Author: fictioningdevelopment (Page 4 of 7)

Musing on FOREIGN GODS INC.

July 28, 2014 / fictioningdevelopment / 6 Comments

It’s a fresh morning at 19 Vance street New York. With hearts pounding vehemently, the young man Ikechukwu Uzondu enters the premises of Foreign God’s Inc. the world’s oldest god-shop. Here a religiously desensitized Mark Gruel displays his entire inventory of powerful and ancient deities to be bought off the shelf by aspiring god-parents. Excited Ikechukwu had come to do a price and interest survey for his next line of trade. Soon, he will vend a war god to Foreign God’s Inc. Ngene the ancient deity of Utonki, whose breathe is fire, whose fart is thunder, with rich history will be vended here. Selling and purchasing a sacred god is a sport which seemed odd to Ike and likewise me the reader. Instinctively, I felt Ike had a grouse with some god; this inspired me to read more.

Any hopeful, who at some point had migrated to Europe with the expectation of finding the greenest pasture, will connect at different levels with the narratives of this novel. Ikechuckwu a Nigerian of Ibo descent migrates to America combining studies and menial jobs to achieve a Cum Laude in Economics. His chase of green card led him to the path of many fugitive brides, ideal but elusive women. Having gone through hell and obtained a green card from his now ex-wife and emotional tormentor ‘Queen B’, alas green card was also not the answer. After 13yrs of eking his living and managing pressures of family demands as a cabby, the degree in economics or grades wasn’t the answer either. The politics of soft and thick accent was a strong odd against him and perhaps his tongue couldn’t deny his root no matter how he tried. Through his experiences, even the gods are to blame. This god Ngene, acclaimed to have favoured him as a potential priest has done nothing more than give him spells of rapturous experiences and shame with every storm that he witnessed. When his friend Jonathan sows into him the idea of stealing his people’s war god to come fight a more relevant war for him in America, it became an idea most people would have given a second thought to.

A well woven story of Ike’s life swings around a ruptured migrant’s hope that becomes excited by the ideas of taking advantage of the untapped wealth in the religion of his homeland to make his major break. In an age where according to Mark Gruel, gods must travel or die, Ike becomes the vessel to carry Ngene across continents. This thrill of global connectedness filled with suspense carries the reader to different settings navigating between the realities of urban American cities and rural African town Utonki where religion is projected as a social malaise with little or no interest in the people’s well-being.

Photo: http://tiny.cc/iojpjx

Okey Ndibe strongly situated migrant issues and religion as an important topic in the present day discussions on Africa’s development. Despite academic studies on this phenomenon, this author has done a good job of representing and communicating the realities of religion at individual and communal level, provoking the intellect and reshaping our knowledge. Foreign God’s Inc. deftly highlights the inherent danger of blurring the lines between religion and rationality. Capturing a highly religious but morally inept society led by morally bankrupt characters like Pastor Godson Uka, it questions the underlying moral that underpins the Christian faith (perhaps all religion) from colonial times to present day.

Unlike the case with India, Nigeria’s loyalty to their religion and culture meant limited penetration of the Queen’s European culture with the help of the many Reverend Stantons. Hence undermining the ideology of old culture was strategic.

‘What you call Ngene is nothing; it’s a lie with which you imprisoned yourself. It doesn’t live in the river nor does it own the river. Our God owns everything. He made your river and also the wood Ngene was carved from’ Rev. Stanton said to a people who were not so gullible, to whom the thought of a born God, birthed by a virgin with a father that lives in heaven and is also everywhere remained an idea hard to swallow. For Utonki people, their own Chukwu is not a father that will hand over his child to be killed and made jest of. In their words, their Chukwu lived in the sky and, ‘everywhere we see the signs of his work, the drifting clouds are smoke from his pipe, rainfall his sneeze, all great rivers are born from his spittle…Chukwu is mighty, yet we never say that he is everywhere… if your own god lives everywhere, then why haven’t our eyes seen him?…If he were so powerful, he should make himself visible? or is he a debtor?’ Only debtors hide in Utonki.

Alas, as the ‘white man’s gun out speaks the guns of Utonki’, Rev. Stanton gun-carrying-god overpowered Ngene the war god of Utonki.

Photo:http://tiny.cc/iojpjx

Over the years, the newly injected Rev. Stanton’s god has gained an African flavour. The chief priests became the likes of Pastor Godson Uka, the son of Okadike (a.k.a Efi epeka) the great witchdoctor with records of nocturnal activities. Like his father, Pastor Uka an ex-convict shares characterizations that easily relates to the present day faith leaders that glide our TV screens. ‘A large gold chain bedecks his neck, all five fingers of his left hands and three of the right hands were bedecked with glitzy rings. His hair dropped in slick curls, slacked with oil’. Ike who finds himself in Utonki is amazed at how people like Uka have moved Christianity from the traditional catholic space with solemn and sober air to a religion of holy ruckus. In church, boisterous prayers erupt, shrill affirmations fill the air, human bodies freeze and flip from a pastor’s touch or blow of air, women like his mother piped up in praise tossing and writhing in induced ecstasy. These sons of the traditional witch-doctors surely came into the church through the back-door. Like their fathers, they offer ‘spiritual insurance policies’; protection, deliverance from evil, dispense holy water, prayer and project all forms of pseudo-science in exchange for money or gift.

Unlike others, Ike is amazed at the failure of a multitude to question the autocratic conventions of this corruption that wears a spiritual coat. Suddenly, Ike temporarily adopts a new battle over snatching Ngene. Battling Pastor Uka whose messages are divisive to his relatives was a worthier fight. Onward, I could clearly understand Ike’s grouse with the gods. Any rational thinker who cares about a people’s well-being and their development will join Ike’s fight. These Peacock Pastors; our modern day witch-doctors appeals to the African spirituality but not to her development. Peacock Pastor Uka desires to make of Utonki a community with ‘spirit-filled, tongue speaking, hands-laying, devil binding born again’ with empty pockets and hungry stomach, he exploits poor people of their meagre feeding money, raping their minds with fear. The scene where Uka demands fifty thousand dollars from a struggling migrant to build God a Church in Utonki as condition for being a millionaire was mind blowing. Beyond this being the size of Pastor Uka’s greed, this narrative aptly captures a wide spread phenomenon in present day Africa. Modern day churches prioritize erecting god more shrines, exploiting poor community purses of vulnerable and gullible people Ike’s mother with terms like ‘God said’, ‘Sow seeds’ … while the people remain perpetually with sick bodies and hungry stomachs.

A walk on the streets of Nigeria confirms that there is a proliferation of churches with almost every street littered with two or three churches if the residents are unlucky. Massive church edifice are now metrics for measuring church growth and an indicator that member populations are on the rise but this in no way reflects the well-being or development of the members. This church building culture of this African flavoured Christianity is being exported phenomenally across the globe and the hinterlands, changing the landscape of the average man’s thinking. Something is fundamentally wrong when a poor person continuously submits his meagre earning to build god a shrine when shrines are not in deficit. Do we really need more churches to develop? Does the growing prioritization of church edifice over the much needed mission schools and hospitals that were once the hallmark of the Christian religion bring to question the mind-set of the present day faith leaders?

Photo: Getty/Graeme Robertson

Decades ago, the church as an institution had proven track record of managing low cost education, accessible quality healthcare and other social services that are critical to sustainable and equitable development. My education validates their impact, for at almost no cost I and others were educated in church missionary schools; taught by selfless teachers from the Catholic, Methodist, Anglican and Presbyterian Church schools that spread across the country. Let for a few church schools still committed to low cost quality education, children of today should bewail the loss of this institution’s commitment to drive human development as was the case years back. Can faith leaders with their agencies channel member’s contributions towards other deficit infrastructures that are fundamental to our well-being? Yes!!!

As Pervez Hoodbhoy puts it, selling religion is the easiest and most profitable business… and as Voltaire’s said, ‘a clergyman is one who feels himself called upon to live without working at the expense of the rascals who work to live.’ Foreign God’s Inc. helps us questions the ideology of the new church ministries with sole proprietorship managed by owners and wife. It made me think more seriously of these African ‘Men of God’ who swim in title galore, craving power, exalting their personalities and looming over us from their imposing pictures mounted on highway bill boards. In an incurably religious Africa, god is a game and to play it, you must either be smart or be vulnerable.

