Transformation, the fragility of peace & Wainaina's columns

On my way to a meeting, I board the train, and take my seat behind two friends, female, young, blonde; obviously, like me on the way to work. They, unlike me, bag a table and proceed to chatter and giggle their way through most of the twenty minute journey, then five minutes to the first stop, they whip out little purses, unzip them and in a moment, I stare transfixed as the table surface is transformed into a display to rival that of any salon. I watch as they carefully, slowly, layer by layer, lay on the make-up, seemingly unaffected by the jolting of the train- first, various liquids are applied to the whole face, or to pars thereof and then it is time to concentrate on the eyes with various wand-like implements, and then the lips are outlined, filled in, shaded and tinted with a delicacy of movement that would put Van Gogh to shame. As we pull into the station, they pack up their gear, put the purses away and lift their bags to leave the train- as they walk past my seat, I see that they are transformed- those amongst you who think that makeup does not work should think again....this was such a slick operation, miles away from my mother's spartan pancake and eye pencil routine when I was growing up...

A colleague waylays me in the small office kitchen, I had somewhat foolishly given her a copy of Half of a Yellow Sun at Christmas and so now she wants to know more- "Do these", she stumbles over the word, waves a hand, "differences still exist in Nigeria?" I want to say, well, yes to some extent but that things are a lot better now, especially among the younger generation like me and then I remember Kenya, my visit last week to some of the Kenyan blogs and forums and I realize how fragile our peace is. And so I stammer a reply, pointing out the role that economic tensions play in situations like this.To bolster my case, I quote from Winnie and Wolf, the fictionalized account (by AN Wilson) of the relationship between Hitler and Winifred Wagner, daughter-in-law of the composer which I read over Christmas. I describe how Wilson captures the mood in Germany between the wars, charting convincingly what it felt like to ordinary people. The humiliating grinding poverty following the First war and then the rise of Hitler and his thuggish hordes who appear to restore German pride and confidence and the economy....so what if as a consequence a small minority suffered, the majority were glad to revel in their improved circumstances....The lesson I think is that peace is fragile, no matter where you are...

I stumbled across this DFID supported site which seems like a good idea if you are sending money home

Nigerian writer Nnedi Okoroafor Mbachu who has dropped by here before is one of the winners of the Macmillan Writers Prize for Africa in the junior category for her book Long Juju Man

If, like me, you are a fan of Binyavanga "How to Write About Africa" Wainaina's, acerbic but thoughtful writing, my recent discovery of his columns for South Africa's Mail and Guardian will please you as it does me. His articles on the troubles in his home country of Kenya are poignant and insightful...

Burantashi etc

Having not had the chance to check my uknaija email in a while, I finally got round to it and was pleasantly surprised by the number of emails there. The most interesting was from a gentleman asking if I could tell him where to buy burantashi as he has “suffered from ED” for a number of years. Burantashi had almost mythological status when I was growing up in Nigeria- it was the Hausa herbal answer to Viagra- and stories circulated of boys and men who had used it and subsequently ended up in accident and emergency units, laid low by the -ahem- potency of the product. Reading the email made a welcome change from the hundreds of spam messages asking if I would like to buy Viagra or other similar products. My correspondent appears to be based in Yugoslavia, and so it appears a business opportunity beckons for Northern Nigerian herbalists. If anyone knows suppliers of burantashi in Europe, please drop me a discreet line…

The six boys cluster round their teacher, smartly dressed in school uniform, obviously on a school trip or excursion of some sort. Seeing them, I am taken back to my school days, the prestige of being selected to represent the school at debates and quiz competitions; the freedom of being allowed to cut classes for the day and breathe the air of the outside world. Even more exhilarating were those occasions when we were successful and brought the trophy back- ah the heady giddiness of those days….

I’ve been reading a lot of what my literary friend disparagingly calls bubble-gum reading- perhaps it’s the January blues that are making me averse to plunging into anything too meaty or tasking. Having just finished Tina Brown’s The Diana Chronicles- with its lurid pink cover- a challenge to lug on to a train-, I progressed to Elinor Lipman’s My Latest Grievance, which had me laughing all the way through and looking forward to more Lipman tales.I am now simultaneously reading The Importance of Being Eton, a slim volume by an Old Etonian exploring the school’s place in English mythology and society and Murder in Amsterdam by Ian Buruma which examines changes in Dutch society through the prism of the murder of Theo Van Gogh. I quite enjoyed The Diana Chronicles for its insights into contemporary British royal society, and while it was criticized for not having any new revelations in it, it certainly did pull together lots of different strands together in a very readable way. And reading it while the inquest goes on, breathlessly covered in the newspapers, perhaps made it even more readable.

I’ve also just finished Barack Obama’s The Audacity of Hope and gained a newer respect for him- I don’t always agree with him, but I can appreciate his freshness and appeal and his willingness to admit that he hasn’t necessarily got the right answers. His humanity comes across so vividly. And he writes well. I still remember a Nigerian friend from the US ringing me, breathless with excitement after Obama’s speech at the Democratic Convention four years ago, convinced that he had just experienced a dramatic historical moment. Yet if I was in the US and a Democrat, I’m not sure who I’d vote for….don’t ask me why- I’m not sure I know the answer myself….

In Nigeria, the sadness of dysfunctional families doomed and locked into a cycle of hurt and despair grabbed the headlines, and made me cringe even as Lucky Igbinedion another of the hapless ex-governors was detained by the anti-corruption body the EFCC. Let’s hope he doesn’t fall ill and end up at the National Hospital Abuja like his mate Ibori…

I was pleased when Gordon Brown appointed Jacqui Smith as the first female Home Secretary, a refreshing break, I thought, from Blair’s tradition of appointing tough-talking bully-boys to the post. I was even more impressed when only a few days in post, she responded to the attempted bombing of Glasgow airport with level-headed calmness. I set this out to explain my bewilderment at her recent admission that she would not walk the streets of London at night- not in notorious Hackney and not in salubrious Kensington and Chelsea. Having walked the streets of Hackney late at night recently after seeing a play at the Arcola and then a meal at Obalende Suya, I am appalled by her comments, especially for the naivete she betrays when she says walking after midnight on the streets is not something people do. I have often argued with some of my City friends about the degree to which the rich and powerful are cocooned from “real life” but Ms Smith’s comments suggest a gap even wider than I had imagined…

Petina Gappah who’s visited us on this blog more than once now has her own blog and Igoni Barrett of Farafina has an excerpt from his forthcoming novel published in Guernica

Writing for radio workshop Nigeria

Sent to me by a friend of a friend...will blog properly later

Are you interested in writing for radio and live in Nigeria?

British Council Nigeria would like to pilot a programme to promote literature development through radio. This programme will be established as legacy activity following the Crossing Borders online mentoring project. It is further stimulated by feedback from the Beyond Borders Festival of Contemporary African writing (October 2006) outlining the need for more holistic literature development policies to continue to provide professional development opportunities for writers and to support the development of new audiences for writing.

The programme will provide critical support from UK-based professional writers who will deliver 5-day creative writing workshops in Nigeria in March 2008. We hope to produce, record and air some of the selected creative pieces in collaboration with a broadcast partner in Nigeria later in 2008.

We are looking to work with 48 writers across Nigeria on this pilot phase. We would like to engage writers who are keen to develop new skills in radio writing that explore exciting topical issues. We invite applications from writers who must:
• be Nigerian citizens
• be aged between 18 and 40 years
• be experienced writers with a portfolio of original work and a strong interest in short fiction, the use of dialogue, and narrative voice
• have an excellent standard of written English and be able to use its idioms creatively
• have a strong commitment to developing their work and that of other writers, through participating in creative writing networks
• be able to dedicate the time to complete writing assignments by agreed deadlines and fully engage in all aspects of the process
• be available for the live workshops (March 2008 exact dates to be confirmed)
• possess word processing and basic Internet access skills

Former Crossing Borders participants are encouraged to apply.

