music
nigerianblogawards.com 2010 winners
Friday, July 30, 2010
Thursday, July 15, 2010
Facebook blurbs
music
What I was thinking today, copied from my facebook:
You ever feel like you're completely doing the right thing? Yeah, I feel good right now. It could also be the brunch I just had, washed down with juice - the extra sugar is a rare treat, and all is right with the world. (this morning)
the way politics works - name recognition - she has a better chance than almost anybody else.
comparing her with who *should* be a Senator in a giant country like Nigeria, you would hiss and say "no really how is this Madam Turai qualified?"
But comparing her with the Senators we have, you might hope that she brings sense into the machinations (and what word better suits the ex-first Lady than machinations?) of the upper house.
Read Tenants of the House, please.
(in response to rumours that Hajia Turai Yar'Adua might run for Senate.)
I think the problem with being a "researcher" at the most elite places is often too much talent on too little scope/applications. Every now and then, the talent finds a mission that's big enough...otherwise this restless ennui nags at the hapless human, just nags. (just now)
What I was thinking today, copied from my facebook:
You ever feel like you're completely doing the right thing? Yeah, I feel good right now. It could also be the brunch I just had, washed down with juice - the extra sugar is a rare treat, and all is right with the world. (this morning)
the way politics works - name recognition - she has a better chance than almost anybody else. comparing her with who *should* be a Senator in a giant country like Nigeria, you would hiss and say "no really how is this Madam Turai qualified?"
But comparing her with the Senators we have, you might hope that she brings sense into the machinations (and what word better suits the ex-first Lady than machinations?) of the upper house.
Read Tenants of the House, please.
(in response to rumours that Hajia Turai Yar'Adua might run for Senate.)
I think the problem with being a "researcher" at the most elite places is often too much talent on too little scope/applications. Every now and then, the talent finds a mission that's big enough...otherwise this restless ennui nags at the hapless human, just nags. (just now)
Saturday, July 03, 2010
From earlier today, the speech
music
Pass on the torch
Still brightly gleaming
Pass on the hopes
The earnest dreaming
To those who follow close at hand.
My warmest greetings to all: our distinguished guests (naming them), as well as our distinguished hosts – the students and staff of Queen’s College Lagos.
Since 1927, the Queen’s College torch has been passed on.
Eighty-three years - that is four generations. That is, of the earliest classes of QC girls, some may have had grandchildren whose granddaughters have become QC girls. So we
Pass on the thoughts,
The skills, the learning
Pass on the secrets
In most yearning
That they may build where we have planned.
The words of a poem. The lyrics of a song. When Miss Dorothy Peel wrote these words, how did she know that the most beautiful ones are not yet born? That where our set planned would be where your set built the house? That our biggest accomplishments would be but a starting point for your set?
Your dreams will be bigger. Isn’t there a lot to excite you as you look around and see a world filled with delicious problems that your ancestors have not solved?
The effort of your forebears over the last fifty years has yielded a democratic state. Still, in this government for the people, the percentage of people served and the quality of this service both need to be increased by orders of magnitude.
In Lagos, we have seen the recent miracle of road-improvement projects, refuse collection, urban beautification. Still I am sure that we can envision a still more beautiful environment with functional public architecture, excellent mass transit, with flowers everywhere.
Yes, your dreams must be bigger than ours. In particular, your dreams must be bigger than money. I like the phrase “poverty of ambition.” As Obama put it, “There’s nothing wrong with making money, but focusing your life solely on making a buck shows a certain poverty of ambition. It asks too little of yourself...”
Pass on the songs
Pass on the laughter
Pass on the joy
That others after
May tread more lightly on their way
I hope that you always remember these words. Remember to sing, to laugh. Remember to play (do you need to be reminded to play?) Remember to dance a little. Keep the tradition of Queen’s College ladies as joyful and fit, as we
Pass on the faith
That naught can alter
Pass on the strength
Lest they should falter
In hours of stress some future day.
We are pilgrims now. We’re on a journey now. We tread lightly, joyfully on our way. We who have studied the Bible and reflected on the Qur’an. We preserve our faith.
For you, my young sisters, this is not even enough. Draw strength also from the Bhagavad Gita. Read also from The Origin of Species. Take a lesson or two from ‘Things Fall Apart.” Do you hear the wisdom in DaGrin’s flow? How do you feel about God and religion? Comment on non-local interactions in quantum science. Who can quantify the vastness of the known cosmos?
In short, get what the giant of African-American history W.E.B. DuBois referred to as “intelligence, broad sympathy, knowledge of the world that was and is, and of the relation of men to it.” This is the sound education for which YOU must strive.
Pass on the firm determination
To guide a later generation
By gentle influence in the home
It may be true that a woman has a domestic role. In days past, fitness for the domestic role was the entire purpose of a woman’s education. The home. Home economics, essentially.
But some things have changed. In those days, few people went to school. Now, many children will be raised primarily in schools. Now, many fathers, men, will participate in raising their own children. These days, you as a woman need not divide your day between scrubbing wooden utensils – along the grain! – and cutting patterns for your next party dress. There is a machine for the wooden spoon, and we all know where to shop for the dress.
With home tasks outsourced, shared, and mechanized to such a large extent, you, we, women, are called outside the home as well as in. There is a public sphere, is my point, and how could you not want to stamp your mark on it? Let everybody know: I was ‘ere in class and style.
As a young woman, you are invited to be a politician - of the excellent kind.
Or to be an actor and make us dream.
Be a scientist – they are not just people you read about in books, they are flesh and blood like me.
Be a teacher, and guide that later generation.
Be a sculptor; be something we haven’t heard of before, or do something traditional - but do it with style.
Be a man. I’m not saying don’t be a woo-man. I am saying you can be omo-seggsy if you wish, or even if you’re big-bosomed and nurturing, or you’re shy and sensitive, or you’re this short and fragile and you love pink, pink everything, when it comes to greatness, feel free to be a man.
If ever good advice was given, it was Rudyard Kipling’s poem titled “If”:
If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you.
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you
But give allowance for their doubting too…
Some of you must know the rest. The poem ends:
…Yours is the earth and everything in it,
And – which is more - you’ll be a man, my son.
Be a great woman!
While I was a student here at Queen’s, our PQC Marinho instilled the following words, ascribed to the 19th century writer Henry Wadsworth Longfellow:
The heights by great men reached and kept were not attained by sudden flight, but they while their companions slept were toiling upwards in the night.
Pass on the health, the youthful vigour,
Pass on the love that can transfigure
The darkest hours that yet may come.
We’re on a journey now. We’re on a journey now. The little we have we have passed on to you.
The little strength they have, your parents have passed on too, in the hope – no, in the certain confidence – that you are greater than they are. Although I am a little older than you, I recently lived with my parents. Let me tell you what I found: Parents will worry.
A story: once I was at lunch with two North American executives, in Detroit, Michigan. We were eating in the company cafeteria when one man complained about his teenage son, bemoaning that the young man was not motivated. The other man replied, “Bill, you know, there are many ways to skin a cat. Maybe your boy is just doing things a different way, that’s all.” To this he said, “Daniel, you’re talking about skinning a cat. I just hope my son knows there’s a cat to be skinned.” They laughed. Lunch continued.
Across cultures, parents really can’t stop thinking and talking about you. They care about you. They will worry.
Some girls here will like to beg their parents (yes?) for less worrying and more listening. Parents, if you will listen to us, you may discover that we care even more about the future than you. We know that there is a cat to be skinned. We’re boiling the water, we have filed the knife, …
Before this gets too macabre, I’ll continue…Poor cat!
The love that they have, your teachers have passed on to you. It takes a village to raise a child. It takes bursars and matrons, Principals, language teachers and business teachers, artists and scientists. Here at Queen’s College, the teachers – the Principal and all the staff – give you their all everyday, so that you may be prepared, not only when things are easy, but for the tough hours that yet may come. Cherish their love, and I say to our parents and teachers: Thank you.
To our dear students, I say, take advantage of Queen’s College. Make effort. Some of you are winning prizes today because of the effort you have made. Some of you are winning so many prizes today, that we’ll just have to wonder – how? How do you do it? (Answer : The heights by great men reached and kept… )
Some of us are not there yet. But we’re on a journey. And I quote this student favourite, attributed to Benjamin Cardozo: “In the end, the great truth will have been learned, that the quest is greater than that which is sought, the effort finer than the prize, or rather, that the effort is the prize, the victory cheap and hollow were it not for the rigour of the game.”
Bill Clinton liked that quote in his student days and I kept it as my laptop screensaver for many years. The effort IS the prize.
The truth that I know, I have passed on to you.
With a great sense of history and a great sense of hope, I ask you finally to sing with me, the final stanza of our school song:
Pass on the torch, the cry inspiring
Unites us here in hopes untiring
In bonds no future years can sever
We forward press not backwards turning
That this our torch more brightly burning
May yet pass on and on forever.
Text of a Speech delivered by Oluwatosin H. Otitoju (FRM)
as Guest Speaker at the Annual Speech and Prize-Giving Ceremony of Queen’s College Lagos on 3rd July, 2010
as Guest Speaker at the Annual Speech and Prize-Giving Ceremony of Queen’s College Lagos on 3rd July, 2010
Pass on the torch
Still brightly gleaming
Pass on the hopes
The earnest dreaming
To those who follow close at hand.
My warmest greetings to all: our distinguished guests (naming them), as well as our distinguished hosts – the students and staff of Queen’s College Lagos.
Since 1927, the Queen’s College torch has been passed on.
Eighty-three years - that is four generations. That is, of the earliest classes of QC girls, some may have had grandchildren whose granddaughters have become QC girls. So we
Pass on the thoughts,
The skills, the learning
Pass on the secrets
In most yearning
That they may build where we have planned.
The words of a poem. The lyrics of a song. When Miss Dorothy Peel wrote these words, how did she know that the most beautiful ones are not yet born? That where our set planned would be where your set built the house? That our biggest accomplishments would be but a starting point for your set?
Your dreams will be bigger. Isn’t there a lot to excite you as you look around and see a world filled with delicious problems that your ancestors have not solved?
The effort of your forebears over the last fifty years has yielded a democratic state. Still, in this government for the people, the percentage of people served and the quality of this service both need to be increased by orders of magnitude.
In Lagos, we have seen the recent miracle of road-improvement projects, refuse collection, urban beautification. Still I am sure that we can envision a still more beautiful environment with functional public architecture, excellent mass transit, with flowers everywhere.
Yes, your dreams must be bigger than ours. In particular, your dreams must be bigger than money. I like the phrase “poverty of ambition.” As Obama put it, “There’s nothing wrong with making money, but focusing your life solely on making a buck shows a certain poverty of ambition. It asks too little of yourself...”