By centralizing religion, this novel proves it has researched the spiritual state of Nigeria and perhaps most African countries, hence its projection of religion as a dimension of life that suffuses whatever Africans do. One would have assumed that the more religious we are, the higher the morals in our society. Ironically, our exploits in religion, made us a people with little godliness. The reality is that the more religious we got, the baser we became. Africa’s religious altar is filled with bloodshed from religious extremists; our girls are continuously kidnapped as booties of religious war. More-so, our altars continue to serve for political rallies to endorse leaders who take advantage of people’s frustrations and vulnerability. Indeed the poor are the raw material for religious salvation.

Foreign Gods Inc. projects that religion is obviously indispensable in Africa’s development discourses. But dear Africans, is our understanding of GOD enabling or disabling our development? According to Osuakwu the chief priest of Ngene, ‘people sometimes kill off a recalcitrant god’ Is it not time we come together to kill this god? In the end, the gods are not to blame, we are.

Okey Ndibe is a Professor of Africana Studies at Brown University.

I encourage fellow literary enthusiasts to read and find out if the almighty Ngene the war-god finally travelled to Mark Gruel’s world’s oldest god-shop in New York. Foreign God’s Inc. was a good read for me, but it failed to project the female gender in an admirable way. For example, I would have loved to know more about the martyred ‘ocher-coloured childless widow who cradled her gun and stood against Rev. Stanton’.

Notwithstanding, Okey Ndibe has given us a book with a detailed narrative that will contribute to wider understanding of the growing linkages between religion and development in ways that few academic writing has. The novel was well written, stories nicely woven and the language is sophisticated. For this and more, I say to Okey, Daalu!

Written by ~ Adaobi Nkeokelonye

JULY’S PEOPLE

July 18, 2014 / fictioningdevelopment / 3 Comments

The novelist in 1990. Credit Chester Higgins Jr./The New York Times

Our evergreen Nadine finally answered nature’s call, leaving us with books that will constantly remind us that in all seasons of life, colour should not matter most. I admire her as that woman whose passion for peace and humanity kept burning in spite of her body’s weakening by age. Despite having most of her books banned by the apartheid government, she continued to write densely about racism within the context of South Africa, questioning all forms of power relations. In her writings, she expressed true knowledge of the threads of thought and emotions that run through the complex and political spaces of South Africa.

When I planned my visit to South Africa this July, I had searched for books by South African authors to help me relate my learning expectations before arriving. Nadine’s novel ‘July’s People’ stood out actually because symbolically it connected with my travel month July. But engaging this book, it certainly was worth more than a symbolic title. It helped me understand better the present day realities of the South Africa I set my foot on and more so it supported my narratives.
In Nadine’s words, “I would have been a writer anywhere, but in my country, writing meant confronting racism”. This she has excellently done with ‘July’s People’ as she captured the social disintegration inherent in racial tensions between the inferior black and the domineering white skin.
Set in a black skin village in South Africa, we meet Bamford and Maureen Smales. Humbled by a war where the blacks in revolution are killing the whites. Consequently, the Smales family become war refugees to their black servant July in his village. Injected into a new world, they begin a dance between power and powerlessness, constantly negotiating and renegotiating the meaning of power with their servant July in whose space they now live. They struggled with trying to adjust to their new realities.

There are trials and error at socializing with the natives of July’s village, Bamford and Maureen the supposedly liberal white couple were coming to understand that the colour of their skin will always hinder them from getting the true fabric of the realities they seek. Indeed, privileges go beyond spaces, it is also skin deep! Hence despite being in July’s space, there is a conflict in maintaining the master servant relationships. July now drives the Smales vehicle to distract combative attention but also attract power to himself, an almost impossible feat pre-war. Objects that were once meaningless, suddenly began to take on entirely new levels of symbolic importance. In the face of theft and no police to help, Bamford felt impotent, these where all new and hence they struggled.

Buried tensions come to the surface. Maureen Smales struggles with her subservience to July as she watches him become less and less subservient to her and more independent as her family stay in his village. Many times, she tries to negotiate with him using subtle blackmail of telling July’s wife Martha of his city affair with Ellen. Long absences of husbands have become a normal part of black women’s lives as their men worked as slaves in the city for white bosses; hence a relationship with other city women like Ellen was inevitable.

July’s family worries that the unwanted white skinned Smale family will trigger trouble for them. The Smales are scared when they are summoned by the village chief of a black nation. The chief could not comprehend the image of a powerless white government; whites running from blacks or taking refuge with them. Living through a time when the whites will never let him own a gun, he finds the presence of the Smales family in his home as an opportunity to request that Bamford teaches him to shoot his fellow black people with his gun. In shock, Bamford responds ‘You’re not going to take guns and help the white government kill blacks, are you?. . . You mustn’t let the government make you kill each other.’

This novel challenges the identity and ambiguous moral constructions of any liberal South African white. Reflective Maureen recalls in her childhood days walking home from school with Lydia the black family’s servant carrying the family school bag on her head. With a photographer’s click of these symbolic image of the two racially different girls, Maureen finds the picture in a Life photograph book years later and was provoked to question a system that makes Lydia carrying her books.

Nadine Gordimer&Late President Nelson Mandela. www.achievement.org/autodoc/page/gor1bio-1

Does questioning alone make-up for an active revolt of such an exploitative system? Likewise, If revolting, does partaking in the privileges of such system therefore indict someone in the institutions’ injustices? The Smales never identified with the oppressive Afrikaner society as they deplored the apartheid system. In their understanding within their former spaces, there was nothing condescending in their relationship with the blacks, especially with July despite his being their servant. But injecting them into a new space reveals that an unconsciously unequal relationship of master and servant exists. They struggled to reconcile with the truth that they too share part of the blame for reinforcing racism.

Like America, South Africa continues to witness the legacy of slavery and the disastrous consequences of Apartheid. Thirty three years after Nadine Gordimer wrote this book, the ‘Whites Only’ sign posts have disappeared but the battlegrounds of South Africa remains on the human skin shade as I could still feel racism among citizens strong enough that I could cut it with a knife. If Nadine hoped for a future where power will shift from the white to the black, I am glad she saw a fragment of it with the end of Apartheid. I say fragments because this freedom is incomplete. What I experienced in South Africa shows that power was sliced into two parts. While the white skinned people held the economic power living a first world life, the blacks hold political power, marginally living and working in subservient positions. I am left to wonder between the two powers, which one Nadine Gordimer desired to shift.

Photo of Nadine Gordimer, used on the academy of achievement profile. www.achievement.org

Nadine Gordimer ‘July’s People’ is a mentally provocative book that stretches one’s intellectual muscles on the dynamics of relationships triggered by racism. The shifts in relationships and spaces give a remarkable understanding of the constructions of difference between blacks and whites. Towards the end of this book, Maureen is seen fervently running after a helicopter perhaps with a hope that they be rescued and returned back to the familiar world where she was once a queen of the Manor with servants.
Imagining Maureen standing nude in the rain makes me think we may need to stand in the rain too to be washed of all racism… Nadine is gone with the month of July, as we bid her farewell with a wish that her soul finds rest, no better honour could be given to Nadine Gordimer’s life and fights than a South Africa washed of racism. In my language, I will say Kachifo; until morning comes Nadine, thank you.

Written by~ Adaobi Nkeokelonye

In the Belly of Dar es salaam

July 16, 2014 / fictioningdevelopment / 9 Comments

In Tanzania, I learnt that the Haven of peace in Arabic means Dar es salaam. Driving through Dar es salaam with Rahab my friend, I imagined that a place called a haven must indeed have a coveted peace. More so, it will hold many foot prints of hope; hope from desperate people who have fled from everything unpleasant. For those whose dreams take long to come through here, I hoped that the beautiful beaches, the trees and all of nature’s beauty I see in this country will serve as a bed of solace.

In the rumbling belly of Dar es salaam, at the heart of this haven of peace, I and Rahab finally located E & D Vision Publishing house. I was meeting with the first feminist English novelist from Tanzania, Elieshi Lema. As we held hands and she says Karibu; welcome, I was carried away by her natural grace and the ambience around her. She was like the future I admired. Meeting this Kiswahili and English writer added more sweetness to my time in Tanzania. Considering her many works, I looked beyond Parched Earth as I was strongly drawn to her fiction novel and stories that focused on children. I must say that most of her work represents an embodiment of the linkages between fiction and development. Her partnership with the Children’s Book Project (CBP) Tanzania has helped promote the use of novel writing and publishing in English to encourage language skills for in-school youths.

Her novel In the Belly of Dar es salaam proved she was not neglecting the out-of-school youths either. Through the hour, we talked about governance, the strengths and weaknesses of the African continent, we reflected on feminism and the African woman but most of all, our discussions focused on her novel In the Belly of Dar es salaam. Confidently, she spoke about the life of street children in Tanzania, expressing the certainty of a writer who had passionately researched her work. This novel uses a female as the central character to questions the political rhetoric on the commitment to social-economic development of children in general.