If you are interested in applying for a place please send:
- a one-page letter of interest with an original idea for a short story (theme and narrative treatment) and a statement explaining how you expect to benefit from participating in the programme
- a one-page Curriculum Vitae with your name, age, gender, contact details and details of any publications
- 2 sides of A4 prose writing – can be an existing story or novel extract. Remember that the first sentence has to attract and hold our attention!

The closing date for applications is 30 January 2008. Successful applicants will be notified by 18 February 2008.
All applications should be sent or e-mailed to:

The Project Coordinator (Connected Africa Arts)
British Council
20 Thompson Avenue
Ikoyi
Lagos
Nigeria

E-mail: Olamipo.bello@ ng.britishcounci l.org

Happy New Year

I am a few minutes from the train station swaddled in the several layers that the now-icy weather has forced me to adopt when I hear the heart stopping shriek. Like many other commuters, busily burrowing our way to work, my head swivels in the direction of the noise. There are three teenage girls, all black, dressed in school uniform, stopping on their way to school, and the shrieking is apparently, merely an expression of their exuberance. At first I cringe, wondering why we are so noisy, a thought guiltily repressed as I remember a poem by an African American poet from the thirties I once read in which the poet mocked high class “Negroes” bitching about low-class “Negroes” and their shaming ways. As I reflect guiltily on this, I board my train and soon another bunch of giggling teenagers, this time white, indulge in their own hilarity and banish my casual stereotyping..….

Christmas Day in London was a revelation- the empty streets, the silence, was strangely quite soul-warming. Christmas lunch with my British Nigerian friend and his extended family meant a first course of turkey and stuffing, with all the trimmings (produced by my friend’s wife) and then later a course of pepper soup, jollof rice, moimoi and plantain produced by his mother and sister.

On Christmas Eve I was silly enough to agree to meet a friend who was on his way back to Nigeria at John Lewis on Oxford Street. Emerging from the Underground, I found that I could not walk but had to let the crush of bodies which had enfolded me propel me along until it spat me out on a pavement on the other side of the road. My progress was not helped by the crowds of gawkers stopping to stare in shop windows and I wished that there could be two lanes- one for those of us with appointments to keep, and another for those who had come to admire the window displays and the Christmas lights….such an unseasonal thought

Going back to work- chatting to a couple of our female senior executives and enquiring after their exertions, I was struck by how, for all the talk of equal rights, ultimately the task of ensuring a happy family Christmas is still a female job...as evidenced by my own experience... 

So much has happened while I have been away from blogging- Kenya, Obama, Benazir, Ribadu, and trying to capture my thoughts on these will be too difficult. The lowest point for me though, was Kenya. Sitting at a dinner party on New Year’s Eve, I vainly tried to argue that what was happening in Kenya was no general descent of savage Africans into tribal killing and mayhem. As I listened to the smug interpolations from various other guests, I thought to myself, “Why do our leaders do this to us?” If Kibaki and Odinga and all the others realized what damage they were doing to the African cause worldwide with their antics, perhaps they’d be a little bit more conciliatory in their utterances and actions. In the end I resorted to Binyavanga Wainaina’s exhortation to remember that the oldest African country is barely more than fifty years old..

The break was a good time for reading- I finished off The Reluctant Fundamentalist by Hamid Mohsin, which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize. There was plenty to reflect on in the pages of that slim book, especially for an immigrant from a developing country to the West… I also read Cathy Flynn’s What Was Lost, surprise winner of the Costa Fiction Prize and Anne Enright’s The Gathering which won the Booker- Flynn I enjoyed in its bare description of a gritty shopping centre which reminded me of a centre near where I used to live, but found Enright a bit less gripping than I had expected. Perhaps, stereotyping again I had expected the Irish gift of the gab to unravel in a richly woven story, and the elements and language were there but I felt I could have stopped reading it at any time and not missed it…

Happy New Year to all the faithful and passing readers of this blog....you literally keep me going :-)

Random pre- Christmas blogging

It’s Friday and I am blog-surfing during what ought to be some kind of lunch break- no don’t ask- too complicated. In a minute, I will stand up and walk through the doors to the café where I will ask for a brown baguette with coronation chicken and salad and a bag of crisps. Or perhaps not. Seeing as I often ask for that anyway, the staff often burst into laughter once I turn up. Is there anything wrong with eating what you like over and over again? I remember my first term at university when I ate rice and stew twice a day, occasionally leavened with some beans and was as happy and healthy as anyone, at least I thought so.

It is cold, freezing, the kind of cold that hurts your nostrils and burns its way right into your lungs searing your throat as it passes by. On the train, there are coughs and splutters aplenty, and I find myself eyeing the perpetrators, silently warning them “If you dare give me that your cold, eh!” As if looks could cauterize the bacteria or viruses or whatever it is that causes these colds and coughs…

My lips split, laughing at a joke outside the office today and so I am slathering them in lip salve. Come to think of it, the weather isn’t unlike harmattan, in its harshness, with the dust clogging your airways with a similar harshness and lips requiring a good slathering of salve to avoid splittage…

Recent reading has covered Blake Morrison’s South of the River, an utterly enjoyable romp through South London in the Blair years following a varied cast of characters as well as The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, which I had long heard about but never got round to reading. A recent work-related foray to Edinburgh found me with time to kill before getting the shuttle back to the airport and so I walked down the dark brooding somewhat Gothic streets of Edinburgh city centre to the small bookshop hiding in a corner. Browsing the shelves and name-checking Adichie and Habila, I stumble across a pile of pristine Muriel Spark novels, a bargain at 99p each and seeing how slim The Prime is, I make my way to the shelf where the bearded bespectacled proprietor takes my pound coin, offering a penny’s change and a brown paper bag which I decline….

Christmas carols blare out from shops and on television as we are exhorted to shop for Britain. In Nigeria I imagine the frenzy to buy things for Christmas in full swing, the streets around the Marina/CMS area thronging with pedlars of cheap toys. Across the seas we are gripped by the same frenzy to buy….

Perhaps that’s why I wake up to 15 missed calls from a Nigerian phone number this morning. At first I panic, thinking it portends bad news but, no it is a cousin making a last ditch attempt at extracting a Western Union transfer to ease the impending cash sucking crunch of Christmas…

Each morning it sometimes feels as if I am walking through thick gooey liquid, a feeling enhanced by the dark gloomy days…this morning walking to the train station in the small town where a work Christmas do has brought me, I spot a lollipop lady, a creature I have often read about but never seen, standing by the primary school to ferry children across the busy road, her huge lollipop in hand. But unlike the ladies of my imagination (and the Ladybird books), this is no matronly twinkly comfortably padded mother figure. Here is a blonde Amazon, some six feet tall, her legs encased in bronzed leather high heeled boots, her pony-tail flicked away as she guides the children across…

So Ibori, the thieving Niger Delta ex-governor has finally been arrested by the EFCC. Perhaps there is something to the Yaradua rule of law after all. The Nigerian Guardian reopens after an enforced closure caused by a strike and the question is raised why journalists adept at exposing the exploitation and corruption of government are so silent when it comes to their employers…

"Stolen" time, cheese eating and a positive silence?

I know the clocks went back in October but did “they” do something to steal our time as well- where do the seconds and minutes and hours go? I keep promising myself that today I will spend time to update my blog and then never get round to it. I haven’t had a chance to read blogs in ages and as for Facebook…what’s that? Or maybe finally while I wasn’t looking, responsible adulthood has crept up on me….

