were these women?’ The question is, ‘why were they so keen on supporting Fẹlá? They supported him to the extent that they were raped and beaten by police officers. Why were they so ready to give it all up, in order to stand with this rebellious musician? And why did Fẹlá marry all 27 of them?

“Sister Ọláídé”(right), as many people in Kalakuta Republic knew her, was a close confidant of Fẹlá’s mother, Mrs. Fúnmiláyọ̀ Ransome-Kútì (middle). Both of them are pictured here with Fẹlá’s lawyer (left) during one of Fẹlá’s court appearances. <b>Photo credit:</b> Kalakuta Museum, Lagos.

Fẹlá Kútì was absolutely nothing without his queens. Ọládọ̀tun Babátọ́pẹ́ Ayọ̀bádé writes in the dissertation the ‘Women that danced the fire dance: Fẹlá Kuti’s Afrobeat Queens, Performance and the Dialectics of Postcolonial identity’ that the women were indispensable actors in the making of Afrobeat music as well Fela’s rise to prominence as a musician and activist. The author adds however that their collaboration with Fẹlá’s anti-government ideologies as well as their often-eroticized stage performances made them special targets of state-organized violence and earned them contempt from the Nigerian society. In this play we see state actors vis-à-vis Nigerian police officers continuously demeaning and harassing them. On why they have been ignored by history despite their critical role in elevating Afrobeat music to a global level, the author writes: ‘they have been imagined as indecent underclass women undeserving of Afrobeat’s collective memorializing or as collateral damage of Fẹlá’s political and personal excesses.’

The play ran for nearly three hours. Starting around past three, music from a live band serenaded us while the lights were still on and people networked, or caught up with old friends. The music gave off Yorùbá party vibes that I felt were just right. This set the stage for the play. But the Fẹlá vibes did not start here. At the entrance, there is graffiti and the words “Afrika Shrine” inscribed. In the ticketing area and beyond, you are welcomed by photographs of the Kalakuta Queens, of Fẹlá and some of his more famous quotes like “water e no get enemy.” This gives you goosebumps even before Fẹlá’s incarnate walks on stage. When it is time for the play to begin, the lights dim. A eulogy of Fẹlá opens up the show, intensifying the mystery and its spirituality.

There is a tendency to criticize Nigerian stage plays – at least the popular ones, as being too musical in nature. Critics ascribe the stunted growth of Nigerian theatre to this, poor plots and terrible acting.  Theatre critics also attribute the lack of growth to lack of theatres and other like spaces. While these concerns are valid, Bọ́lánlé Austen-Peters has carved out a niche in musical stage plays that continues to thrive. The construction of the new Terra Arena where Fẹlá and the Kalakuta Queens holds, further reduces the dilemma. Previous BAP productions: Saro and Wakaa the Musical held at the Muson Centre. Muson is a great space, but it is not necessarily homely. I find that what the less than spacious Terra Arena theatre does is to make things somewhat informal and yet attractive. Brymo’s concert in December attests to this. And this, I feel, is one of the reasons Kalakuta Queens was such a hit. Characters from the play sometimes walk from amidst the audience unto the stage. The audience itself is more often than not a part of the play in the way we raise our hands up in salutation to Fẹlá, sing along, and cheer with every performance.

When they perform for the first time, they are dressed in white costumes their faces painted in different colors, shapes and lines. They dance in red light and other times in blue, green and yellow lights. Their entire look, from their natural hair wigs to colourful costumes and bead ornaments made the play authentic. It was increasingly important for me that the originality of the entire play went beyond Ọláìtán’s close resemblance to Fẹlá. I wanted to feel this same sense of originality with the other characters. BAP did not disappoint. In 1983, Bernard Matussière took some beautiful shots of the Fẹlá queens. In the main, their portrayal by the actors in this show hews as close enough as possible to a true approximation of their appearance, skills, and dance dexterity. Around the world today, several stylists and fashion icons have drawn inspiration from the bold makeup and hairstyles of Fẹlá’s wives.

