ktravula – a travelogue!

Leaving Lagos

by S.I Ohumu

I came here on the shoulders of many, great, expectations. It was the glow-up. Smart Benin girl who never fit in with a talent in the arts must move to the big city. But you lose when you do things that are expected of you.

I should have learnt this lesson from my experience juggling being in my first year of university and last year of secondary school, simultaneously, to give my parents bragging rights, though I didn’t. Or I forgot to. So I moved.

Now I am moving again.

I am leaving Lagos. It is lonely. Alone with 20 million hurrying bodies. Inside of a room, a flat, with persons you know in their own rooms, their own flats, the great distance caused by traffic jams enough to keep you apart. Alone with yourself so you run to whoever you can be with, taking the shit, grateful for a body to see, touch, talk, fuck.

I am leaving Lagos because it is noisy here . And in my head. There is too much. Of everything. Too much hurrying. Too much worry. Too much of cars. Too much of agents. Too much of no friends. Too much of want. Too much of the feeling of keeping up but falling short. There is not enough of anything. Not enough of actual air. Of space. Of quiet. Not nearly enough of peace and joy. Freedom to take flight. There is not enough freedom in Lagos. Not enough of the things which make us truly much. Solid hefty things. Lagos is noise and too much and not enough. It is a shiririrrrrr. It is many stones joined together, haphazard, with no weight. Nothing at the middle.

***

It is my last weekend in Lagos and I have come to move my things. For months I have been afraid to be back here. I left on a bad note. I didn’t finish a manuscript I was editing. I didn’t say goodbye at my job. I told the people at my house nothing. I wrote that deeply flawed essay. I absolutely do not want to be back here.

But fear will always be there. So I do what I am slowly learning to do: allow myself somethings, hold back others. I do not confront former work or abandoned manuscript. Not yet. I stay with Ayọ̀ at Ìyànà Ìpájà. On Sunday night I have wine with a married man–bad tasting white wine–while sitting beside a pool in Lekki, and talk to him for hours, until it is too late to go home. And because I don’t want us to get a room, I say, ‘to the beach’!

We walk. I think I belong to the water. He says everybody thinks that when faced with the sea. There is a line of rock I am unwilling to walk. We look at sex workers. At how the wind makes their cigarette fire fly. Sit on a log. He touches my butt. We sleep in his car. The next day, I’m sick with fever. Can mosquitoes live in saltwater?

On Tuesday I uninstall Uber and Taxify. Forget Rele. My heart holds on to Freedom Park.

***

Hearing Edo being spoken became a balm. A balm given to a bus conductor at agege. A smile returned to boy with blue glasses at Cafe Neo. A celebration of familiarity. Everything else was the other.

***

I am leaving Lagos because I am happy now. I have cleaned the room in my head. Put the hangers in the wardrobe, the broom in its place. I am able to wake up every morning. Go to sleep without crying. Look at trees, touch the sky, love a man who loves me back. I am able finally to be accountable. To understand action, reaction, consequence. Interested in navigating the fragile maze of growing up while retaining my childlike wonder. Realizing clichés come from good places. I am able to think good. Solid. I am leaving Lagos because only the solid can fly. You are fraught and froth and secured to the dirt floor in a city with everything but what is required.

I am leaving Lagos because it is not for me. It is this simple. Do not speak in absolutes. No city is the sunken place. This one is magic to many others. Now the question: But is that you? Are you here because you want to be or you think you ought to want to be? Because you need to be here? Sync like a mac to an iPhone to this rollercoaster of a coastal city? When last did you let yourself rhyme?

I want to rhyme. I want to go home. I only know home is home by having been in a place that isn’t home. I am leaving Lagos because it isn’t home.

Lagos isn’t home. Not to me. Is it to you?