Pass on the songs
Pass on the laughter
Pass on the joy
That others after
May tread more lightly on their way
I hope that you always remember these words. Remember to sing, to laugh. Remember to play (do you need to be reminded to play?) Remember to dance a little. Keep the tradition of Queen’s College ladies as joyful and fit, as we
Pass on the faith
That naught can alter
Pass on the strength
Lest they should falter
In hours of stress some future day.
We are pilgrims now. We’re on a journey now. We tread lightly, joyfully on our way. We who have studied the Bible and reflected on the Qur’an. We preserve our faith.
For you, my young sisters, this is not even enough. Draw strength also from the Bhagavad Gita. Read also from The Origin of Species. Take a lesson or two from ‘Things Fall Apart.” Do you hear the wisdom in DaGrin’s flow? How do you feel about God and religion? Comment on non-local interactions in quantum science. Who can quantify the vastness of the known cosmos?
In short, get what the giant of African-American history W.E.B. DuBois referred to as “intelligence, broad sympathy, knowledge of the world that was and is, and of the relation of men to it.” This is the sound education for which YOU must strive.
Pass on the firm determination
To guide a later generation
By gentle influence in the home
It may be true that a woman has a domestic role. In days past, fitness for the domestic role was the entire purpose of a woman’s education. The home. Home economics, essentially.
But some things have changed. In those days, few people went to school. Now, many children will be raised primarily in schools. Now, many fathers, men, will participate in raising their own children. These days, you as a woman need not divide your day between scrubbing wooden utensils – along the grain! – and cutting patterns for your next party dress. There is a machine for the wooden spoon, and we all know where to shop for the dress.
With home tasks outsourced, shared, and mechanized to such a large extent, you, we, women, are called outside the home as well as in. There is a public sphere, is my point, and how could you not want to stamp your mark on it? Let everybody know: I was ‘ere in class and style.
As a young woman, you are invited to be a politician - of the excellent kind.
Or to be an actor and make us dream.
Be a scientist – they are not just people you read about in books, they are flesh and blood like me.
Be a teacher, and guide that later generation.
Be a sculptor; be something we haven’t heard of before, or do something traditional - but do it with style.
Be a man. I’m not saying don’t be a woo-man. I am saying you can be omo-seggsy if you wish, or even if you’re big-bosomed and nurturing, or you’re shy and sensitive, or you’re this short and fragile and you love pink, pink everything, when it comes to greatness, feel free to be a man.
If ever good advice was given, it was Rudyard Kipling’s poem titled “If”:
If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you.
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you
But give allowance for their doubting too…
Some of you must know the rest. The poem ends:
…Yours is the earth and everything in it,
And – which is more - you’ll be a man, my son.
Be a great woman!
While I was a student here at Queen’s, our PQC Marinho instilled the following words, ascribed to the 19th century writer Henry Wadsworth Longfellow:
The heights by great men reached and kept were not attained by sudden flight, but they while their companions slept were toiling upwards in the night.
Pass on the health, the youthful vigour,
Pass on the love that can transfigure
The darkest hours that yet may come.
We’re on a journey now. We’re on a journey now. The little we have we have passed on to you.
The little strength they have, your parents have passed on too, in the hope – no, in the certain confidence – that you are greater than they are. Although I am a little older than you, I recently lived with my parents. Let me tell you what I found: Parents will worry.
A story: once I was at lunch with two North American executives, in Detroit, Michigan. We were eating in the company cafeteria when one man complained about his teenage son, bemoaning that the young man was not motivated. The other man replied, “Bill, you know, there are many ways to skin a cat. Maybe your boy is just doing things a different way, that’s all.” To this he said, “Daniel, you’re talking about skinning a cat. I just hope my son knows there’s a cat to be skinned.” They laughed. Lunch continued.
Across cultures, parents really can’t stop thinking and talking about you. They care about you. They will worry.
Some girls here will like to beg their parents (yes?) for less worrying and more listening. Parents, if you will listen to us, you may discover that we care even more about the future than you. We know that there is a cat to be skinned. We’re boiling the water, we have filed the knife, …
Before this gets too macabre, I’ll continue…Poor cat!
The love that they have, your teachers have passed on to you. It takes a village to raise a child. It takes bursars and matrons, Principals, language teachers and business teachers, artists and scientists. Here at Queen’s College, the teachers – the Principal and all the staff – give you their all everyday, so that you may be prepared, not only when things are easy, but for the tough hours that yet may come. Cherish their love, and I say to our parents and teachers: Thank you.
To our dear students, I say, take advantage of Queen’s College. Make effort. Some of you are winning prizes today because of the effort you have made. Some of you are winning so many prizes today, that we’ll just have to wonder – how? How do you do it? (Answer : The heights by great men reached and kept… )
Some of us are not there yet. But we’re on a journey. And I quote this student favourite, attributed to Benjamin Cardozo: “In the end, the great truth will have been learned, that the quest is greater than that which is sought, the effort finer than the prize, or rather, that the effort is the prize, the victory cheap and hollow were it not for the rigour of the game.”
Bill Clinton liked that quote in his student days and I kept it as my laptop screensaver for many years. The effort IS the prize.
The truth that I know, I have passed on to you.
With a great sense of history and a great sense of hope, I ask you finally to sing with me, the final stanza of our school song:
Pass on the torch, the cry inspiring
Unites us here in hopes untiring
In bonds no future years can sever
We forward press not backwards turning
That this our torch more brightly burning
May yet pass on and on forever.
Wednesday, June 30, 2010
Heroes: Sadosky
music
Dr. Cora Sadosky taught me Differential Equations and Fundamentals of Applied Mathematics at Howard University. She made most of her students feel very special. She fought for people, sometimes maybe too much. Dr. Sadosky dramatized mathematics in an appealing way one can only call sexy, with talk about live meetings with dudes we had read only about in books, an accent that belonged everywhere - what are you? Italian? Russian? , eclectic dress too: the necklaces of real coral (Cora loves coral) and Soviet-style boiled-wool suits and those up-to-the-minute stylish loafers she wore on the first day I met her, and this biography online (of course we looked her up online) that explained some of who she is.
She is unforgettable to me, especially because she fought for me to attend my dream summer program in Applied Math at Carnegie Mellon and my too-good-to-even-dream-of Institute for grad school, all the time claiming that I was that good.
I try to be an inspiring math teacher now, with examples like hers from my undergraduate days.
This weekend, I'm the Guest Speaker at the Speech Day and Prize-Giving Ceremony at my alma mater, Queen's College, Nigeria's premier (1927) secondary school for girls. I'm impressed.
Dr. Cora Sadosky taught me Differential Equations and Fundamentals of Applied Mathematics at Howard University. She made most of her students feel very special. She fought for people, sometimes maybe too much. Dr. Sadosky dramatized mathematics in an appealing way one can only call sexy, with talk about live meetings with dudes we had read only about in books, an accent that belonged everywhere - what are you? Italian? Russian? , eclectic dress too: the necklaces of real coral (Cora loves coral) and Soviet-style boiled-wool suits and those up-to-the-minute stylish loafers she wore on the first day I met her, and this biography online (of course we looked her up online) that explained some of who she is.
She is unforgettable to me, especially because she fought for me to attend my dream summer program in Applied Math at Carnegie Mellon and my too-good-to-even-dream-of Institute for grad school, all the time claiming that I was that good.
I try to be an inspiring math teacher now, with examples like hers from my undergraduate days.
This weekend, I'm the Guest Speaker at the Speech Day and Prize-Giving Ceremony at my alma mater, Queen's College, Nigeria's premier (1927) secondary school for girls. I'm impressed.
Tuesday, June 01, 2010
Friends I just met
music
The Wayfarer is a nice blog by a friend I just met.
I've been on a socializing blitz since at least Tuesday. Considering I like never go anywhere, this was a great effort. My parents are probably happy their recluse child chose to leave the house :) Olakunle, I even "met someone."
Let's see:
Monday - wrote a training manual and got very tired.
Tuesday - finished The Abyssinian Boy in an upstairs classroom in Unilag with a fresh fragrant forest breeze. Then hung out with "my children" at Creative Arts. Then to Taruwa, a poetry/live music gathering, where I actually first met Seun2 who gave a couple of us a ride home, lest I forget. Taruwa is nice. Bi-weekly. Hosted by Bez, a gifted musician and one of my favourite.
Wednesday - NLI Notes2Note launched, then I caught a movie, ran into Seun-in-a-suit, another movie, then followed him to his church fellowship where I met Seun2 who writes The Wayfarer. It was too cold so I waited outside like one witch.
Thursday - went to watch High School Musical (theater performed for Children's Day for rich kids, one of my children played a lead role otherwise I have no business with HSM) after work. It started hours late.
Friday - Met The Onyeka I Adore - that was a treat, and then went to this awesome Nigerian Leadership Initiative seminar as a visitor.
Saturday - nice lunch then the Farafina Writers shindig that had Seun Kuti and then to the dinner for the NLI seminar where people stayed up talking till 3am. See brilliance.
Sunday - chilled.
Monday - a holiday so to the movies with the "met someone" who revealed at the end of the evening that he was born in 1988. Great dramedy, you should have been there.
The Wayfarer is a nice blog by a friend I just met.
I've been on a socializing blitz since at least Tuesday. Considering I like never go anywhere, this was a great effort. My parents are probably happy their recluse child chose to leave the house :) Olakunle, I even "met someone."
Let's see:
Monday - wrote a training manual and got very tired.
Tuesday - finished The Abyssinian Boy in an upstairs classroom in Unilag with a fresh fragrant forest breeze. Then hung out with "my children" at Creative Arts. Then to Taruwa, a poetry/live music gathering, where I actually first met Seun2 who gave a couple of us a ride home, lest I forget. Taruwa is nice. Bi-weekly. Hosted by Bez, a gifted musician and one of my favourite.
Wednesday - NLI Notes2Note launched, then I caught a movie, ran into Seun-in-a-suit, another movie, then followed him to his church fellowship where I met Seun2 who writes The Wayfarer. It was too cold so I waited outside like one witch.
Thursday - went to watch High School Musical (theater performed for Children's Day for rich kids, one of my children played a lead role otherwise I have no business with HSM) after work. It started hours late.
Friday - Met The Onyeka I Adore - that was a treat, and then went to this awesome Nigerian Leadership Initiative seminar as a visitor.
Saturday - nice lunch then the Farafina Writers shindig that had Seun Kuti and then to the dinner for the NLI seminar where people stayed up talking till 3am. See brilliance.
Sunday - chilled.
Monday - a holiday so to the movies with the "met someone" who revealed at the end of the evening that he was born in 1988. Great dramedy, you should have been there.
Tuesday, May 25, 2010
More Arab Film Festival 2006
music
I'm still blogging the 2006 Arab Film Festival. What Procrastination.