The beauty in their choreographies and dancing cannot be overemphasized. Their moves certainly mesmerized the audience. Through the show, I imagined their motions being trapped into an art frame and exhibited like photographs. Though Fẹlá’s 10 to 20 minutes songs have a life of their own, the dance these women brought to accompany them gave a deeper meaning to what it means for a song to be alive. It is without a doubt that the dancing of the Kalakuta queens made Fẹlá’s songs a complete package back then, as they did on stage during the play. It was a whole new level of energetic, sensual and majestic.

The play is hilarious. Think of the way in which Lọlá Shónẹ́yìn’s Secret Lives of Baba Segi’s Wives is hilarious, the way in which it showcases a Nigerian polygamous home and is still poignant but not crude in the messages it passes. It is in this same way that Fẹlá and the Kalakuta Queens is hilarious and serious at once. The women struggle and compete for Fẹlá’s attention. They plot against and fight with one another, often using music and dance to pass on their messages. They find a common rival in the beautiful Malaika, the woman from London who says she has come to study Fẹlá and the queens, particularly the queens. They become agitated when they notice that Fẹlá has fallen for her, and that she has gained monopoly over the Kalakondo. As with when they stand with Fẹlá, they unite as one in order to throw her out of the Kalakuta Republic. It is interesting though, that while the women stand with Fẹlá when he is arrested, Malaika does not, further establishing her traitor-hood.

A particularly interesting scene is the court scene. After Fẹlá is arrested the first time, he is taken to court and charged with the abduction of the girls and possession of marijuana. He pleads not guilty and the judge asks the lawyers to present their case. The court clerk is a side-splitting character who seemed to overdo his role but still got the audience laughing. The claimant’s counsel presented witnesses who were emotionally inept at giving a clear and concise testimony. The first witness, Láídé’s mother, cries all through her testimony at the witness stand. The second witness is an aunt to one of the queens, Lará. Though she does not cry, she still presents a poor testimony in poor English. The two women stare at Fẹlá accusingly. While they can prove no clear case against the musician, there is another perspective when Lará’s aunt reveals that her niece is underage. On this count and on the count of being in possession of marijuana Fẹlá is convicted and sentenced.

The women call Fẹlá ‘king’, ‘Black President’ and ‘Abàmì Ẹ̀dá.’ He calls them his queens. He says, “I love all my queens. They are unpretentious and are ready to battle with me. Without them, I am nobody”.  When Fẹlá decides to marry the women, he does not do it for selfish reasons. He learns that his queens are unhappy because despite standing by him, despite being dancers, singers and activists in their own right because they are women, they would never do right by society. People would continue to mock them and refer to them as ‘ashẹ́wó’. So he felt the right thing to do would be to marry them. At first, people – his lawyer, Tunji Braithwaite inclusive – try to dissuade him from marrying the twenty-seven at once. He is told that he would be prosecuted for bigamy. But this does not move him. The women are delighted to hear he is going to marry them. In an article on She Leads Africa, Halima Bakenne writes, “Marriage offers some form of validation for women in Nigeria and maybe even other parts of Africa. It is believed that irrespective of what a woman achieves, she is nothing without a man.” This succinctly describes the motive behind Fẹlá’s marriage to the queens. A priest conducts the marriage ceremony. This is followed by a brief performance after which the show ends.

One of my favorite scenes in the play is Ihase’s performance. After the police destroyed their house and abused them, they were taken to the hospital. At the hospital, Ihase broke into soul-wrenching music. Her powerful voice reverberated across the quiet, still hall. In this same scene, Fẹlá is being treated on a gurney and behind him, in the projector, his spirit is depicted as coming out of his body – death and later on, as the music intensified, returning. Fẹlá Kútì later confirms that his father had mentioned that he once died and returned. This scene is also painful to watch. It reminds me of war-torn countries and daily domestic and street violations of women in Nigeria. It reminds me that sexual assault and domestic abuse are still endemic in our society, just as they were in the 80s. It reminds me that while most of the world has joined in on the #MeToo movement, Nigeria is still lagging behind.

There are so many take-homes from this stage play, like most stage plays and generally from Fẹlá’s life. Despite his many flaws and the seeming patriarchal nature of his relationship with the queens, he never disrespected them. He treated them equally. Their place in history has been reintroduced and there’ll hopefully be more public recognition and appreciation for their role in his life story as time goes on. When I climb the stage to take a picture with Láídé after curtain call, I smile at her and kneel beside her. I say to her: ‘thank you for sharing your story with us.’

