Eight weeks ago, I was all set to go home to Nigeria. Now I'm still living in the States and look to live here for a while longer. What happened?
Why I wanted to go in the first place:
The push - Mostly the completely impossible travel and visa situation. It's related to the class stratification in the US, and the fact that being black doesn't confer many advantages here. Raising children requires help and community to a degree that most Americans do not even aspire. The pull - Family and support system, living in a place with sunshine, the thirst for shared values, doing more meaningful work, appreciation. In Nigeria, nobody is in a class higher than you - our constitution may not be explicit about this, but the practice of pride is alive and well.
What changed:
EVERY TIME I have traveled internationally, it has followed a nerve-wracking bureaucratic drama: I've been detained and strip-searched, paid hundreds of dollars in transit visas and thousands in canceled tickets. Further, roughly every weekday I've spent in Nigeria has seen me at the embassy lobbying to get in (pushing and shoving and then pushing fellow Nigerians some more, keeping up with the rumours about the ever-changing application or entry or passport photo or payment "system") or lobbying for a visa. Naturally, I surmised that "they" don't want "us" to stay. As a dear racist friend of mine used to say "Go back to Africa." No problem.
One day in July I tried to go home, having accepted that I wouldn't be able to come back due to the fierce gate-keeping by the Immigration authorities. We got tickets (thanks N) and packed for the airport where I was told that I couldn't fly without a transit visa to cover my one-hour stopover (for flight-change) in Europe. I couldn't get a transit visa without a few days of embassy palaver. Transit visas are only required by people from selected countries, whereas until recently Americans could travel overseas for weeks without a passport. Siooma.
Anyway, this taught me that bureaucracy is not as rational as I thought; it would work to keep me from going back to Africa as well as block me from coming in. Oh well. I returned home. Home is in Berkeley (a guy named Raj.)
My new cynical take on the whole thing is: they want you to go, they want you to stay. Do what you want. You may need to get a lawyer. Nobody understands chaos like a lawyer.
Tennis Player, Rafael Nadal Thomas Niedermueller / Getty
Drama has returned to the top rung of men’s tennis, and much of the credit belongs to Rafael Nadal. Nadal has proven himself to be the undisputed master of clay courts, but has not let up in his pursuit of world number one Roger Federer on grass or hard courts. The upcoming U.S. Open will be a prime test of both men. Use the form below to submit your questions for Rafael Nadal—in Spanish as well—then look for the upcoming interview in TIME Magazine. ...No questions from me. Just admiration. (understatement)
Power and Light Once again, I have a chunk of my life planned out. It sort of needs a job.
Watching the celebrity gossip show, EXTRA. According to them, Monique's beauty contest show for fat women has taken the beauties to France for a glam photo shoot in which they're wearing only body paint.
Mo'Nique is spunky, positive, and super-empowering.
What else do I watch on TV nowadays? AGE OF LOVE - the reality dating show with 20-something and 40-something year old women vying to be the girlfriend of this guy Mark Phillippoussis who's 30 and has been to the Wimbledon and US Open finals.
...Can't wait to see what happens next Monday. Last episode's elimination was delicious: the woman was catty, toxic really, and the cut was swift as soon as he detected her "competitive" ways. I like the show, but don't like the terms "cougar" and "kitten" - eewww.
The Science of Love, an hour-long "experiment" (and promotional machine for some dating site I've forgotten now) was super-cool too.
You guessed it, I also enjoyed the many incarnations of The Bachelor and The Bachelorette. One of the big cultural adjustments when I came to America: men sitting pretty with women striving to bag them. In Nigeria, a show like The Bachelorette would have much greater appeal than The Bachelor. Men competed for chics, not the other way around. Oh well.
First came the Executive Company Head in the center of the paper. He's pot-bellied, in his home with a crucifix on the wall - there should be a Turner there somewhere too according to the song. Then there's little "I" looking at (and up to) the art teacher.
I used to Paint (using Microsoft Paintbrush) on breaks from work at Chrysler back in the day. (That was an awesome internship. Didn't know how lucky I was to be surrounded by such happy people.) The pictures were nicer than this one: I had better control over the "pen" since I used a proper movable mouse, plus I had an eraser, colours, spraypaint, cut-and-paste...
