More Arab Film Festival 2006

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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.

Aqua

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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...

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.

Ram

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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.

I'm hungry

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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

The Eko Festival, Lagos poem

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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.

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.

Declutter . Unclutter .

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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 :)

Visually Speaking

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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

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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.

(CUTE) OVERLOAD

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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.

Poem: My Brother, The Jew

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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.

Short Story: Assassin

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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.

Why gild the lily?

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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.

What's good?

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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.

Broke

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Got a job today, will be a grad student / lecturer at University of Lagos. Just in time.

Poem: Ballroom Dance

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Just wrote this ten-liner.
Posting it because, I guess I thought ErikLeRouge might like it.

BALLROOM DANCE

In the early days, we would
dress up and watch couples
floating like a dream
across the gleaming floor

While me and my husband,
we tripped clumsily
over twenty fat toes
then argued whose fault.

Still in love, we trip
clumsily, daily; privately.

I'm No Superman

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I should totally have watched SCRUBS all those times I saw it on TV in Cali. Ah well, I bought the pirated $1.50 version. Just finished Season One. Bliss. On to Season Two. I just curled my toes, feel so good thinking about it.

I've been living in my parents' home since late July 2009. Thank you. We're in the phase in which they think I'm a Barbie - I've been so compliant. I'm breaking the first of the Seven Habits of Highly Effective People - something about taking responsibility for your actions, "Be Proactive." Not being proactive sucks. But I'll call it research for my book, lol.

Scrubs is really amazing. I should have watched that in grad school, instead of the dating show marathons. Ah but they were good: Elimidate, Change of Heart, The Fifth Wheel, the other one I can't remember, Blind Date...then the weeklies: Bachelor, Bachelorette etc. Ah what a mindless shame.

I wonder what the world is up to now in its race towards its future reality. Hope it's good.

Things to buy

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Look, art, from Nigeria.
1. Ituen Basi
great stuff in 2009. I hope she does even better in future when I have more money and interest in fashion.
http://www.bellanaija.com/2009/06/17/arise-africa-fashion-week-ituen-basi/

2. Gidan Nodza
the best bags, possibly made by a friend, or maybe just someone with the same name and intellect.
http://houseofnodza.blogspot.com/

3. Nike Arts
her new gallery in Lekki (Lagos) is the place to visit. she sells top-of-the-line wall art (paintings, especially) typically in the low four-figures (six figures in naira.) It's really big. My friend says it's like the Tate (London.) Nothing else like it in Nigeria.
http://www.nikeart.com/shop.php

Tribute to Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab

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Pat-down searches now required at airports - assuming the airport security staff is mostly gorgeous people, this could be healthy fun for everyone. Let's do this groping worldwide, not only in America. Imagine the possibilities...

Humour - His attempt at terrorism has been called The Christmas Crotchfire Attack. And today, as we lit up firecrackers for New Years Day, the ones that wouldn't ignite were named the Abdulmuttalibs. Abdul Mutilate-A-Balls. Because we love fart and butt jokes and we still can't pronounce non-Anglo names.

Now that it's clear that I don't really mean the title, and that there's no need to put me on any bloated security lists even though I have been to Yemen (possibly my most beautiful place in the world ) and sometimes say insha'Allah and al-hamdulillah, let's take a look at serious reasons why I don't exactly pity or loathe the guy:

he "got radicalized." He came to believe in something so much that he was willing to give his life for it. Although clarity and singleness of purpose can be beautiful, I, as a scientist, do not have ANY fundamentalist beliefs - who knows what modifying discoveries tomorrow may bring?

I may admire his quest for purity, but I don't admire his willingness to kill other people to make his political statement. I think from now on, we need to think more Gandhi, Woodrow Wilson, Mandela - more nonviolence - and less war. I know he'll come to this realization over the next many years in prison, and I hope he can make amends for this foolishness that caused him to take to the air and nearly kill hundreds of people, human beings.

I think renegade terrorists and state-sponsored terrorists alike need to move on from their brutal business.

I think terms like preemptive strike and war-on-terror are rubbish, and that by my standards I haven't yet seen a just war fought by the US in the last ten years.

What happened to the Powell Doctrine? Where are our military philosophers? Are they really dumb and unimaginative, are they not being heard or are they just not speaking up anymore?