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The play/musical Fẹlá and the Kalakuta Queens ran from mid-December 2017 to January 14, 2018 at Terra Kulture Arena. It is billed to return in April 2018. Photo credit: KTravula.com, Tobe, and Kalakuta Museum.

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Ọpẹ́ Adédèjì dreams about a lot of things but most especially about bridging the gender equality gap and working with the United Nations. If you do not find her writing, you would find her reading a novel. She is the co-founder of Arts & Africa.

More than Ashẹ́wó: Kalakuta Queens Remembered was published on January 18th, 2018, with the tags , , , , , , , under the Art, Drama, Literature, Observations, Review category. There are currently no comments on this article so far.

Finding Home in Writers’ Words

I watched the Lagos performance of Efe Paul’s Finding Home earlier in December. It held at an underground bunker in Ìlúpéjú and featured an array of bold and exciting voices, including some of Nigeria’s best spoken word acts.

The concept of the show always fascinated me since I first came across it in November 2014. Then it featured a different cast, including Sheila Ojei, and Bassey Ikpi (who has now relocated to the United States), among others. But the format was the same: a show designed around migration and movement, and built from the ground up with the words and stories of the individual poets and performers who make up the cast, and who are at liberty to create characters to advance the theme.

I found that not only fascinating but innovative. But I wasn’t able to see it.

Spoken word performance is a relatively young genre in Nigeria, but you won’t know by watching its biggest headliners perform, be it at art events in Abẹ́òkuta or opening events at Freedom Park, be it reciting inaugural poetry for the Nigerian president or harnessing the power of metaphors to sell the services of a commercial bank. The words move, and excite, and provoke, and instruct. From Wana Udobang’s emotive and playful dexterity to Chika Jones’ soft cadences that packed a punch; from Efe Paul’s baritone and theatrical evocations of truths to Títílọpẹ́ Ṣónúgà’s vulnerable but assertive tenderness; from Sage Hassan’s intense rebelliousness to Dike Chukwumerije’s eclectic experimentations, those who have braved the wilderness of this new and fascinating stage have brought with them a range of creative expressions before only seen in drama. So, when a play was constructed from these kinds of creative manifestations and fashioned around a contemporary theme, the result is always interesting to see.

Finding Home is, thus, not about one thing. It’s about many: a young man who takes all his savings in order to move to a new world in search of the golden fleece, a young woman who marries for visa, an immigrant who was ratted out for deportation by someone of their skin colour, or refugees who found themselves in the bottom of the ocean rather than the promised land. These kinds of stories are what the show is about, told mostly in the first person, with sound effects, mimesis, and playacting, in ways that carried the audience along with the ups and downs of each tragedy or triumph.

We leave because we have learned that staying still will kill you faster than moving.
So when home becomes a mad song from a broken guitar,
And it feels like the entire universe is playing you,
Let your fading footsteps become drum beats of victory and let them say: He was a good man, but when home becomes the stench from a rotting carcass, even the best men, leave.

– Chika Jones

There were other innovations. The show was performed in a semi-circle, for instance, with the actors facing different parts of the “stage” at different times. This gave it a sense of familiarity and intimacy, but also a kind of limitation. It will be interesting to see how it is realized on a flat conventional stage.

There was also an innovative but sometimes frustrating foreign language element.

One of the actors, Tanasgol Sabbagh, performed only in German – a brilliant invention that both illustrated the international dimension of the theme and the fact that the play had recently been shown in Germany, courtesy of the Goethe Institut. But in Lagos on this cool Sunday night, surrounded by bilingual speakers of only English and another Nigerian language, her part felt almost alien. And yet in that alienation is another realization of an important dimension of home or homelessness. How many immigrants, like those portrayed in many tragic instances in the play and in real life, get the chance to be fully understood before being sold off to slavery, or strapped to airplane seats and deported (in the best case scenario), or killed in cold blood in the back alleys of drug and gang-controlled slums of Europe and America?

