(Episodic Variations on the Ripples of a Primal Scream)
I
I can’t breathe
I can’t breathe
I can’t bre
I can’t
I can’t
I. . . .
*
2020: Black Lives Matter
1965: I AM A MAN
*
There are countless ways
Of lynching without a rope
*
The casualties were fewer than we ever expected:
10 Persons
&
1,000 Negroes
*
For every Black in college
There are a hundred more in prison
*
So many centuries on,
America still has a “Negro Problem”
*
My skin is my sin,
Sings Bluesman with the wailing strings,
My very life is an “underlying condition”
For countless afflictions
*
And the Media Sage responds:
Racism is America’s Original Sin
Violence, its inalienable companion
*
There is a common crime in town:
Breathing While Black (BWB)
*
Mr. George Floyd committed two cardinal crimes:
He was Black
He was big
*
Black Lives Matter
Black Life Martyrs
*
Asked Louis Armstrong, the Smiling Trumpetman:
What did I do to be so black and blue?
II
Black Life Martyrs,
Their voices rise from their untimely graves:
Amadu Diallo, Eric Garner, Michael Brown, Tamir Rice, Walter Scott, Freddie Gray, Botham Jean, Breanna Taylor, Philando Castille, Trayvon Martin, Ahmaud Arbery, George Floyd. . . . .
Any Hall of Fame
For Trophies from Police hunts?
*
To be and not to be
To wallow in want in a sea of wealth
To shout and not be heard
To stand and not be seen
To sow and never to reap
To live all your life below the Law
To be stopped and frisked stopped and frisked stopped and frisked stopped and. . . . .
To be told countless times
To forgive and then forget
*
Yess Sur, Yes Maa’m. . . .
Put them at ease with your Negro smile
Your low, low, bow and your high regard
That cool façade is your saving grace
The “Angry Black Man” is as good as dead
*
911, 911, 911, 911
My name is Sue,
Calling from my car in City Park
There’s a big black male around
Whose big dark shadow is menace to my sight
Please send a cop; my life is at risk
*
Choke-hold, choke-hold
Stranglehold and dash and dangle
400 years of knee-on-neck
*
Our Police know their oath:
To serve
&
To protect
*
The Police Chief took a knee
The Sheriff followed in tow
Is this a genuine genuflection
To Kaepernick’s treason
Or patronizing bribe of momentary appeasement?
*
And the Emperor snarls
From the bunker of his White Castle
Vowing “vicious dogs and ominous weapons”
Rolling in guns to “dominate the streets”
His unhappy nation now his “battlespace”
*
Black Lives Matter
Black Life Martyrs
*
Asked Louis Armstrong, the smiling Trumpetman:
What did I do to be so black and blue?
*
I can’t breathe
I can’t breathe
I can’t bre. . . . .
I. . . .
______
Niyi Osundare is a prolific Nigerian poet, dramatist and literary critic. A champion of free speech, his art and criticism is associated with activism. His work is taught in Nigerian schools and recipient to many Nigerian and International prizes. He sends this from New Orleans. June 7, 2020.
Jos is a small town in Plateau State, in the middle of Nigeria, at approximately 1200 metres above sea level, making it one of the highest points in the country. It was originally occupied by the Nok people in the early Iron Age, but has now been populated by people from all around Nigeria. The cold environment was particularly attractive to the Fulani because it was an uninhabitable place for the tsetse fly which caused sleeping sickness in their cattle.
The famous rock formation near Riyom in Plateau State
I’ve lived in jos all my life and as such, I’ve grown accustomed to the weather in this beautiful city. Right from time I was introduced to custom of wearing multiple layers of clothing paired with socks no matter the type of footwear I donned on my feet.
One of my most notable experiences with the Jos cold came from my time in secondary school — I attended Baptist High School, Jos, a boarding school. We took our baths, when we could, with cold water, because who was going to gift you hot water as a JSS1 student? The harmattan period which usually came around November – January was a true test of grit.
One day, my roommate and I had secured a bucket of water at night to avoid the long queues to get water in the morning. We had been worried that the water would have been stolen by other students. The next morning, we soon found out why it was left untouched, our water had ice in it! Not large ice blocks as you may think but thin sheets of ice on it! We had to dry clean ourselves — an act where you only wash your hands, legs and face — before heading off to class.
