Christmas and the uncertainty of being paid

On the last day at work before the Christmas weekend, as I went to take out some money from the cashpoint to do some last minute shopping, some girlsbehind me were talking loudly about how they hoped they had been paid Christmas bonuses. And that took me back to Nigeria, where there was never a guarantee that you would be paid before Christmas....I remember the nail biting suspense as each day before Christmas drew to an end and there was no indication that salaries had been or were going to be paid. People working in the accounts department suddenly became repositories of knowledge to be courted, the information about when salaries were to be paid to be milked out of them........and as we waited and watched transport fares soar, chased by the prices of the obligatory clothing without which no child's Christmas was complete, not to talk of the turkeys and chickens and goats whose prices seemed to appreciate geometrically as Christmas approached, we gritted our teeth and cursed our employers......

Strange I had almost forgotten that feeling.....not one that I miss, though. This year there was no question of that, and so I was able to enjoy a Christmas lunch of coconut rice and moimoi with "assorted" meat and of course, a proper Nigerian salad....

Hope you all had a good Christmas and that 2006 will bring good things in its wake...

Africa's year ends,LRA horror, and more websites of interest

On the radio today, it's the end of Britain's presidency of the EU and the G8 and they're trying to do some kind of summary- Bob Geldof and the UK Secretary for International Development trying very hard to convince listeners that progress has been made, some development activists more skeptical- with the hodge podge WTO deal that emerged in Hong Kong and the news that the IMF is putting barriers in the way of some of the poorest countries debts being written off...it's not hard to see why. I suppose it's a bit like optimism versus pessimism- do you measure on the basis of what could have been (and therefore lament the missed chance of using the renewed focus to push as far as possible) or do you celebrate the fact that there has even been renewed focus and whatever little you are able to achieve......From where I'm at right now- feeling very low and sad about Nigeria- I feel pulled towards the importance of grand gestures, even if they end up achieving very little in the long run....I've been here before but recent events in Nigeria have focused my mind........perhaps in a month or two, I'll be back to my cynicism or pragmatism (whichever you choose to call it) but for now I feel very vulnerable............I suppose the cold dark weather does not help matters....

Also on the radio- BBC Radio4 Today programme this morning, a haunting account of the atrocities being committed in northern Uganda by the Lord's Resistance Army- the report was read over the monotonously eerie song by a boy freed from the army who describes how he was made by his captors to slit the throat of another boy after attempts at beating him to death had failed....there was something about the quiet way in which he recounted the story that made me want to throw up- what sort of world is it that we inhabit where atrocities like these happen for nearly twenty years but never really make the global headlines?

Have stumbled across a few websites of interest recently- the Nigerian-Belgian writer-Chika Unigwe's http://users.skynet.be/chikaunigwe/en_main.html , a Nigerian-American online entertainment magazine http://www.nigerianentertainment.com, the Nigerian-American slam poetry artist Bassey Ikpi's http://www.basseyworld.com/

Christmas, Nigerian salad, teargas and DC again

It's the week before Christmas and things have been frantic at work - in the way that it happens as everyone frantically tries to meet deadlines before the shutdown that is Christmas. I wonder if that shutdown is global.....it certainlyused to happen in Nigeria when I lived and worked there and it happens here as well. Although theoretically offices remain open, it's more or less acknowledged that only "skeletal services" will be maintained till the New Year.....

It's interesting contrasting Christmas here and Christmas at home- here it's bitterly cold and everyone eats and drinks too much trying to keep warm. Christmas in Nigeria for me is the haze of the harmattan, that sharp dry smell of burning fields- which you kind of get here- only it's blazing indoor fires- while at home it's farmers setting fields ablaze to clear the dried grass and crops.........there's food as well, but it's chicken or goat and rice and moimoi with dodo and salad- Nigerian salad of course, nothing like the wimpy leafy things you get served here when you ask for a salad. I'm talking sardines, corned beef, hardboiled eggs and baked beans - in addition to the usual suspects- the lettuce, carrots,cabbage, tomatoes and onions all laced with a hefty dollop of salad cream.....not exactly what nutritionists have in mind when they sugest salads as healthy alternatives.....

I haven't blogged for a while largely because I've beenvery sad and angry, reflecting on the Nigerian situation, a propos of the Sosoliso plane crash in Port Harcourt. Over the weekend I was pleased to see that a group of mothers including Marie Fatayi Williams, whose son died in the London bombings had gone on a peaceful demonstration in solidarity with the mothers who had lost their children in the plane crash. Shocking however to read how they were tear gassed by Nigerian policemen, one of whom inanely complained in an interview that the women's action was capable of giving Nigeria a bad name....I suppose demonstrating could give Nigeria a worse name than the string of aviation disasters....it makes you wonder what planet some of these people live on.....The Inspector General of Police later apologized on behalf of his men, but the harm's already been done. Meanwhile the President continues with his kneejerk responses, sacking aviation officials indiscriminately but sparing the Minister who has been widely criticized. Why can the President and his advisers not see that selective actions that suggest the shielding of favourites are part of why many are so sceptical of anything he tries to do?

David Cameron (DC) continues his onslaught against Labour, giving his first newspaper interview to the Left leaning Observer, and calling for (among other things) the British to take asylum seekers to their hearts......hmmmm, he's certainly making the right noises, and I can see him swaying middleground voters.....

Yet another day of Nigerian sadness

When I got a text message from my friend on Saturday afternoon, asking if I had heard of the Nigerian plane crash in Port Harcourt, my first thought was "What planet is this guy living on? That was weeks ago, plus it was near Lagos, not Port Harcourt" And then again I thought, what if he's serious, what if there really was another crash.......but it seemed impossible, too far-fetched I was sure that it defied all the laws of statistics and probability, or common sense....sadly it turned out to be true. On Saturday 103 people (about half of them schoolchildren on their way home for Christmas) died in a plane crash in Nigeria, the third in under two months.......There are so many questions, so many emotions, so many thoughts particularly as it appears that people I knew were on that plane but I'll leave them for now..........I'll just say that my thoughts and prayers go out to all the affected families and friends.....May God forgive us all for our complacency, our greed and our silence....

Reading Aboulela, going back in Time and Alamsco nabbed

I have just finished Coloured Lights, a collection of short stories by the Sudanese writer Leila Aboulela. Her description of life in Khartoum as a university student and subsequent immigrant life in the UK certainly struck chords with me. I will be looking forward to reading her recently published novel, Minaret if I can find it in the library this weekend. As I understand from reviews it's about a relatively privileged educated Sudanese woman who comes to live in the UK and finds herself at the very bottom of society, worlds away from her previous existence.....

A friend sent me a link to the story Time magazine published on Nigeria's independence in October 1960 and it made fascinating, if sombering reading. It was also interesting to look at all the stories that they have done on Nigeria on the same page and to read about events that I had lived through viewed by an outsider.....fascinating. http://www.time.com/time/europe/timetrails/nigeria/ngr601010.html

On a cheerier note, the BBC announces the impeachment and arrest of the tummy-tucking thieving Governor of Bayelsa state, now universally dubbed Alamsco......maybe he shouldn't have got rid of all that tummy fat....with extradition to a cold winter in London looming....he'll need all the insulation he can get

Colin Firth, Fela, Nigerian themed films and watch out, Labour Party

Pleasant surprise this morning to hear Colin Firth, the English actor picking out his favourite songs for Desert Island Discs, and then hearing the rhythm of Fela's Overtake Don Overtake Overtake (ODOO) boom out of the radio. Apparently Firth spent the first four years of his life in Nigeria and picking Fela was in tribute to the time spent there. Which probably also explains his starring in a film I stumbled across a while ago called The Secret Laughter of Women. Set, perhaps a trifle improbably, in a wealthy Nigerian expatriate community on the Cote D'Azur, the film also stars Joke Silva (with her husband Olu Jacobs, she forms one half of Nigeria's foremost acting couple) and Nia Long. The script is written by a Nigerian writer Misan Sagay, and this is evident in the strong Nigerian flavour of the film - it appears to have been panned by the critics for it's improbable rose-tinted view but most Nigerians will probably enjoy it.......after all it's very rare that we see ANY portrayal of Nigerians in films made abroad....

Also listened to David Cameron's first major interview since being elected as leader of the Conservative Party and I must say he did quite well. Asked what he stood for, he said he believed that people should be strengthened and supported to achieve their full potential and that his second major belief is that we are all in it together. He also said he believed all the parties should work together to protect the environment. Difficult to find much to quarrel with in those........I suppose the taste of the pudding (or perhaps that should be the moi-moi) will be in the eating, when he starts trying to translate these beliefs into policies......but I think the Labour Party had better brace themselves.....

Accessing other Nigerian and African writing.....and glimmers of hope

In making my list of contemporary Nigerian writing, I was conscious of the fact that I was only dealing with writers and books whose books can easily be accessed via Amazon or your nearest Barnes and Noble or Waterstones or Borders.......but there is a whole other rich seam of writing that is published within Nigeria which often because of the poor state of the publishing and distribution industry are difficult to get hold of outside Nigeria.....So books like Maik Nwosu's Invisible Chapters and Akin Adesokan's Roots in the Sky are cut off from a wide range of potential readers. Even Helon Habila who went on to win the Caine Prize with a story from his collection Prison Stories which he self-published in Nigeria with very limited circulation. It was not until he won the Caine Prize that he won a two book deal which enabled him rework it as Waiting for an Angel......

