tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-82846616351886794382024-03-05T08:25:44.230-05:00Method to the MadnessBook Reader. Music Lover. Politics Junky. Constantly amused/freaked out.Saratuhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15444322081856808447noreply@blogger.comBlogger170125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8284661635188679438.post-59398912425642605122014-01-17T05:22:00.001-05:002014-01-17T05:22:47.160-05:00More on Nigeria's Anti-Gay BillFollowing up on <a href="http://methodismadness.blogspot.com/2014/01/nigerias-anti-gay-law-and-our-political.html">my post yesterday</a> considering the public health angle on the anti-gay bill (hint: it's terrible for public health), I saw<a href="http://ayosogunro.files.wordpress.com/2014/01/same-sex-bill.pdf"> the version of the bill the Senate passed</a>. This may be the same version the President did as well, so it merits attention.<br />
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Lawyer and blogger Ayo Sogunro <a href="http://ayosogunro.com/2014/01/17/the-straight-nigerians-guide-to-the-new-anti-gay-law-by-ayo-sogunro/">did some great analysis</a> over at his blog on the human rights and constitutional issues inherent in the law. As he points out, this bill has nothing to do with marriage, even targets civil unions, and is more of a witchhunting law than anything that seeks to deter bad behavior. After expanding on how the law should be of concern to all Nigerians -- not just LGBT ones -- he rounds up with how the law is lazy, even by Nigerian standards: <br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 23px;">Just take the basics, simple definitions: the definition of “</span><i style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #333333; font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 23px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">civil union”</i><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 23px;"> isn’t closed, and can legitimately mean two girls sharing an apartment; “</span><i style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #333333; font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 23px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">amorous relationship</i><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 23px;">” is not defined and so even heterosexual greetings can be maliciously interpreted as the expression of a homosexual relationship; words like “</span><i style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #333333; font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 23px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">support</i><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 23px;">”, “</span><i style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #333333; font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 23px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">meetings</i><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 23px;">” are used carelessly without defined categories and exceptions; the burden of proof is not stated; the law does not provide for categories of unintentional or “inadvertent” offenders; and worse—it is a retrospective law—a type of law strongly disapproved of by our constitution. In summary, it’s a very lazy law—the kind a mob will hurriedly put together just to legalise their murderous instincts. But, you see, you can’t amend such a law to take care of these issues—because they deal with private matters that are difficult to enforce by the public without sacrificing people in the process.</span></blockquote>
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Give it a read. Saratuhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15444322081856808447noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8284661635188679438.post-46750826916144466392014-01-15T12:04:00.002-05:002014-01-15T13:14:05.870-05:00Nigeria's Anti-Gay Law and Our Political Leadership<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
The best policy-making is often a study in political leadership. </div>
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In 1986, the UK government under
Conservative PM Margaret Thatcher embarked on a national policy that raised a
fair amount of opprobrium in a lot of quarters – its <a href="http://www.nta.nhs.uk/healthcare-nems.aspx">needle exchange program</a>
to provide access for injection drug users to clean needles. <o:p></o:p></div>
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A needle exchange program
basically provides access to sterile syringes and other injecting equipment to
reduce the risk of transfer of diseases by blood. Injection drug users are a high-risk population for such diseases as HIV/Aids, Hepatitis C, and other STDs. Public health experts who specialize in epidemiology of HIV/Aids would tell you that two highest risk groups for the illness are Men
Who Have Sex with Men (MSMs) and injection drug users. At the time the law was program took effect, the UK was
seeing a surge of new infections from drug users. This needle exchange program was
combined with aggressive safe sex education supported by Thatcher’s government, and today the consensus is that <a href="http://www.opendemocracy.net/5050/mat-southwell/was-margaret-thatcher-right-about-drugs">it worked</a>.
