Chris Abani: Telling Stories from Africa

Chris Abani - TedTalk Global 2007

Telling Stories from Africa

In Memoriam: Robert Gabriel Mugabe

Seun Kuti: God is the Tool of Oppressors

Straight Talk With Kadaria

Engaging Africa

“I’d rather you not engage [with Africa] than engage in a patronising way. It comes from a sense of superiority; an ignorance that refuses to acknowledge itself”

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

The Madman by Chinua Achebe

(Chinua Achebe)—He was drawn to markets and straight roads. Not any tiny neighborhood market where a handful of garrulous women might gather at sunset to gossip and buy ogili for the evening’s soup, but a huge, engulfing bazaar beckoning people familiar and strange from far and near. And not any dusty, old footpath beginning in this village, and ending in that stream, but broad, black, mysterious highways without beginning or end.

After much wondering he had discovered two such markets linked together by such a highway; and so ended his wandering. One market was Afo, the other Eke. The two days between them suited him very well: before setting out for Eke he had ample time to wind up his business properly at Afo. He passed the night there putting right again his hut after a day of defilement by two fat-bottomed market women who said it was their market stall. At first he had put up a fight but the women had gone and brought their men-folk—four hefty beasts of the bush—to whip him out of the hut. After that he always avoided them, moving out on the morning of the market and back in at dusk to pass the night. Then in the morning he rounded off his affairs swiftly and set out on that long, beautiful boa-constrictor of a road to Eke in the distant town of Ogbu. He held his staff and cudgel at the ready in his right hand, and with the left he steadied the basket of all his belongings on his head. He had got himself this cudgel lately to deal with little beasts on the way who threw stones at him and made fun of their mothers’ nakedness, not his own.

Decolonizing African Religions

"The last and most important pitfall for the Christian student is his belief in one God and the assumption which rises from it, namely that Africans must also have a High God. It is this assumption which has led Evans-Pritchard to interpret the numerous deities of the Nuer as refractions of God, and Placid Tempels to arrange the so-called 'life forces' of the Bantu in a hierarchy at the apex of which is the supposed High God. This also explains the preoccupation of many writers with some half-forgotten deities which are described as no longer interested in the affairs of men, and yet, they are called the High God. The aim of the study of African religions should be to understand the religious beliefs and practices of African people, rather than to discover the Christian God in Africa."

Okot p'Bitek (2011: 52), Decolonizing African Religions

A Letter From Home

Source: mackieandtate.weebly.com

(E. C. Osondu)--My Dear Son, 

Why have you not been sending money through Western Union like other good Nigerian children in America do? You have also not visited home. Have you married a white woman? Do not forget that I have already found a wife for you. Her name is Ngozi. Her parents are good Christians and her mother belongs to the Catholic Good Women’s League like me. Please do not to spoil the good relationship I have built over the years with Ngozi’s family.

I beg of you not to become like Kaka’s son who was sent to America with the community’s funds, only to come back with a white woman, and then would not let his parents visit him in his white man’s living quarters in the Lagos government reserved area. He has large dogs and his white wife treats the dogs like her children. The only time he visited his family, he refused to sleep in his father’s old house, complaining that it was dirty, and took his wife to pass the night in a hotel. He stretched out his hands to shake the hands of the elders of the community and would not prostrate on the ground like a well-brought- up child.

Africa: Tradition versus Modernity

Source: New African

(New African)--Visiting a museum in Auckland, New Zealand, a colleague and I were impressed by a battle-ready Maori warrior, showing his martial prowess whilst doing the Hakka. 

The display was suitably intimidating. My colleague got carried away and began to over-exaggerate its efficacy, claiming a warrior could dispose of their enemies in seconds. I reminded her that the weapons had proved ineffective against European firearms, and this was the most likely explanation why the warrior was now on display in a museum, and not on the battlefield.

