There was a hungry man who had three oranges. He cut the first one open, saw it was bad and threw it away. He cut open the second, saw it was also bad and threw it away. He reached for third but stopped, got up to switch off the light, cut it open in the dark, and ate it.
#WordPorn
You know when you are sitting in the service and the pastor is describing how wrong it is for a man to marry a man and a woman to marry a woman, how against the Bible and nature it is, and you want to say our definition of "homosexuality" is present in about 90% of the other animals on the planet, are we so arrogant that we believe we are the sacred ones? the know-it alls? given we've existed for a fraction of a blink on Earth's timeline? Or you want to say that two of your closest friends are gay men and have both fled their homes because laws restricted and strangled the very happiness I enjoy, that religion is said to provide, and the pastor backs up his stance by reading from the book of Ruth, and before reading the passage, asks why it is that Ruth's book goes largely ignored given its wisdom and compassion and depth, and you want to say that it is part of the machine: the book has been edited by men and used to subjugate women, that female characters were entirely replaced by men to further a gender-unjust world, take any of the books, like the book of Luke... and you realise 'Luke' isn't his actual name, as he wasn't an English dude, so when we pray and invoke the saint, we are calling to a fictionalised character that points to a Greek name, that is representative of a man who died thousands of years ago, that prayers are words, are darts fired into the dark, into the edited recordings of a history largely unknown, that it requires faith, which is a belief in the unbelievable, which is gaseous and nothing and everything and nothing and everything so it doesn't really matter, really.
But you want your friends to be happy.
Nigerian Pastoral
-After Gregory Djanikian.
#Afterhours
If Adamu were leaning against a wall
mouth flush with fresh coconut
when trucks screeched to a halt
and Adewunmi were writing her name
in sand, dragging the small stick
when the magazine clicked
and Afoaka were hushing her twins
waving the straw fan back and forth
when the first shots rang out
if Aliyu barefoot by the oranges
were squeezing each fruit for ripeness
when the bullet shattered his cheek
if Akarachi refusing to run
were praying in his room
when the rocket struck the roof
and Azuba in her new hand-stitched hijab
were tucking away stray wisps
when the blast ate her skin
How long would it have to go on then
beginning with A and spilling over
into all the alphabets
before mother sister father child
could bear the same weight
in any faith, in any race,
be mourned with the same tongue.
Further reading:
1) Why did the world ignore?
2) I walked for five days
3) How climate change is worsening the violence
4) Boko Haram were once peaceful
5) Captivity - Teju Cole
Last year, I went to a writer's festival in NewZealand. I was hanging around with some writers who happened to be male and someone somewhere suggest Bungee jumping. I'm afraid of heights. Terrified of it. (This is why I haven't learnt to dunk, ha ha). But when the other guys said 'Yeah, course, why not, it ain't no thaang, let's do this...' I wasn't gonna NOT do it. I had to represent for Nigerians, Poets, and South London bros, so... this is what happened.
When we got back down to solid ground, we started the "Dangerous Writers Club". We haven't done much since this. In actuality, this consists of our only club activity, but who wants in? Let's do something.
So, this is the latest incarnation of inuaellams.com. I've been wanting to update the site for years now and whilst the world rested over the Christmas & New Year break, I powered through to create this. The difficulty was writing about myself; I got really bored of it and it took three times as long as it should have, but I think I've done okay. I'm still to add a 'shop' page and perhaps a 'testimonial' page for some of the nice things folks like you have said about me. But welcome, please take a look around, hope you find something you find worth reading, worth sharing.
Today is the second day of the year long #Afterhours project and I am excited and nervous at the task ahead: to rewrite my childhood through* British poetry, by writing poems after/in-response to poem published between the years 1984 and 20012, from when I was born to when I turned 18.
I was born to a Muslim father and Christian mother. As I child I regularly attended Mosques and Churches and from an early age, learnt to balance these faiths. It also meant religion became, and has remained, fluid to me. I believe God exists but do not believe one order of believe is truer than another. I’ve also begun to look for signs and wonders, little clues set out by the Universe (or whatever you’d like to call it) that I’m doing what I’m supposed to. Last Sunday for instance, I read poems at a tiny theatre in Exeter. I walked into the room and found a board game called Othello (one of my favourite plays, never knew the game existed!) and a novel by Terry Pratchett whose books got me into reading and writing. The only available chair in the front row was numbered 23 and I’d spent the hours previous working on a poem involving Michael Jordan (23 was his number) and the day before, I’d sprained my ankle playing basketball. Now, these might just seem like coincidences… but three of them?
Why do I mention this? Signs. Tom Leonard’s book Intimate Voices, containing the first poem I will re-write for #Afterhours was first published in 1984, the year I was born. The book was republished in 2003, the year I started working as a poet. Finally, the poem I will re-write, the title itself ‘Unrelated Incidents’ echoes this attempt of mine to find meaning from these unrelated incidents, and echoes what we do when we write poetry: to group together unrelated incidents that they are greater than the sum of their parts, which begs (to return to the top) a kind of religious faith.
The most well known section of the poem is called Six O’clock News: bit.ly/1x7hayd. Read to see what I’m working with.