The current UK HIV/Aids prevalence rate from injection drug-users <a href="http://www.avert.org/uk-hiv-aids-statistics.htm">in the UK is 0.14%.</a> Now, only 2% of new infections in Britain come
from shared needles. <o:p></o:p></div>
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I never did know PM Thatcher
personally, but I am quite sure that her support for this law had precious little
to do with her inclination for drug usage. No one can say that needle
exchange programs are <a href="http://aidscience.org/Articles/aidscience013.asp">not
without its problems</a> or that HIV/Aids dropped down to zero thanks to the
silver bullet of the needle exchange program. After all, the cumulative number
of new HIV diagnoses did double between 1987 and 1990, and peaked in 1999. The
point is that her support for this program was grounded in the reports on the epidemiology
of HIV/Aids that showed that, in addition to unprotected sex, drug use was a
major cause of the spread of HIV. Her policy-making with regards to this public
health issue was grounded in pragmatism, not emotion. It entailed listening to
experts, taking on <a href="http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/aids/view/7.html?as=1">politically
difficult</a> solutions, and demonstrating leadership on them.</div>
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<o:p></o:p></div>
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Pres. Jonathan is <a href="http://premiumtimesng.com/news/153298-anti-gay-law-jonathan-draws-praises-nigerians-knocks-abroad.html">getting
a lot of plaudits in the country</a> for his signing of the anti-gay law, but I
think these Nigerians are only seeing this as a moral issue, and not considering it in all its ramifications. Anyone who has
bothered to cast a glance at the major public health issues ravaging the
country would see the measure as the President’s display of a staggering
ignorance of the facts and a refusal to take on the most important matters that
face us today. As it stands, MSMs <a href="http://www.iasociety.org/Default.aspx?pageId=5&elementId=15679">have
the highest HIV/Aids prevalence rate for HIV/Aids after sex workers</a>, and
only <a href="http://www.iasociety.org/Default.aspx?pageId=5&elementId=15679">around
half</a> of MSMs ever test for STDs. In the Nigerian mega-city of Lagos, the
HIV/Aids <a href="http://www.iasociety.org/Default.aspx?pageId=5&elementId=15679">prevalence
rate among MSMs</a> was 25% as of 2007. Lest we forget, a lot of these MSMs
have sex with women as well, and are often even married to women. Ignoring an at-risk
population is how diseases spread.<o:p></o:p></div>
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We are still not sure of what
version of the anti-gay bill Pres. Jonathan signed two days ago, but<a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/01/13/us-nigeria-gay-idUSBREA0C10820140113"> from the early reports</a> we can already see that this law will drive MSMs even further into the
margins and render them harder to help. Also, the law’s attack on freedom of
association in contravention to <a href="http://www.nigeria-law.org/ConstitutionOfTheFederalRepublicOfNigeria.htm">Chapter
4 (S. 40)</a> of the Nigerian constitution would also make life harder for
civil society groups to actively seek them out. And I do hope the law, when we
do get a look at what was signed by the President, goes into a far more detail
on what exactly constitutes a “public show of same-sex affection”, because that
particular provision can be misread and abused in amazing ways. Does this mean that two men can't hold hands, as is currently socially acceptable in Nigeria? Does this mean that sisters at the airport can't hug? Short of seeing two men or two women kissing passionately in the corner of a bar, how does same-sex affection differ from, well, affection? <o:p></o:p></div>
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It is easy to say “Oh, GEJ is
wasting everyone’s time with this gay issue, and could have been signing more
useful bills into law,” but I’m taking this on because real lives are at stake
here. People have <a href="https://www.google.com.ng/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&ved=0CC8QqQIwAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fthelede.blogs.nytimes.com%2F2014%2F01%2F14%2Fdozens-reportedly-arrested-in-nigeria-amid-antigay-crackdown%2F&ei=oLzWUtbYBIeX1AW1_4D4Cg&usg=AFQjCNHg5QJZOsv6eqwkOBT83-Rs4ThATQ&sig2=T9tE6DYwuPWqeZKGimUXPw&bvm=bv.59378465,d.d2k">already
been arrested for being gay</a> just a day after the law was passed, and they
would be thrown into prisons <a href="http://www.unodc.org/documents/hiv-aids/publications/HIV_in_prisons_situation_and_needs_assessment_document.pdf">where
they would be at even greater risk of STDs</a>. Just as not simply throwing
drug users in jail was not a condoning of drug-use under PM Thatcher, likewise
dealing with the special risk that MSMs face and thus attending to an urgent
public health issue need not be read as a call to morality. It is the job of
the leadership of this country to be the Explainer-in-Chief, leading on
difficult issues and guiding the nation aright while recognizing the plurality
and diversity in the country of which he leads. <o:p></o:p></div>
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The passage of this law is a
failure of leadership in more ways than even we realize.<o:p></o:p></div>
Saratuhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15444322081856808447noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8284661635188679438.post-44564702581660027952013-11-14T05:20:00.002-05:002013-11-21T10:07:58.393-05:00bell hooks and MHP on Feminism and Being Black in America<div>