N.B: To the ones not squares, wearing boots at ring road, counting down until the big move, why are you leaving? Your family doesn’t feel like family? To find your tribe? Opportunities? Your difference does not mean you must live in Lagos. Granted it’s a hub but is it the only? Should it be? The country big. Ask Fuád, e big. If you want to create, bad air fast bus quick fingers frothy people fun hangouts may be the way. Trees, slow paced, quiet may also be the answer. I am not saying do not go, only consider. Place it side by side another. It is not a given. Sometimes the way to start anew is to stay. Sometimes it is to go.

Go home. But first, find it. Wherever that is.

_____

S.I Ohumu is a mostly happy twenty-two-year-old living where art, food, and environmental sustainability meet.

Nigeria’s Opioid Crises: Codeine

I first heard about the Nigerian codeine epidemic a couple of months ago, when a viral song by Ọlámìdé titled Science Student was released. Until then, I did not know that a drug epidemic was raging on Nigerian streets and taking lots of young men and women with them. But even then, I had no idea that the drug in question was a prescription cough syrup.

My friend – and Nigerian journalist – Ruona Agbroko-Meyer has now done an important documentary work on this crises, exposing the underground market and individuals that sustain the multimillion naira criminal industry. It is a story that has roots in her own personal story but exposes a national problem through investigative journalism and high stakes reporting.

I strongly recommend it. See below, via the BBC.

Thoughts on “Freshwater”

I have just finished reading Akwaeke Emezi’s powerful debut, Freshwater. Its premise – a novel-length story of an ọgbanje child and its/her/their* experience of the human and spirit world – was one we had needed for a long time since Chinua Achebe gave us the character Ezinma in Things Fall Apart, described as ọgbanje because she was the first of ten children that did not die at birth. In Yorùbá, they are called àbíkú children, and have been subjects of many works of poetry and fiction. Having such a contemporary story based on the real-life story of someone we know makes it doubly intriguing for a novel, with potentials and pitfalls.

Freshwater by Akwaeke Emezi.

This novel, which takes place this time in the modern era of emails, tennis courts, airplanes, condoms, and surgeries, tells the story of an ọgbanje child called the egg of the python: akwa-eke (also ‘the Ada’ – first girl child; also ‘the child of Ala’), whose life begins to get interesting after a night of trauma releases to her reality many spirits she had carried with her since birth. “Interesting” is a curious word to use to describe what happens, but only because the writing successfully immerses the reader in the trauma of her circumstances while simultaneously offering some measure of distance through a multiplicity of voices, all belonging to different entities through which the spirits that control her body chose to express their personalities. Their primary aim is to destroy the body and pull her spirit back to where they came from, but failing that, settling to ‘protect’ her through a series of attack and defense mechanisms that turn the life of such a carrier into one of wild and tumultuous adventure.

“When we were first placed inside her, with these humans, the odds were that the Ada would survive. It was, in retrospect, a very low bar to set. She did not die, yes, but she was not guarded, she was violated, so far as we were concerned, they failed. This is why we have never regretted stepping in, whether as ourself or the beastself. Show us someone, anyone, who could have saved her better.” (Kindle LOC 2411)

I have never read any other book like it. Not in the way the author introduces us to the many characters that live within one person. Not in the way she carries us along with her on a rollercoaster of spiritual and physical experiences that would have been hard to describe in any other way. Not many novels exist in which there are so many characters, but few people. It is a testament to the author’s gift and talent that we are never confused at each turn.

What makes the book important, however, is not just the fact of its existence, its impressive narrative style which combines Nigerian pidgin lingo, Igbo, and standard English, and the intimate exploration of what being an ọgbanje means in a modern time. A month before the book was released, the author penned a complementary essay in The Cut in which she describes her transition across realities, from woman to “a spirit customizing its vessel to reflect its nature.” She was not just becoming non-woman by removing the body part that reminded her every month of the nature of which body it inhabited, she was also freeing herself from the prison of categorization: a transition that isn’t from one gender to the other, but from body to spirit. Serving as complementary features the way that Binyavanga Wainaina’s essay I am a Homosexual, Mom complements his memoir One Day I Will Write About This Place like a lost final chapter, Emezi’s essay fits the novel like a necessary coda, bringing an important conversation to the fore about how transitioning and attendant medical procedures aren’t really such an ‘unAfrican’ phenomenon after all, but had only been spoken of in that light because we had suppressed the voices that could otherwise explain to us the things we knew all along.