The play, then, was both a communal contemplation of loss and survival as it was an examination of conditions that continue, all around the world today (accentuated, of course, by the prevailing news at the time, of the sale of Nigerians in Libya as modern-day slaves) to dehumanize immigrants, their stories, their bodies, and their condition. It was also an important twist on the character of spoken word as being just a one-man craft. Under the creative director of Fẹ́mi Elúfowójù, the cast showed what can be done when creativity and cooperation are harnessed to economy. There wasn’t much costume change, and much of the show played out in the plain site of the audience without any negative impact on the plot movement or overall message.

Is Finding Home a drama or a poetry production? Don’t ask. I’ll certainly see it again. I just hope there’s more music next time, by the characters, even if they are sad ones.

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Cast members: Efe Paul Azino, Chika Jones, Títílọpẹ́ Ṣónúgà, Ndukwe Onuoha. Obi Ifejika. Adeṣọlá Fakile. Tanasgol Sabbagh and Fẹ́mi Lẹ́yẹ.

 

Finding Home in Writers’ Words was published on December 31st, 2017, with the tags , , , , , , , under the Drama, Literature, Poetry, Review category. There are currently no comments on this article so far.

Aké Festival (2017): A Volunteer’s Recap

By Deaduramilade Tawak

I decided to volunteer at Aké for the festival this year because I wanted the experience of what it was like to be on the other side. I am not new to volunteering, whether for events or organisations, but if I was accepted, this would be the first time that I’d be volunteering for an event of this type and scale. I had applied to volunteer last year, but was not selected (I went as a visitor, but only on the last day because my leave wasn’t approved), so I wasn’t very hopeful.

Photo credit: David Adélékè

Three weeks to the festival, I receive an email from Ify (who is the Administrative Manager for the festival) saying I have been selected as a volunteer. In the email is a document with Terms and Conditions to be signed, but I’m still waiting on leave approval. The document also includes the rules and regulations for volunteers: no chewing gum on duty, no smoking on duty, no asking guests for money or favours, no fighting and so on. Finally, two weeks to Aké, and two days before the deadline for accepting the volunteer offer, I receive confirmation of leave approval, so I print, sign, scan and send the document.

Reinhard Bonnke’s farewell rally will be ending on Sunday, the day volunteers are expected to arrive in Abeokuta for the festival. We decide to leave as early as possible to avoid traffic, but not too early that we’d have to wait hours before seeing Ify, who is in charge of volunteers. We being myself, Afọpẹ́fólúwa, and Opẹ́yẹmí (whom I’d found by asking around for volunteers leaving from Lagos). I’d gone to Abẹ́òkuta myself the year before, and although it wasn’t a bad experience, I felt that I’d be more comfortable if I had familiar faces on the journey.

Photo credit: David Adélékè

We leave Lagos shortly after 11am, and I sleep for the entire journey and wake up at the exact moment we arrive at Kuto Park, Abẹ́òkuta, not far from the Cultural Centre where the festival will hold. We take a cab to the centre and meet another volunteer (Ona) waiting. We have 4 hours to kill. Fortunately, I have books, my phone, and three other ladies to keep me company. Slowly, other volunteers begin to arrive. First Yetunde, another first-time volunteer, then Stephanie, another veteran volunteer, and then a stream of young men and women I do not know or recognize.

Ify arrives and we have a “family meeting” where we introduce ourselves — most people are from Lagos, many of us are writers — and are given a quick break down of what the week will be like. Lọlá Shónẹ́yìn arrives at some point. The truck with the books and the other things we’re supposed to sort hasn’t arrived, so we headed to our hotel to group ourselves into rooms. I pick Ona as my roommate. Dinner of jollof rice appears soon after, and we rest a bit before heading back to the venue to help offload the truck. When this is done, we’re each given two orange volunteer shirts, then it’s good nights.

On Monday, we’re grouped into teams, and I’m placed at the registration desk. I’ve been warned by my friend, Ọpẹ́, who had volunteered for the past two events to try to avoid that designation. Being at the front desk means that you miss most, if not all, of what happens during the festival. She’s right. I miss out on all the interesting panels, but catch pieces of conversations as people move from one panel session to another. There are five other people with me including Ona, Yétúndé and Stephanie.