<iframe frameborder="0" height="360" scrolling="no" src="http://new.livestream.com/accounts/1369487/events/2477970/videos/34324981/player?autoPlay=false&height=360&mute=false&width=640" width="640"></iframe></div>
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I absolutely loved this insightful and brilliant public conversation between bell hooks and Melissa Harris-Perry over at the New School in NY.<br />
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If you don't know who bell hooks is, do fix that. She's a feminist and intellectual who has written extensively on gender, politics and identity. MHP is kinda awesome as well. I'm a big fan of her show on MSNBC and fully intend to read her latest book. </div>
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bell hooks was brilliant and insightful as always, but MHP was awesome. A friend and I talked about this event while I was tweeting it, and he's right that the atmosphere demanded intellectual honesty and rigor. </div>
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I tweeted while I watched this, so <a href="http://storify.com/saratu/tweets-on-mhp-hooks-conversation-at-the-new-school/preview">check out the Storify</a> of what I had to say (some tweets are missing, though). I bet you'll have a lot to say, too.</div>
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Saratuhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15444322081856808447noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8284661635188679438.post-91824251602696994182013-10-21T04:28:00.000-04:002013-11-21T10:06:37.197-05:00An Appreciation of Fela Kuti and Some Thoughts on Nigeria<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<iframe allowfullscreen='allowfullscreen' webkitallowfullscreen='webkitallowfullscreen' mozallowfullscreen='mozallowfullscreen' width='320' height='266' src='https://www.youtube.com/embed/pCpua4dvUXs?feature=player_embedded' frameborder='0'></iframe></div>
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">I don't use this space nearly as much as I should, but I did get some writing done recently. Here's me<a href="http://voicesofafrica.co.za/in-appreciation-of-fela-kuti/"> in the Mail and Guardian blog Voices of Africa</a> on Fela Kuti: </span><br />
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<span style="color: black;"><a href="http://www.felabration.net/index.php" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 19.5px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank">Felabration</a><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 19.5px;">, the annual two-day festival celebrating the now-late Fela Kuti, was held in </span><a class="autobesttag" href="http://voicesofafrica.co.za/tag/lagos/" rel="nofollow" style="background-color: white; background-position: 100% 50%; background-repeat: no-repeat no-repeat; border: 0px; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 19.5px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;" title="See the tag: lagos (2 posts)">Lagos</a><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 19.5px;"> this week at a time when Nigeria is in the most peculiar of situations. The country is in bad shape, to be sure, but its ruins are not the same in every home. Some of us have not had our entire worlds yanked from beneath our feet. Some among us have children who do not know a time when our walls saw a coat of paint. Others merely see the worst of pervasive lack on the streets while riding in air-conditioned cars. Our Africa is indeed rising, but with a tide that has lifted some boats and sunk many others. That so many of us are buoyed while most are sinking can distort our urgency, but it is at this time that Nigerians must find the eyes to see the bleeding body that has been dropped at our front door.</span></span></blockquote>
<span style="background-color: white; color: #4a4a4a; line-height: 19.5px;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="line-height: 19.5px;">I should make a slight amendment to that part, though. Felabrations is a week-long, not a two-day, festival. Everything else, I stand by.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="line-height: 19.5px;">Enjoy.</span></span>Saratuhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15444322081856808447noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8284661635188679438.post-15419713604617883092013-07-20T11:24:00.001-04:002013-07-31T04:54:33.891-04:00Section 29 and the Personhood of the Nigerian WomanhoodNigerian lawmakers have lobbed a curveball, and the citizens have responded by swinging in anger. Sen. Yerima, in a coup at the Senate during a routine vote on renunciation of citizenship, managed to argue successfully to maintain subsection 4(b) to our constitution (Do forgive the relative absence of links and wording of the constitution on this piece; I’m writing from an offline laptop and uploading the post on Blogger through my phone). Currently, Section 29 allows Nigerian citizens 18 and over to forsake their citizenship. At Sen. Yerima’s insistence, subsection to Section 29, 4(b) has been left in, stipulating that any woman married is to be deemed of an adult, and thus of age, using the justification that putting so high an age of adulthood is against Islam.<br />
<br />
This, as you can imagine, is problematic for many reasons. My first thought was: how can one man hold the Senate to ransom and force a repeat vote, even with a constitution? His insistence on this provision in the constitution did not pass on the first round of votes, but did on the second. Mercifully, Nigerians have kicked themselves into gear; organizing petition drives and open letters and press statements, mobilizing to find ways to take the online passion offline, and reaching out to more and more people.