Writing Africa to the World

Source: faithmwaura.com

What role should African literature play in presenting the continent to the world?
"To write truthfully, beautifully and to raise high the possibilities of literature. Literature is not advertising; it is all the truths that we cannot take and sometimes all the beauty that we cannot bear. It is about our enrichment and about compelling us, through its dreams, to face ourselves. The best contribution that literature can make is to be the best literature that it can be."

Ben Okri, New African magazine

Nollywood: In Promotion of Pan-Africanism

Source: Switsalone

(MarkLives)--Pan-Africanism is defined by “the idea or advocacy of a political alliance or union of all the African nations” — an idea that has been discussed, debated and promoted throughout the entire continent for many decades. In the 21st century, media platforms in Africa have become an important player to unify the underlying voice of ubuntu and cultivate a landscape of independent, yet intertwined, African culture.

One important player in the promotion of an interconnected African spirit is the highly successful Nigerian film industry — which averages an annual turnover of US$250m.

Africa's History Through Colonial Films

Source: thisisafrica.com

(This is Africa)--Colonial Film presents “moving images of the British empire” for the viewing pleasure of anyone with internet access. It provides an invaluable resource that I think should be exploited by everyone, especially if you are from a country that was colonised by the British

Colonial Film presents “moving images of the British empire” for the viewing pleasure of anyone with Internet access. On the website, you will find facts, figures and material on upwards of 6,000 films, more than 150 of which can be watched online.

Barak Obama: What's in a Name?

OBAMA: Original Black African Managing America 

BARAK: Born African Raised American complete Kenyan

--Pablo (Kenneth Kimuli), Ugandan Comedian

For Val's Day: 5 Love Epics in Africa's History

Cleopatra's legacy has been vigorously contested, the subject of myth, embellishment, and propaganda 

“Forget what they say about money making the world go round - nations have risen and fallen on the account of a beautiful woman."

GOING by the contemporary narrative, love is something powerful, but fleeting and rather silly—with all it’s apparent expectations of dead plants, wax candles and whiny violins. But Valentine’s Day grouches, don’t despair. Love can be serious stuff too, it has been known to shape the course of whole nations:

Nefertiti, Queen of Egypt

One of the most mysterious and powerful women in ancient Egypt, Nefertiti was queen alongside Pharaoh Akhenaten from 1353 to 1336 BC.

The African and Religion

"Africans are notoriously religious... Religion permeates into all the departments of life so fully that it
is not easy or possible always to isolate it.... Wherever the African is, there is his[/her] religion...

"One of the sources of severe strain for Africans exposed to modern change is the increasing process (through education, urbanization and industrialization) by which individuals become detached from their traditional environment. This leaves them in a vacuum devoid of a solid religious foundation. They are torn between the life of their forefathers which, whatever else might be said about it, has historical roots and firm traditions, and the life of our technological age, which, as yet, for many Africans has no concrete form or depth.

Wole Soyinka: Writer, Critic, and Poet

Nollywood: Addressing African Concerns

“A friend of mine described Nollywood as someone performing heart surgery using forks and knives. But the genius of it is that the patient survives… and that’s what we have done with Nollywood. Impossible things have happened with us.”

So says Charles Igwe, the CEO of Nollywood Global Media Group and one of the industry’s early investors. The Nigerian based film industry produces an average of around 2,000 films a year, topping both Hollywood and Bollywood.

Despite production being low-cost, especially when compared with the high budgets of Hollywood, Nollywood films have a strong audience in Nigeria and across the continent. According to Igwe, Nollywood’s success comes from a hunger for African content.

“At the time we started there was nothing in the global spectrum of content that addressed anything African. All the information that came to us was filtered through the big networks like BBC, CNN… It was about famine, corruption – the usual things. And the rest of the space was filled with wildlife from Namibia and Serengeti,” said Igwe.

How Not to Write About Africa: A Beginner's Guide

Nairobi

Nairobi is a good place to be an international correspondent. There are regular flights to the nearest genocide, and there are green lawns, tennis courts, good fawning service. You can get pork belly, and you can hire an OK pastry chef called Elijah (surname forgotten) to work in your kitchen for $300 a month.