Some websites that I have found useful in tapping into this difficult to access seam of literature are The Africa Book Centre in Covent Garden http://www.africabookcentre.com, the African Book Collective http://www.africanbookscollective.com/ and their North American agents Michigan State University Press http://msupress.msu.edu/series.php?seriesID=22 and Spectrum Books, an Ibadan based publisher http://www.spectrumbooksonline.com/cgi-bin/cart.plx

On a separate note, I'm glad to see the flourishing of interest in reading and writing in Nigeria- I've blogged about Farafina and New Gong publishers in the past.....but there are also new book clubs springing up, the opening of a new South African owned-chained mediastore in Lagos with prospects for more branches in other parts of the country as Jeremy Weate makes clear in Naijablog...... and Molara Wood in her art and literary blog

Christmas lights, moaning and a Tory anointing

Another busy weekend that spilt into the beginning of this week. The cold spell seems to have eased off, and so perhaps we may not have a white Christmas after all....speaking of which I was walking down Regent Street on Sunday and night and was struck by the sheer tastelesness of the Christmas lights ......they looked like someone had just put up huge swathes of sparkling blue Lurex, interspersed with incongruous cartoon animals....really hideous

Still on Christmas, many of my English friends like to moan about how much they dislike the enforced camaraderie and jollity of Christmas, and then theygo on to regale me with stories of what a nightmare it's been buying Christmas presents and trying to book train tickets to visit their family members (who they can't stand) and so on and so forth, and I wonder why they bother if it's such a pain.......

Today sees the formal anointing of David Cameron as leader of the Opposition- even as I type the Tory leadership ballots are being counted, and barring any major upset, Cameron will be facing Tony Blair at Prime Minister's Questions tomorrow...I was listening to some of Cameron's supporters on the radio earlier today and they spoke about how he was ging to remodel the Tory party for instance by positively enhancing the role of women in the party and tackling climate change. Conspicuous by its absence was any mention of any other minorities........looks like it's still a steep climb ahead for the Tories........

World AIDS Day, the value of symbols....and still on forgiveness

Feeling rather exhausted today....just work I suppose. It's World AIDS Day today and even as I wear my red ribbon, I struggle with the thoughts of whether these symbolic rituals are worth anything....What happens after World AIDS Day? Or after Africa '05? The millions of people living with HIV do not disappear after December 1st.....African art and music and literature will still exist and thrive after 2005, but will anyone still be interested?

I know the counter-argument- it's not a choice between having these symbolic days or events and full on engagement. The alternative is often a deafening silence, and so I suppose these symbols have some meaning......


Most newspapers here today have on the front page, a photograph of the mother of Anthony Walker the promising black schoolboy killed by white racist youths in Liverpool a few months ago. Yesterday, the killers were found guilty and the composed and dignified mother issued a statement saying "I forgive them" drawing on her Christian faith..... I found it interesting that even some of the newspapers who help to foster the climate in which racist thoughts and acts thrive joined in celebrating this woman's " super"- humanity......

Pissy English rain, Prime Minister's questions, squash and the lure of the forbidden

It's slightly balmier weather today, although it's been drizzling all day, that kind of weak English pitter-pattering that continues throughout the day and which used to make me want to yell at the skies when I first moved here "If you want to rain, make up your mind and rain well- like a proper tropical storm and let us get on with it, and stop this pitter- pattering pissing about!!"........

There was an item on the radio today about what an accomplished performer Tony Blair is on Prime Minister's questions. I must say I was impressed to learn that he often has no idea what the leader of the Opposition is going to ask him - he certainly does manage to hold his own and give better than he's getting....the programme suggested that David Cameron will be no match for Blair when (as is widely expected) he wins the leadership of the Tory party in the next few weeks.......

For some strange reason, at lunch today, as I was grabbing a sandwich in a nearby cafe ......(Oh I must remember to blog about the English penchant for calling sandwiches lunch- I've been at meetings and other conferences with other Africans who certainly agreed that sandwiches do not qualify as lunch :-) .....Anyway, there I was eating my Coronation chicken sandwich and sipping my apple juice and I suddenly remembered TreeTop and Hi-Time fruit squashes. Growing up, they were a staple in every Nigerian middle-class home, and later in every schoolboy or school girl's cupboard at boarding school. They came mainly in orange, pineapple and blackcurrant flavours and were sold in funny-shaped slightly conical (at both ends) bottles, which once the squash was finished became receptacles for storing drinking water in the fridge. Tree top bottles were smooth, while Hi-Time bottles were ridged......For some obscure reason, my mother refused ever to buy Hi-Time- I think there had been some kind of scandal about it containing some unhealthy chemical- and so it naturally became the drink of choice for me and my siblings whenever we went out without our parents......an early lesson in the attraction of the forbidden..........Strange how these flashes of nostalgia come unbidden.....

Abani's Graceland Longlisted for the Impac Award

Chris Abani's Graceland which was on my contemporary Nigerian literature reading list has been longlisted for the IMPAC Dublin Literary award. The only other African writer on the shortlist of 132 books is Bananuka Jocelyn Ekochu, a Ugandan woman writer who works for Femwrite, the Ugandan women writers' group.

Her book, Shock waves Across the Ocean was nominated by the National Library of Uganda while Graceland was nominated by the Stockholm Public Library............... The list of nominated books is quite eclectic, probably as a result of the nomination process which allows only libraries in major cities of the world to nominate works that they judge to be of high literary value......Nigerian libraries should get into the nomination process- it may be one way of exposing Nigerian authors to a wider audience
http://www.impacdublinaward.ie/2006/longlist.htm#A

Richard II, corrupting power and Nigerian self successions

Has been a busy weekend and a busy start to the week. Went to the Old Vic on Saturday night to watch the last night of Richard II. At school in Nigeria, we had studied the play for O level literature and so it is the Shakespeare play with which I am most acquainted, having had to read and reread it several times in order to be able to answer those dreadful context questions which began with a quote and then had several questions underneath it- who said this, to whom and on what occasion? what was the consequence of this speech? We had to answer them in Literature and in Bible Knowledge....I wonder if they are still used now.....

Going back to the play, it was great to see Kevin Spacey (with hardly a trace of an American accent) leading the cast in a glittering performance that had a contemporary ring to it. With Richard and his court all dressed in smart suits, and as you watched the machinations, it sometimes felt as if you were watching Blair and his band of spin doctors..... The ovation at the end was well deserved and there was something poignant about it all- perhaps there is that about all last night productions- that feeling of having worked relentlessly and intensely together as a team and then coming to a successful end.......In taking his bow, Spacey slipped back into his American accent to thank the staff, the cast and the man he called "THE Shakespearian director of our time"- Trevor Nunn.......

The play fascinates me with its theme of the divine right of kings and the question of whether it is right to do wrong in order to correct another (greater?) wrong? In the play, Bolingbroke is justly banished by Richard II into exile for breaching the peace of the kingdom. While in exile, his father, John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster dies and Richard greedily seizes his lands and title which are justly Bolingbroke's. To remedy this, Bolingbroke invades England, initially only to reclaim his inheritance but then ends up an usurper, driving Richard from the throne......

There are echoes today in Nigeria where some argue that in order to stop the President's attempt to change the constitution and give himself a third term, we must overlook the transgressions of people like Alamieyeseigha the tummy tucking thieving governor, merely because they are opposed to the self-succession bid........

Just typing those words sent a shiver down my spine- the last time I used that phrase(self succession bid) , it was in relation to Sani Abacha, the despot that held Nigeria hostage in the mid nineties, and in whose widow's name countless soliciting e mails are sent each day- to think that the current president would ever put himself in a position where these words would be used about him is sad......

Still on Nigerian politics.....

I have up till now resisted posting on the alleged attempt by the Nigerian president to force through a change in the constitution thus guaranteeing himself a third term in office. This has thrown up a loud chorus of opponents- an unwieldy coalition of would-be presidential aspirants, people who have been pissed off by Obasanjo in some way or the other, sheer opportunists and some genuinely concerned Nigerian patriots. Allegations of hefty bribes being sent round to legislators by the president's men are flying around, reinforcing the impression that Obasanjo's famed war on corruption is nothing more than a stage managed spectacle for Western governments and media, and a useful tool for dealing with political enemies who stick their heads above the parapet.......

It is sad that for whatever reason the President is even contemplating this half-assed idea of a third time. I'm sure he's partly driven by the realization that the reforms he has tried to put in place have not bedded down and are at risk of being rubbished by a new president in 2007. This is precisely why many of us saw his waste of his first term as tragic. If the reforms in the financial sector and the economy had started then, by now they would have been well embedded. Nevertheless, there are alternatives to the 3rd term campaign - why not select a trusted pair of hands- and support them to carry forward the reforms?

First snow, the African diaspora and Alamieyeseigha's refilling

This morning, I am looking out on a glistening white garden square and on white roofs and enjoying the sunlight as it is reflected back from the snow and on the bare trees and lamp posts in the square. It's pretty, like something out of a Christmas card, or those Christmas annual books that we were given as children in tropical Nigeria......... Yes, it's the first snow of the year, and it's only November and it appears that the English obsessive desire for a white Christmas may well come to pass this year.......

This morning on the radio, Mary Robinson, the former Irish President was speaking on the potential value of the African diaspora to development efforts citing the example of how useful she had found the Irish diaspora in regenerating the Irish economy in the 1990s. Apparently a group of Africans in the diaspora have put together a shadow Commission for Africa report to rival Tony Blair's commission's report and it is being launched today. Apparently the group felt that the original commission ignored the current and potential contribution of the diaspora and their unique perspective.

I obviously have fairly strong feelings on this, often feeling that I am caught between a rock and a hard place as to my living abroad. I particularly resent often being told by Nigerians at home that I do not understand the situation because I live abroad. Whenever I visit home,(which I do fairly regularly) people marvel at my up to date grasp of Nigerian current affairs and politics, not realizing how much the world has changed since the sixties and seventies when our parents were here, when letters took two weeks to wend their way from the UK back to Nigeria and vice versa and where the only news people abroad got was from the BBC World Service and from yellowed newspaper cuttings, weeks out of date by the time they got to the UK. Now I often read the Nigerian newspapers online before many Nigerians at home have and have access to a wide range of internet sources and commentary on Nigeria, I text and speak to my family and friends nearly every day and can buy the latest Nigerian books, videos, CDs and foodstuff fairly easily. I think there are certainly many ways in which the diaspora can contribute and I don't just mean the ubiquitous Western Union money transfers.......

