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......