Fear is not an excuse for war. Greed or creed should never be an excuse for war. Land and country often have been excuses for war. I say we get some flexibility about how important "owning" land is, or how sacred country or faith is relative to a single human life.

The only thing that ought to excuse war has been extinguished by now: a need to get food to survive. The world now produces enough food (in total, not evenly so.) My friends, we now have no excuse for killing one another.

Because we are young as a human race, there may still be times when a show of violence is needed. In those times, it will be very clear that what was averted was a clear and certain danger of big big size compared to the violence applied. Such a war won't take years, costing even the aggressor hundreds or thousands of lives.

By this standard, Israel-Palestine is a rubbish war that ought not to be happening. Maybe we need to execute - ok, not really - the leaders on both sides because both countries are mired in hopelessness (one being reduced to a military state, the other a prison) while the leaders seem to think fighting is cool. End the bloody war: Call in Powell, Mandela, and friends. Divide up the land between the warring groups. Take feedback for a short while and make adjustments, supervised by people / institutions with high credibility as people of fairness and peace. Use military or legal force against those few who would rather have the baby cut in half, who want Jerusalem for themselves alone at whatever cost to their civilization.

Likewise, Iraq and Afghanistan should be about getting the so-called Allied Forces out while keeping down the risk of civil war. I mean, really, I feel bad for the soldiers whose mission seems impossible to accomplish simply because it is endless. To think some of them only joined the Forces to get money for school.

This first day of 2010, one week after the averted body bomb attack, I am thankful that George W. Bush is no longer the POTUS. Because sometimes bone-headed crackerpants come from accomplished families.

Happy New Year

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A sweet, recession-free 2010 to all.
May the good times roll.

Bookish Santa

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The very bright and amiable Nigerian writer Eghosa Imasuen wrote this story and gave a nice reading in October at a Farafina event in Lagos. Enjoy: New Generator.

NEW GENERATOR: ‘I PASS MY NEIGHBOUR'
A short story
By Eghosa Imasuen

Mr. Ochuko’s decision to buy a new generator was taken with the help of his wife seven months
ago. They lived in one of those suburbs that NEPA seemed to have forgotten about. The electric
company’s staff always hustled around the transformer just beside the junction to their street,
light came up for about five hours and then was gone for another three weeks. Then the NEPA
staff came again.
“Junior, wait. Let me enter the house first,” Mr. Ochuko said.(Read More...)

Farafina Books (Kachifo Limited) has a mouth-watering catalogue of African Literature. Enough reading to get you through the holidays and half the coming year. Priced low enough that you can get them ALL for $100 or less. As with many Nigerian businesses though, I think Kachifo is not big enough. OK, that's a subject for the other blog, not this one.
Merry Holidays and hope the recession ends and the party returns in 2010.

Especially Laziness

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Cardinal rule of my worklife: if there's a mega-process, simplify it.

Agassi Open

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I adore Andre. Want to be like him when I grow up. Can't wait to read his book, though not sure when I'll get to...

More Agassi Open - the 60minutes interview ... Part 2

Good luck to Richard Gasquet with the cocaine charges. It's not a performance-enhancer, rather the opposite effect - shouldn't that be important in judging these cases?

And good good luck to Billy. He's been in jail nearly six years already.

Inspire Me!

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Viktor & Rolf always inspire to lose the walls, artistically speaking.
Watch the Fashion Show and hours of video in their archives.


Check out their website tour. No wonder Rufus loves them!

Writing a bit

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and waiting for 'Tech. Can you believe I'm itching to get back to Caltech?

A bunch of poetry books in the pipeline. I tried to stop writing them for a while, then someone upset me and I started a third book to be titled "Big Girl" with poems about the yuppie/wealthier-class young woman in Nigerian/similar climes.

I just started reading a Nigerian novel I found around the house that is very good. It's as vivid as Things Fall Apart (by Chinua Achebe), although it describes a different time (the 60s I bet, just after Independence) and place (a hypothetical university with a mix of Nigerian staff and expatriates.) Understanding this novel (I don't, really, although the language is simple like Things Fall Apart) you understand the politics of today's Nigeria. I'm surprised that even terms like "godfather" were already in use then. The novel is The Naked Gods, by Chukwuemeka Ike.

My mind is changing, changing...