More train stories:

On the train from Liverpool Street to Stansted airport I was sitting beside these two couples, young and blonde and good-looking- poster children for the British dream- they obviously all worked in the City as evidenced by their rapid chatter interspersed with scrolling through their Blackberries and then making urgent, rapid-fire calls to the office, talking about this deal and that deal and closing…. I watch them fascinated and hear one of them explain to the person at the other end that he is going to cheese-eating, wine-drinking surrender monkey country for the weekend….later I see them in the queue for the check in for the Ryanair flight to Bergerac….

Who on earth chose the lurid yellow and bright blue uniform of the Ryanair staff? Yes I know it’s a budget airline and they need to keep costs down but cheap materials also come in muted colours, don’t they. I’m tempted to whip on the sunglasses at the glare of the uniforms so reminiscent of the school uniforms in a poor village school in Nigeria…

I approach the security gate, backpack secured and book in hand and am not really paying attention when it gets to my turn. I unsling the backpack and put it through the X ray machine and then emerge at the other end. I have forgotten my toothpaste in the backpack which means it is pulled out of the queue for special checks in these days of no-liquids, no-gel flying. I am still not payng full attention as the young Asian woman explains that she is going to swipe the backpack for explosives. She is quite young- barely twenty and I imagine that it is first time nerves that make her swipe my bag again and again. By the third time, I am paying more attention and she is looking more flustered. Suddenly I see her stop and run to an older, more senior- looking woman, who then calls the attention of HER boss, a middle aged man who comes to me and informs me that my bag has tested positive for traces of explosives. I reel as I expect him to say it’s just a joke but when I look up, he’s deadly serious.

He runs off a series of questions- how long have I owned the backpack, where have I taken it and so on and so on….he then whips out a form and asks to take my details, having decided that the positive test may have come from one of the places that I have taken my bag to in the last week. Apparently some chemicals used in everyday life can give positive results. Giving my name, address and contact details, I fear that they will stop me from flying but he waves me through. Nevertheless I worry- will my name now enter some database? What if some nutter does blow up the plane, will I then be blamed post-humously? As if it would matter then.

Landing in Bergerac at the tiny airport, I make the immigration officer’s day when he finally gets to use his stamp. Used to waving EU citizens through, he waves me through as well, before realizing that my passport is green not red. He holds up the queue as he flicks through my passport for the right visa and then with aplomb marches to his desk, where he unleashes his heavy stamp on to my passport with a gusto that suggests that he does not get to do this very often…

Somehow, it seems as if not very much news is coming out of Nigeria, or perhaps it’s my mood, but it seems as if things are settling into a more quiet, more sedate pace…which is probably a good sign.

There’s a new edition of Farafina magazine out and following closely on Helon Habila’s successful book tour, Chika Unigwe, visitor on this blog from time to time, begins a Nigerian book tour to promote the publication of her first novel ,The Phoenix

The post that I was too tired to name

We descend into the bowels of the restaurant- it is a fairly simple, yet sophisticated place somewhere in the west of London. We are soon seated, and have just had our orders taken when I spot her- her face immediately familiar to me from the days spent glued to CNN in hotel bars and lounges, when satellite television was the tenuous link that seemed to sustain my connection to the outside world after the price of Time magazine and Newsweek and the Economist all soared out of reach.



Here, years later, I am seated at a table in a restaurant just a few feet away from her. She is in full flow, commanding the attention of the others seating at her table, and as I glance at the rapt faces, I realize that this is what might be called "a power table". There are two UK ministers, I soon realize, at the table and as the conversation heats up, I hear the words: Darfur, Rwanda, Millennium Development Goals and social entrepreneurship flung in rapid quick fire succession around the table. It is all I can do to concentrate on my dinner, my friends who have kindly invited me out and my own table and our conversation.



I whisper to my friends "It's Christiane Amanpour", mortified that she will hear me, but am met with fairly blank faces. It's only when I screech "and Mark Malloch Brown" that they become interested- the former UN mandarin and now minister in Gordon Brown's government of all the talents, has the day before been in the news- the Spectator and the Evening Standard.



The third face that I recognize is James Rubin, former aide to Bill Clinton and Amanpour's husband, and then across the table from him, Shriti Vadera whom I later overhear being introduced to someone as the "most powerful woman in the UK government" She smiles bashfully but I do not hear her demur….



Later sated on our dinner, we walk to the Underground- me on the way, happily regaling my friends with all these details. How, one of them asks me, do you know all these people…how indeed? On my way home the question continues to plague me…



An interesting harvest of books these past few days- finally I get round to reading The Kite Runner and I, almost to my surprise enjoy it. It opens my eyes and tells me new things and is beautifully written and yet in some ways I feel that it lacks soul. Perhaps it should have been stretched out a bit more



On Chesil Beach is another much-hyped book which I get round to finally reading. I enjoy it so much that I immediately go back to the library for another McEwan- this time, Enduring Love, even though it's only available in large print. Although I enjoyed the latter, I thought the former was more accomplished….

Poor Gordon Brown’s government seems to be lurching from crisis to crisis and the Prime Minister’s face shows the strain. Watching a BBC documentary on Blair’s last days in office, I almost found myself nostalgic for Blair....

Meanwhile the Tories rub their hands in glee, like schoolboys who can’t quite believe their luck....there's something almost school-bully like about their gloating that I find distasteful, or perhaps it's the fact that I'm just biased....

Nigeria makes the front page of the Financial Times at the weekend with a story about Chevron and Shell being implicated in the Ibori corruption saga...at about the same time, several Nigerian topshots are mentioned in an investigation into corruption at Siemens in Germany...perhaps the chickens are finally coming home to roost....

Congratulations

to Molara Wood of Wordsbody for honourable mention in the Commonwealth short story prize

to Chimamanda Adichie for making the IMPAC prize list

made up stories, immigration blues & democratic hypocrisy

I am watching the couple as they walk to the station with their big shaggy dog lolloping beside them. He is dressed in a business suit, sharply cut, formal. She is blonde, more casual in a jogging suit and yet there is something carefully groomed about her. I glance at my watch; I am still a few minutes too early for my meeting. I look up to see the dog depositing a steaming pile on the pavement, she immediately whips out a plastic bag and tries to scrape the offending mess off, but she struggles, hampered by the dog lead in her hand and the active squirming creature at its end. He moves just after a second’s hesitation to take the lead from her, give her room to clear the pavement properly. I make up a life for them- he never wanted the dog but she insisted, and so he is irritated. Minutes later, I see my colleague approach and as I walk over to meet her I see the man disappearing down the stairs into the station having given the dog a last friendly ruffle. The man’s face is transformed, as he tickles the dog’s belly and I am forced to rewrite my made up narrative….

Such a long time away from blogging- busy with work and the million little things that seem to have piled off and need to be dealt with before the year’s end- November- where has the year gone?

Immigration issues fill the front pages again and I can’t help but feel uncomfortable. No, everyone explains, or hints, it’s not people like you we mean, it's the others.... but hearing people speak (not in so many words) about "us" and "them" I can’t help but feel uneasy- hoping that someone else speaks out instead. When in any case does one stop being "them" and become "us"- 5 years, ten years, never?

It is all about the pressure on public services- housing, hospital, council services- very little about how the booming English economy is surely in part due to the immigrants. Do the Mittals and Abramoviches and the American investment bankers who swell the streets of Chelsea count in these statistics at all? Perhaps there needs to be a trade off but maybe the Mittals and their ilk are comfortable here precisely because of the openness and diversity that London offers… maybe it is one or the other….