Eleisha Lema serves as Director of E&D Vision Publishing.

Eleisha Lema authored Parched Earth and serves as the Director of E&D Vision Publishing.

Elieshi glowingly shares the character of Sara; an unconventional girl who we meet in the first page doing a boy’s work; climbing a hill burdened with the head of a slaughtered cow. Small rivulets of blood from the dead animal were dripping and drying on her face; so unconventional! With her young eye eaten up by Cataract and all other impending worries, Sara was flawed in looks but not in character. It is this charisma that followed her through her days in the street with other children, there she lived like a butterfly, freely flying and perching to enjoy life’s sweetness despite the pains.

Leaving Elieshi’s office, I continued reading through how Sara met Prospa, but I dropped the book when Sara changes her clothing in her mother’s death room, leaving an emphatic message for her grandmother before setting out to begin a life on the streets of Dar es salaam. I dropped the book with the assumption that I know what the rest of the stories will be, but practically, we do not know the reality of street children. Two days after meeting with Elieshi, I was attacked by a gang of robbers led by a street child in Kampala,Uganda. With the painful loss of my mobile phone; I was provoked to learn more about this child who was party to those that robbed me.

Vagabond! Waif! Bastards! Urchin! Hooligans! Destitute! Ragamuffin! Guttersnipe!

Their names are so many, but yet we know very little about them. The pain and trauma I felt for my lost phone gave me the energy to further research on this isolated group of children whom despite our ignorance has remained an integral part of our world. Voraciously, I now read through all the pages of In the Belly of Dar es salaam to soothe my grief. I followed the story of Sara as she progressed on the streets of Dar es salaam, her paths meeting and parting with other street-children Mansa, Caleb, Ali among other gang members whom she became Maza; a mother to. For all the children, life in the street was triggered by the need to survive and not adventure. The novel expounded on the triggers of migrant street-children from the rural areas to the urban city. Under pressure from a society that does not appreciate that the hoe and the pen are miles apart, most young children believe that their answers lies in the belly of the urban city.In their hearts, the grass was greener in the city because those who left for the city never came back. So as schools, teachers and families pour them out like a river lets water go, then like tributaries; they flow into the belly of the city. The city thus embraces and nestles them into its rumbling belly.

Photo by Akansha Yadav

Life in the streets of a city called the haven of peace is not what they expected. Here, their plight seems unchanging; they become more voiceless and vulnerable. Over time, their young hearts begins to know the city geography. They walk about, each with a stomach to feed, yet leftovers will remain their buffet. Holding their possession in cellophane bags, street-children often find shelter in abandoned cars, dilapidated rooms, and uncompleted houses. For them, anywhere their body can be stretched until daylight dispels the night is home. And ‘if they felt too tired during the day time, they lay somewhere on the side-walk or in the public gardens… their possessions beside their tired bodies’. Hardship tints their age and hard work hardens their hands. For the tainted ones who have lost patience like the character of Ali, the night is their mask; when the city sleeps, they prowl in its darkness looking for what to steal. The street has finally groomed their hearts tobe ruthless.

According to my colleague Akansha Yadav, street kids are those ‘children out of school, working in horrible conditions with no bargaining power, underpaid and malnourished. Some of us see them as cheap labour and some see them as not our responsibilities but a product of failed parenting, social structures and poor public education system. Admittedly, we have grown immune to the image of them given how pervasive they are and despite the shocking nature of this reality; it does not seem to assault our senses anymore.’ These street-children, do they really strike us? Can we hold them in honour? In the thought lines of Uwem Akpan’s An Ex-mas gift, can you dare say you are one of them? Can we dare say they are one of us?

In the Belly of Dar es salaam, the character of Safina and Belinda whom were born in the street and fathered by nameless men established the fact that street children reproduce themselves making their street life become trans-generational. Over centuries now, street-children have existed in fiction novels also. Horatio Alger, a 19^th century prolific author was famous for his novels following the grass to grace adventures of impoverished children. His novel Tattered Tom; or, The Story of a Street Arab (1871) remarkably projects this age long phenomenon and even now, it raises the question of the possibility of extinction of children from the streets.

Photo by Trace Uganda. Trace Uganda empowers slum and street children, providing alternatives to street life.

Yet while they grace the streets, these children continue to question their realities, they are not dumb. The character of Caleb reflects on the disparity in urban and rural development; ‘my father has been growing cashew nuts all his life, he does not know the kibaha cashew factory or who decides the price, why was the factory not built in my village where I could seek employment’? Sara asked, ‘was Kigogo immune to beauty…do you think poverty can be completely eliminated?’ Through their banter, they explore intra-household dynamics, the gaps between them and the rich minister’s children. And what answers do we think there is for these questions? Ramifications of iniquity seldom are resolved with violence, will their answers rupture them and result in an unruly political revolution?

Perhaps development organisations understand that nature’s providence is certainly a chameleon, hence what is good for the goose; the gander might one day have too. Better than the clean-up squads most governments set up to violate street-children, much more has been done to manage them around the world but little is done to eliminate the phenomenon. The International day for Street Children celebrated in over 130 countries brings a global dimension to reminding the world that street children are also covered by the widely ratified United Nation’s Convention on the Right of the Child. Such progressive activities do not go to waste for Indeed street children have ambition to leave the street someday. Elieshi symbolizes this in the gift of a Pushcart Mansa gets from an adopted father, this triggered him to quit the streets and live more responsibly.

I remember living a day on the street in the city of Lagos as a 16year old girl; I was hungry, frightened and visibly lonely. I had a hateful frown for the world around me. Night came and with a fear for the dark, I was desperate for protection. Helplessly I crept into an abandoned car until morning came. I tasted the street for one night and it was clear I could never survive there. Harrowing as it is, this experience I had is but a tip of what street children like Sara and the one that stole from me knows. Perpetually they tumble into the swift current of the city, swinging on the back of its waves. With many rivers to cross for their survival, day after day, they try to tell us they are not invisible, that they too are one of us. ‘I am somebody’ they say. Do we hear them clear?

Rahab Mbise is the Communications Officer at Helvetas Swiss Inter-cooperation, Tanzania.

In the Belly of Dar es salaam written in simple language has successfully contextualised the pervasive phenomenon of the street-children, situating it in the gap between us and them. Between the street kid and us all there remains a social divide, they live on the fringes of our lives and thoughts. It is therefore with compassion at individual and communal level that we must connect with these children.I dare us to begin to think we are part of them; I dare us to say they are one of us…

To Elieshi, I say Asante; thank you for this simple but well written novel that aptly places the street-child phenomenon within the African context. To Rahab, Juliana and Innocent, I am grateful for the gift of this book.

Written by ~ Adaobi Nkeokelonye

The Season of Kongi’s Harvest.

June 15, 2014 / fictioningdevelopment / 0 Comments

Photograph of Bullseye: ImageState/Alamy on www.theguardian.com

It’s the sound of a new morning, heralded by the cock-crow. The day is in its pure youth and expectations were high for the ‘BullsEye radio programme’ anchored by its Archer Edmund Obilo. For the natives of Ibadan, Edmund’s programme has become like the morning sunlight streaming through our windows, illuminating our political landscapes as a voice of reason and highlighting dark areas of governance. Today’s edition promised to be sensational; a serving honourable of the house of representatives in response to a previous interview called the Alaafin (a revered traditional ruler) ‘a criminal’ with all confidence. I salivated to hear the background story of this tasty interview after several promo excerpts got my attention.

Alas, it was barred from airing! The town criers crushed my hope announcing (without vetting programme content,) that the interview was ‘disrespectful, and also condemnable to our traditional institution and value’. The Alaafin was sacred, revered and must not be tarnished even at the expense of justice and accountability. Our dear radio journalist became the scapegoat; under fire with the politics of trivialities. Like the journalist in Kongi’s harvest, he is a watchdog that should only bark at selected humans; he is either compliant or he is expelled from the kingdom.

I was hopeful that through that interview, I can indeed boast that we are progressing towards the exercise of social equality, respect of freedom of speech and human right which invariably serves as critical indicators of true democracy. My dashed hope, called for more reflection and questioning. In that politically motivated act, I am reminded that though our traditional rulers may be modelling costumes and customs and thriving outside of time, they are not just a museum piece. I am also left to consider the fabric of our political landscape with fragmented system of governance that recognises the conflicting values of traditional leadership and modern state governance. As we strive to establish enduring political system, how much room does the immunity shield we give to traditional monarch institutions allow for the true practice of rule of law? Just in the thick of my reflection, the rhythm of my thought reminds me that we are still in the season of Kongi’s harvest.