I'll develop my blog notes from 2007, copied here.
Start with Zozo. Watch it. More than sold out.
Kiss Me Not on the Eyes. I bought the soundtrack. More than sold out.
Seeds of Doubt
Ahlaam
Waiting
Wesh wesh
Bosta
Bab Aziz
Once upon a time in the Wadi
Khadija Al-Salami http://www.arabia-felix.com/arabia-felix-11.html
Also post picture give me liberty
Where are they now?
Zozo just worked perfectly as a movie. It made me cry, with its depiction of a boy's childhood in some Northern country (was it Sweden?) Sort of an autobiography. There was a bird that was used to very special effect. Zozo made you laugh too. You can imagine, happy-sad, immigration, very clear white pictures, Q and A with the writer/director Josef Fares afterwards. The Arab Film Festival had used Zozo and Dunia on opening night. The word got out about those films and it was a mob that came to watch them later on in the week. Zozo became Sweden's representative to the Academy Awards for the Best Foreign Film Oscar. More about the Zozo film, including a synopsis. Be sure to check this good blog review.
Dunia (Kiss Me Not on the Eyes) is, as Raj put it, poetic. You hear the cadence of ancient love poetry, you do also taste the souk spices, and feel a little with the girl her escape from repression into sensuality. Unforgettable for me is the drumroll in lak, lak, lak (on the soundtrack CD) to which beat the pro-dancers gyrate without shame, the song which is also used to sell underwear in the market, the market like the one this guy walked me through in Cairo one of my last nights there - not a big respectable market like the tourist souk at Khan El Khalili near El-Azhar, but the place near my house I didn't even know it was there that had a boy up on a table dancing while shaking silky underwear for sale (or did this only happen in the film?) The main actress is very very beautiful, arrestingly sultry, like the best of Catherine Zeta-Jones. The movie is sensuous enough from just having a camera closely following her action, but then add the colours (red especially), the deliberate and slow pace, the storyline, that scene with the bangles and the lesson in fore-foreplay, and now, the fact that I associate Mohamed Mounir's love songs with the film.
Seeds of Doubt (Folgeschäden, original German title) is another thought-provoking immigrant film. This guy is an important doctor in Germany, has been there forever, even thinks he's German really, until something happens that makes people think of terrorists and of course of him with his Arab self. Paranoia all around. The production is very clean and Western really. The actor looks very like the director, who is an Egyptian based in Germany. Maybe even half-German Egyptian based in Germany. Very effective film it was. It was a TV-film and went to a few film festivals. I had a crush on the filmmaker Samir Nasr.
Ahlaam made me want to die in Iraq. Or at least go to Baghdad and eat the completely dry sand. It was melodrama overlaid on cinematography. Baghdad is burning, a woman is crying going mad widowed dying all at once. She drags her messy body from place to place (I think wearing her wedding dress, I think she broke out of prison or lunatic house when the war started) and all I can see is these views of scorching sun and dry earth that is brown like over-burnt sand dunes. Even in the city where the shoot-outs happen under a bridge or across a wide road, there is that sand and it's the sexiest saddest sand I've ever seen and I just want a mouthful of that. The film continues the festival tour - check the Ahlaam Facebook fan group - and has been awarded at many of them. I'm guessing they haven't got an aggressive seller behind the film, really. Mohammed Al-Daradji made the film, there's a nice interview here.
Ahlaam = plural of hilm = dreams. Aflaam = plural of film = films. Gotta love the language.
Waiting. Is about waiting. If you have ever been in a God-forsaken place, where you wait all your life - maybe for a signature, maybe for petrol to arrive so that you can get a pen to give to the officer who will someday arrive and then someday give you the signature... - you will say of this film, yes, this is waiting. About life in Palestine. Always waiting. Bloody good art. (Titles in other languages: Attente. Intizar.) By Rashid Mashrawi.
Wesh Wesh. Was this the Algerian film about the sort of slum-dwelling gangster immigrants in some European town (Paris?) If so, I was not connecting, man. It was gritty, maybe a lot of slang, and a little like that Jimmy Cliff "The Harder They Come" film. To start with, the title has "wesh" which is not any Standard Arabic word. You know how all those mesh, mashi, mafish, mush, words (used to) annoy me. Apparently it means like "what's happening, what a-gwan" The director Rabah Ameur-Zaïmeche also did Bled Number One which was popular at that film festival, and completed the multi-award-winning trilogy with Dernier Marquis (2008) The lesson is: Paris has housing "projects" and they suck. I remember the drama now. Watch Wesh Wesh here.
Algéries, mes Fantômes, is another film from Algeria. It had this escapist aesthetic, a road trip on a divine stretch of coast and some friends simply shacking up at the beach, if memory serves. By Jean-Pierre Lledo. Trailer here.
Bosta. It'sa let'sa havea some-a fun. It was alright, a lot of colour and dancing and colourful dancing. Like Breakdance (feelgood films from the 80s about breakdancing) but in shiny MC Hammer Aladdin trousers, crossed with Zorba The Greek. It was the best-selling film in Lebanon in 2006 and was submitted to the Oscars as well.
Another movie with even shinier clothes was Once Upon A Time in the Wadi, originally Il Etait Une Fois Dans L'Oued. Dude, I wasn't laughing. I guess the crime caper (I learned that term in 2003 watching a preview screening of The Big Bounce) is not my genre.
Although I didn't watch Bab-Aziz, from browsing the reviews in the feedback sheets at the AFF, I still long to have seen it. It seems that it took people's breath away, and they would just comment: WOW, or something like that. On amazon. Directed by Nacer Khemir.
There was another film about music and mysticism with more swirling dervishes, in Morocco. Sound of the Soul, by Stephen Olsson. I must have seen part of it. It must have been beautiful. You can buy it here, and it's been on LinkTV.
Michael Franti's documentary I Know I'm Not Alone (on amazon)shows him taking music and cheer to the streets of Iraq, and Palestine/Israel from an American with love. I think there was footage of Iraq's rock and garage bands etc. Would it take more than music to heal this war? Charming film - what was that simple chant he had everyone singing along - yes - habiibiibii habiibiibii habiibiibii habibi. Habibi simply means friend or beloved. It seems there was a CD with the same title, lyrics here.
Linda and Ali seems like a wonderful film. I still really wish I had watched this documentary about the Qatari wife from Arizona. Curious how their interracial marriage works out. Susie's Big Adventure is a cool blog by a woman in a similarly interracial marriage in Saudi Arabia. It won a Bloggie last year.
Yasmine's Song (good review) is a 20minute short film. More melodrama, more wedding dresses. I remember being touched by this story of lovers separated by *the* wall. I don't remember if the wedding actually happened, with a parade on the street and a skirt of paper to keep some tradition, maybe that was a different film. Najwa Najjar wrote/directed Yasmine TuGhani/Yasmine sings. I suspect The Syrian Bride, a significantly more popular film, (not at that festival) is similar. It features Hiam Abbass.
When you watch The Blood of My Brother (Dam Akhii), you see the life of a family member taken pointlessly by wartime chaos in Iraq and you get angry and you wonder along with those left behind what to do with the grief - work, revenge, be bitter, be silent, be soldiers, what? The blood of a ram or goat was spilled in the film and this upset some in the theater. That it upset them (more than the gunned-down human beings upset them) upset some others. Film by Andrew Berends, available on amazon, reviewed on rottentomatoes.com
Little Beirut (watch here, by Mirella Habr) is a short documentary that is exactly this: reactions of Lebanese expats in a Parisian neighborhood at a pivotal moment in history: the Cedar Revolution of April 2005. It went to Cannes Film Festival.
Le Thé d'Ania (OK film, download here. by Said Ould-Khelifa, Algeria), is really a French film, I missed most of it.
La Femme Seule (Short Film, by Brahim Fritah) is an authentic voice (preview) - the life of a West African housemaid - presented in an original style. I wonder how much the style has been copied now.
Beit Min Lahm (House of Flesh, a short film by Rami Abdul-Jabbar, Egypt) is scandalous and the story is consistent with its dark shadowy closeted images.
When Yemen was back in the news this year thanks to a Nigerian would-be terrorist, CNN/Amanpour showed A Stranger In Her Own City to introduce the world to aspects of Yemeni life. Nijmiya is a star. Nijmiya = like/of Nijm = like a star. Documentary film by Khadija El-Salami, a Yemeni diplomat with a crazy story of her own, a Yemeni feminist that is also famous. I'm going to watch the short film online here (still can't find 2/3 of it.) By the way, Nijmiya is doing free and OK. I love her.
Occupation 101: Voices of the Silenced Majority was the big issue documentary. Palestine is the issue. And Israel and the US. None can forget footage of the little diva, this child of about four years, complaining about the artillery spoiling all her things. I adore the filmmakers (The Omeish brothers) and the film is (or at least was) a must-watch-and-get-others-to-watch-too. Watch it online, buy it on amazon.
Goal Dreams (by Maya Sanbar and Jeffrey Saunders) is simply awesome. Combines "waiting" with humour, hope, and football. A documentary that is really fun to watch, Goal Dreams shows Palestine's forming a national football team to bid for the 2006 World Cup. Among the Palestinians on the team is a dapper Wall Street banker, an Argentine, a player from Gaza strip that may/may not cross the checkpoint in time. The coach uses translators who confuse left and right; when the team plays, obviously not on home soil, it's to an empty stadium, when the home fans would have so loved to watch. Just more occupation craziness wrapped in a very good sports film.
So finally, 44 months after the show, I finished the review. Find the previous reviews here and here.
I'm still blogging the 2006 Arab Film Festival. What Procrastination.
I'll develop my blog notes from 2007, copied here.
Start with Zozo. Watch it. More than sold out.
Kiss Me Not on the Eyes. I bought the soundtrack. More than sold out.
Seeds of Doubt
Ahlaam
Waiting
Wesh wesh
Bosta
Bab Aziz
Once upon a time in the Wadi
Khadija Al-Salami http://www.arabia-felix.com/arabia-felix-11.html
Also post picture give me liberty
Where are they now?
Zozo just worked perfectly as a movie. It made me cry, with its depiction of a boy's childhood in some Northern country (was it Sweden?) Sort of an autobiography. There was a bird that was used to very special effect. Zozo made you laugh too. You can imagine, happy-sad, immigration, very clear white pictures, Q and A with the writer/director Josef Fares afterwards. The Arab Film Festival had used Zozo and Dunia on opening night. The word got out about those films and it was a mob that came to watch them later on in the week. Zozo became Sweden's representative to the Academy Awards for the Best Foreign Film Oscar. More about the Zozo film, including a synopsis. Be sure to check this good blog review.