On , perhaps a lighter note, Alamieyesigha, the tummy-tucking thieving governor of Bayelsa has performed his first official action back in office in the impoverished Bayelsa State of the Niger Delta. Guess what it was? Signing the 2006 appropriations bill into law - with 500 000 pounds bail money and over ten million pounds in his frozen accounts forfeited to the British government as a result of his flight from justice, his personal coffers certainly need quick replenishing.........at the expense of the millions of poor Bayelsans, some of whom trooped out to give him a hero's welcome earlier in the week........ I hope he gets impeached soon

Reading Uganda, reflecting on ghettoes and vengeful justice...

Today, I started reading a new book, set in Uganda and in London. It's by Maggie Gee,one of the original set of Granta's Best of Young British writers and it's called My Cleaner. It's a beautifully written book about a middle class English woman who invites the Ugandan woman who used to clean her London home in the eighties back to England in a bid to heal her chronically depressed son who as a child had formed a strong attachment to the cleaner. It carefully charts the shift in the balance of power between the two women and captures quite realistically, I think, the conceptions and prejudices of both women. Even more remarkably, Gee has managed to capture the essence of Ugandan life, at least as far as I can tell, having only experienced it in Doreen Baingana's excellent Tropical Fish and in Isegawa's Abyssinian Chronicles and Snakepit. Not being a Baganda speaker, I cannot vouch for the accuracy of the phrases and interjections with which Gee sprinkles her prose, but she certainly seems to get the atmosphere right. And I again marvel at how similar the experiences and issues Ugandans at home and abroad face are to those faced by Nigerians at home and abroad........ Gee acknowledges support from the Ugandan women writers association Femwrite, to which Monica Arac de Nyeko and Jackee Butesta Batanda both belong.....

Last week in Madrid, the English language version of El Pais, the Spanish national paper carried a lengthy feature on the riots in Paris and worried "Could it happen here?" It also pointed out that Germany, Britain and France had all adopted different approaches to the immigrant "problem" and wondered what the right approach was. Everyone seems to go on about people living in the same neighbourhoods perpetuating their own culture and so on, but I think it's not necessarily the living apart that's the problem. Most Western cities are segregated on the basis of wealth anyway. The problem occurs when an area that is poor and rundown also happens to be largely inhabited by immigrants of another race who perceive that the reason the authorities cannot be bothered to clean up their streets, provide street lighting or other amenities is because of their difference. And inevitably these perceptions are fostered and strengthened by their day to day experiences........

There has been much talk in recent days of victims' rights and justice following the tragic shooting of a policewoman here in the UK, with calls for arming the police and bringing back the death penalty. A similar story has played out following the attempts to provide some sort of amnesty to perpetrators of terrorist acts in Northern Ireland in exchange for securing a peace agreement. It's difficult to put in a word not having been at the receiving end, and I cannot even begin to imagine the pain the victims' families have gone through.....but I can't help but be disturbed at the hectoring calls for vengeance........reminds me of an argument I had with some Naija friends after the 7th of July bombings where they insisted that the most draconian measures be put in place to forestall a repeat. When I insisted that some calm,moderate thinking should supercede emergency rag tag measures, one of them shouted "What if YOU had been on one of those trains? Or your brother or sister?" I replied that I would hope that if that happened, I would have the strength and magnanimity of spirit to respond with humanity.....or perhaps...superhumanity......It IS a lot to ask of victims and their families but there are examples through history that show it can be done....and that forgiveness can be liberating....

And a dash of good old Naija machismo!

The legislators in Bayelsa State who are plotting to impeach the money laundering, bail-jumping "Governor" Al;amieyeseigha seem particularly piqued by his cross-dressing disguise that helped him escape the long arm of British law. In their words:

"A governor who disguised himself as a woman to run away from justice in London should not be our governor. It is a slap on our collective dignity as a people and our sensibilities as a people."

On a day that saw Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf formally declared Africa's first female elected head of state, it was "refreshing" to see a dash of good ol' Naija machismo.

I wonder what they would make of my English male colleagues penchant for dressing in fish-net tights and colorful wigs for charity as they did for the Children in Need Appeal last week....

Alamieyeseigha, the complexity of Nigerian politics& UK media disinterest

I am still angered at reports that Alamieyeseigha, the money-laundering, tummy tucking Governor of Nigeria's Bayelsa State skipped bail in the UK over the weekend and has reappeared in pomp in his impoverished state capital of Yenagoa in the oil-rich Niger Delta......In his speeches, he talks about how "God saved him from his predicament" and how he intends to rededicate his life to the service of God and the people of his state....More like dedicating himself to refilling his pockets with ill-gotten loot from his government's coffers, considering that he has just forfeited 500 000 pounds in bail money, in addition to the over 1 million pounds in CASH seized from his posh London flat when it was raided by the Metropolitan Police......

Thankfully, today there are reports that there are moves to impeach him by the state assembly, which ordinarily would be reason for rejoicing......except that there are also reports that the legislators are being blackmailed to do this by the anti-corruption tribunal set up by the President Olusegun Obasanjo, who it is becoming increasingly clear appears to be planning to change the constitution to give himself a third term in office..... Alamieyeseigha has long argued that he is only being picked on because of his resistance to this self perpetuation bid and while that is no excuse, it perhaps explains why the people of Yenagoa are less than enthused by the President's anti-corruption fight which many have long argued is a selective fight, targetting his "enemies"....

Meanwhile there is a deafening silence from the UK media on the Alamieyeseigha escape from London- one would have thought that it had all the elements of an interesting news story- corruption, the oil rich Niger Delta, the UK's porous borders (long trumpeted by the tabloids as a security concern , the cloak-and-dagger Bonnie-Prince-Charlie- like escape across the Channel dressed as a woman, the efforts of the Nigerian government to bring a corrupt official to justice etc Apart from a few cursory brief pieces on the BBC website, and the Times and Telegraph, no one else seems to have picked it up. Which only fuels rumours in Nigeria that the British government may have been covertly complicit in Alams's escape......

Winter blues, walking slow, walking fast, the been-to way

It is freezing again today and there is a thick dense fog clothing everything and you can hardly see beyond your nose. Yesterday, I had to turn on the heating in my flat, another winter chore that I loathe. Each winter I have to work out the settings for the various heaters and then turn them on, all the while trying to strike the right balance between waking up virtually steamed alive and waking up frozen, while at the same time trying not to run up a fortune in electricity bills......On the streets, everyone is bustling wherever they are going and no one is stopping to dawdle....Which brings to my mind the question of walking paces.....

When I first arrived in the UK, English friends would always complain about how slowly I walked. I on the other hand would marvel at the brisk pace they would lollop off on when we were supposed to be having a leisurely walk....I soon became used to their complaints and didn't think much of it until once in conversation with another friend, he pointed out that if we walked at that brisk pace in Nigerian heat, you would probably collapse in a couple of minutes.....and vice versa. In other words, the famed brisk, business-like steps of the been-to (Sixties Nigerian slang for one who has "been to England") immortalized in Chinua Achebe's description of Clara in No Longer at Ease were not the result of any great zeal or efficiency, but actually an attempt to stave off freezing in winter...........Perhaps the great English tea drinking tradition springs from the same roots.......Even I, usually no great tea drinker am beginning to have the odd cup or two in the office to clear the head and bring some warmth back into chilled bones....

Shameless!!! Another sad day for Nigeria....

The tummy tucking Nigerian governor of my earlier post who was arrested and detained in London on charges of money-laundering has apparently skipped bail and escaped back to Nigeria- allegedly disguised as a woman, the BBC confirms this evening.....

And as predicted, crowds have lined the streets of the impoverished state capital of Yenagoa in the oil rich Niger Delta to welcome him back. Meanwhile he has allegedly said that "God brought him home" and accused the British authorities of "neo colonialism". The cheek of him, having travelled under false pretences, and running away from justice, he dares to invoke God and neocolonialism........

Sadly because of a weird "immunity from prosecution" clause in the Nigerian constitution, there is little chance that he will be brought to justice. A fellow governor caught in similar circumstances last year fled back to Nigeria, also skipping bail and has continued to govern his state.....

How these men can live with themselves, I honestly do not know!

The Metropolitan Police should never have let him slip through......

Freezing, The Constant Gardener, Corporate Social Responsibility and Isegawa...

It's freezing today and even though it's clear and crisp and sunny, I fear that the predictions for a very cold winter will come to pass. I have managed so far not to lose any gloves or my hat or any of the other winter paraphernalia, so feel that I'm doing quite well.....but it's early days yet....

Started reading Moses Isegawa's Snakepit today. He's the Ugandan author of The Abyssinian Chronicles which I loved. Snakepit is again set in Idi Amin's Uganda but I don't think (so far) that it is as accomplished as The Abyssinian Chronicles which flowed smoothly. Snakepit seems a lot jerkier, even though there are flashes of brilliance and humour. What does come through in both books is a sense that Isegawa is quite angry at the situation of things in his country and one almost senses that he has turned his back on Uganda.....the bio at the front of Snakepit simply says that he was born in Uganda and now has Dutch citizenship and lives just outside of Amsterdam....

I also went to see The Constant Gardener at the weekend- I went to see it with my cousin who was born and brought up in the UK and has only been back to Nigeria a handful of times. We were both struck by the authenticity of some of the African market and slum scenes - Nairobi could pass for Lagos or Ibadan or Enugu or the slums on the outskirts of Abuja (far away from the glistening pristine highways). I also agreed with Jeremy Weate of naijablog http://naijablog.blogspot.com/ that again the Africans were largely the backdrop for the white actors , and I suppose the film producers retort would be that "audiences will not come to see a film featuring mostly African actors". True? Like the chicken and the egg, we'll never know which comes first.......except of course the Nigerian movie industry starts making coherent, powerful films and find a way of marketing them to the world........Bollywood anyone?

An English friend who had watched the film earlier asked if I felt that Western companies could act as ruthlessly in Africa as they were depicted as doing in The Constant Gardener. I had to admit that while I had no direct experience or proof, speaking to friends who have lived and worked in the Niger Delta, I was horrified at some of the things the oil companies get up to there.......He was convinced that in this era of "corporate social responsibility", things had changed......I was more cynical- the companies are merely better at covering their tracks...... and Africa where neither the governments nor the press nor the activists have the capability to take them on provides a vast playground for these interests......