Written in 1965, Kongi’s harvest by our dear Wole Soyinka is a tough but sweet drama, reflecting Nigeria’s political trails, highlighting the fact that democracy may remain a pseudonym of the traditional system of governance, and at worse a phantom. The Nobelist was at his best here allowing room for readers to discover their own meaning engaging the spirit of this book. He presents a raillery of the engineering of our political system, sadly considering our political trajectories, we remain stung by this mockery.

Deposed Oba Dondola harasses the national sanctity of President Kongi’s democratic leadership which disbanded his conclave of elders and arrested him. Oba Dandola desecrates the national flag taken from a flagpole, making of it an under-wrapper worn beneath his Agbada. He is soon stripped of it, leaving him struggling to cover his semi-nudity. Oba Dondodola is projected as lacking respect for constituted authority. But where there are two relevant authorities (the traditional and the modern), how do we negotiate what power prevails at a time? The existence of this conflicting dualism that forms the kernel of our political structure, hampers good judgement.

This book of drama, presents a ridicule of the Western style of governance and the dilemmas of transition. Here, the old order changeth, there are more democratic princes with the intent of creating an image of a youthful elders of the state, a conclave of modern patriarch replacing the disbanded ones. We are given an impression of change in governance where there is none.

At the core of the conflict is President Kongi’s new vision to harmonize and replace the old institutionally structured festival with a state ceremony governed by the principle of enlightened ritualism. To achieve this, the traditional institution ruled by retrogressive autocrats will have to be more ceremonial and less relevant to power like a masquerade without spirit or substance. A public display of the final transition was necessary and crafted into the planned harvest festival of which President Kongi must preside as the spirit of the harvest in pursuance of his Five years development plan. President Kongi insists that Oba Dondola must bring to him the New Yam with his own hands as performance of customary spiritual functions. Oba Dondola the reactionary leader is resistant and difficult to break with all forms of appeasement. He was not willing to give up the last thread of relevance in that singular public act that will symbolize the supremacy of the state power over their traditional spaces and authority.

2013-09-11-HRMObaJimohOyetunjiOlanipekunLarooyeIIAtaojaofOsogboland2012copy

Photo by George Osodi of HRM Obajimoh Oyetunji Olanipekun Larooye II Ata oja of Osogboland http://tiny.cc/7olhhx

The drama Kongi’s harvest tells of the pathway that led democracy to become more vibrant, commanding greater legitimacy than the traditional autocratic systems. It cleverly advances that despite their waning powers, the relevance of the traditional rulers and their power is not to be shaken off as a man brushes off cobweb. The intrigues of politics were at its best in this book, portraying the dilemmas of change and power relations. This conflict and struggle for relevance continues even in modern governance.

Arguments on the role and relevance of traditional ruler remain in contest within the terrains of political discourses. Some people percieve them as symbols of natural governance, custodians of native customs, as spiritual fathers and an enduring part of a people’s heritage. Despite their waning influence of power, these perspectives of them had given them some constitutional relevance. Traditional rulers in African countries for example, still hold power over substantial economic and financial resources like land and forestry.

Globally, homogeneous and culturally diverse country’s model of governance still allows roles for traditional rulers designated with numerous nomenclatures. Considering the architecture of national population where more people are rural based, these traditional institution seem normative and this has further enhanced their resilience.

Zulu King Goodwill Zwelithini
Image by: TEBOGO LETSIE at www.timeslive.co.za

For contemporary thinkers, traditional rulers are but relics that don’t glitter any more as they belong to antiquity. With a closed and orchestrated model of leadership entrenched in patriarchy, a succession structure that happens by ascription in place of popular election, it promotes supremacy of one man lording over the affairs of all. Their shielded style of leadership has been noted to be an instrument of oppression and capitalism, aiding and abetting all sorts of crimes and corruption. In the past, their weak leaderships notably gave way to colonialism, slave trade and all forms of exploitation that continues to define the fabric of the black man, endowing us with turbulent history. Their dwindling prestige tells that they must exist outside of present times and operate outside the formal structures of modern state power.

To abolish or not; these arguments persist. But we must remember that bad leadership is bad leadership, whether it clads military uniform, traditional regalia or civilian attire. I have no problem with the existence of traditional political leaders who exercise political power at ethnic or sub-ethnic level. As long as customary laws exist and have relevance, traditional political leaders will thrive. But in seeking constitutional relevance and also interfering in democratic processes of state power as is the case in Nigeria, there is inherent complexities.

Photo by George Osodi on Nigerian Royalties combining traditional king like regalia with contemporary touches like convertibles and spiffy shades at http://tiny.cc/7olhhx

In a nation’s struggle to establish a strong democratic system, what conflicts does the values of autocracy underpinning the traditional institution present? How relevant are their undemocratic values to the exercise of accountability, transparency, free speech, public debates, partisanship and elections, all of which are critical to true democracy? How can this be recreated within the fabric of existing political systems?

The season of Kongi’s harvests that promotes fragmented governance and structures which privileges traditional political leaders with some sacredness to perpetuate injustice must now end. I contend that, whether within or outside the hinterlands, traditional leaders who seek or have constitutional relevance must not be endorsed to sacredly disobey rule of law or be insulated from justice. They have no right to interfere in democratic processes if they will not be governed by it. In the era of growing social change,we must all thrive within the framework of constitutional democracy. Against the backdrop of the suspension of democratic interventions like the ‘Bulls Eye Radio programme’, traditional institutions must learn to submit to known standards of scrutiny and accountability, understanding that in democracy, it is the people that decide. This is instructive in engineering true democracy.

Written by ~ Adaobi Nkeokelonye

‘Oh, My Father is Selling Me, He is Selling Me!’

June 9, 2014 / fictioningdevelopment / 1 Comment

Efua Sutherland authored ‘The Marriage of Anansewa’

Efua Sutherland’s ‘The Marriage of Anansewa’ is a well-crafted drama with hints of folk-tale, littered with amusing scenes that will make you reflect on traditions and their loopholes. Considering its thematic unity, this book could have been titled ‘The Bride Price’ as it projects the whole politics of the bride token.

Soaked up in the culture of consumerism, crafty Mr. George K. Ananse, uses emotional blackmail to initiate his daughter Anansewa into his plan of auctioning her by exploiting aspiring suitors. 20yrs old Anansewa has been out of school for lack of fees, she acknowledges that the burden of her need is on her father. Hence he identifies and capitalizes on her need for education to manipulate her. Anansewa is subtly pressured by her father to go behind the camera for a click. Ananse then goes on a tour, covering miles with different postured pictures of Anansewa to market her. Reluctant but helpless Anansewa speaks:

‘…Oh, my Father is selling me, he is selling me…I will not let you sell me like some parcel to a customer, I will select my lover myself, I will not take part in any photograph engagement’.

Secretarial education was the carrot Ananse dangled to Anansewa, symbolized in the overpriced typewriter he gives her. Yet beneath all these, Ananse aims to fulfil his ridiculous ambition, and Anansewa’s marriage was a means to his successful ending. The metrics of success for Ananse, was him resting his bones on a bouncy dunlopillo, attending burials in fine clothes, making open donations in church inside the gleaming collection plate, and finally being buried in a coffin drawn in a private hearse, and not the municipal.

Ananse has good knowledge of the traditions and the loopholes therein, hence he exploited it. Until a suitor’s bride price is accepted, and the head-drink ceremony is conducted, he cannot be given the privilege of a husband. Hence any appeasement suitors do is considered a gift with no emotional invoice; it is unaccounted for. He knows his daughter Anansewa can be married to only one man despite his enticing so many rich suitors, so he builds a net of competition for intending suitors to pay their way with gifts.

In an intricate way, Ananse exploited the laid down procedures for establishing a marriage, using it as a means of securing upkeep for himself. One is lured to read through the drama to understand how he extricates his self from the pending conflicts of his greed. With the help of Christie his girlfriend, Ananse eventually fakes his daughter’s death, using her resurrection as a selector of husband from the many chiefs he exploited.

‘The Marriage of Anansewa’ is another work of fiction that focuses on the marriage market framework, expressing marriage as a strong polarizer. Ananse showcases for us the politics and economics of the bride price, an extensive phenomenon that has continued to be executed in an organised way in many societies.