We later learned from our more experienced seniors that to prevent your water from getting colder at night you need to use a towel or thick piece of cloth and cover the top of your bucket leaving no gaps. As time passed and it got colder we eventually avoided morning baths and opted to have our baths after classes mid-afternoon. The school also noticed how the cold was increasing and made it a rule for each student to wear a sweater at all times.
As time went by, the students also found ways to keep warm such as creating fires to boil water using hot coals gotten from the kitchen and any available metal bucket in the vicinity. This wasn’t as effective as it may sound because it was limited, not everyone in school could boil water, just a few people who hustled to get to those hot coals early enough.
Around 2011, the PTA decided to build heater rooms to provide hot water for the students so we could cope with the weather. Things are much easier these days as I’m told, more measures have been put in place to combat the cold.
Jos weather is often said to be bi-polar, because of the way it randomly changes. You could be shivering by 7 am and sweating by 3 pm. Yet despite all these, the city is still the preferred location for most people, especially those who grew up here. The people of Jos are so accustomed to the cold it’s sometimes uncomfortable to live elsewhere. Some residents even joke that the cold weather prepares them for various trips outside the country.
The city experiences low temperatures because it lies on a slope. Jos is approximately 1200m above sea level and at heights such as that the weather gets colder and the air thinner.
On the 3rd of January, it recorded a low temperature of 6.7ºC. This was the lowest recorded throughout the harmattan period. For contrast, London on the same day recorded a temperature of 9ºC. The high altitude of Jos makes it susceptible to jet streams which are fast-moving air propagated by the northeast trade winds. Due to the sun, the air around warms up in the afternoon period but drops once it’s evening and the sun has set.
What are the effects of being in a region this cold?
Unlike places abroad that deal with cold weather on a more frequent basis, Jos does not have the resources to keep its residents warm. There is a lack of room heaters in offices, eateries, and homes.
This causes people to limit their sources of ventilation. You turn off your air conditioner, turn off your fan and maybe close some windows to stop all that cold breeze from coming through. This raises some health concerns.
Boys gathered around a fire to keep warm
The harmattan and dust combine to propagate different types of viruses that may cause illnesses such as pneumonia. Due to the cold weather, people tend to congregate and stay in groups, this alone makes it easier to pass along germs and bacteria from one person to the next.
According to a health service provider at the Jos University Teaching Hospital, Ifechukwu Ezeonugo, this period brings an influx of patients who bear symptoms of a common cold, the majority being children and the elderly.
How do the residents cope with the cold?
A resident of Jos all covered up because of the cold
The people of Jos cope in many different ways, I for one carry around a flask of hot water or tea wherever I’m going, to drink and keep me warm. I Always wear socks and if possible gloves when I’m going out to run errands. The cold affects different people in different ways. I decided to get a few stories from people working in Jos to get their perspective.
The Keke drivers
Keke drivers in jos have a curfew of 9 pm, after which they aren’t permitted to work till the next morning due to security measures.
Usman, 30, says since the cold began business has been a bit tougher for him. “I no de too see customers like that again, nobody wan de comot for this kain cold may breeze de blow them on top,” he says. He has had to change his routes a couple of times to get more customers. He doesn’t like to come out as early as he used to because sometimes the cold can be unbearable in the early hours of the morning so he waits for time to pass and hits the road by 7 am then he closes by 8:30 pm so he has some time to get back to his family. The cold affects his work because he can’t increase his rates due to the cold alone, seeing as the fuel price and distances remain constant. He has had to cope with the cold as best he can.
The office workers
I strolled into a popular bank (they wish their name to be kept off the record) to ask how they were faring with the weather and the woman at the bank teller said it’s tough. They don’t use their air conditioners or fans anymore and it’s hard to get to work each morning. You see fewer public transportation so she has to wait outside more than she does on a normal day because of the cold.
Something else that bothered her was the body odour some customers had, “You can tell some of them skipped having their showers this morning, but I understand that due to the cold it is unpleasant to shower so early in the morning,’’ she said. The cold hasn’t affected the flow of business in the bank, things just go as they always do.
