ktravula – a travelogue!

Jeremy and the Boys

A reporter for the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), Jeremy Grange, stopped by my workplace earlier in the week to talk about literature and linguistics, and the writing environment in Nigeria today. He is in town interviewing a number of Nigerian writers about the current state of the writing industry today. He was referred to me by a mutual colleague who thought that he would be interested in my work particularly the angle of the Nigerian language.

We met at my workplace, Whitesands School, talked for over half an hour about my writing, my childhood influences, my other work in promoting the use of indigenous languages on the internet, and other related topics. It was a lively and stimulating conversation. He mentioned, in the end, that my description of the language environment in Nigeria reminds him of Wales and the despair that many people felt about the language dying off. What the Welsh people did, he said, was to create an aggressive campaign to increase the use of the language in all spheres of life, and it worked. Welsh is now being spoken by more people than before. This is one incentive for me to visit the United Kingdom in the near future.

Pictures courtesy of Whitesands School

Talk eventually led to the literary work done by my students whose creative writing and art works were published earlier in the year in an anthology that we called The Sail. A second edition is in the works. The journalist wanted to speak with some of the boys whose work appeared in the book to get an idea of their literary influences and writing purpose. Five of those boys gladly obliged, taking some time out of class to talk about the books they read, what influenced their work in the anthology, and even reading excerpts from the book. In short, it was a hugely productive encounter. He has now invited me over to Wales to check out the teaching of Welsh which is enjoying a renewed attention after decades of neglect. I intend to take him up on the invitation whenever I’m in the UK.

I am grateful to Jeremy for stopping by, and to Emma Shercliff for connecting us. The radio programme, to be narrated by Nigerian writer Wana Udobang, will air in late October to early November, 2015. As soon as it airs on the BBC World Service (and posted on their website), I will put up the links here.

Attempted Speech & Other Poems

Some good news! This morning, my first (adult*) chapbook of poems was published on Saraba Magazine. It is a collection of 15 (mostly*) never-before published poems. It is titled Attempted Speech & Other Fatherhood Poems.

Most of the poems centre around the birth of my child, my contemplations of the fatherhood process, and other ruminations about him, children in general, and surrounding experiences. Please head here and download it. It is free to download and to read.

The publication also features an interview with the magazine, along with readings of three of the poems in the chapbook, uploaded to Soundcloud. I hope you enjoy the package as much as I did writing it. Special thanks to Emmanuel Iduma, Dami Ajayi, and Adebiyi Olasope for their work in bringing this to life.

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* I say “adult” only because I find it necessary to give a hat tip to my first (and altogether ill-fated) outing from ten years ago in a collection called Headfirst into the Meddle (2005). I say “mostly” because a few of the poems in this current collection, in a different form or another, have been featured/workshopped on my social media pages at some point in the past. In any case, ignoring occasional outing of one or two other poems in LitMags across the world, this is my first major literary debut in ten years.

Calabar’s Old Residency

I came across this brilliant travel piece on Aljazeera a couple of days ago. It was written by Femke van Zeiji about a notable building in Calabar, South-South Nigeria, along with the histories it embodies. Worth a read.

“The Old Residency itself, however, could tell stories the museum does not. Like how, about 10 years ago, when looking down the hill, you might see Charles Taylor swinging his racket on the governor’s tennis court while enjoying the asylum the Nigerian government had granted him – and how the former Liberian president disappeared again in 2006 after Nigeria announced an end to its hospitality. Taylor is now serving a 50-year sentence for war crimes in a UK prison.

The Old Residency also served as a prison. At the back of the wooden building rises a white stone annex that used to house the kitchen. It was in the cellar below this kitchen that Oba Ovonramwen of Benin was imprisoned in 1897.

He was the monarch of one of the last independent kingdoms in the region and was resisting annexation by the British. In 1897, a military invasion put an end to that independence. British soldiers burnt down the city of Benin, killing many of its inhabitants and looting its treasures; countless pieces of art – some of which can still be found in museums in Britain and elsewhere outside Nigeria. The string-headed Oba was eventually imprisoned in the cellar that now serves as the computer room of the museum.”

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Read more about it here where from these excerpts were taken.