Dunia (Kiss Me Not on the Eyes) is, as Raj put it, poetic. You hear the cadence of ancient love poetry, you do also taste the souk spices, and feel a little with the girl her escape from repression into sensuality. Unforgettable for me is the drumroll in lak, lak, lak (on the soundtrack CD) to which beat the pro-dancers gyrate without shame, the song which is also used to sell underwear in the market, the market like the one this guy walked me through in Cairo one of my last nights there - not a big respectable market like the tourist souk at Khan El Khalili near El-Azhar, but the place near my house I didn't even know it was there that had a boy up on a table dancing while shaking silky underwear for sale (or did this only happen in the film?) The main actress is very very beautiful, arrestingly sultry, like the best of Catherine Zeta-Jones. The movie is sensuous enough from just having a camera closely following her action, but then add the colours (red especially), the deliberate and slow pace, the storyline, that scene with the bangles and the lesson in fore-foreplay, and now, the fact that I associate Mohamed Mounir's love songs with the film.
Seeds of Doubt (Folgeschäden, original German title) is another thought-provoking immigrant film. This guy is an important doctor in Germany, has been there forever, even thinks he's German really, until something happens that makes people think of terrorists and of course of him with his Arab self. Paranoia all around. The production is very clean and Western really. The actor looks very like the director, who is an Egyptian based in Germany. Maybe even half-German Egyptian based in Germany. Very effective film it was. It was a TV-film and went to a few film festivals. I had a crush on the filmmaker Samir Nasr.
Ahlaam made me want to die in Iraq. Or at least go to Baghdad and eat the completely dry sand. It was melodrama overlaid on cinematography. Baghdad is burning, a woman is crying going mad widowed dying all at once. She drags her messy body from place to place (I think wearing her wedding dress, I think she broke out of prison or lunatic house when the war started) and all I can see is these views of scorching sun and dry earth that is brown like over-burnt sand dunes. Even in the city where the shoot-outs happen under a bridge or across a wide road, there is that sand and it's the sexiest saddest sand I've ever seen and I just want a mouthful of that. The film continues the festival tour - check the Ahlaam Facebook fan group - and has been awarded at many of them. I'm guessing they haven't got an aggressive seller behind the film, really. Mohammed Al-Daradji made the film, there's a nice interview here.
Ahlaam = plural of hilm = dreams. Aflaam = plural of film = films. Gotta love the language.
Waiting. Is about waiting. If you have ever been in a God-forsaken place, where you wait all your life - maybe for a signature, maybe for petrol to arrive so that you can get a pen to give to the officer who will someday arrive and then someday give you the signature... - you will say of this film, yes, this is waiting. About life in Palestine. Always waiting. Bloody good art. (Titles in other languages: Attente. Intizar.) By Rashid Mashrawi.
Wesh Wesh. Was this the Algerian film about the sort of slum-dwelling gangster immigrants in some European town (Paris?) If so, I was not connecting, man. It was gritty, maybe a lot of slang, and a little like that Jimmy Cliff "The Harder They Come" film. To start with, the title has "wesh" which is not any Standard Arabic word. You know how all those mesh, mashi, mafish, mush, words (used to) annoy me. Apparently it means like "what's happening, what a-gwan" The director Rabah Ameur-Zaïmeche also did Bled Number One which was popular at that film festival, and completed the multi-award-winning trilogy with Dernier Marquis (2008) The lesson is: Paris has housing "projects" and they suck. I remember the drama now. Watch Wesh Wesh here.
Algéries, mes Fantômes, is another film from Algeria. It had this escapist aesthetic, a road trip on a divine stretch of coast and some friends simply shacking up at the beach, if memory serves. By Jean-Pierre Lledo. Trailer here.
Bosta. It'sa let'sa havea some-a fun. It was alright, a lot of colour and dancing and colourful dancing. Like Breakdance (feelgood films from the 80s about breakdancing) but in shiny MC Hammer Aladdin trousers, crossed with Zorba The Greek. It was the best-selling film in Lebanon in 2006 and was submitted to the Oscars as well.
Another movie with even shinier clothes was Once Upon A Time in the Wadi, originally Il Etait Une Fois Dans L'Oued. Dude, I wasn't laughing. I guess the crime caper (I learned that term in 2003 watching a preview screening of The Big Bounce) is not my genre.
Although I didn't watch Bab-Aziz, from browsing the reviews in the feedback sheets at the AFF, I still long to have seen it. It seems that it took people's breath away, and they would just comment: WOW, or something like that. On amazon. Directed by Nacer Khemir.
There was another film about music and mysticism with more swirling dervishes, in Morocco. Sound of the Soul, by Stephen Olsson. I must have seen part of it. It must have been beautiful. You can buy it here, and it's been on LinkTV.
Michael Franti's documentary I Know I'm Not Alone (on amazon)shows him taking music and cheer to the streets of Iraq, and Palestine/Israel from an American with love. I think there was footage of Iraq's rock and garage bands etc. Would it take more than music to heal this war? Charming film - what was that simple chant he had everyone singing along - yes - habiibiibii habiibiibii habiibiibii habibi. Habibi simply means friend or beloved. It seems there was a CD with the same title, lyrics here.
Linda and Ali seems like a wonderful film. I still really wish I had watched this documentary about the Qatari wife from Arizona. Curious how their interracial marriage works out. Susie's Big Adventure is a cool blog by a woman in a similarly interracial marriage in Saudi Arabia. It won a Bloggie last year.
Yasmine's Song (good review) is a 20minute short film. More melodrama, more wedding dresses. I remember being touched by this story of lovers separated by *the* wall. I don't remember if the wedding actually happened, with a parade on the street and a skirt of paper to keep some tradition, maybe that was a different film. Najwa Najjar wrote/directed Yasmine TuGhani/Yasmine sings. I suspect The Syrian Bride, a significantly more popular film, (not at that festival) is similar. It features Hiam Abbass.
When you watch The Blood of My Brother (Dam Akhii), you see the life of a family member taken pointlessly by wartime chaos in Iraq and you get angry and you wonder along with those left behind what to do with the grief - work, revenge, be bitter, be silent, be soldiers, what? The blood of a ram or goat was spilled in the film and this upset some in the theater. That it upset them (more than the gunned-down human beings upset them) upset some others. Film by Andrew Berends, available on amazon, reviewed on rottentomatoes.com
Little Beirut (watch here, by Mirella Habr) is a short documentary that is exactly this: reactions of Lebanese expats in a Parisian neighborhood at a pivotal moment in history: the Cedar Revolution of April 2005. It went to Cannes Film Festival.
Le Thé d'Ania (OK film, download here. by Said Ould-Khelifa, Algeria), is really a French film, I missed most of it.
La Femme Seule (Short Film, by Brahim Fritah) is an authentic voice (preview) - the life of a West African housemaid - presented in an original style. I wonder how much the style has been copied now.
Beit Min Lahm (House of Flesh, a short film by Rami Abdul-Jabbar, Egypt) is scandalous and the story is consistent with its dark shadowy closeted images.
When Yemen was back in the news this year thanks to a Nigerian would-be terrorist, CNN/Amanpour showed A Stranger In Her Own City to introduce the world to aspects of Yemeni life. Nijmiya is a star. Nijmiya = like/of Nijm = like a star. Documentary film by Khadija El-Salami, a Yemeni diplomat with a crazy story of her own, a Yemeni feminist that is also famous. I'm going to watch the short film online here (still can't find 2/3 of it.) By the way, Nijmiya is doing free and OK. I love her.
Occupation 101: Voices of the Silenced Majority was the big issue documentary. Palestine is the issue. And Israel and the US. None can forget footage of the little diva, this child of about four years, complaining about the artillery spoiling all her things. I adore the filmmakers (The Omeish brothers) and the film is (or at least was) a must-watch-and-get-others-to-watch-too. Watch it online, buy it on amazon.
Goal Dreams (by Maya Sanbar and Jeffrey Saunders) is simply awesome. Combines "waiting" with humour, hope, and football. A documentary that is really fun to watch, Goal Dreams shows Palestine's forming a national football team to bid for the 2006 World Cup. Among the Palestinians on the team is a dapper Wall Street banker, an Argentine, a player from Gaza strip that may/may not cross the checkpoint in time. The coach uses translators who confuse left and right; when the team plays, obviously not on home soil, it's to an empty stadium, when the home fans would have so loved to watch. Just more occupation craziness wrapped in a very good sports film.
So finally, 44 months after the show, I finished the review. Find the previous reviews here and here.
Monday, May 24, 2010
Aqua
music
Been reading A LOT. More on my African Literature findings later.
I went to a mega book reading - slash - book signing called Book Jam on Saturday. Glad to have heard about it. I met a lot of people who were very very kind to me. My first time attending an in-store book-reading, ever.
A year ago, I thought I'd never do the circuit, the artsy-fartsy scene, but by now I know a lot of the literary folk in Lagos. It's cool reading stuff by people you know. More on Lagos events later. Lagos is still lame, like L.A.
My first book is out in a couple of weeks. Yes!
The blah blah on this book:
My first book will be available for purchase from June 12, 2010.
It is a poetry collection titled COMRADE.
COMRADE is a delightful treasure trove of lyric and theater; a call to link arms in our varied, collective struggles; and milk to refresh us as we forge a future of better government and sweeter childhood.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Tosin Otitoju
http://www.LIFELIB.blogspot.com
070 5677 7120 (for press and distributors)
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
I'm currently reading "Crime and Punishment" - Fyodor Dostoevsky, dead Russian dude - and The Abyssinian Boy - Onyeka Nwelue, Nigerian dude. I met him on Saturday too.
Onyeka lives in India these days. He described a friend in the bookstore as "the black girl?" and I pointed out that errr, in Nigeria dude, so saying someone is black is irrelevant. We laughed. He's cute. I've read the first half of his book and it's, well, very Indian, it feels authentic, down to the Indian-English grammar and very-white paper.
The style is foreign too, very unlike common literature. You know how you watch a Spanish movie by some three-named person like Feliciano Lopez Iñárritu or something and it's not actually like a movie it's this symbol consisting of an embrace (nude, always nude) followed by a swim and the fish swallows the blue rose petal. Like Spanish filmmakers are children of Dali and not descended of Hollywood studios at all. Or like how you read Lolita (Nabokov was Russian too, but he usually wrote in English, I think he worked in America or something) having never read anything so strange and think "is he even allowed that many relative clauses in one sentence?" and wow, this is a lot of psychology, and then the tangents off the digresssions, and though there is a plot, it's secondary to the intimacy you've developed with the inner life of the protagonist (ugly word - protagonist) and the lessons in this and that social science.