When I walked out of my flat yesterday, I saw a wounded pigeon at the entrance to the lil gated community I live in in Brixton. The bird was twitching on the ground, I think the half-broken wing it raised feebly was healthier than the second tucked under its weight. Days before, someone had defecated at this same spot. My flatmate who is American and more than a tad superstitious thought it was a coincidence too much and considered dowsing the place, our flat, the gated area, the whole lot with holy water. I encouraged him, "Protection is better than cure; Do that shit" was my response. As we came and went throughout the day, we watched the bird raise its feeble wing. Another resident we bumped into at the gate suggested we call the company who clean the grounds to come and deal with it, she too was unsettled by the bird but could not bring herself to touch it. As dusk neared, we returned and found the bird gone. We wondered if someone had cleared it up but as we searched, found it had crawled to the dark shady part where the hedge meets the brick-work, where it could die in peace. My flatmate and I commended this. "A noble beast" we thought. "Seeking an honourable death" we thought. "Saving its savage carcass from the eyes of the living" we thought.
A month before, I had traveled to Devon to work with Beaford Arts on a theatre project. Devon is an astonishing, interesting place. It is take-your-breath-away beautiful. There are beaches just miles away from farms. For it's vegetation and wildlife, it is protected by the government, who, for this and many other nuanced reasons, want to know the price of every piece of it. Under the title Eco System Services, the attempt is to figure out how much a piece of land is worth, and what it does. Does it feed animals? Does it soak up rain water? Does it grow food? Is it a natural flood defence? What does that mean in monetary terms? My job was to speak with farmers, conservationists, climate change experts, locals and try to articulate how one might go about putting a price on everything. It was a job of listening, of conversations that were heart breaking, overwhelming, passionate and multilayered. When it came to writing, I didn't know where to start, but an idea crystallised after I met a farmer, his wife and two sons.
They told stories and anecdotes to illustrate how complicated a process it would be, the vast holes in such system, how there are some aspects of the land that simply cannot be valued, that are (by that definition) priceless. He refereed to us as townies, and he and his colleagues as country folk. He did not like townies. As a black african I'm used to prejudice, I found it refreshing, dare I say thrilling, to be prejudiced because of where I lived rather than the colour of my skin. As we talked and I asked the right questions, he began to relax and slowly 'you townies' became 'those townies'. We 'othered' them so we could point and laugh. I have no guilt about this because the stories he gave to illustrate his point were water tight.
For instance, He spoke about us townies buying up country farms as second homes, going for 'countryside walks' through farm and grazing land. When they go walking, he said, they see maybe a wounded bull or a cow, think we are negligent farmers, report us to the Department for Environment, Food, and Rural Affairs (Defra) who ask to do something about it. Two things we can do, one, let the animal alone for two-three weeks which is how long it takes to heal or two, kill it. As a bull what would you want? Us farmers know that's how long it takes and want to give the geezer a chance, but townies don't... they interfere, complain that the animal is suffering and we'll have to do something about it. Same thing with carrion they see on the land. Flies feast on the corpses, crows, wild foxes, mink; it is incredibly rich fertiliser which goes back into the soil. It's the circle of life, he said, but townies see this, call Defra and we have to clean it up because it makes them uncomfortable. Everything dies. Everything.
Back in London, a month later, the same 'townie' I pointed at and laughed back then, is same townie who shook at the sight of dying bird, is he who stares back from the mirror, is me. There are questions I've asked since. How far have we urban dwellers strayed from the natural order of things? Do the circles we build in urban environments ignore the ultimate definite end? Is it a circle then? The conversations I had left me feeling that we should let country folk deal with country issues and let townie folk deal with townie issues, but of course it isn't that simple. The play I wrote is called Marsh Orchids & Concrete, a two-hander where a communications manager from London meets a farmer from Devon. I tried to demonstrate the complication of intersection, that we inhabit the same land, that policies cross boarders, farmers feed cities, decisions in westminster ruffle leaves, that we are invested in our natural world, how despite the naive, can't-stand-a-dying-bird urban spirit in me, this brick city boy still yearns for fields.
On the 7th of December, I left London to travel through SubSaharan Africa for six week researching a play about barber shops. The project is supported by The Binks Trust, The British Council and Fuel Theatre Limited. This is the sixth, the last of six journey-logs.
Barber Shop Chronicles / 12 January / Ghana
The Sunday I arrive in Ghana, I spend with a friend's mother. Aunty Mary is her name and she reminds me of my own mother. There is her endless generosity, her fireplace-warmth, the glowing pride she has of her son and her faith in Christianity. Aunty Mary ensures I am fed as though food is her only form of communication and she has novels to tell. When I am done with the plate of rice, I fall to sleep in the dizzying afternoon heat, exhausted from the gauntlet that was getting out of Nigeria. Hours later, early in the eve, when the sun is dozing on the horizon and a light breeze is cooling its day's work, Aunty Mary suggests we go to the beach and my first introduction to Ghana is this ten minute drive through her neighbourhood, past local salons, large churches, wooden restaurants on the beachfront and the beach itself: the couples and families chasing each other where the waves meet the shore, the roasted meat and sausages sold by food hawkers, the eight year old boy selling horse-rides on the brown stallion tied to his waist, and Ghana's gentle, far saner pace of African life.
The following day, 13th of Jan, I wake early and go out to visit the neighbourhood on foot. It is a small, tight-knit community where I imagine everyone knows everyone else's business. Opposite Aunty Mary's house, a church, the third on the unpaved rocky road is being built. At the bottom there are two shops opposite each other selling identical wares. A beautiful puppy thrashes through the rubbish heap, nearby a dozen chicks bully three kittens in the short grass as the mother hen clucks proudly. On the opposite end, there is a salon and opposite that, a barber shop.