We start with sorting bags and tags for guests, visitors, press, and crew. There’s some downtime, during which I read my copy of What It Means When A Man Falls From The Sky by Leslie Nneka Arimah. There’s more sorting, packing, getting to know each other, setting up, tweeting, chatting, and reading. Somewhere in the middle of all this, there’s a call. I have to leave for Lagos very early the next day. I inform Ify of this development.

I leave for Lagos at 7pm AM, my business takes longer to sort than I expected, so I get back to Abeokuta at about 5pm. I’m told that I haven’t missed much, and registration starts shortly after I arrive. I work out a system to get through registration quickly. We register guests and attendees till around 9pm.

From Wednesday till Saturday, I spend all my time at the registration desk, except for when I go for food breaks or toilet breaks. This is where I get Mona Eltahawy to sign my copy of Headscarves and Hymens. This is where I get to meet Bim Adéwùmí, who is one of the major reasons I decided to attend the festival. This is where I finally put faces to names and Twitter handles. This is where I develop an addiction to kòkòrò. This is where I catch up with people I never see, except at these things. This is where I find out about and enter the Aké Festival giveaway, which I will come to later. Being at the registration desk means that I meet almost everybody who came for the festival. It also means I have to smile a lot, even when I’m tired and hungry, and when I’m upset because almost everybody else who’s supposed to be helping at the registration desk is not.

One of the highlights of my time at Abẹ́òkuta isn’t at the festival, but in a small hotel room party a few minutes away from the hotel where volunteers are lodged. Another highlight is the Palmwine and Poetry night. I caught the tail end of the event, as we closed the registration desk at about that time. I came in in the middle of Poetra’s relatable poem on feminism, and I also heard Koleka Putuma perform a few poems. The brightest highlight is winning the book grant.

At the end of the event, Lọlá Shónẹ́yìn gives a thank you speech, after which I am announced as the winner of the Aké Festival book grant. I have won N25,000 to buy books at the festival bookshop. The night, and the festival, ends with a party.

The next day, we go back to the Cultural Centre to pack up the bookshop, I redeem my books, and combined with books received as late birthday gifts, I leave Aké with 16 nooks, and the stipend volunteers receive at the end of the festival.

Aké is always a delight.

Photo credit: FuadXIV

Even if you’re stuck behind a registration desk for all 4 nights and 3 days of the festival, and have to make do with a barely good DJ (last year’s DJ was great) at the closing party you’d been looking forward to since Day 1. Being surrounded by friends and people you admire, Africa’s best writers, upcoming writers, book lovers, and art aficionados, and managing to listen in on concerts and performances happening close to the front desk make up for it.

Literary festivals are delightful because they are a few days of mingling with people, who for the most part, enjoy the things you enjoy. I have attended Aké as a [one day] visitor, now, a volunteer, and, next year, a full event visitor, or maybe a guest (a girl can dream).

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Déàdúràmiládé Tawak is a reader, writer, and researcher. She was the second runner-up in the CREETIQ Critic Challenge 2017, and has had her flash fiction, essays, interviews, and reviews published in Brittle Paper, Athena Talks, Africa in Dialogue, and Arts and Africa. She lives in Lagos and tweets from @deaduramilade.

Aké Festival (2017): A Volunteer’s Recap was published on December 17th, 2017, with the tags , , , under the Guest Post, Literature category. There are currently 1 comment on this article so far.

My Books of 2017

It’s becoming cliché to say that the year flew by pretty fast, but that happened this year again, and I have a number of books to thank for providing a hiding place from the overwhelming nature of reality. Now, the time has come to take stock of progress and setbacks, and to reminisce about the delight that words in print provided to carry one through a tumultuous year.

(You can find my Books of 2016 here)

Here are books I read, wrote, or contributed to this year, in no particular order. Where a link is provided, it’s usually to a review of the work that I wrote.