...really loved the copying and pasting - built an army, a field of flowers - pretty autistic. Don't worry it wasn't straight copy-paste, there was some realism: perspective, variety. Still, using a computer to draw wasn't the best way to relax from hours of using my eyes and a computer to "sequence processes for F1 build of the 2001 minivan" and my head really hurt from the strain.
I just ate some left-over pasta - not just any leftovers, it's Bertagni, this stuffed pasta line at Trader Joe's. It makes me eat more. It makes me lick my own palate. There's something in the stuffing that I guess my body's been needing. I just finished the ricotta and reggiano cheese tortellini one. Before that there was "gorgonzola and walnut." Waiting in the fridge is an unbelievable pumpkin ravioli - the reason I now like pumpkin - and more .
The pasta takes less than five minutes to make. My past Trader Joe's addiction: they had this bag of salted fluffed peas in a pod. I couldn't help myself against an open bag of Calbee's SnapPea Crisps, even though each was 2.5 servings of high sodium stuff. I took a picture of the bag last year intending to write about it, then I found that someone else had written a blog post about The new "Crystal Meth" of the Snack Food World.
I love this guy, and not just because he attends Caltech theater: Go to the story source in Caltech News
“A New Kind of World”
Growing up in northern France, in the province of Normandy, Jean-Lou Chameau seems to have discovered his principal affinities early in life: hard work, working with people, new experiences, and, last but not least, mathematics and science. He brought this outlook with him when he left the Old World for the new in 1976 to pursue graduate work in engineering at Stanford, and it has served him well throughout a career that has included faculty positions at Purdue University and Georgia Tech, time spent running a company, and, over the last decade, a move into the upper echelons of academic administration. In 1997, he was appointed dean of the college of engineering at Georgia Tech, and four years later he became the university’s provost. Last summer, he was named the ninth president of Caltech. Chameau assumes the job at a time when issues that he has long championed—forging interdisciplinary and institutional collaborations and promoting global sustainability, to name two—have emerged as major themes on both the national and international stage. It’s an environment in which, as he says, scientists and engineers have an increasingly complex and vital role to play, and to which Caltech, through its faculty, students, staff, and graduates, is poised to make unique and far-reaching contributions. He talked about these topics, and a variety of others, in an interview with Caltech News editor Heidi Aspaturian.
The Making of a President. Clockwise from left, Chameau as a pensive youngster in his native Normandy; as a young Purdue University professor in the 1980s; and as a newly appointed president waiting to be introduced to the Caltech community last summer.
When will you marry? This year? Next year? Sometime forever? Who will you marry? Rich? Poor? Beggar? Thief? Which car will you enter on your wedding day? Wheelbarrow? Bicycle? Danfo? Mercedes?
I think the good answers were Mercedes, rich, sometime forever,...actually i was never really sure what "sometime forever" or "lailai forever" meant, or if we were saying something else that actually made sense. This was the song for a skipping game, so for example if you stopped/tripped on poor, then I guess the other kids had a good laugh. Or if you answered "this year" - a little too young.
The sun is back, and the hopefulness and happiness of the season makes me think about who I will marry. So many exciting choices, it's ridiculous that you're expected to stick with one forever. So... I'm building a marriage team One Rufus, one Nadal, maybe Nadal AND Federer. I dumped Tiger years ago, before he dumped me thank-you-very-much. My boyfriend Raj reminds me that Rufus is "flaming gay." Hmmm.
I saw de Villepin on TV the other day - brilliant guy. He'll be the "seasoned" one in my little fraternity.
Might as well throw in a physicist. They have sharp minds and know something I want to know. I know a few hot physicists. Maybe a good mathematician for the same reasons.
I still like my Portuguese/Angolan João Ricardo from last year...why isn't his career as stellar as his World Cup showing? Well, I would love to help him figure that out - on the coast of Portugal.
There really should be a Nigerian on this list for the whole shared homeland and possibly shared language thing, but I like never meet them.
Who did I forget?
I have baby names too. A number of Yoruba names - WURA (treasure/gold?) and AYO (joy) as in Ayokunnu/Ayokunu - I knew lovely girls by those names when I was a kid. I like the fact that Yoruba names are largely gender neutral.
FELA is another, as in Fela, although I still don't know what it means. (Let me know if you do.) There's also INULEWA from family lore. It was my grandfather's nickname, and means inside + is + the value.
In non-Yoruba names, there's ANNELISE - a complex character from my favourite film - and ALEXANDER/ALEXANDRA of course.