When I return, Ebo who runs a business for Aunty Mary asks if I'd like to accompany him on his morning errands which involves visiting a church Aunt Mary is building. I jump in the taxi and minutes later, we are stood before a large but unpainted concrete structure. Inside there is a high-tech sound booth and podium for the preacher, a broad stage with a large blue curtain, a lot of natural light and large windows for cross-ventilation. It can easily seat three thousand people. There is a primary school attached to the church, plans for a secondary school being drawn up and a small shop behind. Ebo explains about the financial ecosystems built around the church, those it employs, the lives it supports, how vital it has become to this community, how some Sundays, so many people come they have to set up a canopy and a cinema screen relaying the service to those outside. We talk more about construction and Ebo reiterates one of stories I have heard throughout the trip; that Chinese companies are winning all the construction contracts, that they are cheaper than their rivals (German companies for instance) but there is a streak of shoddy workmanship in their wake. Ebo, as many others, have complained about work being outsourced to foreign companies when there are Ghanaians, Africans, untrained and without work. Why won't the government invest in the people?
Nii Ayikwei-Parkes, friend and unofficial life-long mentor of mine, comes to collect me from Aunty Mary's place. The first time I ever shared something I had written was at an event Nii was running in a tiny cafe back in London in 2003. At the end of the night, Nii pulled me aside to say he liked what I read, that I had something, that I should come back the following month. In that moment, Nii Ayikwei Parkes changed my whole life. Sometimes, I think he saved it. I will never stop thanking him for this. As we drive through the streets of Accra, I hold down the urge to thank him yet again, he gets embarrassed when I do. Instead, I ask about what he'd been up to. Nii moved back to Ghana six months ago to save some money and to write. We pick up his children from school and I am shocked at how much they have grown. The son, code-named 'SonDude' and the year old daughter codenamed 'LittleMissDaughter' sit in the back staring wide-eyed at the stranger that I am to them. LittleMissDaughter says nothing to me, though there is a wry smile and curiosity in her eyes. SonDude doesn't miss a beat. He is two years old with a vocabulary well beyond his years. He asks impatiently 'Why are you sitting in Daddy's car?' and I reply 'Because Daddy says I can'.
At home, Nii's wife code named 'MissMissus' shows me around the beautiful house in the North Kaneshie area of Accra. Later that afternoon, SonDude further shocks me with his vocabulary. I am talking to LittleMissDaughter who is five, SonDude taps me on my arm 'Uncle... equilibrate' he says pointing to two cups perfectly balanced one atop the other. I look at MissMissus, dragging my jaw up from the table and she smiles saying now and then they teach the kids big words, but they pick up stuff on their own, play with meanings and find things to attach them to. Over the week I fall completely in love with the kids. I nickname SonDude ‘SchoolBoyDude’ after an upcoming rapper, he calls me 'CoolUncleInua' winning a lifetime of brownie points. LittleMissDaughter and I engage in intense discussion about Christmas, Christ's real birthdate and the history of the holiday celebration. She shows me the garden growing in the back and SonDude wants piggy-backs for as long as possible. At night we read books together.
There are two barber shops either end of Nii's street and we visit them that Monday evening. The one at the top is a set designer's dream and after checking with the barber, I take many photographs to be used as set-design references. It is blue, the windows have red-rust iron bars on the outside and there is a forecourt of crazy paving and chairs where clients sometimes wait before a cut. The barber tells me he does not get that many clients during the week, that it is unpredictable and I should return from Thursday onwards.
The next day, I slip into Nii's work-schedule: the school run in the mornings, drop the kids off at 7:15, work in the library till 1pm, lunch, pick up the kids, family time and as soon as they are in bed, back to work. The schedule is perfect. I catch up on a lot of work before ten o'clock - comparing Nigeria's pidgin English to Ghana's and typing up a few scenes for the play. The following day, Wednesday 15th of Jan, we visit the best bookshop in downtown Accra, the manager talks to Nii as one might a financial adviser and he suggests other ways to generate income using the large space. Before this, we'd bumped into a friend (who Nii suspects, given his name and background, is a distant relative) and we have a roving but fascinating discussion which begins when I explain about my project. We talk about dreadlock cultures in West Africa, sex-tourism in Ghana, Thailand, Indonesia and the Philippines, secularism in Liberia, the Ethiopian Orthodox Church which predates the Greek Orthodox Church, Emperor Haile Selassie's rule, his spiritual and blood ties to the Ethiopian church and why he is so revered by Rastafarians. It moves on to how the class system in Ethiopia is closer to the caste system in India - that is it is more about culture than it is about race or skin colour. Nii's friend describes similarities between creole languages spoken in South Carolina (who knew!) and Sierra Leone's Krio, how borders never mattered to Africans. Nii talks of a man he met at London's School of Oriental and Africa Studies who spent nine years in Mexico working on a Swahili/Spanish dictionary in an attempt to cut out the English-language-dictionary-middle-men that he kept translating through. It isn't 10am yet and I feel as if I have travelled the world.
Back at Nii's I try to write as much of the conversation down, to detail its sway and nuance, but something I'd eaten, something of the Ghanaian cuisine disagrees with my system and I am too bloated to write comfortably. It worsens over the next few days, I spend nights confessing my sins for respite from the discomfort, and when that fails, entirely loosing my religion. The pain abates a little on Friday afternoon and I go to meet the barber and spend the evening there. However, in the six hours that pass he has no customers save two. We spend the first hour playing a football video game before those customers arrive. I play as Manchester United, he as Barcelona. His English isn't great, but he speaks perfect Playstation and guides me through the controls of the game. We talk through football. He could beat me easily but holds back asking me to catch up, to chase him for the ball, how to slide-tackle so I better learn the controls of the game. He is patient. He shows that by depressing the button and with directional controls, I can give long passes and short passes and take precise shots. He pays attention to detail. When I score two goals and I am suddenly ahead, he scores three immediately. He is a master.