Anyway, Onyeka's style is weird. He's Aquarian, no wonder (they are the "unconventional" sign, very eccentric, Age of Aquarius and all that.) I would wish him a Nobel except what do I know about great writing? Plus I haven't read the second half of the book where the plot supposedly thickens :) - the family comes to Nigeria from India. All the time I kept recalling - 1988. The author Nwelue is a c-h-i-l-d, born in '88. How does he even have the sense and exposure to write this? There are a dozen blurbs in review of the book, and all are spot-on, using the same adjectives I would use: stylish, original, mystical? I can't wait to get to the bed and finish The Abyssinian Boy. Laters...
Been reading A LOT. More on my African Literature findings later.
I went to a mega book reading - slash - book signing called Book Jam on Saturday. Glad to have heard about it. I met a lot of people who were very very kind to me. My first time attending an in-store book-reading, ever.
A year ago, I thought I'd never do the circuit, the artsy-fartsy scene, but by now I know a lot of the literary folk in Lagos. It's cool reading stuff by people you know. More on Lagos events later. Lagos is still lame, like L.A.
My first book is out in a couple of weeks. Yes!
The blah blah on this book:
My first book will be available for purchase from June 12, 2010.
It is a poetry collection titled COMRADE.
COMRADE is a delightful treasure trove of lyric and theater; a call to link arms in our varied, collective struggles; and milk to refresh us as we forge a future of better government and sweeter childhood.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Tosin Otitoju
http://www.LIFELIB.blogspot.com
070 5677 7120 (for press and distributors)
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
I'm currently reading "Crime and Punishment" - Fyodor Dostoevsky, dead Russian dude - and The Abyssinian Boy - Onyeka Nwelue, Nigerian dude. I met him on Saturday too.
Onyeka lives in India these days. He described a friend in the bookstore as "the black girl?" and I pointed out that errr, in Nigeria dude, so saying someone is black is irrelevant. We laughed. He's cute. I've read the first half of his book and it's, well, very Indian, it feels authentic, down to the Indian-English grammar and very-white paper.
The style is foreign too, very unlike common literature. You know how you watch a Spanish movie by some three-named person like Feliciano Lopez Iñárritu or something and it's not actually like a movie it's this symbol consisting of an embrace (nude, always nude) followed by a swim and the fish swallows the blue rose petal. Like Spanish filmmakers are children of Dali and not descended of Hollywood studios at all. Or like how you read Lolita (Nabokov was Russian too, but he usually wrote in English, I think he worked in America or something) having never read anything so strange and think "is he even allowed that many relative clauses in one sentence?" and wow, this is a lot of psychology, and then the tangents off the digresssions, and though there is a plot, it's secondary to the intimacy you've developed with the inner life of the protagonist (ugly word - protagonist) and the lessons in this and that social science.
Anyway, Onyeka's style is weird. He's Aquarian, no wonder (they are the "unconventional" sign, very eccentric, Age of Aquarius and all that.) I would wish him a Nobel except what do I know about great writing? Plus I haven't read the second half of the book where the plot supposedly thickens :) - the family comes to Nigeria from India. All the time I kept recalling - 1988. The author Nwelue is a c-h-i-l-d, born in '88. How does he even have the sense and exposure to write this? There are a dozen blurbs in review of the book, and all are spot-on, using the same adjectives I would use: stylish, original, mystical? I can't wait to get to the bed and finish The Abyssinian Boy. Laters...
Saturday, May 08, 2010
Vavoom
We Are Africans is a fly and catchy musical video. #1
Then they made a remix. #2
And another remix. #3
Which is your favourite? For me, it's not #2. Maybe the original 1. I like the local remix too #3. It's a worthy remix for sure.
My life is filled with music right now. Hahaha, because I'm supposed to be an engineer. Also been writing poetry so I'm happy. Also been driving up and down - I bleeping hate that. Which is why I bought so much music to keep from being pissed on the commute. A lot of DaGrin (hehehe) in my life. DaGrin media have been rushed to market, like his pre-CEO music, an album of his collaborations, and a collection of videos he featured in. I bet the tributes (like this one by M.I.) will get their own album too pretty soon.
What else have I been thinking about? That Rihanna Rude Boy video is so cheeky lol. And there is real talent on the Jesse Jagz album. The JJ album, it's called Jag of All Tradez, has some stealable lines: I love "M.I. is the lightning, I am the thunder, and Ice Prince is the rain." Very sweet and experimental work. I was also thinking Folasona (my smart ethnomusicologist friend that I keep trying to set up with my little sister) should get in the country and help make sense of all this music.
Then they made a remix. #2
And another remix. #3
Which is your favourite? For me, it's not #2. Maybe the original 1. I like the local remix too #3. It's a worthy remix for sure.
My life is filled with music right now. Hahaha, because I'm supposed to be an engineer. Also been writing poetry so I'm happy. Also been driving up and down - I bleeping hate that. Which is why I bought so much music to keep from being pissed on the commute. A lot of DaGrin (hehehe) in my life. DaGrin media have been rushed to market, like his pre-CEO music, an album of his collaborations, and a collection of videos he featured in. I bet the tributes (like this one by M.I.) will get their own album too pretty soon.
What else have I been thinking about? That Rihanna Rude Boy video is so cheeky lol. And there is real talent on the Jesse Jagz album. The JJ album, it's called Jag of All Tradez, has some stealable lines: I love "M.I. is the lightning, I am the thunder, and Ice Prince is the rain." Very sweet and experimental work. I was also thinking Folasona (my smart ethnomusicologist friend that I keep trying to set up with my little sister) should get in the country and help make sense of all this music.
Thursday, May 06, 2010
Ram
music
President Umaru Musa Yar'Adua died at night yesterday, May 5, on my father's 55th birthday. My father is on TV now commenting on the politics.
Previously there was Muslim prayer being recited musically on TV, with images of Hajia Turai praying alongside her husband. Yar'Adua looked like a humble schoolboy. I thought, she must be so sad, and especially feel so alone. You see, Turai was Yar'Adua's only wife, whereas as a Nigerian Muslim he was free to take more than one wife. This says something of their devotion to each other.
The melodious Muslim sounds made me want to find a mosque to pray in. Maybe I'll let this tugging pass, but like a battering ram, there may yet be another push, until one day, I'll pray as a Muslim. Ram: the most favoured food animal of Muslim festivals in Lagos. Have you ever seen rams fight? Maybe the battering ram is so-called because it's also relentless.
There is too much illogic in religion, so it's not that I want to be very religious. I have attended a Mass a week (thanks to living with my parents) for the past ten months and am now desensitized to Catholic prayer. These days I come to the end of Mass with the thought, wow, I can't remember anything the Reverend Father said. On the other hand, I remain responsive to the sights and sounds of Arabia/Islam.
Another commentator on TV just used the phrase "complete gentleman" to describe Yar'Adua. It is very heartening that we have come this far, from the hoodlums that ruled the country to the era of "gentle" persons. Thank God.
President Umaru Musa Yar'Adua died at night yesterday, May 5, on my father's 55th birthday. My father is on TV now commenting on the politics.
Previously there was Muslim prayer being recited musically on TV, with images of Hajia Turai praying alongside her husband. Yar'Adua looked like a humble schoolboy. I thought, she must be so sad, and especially feel so alone. You see, Turai was Yar'Adua's only wife, whereas as a Nigerian Muslim he was free to take more than one wife. This says something of their devotion to each other.
The melodious Muslim sounds made me want to find a mosque to pray in. Maybe I'll let this tugging pass, but like a battering ram, there may yet be another push, until one day, I'll pray as a Muslim. Ram: the most favoured food animal of Muslim festivals in Lagos. Have you ever seen rams fight? Maybe the battering ram is so-called because it's also relentless.
There is too much illogic in religion, so it's not that I want to be very religious. I have attended a Mass a week (thanks to living with my parents) for the past ten months and am now desensitized to Catholic prayer. These days I come to the end of Mass with the thought, wow, I can't remember anything the Reverend Father said. On the other hand, I remain responsive to the sights and sounds of Arabia/Islam.
Another commentator on TV just used the phrase "complete gentleman" to describe Yar'Adua. It is very heartening that we have come this far, from the hoodlums that ruled the country to the era of "gentle" persons. Thank God.
Saturday, April 17, 2010
I'm hungry
music
This is yummy: The Ottolenghi Cookbook was a publishing phenomenon. His follow-up, Plenty, looks set to repeat the trick, with new recipes and updates on dishes devised for his New Vegetarian column in Guardian Weekend magazine. Here's an exclusive taster of what's on offer
This is yummy: The Ottolenghi Cookbook was a publishing phenomenon. His follow-up, Plenty, looks set to repeat the trick, with new recipes and updates on dishes devised for his New Vegetarian column in Guardian Weekend magazine. Here's an exclusive taster of what's on offer
Wednesday, April 07, 2010
The Eko Festival, Lagos poem
music
I saw The Tragedy of King Christophe yesterday at the auditorium in Unilag. Although the space would seat about a thousand, there were about as many people in the cast/crew as in the audience (about 30.) The show was gooooood, and it only cost 250bucks (less than $2 - even I can afford that.) It was performed by the Jos Repertory Theater, so basically, good stuff.
I don't want to get attached to the place, but there I go falling in love. Anyway, now I've seen a play at Unilag, only one more social to-do item: swim at the guest house. My last sweetheart/ex plans to visit, so that could be the occasion.
Other things to certainly do, math/tech-wise: give tensors many more hours of study, figure out what Finite Element Analysis is and teach the software part, and do a Mathematica club starting next week (so I can learn along with others as Caltech taught me to do.) The mathematica club could be extended to a cool teacher-training thing so I may push for that, and the FEA stuff would be extended to some research project thingie on lung modeling - Jesus!
This play was part of the ongoing Lagos Black Heritage Festival (let's just call it the EKO FESTIVAL), a week-long funfest with an average of ten events a day from the Island to Mainland to Badagry even. Wish I would go to Badagry - it's been many many many years - and the beach. Why am I thrilled about the festival, even if I'm only doing a few events? For Lagos to be cool, there must be these public events, we must break the class-centrism a bit and have a collective cultural space.
I checked out the regatta on Saturday in Lekki, a play last night in Yaba, likely to see another play - A Season in The Congo , also written by Aimé Césaire - at TerraKulture tonight , then maybe roam around Victoria Island tomorrow. The festival closes on Friday and will be missed. P.S. I know it will be bigger next year. Eko o ni baje o.
Might as well share my Lagos poem here. Wrote it over a year ago. You should love it. Whatever.
SUFFERING AND SMILING
We hold these truths to be self-evident:
That where there is a child
There must be a cane.
That before you make ends meet
There will be some pain.
That Lekki is the part of Lagos
Closest to heaven.
That after such a brutal week
We deserve a good wedding.
That Fashola does the work,
Tinubu dey behind am.
That Allahu Akbar
No dey disturb Revival.
Say do me I do you
God no go vex.
Say jazz pass jazz
Na so sense pass sense.
Say my people for village
Never sabi Rat Race.