There's COCO - not just the name of a fashion icon, "Aunt" Koko was a super-cool neighbour when I was a kid living in one of the world's most beautiful places.
I must really like light, because I also have CLAIRE, LUMIÈRE, and CANDÈS in my top-ten.
My runners up are LUDWIG, AMADEU, ANNA, APRIL, MAY, NERO, NEO, NEHRU, SUPRIYA, UMA, MALA, AMEERA, SAMIRA/SAMEERA/SAMIR, FARDOOS/FARDOWS - I'll have to be feeling really high to name my kid "paradise, as in the Muslim's afterlife" but giddy happens.
I've always thought Daniel was such a good, fortright person's name, Goke a very pretty boy, and Jonathan a good and loyal boy - this comes from David and Jonathan when I was a kid, I think I was the narrator and, thanks to my mum, the best dressed narrator ever in my pink butterfly dress which I just loved. The tall boy in my class, a complete sweetheart named Efanga, played Goliath. There were "crowds" of Philistines and Israelites. Anyway.
When I was more Christian, my favourite names were Jonathan, Joshua, Joel. I knew their meanings. I don't know if I picked girl's names. Oh cool, I was really young, so those were possibly names for the love-of-my-life, not the kids. I still don't know why people promise to marry only one - that can't be easy.
It's important that all the names don't mean something silly in a major world language; they may have to go to school somewhere exotic and I want to be kind. It's not easy to find names that fit the bill actually: if you try to exclude all the words that translate into giggle-worthy words in say 10 major languages - no funny body parts, no unpronouncable letters.
Nick is a big joke of a name in Arabic. The Norwegian Kora and Tone were small jokes. Kora is a (sports) ball, Tone is tunafish.
Rufus would need to sell more records (opera or whatever) to get people to start naming human children that again, since it seems to have taken hold as a dog's name - why oh why? The letters "gb" and "kp" in Southern Nigeria, nobody in the West has those. And the Arabs make "p" into "b" - there were two blackbirds sitting on a wall: one named Bita, one named Ball.
As the joke went when we were in school, the phroblem with the pheephle phrom the northern phart oph Nigeria is that they do not know how to phronounce the letters eph, phee, and phee. So f, p, and v, are sort of dangerous letters too.
Release The Stars, the latest music album by my beloved Rufus is available as (free) streaming audio on vh1.com. News courtesy of usatoday.com "Pop Candy" blogger Whitney Matheson.
My first pop concert ever was Rufus Wainwright, last month at the Palace of Fine Arts in San Francisco. My groupiehood while now concert-certified remains at a comfortable orange intensity, since I feel like I know him so well already. Next time I'll make more of an effort to talk to him or something.
Before l'arrival de Rufus on stage, I'd started to warm up to the opening act Teddy Thompson, who's much younger/hotter than I imagined - he's a country musician after all, and they're not supposed to be so metrosexual. He plays awesome guitar, lovely voice too, and is an old family-friend of El Rufus. His music is so modern, it barely qualifies as country.
Rufus is a totally stylish guy. He had this sash or something around his hips, stripes and colours all around, and great new cowboy boots as he sashayed on stage. He's so look-at-me. He played mostly the new stuff, backed by a very energetic percusssionist and four/five others.
Try I'm Leaving For Paris and more, while I try to find video footage of him channeling Judy Garland.
11 days later: No Judy Garland video yet, but there's this and hundreds more on youtube. Rufus make great success.
Don't forget to follow the links to read official synopses and watch the film trailers!!!
The Short Films
I already mentioned A Stranger in Her Own City, the Sana'ani film about a "tomboy" named Nedjmia. There were seventeen other short films at the festival, arranged into programmes of four to six films each. I missed most of the shorts - sad sad sad. I caught Yasmine's song, La Femme Seule, and bits of Beit min Lahm and Little Beirut. Yasmine's Song is probably very similar to The Syrian Bride, an award-winning full-length feature film that I'll soon watch. Both are marriage stories focusing on the separation caused by the Israel-Palestine conflict. At the end of the short film, Yasmine and her lover are on opposite sides of a freshly-built fort-quality wall and the image is moving, to say the least.
I enjoyed being able to translate many of the film titles, including Beit Min Lahm - House of Flesh - which thematically resembled a European taboo-sex-lite film. I believe the story was a mum and her daughters in a love web with a man. The images were all in shadow; deliberate, a good and gentle art film.