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What is the nature of time? Read the winning essay by Julian Barbour on The Nature of Time, then browse more Expository Essays on the same topic at the FQXi, the Foundational Questions Institute.

Shortly, you will be able to view essays on this year's topic, "What is Ultimately Possible in Physics?"

Public Art

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COMMITTEE FOR RELEVANT ART, CORA (Winner of Prince Claus Award 2006)

We Are Cultural 'Landscapists'. The MISSION is to create an enabling environment for the flourishing of the contemporary arts of Nigeria and to increase human capacity of the continent. VISION is to make Culture the Prime Investment Destination for the Country and the Continent by 2018.

I attended the CORA book party yesterday, celebrating the nine shortlisted works for this year's Nigeria Prize for Literature (Poetry.)
Had an excellent time meeting some of Nigeria's sweetest poets, some of whose works I've started reading. Reading poetry is not bad. It doesn't hurt. Nor does it bore if you choose well.

Fiction: Honeymoon

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HONEYMOON
By Tosin Otitoju
ootitoju@hotmail.com

Tradition holds that newlyweds would spend thirty days away from their friends, family - their routines. The period is spent visiting sites of history and culture. As the new couple soared together, gliding among monuments, they would learn about love and permanent marriage. This obligation is so sacred that every newly-married couple in the land is given leave from work to enable it.
Per and Flooy are a newly married couple on their honeymoon.

THE WEDDING
On the wedding afternoon, the friends of Per and Flooy dutifully escorted both to the town square after work. Weddings were conducted outdoors in a green patch surrounded by tall, important buildings and dense, colourful traffic. One by one, the couples came in focus of a camera to declare verbally that they were new spouses. After every three declarations, an intern rang a small, shrill bell; this constituted the wedding proper. The whole show was typically broadcast on screens above the roads throughout the town.

Per and Flooy declared just after the bell, adding that “permanent love and marriage” would be their goal. They waited for the next two couples, and then the solemnization by the bell, before kissing and then skipping off to join their friends.

THE PRESENTS
Among their crowd were their cousins who handed Flooy tickets to see the ancient town of Jerusalem. Their workmates gave them a very classic trip – up the Nile to Sudan to see the oldest human skeleton. Their uncles and aunts had collected enough to present them with a fifty-meal dining card, so that they could enjoy fantastic dinners on the honeymoon.

The couple glowed and hugged thanks throughout their company, while everyone tingled with excitement about the parents’ gift.

As you already guessed, the parents of both newlyweds were expected to come together to pick out the most fantastic tours of their children’s honeymoon. Per and Flooy soon found out that it would be “The Seven Ancient Wonders.” Flooy had been hoping for the moon, not the kitsch Seven Wonders tour. Her in-laws could afford it, and she was certain her own parents knew it was the most desired honeymoon gift of the decade.

THE HOTEL
Soon, the guests left the couple alone with the clerks who led the couple to a newlywed hotel. Here they ate marvelously, slept luxuriously, and in-between these they spent hours holding hands and talking dreamily about all the trips they would soon make.

Two days later, it was time to begin touring.

The morning was glorious, with the sun’s rays bursting into their room, signaling time for breakfast. They had a jam and marmalade feast that was laid out with twenty cubes of exotic breads, all different, all appetizing.

Breakfast in bed was followed by a nap. Then they bathed and dressed for their trip. Flooy chose a dress in ivory printed with tiny begonias, while Per wore a youthful teal-and-khaki ensemble. They decided to get some exercise, so instead of calling for a vehicle, both strapped on their streamliners and soared out of the hotel window.

They traveled for a number of hours in the direction of the mountains, and soon were present among the ruins of the old city of Jerusalem, making small spirals on the rough ground in an attempt to brake their flying.

MOSQUE
Their seventieth hour as a couple found them in the vast courtyard of the mosque, where beggars used to crowd in wait for the alms of the faithful. In those days, hundreds of years back, after Friday worship, the mostly wealthy pilgrims would drop their zakat, their alms, with the men who lived in the streets or the poor shanties of town and made their living on the mosque grounds. Now, the courtyard was the starting point for tours of the mosque.

A guide led the tourists to another area, a confection of small, hexagonal tiles said to have been once covered in shoes of every tribe and type. The guide showed them moving pictures of the same room over the centuries until the time of the Great Quake that sunk Jerusalem.