The bike men
Bikes aren’t too popular in Jos, they have been restricted for some years from the main roads, so they operate in inner settlements of the city. I walked around for some time until I found a bike man who was willing to talk to me. Mr Dung says he doesn’t come out to work till 8am, because the cold is so severe in the mornings. He also does not have his bath till mid-afternoon when the sun is out and its a bit warmer.
He dares not forget his sweater, head warmer, gloves, and socks. It’s suicide to leave even one. He said that because he operates within a small settlement, people have no choice but to make use of his services. If not, they would have to brave the cold and make the long trek to the junction where they can get a cab to their desired destination.
The maishai (tea makers)
There are a few maishai around Jos. You can spot them carrying large trays on their head containing flasks of hot water and nylon filled with loaves of bread. I walked around till I could spot one. And although he was busy, he obliged me and answered the few questions I had for him. He said the cold is nothing new to him, he expects it. He has lived his whole life in Jos and has only been to a few other northern states.
To cope, he takes his bath early and always with very hot water and comes out as early as he can. Business is booming for him this period, he says. Everyone who goes about their business outside such as drivers, hawkers, and even pedestrians can get cold and need a hot drink to keep warm. He says business is so good that he has to go home and refill every few times.
For him, the Jos cold is a blessing.
The traders
I walked into this shop because, at first sight, it just felt like a warm place to be in at the moment. After feeding my eyes I walked over to talk to the owner of the shop find out how the cold was treating him and his business.
He entertained me briefly because he had customers to attend to. The period was the best for him, he said, because he had to get more wares ahead of time so he’ll have enough blankets and sweaters to sell to his customers. He has no shortage of customers. Most of his clients are mothers buying extra blankets and sweaters for their wards going back to school in this harsh weather, he says.
He’s covered head to toe in warm clothing, moving back and forth and responding to the needs of his various customers. He is one of the benefactors of the cold that comes around this period.
Here are some common myths about the Jos cold
It snows. Sorry to disappoint you but it hasn’t snowed in Jos and the likelihood of it ever happening is low due to its geographical location.
It rains ice. Technically it doesn’t rain ice, but Jos has been known to experience hailstones during the rainy season and not the harmattan.
Pipes bring out ice water. While this is a possibility, in the past few years there has been no documentation of such happening in the state, a few videos have gone round saying otherwise but those are videos taken from other locations.
How to survive in the Jos cold
Never leave home without a sweater. You might come out in the afternoon and the weather feels a bit warm and you say to yourself I can do without a sweater, my dear brother/sister this is a bad idea. Remember what I said about Jos weather being bipolar? In a split second the weather can change and you’re left in cold chattering your teeth and rubbing your palms together to create warmth.
Avoid dust at all costs. Dust inhaled can cause loads of health problems for you including asthma and pneumonia. You can get a surgical mask to prevent inhaling dust or use your handkerchief as a makeshift cover if you can’t find one.
Get extra clothing. Additional clothing such as gloves, scarves, head warmers, and socks are incredibly helpful.
Avoid cold water and fluids. The weather is already cold no need to make your body feel it anymore, use hot water to bath and only consume drinks at room temperature or warmer if possible.
When all that’s said and done, Jos is an interesting place to visit during the harmattan period. You get to experience the feel of a different region entirely and see firsthand how people cope with the weather.
____
Chijioke Chris Chuwa is a chemical engineer who loves to write. He is based in Nigeria and writes articles, short stories and poems. He is also a content creator and digital marketer.
Chinenye Mgbojikwe is nutritionist and a student at the University of Ìbàdàn, where she is currently doing her masters in Public health. She is a model who has worked with several brands. During her free time, she indulges her love for books by editing.
Sometime in April of last year (2019), I visited the site of the Kuti Heritage Museum in Abẹ́òkuta. Located on NEPA Road, Isábọ̀ Abẹ́òkuta, the house was the famous home of the Reverend I.O. Ransome-Kútì and Mrs. Fúnmiláyọ̀ Ransome-Kútì, and the likely birthplace of Fẹlá and some of his brothers.
This restoration project has been ongoing for a while. The home of the famous Kútì couple had, over the years, become victim to negligence and decay. Photos exhibited at the venue, showing the transformation of the structure from its earlier state of rot shows it as sometimes being a site for refuse dumping by neighbours and passers-by.