Nigerian home videos,the erosion of reading and a deep malaise

Reflecting on my earlier post about Pacesetters, the popular African street literature series had me wondering whether home videos have taken the place that novels used to have in Nigerian popular culture.

The very popular Nigerian home video industry is an example of enterprise that has grown from nothing to a huge behemoth now said to be worth millions of dollars with the films watched all over the world. I had thought that it was a purely Nigerian market but now understand that it's a pan-African thing.

I remember reading an article in an international magazine not too long ago describing a journey across Tanzania in a bus where the on board entertainment was a Nigerian home video, and I understand that they sell like hot cakes in Ghana and South Africa and Kenya. I've seen the films on sale on the streets of Washington DC and in Brixton and Peckham in London. For many, the films have become a way of keeping in touch with home.....and for others a way into a world they have never been to....pretty much in the way books have led me into countries and cultures that I have never visited.....

Now there are huge shops selling these films in many Nigerian markets, and people exchange the newest videos with their family and friends, but years ago they would have been exchanging novels and there would have been large bookshops selling these books in the markets. Now all they sell are textbooks, motivational books and religious texts of the "How to Possess your God Destined Wealth" variety.....

I'm not suggesting that all Nigerians read high literary fiction-it varied quite widely. For the women, you had the frothy Barbara Cartland romances, the Bertha M Clay books with improbable titles like Beyond Pardon and for the slightly more highbrow, Denise Robbins whose romances were slightly meatier than Cartland's and unlike Cartland's were not always set in fairy tale castles......Later the Mills and Boon series intruded.

For the men, it was more action stuff- the epitome of which was the novels involving Nick Carter, a sort of implausible James Bond figure who was always armed with "Wilhemina-his trusty Luger" and a stiletto whose name now escapes me

Then there were the James Hadley Chase crime novels which virtually could be found in every home. They tended to have a bad reputation because of the rather racy covers which usually had a combination of a bikini clad blonde and a weapon and the covers often bore no relation to the plot, but obviously must have boosted sales hugely. I remember having to wrap the book covers or even ripping them off so that adults didn't suspect that you were reading a racy James Hadley Chase

The more sophisticated children read books from the Ladybird series- books that I hold responsible for my rather deep knowledge of the largely irrelevant minutiae of the lives of various English monarchs, as well as the Enid Blyton books and then there were a whole series of books by Nigerian authors commissioned by publishers like Heinemann and Macmillan for the Nigerian children's market- including Chinua Achebe's Chike and the River, Cyprian Ekwensi's The Rainmaker and other stories and Anezi Okoro's excellent Tales out of School and More Tales Out of School

And then there were the African Writers Series which published Achebe and Soyinka and Ngugi and a whole host of African writers.

These days, when I go to Nigeria, I visit houses of fairly well-off, well educated professionals in which there is not a single book. Where there are books, they are often motivational or religious. But there are almost invariably rows and rows of home videos. And the story is the same in many Nigerian homes here in the UK.
Which isn't in itself a bad thing, but puts the lie to the story that the withering away of reading is purely economic- perhaps it's something to do with a deeper malaise, probably not divorced from the crass materialism that pervades Nigerian society

Adichie makes the John Llewellyn Prize shortlist

Chimamanda Adichie's Purple Hibiscus has been shortlisted for the John Llewellyn Prize for "fine young writers early in their careers from biographers, novelists and historians to travel writers, dramatists and poets " The other shortlisted books are:

Neil Bennun The Broken String Viking (British) (non-fiction / history)
Anthony Cartwright The Afterglow Tindal Street Press (British) (Novel)
Colin McAdam Some Great Thing Jonathan Cape (Canadian) (Novel)
Rory Stewart The Places In Between Picador (British) (Travel)
Jonathan Trigell Boy A Serpent’s Tail (British) (Novel)

I remember e-mailing to congratulate Hari Kunzru (author of the Impressionist and Transmission) last year when he won the prize but in a stinging rebuff turned it down because the prize was sponsored by the Mail on Sunday, an English tabloid which had in his words " consistently pursued an editorial policy of vilifying and demonising refugees and asylum-seekers, and throughout their political and social coverage there is a pervasive atmosphere of hostility towards black and Asian British people" The full speech is here...
http://www.harikunzru.com/hari/jlr.htm

Thankfully the prize is no longer sponsored by the Mail and so Ms Adichie can hopefully look forward to the award ceremony on the 1st of December in London without worrying that she is selling out......

Nigerian home videos,the erosion of reading and a deep malaise

Reflecting on my earlier post about Pacesetters, the popular African street literature series had me wondering whether home videos have taken the place that novels used to have in Nigerian popular culture.

The very popular Nigerian home video industry is an example of enterprise that has grown from nothing to a huge behemoth now said to be worth millions of dollars with the films watched all over the world. I had thought that it was a purely Nigerian market but now understand that it's a pan-African thing.

I remember reading an article in an international magazine not too long ago describing a journey across Tanzania in a bus where the on board entertainment was a Nigerian home video, and I understand that they sell like hot cakes in Ghana and South Africa and Kenya. I've seen the films on sale on the streets of Washington DC and in Brixton and Peckham in London. For many, the films have become a way of keeping in touch with home.....and for others a way into a world they have never been to....pretty much in the way books have led me into countries and cultures that I have never visited.....

Now there are huge shops selling these films in many Nigerian markets, and people exchange the newest videos with their family and friends, but years ago they would have been exchanging novels and there would have been large bookshops selling these books in the markets. Now all they sell are textbooks, motivational books and religious texts of the "How to Possess your God Destined Wealth" variety.....

I'm not suggesting that all Nigerians read high literary fiction-it varied quite widely. For the women, you had the frothy Barbara Cartland romances, the Bertha M Clay books with improbable titles like Beyond Pardon and for the slightly more highbrow, Denise Robbins whose romances were slightly meatier than Cartland's and unlike Cartland's were not always set in fairy tale castles......Later the Mills and Boon series intruded.

For the men, it was more action stuff- the epitome of which was the novels involving Nick Carter, a sort of implausible James Bond figure who was always armed with "Wilhemina-his trusty Luger" and a stiletto whose name now escapes me

Then there were the James Hadley Chase crime novels which virtually could be found in every home. They tended to have a bad reputation because of the rather racy covers which usually had a combination of a bikini clad blonde and a weapon and the covers often bore no relation to the plot, but obviously must have boosted sales hugely. I remember having to wrap the book covers or even ripping them off so that adults didn't suspect that you were reading a racy James Hadley Chase

The more sophisticated children read books from the Ladybird series- books that I hold responsible for my rather deep knowledge of the largely irrelevant minutiae of the lives of various English monarchs, as well as the Enid Blyton books and then there were a whole series of books by Nigerian authors commissioned by publishers like Heinemann and Macmillan for the Nigerian children's market- including Chinua Achebe's Chike and the River, Cyprian Ekwensi's The Rainmaker and other stories and Anezi Okoro's excellent Tales out of School and More Tales Out of School

And then there were the African Writers Series which published Achebe and Soyinka and Ngugi and a whole host of African writers.

These days, when I go to Nigeria, I visit houses of fairly well-off, well educated professionals in which there is not a single book. Where there are books, they are often motivational or religious. But there are almost invariably rows and rows of home videos. And the story is the same in many Nigerian homes here in the UK.

Which isn't in itself a bad thing, but puts the lie to the story that the withering away of reading is purely economic- perhaps it's something to do with a deeper malaise, probably not divorced from the crass materialism that pervades Nigerian society today.......

On loving Spain, Madrid but not Oates

Just got back from a very relaxing four days in Madrid, my first visit there. I love Spain, there's just a certain warmth and openness I find in the people that is unrivalled in other parts of Europe. I suppose it's what the French would call joie de vivre. Plus, I never seem to get the hassles at Spanish immigration that seem de rigueur almost everywhere else. And the food is probably as close to Naija food as it gets- this time I had a lovely callos madrilenos, a stew of tripe and cow foot which with a little bit of red hot pepper, would have rivalled any of the steaming products of the bukaterias in Obalende.....stickiness and all, pity they didn't have the bowls of water with bars of Lux soap floating in them and a ragged towel for cleaning up after washing your hands.....

I was finally able to finish Michela Wrong's I Didn't do it for You which taught me so much about the history of Eritrea and Ethiopia and made me want to visit Asmara, the Italianate capital of Eritrea. The story of the Eritrean people's struggle for independence and their subsequent history is at once both heartwarming and heartbreaking......

I'm also well into Esi Edugyan's The Second Life of Samuel Tyne and find it a remarkable achievement, although the style and theme , almost Gothic is not exactly my favourite style.....she's been compared to Joyce Carol Oates and I have never yet got round to reading a single Oates

Exhausted......

I woke up late this morning and had to dash to catch the train to my morning meetings. All day I've felt like I'm wading through really thick liquid and it feels as if I'm hearing through a thick veil as well......

The thick veil didn't stop me noting that Tony Blair was defeated in the Commons last night on his bill to hold terror suspects for 90 days without charge.....what I found most despicable was the insinuation that the July the 7th London bombings would have been prevented if such a law was in place....... I am no security expert but 90 days does seem a long time to hold someone without charge.......especially if you are only too aware that the police sometimes get it wrong....

On the Nigerian front, the wife of the Nigerian governor (see tummy tucking governors and other obscenities in the archives) who is currently charged with money laundering in London was herself arrested by British police yesterday in connection with millions of pounds allegedly found in her account.... I suppose their case is not helped by the fact that photographs of their daughter's graduation party from a Californian university are splashed all over the latest edition of Ovation, the Nigerian version of Hello, complete with Vera Wang ballgown and a poolside party AND ball at the Beverly Hills Hotel..........this from the governor of a state that has no roads, in the grossly deprived oil rich Niger Delta......the gall of some people!!!

I'm off on a weekend break tomorrow, I hope I'll come back rejuvenated...