In spite of the hectic pace of life, there has been time as usual for some reading- In the library one weekend I stumbled across Free Food for Millionaires by Min Jin Lee, an account of a young Korean American woman newly graduated from an Ivy League university and caught between her poor Korean parents and the glittering lifestyle offered by her peers- there were I thought lots of echoes of Nigerian immigrant family tensions but I suppose in some ways, all immigrants face similar issues. The writing was assured but I’m not sure that Lee did her skills justice in this book- I’m not sure if it’s the plot but there was something that didn’t quite ring right….

I’m currently reading Hari Kunzru’s- My Revolutions which is beautifully written- I think it’s the best of his three books so far. While I loved his first two: The Impressionist and Transmission, it is in this book about a Sixties activist living a comfortable bourgeois life in 21st century Sussex who finds his past catching up with him….I’ve always had a soft spot for Kunzru ever since he won the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize for Transmission and turned it down because it was sponsored by the Daily Mail. Instead he asked for the prize money to be paid to the Refugee Council- an action that must have riled the Daily Mailers no end…

Glad to see that Etteh finally did the decent thing and resigned as Speaker and even “gladder” to see the House members ignore the PDP order to vote for her self-nominated successor and elect someone who appears to be articulate and intelligent instead. Now the House members must prove their vaunted patriotism and get to work and not start squabbling over committee memberships…

In Pakistan, the hollowness and hypocrisy of the champions of democracy is again put on display – lawyers are beaten by the police, judges are sacked and the opposition are put under house arrest- all for speaking out in favour of democracy- you would imagine that for the self-appointed supporters of democracy- these stirrings in a Muslim country would be heart-warming and deserving of support. But no- it’s too complicated, cutting off aid would not be constructive, etc etc Pity the poor young Pakistani lawyer who believes the rhetoric about democracy and finds himself bruised and battered tonight in a police cell…..If you are in any doubt, go and ask the monks in Burma…

Visit

Cassava Republic's new website
It's poppy season with a difference here or here
And Kambani promotes Nigerian artists and art here

Lost condoms, dignified exits, recent reading, prizes and an anniversary

It is early morning and as the display on the platform keeps changing, showing that the train I am hoping to get is becoming even more delayed, I soon realize I had better get out of the station and catch a taxi if I am to have any hope of catching the train out of London and making my meeting. I hail the first taxi that I see, it’s one of the old-fashioned black cabs and as I settle in, my wallet clatters to the floor. I reach for it and find tucked away at the edge of the seat, a pristine packet of Durex condoms. Perhaps it is the early hour but I can’t help thinking about how it got there. Who has dropped it, and is the consequence of their dropping it going to be an unwanted pregnancy, a nasty disease? Or did they finding themselves condomless, abstain, resisting temptation?

I can’t help but think of the nursery rhyme we used to chant, often thoughtlessly, not really understanding the words……

for want of a nail, the shoe was lost,
for want of a shoe, the horse was lost,
for want of a horse, the rider was lost,
for want of a rider, the battle was lost,
for want of a kingdom, the battle was lost

The fighting over Ettehgate continues and now sadly appears to have claimed a legislator’s life. Without going into the rights and wrongs of it, I think it’s time for Madam Speaker, Mrs Etteh to go. Her continuing presence is merely inflaming the situation, everyday I read about new brawls in the House and so in the interest of peace I think she should just go. Reading about people I had some respect for getting involved in the brawling and name-calling in the House I am appalled. Go Mrs Etteh, just go….

Perhaps Mrs Etteh should take a leaf from Sir Menzies (pronounced Minghis- yes I know!!) Campbell, leader of the Liberal Democrats- the small third party of the United Kingdom, who bit the bullet once his party members started murmuring and made a dignified exit….. I’m always fascinated by how when an English party deposes its leader, all other contenders have to pretend to be disinterested for a while, lest they be blamed for forcing the old leader out- even when everyone knows they are rubbing their hands in glee…

Glad to see Anne Enright win the Booker- my sympathy for the underdog and the fact that she cheerfully described her novel as bleak, plus the fact that she’s Irish ensured that. Now I’ll have to read the book…

Speaking of underdogs, England’s spectacular rise through the Rugby World Cup sees me humming Swing Low Sweet Chariot along with everyone else as I go about my duties at work….sorry South Africa but I’ll be rooting for the English on Saturday..

I’ve just finished Alan Bennett’s slim novella, The Uncommon Reader, a wittily intelligent book examining what happens when The Queen suddenly develops an appetite for reading….

Next up is The Reluctant Fundamentalist which I’ve just started- it was shortlisted for the Booker and I think I bumped into the author last week walking in central London… I share his love for London... revealed in an Evening Standard interview a while back, sadly not available online

Still on prizes, Chika Unigwe’s Fata Morgana has been shortlisted for the ANA Prize for Fiction as has Jude Dibia’s Unbridled, the follow-up to his earlier, controversial Walking in the Shadows which portrayed a gay man living a double life in Nigeria. I’ve blogged elsewhere about Chika and her talent and she’s dropped by this blog in the past…

Oh and while I was away my second bloggerversary came and went- thanks everyone for keeping faith with this inconsistent blogger and for sharing my world- I only just realized my first post was on August 25th 2005

Sites to check out:
Farafina
African Writing
African Writer.com
Viewnaija where I finally got to listen to the much talked about Yahooze
Igoni Barrett's collection of short stories- for lovers of Nigerian fiction and awuf things
Nominate that bright young Nigerian under 30 at the Future Nigeria Awards

Blogger's dilemma, facebook, football louts etc

I am suffering from the intermittent bloggers’ dilemma- the longer you stay away from blogging, waiting for the combination of something meaty enough to blog about and having enough free time to do it justice, the more things to blog about pile up. So I’ll just have a go- first things first. I finally signed up to Facebook, just to see what all the fuss is about. I haven’t been terribly excited, but perhaps I simply haven’t got into the spirit of the thing….if anyone wants to show me how to do it properly, get in touch, search for Musing Naijaman….

There have been a great many train journeys since I last posted (reminder to self- buy shares in Virgin Trains) including one in first class, courtesy of work which was sadly marred by the entire carriage being overrun by a bunch of football louts who kept the train heaving from Wolverhampton to London Euston. The British Transport Police made a brief appearance and then promptly disappeared; the Virgin Trains staff did not dare to show their faces at all. In the event I finally gave up my unbothered mien, packed up my laptop and book and moved to another carriage. Talk about feral- banging on the roof of the carriage, jumping on the seats, dancing on the tables, roaring out their football chants. They were all white and I couldn’t help but wonder what would have happened if a bunch of Black or Asian young men had overrun a first class carriage in a similar manner. I’d like to think that the train staff, transport police and other passengers would have been just as indulgent, but somehow I doubt it….

I was able to shut out the soccer louts’ antics for as long as I did as I was deeply engrossed in What is the What, Dave Eggers and Valentino Achak Deng’s stunning tour de force of a novel. I’m not sure if it’s a biography or what, because it’s called a novel and it’s by Eggers- an account of the life of Deng, a Sudanese “Lost Boy” who ends up in the United States- it is equal parts sociology text, history text, novel and utterly unbelievable and unputdownable and heart wrenching. And you must read it, if only to understand What is the What….

I’ve also been reading Patrick Gale’s Notes from an Exhibition, where he skilfully uses the notes from a retrospective exhibition to recreate the life of an artist on the Cornish coast exploring her family’s past and present relationships in a calm understated way that I found very attractive….

And to politics- so Gordon Brown’s liver failed him. One minute he was at the top of the opinion polls, with Cameron destined for the dust heap and the next he was struggling for dear life after Cameron made what the press told us was one amazing thumper of a speech. I was more interested in the quick switch- I assume most people like me had not watched the speech, so what was the sudden switch based on? The pledge to reduce the number of people liable to pay inheritance tax? Or the deal to tax non-domiciled City fat cats 25 000 pounds a year in lieu of tax ? Whatever it was, and I suspect it’s a bit of a mystery to the Cameron camp as well, Old Gordon was forced to swallow all talk of a snap election. It’ll be interesting to see what the next few weeks bring, but I was left musing on the power of the media to frame narratives….