The first client that comes is a Nigerian. He says he started coming to this shop after he wandered in and saw how patient, precise and masterfully the barber cuts. He goes on to discuss his views on the laws to do with homosexuality recently passed in Nigeria, arguing that the president responded to the views of his people and the culture of the land: we should hold our culture responsible not the government. The second is an older man whose broad smile is only matched by his knowledge of the continent. I ask about his travels and he has visited 30 of the 53 countries in Africa. He talks mostly though about his wife, she was his first girlfriend, he her first boyfriend. They had dated for 25 years before getting married 15 years ago. A 40 year relationship, three boys, one girl, still going strong. When he leaves, I ask the barber for a cut and rather than using clippers he cuts me with a razor blade, one hand gently turning my head, the other scraping at my scalp. I reach for my wallet to pay the 4 Cedis price tag, but he shakes his head vigorously. Of the six-week research trip, this is the first free haircut I have received. I thank him, promise to return the following day.
On Saturday, I buy fresh mangoes and oranges, ask the lady selling them on the roadside to peel and dice them for the barber. When I arrive, the shop is closed, the curtain inside drawn. I choose to wait and after half an hour, the curtain stirs and I see the barber's face peeking out. I feel guilty as he begins to open the shop, sweeping the floor with broad brushstrokes. If I knew he lived there, I would have come much later. He invites me in and we spend three hours together in which no customers come. I thank him for his time, grab a taxi and go to another shop called Headmaster on the other side of town. This is a far more upmarket joint, and comes with what I experienced in A) Nigeria and B) Uganda. A) The rich men who come do not really want to talk and B) those who do, gossip in Ga or Twi - the local languages. The only customer I engage in conversation actually argues against the founding principle of the project, saying that he doesn't tell his barber much about himself, so why would he tell me anything? I visit a few more spots, but feel like my luck has finally run out. It is the penultimate day of the research trip and I chose to call it quits, to finally rest.
Sunday, the 19th of January and we decide to go to the beach. All the way, SonDude chats happily; a young commentator on the journey asking searching questions of the 'are we there yet' nature. When the answers fail to satisfy, he repeats the declarative statement "I want to go to the beach". I attempt a little revers psychology, tell him that if he says that again, we won't go to the beach. SchoolBoyDude is silent, just long enough that I imagine I have won the battle of wits. They he speaks up, "But I DO, want to go to the beach!" and Nii laughs along with his wife... "That's my boy" they say, "That stuff doesn't work on him, you don't know who you're messing with". We get to the beach and the sun is so hot, the sand so baking, I hop on it for a few minutes. The water though is perfect. We rush into it. We play. I once read that the fabric of the world is thin in the in-between places: in doorways when a person is neither in or out, dusk & dawn, when the world is neither night nor day, or here, where water meets the land. I try to let go of the disappointments of the last few days, to just play.
Hoping to make CoolUncleInua seem even cooler to LittleMissDaughter, I entertain her with backflips in the surf. I wade out to where the waves are bigger and relentless making sure LittleMissDaughter can see and hear me. I jump, kick out my legs as high as I can and land in the water. I flip to my front, to my knees and when I open my eyes my vision is blurred. My glasses are no longer on. The wave I trusted to break my fall snapped the frames from my head and a rising panic grips me. I search frantically as the water begins to retreat. If I don't find them soon, the glasses will be washed out into the South Atlantic and my impaired vision will ruin the rest of afternoon. I have a spare pair at Nii's house, but that is hours away. In the water, I realise I'm trying to see what helps me to see.
I had ulterior motives in researching this play. Though I have lived in England for eighteen years, I have never quite felt like I belonged there, or anywhere for that matter. My cultural make up is Nigerian, Irish (for the pivotal years I spent there), English and African American. London is a city of immigrants and the fondness I have for it is largely to do with that: a lot of people live there, not many call it home and our collective experiences make up its bubble of transience and speed and this common denominator is what we belong to. My ulterior motive to travel through Africa, to travel home, was to find home. And I hadn't. The visit to Nigeria left me feeling frustrated and the various language barriers in South Africa, Kenya, Uganda and Ghana had felt alienating, with cultures that seemed impossible to fully penetrate.
As the water sweeps back out to the ocean, rather than searching frantically as I have these past six weeks, I try something different. I try to stay put. I kneel down, focus and trust the water will flow back to me with its gift of sight. It does. I snatch up the glasses, kiss them passionately, put them on and find LittleMissDaughter waving in her father's arms. I run out to them, back to the shore.
Later that evening I say my goodbyes to SonDude, LittleMissDaughter and MissMissus. Nii kindly drives me to the airport, to a British Airways flight to London. In the car, my head swims with six weeks worth of gossip with African men. I wonder how to go about stitching it all, how it might work dramatically, how an anthology of conversations will work on a western stage and how much of my own politics I can write into the play; how my sense of belonging (or not) might conflict with the familiarity I hope to conjure on stage. It is further work for further months but as the plane takes off, for the last time, I make a list of things I have learnt in Africa.
1) Despite what Nigerians say, Ghanaians are alright. 2) There are no religious conflicts in Ghana. 3) There is a bike culture growing in urban Accra. 4) There are 70 tribes in Ghana, each with a distinct language. 5) Twi is the most widely spoken Ghanaian tongue. 6) Forget Ambrosia, groundnut soup is the nectar of the gods. 7) Shitor* should be awarded a Nobel Peace Prize. 8) It takes a village to raise a child, and villages to raise a nation. 9) Re:finding home, perhaps I have gone about this all wrong. 10) Perhaps if I stay still, home will find me.