In social development, the concept of payment between families at wedding is sensational especially amongst activists who explore the practices and its impact. Be it is the groom price (dowry) paid to the groom’s family or the bride price token paid to the bride’s family, or the dower, all of these have over the years become an integral part of marriages. Steeped in the traditions of most African and Asian culture, these traditional rituals have been explained with different understanding. Some consider the price as the purchase cost of a wife; paying for her nurturing from birth, her mother’s breast milk, her education among others. Others consider the bride token of jewellery, furniture, and livestock among others received as a proof that a bride will be well catered for by the groom. Another group finds it a deterrent for divorce or desiring polygamy, while others find it as an element of marriage entertainmentas expressed in the new app at www.brideprice.com.ng

Many hypothesis hover over this seemingly sexist practice. People advocate for it because it gives economic value to a woman as payment is made in exchange for her family’s loss of her labour and fertility among her kin. Others claim that the dowry paid to the groom is a way of supporting the newly wed to establish their household. But the arguments many put up against the dowry system is; why should a woman’s family give money and gifts to a husband’s family when they are already giving their daughter?

Advocates argue that these transfer of valued gifts and payment between families at the time of marriage contributes to the subjugation and objectification of women. The prices are weighed to appreciate the woman’s agricultural labour value, educational qualifications, and family pedigree, amongst others. Be it as it may, this payment phenomenon has become a major factor triggering marriage anomalies; rather than strengthen marriages, it has caused an increase in violence against women. Often conceptualized as ‘Dowry Violence’, this act is perpetrated by husbands or in-laws intending to extort a bride’s family of more dowry price when the years of marriage has nibbled away the significance of the paid price. Fuelled by the rising culture of consumerism, their greed is expressed in sexual, physical and mental violence against the woman.

When Efua Sutherland published the ‘Marriage of Anansewa’ in 1975, it may have reflected another form of violence or abuse; emotional abuse. But bride price oriented violence has indeed grown. Female infanticide and Bride burning now exists; many women are driven to suicide, discouraged to seek divorce, suffer marriage squeeze and most of them become victim of dowry death. Dowry harassment remains a visible phenomenon in India, despite its being outlawed since 1961; it’s quite under-reported as the laws are not enforced. India’s government National Crime Bureau reports approximately 6,000 dowry deaths annually.

Stephanie Sinclair’s photograph of Child Brides in Yemen

While the dowry and bride price may not be converse, their impacts are related. Stephanie Sinclair’s photo video ‘The Bride Price: Consequences of Child Marriage Worldwide’ includes compelling images of child brides in Afghanistan, Ethiopia and India. Most of them are married off to settle inter-family financial dispute. In Africa, a disturbing but prevailing attitude remains that when you have paid a price for a wife, she becomes your property.

The fact that some culture practices the two blurs distinctions between bride-price and dowry. Arguments persist on whether a bride price or dowry should exist or not, and should it be a refundable gift? The MIFUMI Project has worked extensively in African country, Uganda especially, seeking litigations to rule that the practice of bride price is un-constitutional. In Thailand it is called Sin Sod, southern Africa is lobolo, in my culture it is called Ego nwanyi.

All of these appreciations in different languages go to say how widespread and deeply entrenched this practice is in cultural processes of establishing marriages. Banning such practices may be to some people as being anti-cultural and against valued cultural practices which may represent a way of promoting friendly courtesy, hospitality and alliance between kinship groups.

A traditional, formal presentation of the bride price at a Thai engagement ceremony by en.wikipedia

Considering welfare impacts of marriage payments, women are disadvantaged. While the arguments persist on the abolishment of payment during marriage, perhaps we may consider a value shift also that will help such cultural exchanges become a stronger deterrent, and more so, a source of security for many women who walk in and also out of marriages with nothing. My argument is; can people begin to consider structuring a price or agreement that will protect all partners during and maybe after the marriage? Can we consider something in line with the Islamic bride gift of Mahr that should be given to a bride not at the consummation of their marriage, but at the end of a marriage partnership? Considering persistent economic disadvantages women suffer as a result of unpaid labour, can we focus more on divorce settlement where the woman is compensated when the marriage being her major form of social security fails? This I believe will have implication in securing marriages and also give more social security benefits to women especially in developing countries where wedding payments prevail as deterrents but yet its speedily failing to hold power.

Written by~ Adaobi Nkeokelonye

I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings…

May 29, 2014 / fictioningdevelopment / 4 Comments

The caged bird sang about a little black girl’s pathway to a life of impact. Maya was a speechless child filled with a guilt that was not hers, with a shoulder too young to carry the weight of difference that insidious racism injects. Observing the cotton-pickers as they journey to and from work in the fields from Momma’s store was like the epoch of her creative life. Brother Bailey stuck to her despite her battered sense of self; it was as though he knew what the world will miss if Maya never found the courage to speak, to dance and write in words that will glitter forever.

Maya shared the story of a fragile world that groomed her into strength. Stories of constantly changing homes harbouring memories of violence between the lovely bones, nights in the junkyards, life as the female car conductor and a teen mother, all of this made the caged bird sing.

Thinking through the title of this book always made me understand the beauty of FREEDOM. Everything can never be taken from us. Freedom is when birds sing even in a cage; they do not have to fly to believe they are free.

Travelling through the pages of this book as a young girl and reflecting on the life of the author Maya Angelou, I grew. I understand that if you follow your anger, it will show you your fight. If you let pain do its work, your spirit will grow.

Dear Maya, you were a Spiritual Giant; the world got better because you came, you danced, you spoke, you wrote and you lived. Today we mourn you like widows of a worthy man. May death be to you as beautiful as life was, sleep sweet my woman with the scattered brain.

Written by~ Adaobi Nkeokelonye

The Dearth of the Happy Single Woman…

May 9, 2014 / fictioningdevelopment / 18 Comments

Anu Verma

It was just before spring, in the winter of 2012, I heard Anu Verma speak for the first time in our all women gender class at the Institute of Development Studies, Brighton. I had seen her severally and for most times, I admired her because just like me, she mostly adorned her traditional attire, the Indian Salwar kameez in cold England. Over time, she became even more remarkable; her passion for single women issues shined through her questions and contributions in our small group sessions. I appreciate Anu Verma, I think she is pretty and brave but I was very weary of her arguments which presented Single Women as a relevant category for marginalized persons. I was weary because I wondered if the experiences of being a single woman could be conceptualized as marginalization.

Being in my early 30’s, I have been single for quite a while. In my part of the world, this status certainly comes with more unpleasant than pleasant experiences. On the pleasant side, my status has opened unique doors of life to me and strengthened my individuality. But there are loses too. On the altar of marriages, many valuable relationships are slaughtered; I have lost the individuality of my friends to marriage. I feel strategically isolated by married friends who litter their conversations with stories of their husband and sometimes children but rarely of themselves. For comic tickles, our girlfriends when engaged like to display their trophy rings to spite, at the cost of seeming disabled in one hand 🙂 . Over time one becomes a sex prey for married men, and ego booster for single men. As a single woman, I tread carefully, walking on eggshell amongst married colleagues lest I get personal and excite their partners negatively. Pressure from family and friends can be stifling; I am reminded that a lonely old age is staring me in the face. To make it worse, the social identity constructions of a single woman lacks dignity; she is either a whore or unlucky in love. All my other achievements crumble like cookies every time I hit the speed bump question; are you married, why are you single, when is he coming forth…?

All of these experiences though psychosocially disturbing and indeed destabilizing could not justify my being a voice for single women as my friend Anu Verma. I often wondered if other single women had similar experiences. Will they be unashamed to openly identify with these experiences, or be willing to hold extended discussions on these phenomena? I have been unable to write or identify with Anu’s cause because I felt this issue will be easily derided as idiocies.

Despite all, I have been a happy nullipara, never-married single woman, who is not ashamed to flaunt this status and the dividends therein. Between heartbreaks, pressure, ridicule, distress and the pain we humans feel, there is a moment of rupture. Amid my fractured lines of rupture, are busted marriage myths that has liberated and strengthened me from living under this marriage pressure that always hanged like a heavy mist over our lives. But such freedom and happiness do not go unchallenged. Indeed my confidence in my status was challenged when my right to shelter was severally denied, not because I had no money, but because I was single and not married. All these years, being single seemed like a social problem that has no name, but my inability to rent a house in Ibadan (a Semi-Urban town in Nigeria) gave it a name; Marginalized! In that moment of discrimination, I realized that Anu had a case and I was willing to research more on other people’s experiences.