In Nigeria, the furore over the Speaker continued with each newspaper virtually guaranteed to have an article on the latest of Speakergate. The usual tritenesses were being wheeled out- is she the first; it’s all the work of disgruntled elements and so on. All probably true but why do we always have to resort to the age old refrain “Everyone does it”

I was more bemused by the story of Judith Burdin Asuni, or as Thisday put it “The Spy who loved us” Is she really a spy or are there other issues at stake. The murkiness of the dealings in the Niger Delta and Nigeria’s oil industry remain a source of fascination for me. Would that there were some good investigative journalists to piece all the stories together. Who bunkers? Who owns licences to drill for oil? Who imports the petroleum that Nigeria uses? So many unanswered questions and yet the answers float in mansions in Lagos and Abuja and Port Harcourt and London and Maryland and elsewhere….

Time, Atonement and a Happy Independence day

Standing in church I see the little boy toddle towards his mother who is singing in the choir, he is bemused as his father cuddles him up just before he reaches his target. I remember vividly, the gentle swelling week on week of his mother’s belly, her disappearance from the choir and then her reappearance proudly carrying a bundle of white clothing. Now seemingly weeks later, he is running around and trying to climb into the choir stall, where did the time go, I wonder….

To the cinema, for the first time in a long time to see the film version of Ian McEwan’s Atonement. I have overheard a discussion of it on the radio, driving somewhere and I am interested that the two discussants are split in their assessment of the film. In any event I am left underwhelmed, particularly by a seemingly endless scene on the beaches of Dunkirk which I am later told is to highlight a cinematic technique. Considering that one of the newspaper reviews had referred to it as the thinking person’s Titanic, I try to work out which of the target groups I have failed to fit in to….Not even Keira Knightley’s winsome loveliness can draw more than a flicker of interest….

To dinner or perhaps early supper on Sunday. Our hostess has outdone herself with a spicy carrot and coriander soup, salmon parcels stuffed with ricotta and spinach and a crisp lemon sorbet with fresh fruit. She offers apologetically that it is all store bought, but I don’t see what she’s apologising for- the food is great….

It is Nigeria’s Independence Day today, forty seven years on, and I can’t help thinking that in country terms, we are really still quite young. Perhaps that’s another sign of aging- ten years ago, I was ranting at how little we had achieved at 37, now I am slightly more patient.

Thinking about Independence Day takes me back to childhood and the school children’s march past. We would practice for weeks beforehand and the worst students would be weeded out. Then the day before the parade we had to bring in our uniforms to be inspected so as not to disgrace the school. Then on the day itself to the field where the state governor would appear on a dais ready to take the salute. At the command “Eeeeeyyesss riiiiight!” we would swivel our tiny necks by 180 degrees to pay homage to the governor as we marched past the dais…..

I still remember a song that some of the children used to sing

“Nigeria is a great country,
Africa is a large continent
We are marching on
To take awa place among all the (other?)
Nations of di worl’

And remembering it now I am oddly moved….

As my great grandmother used to say "happy independa!"

Ramblings...

I am walking past the charity shop (the UK equivalent of Naija's bend down boutiques) when a scrap of scarlet silk at the back of the shop catches my attention. It is an old gentleman's dressing gown and suddenly I find myself thinking about pyjamas. Growing up, there was the nightly ritual of the evening bath followed by the change into pyjamas. Initially they were Marks and Spencer pyjamas bought on the infrequent trips to Kingsway and Leventis stores, but as the Nigerian economy deteriorated they tended to be Chinese brands with names like "Golden Bunny" and were bought in the clothing section of the local market. I once owned a scarlet dressing gown, it was not silk, but I cherished it and for some reason, my parents insisted that if we were leaving our bedroom in our pyjamas we had to put on our dressing gowns. I suppose they had picked up the habit during their education here in the sixties and seventies. Struck by the dressing gown, I reflect on how on leaving home for boarding school, I began to sleep in my day clothes and then by the time I ended up in university was mostly sleeping in my boxers..... Boxers were another latterday introduction- growing up it was all Y-fronts or nothing but much later, boxers were introduced and soon every street side tailor in Nigeria's cities were churning out their own take on the ubiquitous boxers....

I've just finished Donna Daley Clarke's Lazy Eye which is a gripping and evocative of black Caribbean life in the UK in the 60s and 70s. On the cover, there is a photograph of two children on Chopper bicycles, which again had me reminiscing about Chopper and Tomahawk bicycles. unfortunately the bicycle on the cover was the red version when everyone knows that only the purple version ever really counted....

Now I'm reading Nikita Lalwani's Gifted which was longlisted for the Booker Prize this year. It's a well written account of a young girl with a gift for maths growing up with her Indian immigrant parents in Cardiff. Reading it reminds me of my Indian classmates from primary and secondary school, many of whom had a similar gift for maths. This of course put unbearable pressure on the few Indian classmates whose maths skills were more run of the mill. Looking back now I can imagine how miserable they must have felt....

Will there be an election in the UK soon or not? The debate is everywhere- will Gordon go for it or not? I think it is extraordinary that the Prime Minister alone can more or less chose when he calls an election, although having that power is no guarantee of success...

Meanwhile in Nigeria, the list of ambassadorial nominees is released and there are rumours that the former PDP Chairman Amadu Ali is pencilled in to become the UK High Commissioner, which, if it is true will be sad. Following the suave sophistication, erudition and impeccable integrity of the Kolades whose term has just ended is a tough enough act to follow without all the baggage that Ali and his wife carry...

Having recently finished Amy Tan's Saving Fish from Drowning (you should read it if only to hear the story behind the title) which is set in Burma, I look at current events there and shake my head and wonder at the injustice of the world. Everyone is cheering from the sidelines but doing nothing concrete to help, now where's Dubya with his missiles when you need him? Restricting visas isn't going to save those poor people when their nameless and faceless military rulers unleash their venom is it?

Quick update, a few pointers

Just got back and am facing the prospect of a mountain of emails and other work-related projects and meetings. In the rural area of Bavaria, the beautiful landscape of towering mountains, seemingly endless thick green forests and valleys interspersed with the fairytale castles of "mad" King Ludwig of Bavaria and the lavishly decorated baroque and rococo churches provided a good backdrop for time away. The greeting in this deeply conservative and deeply Catholic region of Germany is not the usual Guten tag (Good day) but is Gruss Gott (greetings to God). Yet my experience where many of the inhabitants (including some of the staff in the hotels) had problems responding to the greetings of another human being, albeit a black one, did raise questions about the validity of their preferred mode of greeting. Thankfully Munich and Wiesbaden proved more obviously welcoming and indeed I was surprised to see so many black people in Wiesbaden, although the American accents that many of them sported suggested that they were US Army families stationed nearby..... Indeed there was a gospel revival featuring various African American musicians and ministers on one of the days that I was there. Also surprising was the number of medical clinics and hospitals in the area which were actually included in the city's tourist guide, suggesting that the area was a focus for medical tourism....

I'll blog properly later to catch up on all the developments in the UK and Naija while I've been away and catching up on the books I read, but it was a relief to be back and I thought I'd better highlight a few important events ....