Little Beirut showed unrest among the Lebanese émigré in France. La Femme Seule is about a Togolese housegirl. One of the most special and original films I've ever seen. It's a story about a domestic worker that is entirely from her point of view, in her voice, with still pictures. It's in French with subtitles. To all Africans, film-lovers, and especially filmmakers: Watch this one. Trust me.
I wish I had seen many of the others. (That's what I get for being late.)
The Not-Short Documentaries
I saw Occupation 101: Voices of the Silenced Majority, remember? By now you ought to have hunted down and hosted a viewing party for this political film. There was a special high-school viewing of this film and discussion with the directors afterwards. A favourite scene shows footage of an Iraqi diva, maybe five years old, animatedly complaining about how the explosions have spoiled her things. Really. I want to see her again.
You also remember Goal Dreams, another poignant Palestine documentary, about hope against all hope? In this case, the hope was to build a Palestinian team and qualify for last year's FIFA World Cup. Little did the coach know that the biggest challenges would have nothing to do with playing ball.
Dam Akhii, or The Blood of My Brother (watch the trailer) was an Iraq death film. A man is killed, for no reason, like thousands and thousands, in Iraq. What is the family feeling, how are they living, how do they cope? That Iraqi communities have been presented with such horror is troubling. One of the surprising moments in watching this film was that a fellow audience person gasped as a ram was slaughtered in a ritual marking the man's death...where was her expression of horror when the man was slaughtered and buried, as his mother beat her chest and cried?
I Know I'm Not Aloneis a crowd-pleasing documentary about a crowd pleaser. He's an American musician, a silly man, a deep man, who takes his music to the war-ravaged areas of the Middle East to meet, to greet, to laugh, to heal. He meets undergound Iraqi rap musicians who are inspired by the black struggle in America. He needs no prompting to start strumming his guitar and belting his sing-along song HaBiiBiiBii HaBiiBiiBii HaBiiBiiBii HaBiiBi. Habibi means beloved, and is to Arab pop music what Corazón is to Spanish pop, or Love to English, that is, the most (over-)used word in the songs of the language. This film follows the adventures of an ambassador.
All these are very highly recommended. Of the documentaries I missed, I would have especially loved to see Linda and Ali, about a cross-cultural couple: Linda is from Arizona, while Ali is Qatari.
The Feature Films
Coming Wednesday/Thursday. For now, I have to get back to preparing for a job interview tomorrow at which I'm not likely to discuss Arab film; I think it will be about statistical data analysis and such. Interviews, finally: there's another on Friday with an electric power company. Yay! Wish me luck.
The People
The filmmakers' panel included the completely captivating actress Meriam Serbah. I mean, I didn't watch Bled Number One, in which she starred, but in person, she had such a dominating strength of presence in a room in which many people had such great strength of presence.
I met Sufyan and Abdallah Omeish, the brothers who directed Occupation 101. They're nothing if not passionate, and it's amazing that such young people have done such important work.
There were also: Maya Sanbar, the très beautiful BBC documentary filmmaker and co-director of Goal Dreams, who not only knows how to make a great film, she knows how to fund and sell; Stephen Olsson, who directed the reportedly psychedelic Sound of the Soul, which was presented at the festival with Improvisations, a film about the oud, which was probably a delicious work.
I met Samir Nasr, who directed Seeds of Doubt (English title of the German Folgeschäden.) I have a few goals as an actress, one of them is to work with this man. I suspect he's that brilliant. He's making a film in Arabic next, and I'll someday soon be fluent in Arabic.
As a film festival volunteer, I met other volunteers, attendees, judges, directors, actors, and organizers. If there's a heaven, the people who organize a beautiful thing like this are definitely going there.
I was a little shy about handing out my newly-made headshot/acting-resume card.
I felt very beautiful in a small-world of very beautiful people. I felt very beautiful at the afterparty - dancing in the gorgeous dress (completely gorgeous, I tell you) that a friend in Sana'a had given me when she learned of my missing luggage. I was the stuff of dreams in that dress. I loved living in French and Arabic, learning about the human condition, being in a social condition, having a brand new boyfriend and many new friends...
I first wrote about some of the films (Occupation 101, A Stranger in Her Own City, Goal Dreams) in this September 2006 post.
I once met a friend of the guy who directed this vegetable animation called T-Day. I just love the filmmaking in T-Day, and though I can't say I understand Lior Chefetz's other films to date, he's clearly a star filmmaker in the making.