Books I Completed

  1. Stay With Me by Ayọ̀bámi Adébáyọ̀
  2. The Yearning by Mohale Mashigo
  3. When We Speak of Nothing by Olumide Popoola
  4. Taduno’s Song by Odafe Atógun
  5. A Good Mourning by Ogaga Ifowodo
  6. The Heresiad by Ikeogu Oke
  7. Songs of Myself by Tanure Ojaide
  8. Like a Mule Bringing Ice Cream to the Sun by Sarah Ládípọ̀ Manyika
  9. I Wrote This For You by Samira Sanusi
  10. The Kindness of Enemies by Laila Aboulela
  11. Slipping by Lauren Beukes
  12. The Birth of a Dreamweaver by Ngugi wa Thiong’o
  13. Welcome to Lagos by Chibundu Onuzor
  14. Níyì Ọ̀ṣúndáre: A Literary Biography by Sule E. Egya
  15. Grass to Grace by Ayọ̀ Bámgbóṣé
  16. America their America by JP Clark

I enjoyed all the books I completed this year, especially in the prose department. Ayọ̀bámi Adébáyọ̀’s anticipated debut blew me away in a number of ways, and perplexed me in others. I also enjoyed Mohale Mashigo’s debut which explores trauma and mental illness, Olúmìdé Pópóọlá’s delightful prose and a story of friendship, Lauren Beukes’s collection of dystopian stories, and Sarah Manyika’s beautiful and unconventional book about love in old age. I think I should read more non-conventional prose like these in the next year. Normal is boring.

I was honoured to be able to speak with Laila Aboulela in Kaduna in July, discussing her historical novel The Kindness of Enemies. I’ve always found work that incorporate elements of fact into fiction to be very engaging. That way I can pretend that it’s nonfiction when it is really not. I loved Taduno’s Song for the same reason. I look forward to reading more of such work.

Started But Not Finished

  1. A Woman’s Body is a Country by Dami Àjàyí
  2. Masks of Light by Robert Eliot Fox
  3. What It Means When a Man Falls from the Sky by Lesley Nneka Arimah
  4. Are You Not a Nigerian? by Báyọ̀ Olúpohùndà
  5. The Pleasure of the Text by Roland Barthes
  6. The Book of Memory by Pettina Gappah
  7. The Sellout by Paul Beaty
  8. Facade by Emem Uko
  9. The Idiot by Elif Batuman
  10. Beyond Linguistics and Multilingualism in Nigeria: Essay on linguistics and multilingualism, language in education, English language, Yoruba language & Literature by Ayọ̀ Bámgbóṣé.
  11. Beethoven Was One-Sixteenth Black by Nadine Gordimer
  12. In Praise of Slowness: Challenging the Cult of Speed by Carl Honoré

Speaking of delightful prose, one book I can’t wait to finish is Lesley Nneka Arimah’s What It Means When a Man Falls from the Sky. It is my first time reading anything she’s written and I’m blown away. Thanks to the folks at Farafina for sending me a complimentary copy. The book is a collection of short stories each carrying a heavy punch. Her words are sweet and svelte, capable of telling a story, no matter how difficult, with care and beauty. Two of my friends, Báyọ̀ Olúpohùndà and Dami Àjàyí also published a book each this year, and I look forward to spending quality time with them. I’ve read Àjàyí’s book as a manuscript, and many of the articles in Olúpohùndà’s when they were newspaper columns. But I look forward to reading them again. I also highly recommend Robert Eliot Fox’s collection of poetry, published by a publishing outfit by Frank Chipasula whom I met for the first time in Abu Dhabi in April.

Bought But Not started.

  1. Nollywood by Jonathan Haynes
  2. Arrows of Rain by Okey Ndibe
  3. White Lagos by Pẹ̀lú Awófẹ̀sọ̀
  4. Al Franken: Giant of the Senate by Al Franken
  5. King Baabu by Wọlé Ṣóyínká
  6. The Fisherman by Chigozie Obioma
  7. Letterman: The Last Giant of Late Night by Jason Zinoman
  8. Dialogue With My Country by Niyi Ọ̀súndáre
  9. The Translator by Laila Aboulela
  10. A Black Man in the White House by Cornell Belcher
  11. Kintu by Jeniffer Nansubuga Makumbi
  12. Who Thought This Was a Good Idea? And Other Questions You Should Have Answers to When You Walk in the White House by Alyssa Mastromon