For the New Yorkers, the highly acclaimed Tings Dey Happen drama sketch based on the experiences of the lead actor in the Niger Delta is on at The Culture Project till the 20th of October

For the Brummies and fans of the UK TV police drama, The Bill, Cyril Nri, the Nigerian born star of the series is appearing in a production of Othello in Birmingham

And for everyone else, two of our favourite visitors on this blog- Molara Wood of wordsbody and Petina Gappah have short stories published in the latest edition of Per Contra. Here's Petina's and here's Molara's

One last word- on the Madeleine Mc Cann case, can all the armchair commentators, detectives, PR pundits, pros, antis, etc etc, please shut up? Since I got back it seems nothing else is worthy of front page coverage, an indication of our increasingly voyeuristic society...whether or not the parents are implicated or not, all the relentless media coverage (some self-generated I'll admit) cannot be helpful or constructive....

Travel notes, asking questions, the demise of NNPC and a legislative boob

Luxembourg was bland, sanitized, international, a bit like my experience of Geneva; bits of it, on the outskirts were surprisingly green forests, which came as a bit of a surprise as I had conjured a vision of the Grand Duchy as a pristine, modern,urban city-state.

Stuttgart, the bits that I saw were largely grim and industrial. My local colleagues had organized as a "treat", a tour of one of the local luxury car manufacturing plants. The hour passed pleasantly enough except for the irritating questions from one of our party who kept echoing the guide's words and asking questions that the guide had already answered in his spiel. Discussing this later with a colleague who admitted that she had been irritated too, she argued that our irritation was cultural. The offending tourist being American, she argued that we would have been more sympathetic and less irritated by the questions if we had been American too....I reflected on an earlier class years ago, taken with people from many different countries. We soon got used to the Americans asking questions a lot, not always timely or relevant, but it wasn't till later that an American friend explained that in some US universities, you get marks for participating in class hence the flurry of questions.... I didn't get to ask the question I had really wanted to ask which was whether the workmen who crafted the parts so lovingly ever got to own any of the models....looking at the staff car park, it did not appear that way...

Yaradua continues to chart his own course, setting up a panel to reform the electoral process and acknowledging that the April elections which brought him to power were riddled with irregularities. Today I see that he has announced plans to split up NNPC, the behemoth that has straddled the Nigerian petroleum sector for decades. I remember the lavish lifestyles of friends whose parents worked there and wonder if there will ever be a proper audit there.....It'll be interesting to see what the new structures will look like...

I was blasted back into blogging having been sent this quote relating to the "boobs" of the embattled Nigerian speaker of the House of Representatives, Patricia Etteh who is accused of having awarded inflated contracts for the renovation of her residence and going to the US for a lavish 54th birthday party. A male legislator, purported to be her supporter is quoted as saying:

This woman told us, on the floor of the House, that she’s got two boobs. That the old can suck one while the new would suck one. Honestly speaking, we are sucking. We are enjoying the sucking. We are doing that right now. So, for anybody to say that there is an apathy or favoritism to either the new legislators or the returning legislators or those with cognate experience, honestly, it is unfortunate and it is uncalled for.

Such language! And from an "honourable" too......To read the whole interview, see here

I enjoyed Helen Oyeyemi's The Opposite House- it's an amazing book although I suspect that it may not appeal to the mass market. It is dreamlike and bold and tackles so many issues; from second generation immigrant children to the relationship between mothers and daughters, to faith and religion, all written in lucid languid prose that is infused with a wisdom and music and replete with historical references, subtly worked in. I think it is a very 21st century novel...

Random ramblings, going away, Felabration

In a hurry as it's my last day at work for a while and there are a million and one things to do. I'm going away for work and hoping to catch some holiday and to be honest, I can't wait. I'll try to blog on my wanderings as internet connectivity permits...

On the train this morning a bunch of giggling teenagers in multicoloured wellington boots, carrying backpacks the sizes of small mountains, occupied most of the train. They keep up an urgent rapid-fire chatter which distracts me from the work I'm trying to do. Their conversation ranges over the drugs they've taken and the ones that they will take at the festival that they are headed to, the sex that they have had and will have and so on. I am no prude but can't help being gobsmacked at the casual way in which they broadcast this information through the carriage. I look up from my papers, catching the eye of one of them who has the good grace to blush and gestures to the others to tone it down. As their conversation descend to loud whispers, I am acutely conscious of my age....



Much talk in the last week of Britain's fractured society particularly with the horrific gangland style killing of an 11-year old boy in Liverpool. Everyone seems to agree that society is fractured, but there is disagreement on what to do to heal it. There is much talk about the role of "the community" which makes me irritable. Unlike Mrs Thatcher I do believe that society exists, but am unconvinced that many of the pundits actually know how to mobilize a community. Jack Straw says "lads need dads", suggesting that the black community needs to acknowledge this and promote it, yet I wonder how you actually put that into practice, beyond rhetoric. David Cameron abandons his hug-a-hoodie approach and suggests that offenders should be banged up in prison. Doing a U-turn so soon after his faux pas over hospital closures (he had claimed a number of hospitals were going to lose their accident and emergency departments, only to apologise to a few and then retracting the apology) certainly did nothing to strengthen his public image....

Excerpts from a press release sent to me from Storm Nigeria

"The event which has been tagged "FELABRATION 10" is a 5-daycelebration of Fela's life, music and spirit holds from the 9th-16thof October 2007. The events scheduled include:? Tue October 9th: World Movie Premiere of the previously unreleasedspecial movie of Fela ?Shuffering and Shmiling? and Kick Off Partyfeaturing celebrity DJ, Koffi? Wed October10th: Ladies Night. A day dedicated to the ladies tocelebrate Fela featuring special performances by frontline Nigerianfemale artists such as Zeal, Sasha, Niyola, Asa and many more.? Thursday October 11th: Classics and Yabis night featuring Veteranartists like Fatai Rolling Dollars and Victor Olaiya with acecomedians, Basket Mouth, Tee A and Julius Agwu handling the Yabisspecial. (Don?t forget Baba inspired most of the frontline comediansas a grand Yabis Master himself)? Friday October12th: Fela is Hip Hop featuring International hip hopartist, Nas as well as top Nigerian hip hop stars such as Mode 9,Ikechukwu, Naeto C, Thoroughbreds and Lord of Ajasa have already beenconfirmed to celebrate Fela, the hip hop way! (More to come)? Saturday October 13th: Block Party. All roads lead to the Shrine fora Street Party featuring Damian Marley and most of the big names inNigeria?s music industry.? Sunday October 14th: Fashion for Fela by award winning designer,Deola Sagoe featuring International models Oluchi, Agbani and Nnennaamongst many others. This will be followed by special performances byFemi and Seun Kuti.? Monday October 15th: All day Free feeding at the Shrine by theUnited Nations World Food Project (UNWFP)? Tuesday October 16th: Music Business Conference. The conference willbe held in honor of Fela with an aim to elevate the Nigerian musicindustry. The event will join major businesses, major players in theindustry as well as International resource people. Issues such aspiracy, distribution, broadcast, new technologies, internationalmarkets, regional markets, corporate support, the power of music to drive youth marketing and brands will be dealt with."

I've just finished Pies and Prejudice by Stuart Maconie, a wander through the North of England by a Northerner living in the South. There's lots of good writing and priceless nuggets of information but it's all mired in a mash of references to music and bands that I know little about which spoilt it a bit for me. Learning that there was a large Yemeni Arab community that settled in South Shields in the North of England in the 19th century was an eye opener for me. I'll be taking Bandele's Burma Boy, Oyeyemi's The Opposite House and Abani's The Virgin of Flames with me on my travels....

Now back to the desk clearing....