I am encouraged by the attention that we have managed to sustain over the last few days, but I fear a missed opportunity to address the more pertinent issue of Nigerian women’s citizenship rights.<br />
<br />
From the very beginning, politically-aware Nigerians on social media used the easiest, more emotional topic to rally around, with a ready-made hashtag that has been around for a while -- #ChildNotBride. I don’t think the discussion on child marriages was unnecessary, mind you; we all know Sen. Yerima’s antecedents as one not opposed to marrying minors and it is correct to point out that one of the implications of such a provision as Section 29, sub-section 4(b), passing muster is that the window within which one could persecute a man for marrying a young girl-child is only open in betrothal, after which she will be, according to the constitution, legally an adult. But if we are to properly focus this discussion, we will do well to take this as an opportunity to address the personhood of the Nigerian woman.<br />
<br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(175, 192, 227, 0.230469); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(77, 128, 180, 0.230469); -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.296875);">There are entirely too ways in which the Nigerian constitution shuts women out. The current iteration of the constitution does not allow women to pass on citizenship rights to foreign spouses. Even the federal character argument that seeks to balance ethnic diversity in political office does not extend this logic to gender balance. All this, and never mind there being no constitutional protections for women against prejudice and violence. Women are not alone in being without constitutional protections, though; youth and persons with disability are not either. There is no clearer indication that Nigeria sees itself politically as a collection of different ethnicities, and not a nation of men and women. We are then looking for our constitution, a document that does not recognize the individual as a political entity, for our protection. IF this is to be feasible at all, we would need to make the argument more broadly seeking the protection of personhood as a general matter. </span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(175, 192, 227, 0.230469); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(77, 128, 180, 0.230469); -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.296875);"><br /></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(175, 192, 227, 0.230469); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(77, 128, 180, 0.230469); -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.296875);">The Nigerian constitutional review process has not been as well covered as that of recent constitutional review efforts by our counterparts in Kenya and Ghana, so a lot of groundwork needs to be done in order to ensure that folk are aware and on message. Civil society groups focusing on gender wrote memorandum after memorandum on how best to make for a more woman-friendly constitution, very much in the shadows of larger issues such as state police and local government autonomy. One of the main problems observable with mounting a social media awareness campaign is just how easily the message can veer off in a direction that you don’t want it to take. We do not have a Melissa Harris-Perry on TV every Saturday morning to help us guide multi-media conversation in traditional media. We do not have a press corps that is always dogged in its work to champion the cause of the most vulnerable of Nigerians. Indeed, most of our media-houses would rather tell the stories of political soap operas in Rivers State than hard-hitting, insightful reportage on issues affecting vulnerable populations. What we have are strong opinions from an impatient people that are understandably cynical about their ability to change anything. Watching conversation on Section 29 has been instructive about how we can better channel our collective energy and the importance of finding ways to drive conversation in a manner that carries us all along. </span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(175, 192, 227, 0.230469); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(77, 128, 180, 0.230469); -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.296875);"><br /></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(175, 192, 227, 0.230469); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(77, 128, 180, 0.230469); -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.296875);">Given the context, then, Section 29 of the constitution to be amended with the offending subsection only adds further insult to injury on the question of Nigerian women’s citizenship. Generally, if a law pertains to only one slice of your population, a government’s job of ensuring an equitable society within which its citizens can thrive must be called to question. This troubling notion of “full adult” (as opposed to “half-adult”?) holds so many implications, most egregious of which is that a woman can be “half an adult” for the sake of the man that intends to use her. Aside from being at odds with Child Rights Act which has the age of consent for a child at 18, subsection 4(a) does not make clear what rights these half-adults have rights to. They cannot enter contractual agreements without parental consent, legally vote, or legally obtain a drivers’ license. These “half adults” are, in effect, not adults at all. If a half-adult enters a marriage, can she even dissolve it on her own, given that she does not have contractual consent? What is this half-adult citizen’s right, then? Who determines that? And where does this slippery slope lead to? These are the questions that our government must