Next stop, London, England.
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Litany - By Billy Collins
You are the bread and the knife,
the crystal goblet and the wine.
You are the dew on the morning grass
and the burning wheel of the sun.
You are the white apron of the baker,
and the marsh birds suddenly in flight.
However, you are not the wind in the orchard,
the plums on the counter,
or the house of cards.
And you are certainly not the pine-scented air.
There is just no way that you are the pine-scented air.
It is possible that you are the fish under the bridge,
maybe even the pigeon on the general's head,
but you are not even close
to being the field of cornflowers at dusk.
And a quick look in the mirror will show
that you are neither the boots in the corner
nor the boat asleep in its boathouse.
It might interest you to know,
speaking of the plentiful imagery of the world,
that I am the sound of rain on the roof.
I also happen to be the shooting star,
the evening paper blowing down an alley
and the basket of chestnuts on the kitchen table.
I am also the moon in the trees
and the blind woman's tea cup.
But don't worry, I'm not the bread and the knife.
You are still the bread and the knife.
You will always be the bread and the knife,
not to mention the crystal goblet and - somehow -the wine.
On the 7th of December, I left London to travel through SubSaharan Africa for six week researching a play about barber shops. The project is supported by The Binks Trust, The British Council and Fuel Theatre Limited. This is the fifth of six journey-logs.
Barber Shop Chronicles / 5 January / Nigeria
Wallace, the taxi driver is a little older than I am. I learn this as Lagos' Murtalla Muhammed Airport is swallowed up by the darkness of the night in the rear view mirror. Wallace is so excited to have gotten a customer after waiting all day, he cannot stop talking. I cannot stop listening. He is a natural born storyteller, peppering his tale with exaggerated facial expressions, body shifts and changes in posture from behind the wheel, where the moon and passing headlights illuminate his face like a mobile lighting rig. It is a forty minute drive and Wallace tells me his own creation myth. He used to be a teacher in Imo State where his best friend who came from a far wealthier family taught him how to drive. He moved to Lagos to live with his aunt and his uncle bought a car for her. Because she did not know how to drive, the car lay dormant. After two days of gathering dust, Wallace persuaded her to give him the keys. He took it out for a spin. A week later, he was on the motor way and two weeks after that, he was making money as a taxi driver. Wallace tells another story of rich man, similar to my height and build he says, who he drove from the airport to Benin, a four-hour drive and a price tag of 40,000 Naira - a fortune compared to 5,000 this will cost me. The rich man was so impressed at Wallace's speed, he let him shower in his hotel room, took him out for dinner, paid for meals (including barbecue chicken which Wallace says he had never tried at the time), bought him two meals worth of takeaway food, and gave Wallace an extra 10,000 just for keeps. We arrive at the 1004 apartments in Victoria Island where I am to stay with a man who I have called 'Uncle' since I was born. He may be my mother's brother's wife's uncle's eldest son, but 'Uncle' is what I have always known him as. He welcomes me as if I'd seen him only yesterday instead of the decade that had passed and this is what I expect in my country of broth, in the Nigerian stage of the research trip: An even greater shorthandedness, a sense of belonging old and natural as blood, barber shops crammed full of stories so fluid, I'd be spoilt for choice. I did very little preparatory work before coming, so it's failure is entirely my fault.
Also, a travel fatigue is setting in and the writer's need to sit quietly now and then, internalising experiences, excavating immortal truths from darkness or whatever has been ignored for five weeks, I've been out and about externalising everything. I'm tired and the West African heat is completely unlike the Eastern African heat, it is unrelenting, sticky and heeds not the pleas of man. I am baking. Monday, 6th of January, I meet up with Fusi, a friend who works for the British Council and we go to his local barber shop in an area called the Dolphin Estate. The talk begins with football, as always, but suddenly shifts to how tribal politics sometimes play into football politics, how for instance it is bad enough being an Edo man (as I partially am), but to be Edo and support West Ham is unforgivable! It shifts to a critique of Kenyan Manchester United fans and I push record on my device as we talk. I eventually choose to sit for a hair cut. My glasses are off and so immersed am I in the tribal football conversation, the cut goes unchecked and barber does what he feels suits my face. When he finishes I replace my glasses, squint into the mirror. My eyes adjust and it is without doubt the best haircut I have every received. Something to do with cutting my beard differently and a moustache that isn't too prominent. A few of Fusi's friends joins us. We order food from the vendor just bedside the barber shops and over a dinner of suya and chips, we reminisce and tell harrowing incidents from our various boarding school experiences. I gather information about the best barbers on the island and make a plan visit the following day. On Tuesday, I write till late afternoon, wait for the heat to subside and go out to a spot a ten minute walk from the apartments. The shop is well air-conditioned, everything is silver and black and spotless including the uniforms of the waiting barbers. This an 'exclusive' spot where cuts cost 3,000 on average. I explain the project to the receptionist seated behind the oak desk and the old man asks me to return at 2pm the following day to speak with the manager. I have learnt not to bother visiting barbers between Monday and Wednesday - they have so little clients, it is a waste of time - so I do not bother seeking another place, call it a day and meet old friends at Bogobiri, an arts venue on Victoria Island.