My search led me to many extensive works done by a fantastic woman, Jill Reynolds (RIP). Her book ‘The Single Woman, A discursive investigation’ contributes to the understanding and experiences of the stigma attached to the Single Woman Identity. Learning from social diversity, the experience of being single differs and has critical intersections of gender, culture, religion amongst others. For single women in the developed world, it might mean being a wo-man without man, living a man free life, suffering social drought and having less sex. But for women in developing countries like India, Pakistan and others, it means a denial of basic human right and a threat to survival.

Anu Verma working with women Sangathans of Rajasthan in relation to intersections of marital status,caste and religion.

There are no United Nation’s Conventions on this issue, but there are interests expressed by groups and individuals. With the support of Action Aid Gujarat, Anu’s research paper also made a strong case for India’s Dalit Single women. Titled We are told we have rights…but where are they! , this research chronicles a reflection on the life threatening experiences of exploitation, hardship, chronic poverty, lack of education and livelihood opportunities for these women as life with dignity becomes their major struggle. Their threatened well-being, loneliness, shame and vulnerability reminds us of the need to make them an agenda in literature.

Situating Dalit women in Manusmriti system (a prescribed code of conducts for Hindus), some disturbing verses were quoted;

‘By a girl, by a woman, or even by an aged one, nothing must be done independently, even in her own house… her father protects her in childhood, her husband protects her in youth and her sons protect her in old age; a woman is never fit for independence’ (Manusmriti V.174 & X.3)

The quote captures the tough patriarchal society these women are up against. The normalization of this perpetuates the continued isolation of this category of Dalit Women to the margins of social structures for the sin of being unwed women. Collective action enacted in the Dalit Single women group/Sangathans is helping. In India, they now have 7 states/provinces with more than 80,000 single women association striving for social change with their own movement.

My scope of enquiry was extended to literary fiction. How have writers presented the single woman character in their work? Are writers reinforcing the stereotypes or challenging it? Can I clearly find a single woman character in literature who is admirably happy, and whose source of unhappiness is anything else but a man, marriage or children? This was a challenge as I suffered a dearth in the severe drought of such characterization. The plots of many literary works focus on single women’s struggle to find lasting love, or manage love and its heartaches. Their lives are woven around men, clinging on the happily ever after myth that begins with being the woman in white, ending with them finding love or beginning a new life after being unlucky in love.

Unlike their western counterparts, African women writers, though very militant with their feminist writings, also align with the above plots as seen in our review of the models of femininity in Africa’s popular fiction. Marylyn French, a renowned feminist whom I admire, authored her novel ‘In the Women’s Room’ in 1977. It was described as an influential novel of the modern day feminist movement. Yet, the major character Mira Ward is a conventional and submissive young woman in a traditional marriage; we are entertained by her divorce and gradual feminist awakening. The story of Mira and many others may be captured in the voice of ‘Amaka’ in ‘One is Enough’ by Flora Nwapa:

‘… I don’t want to be a wife anymore, a mistress yes, with a lover, yes of course, but not a wife. There is something in that word that does not suit me. As a wife, am never free. I am a shadow of myself. As a wife, am almost impotent. I am in prison, unable to advance in body and soul… I don’t want to go back to my ‘wifely’ days. No, I am through with husbands.’

But the question that the character Nnu ego in ‘The Joys of Motherhood’ by Buchi Emecheta asked God is the same question I am asking writers. She said;

“God, when will you create a woman who will be fulfilled in herself, a full human being, not anybody’s appendage?” she prayed desperately. “After all, I was born alone, and I shall die alone.”

Why do writers of popular fiction invalidate happy single women characters? Is it a tale sign that books with such characters will be unaccepted or perhaps make poor sales? Considering the role of writers in influencing development, it is disillusion and myopic to promote false dichotomy. As children and teenagers, we had no one model of a happy single woman in the press, media or even in our school books. We have all been educated to become the woman in white and just marry, but the reality of our present day lives contradicts these models.

According to Eric Klinenberg’s ‘Going Solo’, there are more single people today than anyone could think. In fact, being single is the world’s biggest social change in the last 50years. This is true with huge possibility of being a continuing trend in the coming years. The alterations of lives and social impact this will have in future are unimaginable.

Let us remove the covers and blinders that are obscuring reality; there are lots of people out here who by choice are single, living fulfilled lives with no plans for marriage. We must acknowledge that we are first a person, before anything else. Not everyone will be married and if we are to marry, life’s trajectories are different, so are the ravages. Many will be single for longer than others. No one is married all their lives, hence there is a time to be single. How can a society ensure the psychosocial well-being of persons living single either as a phase or permanently? How are we protecting the human rights of those whom marriage does not fit their lives? How do we as individuals hold them in honour and give them a better worth?

If I smell your thoughts, my writings may stink of anti-marriage views, I am not anti-marriage; I detest social conventions which do not appreciate that life’s trajectories are different for each one. While I agree marriage can be good, the over-privileging of marriage and long-term partnerships in our society contributes to the marginalization of persons like the Dalit Single Women, among others as Anu’s research and other literature captures.

I am by choice, a happy single woman who continues to negotiate her identity, refusing to allow society inject shame into her. I now understand the challenges of people like myself, but again because of my education, I feel the responsibility of my privileges compared to the Dalit Single Women. Thus, through this writing, I wish to validate the Dalit Single women. I am saying they are not outsiders, they too belong here. Life is not an unaccompanied journey because you are single, you do not travel alone, I am with you.

Written by~ Adaobi Nkeokelonye

Lacing the War with Women and Children

April 27, 2014 / fictioningdevelopment / 4 Comments

‘Back from the boats,’ [Captain Harrington] shouts, catchin’ up the hand-spike. ‘The first man that touches a boat I’ll brain. Women and children first…’

~Harrington: A Story of True Love (1860) by William Douglas O’Connor

The reality of the lives and struggle of women and children in war front cannot be known by war mongers, it’s only the imagery of this experience that we see. The lived experiences of women caught in war zones are diverse. From decade to decade, these woes continue to the point of normalization. They are captured in different media forms like photography and films. But they are also captured in fiction.

I must accept that chronicling war experiences in fiction is a really difficult thing, especially if the writer has not lived through war. Yet between the lines of many fiction novels, you can have a glimpse of what life in the war front is like. Of all the fiction narratives I have read about war, the novel ‘The Last Duty’ stands out. Published in 1976, bagging the African Arts Prize for literature awards, I wonder why the excellent writer Isidore Okpewho has eluded me all these years. Perhaps he has maintained a low profile, but viewing war through the lens of his writing provoked a lot of high moment. Most significant is its ability to capture the experiences of civilians, especially that of women and children in the characters of Aku and Ogheneovo.

‘The Last Duty’ stylishly gave almost all the characters a space to tell their own war story; hence there was no single person narrative. Set in the fictional land of Urukpe,we are exposed to a war in which every moment of it is pregnant with danger. Guerrilla air rades by the rebels happen and bodies are counted, the sounds of guns rattle in fury, tat-tat-tat-tat-tat! It awakens plain ancient fear, people learn to take cover according to civil defense instructions; under the tree, in the bunker, beneath the bed, at the foot of a wall, everywhere! Roads are chewed up and broken by the business of long fighting. Guns Booming, riffles cracking, invading planes dropping bombs…Diimm! Kpoai! Toai! There are endless wailing from the confrontations between two military forces; the federal and the Simbian. Guns answer to guns in deafening encounter.

Dorothea Lange 1936 Photograph titled ‘Migrant Mother’ in honor of women and children that suffered in the great depression.

Between the lines of weaving this entire story, the struggles of Aku stand out.Life and time was hard upon her. She had many things to say of her life, more so, every character held a slice of this young woman’s physiological and psycho-social existence in the war torn Urukpe. She comes into the scene sharing her dependency and loyalty to her beloved husband (Mukoro Oshivere)whom she was willing to pine for until his release from incarceration. She admits to the readers that she and her child Ogheneovo are not secure anymore in Oshivere’s absence. Hostile eyes assail her, no one greets her, she is isolated for her husband’s misguided accusation of being a rebel supporter by Toje his commercial rival. Yet among her catalogue of woes, Toje poses a new kind of danger; he offers her kindness bringing food, money and cloth through Odibo to her. She can see in Toje’s eyes that his gifts has a hidden emotional invoice attached to them, she is right but again, she is helpless. As a suspected rebel with insolent freedom, she is not allowed to go to the market, how do they survive without the food he offers? In her words, ‘It is a dreadful thing to be at the mercy of someone, the slave of a compulsion you know you cannot fight.’