Of these twelve, the one less likely to be read in a hurry now is Al Franken’s autobiography which I was actually looking forward to. His resignation from the Senate amidst allegations, by about eight women, of sexual impropriety will certainly cast a shadow on any of the jokes he makes in the work about working with women. Not like the Letterman story will be any less cringe-inducing, but one of them managed to escape unscathed from public life. Some irony in that. Both of them, however, still occupy a very important place in American public life, as well as in comedy. I bought the Nollywood book at the Lagos Conference this summer, on impulse purchase, and because the author was there. But don’t know when I’ll ever get to it now. It does look like a good reference material on the story of Nigeria’s thriving movie industry though. I also look forward to reading Okey Ndibe’s Arrows of Rain which actually preceded his memoir published last year. Will be interesting to trace his creative development and style.

Publications my works appeared in.

  1. GENERAL NONFICTION. Saraba Magazine’s published its first print issue this year, titled Transitions. In it, I have a nonfiction piece, co-written with Tèmítáyọ̀ Ọlọ́finlúà titled “House 57”, about a house in Ìbàdàn that means a lot to me, but also carries an important story that touches more than just its immediate characters.
  2. REVIEWS AND INTERVIEWS. I published a number of reviews and interviews on Brittle Paper this year, of works of writers like Sarah Ládípọ̀ Manyika, Ngugi wa Thiong’o, Níyì Ọ̀ṣúndáre, Chibundu Onuzor, Odafe Atógun, Lauren Beukes, Tádé Ìpàdéọlá, and Wana Udobang. I also published a couple of works on AfricanWriter.com, most notably my interview with Yẹ́misí Aríbisála (February 2017) and Titilope Sonuga (July 2017). I also joined This is Africa later in the year as a resident interviewer, publishing interviews with Dami Àjàyí (October 2017), Abubakar Adam Ibrahim (November 2017), and Igoni Barrett (December 2017). In Ake Review 2017, I have an interview with debut author Ayọ̀bámi Adébáyọ̀ on her work, her process, and on the presentation of women in fiction. It’s aptly titled “There’s Not One Way to Write a Feminist Character” — a quote taken directly from the author’s response to a question I had posed.
  3. ESSAYS. Earlier in March, my literary essay In the Shadow of Context was published in Enkare Review. It was later nominated for the Brittle Paper Award for Think Pieces. In June, I contributed an essay titled Wetin Dey? Nigerian Pidgin and its Many Pikin as a preface to Inua Ellams’s Barbershop Chronicles staged and published by the UK National Theatre. In November 2017, my essay appeared in Il Suono di Pan an anthology edited by Prof. MM Tosolini and launched at Cividale del Friuli, near Udine in November 2017. The essay was titled The Suspended Leg in the Tripod of Identity: Yorùbá Around the World Today. it was also translated to Italian.
  4. FEATURES. In January this year, Latterly Magazine’s Ashley Okwuosa shadowed me around places in Ìbàdàn where I grew up, asking relevant questions about my work as a writer and linguist. We visited Àkóbọ̀, the University of Ìbàdàn, and she met a couple of my professors. The result was a long profile titled “The Yorùbá Guardian” in the Spring Issue of the magazine. So, while this is technically not my work, it’s one I’m glad to have participated in.

Books Lost

This one is a tragedy A book I’ve had with me since 2002 was “borrowed” from me without my permission while I was attending the Kaduna Book and Art Festival (KABAFEST). Still waiting for whoever has it to send it back, graciously.

Hello 2018!

Thinking back, it’s hard to believe I read (or wrote) this much this year. My pocket certainly doesn’t believe it. There are so many more books I have bought and I’m looking forward to reading. The complete works of Nnedi Okorafor, for instance. Something tells me that the time for sci-fi and fantasy fiction is upon us. Every year I promise myself not to buy more books than I can read. I’ve failed this year, but 2018 is another year.

So, what books did you read and enjoy this year? And will you lend me to read?

My Books of 2017 was published on December 9th, 2017, with the tags , , , , , under the Literature category. There are currently no comments on this article so far.