Boris Johnson, Eritrea and a recurring theme of twins

So, back to literature and what I'm reading at the moment. I've actually got three books on the go, which is unlike me, but the past few weeks have been so hectic workwise that I seem to undergo mood swings- just in relation to my leisure reading- I hasten to add!

For light entertainment, I'm reading Boris Johnson, the Tory MP for Henley and editor of the right wing magazine The Spectator(known in these parts as the Sextator for the wide tangle of illicit sexual liaisons involving its members of staff last summer).He's widely beloved in the UK for his bumbling cuddly, oversized teddy bear, shambolic persona. I think it's all an act as he was President of the Oxford Union while at university and so isn't the slightest bit as dim or disorganized as he'd like to make out. Which in my book suggests that he is fierecely ambitious. Anyway I'm reading his Seventy Two Virgins which is supposed to be a comedy set around the visit of the US President to the UK in the aftermath of the onset of war in Iraq. It's not as funny as it could be and you can't help feeling that he probably just dashed it off to earn a few pennies, trading on his celebrity.......

For meatier stuff, I finally got hold of Michela Wrong's I Didn't Do It For You, with the intriguing subtitle of- How the World Used and Abused a Small African Nation- and it's about Eritrea. I've only just started but am enjoying it and learning about Eritrea, just as Ms Wrong's book In th Footsteps of Mr Kurtz was one of a set of books that educated me about the Congo.

The third book, I've also only just literally started and it's by Esi Edugyan, a Canadian author of Ghanaian extraction and it's called The Second Life of Samuel Tyne and is set in Canada. According to the blurb it's about a Ghanaian man who moves to Canada and moves with his wife and their twin daughters to a small town where sinister things happen. The twin and other worldly theme thing intrigues me because Helen Oyeyemi (The Icarus Girl) and Diana Evans (26a) both have twins and fantasy in their work......and all three are second generation immigrant (part or wholly) West African young women writers

I wonder if it has anything to do with the fact that West Africa has a high rate of twinning.....

Pacesetter novels and popular reading culture in Africa

If you lived in Nigeria in the 80s, then you probably remember Pacesetter novels.

These were a series by Macmillan (I think) which featured contemporary writers from across Africa. Unlike the Heinemann African Writers Series, they did not aspire to any great literary pretensions and were unabashedly popular in their slant.

I remember my first was The Undesirable Element in which a young virtuous Hausa woman (Bintu or Binta...can't remember now) went to work in a big city (Kano , perhaps) and fell into the evil clutches of a lascivious Alhaji, which I think she eventually escaped. I also remember The Mark of the Cobra by Valentine Alily which featured a sort of Nigerian James Bond dashing around in submarines and all that kind of stuff and The Smugglers by Kalu Okpi which was a sort of thriller featuring the Nigerian Police. And then you had Helen Ovbiagele's Evbu My Love and You Never Know which I suppose could pass for a sort of Nigerian 80s chick-lit with its young professional working women battling to keep their romances alive.....Anfd there were others from across the continent...Christmas in the City from Ghana, For Mbatha and Rabeka from Eastern Africa and so on.

Even the cover designs were classics in contemporary African pop art, colourful and amateurish, a stone throw away from the barber shop and hairdressing salon boards which I have seen decorating some English homes here in London. (somewhere in Africa, a barber shop is missing it's sign board....)

The good thing about them was that they were churned out on a regular basis (I remember the thrill of walking through the booksellers section in the market and finding a Pacesetter that I hadn't read) and they were cheap...when I went away to boarding school, my grandfather gave me the princely sum of ten naira which bought me the two latest Pacesetters.

And yet looking back now that was the golden age of African publishing and popular reading.......everyone read them- from semi literate traders in the markets to snooty secretaries in posh Lagos offices to spotty secondary school students and semi sophisticated undergraduates- and they constantly introduced new writing from across the continent, exposing us to everyday life in other African countries. Plus for some writers it gave them the first opportunity to thinking seriously about writing......

Sadly, in the 90s as structural adjustment programmes swept across the continent and the value of local currencies crashed, these books disappeared and with them, an entire reading and writing culture.

The attempt to keep a popular culture of reading struggles on though in such areas as the Hausa street literature of Kano in Nigeria, the valiant efforts of Caine Prize winner Binyavanga Wainana's Kwani? in Kenya http://www.kwani.org/ , Farafina Books in Nigeria http://farafina.dbweb.ee and now the New Gong Press publishing from Lagos www.newgong.com

But the good news for the nostalgic is that Pacesetter novels are back. I stumbled across a website with a link to them https://sslrelay.com/www.pacesetternovels.com and you can sneak a peek at the catalogue and relive those feelings of the 80s as you admire the covers which may look slightly garish now.....

It's not clear who's behind them- presumably Macmillan's sold the backlist- but at 5 pounds, and sold over the internet, they probably will not spark off any major African reading renaissance...... but then I suppose the target market is nostalgic old gits like me who now live abroad and have regular access to the internet, and credit cards to boot......

French riots, the value of human lives and John Donne

I had hoped to refrain- at least for a while- from commenting on the French riots, partly because I am wary of being labelled as someone who's "got a bit of a chip on his shoulder"....Britspeak for someone who keeps raising uncomfortable truths-about race or class or gender. Never mind that attitudes like these lead to people biting their tongues and letting it all simmer inside...........except of course, if like me you have a blog where you can let off steam....so please indulge me........

Last July, in the aftermath of the London bombings, I was incensed to read an article by a French journalist based in London, the gist of which was that she was not surprised that the bombings had happened seeing as the British had got the whole race relations- and- integration caboodle wrong, implying of course that France had got it right. I was incensed because a year before I had visited Paris and was struck with how bleak the lives of its non-white populations seemed.....

From the dreariness of the banlieus, graffiti strewn and soulless, with unemployed youth hanging around listlessly to the virtual absence of ethnic minority people on television, there was something particularly hollow and sad about the people of colour I encountered there.

Chatting to some Nigerian friends later, they told me how lucky I was to be living in London, describing how regularly, black people coming off the trains in Paris would be herded into groups by gendarmes shouting "Les papiers, les papiers" as they checked immigration and identity papers

My feeling of unease was virtually complete when on two separate nights going back to our rather trendy upscale hotel with my English friends, I was stopped at reception by security men asking to see my room key. The second time I just stormed past, refusing to respond to their increasingly agitated "Monsieur, monsieur!" In my three years in the UK, I had never had a similar experience.

Which is why I was annoyed to imagine that someone from France dared to exploit the tragedy of the London bombings to pontificate on what Britain should be doing about race relations...........

On a different but not unrelated issue, I heard "President" General Musharraf of Pakistan (I wonder when the US will turn their democracy-spreading skills in his direction,) lament on radio that he believed the world would have contributed more to the earthquake victims if it had happened in a Western country. On the same day, in a newspaper, I saw a report from Oxfam detailing the various amounts that had been donated per victim for the earthquake victims, the tsunami victims, for Hurricane Katrina and for people suffering from HIV in Africa. No prizes for guessing who topped the list.......or who came bottom

And it's not just a Western affliction, this subtle grading of the value of a human life.....after the recent aircrash in Nigeria, a few people pointed out that far more than 117 people had died in huge road traffic accidents which had not received the kind of attention that the plane crash had in the Nigerian press.Flying in Nigeria is of course the preserve of a small privileged minority..... Other commentators lamented that the death of the First Lady appeared to take up so much more space in the Nigerian media than the death of the 117 victims of the plane crash.....

And even I, I remember, a few days after the London bombings which killed 52 people, reading an article about a bus plunging into a river in Nigeria and killing over sixty people. I quickly flicked on to the next page and put it out of my mind. And then the thought came to me.............only days before, I had been devastated by the shock of the London bombing and the lives lost and greedily devouring article after article on the bombing and yet here could not summon more than a passing thought for these other souls and their families......

We must never forget John Donne's immortal words- "....Any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind...." and we must take them to heart more often.....

Another week gone...more African writing

This week's sped past so fast, partly because I've been away on a course which was rather gruelling and didn't offer me much chance to get to a computer, let alone blog....you know them those intensive eat, sleep breathe things with lots of "group work" and "interactivity"....

Quite a bit has happened while I was away...in the UK, the David Blunkett saga came to a rather sorry end with him resigning for the second (and probably final) time . I did try to be sympathetic and charitable about it, but having arrived in the UK when he was hardline Home Secretary and mouthing off toughly about immigrants and asylum seekers and anti-social behaviour, I've never really warmed to him, a position not helped by the apparent hubris that seems to characterize Blair and his New Labour acolytes, in which they fail or refuse to appreciate why certain positions they take are being criticized. I did respect David Blunkett's achievements as someone who grew up blind in a deprived Northern city, his ending up in the Cabinet was a fantastic achievement. But he showed spectacularly poor judgement.......

In Nigeria, the investigation into the plane crash has started with experts from the US flying in to assist the Nigerian authorities. I did get a look at the Nigerian newspapers and magazines for last week and they tried to answer some of the questions raised. Many remain however and there were concerns about the credibility of the panel of enquiry as its membership and terms of reference appeared to be shrouded in secrecy....

I've had lots of feedback on this blog for which I'm very grateful. Chika Unigwe, (the talented Nigerian writer whose De Feniks is published in Dutch and is the first by a first generation immigrant in Belgium) has suggested Ben Okri's In Arcadia and Bernadine Evaristo's Laura as an addition to my contemporary Nigerian fiction list and tells me that she is reading with Brian Chikwava(the 2004 Caine Prize winner) tonight in London at the Institute of Education in Bloomsbury. She's also suggested Jackee Budesta Batanda as another Ugandan writer to look out for.....