Through the many encounters with Toje, she wavered between grudging acquiescence and unspoken protest, ashamed to admit it, the desire in her has accumulated like pus in a boil. Her heart tussling between hope and fear each day, she launches into the unfriendly open with a passion only rudely tickled every time she departs from Toju’s poor performance of regaining a deserted manhood. Her thoughts are racing with questions, ‘do I wear disgrace unmistakably on my person… Toje’s whoring mistress, bound to minister to his animal desire at the price of food and clothing, maybe even protection and occasional words of comfort?’ In spite of this, she harbors within, some adulterous longings that now strives to overpower her, her painful fancy for the 3years overdue touch of a man eventually but shamefully realizes itself in her skin fellowship with disabled Odibo, the imbecile nephew and errand boy of Chief Toje.

In Aku‘s words; ‘Frustration has driven me to the point where I will rather live the fact than the fiction of sin. Loyalty and devotion has been strained beyond all possible endurance. Neither the mind nor the body could any longer fight the overwhelming presence of temptation…the body could no longer be supported by the will of the mind…the entire defense came tumbling down, like an unsheltered mud wall under relentless down surge of rain’

Self-gloated, overzealous antagonist Toje, wages what I call a silent guerrilla war against protagonist Mukoro Oshivere who until towards the end of the novel was a war prisoner, incarcerated by Toje’s frivolous charges. In Toje’s words, ‘The absence of Mukoro Oshevire …gives me the opportunity to re-establish my prominence.’ This absence destabilizing as it may be for Aku, gave Toje plenty space to unleash his politics of using sex as a weapon of warfare on Aku. In an environment of war, we are entertained by his many attempts at taking advantage of Aku’s vulnerability to seek restoration for his deserted manhood which is now but a flab of flesh. Toje is finally beaten to his game by his ‘dumb and imbecile nephew Odibo who though disabled and mocked all his life, finally gives to Aku the touch of manhood she had shamefully longed for. The revelation of this sex triangle brings the novel to a very tragic end that recreates Aku’s sorrow.

Korean-American groups persuaded the city of Glendale, Calif., near Los Angeles, to build a bronze statue of a “comfort woman.”Monica Almeida / The New York Times.

This fiction book, tells the story of what happens to women and children when men go to war. Like Ogheneovo, children learns violence. More so, the only toy left for children are guns, the ambition left to their admiration is to become a soldier. For women, displacement, rape with impunity, hunger, prostitution among others hangs over their lives. Aku’s experience is similar to that of the South Korean comfort women who served as prostitutes for the military, commemorating their woes in a status. The lives they had before the war is suddenly nibbled away with every gunshot and death and destruction around them.

Writing ‘Harrington:A story of true love in the 18th century, William Douglas O’Connor is recorded to use the phrase ‘Women and Children first’. This phrase has grown so wide and far to the point that the two words ‘women’ and ‘children’ are almost an alliteration. Beyond it being a sort of crisis conduct code in the maritime world, this phrase has gradually planted its self historically in almost every war speech.Protecting women and children has been used by leaders to sweeten their words when bidding for war. It is the holy mantra invoked to make intentions of advocating for or against war seem noble, it is used to placate the sound of war drums.

Vietnam War in Picture: Women and children crouch in a muddy canal as they take cover from intense Viet Cong fire at Bao Trai, about 20 miles west of Saigon on Jan. 1, 1966. http://tiny.cc/14stex

With benefit of hindsight, the adoption of this phrase, just like the Declaration on the Protection of Women and Children in Emergency and Armed Conflict (adopted in 1974) and the Fourth Geneva Convention for the protection of civilian persons ( adopted in 1949), however has made little or no impact to the lives of vulnerable non-combatants in the many war so far fought. Do leaders just politically exploit the myth of women and children? Do they care to understand the true meaning of protecting women and children and the impact of not protecting them in the many war we tag them in?

In the words of Major Ali, the stranger from up country protecting Urukpe, ‘ that woman (Aku) meant more than just the wife of a detained man, … she was the measure of justice.’ The impact of war on women and children, more so the elderly and every vulnerable person, is the true measure of any war. I wish that my vision of a war-less world is possible, but with hindsight, this vision has eluded human nature. I however agree with C. JoyBell C view on war; “the country with truly strong men is able to have soldiers that need not a knife, that need no guns! And if you can soar even higher than that; fight with your pens! Let us all write! And see the substance of the man through his philosophies and through his beliefs! And let one philosophy outdo another! Let one belief outlast another! And let this be how we determine the outcome of a war!”

To leaders who add to the sounds of violence, using women and children to muffle the drum beats of war, I will say this; there is more to us than guns and bombs, if truly you care about the dignity of women and children, you will stop these wars and come to an understanding with the innocent. Therein is your power.

To Women and Children caught up in the raging wars of Syria, Congo, Sudan among others, I wish you courage for the days ahead that may be harder to get through and grace for when the time comes to let go. More so, from my depth, I wish you comfort.

Written by ~ Adaobi Nkeokelonye

Women and Children in Quotes

Extracts from War and Conflict Speech of World Leader with emphasis on ‘Women and Children’.

Do They Hear When You Cry?

April 16, 2014 / fictioningdevelopment / 1 Comment

Oasis Academy Hadley #FightforYashika Campaign

For many social causes that make headlines these days, there is an individual at the center to humanize it. In most cases they enjoy the support of their community. Yashika Bageerathi, became a ‘star pupil’, making headlines in the past weeks, thanks to her community and fellow students at the Oasis Academy Hadley, United Kingdom. The ‘Fight for Yashika’ campaign gathered thousands of votes on Change.org to ensure that Yashika, a 19yrs old Mauritian student who came to the United Kingdom as a refuge, was not deported to Mauritius without the chance to complete her A-levels. They pleaded that she should not be torn away from her family and be given a lonely deportation to Mauritius where she had no family or friend to rely on.

Yashika Bageerathi

All of that fell on the deaf ears of the UK Home Office whom do not mix business with sentiments. Despite the knowledge that Yashika is a model student,a valuable member of the Einfield Community, and on the good side of the migrant books, she was deported. Yashika’s case does not stand out. Lorin Sulaiman, the Kurdish school girl, whom with her family fled persecution in Syria and claimed asylum in the United Kingdom, faced similar circumstances. Again the school community came to her aid with a huge ‘Free Lorin campaign’. Unlike Lorin, Yashika was eventually deported, plucked away from family and friends to Mauritius by a system that has shown it knows no compassion. She sought for so little; a chance to complete her exams before she was disproportionately deported against Article 8 of the Human Rights Act (respect for private and family life). But all effort did not go down the drain, thanks to the 178,000 votes gathered, the jammed lines and media platforms of MPs, Home Office, Air Mauritius and Heathrow Airport. Being at the center of media broadcast, this case helped to refocus attention on the horror of Yarl’s Wood detention centre where Yashika like other refugees and deportees are kept on arrival and prior to deportation. This structure projects the lack of compassion in deportation systems around the world.

Refugees who seek asylum are stereotyped as scroungers who lie to get into privileged systems. Not much can dismantle this stereotype which has filled the knowledge void of the average person whom knows nothing of a refugee experience. What happens in Yarl’s Wood and other detention centers no longer remains within. Yarl’s Wood Immigration removal center has made negative headlines with stories of death, torture, hunger strike, sexual abuse among other forms of injustice experienced by refugees.

Seeking to capture this in fiction novels has been a little challenging. But my friend Mary Okeke reminds me of Mark Twain’s quote ‘The truth is stranger than fiction …Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn’t ’. The truth of the horror of detention experience was painfully captured in the novel ‘Do they hear when you cry?’ With an emotionally provoking title, Layli Miller Bashir helps the author Fauziya Kassindja, narrate her experience as a refugee. This rare piece of work coming from Fauziya emerges from Togo where literary works are sparse in comparison to their neighboring countries. Fauziya is born into a middle class Muslim family in Togo, to a society where polygamy, teen marriage, genital mutilation among other practices are normalized. With the death of her father, she is married by a polygamist who requires that she be mutilated to qualify as his wife. With the help of her sister, Fauziya escapes to America via Ghana and Germany.

This non-fiction novel, gives us a first-hand account and a lens to view the experiences of refugees especially from developing countries. The irony of the refugee experience is well captured here; they leave the tortured spaces in search of their romanticized land of freedom in Europe, but the sanctuary they hope for welcomes them with the incarceration and persecution they run from. Fauziya was mortified, stripped naked, forced to bath in the open, given bad food and isolated in prisoner style by our dear America. Her failing health and dying hope was restored by Karen Musalo and the law student Layli Miller Bashir, together with Washington College of Law who helped gain her an asylum status.