From the shoe room, they entered a grand room in which the faithful had prayed on thousands of mats facing Makkah in the south. On the screen, the patchwork of colourful carpets looked like a most elegant velvet quilt.

The building used to have five minarets, but three were now broken and hadn’t yet been restored. The central dome that roofed the praying area glistened with a gold that recalled similar domed houses of Australia and Antarctica. Mohammedans could be found in both countries, hence the architecture in parts of these islands used gold, and domes, and minarets, and even retained the use of a star in a crescent moon perched atop the highest reaches of the building.

Mohammedans were few anywhere outside these two places, the movies explained. The people of Mohammed believed that a man would find at most four permanent loves in his lifetime. Since they also believed that marriage could only take place between a man and a woman, and each woman of course could only marry one man, it was usually the case that all the desirable women were already married. Mohammedans often took wives from among the wider communities of non-believing women, and this helped remedy the imbalance in their spousal pools.

SYNAGOGUE
Per and Flooy were flying hand-in-hand as they passed over the tall birch trees that separated the mosque from an ancient mud wall into which the Jews had wailed their prayers for a thousand years. The tradition held that the Father of the Jews lived in the wall. Hence, the faithful took off their sandals and donned black robes over their street clothes before proceeding to whisper into the wall, in deep conversation and prayer which caused them to rock back and forth. Sometimes, if they didn’t feel like talking, they squeezed a letter in one of the many gaps in the wall.

The tour guide at the synagogue explained chattily that Jews busied themselves with two things: successful careers, and preparation for the coming of the son of God. One percent of the world was Jewish, more than the Catholican population of the day, the guide said.

The Jews didn’t believe in flying. They couldn’t shave their heads, eat meat, or gather with non-family members after sunset. These practices made them stand out in the world since bald heads were on every model in every magazine, most meals contained meat, and most parties or socials took place at night. In those days too, young people liked to spend their free time flitting around in the air, as it was a fun and inexpensive mode of transport.

Per had no sympathy for the superstition of this people, but he envied their dedication to work and vocation. Neither he nor his wife was superstitious. What sense was it, they thought, to revert to the thought patterns of millennia past, days so clearly inferior in quality-of-life to the present? In distant history, hunger had caused people to see monsters in benign shadows, while delirium made them merge physics and god; disease was always the result of jealousy backed with anti-god powers.

Yet Per’s wife had idols of a sort; idols in the here and now – her friends, her sisters, and their total acceptance meant as much to her as the thunder god or moon goddess might have meant to her early ancestors.

CHURCH
The sun had been one of the most worshipped gods in this land. Now, the cross held dominance. The sun was getting low in the sky now, and the couple determined to visit another monument before retiring to their hotel room. They traversed the cobblestone on the west side of the synagogue and found a short bridge where the gentle breeze loosened bright red flowers from the trees above, causing a shower of sorts. They walked on, hand-in-hand, in the direction of the former Catholican shrine that also lay in the valley of the ruins.

Per knew Flooy’s superstition about conformity. This was why he was careful to learn about fashion; perhaps she would never leave him, but only if he behaved according to convention at all times.

He hoped this would be enough.

He hoped he would be enough.

He glanced over at her, the most beautiful thing he knew in the world, his lily flower, his new bride. He watched her bald head and auburn eyebrows. Yes, he would do anything to see her face every morning. He smiled thinking the way her eyebrows crinkled then arched animatedly when she talked. He remembered the way she looked when she first undressed and thought grimly that he, for his part, would never leave her.

At the moment the couple arrived at the crosses that marked the shrine and cemetery, their thoughts - at that moment - ran perpendicularly. Flooy suspected this, Per did not. As Flooy Lily Wura’s brilliant red-lashed eyes focused, first on her husband, then on the statues of a Catholican married couple – a man in black tuxedo and his bride in head-to-toe white, with a silver heart behind them and a brown cross before them, as Flooy took in this picture of splendidly correct marriage, she smiled to think how nice the next ten years would be with a good man like Per by her side. She saw visions of babies and trips. Youthful sex. Afternoons comparing notes with her sisters on aforementioned babies and trips and sex.

While the shrine and cemetery had served for fifteen decades, her youth would last for fifteen years at most. With Per, her adorable first husband, she was determined to spend ten of them, and then retire like was the fashion, until she made a mid-life marriage.