Fiona (a fellow Irish-Nigerian) from London who relocated to work in the advertising industry comes to collect me from the apartment and at Bogobiri, we meet a friend of hers who runs a package holiday company. The fourth of our company is Wana - a fellow writer/performer and radio personality with an enthusiastic loyal fan base (who pray for her on a daily basis). They call Wana with their problems and she tells us animatedly about the day's discussions, about 'allowances' girlfriends request of their boyfriends or male acquaintances in general; how natural it is for a young woman who needs more airtime on her phone to rather than going out to purchase some, sit and scroll through her phonebook looking for a benefactor. They ask for everything Wana says, cash for hair treatments, deep-tissue body massages, anything. Sometimes the allowances climb into the tens of thousands of Naira per month and some girls will have multiple benefactors. Fiona agrees, says she has friends who think she is foolish for spending her own money on herself, who tell her it is part of the way life - "This is Naija... [they say] ...hustle or die!"
Wednesday 8th, I venture out again to the first barber shop and I am told the manager is not around. However, I spend a few minutes there and notice that no one is speaking. The barbers barely talk to each other or to their clients. I leave thinking this is unusual. I try to follow my uncle's directions to find another spot on the island and end up walking for two hours, twisting and turning down unpaved rocky roads, dodging motorbikes and taxis. I ask various security guards about the place, none of whom seem to know, give up, retrace my steps to the exit of the 1004 estate and start again. This time I accept that my internal compass doesn't work as intuitively as it seems to in London. I ask every step of the way, eventually find a little two-chair barber shop tucked inside a gated community. I pull back the sliding doors, collapse into a chair then launch into the spiel about the project. The three barbers are a little guarded at first but eventually are relaxed enough to tell me they do not really talk to customers either. Their rich clientele sit and barely speak a word for the entire duration of the cut. Some clients even ask if the barber is ambidextrous so they won't have to move when the barber switches from one half of the face to the other. Unanimously, they tell me to get off the island; the stuff I need for the play won't be found here, rich men think they are better than us, they don't care. I thank them for their advice and get a taxi to Tera Kulture, an arts venue where I meet Tolu Ogunlesi one of the youngest, most celebrated and popular of Nigeria's emerging columnists.
Tera Kulture is a low-lit, two story building with a library/restaurant on the ground floor and long winding staircase from the centre of the room to the second floor. Tolu is sat behind the staircase with a friend and I slide easily into the conversation on Nigeria's film industry. Tolu's friend says the World Bank is investing; they have a fund set up to support the industry. I ask how it is such a body can fund an entire genre of entertainment and one as big as Nollywood and he explains the fund is to support bigger budget films (directors apply) and to help re-establish Nigeria's cinema industry. There are only ten or so cinemas in Lagos to supply a population of 17.5 million. All the primetime slots are taken by Hollywood films. The cinema is the first place where directors and investors can make their money back. Because there are not enough screens or programers willing to take risks, they look to street hawkers for distributors and the hawkers pirate the movies for the demanding public. The conversation switches to Beyonce's use of an excerpt of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's TEDx Talk in a song from her latest album, and if Chimamanda might have made any money from the deal. We search online for the video and after ten frustrating minutes, laugh at the idea that this late at night, three grown men are searching frantically for a Beyonce song.
Thursday 9th of Jan, I'm tired, losing focus and a little disheartened by the previous day. I potter about the apartment willing myself to write. I sit, completely dispirited before the computer till a friend, the prolific playwright and director Wole Oguntokun texts to say he is on his way. We had spoken earlier in the week when he offered to take me round visiting barber shops on the mainland, but he fell ill and I was unsure if we would meet. We drive to three different spots. The first one, a sleepy place established 20 years before, is run by the lone attending barber, an older, straight-backed, softly-spoken man. There are no ceiling fans or cooling devices and though the door is wide open, it is stifling hot and breezeless. The barber is shaving a client's and he is so skilled, so light of touch, that the client is falling asleep. I explain to Wole that I need a place with people talking and I'd heard of a spot not too far away. The second place is bustling and I attempt to speak to people, but for the noisy ceiling fans fighting to make the temperature customer-friendly and the music shaking the walls and mirrors, it is hard to converse. The clients and barbers are not really speaking to each other either. We leave for the third place where barbers and clients ask if I will pay them for the conversation and more or less clam up when I refuse. Back at the flat, an old friend Ore Disu comes to visit and I explain the problems I had encountered. She assures me an acquaintance, Oscar, will sort everything out on Saturday.
I spend much of Friday attempting to build a scene from the first conversations I'd had and trust that Oscar will deliver. We are to meet on Saturday morning. I finally get through to Oscar at 12 and he says he will be busy till four o’clock. I call Oscar at four and he asks for payment for himself and the barbers he'd found for me to speak with. I explain again that I cannot pay people to talk to each other or to me about anything and everything, but he refuses to engage otherwise. I hang up the phone and everything comes crashing down: my fatigue, frustration at having to give security guards and police officers money to let us pass, haggling with various taxi drivers, the relentless heat, the growing loneliness of the trip and the fluctuating confidence I feel in the entire project. I try one last time, one last attempt and go out to the first barber shop on the island, show the barber a picture of my previous cut to recreate, take off my glasses, sit back and attempt to talk to him. His answers are monotone and monosyllabic. I put on my glasses after he is done and it is the worst cut I have received, ever. The moustache he has given me is two strokes short of Adolph Hitler's. I slip three 1000 Naira bills into his outstretched palm and leave.