Not many are as lucky as Fauziya to have been freed. More refugees are still being held at different detention center around Europe where they are treated as criminals which is against their human right. While the British Government expresses its promise to remove those who have no legal right to remain in the UK, a complex debate on the rights of refugees and Asylum seekers continue. The 1951 Geneva Refugee convention relates to the Status of Refugees (CRSR). This United Nations multilateral treaty defines the status and rights of a refugee, and setting out rights of individuals granted asylum and the responsibilities of their host nations. For a convention that was approved in 1951 and entered into force in 1954, it has not done much to protect the right of refugees even in ratifying nations.

Over the years, organisations like Women for Refugee Women, individuals like Fauziya, Melten Avcil, Yashika, and others have achieved more in highlighting the unjust treatment of refugees and asylum seekers. Fauziya Kassindja’s case provoked the acknowledgement that victims of Female Genital Mutilation are worthy of Asylum in the USA. Melten Avcil (who at 13yrs was locked up Yarl’s Wood in 2007 with her mother and later released) is currently championing a campaign, petitioning Theresa May, British Home Secretary to end the detention of women who seek asylum in the UK. We can support this worthy cause by signing and making up the 50,000 signatures needed by Melten Avcil’s petition here change.org

What I am doing, is not to obscure the wider issues and challenges of migration control. I do understand the need for nations especially in the developed country to put further curbs on immigration for obvious reasons. The idea of this article is not to justify illegal migration or to ask that humane asylum policy should be led by emotions and not law, no! I believe that despite the challenges, we can still preserve the rights of persons who are fleeing persecution as stated in the 1951 Geneva Convention.

Men,Children and Women in particular who flee death, torture, rape and imprisonment do not deserve to be incarcerated if their only crime is fleeing persecution in their home land. They do not deserve to be welcomed by the very devil they fled from in sanctuary Europe, or to be forcibly returned to the country they flee from. In the word of Melten Avcil ‘If a woman has already experienced rape, torture, and imprisonment in her home country then it is really hard for her to be locked up here’.

Yarl’s wood and other detention center across Europe and America are no refuge for refugees. Sadly,they still have hundreds of asylum seekers locked up in them. Dear leaders, do you hear when they cry?

Written By~Adaobi Nkeokelonye

Is Sizwe Bansi Dead?

April 5, 2014 / fictioningdevelopment / 2 Comments

When a piece of writing gets you a space in jail, then it struck a very sensitive cord for the incumbent government. The texture of such writing, are absurd, dealing with surreal subject matters. Sizwe Bansi is Dead is such; a dramatically provocative piece with strands of humor and layers of irony. It excites the good and the bad. Despite not mentioning the word ‘Apartheid’ in all of the book, it triggered the then South African Apartheid Government to arrest Athol Fugard and his African co-writer/performers John Kani and Winston Ntshona for treason. Talk about a piece of fiction that has aged gracefully, this is it!

Written in 1972, it is set in a South Africa when blacks could only find peace in their grave. With a sparse setting, we meet three major characters, Styles the photographer and narrator, Sizwe Bansi whose experience the drama is centered on and his friend Buntu. Styles established his ‘strong room of dreams’, a photo studio representing an escapist world which presents a space for other blacks to interpret their dream. Behind his lens, they share their dreams, aspirations and achievements. With a click of his camera, he immortalizes them. When finally they are dead and buried like his father, their photo is their only memorabilia. This profession gave Styles fulfillment away from his former job with ‘Ford Motors’ where he was only a ‘circus monkey’ that would be rewarded with just a gold wristwatch after 25yrs of service. With little choice, Styles locates his dream studio next to a funeral parlor, he wages war against some symbolic cockroaches; social venom without which he could not function.

Photo: www.theatreroyal.com enactment of Sizwe Bansi is Dead

Sizwe is Styles client with a dream to get employment in Port Elizabeth, away from his home in King Williams Town where he could not provide for his wife and kids. But with a passbook that declares it illegal for him to reside or gain employment in Port Elizabeth, Sizwe is boxed! This scene captures the realities of migrants seeking greener pastures outside their home zone and abroad. Unlike most illegal migrants of today who have relative freedom to move around and live in most countries, Sizwe could not. Sizwe’s movement was strongly regulated by the apartheid system in place.His passbook (Visa) required him to return to King Williams Town in three days. Like Buntu his friend, Sizwe is battered but still hopeful.

This drama, projects for me, the extreme sacrifices many migrants and perhaps desperate job seekers make to survive in a strange land. Sizwe saw himself as a ghost; after all he lived in a strange land where he was irrelevant and unnoticed. More so, not being able to earn income to sustain his household meant he was not a man but a dead man. With the help of Buntu, Sizwe finally puts his self to death. He gave his life and body to a dead man’s name, incarnating his self into Robert Zwelinzima, (the dead man) whom Buntu performs a surgery on his passbook which still holds a job seeker’s permit. Buntu replaced Robert’s picture with Sizwe’s. Sizwe Bansi is dead, Robert Zwelinzima is alive!

Sizwe Banzi Is Dead Photograph: Robert Day from theguardian.com

Sizwe (now Robert) with a new job, wearing a new suit, Stetson hat, a pipe in one hand and cigar in the other, is transformed to who he wants to be. Styles escapist world is the best place to capture the birth of the new Sizwe for his wife and family in King William Town to see. The whole play is climaxed in this scene where Sizwe struggles with constructing his new identity. This has supported the projection of the theme of this novel as that of Identity struggle.

While identity as a theme is obvious, it should not overshadow the significance this drama gives to the reality of migrants especially in the world today. It frames the struggle for identity, projecting the realities of shifts necessary for a migrant’s survival. It fits within the development context of migration and human right discourses, detailing the negotiations of national identities and other struggles migrants experience in the search for livelihood in a foreign land.

Migrants don’t arrive alone; they bring with them their culture, values and perspectives to life. In some cases, they don’t leave their homes willingly, they are forced to migrate. In the struggle for survival, most migrant job seekers have to live with an uneasy switch to dualism, impersonating other people’s privileges; this for them is worth it if they can survive. Diffusion into a new society is difficult, both for the migrant and their host society. Governments and people struggle to give space to migrants. In this process, many migrants are displaced, left at the margin of their new society. Some are made to feel they are just invisible, and just don’t count.

Wajiha Hamid (Third from left) with some Migrant Workers in Singapore.

Wajihah Hamid (Third from left) with some Migrant Workers in Singapore.

The way individuals and communities respond to the challenges of immigration and settlement is a trendy issue in International development. This has been expressed by the United Nation’s Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers. Adopted in 1990, it entered into force in 2003.Though in place, it has only been ratified by just forty states, exclusive of major immigration country.

Taking a leaf from the knowledge on the plight of migrant workers in countries across the world, the vizualmusing blogger; my dearest friend Wajihah Hamid with the support of her Sister Aisha organized Project Parallel Paths. They brought together 18 injured migrants workers and 13 natives of Singapore for an excursion to some places of interest in Singapore. The migrant workers were given Cameras to take individual photographs within a theme that captures their perspective of their host community.

Participants discussing their photos after Project Parallel Walk.

Participants discussing their photos after Project Parallel Paths.

The outputs are amazing and insightful pictures of Singapore in the eye of a migrant. Most importantly, it created a space for injured migrant workers to relax, eat out, visit the beach and mix freely with the natives. This ingenious project inspired by Waji’s experiences of her dissertation which included participatory action research method for once exalted neglected migrant workers from being research guinea pigs to active participants in research processes.Relating her key lesson from this initiative to me, Waji said ‘I have learnt that people sometimes overlook each other, and that given an opportunity, they can stop, re-think and make an effort to acknowledge the presence of ‘the others’ within their society’.

I appreciate Wajihah, Athol Fugard, and his African co-writer/performers John Kani and Winston Ntshona, and many others who are creatively helping migrants to live and make a living in a foreign land. The Sizwe Bansi of our time doesn’t have to die if more concerned people will address the plight of migrant workers world over.

A collage of some activity pictures from Project Parallel Paths

– Written by Adaobi Nkeokelonye

Author: fictioningdevelopment (Page 4 of 7)

Musing on FOREIGN GODS INC.

JULY’S PEOPLE

In the Belly of Dar es salaam

The Season of Kongi’s Harvest.

‘Oh, My Father is Selling Me, He is Selling Me!’

I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings…

The Dearth of the Happy Single Woman…

Lacing the War with Women and Children

Do They Hear When You Cry?

Is Sizwe Bansi Dead?

Recent Posts

Recent Comments

Archives

Categories