If no be for football
Man pikin for don crase.
One Nation under Fela,
we dey suffer, dey smile.
“Eko o ni bajẹ:”
this town no go spoil.
I saw The Tragedy of King Christophe yesterday at the auditorium in Unilag. Although the space would seat about a thousand, there were about as many people in the cast/crew as in the audience (about 30.) The show was gooooood, and it only cost 250bucks (less than $2 - even I can afford that.) It was performed by the Jos Repertory Theater, so basically, good stuff.
I don't want to get attached to the place, but there I go falling in love. Anyway, now I've seen a play at Unilag, only one more social to-do item: swim at the guest house. My last sweetheart/ex plans to visit, so that could be the occasion.
Other things to certainly do, math/tech-wise: give tensors many more hours of study, figure out what Finite Element Analysis is and teach the software part, and do a Mathematica club starting next week (so I can learn along with others as Caltech taught me to do.) The mathematica club could be extended to a cool teacher-training thing so I may push for that, and the FEA stuff would be extended to some research project thingie on lung modeling - Jesus!
This play was part of the ongoing Lagos Black Heritage Festival (let's just call it the EKO FESTIVAL), a week-long funfest with an average of ten events a day from the Island to Mainland to Badagry even. Wish I would go to Badagry - it's been many many many years - and the beach. Why am I thrilled about the festival, even if I'm only doing a few events? For Lagos to be cool, there must be these public events, we must break the class-centrism a bit and have a collective cultural space.
I checked out the regatta on Saturday in Lekki, a play last night in Yaba, likely to see another play - A Season in The Congo , also written by Aimé Césaire - at TerraKulture tonight , then maybe roam around Victoria Island tomorrow. The festival closes on Friday and will be missed. P.S. I know it will be bigger next year. Eko o ni baje o.
Might as well share my Lagos poem here. Wrote it over a year ago. You should love it. Whatever.
SUFFERING AND SMILING
We hold these truths to be self-evident:
That where there is a child
There must be a cane.
That before you make ends meet
There will be some pain.
That Lekki is the part of Lagos
Closest to heaven.
That after such a brutal week
We deserve a good wedding.
That Fashola does the work,
Tinubu dey behind am.
That Allahu Akbar
No dey disturb Revival.
Say do me I do you
God no go vex.
Say jazz pass jazz
Na so sense pass sense.
Say my people for village
Never sabi Rat Race.
If no be for football
Man pikin for don crase.
One Nation under Fela,
we dey suffer, dey smile.
“Eko o ni bajẹ:”
this town no go spoil.
Saturday, April 03, 2010
Rapping in Yoruba - DaGrin
I love his album C.E.O. "aimoye many coloured t-shirts but one red shoe."..."but mo wa determined, mo si wa focused, tori bee loruko mi se spread bi staphylococcus" hehehe..."and my favourite"...nkan ti o n wonder mi, ki lon shake nibe, ki l'awon guys n rush fun, ki n'won fe take ni be?" hehehe.
In other Naija music news, NNEKA is doing Lilith Fair. Go girl.
Thursday, April 01, 2010
Declutter . Unclutter .
music
Lin Yutang: Besides the noble art of getting things done, there is a nobler art of leaving things undone. The wisdom of life consists in the elimination of nonessentials.
I kept quotes cutout from Oprah mag below my whiteboard over my desk for a few years in grad school. This was one of three? six?
I held on to the truth therein in the faith that one day, I would understand...the elimination of nonessentials.
How does one focus? smile? win?
Part of the answer is in selectively leaving things undone. The result is more resources, quality time, for fewer things. Or as Oprah used to say: spend major time on major people, minor time on minor people.
I like all this hokey, Oprah, pop-psych stuff :)
Lin Yutang: Besides the noble art of getting things done, there is a nobler art of leaving things undone. The wisdom of life consists in the elimination of nonessentials.
I kept quotes cutout from Oprah mag below my whiteboard over my desk for a few years in grad school. This was one of three? six?
I held on to the truth therein in the faith that one day, I would understand...the elimination of nonessentials.
How does one focus? smile? win?
Part of the answer is in selectively leaving things undone. The result is more resources, quality time, for fewer things. Or as Oprah used to say: spend major time on major people, minor time on minor people.
I like all this hokey, Oprah, pop-psych stuff :)
Thursday, March 11, 2010
Visually Speaking
music
Most of Tolu Aliki's paintings are just my taste. A few of Rom Isichei's too (but I can't find the ones I love so - split faces, split female figures... these represent Rom to me)
Tolu Aliki on Saatchi Gallery
Tolu Aliki's website
Rom Isichei's website
I'm going over to meet a painter named Ben Osaghae tomorrow. Excited. He works in intense monotone pure colours with almost-violently-rough sketches drawn in. Not my taste, but fascinating, confident work of high quality.
What do/would you buy, in terms of wall hangings? My first ever was a cheap copy of Manet's "Artist Garden." I bought it in Georgetown (DC area) and hauled it on the bus to my RA room/apartment at Howard, along with a proper giant frame. I loved this painting - I would stare at it and be transported to that loveseat in the garden. What a sentimentalist! I was really into green and pink (or green and red.)
Most of Tolu Aliki's paintings are just my taste. A few of Rom Isichei's too (but I can't find the ones I love so - split faces, split female figures... these represent Rom to me)
Tolu Aliki on Saatchi Gallery
Tolu Aliki's website
Rom Isichei's website
I'm going over to meet a painter named Ben Osaghae tomorrow. Excited. He works in intense monotone pure colours with almost-violently-rough sketches drawn in. Not my taste, but fascinating, confident work of high quality.
What do/would you buy, in terms of wall hangings? My first ever was a cheap copy of Manet's "Artist Garden." I bought it in Georgetown (DC area) and hauled it on the bus to my RA room/apartment at Howard, along with a proper giant frame. I loved this painting - I would stare at it and be transported to that loveseat in the garden. What a sentimentalist! I was really into green and pink (or green and red.)
(GOOD) OVERLOAD
music
I bought two books for my young cousins last weekend.
Zahrah the Windseeker - I read the beginning. The beginning is better than the start of that last Harry Potter book - ...the Order of the Phoenix. My cousins are both in love with the Zahrah novel. (Just buy all the Farafina Books. Zahrah is also available on amazon etc)
I also bought the abridged Ake - The Years of Childhood. It's a good read, and a good piece of national heritage. The much-fatter original book is said to be one of Soyinka's finest.
Well, I got both books signed by Prof. Wole Soyinka who I met for the first time on Sunday. Score!
Nigerian authors and their beginnings:
Half of A Yellow Sun - a short story on which the award-winning novel is based. Read it, it's good. It took me three years to get round to reading the short, cos at first I found it lame, but now I think it's b-rill. Yep, Chimamanda is a fine girl, no pimples.
The beginning of an untitled novel - by Onyeka Nwelue, author of The Abyssinian Boy, which is soon to be made into a movie. I like it too, he paces very well, keeps you wanting more. The last Harry Potter book did the same thing in every chapter.
Beauty
I'm watching (the just-past New York) Fashion Week on that cable channel called FashionTV. It's killing me. So much beauty. The clothes that are so different from what boring people call "fashion." The new. Like the chains and jewels on sunglasses. I saw a T-shirt on an art school student in LA that said what you think is cool, I thought was cool ten years ago - or something like that. The colours. P.S. I'm wrapping up that heady, psychedelic, coloured poetry collection. God knows when I'll publish all this stuff. But I'll keep them somewhere good - in case I die, lol.
Unilag
I rocked my first lecture last week. It was a party. Then I went and crapped up yesterday's lecture. Blame it on the software hehehe. My time at UniLag is likely coming to a close, unless I find more ways to rock this. It's funny, I feel like I've learned half of what I would learn here. Even though I haven't moved in yet, I've met good people in engineering, had a chat with a future great artist in the Fine Arts department, that day someone gave me a demo/promo CD that sounds like (Yoruba rap artiste) DaGrin - it's catchy and good; I've walked the lagoon front, taught a class, studied new math, done the bureaucracy, visited the pool at the guest house where Uncle Rudy tried weekly to teach me and Kunmi to swim 20yrsago, learned new software, especially! started uing Mathematica...on Tuesday, I figured out, science-wise, what I want to do with the rest of my life.
What I want to do with the rest of my life (just the science part)
Since I'm too lazy to write papers, and I love the adoration of an audience (even if it's only, like, one person) I'm going to do a math blog. I'll start soon, latest in May - because the other blogs started in May because when I was in the US I came alive when the summer came along but now I can get solar energy year round. It will be pretty. I'll use Mathematica. Sometimes it will be original math, worthy of a paper. Sometimes it won't be but it will still be pretty and accessible. I'll write something weekly, even if it's short. In the future, it may slow to monthly themes with weekly updates. (Suggestions are welcome. Or if you want to collaborate or help me in some way.) Looks like I'll get to be a researcher after all.
I bought two books for my young cousins last weekend.
Zahrah the Windseeker - I read the beginning. The beginning is better than the start of that last Harry Potter book - ...the Order of the Phoenix. My cousins are both in love with the Zahrah novel. (Just buy all the Farafina Books. Zahrah is also available on amazon etc)
I also bought the abridged Ake - The Years of Childhood. It's a good read, and a good piece of national heritage. The much-fatter original book is said to be one of Soyinka's finest.
Well, I got both books signed by Prof. Wole Soyinka who I met for the first time on Sunday. Score!
Nigerian authors and their beginnings:
Half of A Yellow Sun - a short story on which the award-winning novel is based. Read it, it's good. It took me three years to get round to reading the short, cos at first I found it lame, but now I think it's b-rill. Yep, Chimamanda is a fine girl, no pimples.
The beginning of an untitled novel - by Onyeka Nwelue, author of The Abyssinian Boy, which is soon to be made into a movie. I like it too, he paces very well, keeps you wanting more. The last Harry Potter book did the same thing in every chapter.
Beauty
I'm watching (the just-past New York) Fashion Week on that cable channel called FashionTV. It's killing me. So much beauty. The clothes that are so different from what boring people call "fashion." The new. Like the chains and jewels on sunglasses. I saw a T-shirt on an art school student in LA that said what you think is cool, I thought was cool ten years ago - or something like that. The colours. P.S. I'm wrapping up that heady, psychedelic, coloured poetry collection. God knows when I'll publish all this stuff. But I'll keep them somewhere good - in case I die, lol.