The Nigerian Prize for Literature: Children’s Fiction 2015

(Being a speech given today at the World Press Conference of the NLNG Nigerian Prize for Literature 2015 Award by Emeritus Professor Ayo Banjo, Chairman, Advisory Board, Nigerian Prize for Literature)

The Nigeria Prize for Literature sponsored by Nigeria LNG Limited was instituted in 2004 with the aim of promoting literature and recognizing excellence. The initiative has witnessed steady progress since inception. The prize rotates among four genres namely – Poetry, Drama, Fiction and Children’s Literature. The 2015 The Nigeria Prize for Literature competition is for Children’s Literature.

The Nigeria Prize for Literature has since 2004 rewarded eminent writers such as Gabriel Okara (co-winner, 2005, poetry), Professor Ezenwa Ohaeto (co-winner, 2005, poetry); Ahmed Yerima (2006, drama) for his classic, Hard Ground; Mabel Segun (co-winner, 2007, children’s literature) for her collection of short plays Reader’s Theatre; Professor Akachi Adimora-Ezeigbo (co-winner, 2007, children’s literature) with her book, My Cousin Sammy; Kaine Agary (2008, prose); Esiaba Irobi (2010, drama) who clinched the prize posthumously with his book Cemetery Road; Adeleke Adeyemi (2011, children’s literature) with his book The Missing Clock; Chika Unigwe (2012, prose), with her novel, On Black Sister’s Street; Tade Ipadeola (2013, Poetry) with his collection of poems, Sahara Testaments and Sam Ukala (2014, drama) with Iredi War. In 2004 and 2009, there were no winners.

Perhaps at this point, it is necessary to explain very briefly what children’s literature entails. Children’s literature reflects the cultural milieu, norms and values of any given society. It molds, teaches, corrects, entertains and crucially inspires the next generation of readers and writers. In most of the entries for this year’s contest, it was discovered that inappropriate prominence was given to the following: violence, eroticism, mediocrity, cheating in examinations, bullying, exploration in mysticism and negative peer-pressure.

A distinction needs to be made between children’s literature and literature about children. Children’s literature should be a creative works of aesthetic and social values for children.

This year, 109 entries were received. Eighty-nine (89) entries did not meet the preliminary criteria for assessment. This number represents 81.6% of the total number of entries received for 2015. The percentage by any standard is worrying; especially as there is a paucity of literature for children. Creative writers are urged to pay particular attention to children’s literature because this is the fundamental stage for child growth and consequently national development. In this year’s competition, the following criteria were used for assessing the entries: language\diction, theme(s)/content, social relevance, style, quality of production and originality.

Language plays a major role in literary production. Creative writers are normally expected to pay special attention to the use of language, particularly so with regard to children’s literature. The Nigeria Prize for Literature demands stylistic excellence as manifested through an original and authoritative voice, narrative coherence, and technically accurate writing. Unfortunately, the entries this year fall short of this expectation as each book was found to manifest incompetence in the use of language. Generally, published works are expected to be attractive, attention-catching and of good quality. The entries assessed for the 2015 The Nigeria Prize for Literature competition did not reflect the above qualities to an acceptable degree. Many of them showed very little or no evidence of good editing.

In view of the above assessment, it is clear that no entry met the standard expected of a good literary work of children’s literature. Therefore none of the entries is found suitable for the 2015 The Nigeria Prize for Literature Award.

The Conversation: Diss(cuss)ing Sexism

Last Sunday, Joy Isi Bewaji, author of Eko Dialogue, hosted the fourth edition of The Conversation, a public town-hall-style interaction on various issues, at Colonades Hotel in Lagos. The first edition held in Lagos, the second in Abuja, the third was held in Ibadan this last July. This edition was to discuss sexism in Nigeria and its implications for both men and women. I was one of the panelists, along with lawyer Ayo Sogunro, actor Femi Jacobs, and Bimbola Amao. In attendance were men and women from all walks of Nigerian life: journalists, artisans, housewives, young single women, married men and women, writers, and all. This was my first time in one of these events.

What is sexism? How sexist is the Nigerian media? How sympathetic or sensitive is society to the issues of Sexism as it affects the woman? What are the dangers of sexism in marriage? etc. These are some of the questions posed by the convener, and discussed by the panel and the audience. And, in just a few minutes into the event, a series of personal experiences started pouring in from around the room detailing the crap that Nigerian women put up with on a daily basis: a deadbeat but egotistic husband who prevents his wife from excelling, a caring but misinformed mother who hands over her daughter, at 19, to a man whom she had never met, or loved, to marry just so she could boast of having a daughter in a marriage, a young lady who is kept from going to school to pursue her degrees because of her husband’s patriarchal (and religious) conditioning, another who is struggling in a marriage where the balance of power (and finances) is tilted against her even after she had supported the man with her own income when she had the means. In the workplace, someone who didn’t get a job because she was pregnant at the time of the interview, and many more who were (and would be) denied jobs just because they were female and thus “emotional” beings.