“The first madness was that we were born, that they stuffed a god into a bag of skin.” Kindle LOC 278

Akwaeke Emezi.(Photo from http://1888.center)

The novel works on many levels: as a memoir, a coming of age story, a journey to self of a young girl of Igbo and Tamil descent trying to find her way in the world; as a fictional exploration of trauma, mental illness, family issues, and sexual/gender identity; and as an inevitably anthropological material on the study of the ọgbanje phenomenon and its many manifestations, with an intimate portrayal of challenges, heartbreaks, and opportunities. All the earlier works we had read about the phenomenon had treated the issue in a distant mythical way, removed from relatable experiences. While I was in Korea in January, a student of African literature asked whether the ọgbanje/àbíkú experience was ‘real’ and something that still happened. He had read about it from Chinua Achebe. I was glad to refer him to Emezi’s personal essay, and novel, on the subject. With Freshwater, the phenomenon became flesh.

Besides the subject matter, I was also very heartened to read a Nigerian novel in which the Nigerian language words (in this case, Igbo words) are written with appropriate diacritics. Ọgbanje wasn’t written as ogbanje, or with italics, as Chinua Achebe did in 1948. Other Igbo words and expressions like Asụghara, Lẹshi, Nzọpụta, Ịlaghachị, among others, were written with adequate respect for the writing conventions (I have discussed my thought on this pervasive deficiency in contemporary African writing in past essays (see 1, 2, 3), but particularly in this recent talk given in Korea about the subject). If we care enough to put diacritics on French, German, Swedish (etc) names in our English prose, there’s no need why we shouldn’t do them for African languages as well.

“When you name something, it comes into existence – did you know that?” Kindle LOC 816

Emezi has written an important book that is also a delight to read, in spite of (if not also because of) the trauma and challenges that make the writing necessary in the first place. Highly recommended.

* Note on Pronouns. As those already familiar with Emezi’s work will note, she insists that she’s not a woman, though she answers to both ‘she’/’her’ (as is seen on her web bio), and ‘they’ (as will be seen throughout the novel, and as she’d once mentioned online as a preference). Her bio, for a long time, quotes her as living ‘in liminal spaces’. I believe that she has also not entered the book for any women’s prize for this purpose, which makes sense in light of how she represents herself in public and how she has experienced the world as an ọgbanje. One of the things that intrigued me greatly in the book is how each voice comes across as an authentic self of the character, even when they all live within the same body. So here, using ‘they’ makes enormous sense, and not confusing in a way that it has been when other trans people (especially in the United States) have used it. This is said not to disparage other trans people and the way they represent themselves but to credit this particular work with illuminating the issue in a way that makes it a little more relatable.

Drama at the NLNG

I realized, just last week, that the call for entries for the Drama Category of the annual Nigeria Prize for Literature is out. The Prize, as will be familiar to those following Nigerian literary conversations, carries $100,000 and is awarded annually in four rotating genres. Last year’s winner, Ikeogu Oke, won for poetry (and you can watch my interview with him here, or read a review of his willing entry).

At a lunch invitation in Lagos with interested stakeholders, literary journalists, and selected members of the public, Mr. Tony Okonedo, Manager, Corporate Communications and Public Affairs at the Nigeria LNG spoke about the progress of the prize, fielded questions about its shortcomings and public expectations, and announced a number of initiatives being planned for this year’s edition.

One of the attendee inputs that got a favourable response by the organizers is the suggestion that NLNG consider sponsoring a command performance of whichever play that won the prize last. In this case, that will be Iredi War written by Sam Ukala, and which won in 2014 when the Drama Prize was last awarded. I can already imagine such a performance (open to the public, perhaps) helping to draw more attention to the prize, the winning writer, and the genre in particular.