I pack, wait for Sunday's dawn to come and at 5am, go downstairs to meet Wallace who is to take me back to the airport for the flight to Ghana. Wallace had had a busy week and when he asks about mine and I tell my problem, he says that I should have let him know, that he would have sorted out everything, taken me to Mushin and Ajegunle where his barber is located, that he'd spent half of the previous day in a barber shop. As we drive, he recounts conversations he'd had, does his best to give an impression of what I had missed. I give him a large tip and join the queue for Arik Air's 7:20 to Ghana. I'd read about and been warned of the airport’s inadequacy and Arik air’s particular ineptitude, but my experiences to date had been fine. On this occasion, the staff really outdo themselves. Firstly they ask passengers from separate flights to queue up together, after sorting through the chaos and checking us in, we wait at the boarding gates as usual. At 7:47, 27 minutes after the flight was due to take off, we are informed that the flight will be delayed by an hour, but we do not leave till 9.40. We swap boarding gates, exit through the fire escape to the runway, gingerly stepping over pipes and wires towards the airplane where one groundsman is sat sheltering beneath the airplane, surfing the internet on his phone. As we walk past Arik Air staff who are entirely unapologetic for the delay, they ask us what presents we have brought for them and suggest we give a 1000 Naira each for the trouble of seeing to our luggage.
As the plane lifts I sink into my chair feeling guilty to be pleased to be leaving my own country, to be rid of its brand of double think and heat. I remember something Wole said, that there are phrases you see when arriving into major cities, 'Welcome to LA' a billboard will say, 'Welcome to London' another chimes, but ours reads 'This is Lagos'. It is a statement. It's subtext is 'Enter at your own peril' or 'sink or swim'. On this occasion, I have sunk. But I am to return in March for three days and I pray cometh the hour I'll swim again. Mid-flight, I make a list of things I have learnt:
1) In Nigeria, nothing, nothing comes for free. 2) "Nothing ever happens quite the way you expect it to" 3) THIS IS NAIJA, HUSTLE OR DIE! 4) '419' refers to section 419 of the Nigerian criminal code. 5) 419 deals with obtaining property by false pretence. 6) The Yoruba are natural dramatists. 7) The Igbo are natural prose writers. 8) The Hausa are perhaps better served by poetry. 9) 100 years ago this year, Nigeria was created. 10) What a creation it is.
Next stop, Accra, Ghana.
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On the 7th of December, I left London to travel through SubSaharan Africa for six week researching a play about barber shops. The project is supported by The Binks Trust, The British Council and Fuel Theatre Limited. This is the fourth of six journey-logs.
Barber Shop Chronicles / 27 December / Uganda
If I thought Kenyans were relaxed, they are absolute firecrackers-on-speed compared to the ever-at-your-own-leisure-ease Ugandans seem to stride with. Even the airport staff are so relaxed, I feel as though I'm queuing at a supermarket, casually checking myself into their country. My bag is the lone luggage on the conveyor belt, I grab it and head out searching for a taxi from Entebbe where the airport is, to Kampala, the capital city. My driver is a fast-talking uncle of crisp movements and quick eyes. I climb into the passenger seat and we are off. His name is Mugasa Blick and he tells me a little about how Swahili is used; only 30% of the country speak it compared to the 100% of Kenya, that there are various ethnic groups, so various languages, but the most commonly spoken is English. We drive past shops entirely painted and decorated with the logos and colours of rival mobile phone companies - Airtel and MTN, red and yellow respectively - aggressively advertising in a country where I imagine aggression doesn't work.
I check into the Shangri-La hotel, leave an hour later to explore my neighbourhood. The hotel is tucked just behind the Sheraton, a ground-hugging-sprawling bungalow compared to the multi-storey sparkling tower of the Sheraton Hotel, rising up from this hill, one of the seven Kampala is built on. The public modes of transports are the Matatus (buses similar Kenya's) and Bodabodas - unlicensed motorbikes that dart in and out of traffic, by far the fastest way to travel. I hop on a boda and ride to the Nakumat, (local shopping mall) to purchase an MTN SIM card. The mall is three stories tall and is busy for a lazy Sunday afternoon. Kids ride up and down the escalators as if in an amusement park, laughing at the sensation of moving whilst standing still. I eat at a food court, letting the warmth of early evening slow down my racing thoughts on what to do tomorrow.
Monday, 30th of December and I meet Patricia who works for the British Council in Kampala and she further contextualises Uganda's relationship with the English language. She says that during the Liberation War between Uganda and Tanzania, the leader at the time, Idi Amin, was distrustful of Ugandans who held positions in the government, who'd completed their education in England and spoke English far batter and fluently than he did. He deposed a lot of them, gave their jobs to those he trusted and insisted they carry out the duties of their office in Swahili. They were brutal times and after the war Swahili became synonymous with hard time and the military. The people refused to have their everyday conversation overshadowed by those difficult times and wanted another national language. To avoid the problems that may arise from favouring a local tribal language over others, English was settled on. I explain the barber shop project again to Patricia, where it began, what it is trying to do and the experience thus far. She suggests a bunch of places to check out, a strategy, a plan of action and insists that I visit Alex, a friend of hers who runs an arts organisation. We drive for a few minutes and the landscape changes from the presidential and business side where I am based, to the packed pedestrian of the city centre, and eventually, the partially rural ‘roaming-goats’ working class side of town.