But it was not always this way. Copious paragraphs from Wọlé Ṣóyínká’s autobiography Aké were dedicated to memories of times spent in this place to visit his uncle who was by then the headmaster of Abẹ́òkuta Grammar School, and his wife whose organising of women to protest the misrule of the Aláké led to the Abẹ́òkuta Women’s Tax Riots and the eventual abdication of the king in early 1940s.
Over time, the successful careers of many of the house’s famous former occupants notwithstanding, the home had gradually settled into oblivion. But the Ògùn State Government, in collaboration with members of the family, returned a few years ago to restore the building to its rightful place in the Nigerian consciousness as bearers of history. From what I gathered, the building adjoining the original home is the museum, set up to inform visitors about the family, its famous members, and their role in Nigerian and world history. I could not enter this building itself on this day.
But I did enter the main home, restored to its old stone form, and girded on each corner downstairs with metal beams. Word is that the project was supervised by Theo Lawson, the same architect behind the Freedom Park and the Kalakuta Museum in Ìkẹjà. Being nothing more than a casual observer of art and documentation myself, I was impressed by the presentation.
All the rooms in the old building have retained their sense of time. The furniture reflect those of the 40s, and the upper-class aesthetic that the Kútìs must have enjoyed among the society. The bathroom had a bathtub — what would seem like a sign of opulence in that part of Abẹ́òkuta and that time period. The plumbing of the house was modern, even though the house was made of mud and stones. This restoration has added a few more things to the aesthetic: air conditioning — which should tell us something else about the changing climate.
The veiw of the Museum from across the street.
From the balcony, one could see a good view of the town itself, and one can imagine the Reverend himself, on a cool day, standing there, toothpick or pákò in mouth, staring out or greeting a passerby.
The view from the Reverend I.O’s Balcony.
Even much of the smell has remained, a rusty old smell from the mattresses, stationeries, rug, and furniture.
I recommend the building to anyone in Abẹ́òkuta, especially the adjoining Museum. I hope to visit it again when I’m in town. I am already impressed by this attempt at keeping history alive through structures and other non-conventional means of keeping the names of our famous citizens in the memory of contemporary children.
A few more photos below. Here is a more comprehensive report of the launch.
Congratulations to those of you- young, male, Nigerian, and travelling alone, who were able to reach your destinations with(out) molestations, after flying out of Lagos airport in the wake of that failed underwear bombing of December 25, 2009.?
O ye travellers of hope, I hope you have all found your dreams, did you find home, did you find love, did you find happiness? This is a moment of reflection for us, I am one of you. I think we need to gather somewhere and celebrate a decade of surviving what was to become hostile treatment for young Nigerians travelling in the west.
As I write, I recollect all the fears and apprehension that followed the tragedy of young Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, and the recrimination that was unleashed on innocent young travellers from Nigeria by border forces across the world. My own maiden flight was slated for the middle of January 2010, just 3 weeks after the near-tragic incident that involved a bomb on a plane. Those who believe that the USA and the western governments took undue advantage of the incident to heighten security vetting and high-handedness towards travellers from a certain part of the world may not be wrong, as we became legitimate targets for extra checks in frontiers across the world.
I was freshly 29, at a turning point in my life, a make or break moment, a moment that I made one of the most difficult choices. I chose to leave my father’s home, and headed out to the foreign land.
Taken in 2009. (credit: Fèyíṣọlá Babárìndé. Telford, 2010)
I was coming to the UK to start my master’s degree. But the marks of ‘slaves’ were all written on my passport…. ‘no recourse to public funds’, ‘restricted work’, má j’ata, má jẹ iyọ̀, and many other repressive immigration controls on the unsuspecting prodigal son. But unlike the biblical prodigal son, I did not go away with any inheritance to squander, I had less than £100 in my pocket, and owó onírú, owó aláta, owó alájẹṣẹ́kù paid the bulk of the cost… but like the real prodigal son, I went away from home, joyfully.
Before my flight, I had taken all additional precautions, booked a direct flight- avoided ‘Amsterdam’, the bad boy had connected a targeted flight via Schiphol airport. The scheduled landing time at Heathrow must be during the daytime, such that even if I was delayed in London, my onward journey to Wolverhampton would still happen during the day.