Racist cab driver in London...my Danny Glover moment

So, having got my stolen bag back on Friday, I was on a high. Then on Saturday I was on a busy smart London high street on a work related errand and had to get a cab in order to get to Chelsea before the office I was going to closed... Now I don't take cabs often...largely because of the cost. And also perhaps because it took me a few days after I first arrived in the UK to work out that you had to check whether the cab had its light on indicating that it was free before it would stop for you.... Anyways since then I've worked it out and I've had a few incidents where I'd hailed cabs with their lights on and then the driver had switched it off and sped off but I hadn't really thought that much of it. I had always assumed that perhaps the driver was going on his lunch break or something..... So there I am, nicely dressed on the busy London high street this chilly autumn noon, not wearing a hoodie or anything, and I look at my watch and realize that I'm going to have to get a taxi if I'm to get to Chelsea before the office closes. So in good Londoner style, I take a few steps away from the bus stop, spot a cab right at the other end of the street, raise my arm sharp and watch the cab change lanes, indicating that he's seen my waving arm. His light's on, so he's free......cooool He pulls up and as he gets closer and clocks me, he raises his hand and switches off his light. Bugger, just my luck I think to pick a cabbie on his lunch break, and so I shrug and begin to look for another cab. There doesn't seem to be another in that direction and so I swing back, and that's when I see "Mr Cabbie on his lunch break" picking up this nice young white English couple, just a few metres away from me......my jaw slams into the ground....what tha'? And then slowly it sinks in, what's just happened, it's my Danny Glover moment....remember the famous black actor who couldn't get a taxi in New York? I manage to get a cab and get to the office and do my business and thengo to lunch with some friends who've lived in London for ages. They're black, Nigerian professionals like me and so I recount the story..... and my shock. I'm amazed when they burst out laughing, and then they tell me..."Oh it's got a lot better now, in the late 80s or early 90s we couldn't get a cab for love or money - you'd have to hail several before you got one to stop" I am gobsmacked that 50 years after the late Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat,in one of the most cosmopolitan and "multicultural" cities in the world, a brother still has problems getting transport home ........ So from now on, I'll be watching, and the next time I get that, I'm taking that number down and making a formal complaint. It may not go very far, but at least I'll have made a stand....

London Underground comes up trumps (or as we used to say Up London Underground)

So much seems to have happened to me this weekend. On one hand it was just another normal weekend spent catching up with my cleaning and other household chores, and yet a few kind of major things happened...I'll start with the good...

First off was I got my brown leather backpack which was stolen in an internet cafe back..(see archives for an account of this )which was a relief as I had a kind of sentimental attachment to it, having bought it in the souk in Marrakech on one of my first holidays outside the UK a few years ago. I had had the opportunity to try out my Naija-honed bargaining skills on the leather merchants in the souk and it had worked....I'd bought it for a fraction of what it would have cost in London and so was very proud of it.... until two "gentlemen" decided to relieve me of it in an internet cafe.....while I was helping one of them log on.....

So how did I get it back? Well I had a postcard from London Underground last week saying that they were in possession of some of my property and I was to call at their office to pick it up. I tried to think of stuff that I had lost or left on the tube and couldn't think of any, except for my stolen backpack. Anyway I went to the office on Friday morning, (a pain because they are only open Monday to Friday during working hours, so it meant going into work late) and behold they had my bag complete with the library books that were in it. My sunglasses which were also in it had however disappeared, but I wasn't quibbling. I paid my four pounds to the smiling London Underground lady and got out of there.

The guys who had run off with the bag had obviously found that the only things worth keeping in it were the sunglasses and had dumped the rest of the stuff at Bond Street tube station. I was delighted to get my library books and backpack back......

More Nigerian sadness...

Sad to learn that the body of the missing Indiana university student, Olamide Adeyooye had been found in Mississippi....I hadbeen one of those who sent e mails to major networks in the US encouraging them to focus more attention on her disappearance having been encouraged to do so by a Nigerian message board. Her friends had mounted a massive internet awareness raising effort to help find her, especially in the face of the alleged US media obsession with "blonde and blue eyed victims" and it's really sad it ended this way..........Of all the messages people posted on various sites I really liked this one-No one can hurt her now!

And then to hear that Ezenwa Ohaeto, one of Nigeria's best known literary figures who only a few weeks ago won the NLNG Nigeria Literature Prize for his poetry collection, Chants of a Minstrel died earlier this week at Addenbrooke's Hospital in Cambridge. He will probably be best remembered for his biography of Chinua Achebe. My thoughts go out to his family and friends....

It really hasn't been a good week for Nigeria. Let's hope next week will be better.....

A warm day...reflecting on the democracy of the internet and hungry for home

Today has been quite warm, by which I mean I haven't had to wear a jacket to work. I've carried one though and sure enough as dusk falls, there's a slight nip in the air. In the garden square opposite me two good English policemen, complete with inverted cone helmets are questioning (or chatting) to a group of men who seem to be more interested in the contents of bottles in the plastic bags that they are clutching....

This blog is suddenly exposing me to a whole new world of possibilities....while some people took offence at my asking questions about Nigeria's tragic weekend, I found a foray into some Nigerian chat rooms interesting to say the least. Nigerians from all over the globe were weighing in with their thoughts and feelings and asking questions in a way that would probably never be sanctioned in day to day Nigerian society....

Now I understand better why Owukori of Black Looks is passionate about unleashing the power of the internet in Africa....

Stumbled across a photograph by Jangbalajugbu on the Global Voices Online site of a plate of eba and what looked like egusi soup taken in Ife. Just looking at the smoothly curved yellow mounds of glistening eba and the swirl of palm oil and red pepper stew -with what looked like some sort of orisirisi (?tripe) floating in it- had me drooling over my keyboard....there was something about even the simplicity of the bowls and the plastic tablecloth that triggered a deep nostalgia.... I know what I'm having for dinner tonight....

More African books to look out for...contemporary Ugandan writing

I've had great feed back from my list of contemporary Nigerian books to look out for, so I'll just add a few more, widening my remit beyond Nigeria this timeto Uganda. I lay no claim to comprehensiveness or in depth knowledge of Ugandan fiction today....anyhow here goes

Tropical Fish: Stories Out of Entebbe by Doreen Baingana is a beautiful collection of interlinked short stories following three Ugandan sisters from childhood to boarding school to life as an immigrant in America -it's funny, sassy and resonates with meaning for me- even though I've never been to Uganda- and has been nominated twice for the Caine Prize

Abyssinian Chronicles by Moses Isegawa is another book set in Uganda and the Netherlands and is a powerful and darkly humorous rendition of the life of a young Ugandan boy through the Amin Years and then on to life as an immigrant in the Netherlands. I haven't read Snakepit which is his next book, but it's on my list

No Place Like Home - Yasmin Alibhai Brown, one of Britain's "leading commentators on race" grew up in Uganda and here recounts what it was like as an Asian in Uganda before and during the early part of the Amin years (pre the expulsion) and the struggle to settle in different parts of the world. Before reading this I hadn't realized how widely scattered Ugandan Asians became or that many of them had gone back to settle there in the mid-nineties....

Monica Arac de Nyeko's short stories are worth looking out for on the web...

To a less contentious subject....or perhaps not

While I dodge the flak from my questions about Nigeria's tragic weekend, perhaps I'll diffuse the tension by telling you about a book I just finished last night. It's a biography of a homeless man living in Cambridge by an academic who befriended him for three years and it's called Stuart, a life backwards. It challenged me profoundly, not least because of the way it highlights how our (I use the pronoun advisedly) ways of thinking about the homeless can be so different from theirs, so that what may be well intentioned interventions end up horribly wrong.

I suppose the same applies to interventions to "save Africa and Africans" or to "help black and minority ethnic communities" and the bottom line is that before you can help someone you need to understand where they are coming from, and by understand I mean a real understanding of how these individuals or groups make sense of their world and their position in it...

Unanswered questions from Nigeria's black weekend

Why did it take so long to determine where the crash site was?

Where did the "government official" who announced that there were 50 survivors get his information from?

Why was the broadcasting station that finally identified the site correctly promptly shut down?

Why was the Nigerian First Lady having cosmetic surgery done? And why in Malaga, Spain, not necessarily known for its medical excellence? Who was footing the bill?

Is it acceptable to ask these questions now? And if not now, when?

Opinions welcome

Tragedy in Nigeria

Was woken up on Sunday morning by a text message from a close relative saying there had been an aircrash in Nigeria on Saturday night and that he just wanted to let me know that he had spoken to my parents and they were fine. Leapt out of bed and switched on the television, BBC News 24 confirmed that a Bellview plane was missing after take off last night from Lagos en route Abuja but it was unclear what had happened to it. Since air travel in Nigeria is used by relatively few, I and most Nigerians whom I spoke to in the UK were very jittery as the chances of knowing someone on board was fairly high

By the time I'd taken a shower and headed for church I had a text message from a friend asking if I'd heard about the plane crash and also about the death of Stella Obasanjo,wife of the Nigerian president following cosmetic surgery in Spain. While I was sure that the news of the crash was probably true, I was more dubious about the second, convinced that it was a hoax, being perpetrated by "detractors". Sadly it was later to turn out that both stories were true.

The rollercoaster wasn't helped by the news from a government spokesman at about twelve that the crash site had been found, that over half the passengers had survived,and that all medical personnel should in the vicinity should head to the area.A few hours later, this statement was retracted, after AIT, a Nigerian broadcaster showed pictures of the site (apparently with graphic images of the crash site) which promptly made clear that there were no survivors. They were subsequently promptly closed down by the broadcasting regulator, although whether it was for the graphic images they had displayed or for having shown up the officials who had originally misled the public it was not clear.

There are so many questions and issues that the events of the last 24 hours throw up but this is not the time for them. I will surely return to them though.

For now my thoughts and prayers are with the families and friends of the bereaved, and also the management and staff of Bellview Airlines,certainly one of the most (if not the most professional) local airline in Nigeria.

TGIFriday, hunting library books,loving your neighbour and spice-o-meters

It's Friday and I am looking forward to the weekend, to chilling, to catching up on my Nigerian newspapers, to my weekly visit to my local library to return my books from last week and to pick out new ones. I literally get a buzz whenever I find a hot-in-demand book on the shelves- Philip Roth's The Plot Against America was my last big coup and I'm aiming for On Beauty and Shalimar the Clown now. I'm also looking out for Moses Isegawa's Snakepit (I thoroughly enjoyed his Abyssinian Chronicles set in Uganda and Holland). I get a buzz because too often , the hot books are reserved long in advance.... Which reminds me...I must do a post soon on contemporary African (non-Nigerian) writing that has caught my attention. Doreen Baingana's Tropical Fish is one to look out for. On the non-fiction front, I want to read I Didn't Do It for YOu- How the World Used and Abused a Small African Country. It's apparently about Eritrea, a country I'd like to learn more about...