If you work for one of the major newspapers, or television and radio services, chances are you live in Nairobi or Johannesburg. To make your work easier, you need, in your phone, the numbers of the country directors of every European aid agency: Oxfam, Save the Children. To find these numbers is not difficult: chances are these guys are your neighbours, your tennis partners.

How to Write About Africa II: The Revenge

Novelists, NGO workers, rock musicians, conservationists, students, and travel writers track down my email, asking: Would you please comment on my homework assignment / pamphlet / short story / funding proposal / haiku / adopted child / photograph of genuine African mother-in-law? All of the people who do this are white. Nobody from China asks, nobody from Cuba, nobody black, blackish, brown, beige, coffee, cappuccino, mulatte. I wrote “How to Write about Africa” as a piss-job, a venting of steam; it was never supposed to see the light of day. Now people write to ask me for permission to write about Africa. They want me to tell them what I think, how they did. Be frank, they say, be candid. Tell it like it is. I have considered investing in a rubber stamp.

I have imagined myself standing at the virtual borders of Africa, a black minuteman with a rubber stamp, processing applications — where YES means “Pass go, pay one hundred dollars,” and NO means “Tie ’em up and deport ’em.” It’s almost a sexual thing. They come crawling out of the unlikeliest places, looking to be whipped. I am bad, Master Binya, beat me. Oh! Beat me harder. Oo! They seem quite disappointed when I don’t. Once in a while I do, and it feels both good and bad, like too much wasabi. Bono sent a book of poems.

How to Write About Africa

Always use the word ‘Africa’ or ‘Darkness’ or ‘Safari’ in your title. Subtitles may include the words

‘Zanzibar’, ‘Masai’, ‘Zulu’, ‘Zambezi’, ‘Congo’, ‘Nile’, ‘Big’, ‘Sky’, ‘Shadow’, ‘Drum’, ‘Sun’ or ‘Bygone’. Also useful are words such as ‘Guerrillas’, ‘Timeless’, ‘Primordial’ and ‘Tribal’. Note that ‘People’ means Africans who are not black, while ‘The People’ means black Africans.

Never have a picture of a well-adjusted African on the cover of your book, or in it, unless that African has won the Nobel Prize. An AK-47, prominent ribs, naked breasts: use these. If you must include an African, make sure you get one in Masai or Zulu or Dogon dress.

In your text, treat Africa as if it were one country. It is hot and dusty with rolling grasslands and huge herds of animals and tall, thin people who are starving. Or it is hot and steamy with very short people who eat primates. Don’t get bogged down with precise descriptions. Africa is big: fifty-four countries, 900 million people who are too busy starving and dying and warring and emigrating to read your book. The continent is full of deserts, jungles, highlands, savannahs and many other things, but your reader doesn’t care about all that, so keep your descriptions romantic and evocative and unparticular.

The Moment Mandela Was Angry With Nigeria

"It is better to help a friend pay his fine, than tell a lie to help him cover a crime."  - Nigerian proverb.

It was literally a life-long ambition, and I used every opportunity to meet the old man in person. I was finally in a position to press buttons and call old friends to render favours, and in early 2007 I succeeded. I was told I could see Mandela for only 30 minutes at his home, but I needed to get there one hour earlier. Colleagues I had leaned on were skeptical that I would see him despite the appointment, particularly since I will not say it was official. An old South African friend and course mate from South Africa who helped, suggested I asked questions or matters I wanted to discuss with him and send them in advance. I did not think that was the type of meeting I wanted, so I did not.

Mandela was surprised when he was told I worked at the Nigerian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, but had spent 6 months trying to see him to pay my personal respects. Why did you not go through your colleagues here? I told him the visit was not official. I just wanted to meet him. He relaxed and apologized that it had taken that long for me to see him. Others left us, except a lady who sat discreetly away from us. I thought she was a medical person.