I made sure I had ‘no goatee’, no mustache, I identified as a Christian, from the south — it was necessary at the time in order to survive. So I thought I would be no easy target for any overzealous Islamophobic- steroid charged security operative. On the morning of my flight, I was briefly pulled aside to be interviewed by two middle-aged white operatives in Lagos airport before I was allowed to board, that should be it, I have been cleared — I thought, but I was wrong.
The flight itself was safe, and full of anxiety. I was waiting to meet my wife — we had just been married for less than 4 months before the affairs of this world separated us — I became home, she had become exiled. As planned, she was to collect the ‘JJC’ in London, and we would move to the midlands, where we would live for the next decade or so.
I left Lagos around 10am, it was around 33′ C, and London was waiting for me already blanketed by heaps of snow. Snow was something I had only seen in movies. London was in sub-zero temperature, and freezing. So I prayed that our plane would be able to land without diversion, as we were warned that many flights had been cancelled in previous days.
As the plane was landing, I felt coldness creeping up my spine, clearly all my preparation for the cold had proved unhelpful. I was already wearing two pairs of socks, before I left Lagos. To keep warm, I reached for the fairly used unlined ‘Ògùnpa-gbà-mí-ọyẹ́-dé’ jacket that I bought at Dùgbẹ̀ market. My fine boy shoes, I was told were no use for the wintering London.
We landed safely, and I followed the signs towards the bagging area. In one of my luggage bags was gari, ẹ̀wà, irú woro (which had a tipper load of sea sands in it), èlùbọ́, gala, and other women things that I had bought for Fèyíṣọlá at Alẹ́shinlọ́yẹ́ market in Ibadan.
In the other bag, I had some mainframe movie CDs. ‘They will certainly be reminding me of home,’ I had assured myself. Then in 2009, YouTube was still in its infancy, and had not been populated by Nollywood-advert invested contents. I had copies of some Nigerian books too, there was a feeling that I was going to be gone for a very long time, and I had to prepare for them days. I had some Ọ̀ṣúndáres, Akeem Làsísì’s Ìrèmọ̀jé, some copies of my own ‘failed anthology’, some Fálétí’s works, and some other copyright infringed photocopied books. Amazon and Netflix have reversed all these worries today’s maiden travellers.
So I got my luggage, and I headed out into the hands of my new set of friends. I had met a party of them in Lagos, but to be faced with another security men in London… I was waived into a little huddle of fellow young travellers, at this point we were not all Nigerians in that holding, but we were all single travellers. I was taken in for checks… of course I was punctuating them with my ‘pardon’, ‘pardon me’, ‘and excuse me please’ (s), which would become part of my hurriedly developed survival phonetics in the Un-queenly many regional-accented spoken English language that I would later be exposed to, particularly in the black countries of the west midlands.
I was left in a room, with no shirt on, the machines came up to my chest- I knew they would find nothing. No powders, no tuberculosis, no typhoid- there was no ebola then (thank goodness), and no bombs.
Outside the room, I heard chatters, I could hardly understand what was been said, then footsteps fainted away from the door to the room, and everything fell silent for an eternity.
After some 45minutes, it dawned on me that I have been abandoned in the room. I waited for no further instructions, I dressed myself up, and I was posing for what I truly believed was a camera as if to tell them that I was already yielding myself to the 11th commandment (‘do they own will’)… I was no international security threat to nobody, I was just a young Nigerian happening to be travelling alone after a failed bomb attack on a plane.
I later understood what had happened to me that evening, the poor immigration staff had been understaffed, and I was not properly handed over, I must have arrived mid-shift change.
I pulled myself and my luggage out into a narrow corridor, I approached a table at the other end of the corridor, and I asked whether I could leave. Yes…yes…yes… someone said to me. And I stepped into the arrival lobby, even within the foyer, the winter breeze was already lapping up my face.
Fèyíṣọla was already waiting for me, and she was wondering and fearing the worst. There was a possibility of being refused entry, the whole process of delay, checks, and the disappearance of the security/immigration staff took almost 3 hours. We had no time for hugs and kisses, I was herded like a sheep towards the car park by the invisible winter-rod, and we headed north.