answer in this constitutional review process. </span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(175, 192, 227, 0.230469); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(77, 128, 180, 0.230469); -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.296875);"><br /></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(175, 192, 227, 0.230469); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(77, 128, 180, 0.230469); -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.296875);">I love that Nigerians are taking the activism offline at organizing; frankly, we need the practice for the greater battles ahead in the 2015 elections. I’m just concerned that we have allowed the question posed by the Senate’s actions (however reluctant) on Section 29 to be framed by something not directly linked to the topic at hand. If we’re going to win battles on issues that matter, we need to focus, ask for concrete, achievable things, and orient our message the right way. Taking on a topic that ever so slightly enters the realm of religion at the height of Ramadan in a politically and religiously polarized environment is not a good idea. But the important thing is this: we are right, and this battle can be won.</span>Saratuhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15444322081856808447noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8284661635188679438.post-12323141178593100002013-06-04T19:27:00.002-04:002013-06-04T19:45:12.692-04:00Blogging the Caine Prize - Pede Hollist "Foreign Aid" and the Diaspora Conversation<i style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px; text-align: justify;">I am <a href="http://thenewinquiry.com/blogs/zunguzungu/blogging-the-caine-2013/" style="color: #7ca18a; text-decoration: none;">blogging The Caine Prize Shortlist </a>with a coterie of bloggers. Check out the blog round-up for reactions to the stories on the shortlist over at <a href="http://thenewinquiry.com/blogs/zunguzungu/" style="color: #7ca18a; text-decoration: none;">ZunguZungu</a>'s. This week's review is of Pede Hollist's "<a href="http://www.caineprize.com/pdf/2013_Hollist.pdf">Foreign Aid</a>" (pdf).</i><br />
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I’m not even sure where to begin
with this one. So here’s the story of Logan, a man who makes good in America,
goes home with a head full of ideas as to how life is supposed to be, and wants
to dictate to those he’s left behind in Sierra Leone what kind of life they
should live. The title “Foreign Aid” is interesting, because it recognizes
Logan’s interventions as from an outside source, as foreign as the Westerner
with full of good intentions and soft-spoken superiority. The messages in this
story, warning of the dangers in de-contextualizing a nation’s problems and
playing know-all, are clear. Maybe even too clear.</div>
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As far as the writing goes, this
story was hard for me to muscle through. For what this story
was trying to do, I think it is fair to say that it was entirely too long.
There were entire scenes that could have been cut out – like the hedging at the
beginning to give Balogun aka Logan a back-story that does not do much to
explain the man that we see in Sierra Leone, or that entirely too long scene
with the suitcases and the ferry. rather, I would have liked, for example, to know more
about what gave Logan, who had lived in Sierra Leone until his twenties, the
level of remove from where he grew up that what he met at home so surprised
him. How different was the Salone he knew as a young man and the Salone he’d
probably heard or read about in his years in America from the Salone he met
upon his return? Did he have no friends of African descent in the U.S.? I
simply do not buy that he came home a <i>tabula rasa</i> and needed to re-learn his
environment. Also, those conversations between Logan and the many uncles were so obviously
playing into a point the author was trying to make that I wish he had just
written us an essay and gotten it over with. </div>
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The trouble is that I actually
completely understand the world the writer is depicting here. Aunties and uncles abroad always joke about how they avoid coming home because the
expectation is always that they spray around the money that they’ve acquired
from the Land of Milk and Honey. I know how irritated I get when I meet
Nigerians who live outside the country that act as though they have all the solutions for Nigeria’s progress, because those of us
who currently live in the country obviously couldn’t trace our wrists from our
elbows. Lots of people who have spent time away truly no longer understand how
a nation could make it so difficult for people to survive, never mind thrive. But I am not every reader, and the way that each character is influenced by their time abroad also differs. It does take a lot of effort and care, but there is indeed a way to tell well-observed, beautifully written stories of this
world that does everything that a good story must do.</div>
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The tradition of writing set in
Africa that addresses contemporary social issues hearkens as far back as those folk tales and proverbs, and is meant to both entertain and make you think, just like these other forms of storytelling. African writers have always felt the burden to have their stories mean something more than just the sum its plot, and that is definitely not a bad thing. The burden some African writers have felt since the post-colonial
era to create work that speaks to the cultural moment has allowed for the
creation of some very beautiful work by writers whose names still ring a bell today, but we most always remember that the best stories also understand the