12020022_10207030163607892_2268462496907388402_n There were many more, not just from the panelists who in a few instances disagreed on the cause of and the solutions to many of the issues. (Is religion a force for good or for ill in these matters? Yes? No? Ayo Sogunro argued, correctly I believe, that our imposition of a foreign belief system on what was a fairly equitable traditional family system complicated our gender relationships and gave excuse to men to relegate women into subservient roles because “the bible said so” or “it’s written in the Qur’an”. Femi Jacobs disagreed, crediting religion with all the good in the world and absolving it of the resulting ill. The followers of the faith, in his opinion, are the ones most responsible for the interpretation of simple harmless injunctions. This isn’t satisfactory, I argued, citing examples in Catholicism where divorce is frowned upon, and Islam where female genital mutilation is – in some cases mandatory. We cannot always separate religion from much of the problems we have with oppression and inequality in marriage, I said. It’s called “Man and Wife”, after all, and not “Husband and Wife”, where “man” is the default and “wife” is just something he possesses.

There were also some personal disclosures by some of the women which elicited winces of discomfort, despair, and eventual vocal disagreement by the panel as well as some other members of the audience: should women refuse to hire other women because, in someone’s words “women are emotional, can be petty, and are often unprofessional”? As I responded, hopefully with as much incredulity as I felt, “What would you say if a man had said that???” In discussions like this that can sometimes move fluidly from the solid grounds of rejecting discrimination on the basis of one’s gender to the murky waters of self-righteous recrimination of other members of that same gender for being the real reasons why they have what’s coming to them, it’s always important to be on guard. It is particularly so for women who eventually become victims of these prejudices when they become accepted as fact by the general publc.

What my experience of participating in the conversation tells me is that a lot more needs to be done. Sexism is discrimination against someone on the basis of prejudiced opinions, summaries, and conclusions about their gender without giving them a chance to prove themselves. Simple. Not giving someone a job because they’re thought to be incompetent before they are tested is sexist. Assuming that all unmarried young women are incompetent is sexist, even if many of them are (and I don’t believe that this is the case). Not employing young women with boyfriends (because they often can’t focus on their work because of their love life) is sexist too – and many more. These are sexist even if the person doing this is a woman! There will always be other avenues to talk about how young women (and men) in Nigeria could improve their competence in the workplace so they’re not mistreated at work. But in a gathering to discuss how to remove that kind of mistreatment, the focus on the victim seemed a tad out of place.

In all, the event was notable – for me – in the the openness with which the women (and men) present spoke about what were intensely personal issues and encounters in their marriage and their daily lives. These were information that couldn’t have been easy to elicit from anyone, but were freely shared in order to illustrate a point, refute another, or help others learn from past mistakes. This is where the convener, Joy Isi Bewaji gets an A+. For creating an avenue for women to share and learn from each other, provide support, and encouragement, proving that there is no knowledge that is not power, I salute her. As the diversity on the panelists’ table shows, it is not for women alone either. Men, hopefully, took away more than just the guilt of having been in a privileged position that has trampled on women’s rights for generation, sometimes non-deliberately. They also learnt about what they can do to make the future a better one for women, for their sons and daughters, and for themselves.

Like Oprah Winfrey who one may guess that Ms Bewaji aspires to surpass in her responsiveness and attention to human-angle issues around the country, especially regarding women, Joy is passionate about what she does, and has achieved success for doing them. At the end of the event, she presented a sum of 50,000 naira ($250) to three women each who, though indigent, had inspired her over a period of time with their strength and innovativeness. The money, according to her, came from donors. Days after the event, we learnt that 85,000 naira (>$400) more was raised – also through anonymous donors – for one of the struggling women at the event who had passionately told a story of her survival through a horrible marriage. The money can never be enough to solve problems that have roots in our evolution, cultural conditioning, and history, but it can have practical implications for someone living in poverty who however has the zeal, the smarts, and the ability to innovate and pull herself up. This is a great thing, and we need more of it.

It took over three hours, then the event ended. There will be many more in the future, Ms. Bewaji said. And to that, we say, amen.

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All photos courtesy of Joy Bewaji’s Facebook page where you can see the other pictures, along with more smiling faces than I cared to put up here due to the limits of space.

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