The following months were very cold, it was my very first ever winter experience. The days were very short, I was going to bed with the setting of the sun, and over-sleeping, waiting to wake with sunrise that never happened in the morning. I became bitter with the elements, particularly with the sun, I angrily wrote in a poem about the sun… ‘do not rise today,/ if you will not make me warm’… I nearly became clinically depressed. I contemplated going back home.
Every day of the last 10 years, I have remembered the words of Ìyá Àyọ̀ká- as she is fondly called by the name of one of my sisters. ‘Please do not forget home, I hope to see you again’
Her words had reverberated in my head as I drove myself from Ibadan to Lagos on the morning of my departure. I have since made several other return flights to and from Nigeria in the last 10 years, the feelings of my first flight and the words of my mum always return to me on each occasion. Though the definition of both home and exile has changed for me, there is a part of me that now (sadly) sees exile in every thought of the place that used to be home, and there is another part of me that sees new home in my exile.
Selfie. (September, 2019)
There is no way I could explain my new philosophies to Ìyá-Àyọ̀ká — It will never help. I have joined myself with foreigners, all in the name of citizenship integration. All the things I should never eat, nor drink have become regulars at every dinner, and I know that I have changed and become different.
My muse left me at the depth of my depression. This is one reason for which I must return. I have failed to see any inspiration in the burgundy of autumn leaves, the white winter fields only depress me, and the sun-shined summer’s meadows would not compare with the poetry of Bẹẹrẹ, or with melodies of Bódìjà market.
______
Ìbùkún Babárìndé, author of Running Splash of Rust and Gold (poetry; Kraftgriot, 2008), writes this as a reflection to commemorate the 10th anniversary of his ‘exile’ in England.
Last week, I visited Paris as a guest of UNESCO’s International Conference on Language Technologies (#LT4All). It was a large gathering of language practitioners — from linguists to teachers to tech gurus and other executives — under one roof to share ideas, discuss obstacles, and showcase current activities in the sphere of language technologies. The theme “Enabling Linguistic Diversity and Multilingualism Worldwide” was part of the framework of the 2019 International Year of Indigenous Languages.
It was my first time in the city and in the country (since layovers don’t count).
At the Eiffel Tower during one of the conference breaks.
The conference was co-sponsored by Google (as a Founding Private Sponsor), The Government of the Khanty-Mansiysk Autonomous Okrug-Ugra (as a Founding Public Donor), UNESCO, Japan, France, and NSF as public donors, and others like Facebook, Systran, Microsoft, Amazon Alexa, Mozilla, IBM Research AI, etc, as regular sponsors. Team leaders from many of these companies were around to speak and share ideas from their ongoing work. It was a delight to be able to listen to many of them, and make connections. I met, for the first time, Daan van Esch, who leads Google’s GBoard global efforts, and with whom I’ve worked in some capacity on these efforts while I worked at Google on some Nigerian language projects. His presentation was about GBoard and how it has empowered more people to write properly in their languages on mobile devices.
I also made acquaintance with Craig Cornelius who has done some work for the consortium, but now works at Google as a Senior Software Engineer. This was during a panel on Unicode where I mentioned the fact that Yorùbá writing on the internet has suffered greatly because of Unicode’s inscrutable decision not to allow pre-composed characters. Because Yorùbá diacritics are usually both on top of the vowel and beneath it, one usually has to find so many different Unicode characters to match before one properly tone-marked character can be typed. Beyond the fact that this would be a nightmare for someone having to type a whole passage (or a novel — imagine!), it is usually often still impossible to find the right combinations. And when one manages to find the combinations, the difference between how one computer system or word processor codes its software often makes it impossible for the text to remain readable by a second or third party. I encounter this problem every day while working on the catalogue at the British Library where many of the Yorùbá books listed there appear in a variety of fonts in the BL system, some of which make the titles unreadable or with a different intended meaning.
Craig Cornelius (left), Mark E. Karan from SIL (middle), and a guest.
GBoard has mitigated some of these problems. In Yorùbá on the GBoard app, for instance, we now have pre-composed characters like ọ̀ and ọ́ and ọ and ẹ and ẹ́ and ẹ̀, etc, which can be inserted instantly without any secondary combinations. What we need, as I said during the subsequent informal conversation about the subject, is something like that for Unicode so that every new computer user does not have to spend valuable time doing diacritic permutations from the Insert>Symbol field. Or for browsers (Chrome, Explorer, Mozilla, Safari, etc), so we can stop waiting for Unicode to change its ways.