Coming to work this morning, I took a shortcut and was walking past a fence surrounding a public space (Yes I walk to work, aren't I lucky?) which an elderly white man was having problems trying to clamber over, as I was wondering whether or not to approach him to help- he was literally stuck on the fence (but I didn't want to alarm him- I've tried helping elderly women with their luggage up the stairs in train stations only to have them reel back, clutching their bags tighter), but then I saw a young black boy in school uniform springing to his help and got him over. Watching them clasping each other, this young boy in his pristine uniform, happily lending a helping hand to this none too clean bewildered looking elderly man had me thinking again-why can't we all just see each other as human? And lend a helping hand....and accept a helping hand and think the best of people. I know.....I know it's a rather simplistic view of the world but we can dream and it was a good start to my day.

Having to have a chicken vindaloo sandwich because the sandwich lady had run out of choice before getting to my floor wasn't so cool, in fact it was rather hot!! I begin to wonder if I've had my spice-o-meter toned down living so long here... I mean this vindaloo was nowhere near the red (in colour and in heat) hot stews of Iya Modinat in Idi Araba that I used to gulp down early in the morning over hot white rice with ewa and dodo and yet here I was panting over my PC like my English friend encountering Mallam Sani's yaji for the first time....pathetic!!!

Dirty words...not

I think I should start a campaign to reclaim ordinary words that people have turned into dirty words, so here's my list, partly inspired by the strenuous way Nigerian women often shrug off the tag of feminist......so here goes:

"Feminist" - Usually any woman who tries to stand up or speak up for herself. In Nigeria often slandered as having been brainwashed to reject her culture by Western feminists

"Immigrant" - Thrown around especially at election time in Western countries, often code for non-white. I personally think "immigrant" should be a positive word- it takes a lot to leave your country and the familiar to venture out into the unknown and to get there in one piece requires being better than average, so deserves celebration!

"Liberal" Most of the things that make the world a better place came from liberals. I bet that when slavery was to be abolished, the more conservative said "But that's the natural way of things, that's how it always been...." Maintaining the status quo has never brought about positive change, so why should people be ashamed to stand up and be counted on the side of a movement that has been responsible for most of the positive change in the world....

Feedback...fantastic

Have actually had three comments today on this blog, perhaps it's the Nigerian literature thing...whatever it is I'm grateful and I'm glad some people are enjoying this

The comments have led mt to some fantastic blogs by Nigerian women- Nneka's World and The World according to Adaure for a start...I've always been impressed by sassy intelligent opinionated Nigerian women and it looks like there are a few blogging out there...

Keenly watching the Tory leadership contest in the UK to see how it will all pan out. Obviously David Cameron is the only candidate who seems near understanding what it is to be human in the 21st century in Engladn but he seems rather soft on policy detail and principles.... a bit like Tony then....be all things to all men (and women)

On the Booker Prize winner...and Chiwetel's Kinky Boots

So John Banville won with The Sea. I've glanced at it and read bits of it and the language is haunting and beautiful but perhaps too much so, gets in the way of the story which is what put me off....shallow, unintellectual me, easily seduced by a good story.... Anyway I'm still waiting to read On Beauty, Shalimar the Clown and Never Let me Go which I thought I might enjoy....

Went to see Chiwetel Ejiofor in Kinky Boots at the weekend, his performance as a drag queen in a provincial English town was stunning...heartbreaking and so human. I've followed his acting since Dirty Pretty Things and am proud that he's being touted as the first black film star to emerge from the UK in recent history. He's certainly doing Nigerians proud....

Contemporary Nigerian writing - reading list I

English friends who share my passion for reading often ask me about what new writing is coming out of Nigeria and I'm glad to say plenty. So here's a list in case you've been wondering what to look out for or buy. I interpret Nigerian quite broadly.....

Everything Good Will Come- Sefi Atta- An evocative rendering of the lives of two Nigerian girls as they grow up in Lagos. Challenges many preconceptions about the role of women in Nigerian society today

Purple Hibiscus- Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie - Kambili (Let me live in Igbo) is a young girl growing up in a wealthy family in Eastern Nigeria but her life is overshadowed by her father's tyranny, his brutality against a backdrop of societal upheaval and the Catholic Church

Graceland- Chris Abani- A Nigerian Elvis impersonator recounts his life, roams from Ajegunle to Bar Beach and interspersed with recipes of traditional Igbo dishes. Edgy

Waiting for an Angel by Helon Habila - Captures the brutality and hopelessness of the Abacha military dicatorship in languid, beautiful prose that reads almost like poetry

Arrows of Rain by Okey Ndibe - Another powerful evocation of military rule in Nigeria and its effects on the lives of ordinary people. Madness looms large as a metaphor and there is a beauty to the writing that is haunting

A Squatter's Tale by Ike Oguine - As far as I know, this is the first rendering of the Nigerian immigrant experience in the US and also captures the frenzied 90s in Lagos when a new breed of buccanneer bankers in braces and red ties wreaked havoc on Nigerian society

Sky High Flames by Unoma Azuah- We follow Ofunne as she grows up from a carefree village childhood through a Catholic mission school to marriage

Beast of No Nation- Uzodinma Iweala - This Harvard educated son of the current Nigerian finance minister writes in the voice of a barely literate African boy soldier and in the process shocks with the rendering of horror in an innocent, almost pure voice.

26a- Diana Evans- Evans, half English, half Nigerian and one half of a set of twins writes of two twins growing up in Neasden, a suburb of London and of love and loss and displacement in an engaging voice

The Icarus Girl- Helen Oyeyemi - I initially dismissed this out of hand as an attempt at a half-Nigerian Harry Potter but in the end quite enjoyed this tale of a half English, half Nigerian young girl and her spirit "friend" overlaid with a sense of horror and the macabre

Other Nigerian writers to look out for- you can read their short stories on the internet- are Chika Unigwe, Ike Okonta, Ikhide Ikheloa, Victor Ehikhamenor, Tolu Ogunlesi, Lola Shoneyin, Maik Nwosu, Nnedi Okorafor-Mbachu and Chuma Nwokolo

Useful websites are www.africanwriters.com,www.farafina-online.com

Watching the English

I have just finished a great book by an anthropologist (she calls herself a pop anthropologist) called Kate Fox and it's called Watching the English. Having lived in the UK now for four years I found her observations remarkably spot on. She points out that what many regard as an English obsession with the weather is no such thing- when an Englishman says "nasty weather isn't it?" It's merely an ice breaker and does not really demonstrate any interest in the answer.

She also points out all the subtle class distinctions that persist in English society, ranging from what you call your children (Kevin and Tracey at one end to Sarah and David at the other) to what you call the meal you have at mid day....just why it matters is not clear, but what I find interesting is that even among so called iconoclastic liberals, many of these rules still hold sway in 2005!

Unfortunately the book gets tedious towards the end as she tries to pull together all her remarkably detailed observations into a few pithy soundbites

Tummy tucking governors and other obscenities

When I first heard that the governor of Bayelsa State in Nigeria had been arrested at Heathrow Airport and that a subsequent search of his house had found nearly a million pounds in cash, I was horrified at the stupidity of it all. What is this Nigerian obsession with cash, how can you be so stupid as to keep such huge amounts in cash?

Of course I realized that there were political undertones to the whole arrest- the governor is alleged to be in the vice-president's "camp" and his movements were apparently leaked by the President's camp to Scotland Yard. But as many Nigerian commentators have pointed out, the fact was the money had not been planted in his house by the president's camp, had it?

I half wish that these Nigerian fat cats would declare full on war on each other and expose the skeletons in their various cupboards, but it appears that that is a wish too far. In the end, these things are settled "in-house" and the looting continues. All the previous corruption sagas have come to nought, which is partly why many Nigerians are cynical about the anti-corruption moves.Why can't the vice president's camp counter leak what dirt they have on members of the President's camp?

But the EFCC (the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission) and elendureports are two organizations which are playing an important role- www.elendureports.com by digging out information about the things Nigerian politicians get up to abroad, including their financial misdeeds and the EFCC by investigating and arresting suspected corrupt politicians. I only wish that the EFCC would update their website- it could make it easier to report cases to them

But the most obscene aspect of the Bayelsa governor affair was the revelation that what he had gone to Germany for (long proclaimed by members of his camp as a serious medical operation) was actually a tummy tuck. Following his initial arrest the governor had lamented that his "enemies" chose a moment when he was recovering from major surgery to strike. I sympathized, imagining he had undergone a kidney or liver transplant or a heart bypass, only to learn later that it was a TUMMY TUCK he had gone in for! Is there no end to the depravity of some of these monsters we call leaders in Nigeria?

And of course, when eventually he returns to Yenagoa, the impoverished capital of the oil rich Bayelsa State he governs over, there will be thanksgiving services and solidarity rallies to welcome their son back!!!! When will we begin to demand accountability from our leaders?

I am sure, even as I type, that there will be "prayer warriors" and all-night vigils and fasting programmes being held in many churches in Yenagoa for the deliverance of the governor from his "enemies"

Another worrying aspect of the whole saga is how otherwise respected or respectable individuals weigh in to defend the indefensible or fail to speak out. Oronto Douglas made a name as a dogged fighter for the rights of the people of the Niger Delta, publishing a book Where Vultures Feast detailing the abuses of oil companies in the area. A while ago he was appointed to Governor Alamieyeseigha's cabinet as information commissioner. I am yet to see or read his view on the current scandal. Or perhaps it is acceptable for "indigenes" to exploit the poor people of the Niger Delta.

Magnus Onyibe is another young man I used to respect, but his article attempting to defend the governor, ostensibly under the pretext of defending Nigeria's sovereignty left a bad taste...