Unilag
I rocked my first lecture last week. It was a party. Then I went and crapped up yesterday's lecture. Blame it on the software hehehe. My time at UniLag is likely coming to a close, unless I find more ways to rock this. It's funny, I feel like I've learned half of what I would learn here. Even though I haven't moved in yet, I've met good people in engineering, had a chat with a future great artist in the Fine Arts department, that day someone gave me a demo/promo CD that sounds like (Yoruba rap artiste) DaGrin - it's catchy and good; I've walked the lagoon front, taught a class, studied new math, done the bureaucracy, visited the pool at the guest house where Uncle Rudy tried weekly to teach me and Kunmi to swim 20yrsago, learned new software, especially! started uing Mathematica...on Tuesday, I figured out, science-wise, what I want to do with the rest of my life.
What I want to do with the rest of my life (just the science part)
Since I'm too lazy to write papers, and I love the adoration of an audience (even if it's only, like, one person) I'm going to do a math blog. I'll start soon, latest in May - because the other blogs started in May because when I was in the US I came alive when the summer came along but now I can get solar energy year round. It will be pretty. I'll use Mathematica. Sometimes it will be original math, worthy of a paper. Sometimes it won't be but it will still be pretty and accessible. I'll write something weekly, even if it's short. In the future, it may slow to monthly themes with weekly updates. (Suggestions are welcome. Or if you want to collaborate or help me in some way.) Looks like I'll get to be a researcher after all.
Monday, March 08, 2010
(CUTE) OVERLOAD
music
Proud to be a Bez groupie
As in happy. The other night I woke up to hear Zuciya Daya on the radio. It made me feel perfetto. As in happy. The radio presenter predicts a grammy for the artiste Bez. I'm like "dude, will you even wait for the guy's second single to be released before you start talking Grammies?" If the second single is Stop Pretending, then yeah, it's all over. It's possible of course he has even sweeter songs coming out of the studio.
Rufus and Jeff
Rufus lost his mum, the poor baby. Jeff Buckley's music could go on Broadway in some sort of Romeo and Juliet adaptation. Meanwhile, Rufus tours as usual, his opera - Prima Donna - goes to London next month; and there's an album out in a couple of weeks, so I wait I wait I wait. The album is titled All Days Are Nights: songs for Lulu. Rufus, majnoon anta. Crazy boy. Why am I obsessed with death by drowning? In my imagery it's usually in old age, not at my age like Jeff Buckley.
Proud to be a Bez groupie
As in happy. The other night I woke up to hear Zuciya Daya on the radio. It made me feel perfetto. As in happy. The radio presenter predicts a grammy for the artiste Bez. I'm like "dude, will you even wait for the guy's second single to be released before you start talking Grammies?" If the second single is Stop Pretending, then yeah, it's all over. It's possible of course he has even sweeter songs coming out of the studio.
Rufus and Jeff
Rufus lost his mum, the poor baby. Jeff Buckley's music could go on Broadway in some sort of Romeo and Juliet adaptation. Meanwhile, Rufus tours as usual, his opera - Prima Donna - goes to London next month; and there's an album out in a couple of weeks, so I wait I wait I wait. The album is titled All Days Are Nights: songs for Lulu. Rufus, majnoon anta. Crazy boy. Why am I obsessed with death by drowning? In my imagery it's usually in old age, not at my age like Jeff Buckley.
Sunday, March 07, 2010
Poem: My Brother, The Jew
music
I’m working on a collection of poems investigating fear and loathing:
MY BROTHER, THE JEW
Under the banner of peace and brotherhood,
my body to be scattered in bits in the noisy,
sudden, non-peaceful tearing of flesh.
My body a weapon against cousinhood.
I have many cousins -
one that smokes by the Ganges and really hates blood.
one that used to be stupid but now rules the world.
one devilish one – very quiet but very sharp sword.
The one that vexes me is not my cousin.
The fuck is my brother. Bastard.
P.S.
My friend Olumide (aka Loomnie) runs NigeriansTalk, where I previously posted this.
I’m working on a collection of poems investigating fear and loathing:
MY BROTHER, THE JEW
Under the banner of peace and brotherhood,
my body to be scattered in bits in the noisy,
sudden, non-peaceful tearing of flesh.
My body a weapon against cousinhood.
I have many cousins -
one that smokes by the Ganges and really hates blood.
one that used to be stupid but now rules the world.
one devilish one – very quiet but very sharp sword.
The one that vexes me is not my cousin.
The fuck is my brother. Bastard.
P.S.
My friend Olumide (aka Loomnie) runs NigeriansTalk, where I previously posted this.
Friday, March 05, 2010
Short Story: Assassin
music
Can you believe that there are cable channels for Africa Magic Yoruba and Africa Magic Hausa? Go Nollywood!
I don't watch Africa Magic myself, but I can tell you it's a big addiction and not only for bored housewives. Maybe the most popular channel in Nigeria right now.
I wrote this Jason-Bourne-inspired piece late last year. Enjoy.
ASSASSIN
By Tosin Otitoju
ootitoju@hotmail.com
It’s 8pm and Frida is just leaving the office. As a precaution, she takes the backdoor exit, where two guards wait, robot-like, to escort her to her car. Notwithstanding the bodyguards, or her discreet bulletproof vest, Frida has reason to fear for her life: even with the President’s backing, one could not be too careful in her position as saboteur of those called untouchable in her country.
In reality, she is not afraid.
Frida’s car is a neat blue jaguar worth a hundred thousand dollars. The annual income of most people in her city? One thousand dollars.
The untouchables are people who have much more money than Frida with her jaguar. They claim to work, but the devil in hell claims to work hard too. The way to know them is perhaps their non-work; but definitely by their plenty money and by the fear people have of speaking of them.
People speak about Frida’s family; they talk about her brother the chief and her father the colonel.
Her brother was the Minister of Commerce for one year. The day he was sacked, he cleaned the coffers of the ministry. That day, he stole one million dollars, or about ten jaguars. He took his daughters, wife, and nanny to Spain within the week and never looked back.
Before Frida’s brother, their father had also been what you would call in government a petty thief. In her father’s day, you built a sunny house or two, planted colourful gardens, lay crushed granite on the floor of the car shed and driveway, and fed a gatehouse-full of armed security detail from the National Forces.
Back then, the price of the elite lifestyle was absolute submission to the will of the President. It was a high price but many strove to pay it. Then that president was killed. Then the next. Then came an interim government that handed over to civilians for the first time in twenty years.
Remember that day? O, see dancing in the streets! The civilians are hopeful; the young and able soldiers swiftly withdraw to their barracks, while the potbellied soldiers like Frida’s father choose to retire.
The retired still have to eat – have you forgotten? The retired still have to pay their children’s fees in schools in Europe and Japan. So the ex-military become specialists in disorder. They become consultants, one may say, in the field of bureaucracy that the nation has been and still is. See, whenever a redtape is cut, money gushes to the pavement like blood such that a retired colonel like Frida’s father can suck enough to last until the next feast comes around.
Soon, Frida’s elegant mother dies, then her father. For the next six years, their boy fills his father’s shoes as the man who “knows who to call.” Then comes exile for him, and a promotion to Assistant Chief of Police Intelligence for the girl, Frida.
It may seem strange that Frida has been allowed to rise so highly in the police, considering that there is nobody of clout in her family. The truth is that not everything depends on connections in this country. Her next promotion doesn’t depend on connections either: the President needs some people disgraced, the Chief of Intelligence, Frida’s boss, is not deemed competent to perform even this simple task, so the chief is transferred to head Staff Development, and Frida is named the new chief of intelligence in that capital city in which it would take a dozen people a few years of income to buy her jaguar.
Normally, the office of intelligence is not expected to do anything other than keep the status quo, keep quiet, make some money, buy something nice or whatever. But now the president needs something done about a pair of officials, from amongst those people called untouchables. The president imagines that Frida, with her fancy European degree, can investigate, where her predecessor probably couldn’t spell the word.
The issue at hand in this investigation is no petty theft. The Minister of Petroleum, who has been feuding with the Minister for Finance, tipped off the intelligence office to some of the Finance Minister’s money-laundering antics. The Central Bank Governor is also involved, since he helped the FinMin launder the money, about one thousand jaguars worth altogether. The President is particularly irritated with the Central Bank chief for being allied with a coterie of businessmen that pretends to support the President but actually hopes to field a candidate in the next presidential elections. Hence, he wants to use the police intelligence office to dissolve the wayward Banker’s power.
Meanwhile, the Petroleum Minister is safe in his job because he is the President’s personal fool. This leaves him free to stash some money for himself, fifteen jaguars worth in the past year. He is not a very smart man and his method of operation is fittingly crude: two conspicuously vanished consignments of crude oil, twenty thousand barrels in all, precede two deposits of about 700 grand each in his personal current account in the bank run by his childhood friend.
When Frida was a child living in a nice military house with a fine garden and small orchard, these new untouchables were known to her as lively youths and family friends. Now she knows them as cold, with blue steel in their veins, not blood. They don’t go around torturing people – no. Torture died away, thank God, along with military rule. The new flavor of evil consists in being utterly useless to society. Useless as a boil on your bum.
Where their parents reigned as mere bureaucrats, the new breed of kleptocrats possesses more charm, refinement, and knowledge of the klepto-arts. Round-off error accumulation, extra-zero insertion, goods diversion, public offer vapourization, currency perambulation – these are some essential klepto-arts. Along with cronyism and bold-faced lying, these skills help the upper class suck the lifeblood of the country and keep the other class subdued.
Within one week, Frida’s office has the documents to show that a large extent of money laundering has taken place. Some of the documents were found by bank clerks and civil servants in the investigation, while some were designed by ‘artists’ in the intelligence office.
The president is pleased to think how devastating for those two crooks when they find the law caught up with them. He is eager to see them out of play for the foreseeable future. In fact, he has replacements ready for their positions, a pair of unemployed associates sure to be full of gratitude at being named to Finance and the Central Bank, and consequently eager to please the President.
Suddenly, the Central Bank chief is found dead, of poison apparently, on the marble floor of the thirteenth floor toilets at the apex bank. The newspapers are overfilled with reports of his unfortunate “cardiac arrest.” The Times, The Crier, The Post, The Nation, The Union, The Punch, The Barrel – all the newspapers are bursting with obituaries. In them, bank chiefs and party chiefs, men on the rise and those waiting in the wings, young and old, seize the opportunity to be seen bidding adieu to such a high-ranking official. They eulogize a ‘man of timber and caliber’ who died too soon, leaving his loving wife and adoring sons.
The President instructs Frida to close the money laundering investigation. The death of his comrade banker has left him shaken; he had been plotting his downfall, but never his death.
However, the Petroleum Minister, still angry with the Finance Minister, tips off a newspaper to the investigation. The FinMin reads the unpalatable rumours accusing him of massive corruption. Guessing their source, he decides to put up a fight once and for all. First, he secures more of his money in foreign banks.
Satisfied about his financial safety, the FinMin releases a tip of his own: the PetMin, although married to the President’s beautiful goddaughter Tara, regularly visits seedy bars abroad for sex.