Alex is direct, intelligent and hardworking, you can tell by how he talks, how, as I explain the project again, I feel like he is underlining lines and phrases from the play's sales pitch. He leans back and says that I need to stay away from affluent barber shops, that I must go to other places for local conversations, everyday problems. He says they will not be kind to a foreigner recording their talk, so I must do it discretely. There will be langue-barrier he says, people gossip in their dialects not in English. He suggests hiring an interpreter for the day: Jackson, a friend, playwright and actor, who everyone knows as 'Dre', "Like the doctor" Alex says laughing. Dre is an easy going, softly spoken, loose-limbed starving artist like I am and I find camaraderie and kinship in his views on Nigerian literature and the implications of being an "African Writer".
The following day we travel by foot and matuatu to three barber shops. Dre explains that the largest tribe is called Buganda from which the country gets its name: Uganda, Baganda is the plural for Muganda (what you call a lone Bugandan) and Luganda is their language, which Dre speaks in the barber shops, doing his best to initiate conversations. I discretely push the record button on my device and try to guess what is being talked about, I watch the familiar dance of testosterone and intimacy/bravado and humility/storyteller and his audience play out in a different tongue. After the third barber, Dre and I sit and he translates. With a sinking feeling, it becomes obvious that this arrangement is not working. I have never recorded without asking for permission first. As Dre speaks, I realise I need to be more active. If I could understand what was being said, I would have asked this question at this point, agreed here, disagreed there, teased this topic out because someone else had spoken of it in London or Johannesburg... and a host of other things I had been doing automatically, before pressing the record button. I thank Dre for his time and resolve to find another shop where English is the language of gossip. Michael (from Kenya) had paired me with a lady called Beverly, a friend, fellow poet and member of Kampala's literati. Beverly gives me the number of a barber called Simon based in the Ntinda shopping complex in Bugolobi and later in the evening, I wrestle the price from 7,000 shilling to 5,000, hop on the boda and we weave through the red tinged-world that is the sun setting on Kampala. The journey takes a little over 15 minutes and from the moment I walk into the beauty salon where Simon rents a chair and works from, it is non-stop with talk. Simon is a diamond of a barber of a man. He has been cutting for 15 years, his clients go back a decade and they trust him so much, after he explains my project and I ask hesitantly if I can record our conversation, one says 'I don't give a fuck' and another looks at the recording device as though an insect before the unstoppable locomotive force of his opinion on the ills of the world. He talks about love. In a rich thick accent, he lectures passionately and wildly on the dangers of loving too much. I don't ask who hurt him in the past, he tells everything unprompted. Another client discusses surprisingly contemporary attitudes to dating, to Uganda's dowry system, to fatherhood and when they ask about my own marital status, they collectively chastise me on being single, how unusual it is (they say) for a Nigerian not have two or even three girlfriends at at time. Back at the hotel, I fall to sleep listening to the conversation and dream I have two girlfriends. I wake up sweating from the stress of it.
It is the early hours of the 31st of December, new year's eve and a sudden loneliness is a gulp in my throat. I spend most of the day writing, half planning to mark the year's end from the comfort of my bed, but eventually, I go out to meet Phiona Okumu, writer, journalist, curator, country-hopper, enthusiast; an everything woman. Above all, she is an old friend and we see in the new year together. The first day of 2014 passes uneventfully, I write for all of it and on Friday, head out to meet Simon for the last time. We leave the mall in Ntinda, take the first two left turns and enter a health centre. There is a pool table by the pool side. The soundtrack to the music of striking cue sticks, is child's play, laughter and splashing water. Now and then, a daughter runs to us from the pool to high five her father, who is among us, before diving back into the water. Simon buys a round of drinks for everyone and I'm drawn against an experienced player, smooth and precise to the clumsy ogre that is my style of play. We play three rounds, he takes the first match when I have two reds left to pot. Miraculously, I take the second, and he absolutely destroys me in the third. As we play, Simon explains that he had been working since 6am that morning, he'd driven to a client's house before coming to the mall, that it had been non-stop. I ask if he will ever open his own barber shop, he says he has been saving for it already and also plans to open a shop for his girlfriend. Simon knows his business well, he discuss work incentives for future employees, ways of generating positive attitudes to life for the mental well-being of clients, how to sustain longevity and the best location for his business. After the match, I thank Simon for his time, for allowing me into his world and flag down a boda to take me back to hotel. It is night time and the driver dodges potholes and speed bumps so smoothly, I drift off on motorbike and imagine a thriller set within Kampala's bodaboda community - think Spartacus meets Biker Boyz meets West Side Story with an oracle figure loosely based on Simon.
Whereas the South Africans mostly spoke on politics, Zimbabweans mostly on music and Kenyans on African development, the Ugandans overwhelming spoke of love. As if to confirm this, behind the breakfast buffet table, Jimmy, who works at the hotel, tells me about his last relationship. He walked in on his girlfriend cheating on him. He recounts a joke by the Nigerian comedian Basktemouth. Basketmouth explained how Hollywood had colonised our ideas of relationships; in movies, you have guys climbing mountains, threatening to jump from heartbreak and it turns out okay in the end, but in Africa, you'll jump and die! Hollywood romances he says, should come with the same warning that precedes WWA (World Wrestling Allstars) t.v. shows: 'Don't try this at home'. We swap email address, promise to keep in-touch, and after packing, I make a list things I have learnt:
1) Storks are common as muck in Uganda. 2) Kenyans believe Ugandan girls are aggressive. 3) Swahili is regarded as the language of the military. 4) The bodabodas are the bad boys of traffic. 5) Ugandan soil is very very red. 6) The dowry culture is still thriving. 7) The source of the River Nile is in Uganda. 8) There are 56 tribes in Uganda. 9) The largest tribe in Africa are Manchester United fans. 10) I am a superficial tribesman.
Next stop, Lagos, Nigeria.
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