Overheard, brief summer, economic turmoil and bombarding the Garden City

I am sitting in a train carriage on my way out of London for work. Opposite me is a fifty-something year old American man who keeps applying and reapplying some kind of lip salve that makes his lips a funny white colour. Perhaps he has burnt his lips in the sun or has some sort of medical condition. He is wearing tortoiseshell glasses and a blue shirt with braces (the sort that Nigerian banking whiz kids rocked in the 90s before the finance houses collapsed) and throughout the journey he keeps up a monotonous conversation with various vassals and minions. “Who ordered the report on the India outsourcing? Have the clients been properly billed?” he drawls. The person at the other end barely has time to answer before he barks “Yes but I want to be sure that it’s billed to the right cost centre, is that clear?” He clicks his mobile shut and dials another number and the conversations continue. Nothing stops him, when the train passes through a tunnel and he loses his connection, he immediately dials again. Just listening to him and the way the tone of voice changes, it’s obvious that some minions are doing better than others. He even smiles once while talking to one. I think to myself, is this what it feels like to be Master of the Universe….I tried to see if I could pick up some trade secrets, maybe some hot investment tips but no way. I’ve heard some strange conversations on trains in my time but that’s a whole other blog.

It’s been raining most of this week, payback for the few days of summer that we’ve had I guess. At the weekend looking at all my colourful summer shirts I realized that I’ve hardly worn them this year. Shorts I’ve worn maybe twice, if that. Oh well….

My rusty economics has been receiving quite a stretch this week, what with stock markets plunging worldwide and Soludo at the Nigerian Central Bank announcing that from next year, he’ll be slashing two zeros off the naira. Expert opinions on both developments abound are so many and varied as to be useless. I wonder what it feels like to live through a Crash. Did people wake up in 1929 one morning to discover the markets had crashed, or was it a more gradual process? Were there warning signs that the smart ones picked up on, and the majority ignored? How will we know when the next one comes? Answers on the back of a postcard please.

Saw an interesting comment in one of the papers about how the denizens of the free market in the world’s financial centres were quite happy to receive a massive injection of public funds to shore up the stumbling market. So government intervention isn’t so bad then.

I’m reading Let Me Eat Cake by Paul Arnott, a kind of account of his growing up focusing on his love for cakes and sweet things. It reminds me a bit of Nigel Slater’s Toast in its evocation of a different Britain but isn’t as good. Earlier, I finished another collection of short stories, this time by a Chinese author. Yi Yun Li’s A Thousand Years of Good Prayers which won the Guardian First Book Prize was great reading- capturing different facets of contemporary China in beautiful language and engaging plots.

What on earth is happening in Port Harcourt, our Garden City? I had e mails from friends there yesterday talking about bombardment by helicopter gun ships as the army tried to corral the gangs that have been terrorizing the city. Scary stuff it sounded like. Hope Jaja’s keeping safe- we need that magnum opus.

Zulu art by the Thames, tasty tomatoes, McEwan's Amsterdam and failed DNA tests

The weather continues to be distinctly more summery although there was a brief shower yesterday. I was walking along the Thames at the time and as I was umbrella-less I sought refuge in the Oxo Tower Gallery attracted by the stunning display of hand embroidered colourful umbrellas in the window. In the event they were way beyond what I could afford with a price tag of over a hundred pounds, but I was able to feast my eyes on Best of African Design: 100 % Zulu, an exhibition of Zulu arts and crafts currently running at the gallery….

To supper with English friends on Sunday who served a distinctly summery meal of slices of ham, tomato salad and potato salad which reminded me of reading Enid Blyton’s descriptions of the Famous Five feasting on picnics of ham and tomato. I often wondered then if the tomatoes were different from our Nigerian tomatoes, based on the heavenly way in which they were described. Now I find that if anything Nigerian tomatoes are more flavourful than the often insipid specimens that one finds here.…

Having stalked Ian Mc Ewan’s On Chesil Beach at the library for a few weeks now without any luck, I thought I might as well start on another of his books. And so I took out Amsterdam which won the Booker Prize in 1998. I was not disappointed, it’s a slim book, easily finished but packed a powerful punch. It had most of what I like in a book- a mixture of beautiful prose, a strong storyline that keeps me guessing what happens next and moral discussions that I can engage with. If On Chesil Beach is anything like it, it’ll probably earn him his next Booker….

Another discovery this weekend was The Red Carpet, a collection of short stories set mostly in contemporary Bangalore, by Lavanya Sankaran. As she explored the clash of cultures between a younger more American-influenced generation and an older more English colonial generation, she could have been writing I felt about Nigeria. Ditto for her story of the relationship between a driver and his young, modern Madam and another story about the fraught relationship between a young girl and her nurse. It’s been a while since I read a collection of short stories but so far, this is proving well worth it.

Helping a friend move yesterday, I spied in one corner of his emptying drawers a white plastic band which I soon recognized as a relic of the Make Poverty History campaign. In 2005 you could not turn your head without seeing this on nearly every wrist. As we cleared out the debris I wondered when and why people stopped wearing them. I mean it’s not like poverty’s been made history or anything…..

I remember arguing with friends a few years ago about the stipulation in MKO Abiola’s will asking most of his children to undergo a DNA test before they could benefit from the will. My argument was that Abiola was wrong in visiting the sins of the mothers on the children. Why did he not insist on the DNA tests at the time of birth? He was happy to fund lavish naming ceremonies and bankroll expensive educations and to act as father only for him to issue the killer punch so late in the day. Now that 25 of his children have “failed” the DNA test, the Nigerian media is agog. But to all those sneering, I would ask them to save their sneers as there’s no telling what conducting similar tests in their families might yield…

Back on the blog, KLM rubbish, Booker longlist and TED Global talks

I haven’t blogged in a while, not because there was nothing to blog about- what with Yaradua’s “independence” moves in Nigeria, foot and mouth scares on farms and chaos at Heathrow in the UK and the alternately infuriating and depressing news of TV star Funmi Iyanda’s brush with the “fashion police” in Lagos, there’s been more than plenty to blog about. But it seems that the sunny weather we’ve had in the last week or so has lulled me into a state of lethargy. That combined with work where lots of colleagues are on holiday making things pretty tight and the relentless march of friends, relations and friends of friends and relations of relations visiting from Nigeria has pushed blogging way down the list of priorities but anyways here I am

I read the increasingly vociferous complaints about how shoddy services at Heathrow were in the last few weeks but took it all with a pinch of salt until I had a reality check the other day. I was seeing off an uncle flying back to Nigeria. First I tried to check him in online so that we could avoid waking up at 4 am to catch the 8 50 flight. The KLM website wouldn’t let me and I finally rang up the contact telephone number only to be told that the online system was down and check in over the phone would be to Amsterdam only so he would have to retrieve his luggage in Amsterdam and check it in again to Lagos. And so we lost a potential extra hour of sleep. Then he made the mistake of not weighing his luggage and so as soon as I arrived I asked a member of BAA staff where the weighing scales were only to be sent off in completely the wrong direction. We finally arrived at KLM business class and the attitude of the staff at the check in was atrocious. The two women were engaged in an obviously-more-important-than-work chat and ignored us standing there for a while. When I finally, ostentatiously cleared my throat, one of them caught my eye and with an “I suppose I better deal with you since you’re not going away” look sauntered over to the desk and started up the computer. Just as she was about to start the check in process, she reminded us that this was the Business class check in not economy. My uncle replied that he was well aware of this, only to have her supervisor retort sharply “A lot of people make that mistake, so she was only checking” The aggression seemed so unnecessary at 6 30 in the morning and in what was supposed to be business class that I asked her to please mind her business and let us get on with checking in which obviously did not go down well…. Then there was all the drama about the security queue. You could carry a laptop as long as it was not in its case through the barrier but then it did not matter how many bags you had subsequently. So my uncle had to take his laptop out, squeeze the laptop case into his briefcase but once he was through the barriers it was fine to take it out and put the laptop back in its case- I struggled to see the rationale for this….All in all I finally saw why people were complaining- I mean I wasn’t travelling but by the time I waved him through the security barrier I was exhausted…

I’ve just finished Cuban writer Abilio Estevez’s Distant Palaces and it suddenly struck me why Havana had seemed so familiar when I visited it a few years ago. It was the echoes of the ancient quarters of Lagos Island that did it- the crumbling Italianate mansions, the strong sense of a syncretic Catholicism, the salt tinged organic breezes of Marina and the Malecon against a backdrop of decay and vibrant human living. Reading Estevez, his descriptions of Havana could have been set in Lagos Island….