In 2016, through the Yorùbá Names Project that I founded, we created a free tonemarking software for Yorùbá and Igbo, for Mac and Windows, which has been very helpful in writing on the computer — and with which I have typed all the diacritics in this post. It still combines character elements, however, but it is software-keyboard-based, and a lot more intuitive.
The Yorùbá Names Project Keyboard, launched in 2016, can be downloaded at http://blog.yorubaname.com/keyboard
Its limitations show up when a document typed with the software has to be read with another program (like Adobe or Microsoft Word, then the cycle begins again). It would be helpful if the functionality of this nature already came with the computer so there is uniformity. Imagine if every computer sold in Nigeria already suggests to the user to flip the language as I do above so that the keyboard automatically allows for diacritic markings that can transmit across different programs. That would be great, won’t it? The conversation with these gentlemen convinced me that it is doable, but would take time, and different companies coming together to agree that African languages matter on these platforms. It has not always been the case.
Speaking with someone from the Woolaroo team, a Googler, who now lives in Australia and wants me to come visit.
One of the other language products that was showcased there was Woolaroo, created in conjunction with Google Arts & Culture, which is a crowdsourcing visual dictionary for a small Australian language. When publicly launched, users will be able to take photos, and then use that photo to submit words for items in the image, which is then sent to a database and shared with other users. For languages with few speakers, but whose speakers use the tools of technology, it is one way of eliciting lexical items without having to do the physical fieldwork that has characterized most language documentation efforts in the past. There is significance for this type of approach for languages in Nigeria, for instance, where old people who know the name of items are not literate to write, but can perhaps be made to use the visual aid of phones to contribute as much as possible while they are still alive.
How the Woolaroo app works. It will be launched in 2020, and its API will be made available so others can replicate it in many language communities.
There were other Nigerians, and Africans, at the conference. I met Dr. Túndé Adégbọlá of the African Language Technology Initiative (ALT-i), Àbákẹ́ Adénlé of AJA.LA Studios, Professor Chinedu Uchechukwu of the Nnamdi Azikiwe University in Awka, Nigeria, Professor Sunday Òjó, and Adama Samassekou (the founder of the African Academy of Languages), among others. It was a diverse group of people working in different aspects of language revitalization, technology, and documentation. Mark Liberman, whom I was also meeting for the first time, shared my concern about Unicode, having done some work himself in Nigerian languages, and been frustrated by the problem of finding the right diacritics in a simple and accessible way.
Dr. Adégbọlá and Prof. Sunday Òjó
Paris is beautiful at night — perhaps much better looking at night actually. The monuments are lit up, and the beauty of the city shines out from within the glow. The language of the city, naturally, is French, but the tourist who speaks not more than a smattering of the language doesn’t run into much of a problem.
It was cold most of the time, which made walking around a bit of an ordeal. It reminds me a lot of the other global city I once attempted to walk around in 2009. A day before I arrived in Paris, there had been a massive strike that paralysed the entire country and rendered public transportation useless. This could explain why Uber appeared a lot more expensive that I’d experienced elsewhere. Would have been nice to see how different the Metro was from the Tube in England. But the strike also meant that the city was less crowded — at least the usually touristic areas — and the public trash cans seemed always in need of emptying.
The Arc de Triomphe ahead, and a trash bag nearby.
I had got a travel grant of £1,011 to attend the conference — which covered my visa (~£295), hotel (~£270), food (~63), train (~£500), and Ubers (~£81.77) and was helpful and convenient, especially since I had to pay for the highest end of many of these things due to the rushed arrangement. My visa was issued on the 4th, so I was only able to attend the sessions on the 5th and 6th, leaving the city in the evening of the 7th. Still, it was enough to take in the fine city, sample the food, make connections, and make future plans to return for more adventure.
The benefit of the strike is fewer tourists, but more overflowing trashcans.
The train ride on the Eurostar from St. Pancras to Gare du Nord, which took just under three hours, is a story of its own.