Another suggestion which I particularly like will involve having the NLNG sponsor a type of writing workshop every year either with all the longlisted authors in its prize categories or for selected and/interested writers who are then taken to the Island of Bonny where NLNG makes most of its money through the liquified natural gas. Either that or a type of residency. What I’ve heard of the tranquil nature of that island makes this something of a perfect fit.

According to a press release, the NLNG-sponsored Science Prize will also be accepting entries on Innovations in Electric Power Solutions. The literature prize opened on February 13, 2018 and will close on March 29, 2018. The window for the science prize, on the other hand, opened on February 15, 2018, and will close on May 25, 2018.

Professor Matthew Umukoro will chair the panel of judges for this year’s Literature prize competition. He is a professor of Theatre Arts at University of Ìbàdàn. Other members include Professor Mohammed Inuwa Buratai, a Professor of Theatre and Performing Arts and the Dean of the Faculty of Arts at Ahmadu Bello University, (ABU), Zaria; and Dr. Mrs Ngozi Udengwu, a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Theatre and Film Studies at University of Nigeria, Nsukka.

Do people still write plays? Silly question, I know. But are there still many being published every year, a vibrant industry like we have for prose and, sometimes, poetry? I don’t know. Are unpublished plays eligible for this prize even? If not, why not? I know, though, that Sefi Atta published a collection last year, so I look forward to seeing the writers on this year’s long and shortlist. Who knows, maybe I’ll get to interview the shortlisted playwrights as well. Still, about 10 days for you to enter if you qualify. More information here.

At the Korean DMZ

Visiting the Korean Demilitarized Zone (DMZ, as it’s commonly called) was, I think, one of the most exhilarating parts of my trip. Nowhere else in the world, perhaps, is as illustrative of tension and hostility between two countries as the DMZ is. It is the world’s only remaining demilitarized zone laid bare in a 250-km long border barrier between what is now known as North Korea and South Korea.

Parts of the DMZ are open to guests, though subject to last-minute cancellations in many instances. On the day of our visit, the Olympic delegation from the North had just passed through the Civilian Control Line, on the way to Seoul on a historic visit. Had we arrived there just a few minutes earlier, we may have been delayed to make way for them.

The parts of the South where visitors can visit have a number of interesting landmarks, including an observatory post from where one can peep into North Korea and see its Propaganda Village and a flag, erected to be taller than anything else near it, placed strategically near the border. There, there is a small museum showing how the Korean conflict started, the many skirmishes between both of them over the years, and other relevant information. Over the years, the North Koreans had plotted to take over the South using many sly tactics. One of them is the use of a tunnel, four of which have been discovered before they did too much damage. Guests to the DMZ can take a look at some of them, and even take a walk in them, since they’ve been preserved for touristic purposes.

A place I thought I was going to visit, but learnt isn’t much open to the public, is Panmunjom with the famous blue house split across two national boundaries, and where most high-level diplomatic meetings between the countries usually take place. From Paju, where the observatory was, Panmunjom was a few miles out of view even of the mounted telescopes.

One thing that was exciting to discover is that, due to the state of war between the two Koreas and the untouched nature of the wilderness in the DMZ, it has grown over the years to become something of a nature park. Exotic birds and animals of diverse natures now live in the four-kilometre-wide minefield that separates the two Koreas. It has been proposed that in the case of future unification, the two countries agree to keep the DMZ as a heritage site of protected flora and fauna.

I can get behind that, as well as the idea of returning to the country after a state of peace has finally returned. Hope is frail but it’s hard to kill, as the saying goes. From the conversations with ordinary Koreans throughout the trip, it appears that I’m not the only one with at least a desire for a better future in that part of the world. May it be soon, and may the cost not be too high for the world to bear.

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