On the subject of writing, Helon Habila has an interesting piece on what I had earlier suggested was an amazing year for Nigerian writers. I’m particularly interested at his classification of contemporary Nigerian writers... And the Booker Prize longlist is announced with some surprise at the brevity of it, sadly there are no Nigerians on it and although On Chesil Beach and Winnie and Wolf were on my to read list, the rest are all new to me ….

Finally, in continued pursuit of Nigerians off the beaten track, I’m pleased to read that Tayo Aluko, the Liverpool based singer and architect is performing at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival this week; and to see The Financial Times at the weekend reveals that the chef at the new fashionable London restaurant La Petite Maison is Nigerian born Raphael Duntoye

And finally Nigerian writer Chris Abani's talk at TED Global earlier this year is now available and also here . Also worth listening to are Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, George Ayittey and William Kankwamba

Hypocrisy, Covenant University, fine-boy politics et cetera

I have always been a firm believer in the aphorism that travel broadens the mind, and for me, coming to the UK has helped me see my country through fresh eyes. One area that astounds me is the hypocrisy that permeates many aspects of Nigerian society. I remember on one of my visits home, this cousin whom I am very close to accosted me and asked me which church I attended in London. When I told her, she said " I hope it is a Bible-believing church o!" and went on to regale me with her activities at her church in Lagos where she had recently been promoted to lead one of the departments. Later in the trip, she said she had a friend whom she would like me to meet. We went to lunch at a swanky Lagos restaurant with a gentleman of the sort that City People refers to as a "Lagos Big Boy". It was soon evident that this was no ordinary friend but indeed my cousin's married lover- indeed his wedding had been splashed all over the society magazines a few years before. As we left the restaurant, ensconced in the air conditioned jeep of her "friend", I wondered how she made sense of these disaparate strands of her life. It is this same hypocrisy that leads 419 barons and fraudulent public servants to give tithes from their ill-gotten gains and hold thanksgiving services without questioning the incongruity of their actions...

I was set to musing about this by the recent news that Covenant University, owned by one of the churches in Lagos , has instituted mandatory pregnancy tests and HIV tests for all final year students. Students who test positive for pregnancy are to forfeit their degrees, those who test positive for HIV will receive their degrees after they have "received their healing". Questions that immediately spring to mind include: What about the sexually active boys who cannot get pregnant? What about the various other ways that HIV can be contracted apart from sex? How come this healing has not been made available to the 4 million or so Nigerians estimated to be living with HIV? Would married students be exempt? Can all the lecturers and staff swear that they are living chaste, morally upright lives?

I'm glad that some action is being taken but the mind boggles at such irrational, ill thought out and draconian policies being made and implemented in of all places a university. One can then imagine the level of critical thought being imparted to these students.....

Jeremy touches on another aspect of this shadow chasing favoured by my people in his post on the Nigerian police and skimpily dressed Lagos women...

Meanwhile in London, David Cameron struggles as his place in the polls slip further and further down. The Brown bounce is to account partly for this but "Call Me Dave" did himself no favours jetting off to Rwanda to build schools while his constituency was awash in floods and losing the bye election in Ealing to Labour after imposing a fine-boy Asian businessman candidate who was revealed had been hobnobbing with Blair only weeks before joining the Conservatives. Funnily enough Brown is slowly appearing more statesmanlike and now appears to show up Cameron's fine-boy tactics as just that- all show and no action, no meat to his policies. The Tory traditionalists are getting restive but Dave has vowed to stay the course and avoid a lurch to the right. I think part of his problem is that he is still trying to be all things to all men and women, and that can only take you so far.....

In London we have an interesting mayoral contest coming up with the faux-shambolic Boris Johnson, the Old Etonian and former President of the Oxford Union who likes to pretend that he is really just a bumbling, harmless upper class toff throwing his hat into the ring to run against Ken Livingstone. In many ways I suspect it will also turn out as another fine-boy (albeit with jokes added) versus substance contest. As Labour was quick to make clear- can you imagine Boris as mayor after the 7th of July bombings?

To Spitalfields last weekend and a magnificent steak dinner at Hawksmoor which prides itself on serving the best meat in London. The ribeye was superb, succulent and run through with fat and the chips were juicy and crisp on the outside. While the Caesar salad was a bit on the watery side, the delicious cocktails more than made up for the deficiency. The Spitalfields area is an interesting mix - from bearded Bangladeshi elders to funky Brit artists, punks, Goths and pinstriped City boys, the streets are alive with something inexpressibly exciting...

Marooned in Bloomsbury on Sunday, I found myself on the doorstep of the London Review of Books bookshop. It's fantastic- packed with books that you wouldn't ordinarily see in Waterstone's or any of the bigger chains. I bought Chris Abani's The Virgin of Flames which means that I now have four new books by Nigerian authors to read on my forthcoming holiday. Already on the to read pile are Helen Oyeyemi's The Opposite House, Biyi Bandele's Burma Boy and Segun Afolabi's Goodbye Lucille. Who says it isn't a great time for Nigerian literature? And while they may all be based abroad, surely greater attention to Nigerian literature can only benefit all- homebased and international.

Speaking of which I came across the website of the iconoclastic, irreverent poet Lola Shoneyin, who apparently has a novel coming soon. There's an excerpt on the website. Thanks Molara of Wordsbody for the heads up

Deceptions, training away bad things and finally a cabinet

It is, it appears a week in which things are not quite what they seem. There is a furore about the BBC and other UK broadcasters “duping” their viewers by asking them to call in to win prizes when the winner had already been decided, or reading out the name of a member of production staff as the winner of a phone-in competition when technical difficulties prevented calls from coming through. There has been much hand-wringing and apologies from the Beeb, especially coming after it was revealed that footage it had shown of the queen storming out of a photo session had been manipulated. Through it all, I couldn’t help thinking- “Come on people, it’s television, not real life- what do you expect?”

Trust the Director of the BBC he’s ordered the entire staff of the corporation to attend training on trust and integrity, which hasn’t gone down well with those members of staff who feel that they weren’t implicated and so shouldn’t have to go through it all.

Personally I’m amused at this belief in training- x makes an anti-Semitic remark; he holds meetings with members of the Jewish community and undergoes training in cultural diversity. Ditto for the racist and homophobic. If these lessons are so life-changing, shouldn’t we all be going on them beforehand and not just when the s**t has hit the ceiling (if you’ll pardon my French) Perhaps next time someone commits a crime, instead of punishing them we can send them to murder/stealing or fraud charm school instead...

Finally, Uncle Yardie (I refused to call OBJ Baba, but I don’t mind calling Yardie Uncle) has sworn in his cabinet. I like that Mrs Diezaeni Alison Madueke is in charge of Transport. With her working experience as a very senior executive in Shell and a fairly comfortable background, she should be ready to contribute and not to chop. Professor Adenike Grange at the Health Ministry is another square peg in a square hole. I reserve my comments on Ojo Maduekwe in Foreign Affairs and Shamsudeen Usman in Finance. Yardie has decided to hold on to the energy portfolio with no less than 3 junior ministers to support him. Ha, this oil sweet o!

At the moment I’m reading Temptations of the West: How to be Modern in Pakistan and India by Pankaj Mishra. It’s an interesting mix of memoir, travelogue, philosophical rambling and history with illuminating insights into for instance, the situation in Kashmir