If these are the young men who will be tomorrow's leaders, the future looks bleak

Of falling leaves,crime, conservatives and liberals

Looking out on the garden square opposite me, the leaves have begun to fall and there is a chill in the air, soon autumn will be upon us....where has this year gone?

I had my bag stolen over the weekend in an internet cafe which was quite upsetting, not because it contained stuff that was valuable (thankfully my wallet and cards were in my pocket) but because I fell for it. It was a classic two man job, one sidled up to me as I typed fast and furious on the computer, stale breath blowing in my face asking where he could buy a token for a PC. While I pointed it out and went back to my typing, the other came up on the other side asking for assistance on how to log on. As I have always felt that people ought to be friendlier and more helpful in public places, I turned to explain in a few quick sentences and faced my work again. Probably sensing that I needed to be distracted further, Villain no 2 asks "Brother, Am I doing the right thing, is this the right way to log on?" As I turn to say yes, and look back, I notice my bag has disappeared. I give chase but they have melted into the heaving throng that is Oxford Street on a Saturday afternoon. I go back in to report to the cafe manager, he's sorry but I'll have to go to the police....so I make my way to the police station on Savile Row where a fresh faced constable gestures for me to join the cue of seven people waiting to report petty crimes, obviously Saturday is boom time for pick pockets and petty thieves. I end up being advised to make an online report as it will take nearly 2 hours, so I stagger back to the internet cafe and log on again, at least now I have no bag to worry about. After answering questions including my age my ethnicity and my sexual orientation, I finally print off the sheet which says the police will be in touch. And they are! Early Monday morning my phone rings and it's a woman constable asking for more details and then she promises she will be in touch later.

The bag contained some library books which I had just borrowed that morning and a pair of sunglasses which I had had for a while and which I had treated myself to on duty free on one of my trips home to Nigeria. I had hoped I'd be able to claim on my insurance but apparently not. Doesn't it just madden you, forking out insurance premiums diligently every month and then when something happens, you get shown some small print that says you can't claim. Perhaps I should get into the insurance business

The night my bag was stolen, I was angry and could barely sleep, wishing that I had turned, just a fraction earlier ..... and I was reminded of the slogan, can't remember where from that
says "a conservative is a liberal who's been mugged"

But by the next morning I'm fine and regained my sense of perspective

Booker Prize shortlist

Went to my local Waterstone's at the weekend to check out the books on the 2005 Booker shortlist. I'm really looking forward to reading Zadie Smith's On Beauty, Kazuo Ishiguro's Never Let me Go and Salman Rushdie's Shalimar the Clown. Ali Smith's The Accidental is a possibility, as is Julian Barnes' Arthur and George but I must confess that John Banville's The Sea and Sebastian Barry's A Long Long Way didn't catch my interest at all. Which is not a judgement on their literary merit, just my personal feeling.

These days I feel less and less obliged to read "worthy" books that do not capture my interest. But then I find that my tastes also change and a book that I felt I couldn't read last year may become one of my favourites the year after. I think it's a complex mixture of where I am geographically and mentally at a particular moment....

Leaders squabbling with their "vices"

Tony Blair is on all the front pages today having delivered a rousing speech at the Labour party conference indicating that he intends to push forward with every aspect of his agenda which has been interpreted as a snub to Gordon Brown, his Chancellor of the Exchequer and heir presumptive whose speech the previous day had been interpreted as a pre anointing speech. Cherie, Tone's wife rubs it in with her comment to a BBC reporter that leaving Downing Street is still a loooong time away.

I find the parallels funny as Nigeria's president is at this moment embroiled in a row with his Vice President and it is turning nasty with veiled threats on both sides to release dirty facts on the other party. While the instability might not augur well for the country generally, I do wish that they would both go public so that we would know what they'd both been up to. Because I'm sure they know what funny deals they all have been up to. Sadly, there's not much chance of that happening as with most Nigerian political quarrels it will all be probably settled "as a family matter" which simply means they'll both realize that it is best for them both to keep their skeletons firmly in the cupboards

An interesting aspect of all these squabbles is how the wives get drawn in.... Piers Morgan suggests that Cherie Blair and Sara Brown are barely civil; and in Nigeria it has long been common knowledge that Mrs Abubakar and Mrs Obasanjo can hardly sit in the same room. The most amusing bit was when Atiku Abubakar, the Nigerian vice president took a new wife a couple of years ago (as a Muslim, he's entitled to four wives- although eyebrows were raised as he was alleged to have divorced one of his already full complement of four wives to marry this one)..... Anyway, new wife decides to make her presence felt by launching a new foundation to tackle health problems.....(it's what the wives of Nigeria's leaders do...they all have pet projects ostensibly funded privately) in an ostentatious ceremony in faraway Washington and Mrs Obasanjo, in a vital snub to the first Mrs Abubakar is pictured smilingly presiding over the event.

What am I reading?

I've just gone through a whole slew of books.... I had a bit of holiday so had the chance to catch up on my reading. I enjoyed A History of Tractors in Ukrainian by Marina Lewyczka which was shortlisted for the Orange Prize this year. I thought it was well-written and I particularly enjoyed the whole immigrant in the UK thing, even though Ukraine is as far from Nigeria as can be, but it's interesting to see that the general nosiness of the immigrant communities and the attempt to show up who is doing better than whom is constant. I suppose it's all about trying to convince each other (and ourselves) that the journey has been worth it.

Perhaps for similar reasons I'm enjoying Lipstick Jihad by Azadeh Moaveni, an Iranian American talking about living as an Iranian in America and as an American in Iran. In her book, as she describes the difficulty of explaining to her Western media colleagues that the political situation in Iran is much more complex than simply classifying the reformists as the good guys and the more conservative ayatollahs as the bad guys, I am struck by the similarities with Nigeria. Our presidents tend to be type cast as either good guys or bad guys and it is difficult to explain why, for instance, the public isn't particularly enamoured of the current president, Olusegun Obasanjo despite his supposedly reformist anti corruption stance, to the bemusement of the Western media.

I also read the Jealous Ghost by A N Wilson, whose books I have generally enjoyed even if I do not always agree with his politics. It is apparently a homage to Henry James' A Turn of the Screw and reinvents James' story of a young woman who goes to a large country house to look after two children with tragic consequences in contemporary times. While I enjoyed the book, I must say (at the risk of being denounced by the literati) that I do not enjoy James.

I tried reading Washington Square many years ago and found it difficult and abandoned it. I thought that might have been because of my relative youth- I was about 10 then- but even now I have struggled with The Wings of a Dove. And I found Colm Toibin's much acclaimed The Master, the Booker shortlisted homage to James, the Toibin book I liked the least.

On a lighter and perhaps more frivolous note I have enjoyed Piers Morgan's account of his years as editor of The Mirror, one of the UK tabloid newspapers which like all the tabloids has a less than savoury reputation. I was quite surprised at the amount of alcohol he seemed to put away in the course of his editorial duties and the seemingly light hearted way in which he was appointed to his initial job by Rupert Murdoch.

I'm looking forward to October as there are a series of African literary events including a rare appearance in London by Chinua Achebe and a tour in which Chimamanda Adichie, Binyavanga Wainana , Alex Agyei-Agyiri and Lindsey Collen appear at various venues across the UK. Unfortunately because of work commitments I'm not sure if I will actually be able to attend any of the events which is a shame....

This blog thing is even more difficult than I imagined

Here I am, back again...many days after my last post. I had obviously misunderestimated (to paraphrase Dubya) how much effort it takes to keep a blog going.

I actually had one e mail from someone who said they had enjoyed the previous posts (which was very encouraging), and it's largely because of that one person that I feel I ought to drop a few more lines.

So what's new? The weather in my part of the United Kingdom has turned in the past week, that night time chill that presages the autumn and winter has appeared and I have begun to shiver in my flimsy summer shirts....

I have generally found the winter less harsh than I had expected, perhaps because I was prepared for the worst by the time that I arrived in the UK. Other Nigerian friends complain about how dreary the weather is but four years on I, used to scorching sun, am still relishing the difference and am fascinated by darkness falling in the middle of the day pretty much....

One thing that bugs me though is the wahala (Nigerian pidgin for trouble) that goes with winter dressing. I'll soon have to dig out my warm coat, the gloves, the hat and the scarf from where I stored them at the onset of summer. And that's the problem. I wouldn't mind if , once I had wrapped myself in these many items of clothing, I left them on and went about my business, but no. You enter a house or an office and immediately you are too warm and so you strip off your outer gear and feel better. And then your meeting or social visit is over and then you put it all back on as you step back into the freezing cold outside. Then you arrive at your next destination, which again is nicely heated, so you divest yourself again of your gear. This constant putting on and taking off and putting on and taking off is one of the big downsides of winter as far as I'm concerned..... Perhaps we should just abolish central heating and go about our business permanently wrapped up till the summer when we can throw it all off again. We'd save lots of energy too.....very green

Welcome to my world

It's a sunny but chilly day in this part of the UK and I'm looking out onto a square beautifully laid out with old Georgian townhouses and shaded by tall trees. Sounds like paradise but there's a catch because there are a couple of homeless people sitting on the benches on the square and there are two policemen talking to them trying to move them on. They are clutching large plastic bottles of cider- the homeless men not the police- and don't look like they are quite ready to move on yet.... The streets around us have just been designated a no street drinking zone hence the police. But I can't help but wonder what happens to those who are moved on- do they go on to plague some other street, some other square? Probably.

I'm not really sure how this blogging thing will go, but I'm hoping it will kick start my writing which has increasingly been sidelined by the day job which pays the bills. Maybe I can post my various works in progress and maybe, just maybe someone will give me good feedback and keep me going.

Other times maybe I'll just talk about the various things going on in my life at the moment- some boring, some humorous- a bit like life I guess- just getting on with it.

So what can you expect from my blog? Lots of talk about writing, especially Nigerian and African writing which I'm passionate about; some stuff about what it's like to negotiate your way through a culture different to that in which you were born and brought up; some stuff about growing up in Nigeria; perhaps some politics and current affairs which almost invariably I can't help but be passionate about; some stuff about great meals I've had and places I've been.

Eclectic really, so here goes.....