Why then did she, just three days ago in the center of the town, swear to love him forever?

Because, silly you, romantic weddings all have the forever clause.

ARAB FILM FESTIVAL

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Mark your calendars.
California (especially San Francisco)
October 15 - 25, 2009.

I didn't realize he was dead

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Naguib Mahfouz, one of the world's great people.
Biography @ Wikipedia
Pictures @ images.google.com

He died August 30, 2006.
Guess I was too preoccupied to register the obituary.

Happy September

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Full of music, laughs, and flow, and maybe just a little hustle.

My new love

Shayo, by Bigiano.
Shayo means booze.
The kid is so cute, and so positive. I so dig androgynous hotness.

African Reader's Library

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I met this writer, Akachi Adimora-Ezeigbo yesterday.
Read more about her at 234next, and at sunnewsonline (so people really do it everyday)

I thought her elegant and...gracious? A new friend, looking to help me learn more about publishing options, brought me in to her office at the University of Lagos for a chat. Today I read her award-winning children's book "My Cousin Sammy." It made me sad at times, you know, the little daily cruelties in the family. The story is more interesting than some of the African literature we got in primary school.

For months I'd been trying to remember the title of a book that we read in Primary school. It had references to Bamenda, which we were told was in Cameroun. It wasn't an exciting read. I would maybe never have found it, was even considering posting a help request on the yahoogroup of my former classmates, when I got home found "The Village School" by Anezi Okoro. This wasn't the book but at the end was printed a list of other titles in the "African Readers Library," with short descriptions.

There was "An African Night's Entertainment" by Cyprian Ekwensi - I can still feel my heart race as I remember the sheer danger and excitement of following this story in reading class, was it primary 5 with Mrs. Emokpae? or Primary 4 with Mrs. Ogu? A similar story to The Passport of Mallam Ilia which we read in JS3 (Junior Secondary school) with Mrs. Bickersteth, the unforgettable, finishing schooled, then Head of English, now Principal of Queen's College Lagos. I just checked online...Ilia was of course written by Ekwensi.

On the list was also "Eze Goes to School" which is still very popular, but whose story I've forgotten, "My Father's Daughter" which I remember owning once, but it must have been unexciting, and on the third page of the list, at #16 was Promise, by Ashere, J. Promise was a book like "My Father's Daughter" - a girl's narration of some rustic living somewhere with not much action.

I would never have guessed that: "Promise is the story of a girl growing up in rural Cameroun..."

In those days, definitely Primary 6, 6A, with Miss * (three letters, two syllables, what was her name? jheri curls, dark and pretty and shapely and didn't let us play all the fun music at our class party at the end of primary school, so we trooped to 6C where the usually tough, cane-happy, short Ghanian Mr. Baa was letting the kids go crazy with disco etc. Was her name Miss Oji? She died soon after we left school.)

Where was I? In Primary 6 we had a book, not in the African Reader's Library, titled "Aduke Makes Her Choice." Aduke learrned typing and shorthand and things like that. I don't remember the "choice" she made, though. I remember the words stenography, and I think menstruation (which usually irked Aduke, or was it the Bamenda girl of Promise who noted this?) I remember Kenechi seemed to understand this part, mensuration or whatever, while I sure didn't. Kenechi is a nurse now. Thanks to facebook, I'm in touch with Primary school friends even.

Being on the campus of UNILAG...well, although it has that waterfront going for it,it's not a perfectly beautiful campus, but it is a campus, with all the youthful energy of late teens and tweens. I like campus energy, especially if it's all kinds of intelligent young people on campus, not only engineers.

Instinct, Natasha

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It's my instinct to make love, art, whatever; not war. Does everyone share this instinct? Not these city people. I guess chickens in a coop behave nothing like free-range chicken too. Crazy Lagos.

I have a short story from earlier this year: hope you like it. Wrote it in the middle of the night in Yola (after listening to Rufus' Natasha a lot I guess) Yowz, I miss Yola.

Natasha - A short play / picture book
January 24, 2009
By Tosin Otitoju
ootitoju@hotmail.com

Natasha is a friend of ours. She has lived in the United States of America for 15 years now, since she was 16 and starting her first week in the University of Indiana. She went from there, summa cum laude, to advanced engineering research in California, and now with her PhD, she is a professor living in Beverly Hills.
Natasha is not only very good in mathematics and engineering; she is also very beautiful with a good sense of fashion. She likes to spend money on clothes, which she collects like pieces of art. Do you think she has it all? Let’s ask her boyfriend.