As you can imagine, this creates headaches in the PetMin’s home. The President even becomes irritated with him. In frustration, the PetMin leaks to the press that the FinMin in his early days killed two former schoolmates while jostling for position in his state. The newspapers, of course, fail to print such a scandalous accusation without evidence. Still, the rumour spreads among the rich and the poor people. They shrug alike, too busy with their lives to do any more about the murders.
Things are not going well for the PetMin. He has stashed enough money to retire and nothing else of importance remains to be done at work. He is bored but can’t travel for fear of the FinMin’s mean machinations against him. His wife starts a fight with him every day at home, since she is still sore about the disgraceful rumours of his philandering.
Then a new rumour starts around town that the two bickering Ministers are lovers. The papers do not fail to print this, and the people do not fail to buy, read, and snicker. Here is comic relief to help them cope with their busy lives.
Frida has been Chief of Police Intelligence for five action-filled weeks now. It’s 6pm and she is already home from work. After a quick snack, she packs her automatic, pulls on her hooded raincoat and goes out for a walk in the evening drizzle.
She treks through golden fields of cereal stump and stalk and soon reaches the smooth, tree-lined asphalt road where the Finance Minister will soon take his daily jog. In two minutes, the FinMin is dead. Frida turns her back on his body and discreetly hurries home.
Can you believe that there are cable channels for Africa Magic Yoruba and Africa Magic Hausa? Go Nollywood!
I don't watch Africa Magic myself, but I can tell you it's a big addiction and not only for bored housewives. Maybe the most popular channel in Nigeria right now.
I wrote this Jason-Bourne-inspired piece late last year. Enjoy.
ASSASSIN
By Tosin Otitoju
ootitoju@hotmail.com
It’s 8pm and Frida is just leaving the office. As a precaution, she takes the backdoor exit, where two guards wait, robot-like, to escort her to her car. Notwithstanding the bodyguards, or her discreet bulletproof vest, Frida has reason to fear for her life: even with the President’s backing, one could not be too careful in her position as saboteur of those called untouchable in her country.
In reality, she is not afraid.
Frida’s car is a neat blue jaguar worth a hundred thousand dollars. The annual income of most people in her city? One thousand dollars.
The untouchables are people who have much more money than Frida with her jaguar. They claim to work, but the devil in hell claims to work hard too. The way to know them is perhaps their non-work; but definitely by their plenty money and by the fear people have of speaking of them.
People speak about Frida’s family; they talk about her brother the chief and her father the colonel.
Her brother was the Minister of Commerce for one year. The day he was sacked, he cleaned the coffers of the ministry. That day, he stole one million dollars, or about ten jaguars. He took his daughters, wife, and nanny to Spain within the week and never looked back.
Before Frida’s brother, their father had also been what you would call in government a petty thief. In her father’s day, you built a sunny house or two, planted colourful gardens, lay crushed granite on the floor of the car shed and driveway, and fed a gatehouse-full of armed security detail from the National Forces.
Back then, the price of the elite lifestyle was absolute submission to the will of the President. It was a high price but many strove to pay it. Then that president was killed. Then the next. Then came an interim government that handed over to civilians for the first time in twenty years.
Remember that day? O, see dancing in the streets! The civilians are hopeful; the young and able soldiers swiftly withdraw to their barracks, while the potbellied soldiers like Frida’s father choose to retire.
The retired still have to eat – have you forgotten? The retired still have to pay their children’s fees in schools in Europe and Japan. So the ex-military become specialists in disorder. They become consultants, one may say, in the field of bureaucracy that the nation has been and still is. See, whenever a redtape is cut, money gushes to the pavement like blood such that a retired colonel like Frida’s father can suck enough to last until the next feast comes around.
Soon, Frida’s elegant mother dies, then her father. For the next six years, their boy fills his father’s shoes as the man who “knows who to call.” Then comes exile for him, and a promotion to Assistant Chief of Police Intelligence for the girl, Frida.
It may seem strange that Frida has been allowed to rise so highly in the police, considering that there is nobody of clout in her family. The truth is that not everything depends on connections in this country. Her next promotion doesn’t depend on connections either: the President needs some people disgraced, the Chief of Intelligence, Frida’s boss, is not deemed competent to perform even this simple task, so the chief is transferred to head Staff Development, and Frida is named the new chief of intelligence in that capital city in which it would take a dozen people a few years of income to buy her jaguar.
Normally, the office of intelligence is not expected to do anything other than keep the status quo, keep quiet, make some money, buy something nice or whatever. But now the president needs something done about a pair of officials, from amongst those people called untouchables. The president imagines that Frida, with her fancy European degree, can investigate, where her predecessor probably couldn’t spell the word.
The issue at hand in this investigation is no petty theft. The Minister of Petroleum, who has been feuding with the Minister for Finance, tipped off the intelligence office to some of the Finance Minister’s money-laundering antics. The Central Bank Governor is also involved, since he helped the FinMin launder the money, about one thousand jaguars worth altogether. The President is particularly irritated with the Central Bank chief for being allied with a coterie of businessmen that pretends to support the President but actually hopes to field a candidate in the next presidential elections. Hence, he wants to use the police intelligence office to dissolve the wayward Banker’s power.
Meanwhile, the Petroleum Minister is safe in his job because he is the President’s personal fool. This leaves him free to stash some money for himself, fifteen jaguars worth in the past year. He is not a very smart man and his method of operation is fittingly crude: two conspicuously vanished consignments of crude oil, twenty thousand barrels in all, precede two deposits of about 700 grand each in his personal current account in the bank run by his childhood friend.
When Frida was a child living in a nice military house with a fine garden and small orchard, these new untouchables were known to her as lively youths and family friends. Now she knows them as cold, with blue steel in their veins, not blood. They don’t go around torturing people – no. Torture died away, thank God, along with military rule. The new flavor of evil consists in being utterly useless to society. Useless as a boil on your bum.
Where their parents reigned as mere bureaucrats, the new breed of kleptocrats possesses more charm, refinement, and knowledge of the klepto-arts. Round-off error accumulation, extra-zero insertion, goods diversion, public offer vapourization, currency perambulation – these are some essential klepto-arts. Along with cronyism and bold-faced lying, these skills help the upper class suck the lifeblood of the country and keep the other class subdued.
Within one week, Frida’s office has the documents to show that a large extent of money laundering has taken place. Some of the documents were found by bank clerks and civil servants in the investigation, while some were designed by ‘artists’ in the intelligence office.
The president is pleased to think how devastating for those two crooks when they find the law caught up with them. He is eager to see them out of play for the foreseeable future. In fact, he has replacements ready for their positions, a pair of unemployed associates sure to be full of gratitude at being named to Finance and the Central Bank, and consequently eager to please the President.
Suddenly, the Central Bank chief is found dead, of poison apparently, on the marble floor of the thirteenth floor toilets at the apex bank. The newspapers are overfilled with reports of his unfortunate “cardiac arrest.” The Times, The Crier, The Post, The Nation, The Union, The Punch, The Barrel – all the newspapers are bursting with obituaries. In them, bank chiefs and party chiefs, men on the rise and those waiting in the wings, young and old, seize the opportunity to be seen bidding adieu to such a high-ranking official. They eulogize a ‘man of timber and caliber’ who died too soon, leaving his loving wife and adoring sons.
The President instructs Frida to close the money laundering investigation. The death of his comrade banker has left him shaken; he had been plotting his downfall, but never his death.
However, the Petroleum Minister, still angry with the Finance Minister, tips off a newspaper to the investigation. The FinMin reads the unpalatable rumours accusing him of massive corruption. Guessing their source, he decides to put up a fight once and for all. First, he secures more of his money in foreign banks.
Satisfied about his financial safety, the FinMin releases a tip of his own: the PetMin, although married to the President’s beautiful goddaughter Tara, regularly visits seedy bars abroad for sex.
As you can imagine, this creates headaches in the PetMin’s home. The President even becomes irritated with him. In frustration, the PetMin leaks to the press that the FinMin in his early days killed two former schoolmates while jostling for position in his state. The newspapers, of course, fail to print such a scandalous accusation without evidence. Still, the rumour spreads among the rich and the poor people. They shrug alike, too busy with their lives to do any more about the murders.
Things are not going well for the PetMin. He has stashed enough money to retire and nothing else of importance remains to be done at work. He is bored but can’t travel for fear of the FinMin’s mean machinations against him. His wife starts a fight with him every day at home, since she is still sore about the disgraceful rumours of his philandering.
Then a new rumour starts around town that the two bickering Ministers are lovers. The papers do not fail to print this, and the people do not fail to buy, read, and snicker. Here is comic relief to help them cope with their busy lives.
Frida has been Chief of Police Intelligence for five action-filled weeks now. It’s 6pm and she is already home from work. After a quick snack, she packs her automatic, pulls on her hooded raincoat and goes out for a walk in the evening drizzle.
She treks through golden fields of cereal stump and stalk and soon reaches the smooth, tree-lined asphalt road where the Finance Minister will soon take his daily jog. In two minutes, the FinMin is dead. Frida turns her back on his body and discreetly hurries home.
Tuesday, March 02, 2010
Why gild the lily?
music
I have no interest in my face. I mean, I'm sure it's a perfectly nice face with all the requisite parts, good structure AND function. On the rare occasion that my conscious mind observes my reflection in a mirror, it thinks (and often pronounces) "wow, hot."
Most boys get along just fine with this mentality.
Not sure why girls have to make like film actors or talk show hosts, working endlessly at adorning and perfecting...It's the standard, and the results are often good, but even where there's gold, I'll always have a soft spot for the lily.
I have no interest in my face. I mean, I'm sure it's a perfectly nice face with all the requisite parts, good structure AND function. On the rare occasion that my conscious mind observes my reflection in a mirror, it thinks (and often pronounces) "wow, hot."
Most boys get along just fine with this mentality.
Not sure why girls have to make like film actors or talk show hosts, working endlessly at adorning and perfecting...It's the standard, and the results are often good, but even where there's gold, I'll always have a soft spot for the lily.
Friday, February 26, 2010
What's good?
music
The winners of the 2010 bloggies will be revealed this weekend. Meanwhile, all the nominees are here at http://2010.bloggies.com. Lots of yummy stuff to check out.
The new gig is cool, but the traffic! so I'm moving in with somebody next week that lives in that area, maybe my uncle, until I move on campus. Don't want to spend 30% of my waking hours commuting. You shouldn't have to either.
The winners of the 2010 bloggies will be revealed this weekend. Meanwhile, all the nominees are here at http://2010.bloggies.com. Lots of yummy stuff to check out.
The new gig is cool, but the traffic! so I'm moving in with somebody next week that lives in that area, maybe my uncle, until I move on campus. Don't want to spend 30% of my waking hours commuting. You shouldn't have to either.
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