I haven't been depressed since I got here, six months ago. Today and yesterday I've been choking with rage. I won't write why on the internet, not today. I just want to go to sleep and not deal with it. I've considered chugging some wine or cough syrup. Then I found this site: Two minutes later, I'm sharing the link here and maybe I'm ready to pick myself up and breathe.
Why? I signed up to do a local playreading (in Oakland, tomorrow.) My character is a librarian named Joan, who knits throughout the short play. I could fake-knit on stage, but OF COURSE I drove to Michael's before rehearsal one day and bought some conspicous gold-coloured knitting needles, some yarn and a beginners kit a helpful attendant picked out for me, which includes a how-to-knit book with pictures.
The basics are easy, I've been back to Michael's for more yarn, including a different colour to pattern it, and now the knitting has grown to about 40% of a scarf.
Just now I picked it up to continue and exclaimed "God, it's beautiful." It occured to me that I had more than a stage-prop on my hands, I had a scarf in the making.
First thought: give it to Raj, but he's a man who hasn't learned to wear pink yet. So I'm going to sell it.
You should buy it. See sidebar on the right for Google Checkout button. I'll ship no sooner than a week from today, after it's completed, insha'Allah.
A Terrible Thing to Waste From laweekly.com Convicted as an ecoterrorist, a brilliant young scholar nose-dives in prison. UPDATE: Exceprts of Billy Cottrell's letters from prison By JUDITH LEWIS Wednesday, February 28, 2007 - 1:00 pm Billy Cottrell in kindergarten
When Billy Cottrell was first sent up to Lompoc Federal Penitentiary, he thought he had landed the perfect job. A brilliant student of theoretical physics at California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, Cottrell has a high-functioning form of autism that makes it difficult for him to pick up on people’s emotions, but also gives him a grave appreciation for detail. At Lompoc, he thought, he would do secretarial duty in the “boiler-room office,” spending many hours alone, filing, sorting, typing and proofreading. He could be useful.
Before his first day, however, prison officials got nervous. They knew Cottrell was smart; they’d seen his physics textbooks and writings. And wasn’t this the kid who’d been convicted of blowing up Hummers somewhere in Los Angeles? Thinking he might find a way to rig the water heaters to blow up the prison, Cottrell says, they denied him the job.
Next, Cottrell was offered a job mowing Lompoc’s copious lawn. Read more...
I'm listening to the music of Banky on his myspace page right now. You should too. He make great success! I like!
Browsing the web today and finding nascent Nigerian lifestyle (women, fashion, entertainment) media like this one. There's some very good content out there.
My sister Taiwo wants to be a leader in this sphere. She has all it takes, including a business education, trademark ideas and a spirit that is singularly beautiful and very strong.
Unlike the larger Nigerian blogosphere, the lifestyle segment of Nigerian bloggers seems to have a network i.e. members link to one another, so that finding one helps you find others.
You know where else there is a tight network? In modeling. The young female models, from alumnae of America's Next Top model to home-grown international models from Africa and Europe. You find one myspace page and you've more-or-less found them all.
1998, I was seeing a man who was famous for being a brilliant student, who was slightly balding, fit and short. "Seeing" meant sharp-tongued banter and kissing in the hallways. I assumed he was seeing other people, in a more grown up way. I assumed that had nothing to do with me. I remember the pretty film, Surviving Picasso...I was Françoise, the young one who survived Picasso. I had too much going for me to be engulfed by this guy.
Anthony Hopkins' Pablo Picasso showed a portrait to his new girl Françoise (Natascha McElhone) of a razor-tongued woman, his x, who "had a sharp tongue to nag, nag, nag," he said in a nagging Hopkins accent. "She has a sharp tongue to nag nag nag."
I started hearing myself say the same things over and over to my current boyfriend, so much my throat literally hurt sometimes so I'd say "my throat hurts, I can't talk so much." But I'm stopping. By the way, Raj helped label the stuff for garage sale yesterday. It all took a few minutes, after I spent 10 times as long saying we had to do it. What a waste! Nothing gets done when you nag - except rapid aging.
Because I allowed people to create a violent war in Iraq. I murmured a bit, and then moved on with life and quotidian concerns.
If it's "not my job" to do something, and not your job, and not her job, and not his job, then who will do something? And who will do something when I am (or you are) the victim?