Hans: Men, I love her. She doesn’t have “it all.” For example, she is so skinny because she hates to eat. I spend an hour everyday trying to make her eat.

But she looks lovely, we protest, so thin.

Hans: She is getting smaller and smaller. I worry for her. Nowadays – she doesn’t know that I know – she goes away after every meal. To the ladies room. To vomit everything.

Really? You should have her see a psychologist.

Hans: Tasha? You know she’s from a different culture. Psychologists are not in her culture. But yes, I agree, she has an eating disorder. I wish I could help her. Ah, there she is.

Natasha: Hey love. Sorry I’m late. (Smiling) I’m always late.

Hans: Darling! It’s OK. We were just about to order. What will you like?

Natasha: Er, not really hungry.

Hans: ‘Tasha?

Natasha: Maybe ice cream. Strawberry.

Hans: And a sandwich? Some rice? (After a minute of haggling, they decided Natasha would get a salad with her ice cream. Hans got a chicken and potato casserole, and we got our usual, fish and chips. )

Hans: Natasha has been unusually sad.

Natasha: I am always sad.

Hans: You are sadder now…

Natasha: The bombings. They are running my life. I wish I never came to this country.

We didn’t even know that was her country. She never struck us as Moslem – no veil, no Muslim name…

Natasha: You didn’t know? I’ve been watching the thing on TV. My own village, where I grew up – it has been leveled by the shelling. My life – I wish I was there.

Hans: But here you are safe.

Natasha: Safe for what? Alive for what? I am not alive, Hans.

Hans: (aside to us) My girlfriend can be overly dramatic sometimes. But Honey, next year you can go back home and help them rebuild.

Natasha: You don’t understand. For ten years, I’ve been plotting to go back (she slurps some of her ice cream) and still – what?

Hans: And she was supposed to finally go to her country this weekend. A one-year visiting professorship.

Natasha: And suddenly, poof. God, my life. If they would only open one airport. Let me go home and die. I can’t live like this anymore – worrying if my parents are alive.

Hans: She misses her home. The thing is very strange, since she’s very much an American girl now.

Natasha: But it’s very modern in the Capital. The difference is that people there – they know how to feel, feel life. I died already, living in America. Hans loves me: right, Honey? But nobody here can help me.

Hans: I know but I still try. I wish I could get her home. I go to my country every year, sometimes twice. My brother’s wife and kids join my parents and me for Christmas. Just like when we were kids; there’s a tree, plenty of soup and warm drinks, presents…So I can’t imagine, Natasha hasn’t been home in eight years.

Natasha: Was too busy. Grad school, then the Postdoc – ah, I wasted my life. A wasted life. There is nothing now to do but cry for a wasted life.

Hans: I love you. Your life is not a waste. Look, you are beautiful, accomplished, kind, rich, even. Only thirty-one.

Natasha: Excuse me. (She leaves for the ladies’ room)

Hans: I have never known a person so sad. You know, nobody in her family died, fortunately. Her grief is as if somebody died.

We agree that she is sad. We think she has a life here and that she should be patient until she can honour the visiting professorship back home. Of course not now, it’s too dangerous now, with hundreds dying every day in the bombings.

Two years later

Natasha! Look at her on the sidewalk in Beverly Hills, looking glamorous as ever. Granted, she’s a little too skinny. Let’s go over to say hi.

Natasha: I remember you. How have things been?

Alright. You know? And you? How is Hans?

Natasha: My ex? He never understood me. He’s very nice and he saved my life, but for me – I mean, these people don’t know how to feel their life. But he saved my life. I was really miserable those years.

And now?

Natasha: I can’t be miserable. I have a daughter.

Wow. That was – wow. Congrats.

Natasha: It’s not a big deal. Everybody has a child, a few children, at my age. Not around here, but –

I take it you went home then.

Natasha: Yes. The war ended at the end of August. One month later I was in the Capital. My mother kept crying because she said I looked so ill.

Did Hans visit you there?

Natasha: I got pregnant, so he couldn’t – it got awkward. I got very sick after I got to my parents’ home so I spent a lot of time in and out of hospitals. I couldn’t even teach for the first three months.

So you were pregnant?

Natasha: But not for Hans, obviously. I got pregnant after the illness. The father doesn’t know. It was someone I met in hospital. I can take care of the baby, and my mother is here to help me. She’s been here for a year.

That’s such an interesting life.

Natasha: Don’t use the word ‘interesting,’ like I’m an object. I wish I had Hans now. But he could never return to my life.

Have you talked to him?

Natasha: I had a baby. Can’t possibly ask him for anything now. Men have their pride.

I would call him. Just see what happens. He really cared about you.

Natasha: Yes. And I started going to see a shrink now. It’s a nice activity, outside work and home.

Glad you see it that way. You weren’t interested last time we met.

Natasha: But now I think it’s a good help. I mean, if we still had religions, or tight-knit families and elders, but in the modern world I say a shrink is a nice way to confess, clear your head.

How old is your girl?

Natasha: She’s one. Let’s go inside and see her.

Aw, you’re sure you’re not too busy?

Natasha: This is life, for living, I’m not too busy. (she leads us in through a small gate.)

Natasha’s mother: Ahlan bikum. Ahlan.

Natasha’s daughter: Eeek!

Natasha: There she is – Farah.

Notes:
Summa cum laude – graduating with highest honors.
Ahlan – greeting, welcome, in Arabic.
Farah – name, meaning happiness.

Hustle or flow

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I so hate hustling, you know, that big city mentality, me fighting working against the world.

Couldn't blog this month

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Sorry

O'Bama

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I read The Audacity Of Hope last week. I read it very quickly. It's a good book featuring Obama's thoughts on US Government, Money, Race, God, Policy, Family, etc.
I'm reading Dreams From My Father this week. Now, that is an infinitely interesting book. I'm glad it's so long. I really like the end, which narrates, finally, his Kenyan family history. (I had to read the end before I properly got there; you feel his relief at finally KNOWING where he's from.)
I wish many "lost" Black people in America could come out here, even on short visits, 'cos it's rare to feel at home, in the regal sense of the word, in America when you're Black.
I wish I read more of the AfrAm works that we did in that blitz of a course with Charles Metze III in Freshman year at HU. Now I see what a diligent kid I was, how diligent many of us foreigners were, to have got As in these courses in spite of not having the background knowledge - slaves, OK I had seen "Roots", but we hadn't heard of Thurgood Marshall, Richard Wright, even Toni Morrison, and we had just one semester. The main text for the course was fantastic: From Slavery to Freedom, A History of African Americans by John Hope Franklin.

My sister Kehinde graduated last weekend with a degree from The Mecca. The real H.U. She studied Business: Hospitality Management. (Anybody hiring? Seriously. I would hire her in a heartbeat.)

Last week's news:
New Poet Laureate of England - Carol Ann Duffy
New on the Time 100 List - Rafael Nadal
Still the best in the world - Dinara Safina

Birthday

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Birthday is on May Day folks.
tonight: cartoons and pineapple.
tomorrow: whatever's fun.

Life is amazing, even without electricity in my house.
there's a lot of fun stuff I could tell you, but my Papa might think it immodest. You know I'll still tell.
Girls are weird. Boys make more sense. Someone I know (yours truly) decided to try polygamy. She tried it. Her boyfriend returned two days later from a trip. She told him (well, he knows her, so he knew from her poetry that she might do something like that someday.) He did the sensible thing: tried to "adapt," then eventually started being a bit too busy to hang out regularly.

Could you see a typical girl doing the same as boyfriend? She would get so pissed, then waste a lot of her time fretting over the situation, maybe even trying to change things. Girls are weird, dude.

There are downsides to polygamy, like "who's the daddy?" - I think that's why all the mores around marriage started in the first place. Then also the fact that it leaves less time for "somebody." I guess everybody knew that.

The poetry book is done. I'm so happy. It's so nice to FINISH something this big. You'll read the poems soon, over a hundred of them, everything from Haiku to "Saguaro" with some music and limerick in between. I got a chance to read some today, and my audience had a fine time laughing. Who could ask for anything more?

Aish baladee and Nutella

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It's funny how well Nutella goes with aish baladee. One is an Italian chocolate-hazelnut spread, beloved of travelling students everywhere, baladee is the barely-there-light Egyptian local bread. Yum.


It's funny how lovely dark-haired white guys look in Adire/Batik, the locally-dyed cloth famous among Yorubas.

Yes, I know this post could use some visuals :-o

...so I just added the pics and links. do i have volunteers with cuter pictures of oyinbos in Naija clothes?

Cool research, outside the academy

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Last months in Adamawa
After the last post, electricity returned, and we've had so many hours per day now that I'm mildly sleep-deprived. Basically, whenever we have power, I'm up "using" it, to watch DVDs, read, etc. Watching Indian films now : finaly saw Kuch Kuch Hota Hai, a tearjerker love story with all the biggest names (except Aishwarya), Girlfriends is a surprising thriller - think Fatal Attraction but with girlfriends ;), there was a comedy called mujhse-shaadi karogi (Will You Marry Me?)that draws me to Goa , and I fell asleep watching more last night.

My answer, finally, to the first cry in this blog, dated July 2005, that I've discovered no new science...well, it is silly that I expected to be a researcher in 2004. (OK, 2005 less silly.) It takes time (for some people, for me) to have anything to say. I think the time will come, come soon even, but sad that I didn't know how to have more realistic expectations. Perhaps it's something that PhD programs can teach more to reduce the angst and pain. Ideally, though, it won't be in our trade papers that I do all or even most of my work, because I'm special and prefer higher impact even if it's unusual. That, does not come easily to many scientists. Although my gradschool advisor is way cooler than average, it's still a funny bunch that elects to live in Caltech. Ah yes, I'm planning to go back to grad school, in spite of being certain to be unhappy there, unhappy at least relative to eating cheaply and living simply in Adamawa State.

Compare Pasadena, the town in which I was somehow always a little sad. At least I learned a lot, including this work-life balance thing, how to be productive and relevant while selfishly keeping oodles of ME time. How to get knocked down and get up again. Not to mention practical things like driving and googling. Met some assholes and some lovely people, learned about white people and their civilization, enjoyed wealth for a bit (not that I was making a mega-salary but that the ambiance - the landscaping and the big-money equipment and everybody round having food and health, clothing and shelter, internet and extra, and the time and equipment to be scientists...it was quite a wealthy community.) The sad thing is that I wasn't even one of the sadder people around. What manner of progress ends up with sad people? At Howard, with black folk, there were sometimes delays, annoying people, but not the general sadness at 'Tech. Maybe things have changed since the President changed - he had a clue as to how to make a people sad: work long and hard on "interesting" problems without a clear view as to the real-world solutions and impact of the work. That's the winning formula for sadness.

Finally, the research
What could be more important than better understanding infant care? I watched this thing on Oprah years ago in which a chic analysed and classified baby cries so that you can see scientifically "why" the baby is crying. I wish more girls would do science and have fun with it. In

The Secret Language of Babies: The Five Cries of Newborns
Priscilla Dunstan [claims] babies of different races and culture all have the same five cries ... and since we all have the same reflexes the sounds are the same. (Check the five sounds here, get the DVD)

If you're into this astrology thing, The Pisces Effect is intriguing. Kenneth Mitchell scientifically relates Zodiac sun signs to specific Olympic sports, finding for instance that the percentage of medals in a sport such as swimming or archery, is not evenly distributed among the 12 signs, but actually skewed in favour of their corresponding signs: Pisces and Sagittarius.

Why would I want to be a synchronized swimmer of all things: some attractions - movement, rhythm, it's not goal-oriented in the narrow way that besting your fastest time in running or swimming is, it's more "aesthetic" and "cultural," it's low-impact (safe, no injuries), and it involves teammates so that the stress is lower. Basically you have fun trying it, happy if you win, whatevs if you don't. Makes sense that a Taurean would dig it. Taureans are the synchro queens, per The Pisces Effect. And I dreamt of doing synchro years before reading this, you know?

And great news
TWO cybercafes just opened in my area, feet from the university. 50% lower price even. And they may soon have a wireless subscription. My XO laptop aka One Laptop Per Child, would come in handy then, since electricity is not guaranteed. Can't wait to test the laptop out if/when it arrives.

Big Rush

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cybercafe's kicking me out. hi.
classes started finally. fun. yay.
it's hot. but i can't bitch. happy to be hot for a change.
no fucking flash of electricity at home for the whole week. then again i've never paid the electricity bill. we never do. never will.
too funny.