importance of putting a good story – not a message -- front and center. </div>
Saratuhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15444322081856808447noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8284661635188679438.post-85704149075868116842013-05-31T15:18:00.001-04:002013-05-31T15:18:25.020-04:00Blogging the Caine Prize - Tope Folarin's "Miracle"<br />
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<o:p><i>I am <a href="http://thenewinquiry.com/blogs/zunguzungu/blogging-the-caine-2013/">blogging The Caine Prize Shortlist </a>with a coterie of bloggers. Check out the blog round-up for reactions to the stories on the shortlist over at <a href="http://thenewinquiry.com/blogs/zunguzungu/">ZunguZungu</a>'s. The first story we're reviewing is <a href="http://www.caineprize.com/pdf/2013_Folarin.pdf">Tope Folarin's "Miracles"</a> (pdf), which was first published in Transition Magazine.</i></o:p></div>
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Its probably not possible to a
church service scene and not recall James Baldwin’s “Go Tell it on the
Mountain”. One thing about that book is how palpable the belief was, the very
performance of belief, and how the certainty of that performance belied the roiling
humanity just beneath the surface. Tope Folarin’s “Miracle” was full of the
certitude of belief, but I got much less of the humanity of its main
character and his family. </div>
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I did, however, get a good sense
of who the Nigerians in the church were as a collective, and the helplessness
that seems to embody their narrative. It was a
nice contrast to focus on the church scene in the United States, and Texas
seems a great setting in which to do this. It was subtle, but I like how this
helplessness hung over them like a rain-cloud even in faraway America, where
they – it does not say, but I’m sure – ran to for greener pastures. I would
have liked to know why his family left America, why his mother left them. We
got a good sense of what the Nigerians in the church wanted deliverance from,
but not so much of what this main family wanted and needed. Yes, they are
working hard to make ends meet in America, but I would have liked some more
about how their poverty in America has affected them socially and emotionally.</div>
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Writing-wise, I think the piece
well encapsulated the air that permeated the church and its many followers, and
I could almost feel the anticipation in the church for a miracle. It was all so
droll, watching these people hoodwinked by a pastor, the certainty with which
the pastor performed these “miracles”, as though it were all some elaborate
joke in which everyone were a part of. Droll, yes, but as a Nigerian living in
Nigeria that feels like she is part of an elaborate joke every damn day, it was
mostly very accurate and sad to read.</div>
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I’d have liked some imagery. I’d
have loved to know what the church looked like, what the altar looked like, and
some hints as to what the class of people in the church was. Were they just
like the lead character in the family? Were people from different backgrounds,
worked different kinds of jobs? Did they know the lead character well?</div>
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It has become quite the fashion
to write stories about dissatisfaction with a life in the West, but I always
would like some explanation. Not because I think this is impossible, but
because the root of the dissatisfaction is almost always different and enriches
the story. All in all, though, great story from Folarin, and I would definitely
check out more of his work.</div>
Saratuhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15444322081856808447noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8284661635188679438.post-75770740771679224232013-05-27T12:07:00.000-04:002013-05-27T12:07:18.789-04:00Taiye Selasi's Ghana Must Go and the Question of Magical Immigrants<span style="text-align: justify;">I'm excited to be joining a coterie of bloggers to review of Caine Prize shortlisted stories, just like<a href="http://methodismadness.blogspot.com/2012/05/caine-prize-shortlist-review-bombays.html"> I did last year</a>, mostly because my mind has been primed for literature a fair amount lately. I just ordered A. Igoni Barrett's </span><i style="text-align: justify;">Love Is Power or Something Like That</i><span style="text-align: justify;">, am currently in the middle of Doreen Baingana's short story collection </span><i style="text-align: justify;">Tropical Fish</i><span style="text-align: justify;">. I also just finished reading Taiye Selasi’s
much talked-about novel </span><i style="text-align: justify;">Ghana Must Go</i><span style="text-align: justify;"> this weekend, and I can say right away that you need to do read it, too. </span><br />
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As far as the writing goes, it does not get much better than Selasi's poetic prose that belies a deep emotional intelligence that makes her characters feel real. I came away thinking that I had met many Kwekus and Taiwos, and did not want to stop reading about their lives. From the very first page, there are some passages that you want to just scan and frame and mount on your wall for their lyricism and intelligence and honesty. her description is painstaking and detailed with a poetry and grit that reminds of Toni Morrison. She loves language, sometimes a bit too much, giving her this tendency to over-describe and launch into (albeit gorgeous) paragraphs that do very little to advance the story. Even so, I think you'd do yourself a great disservice for not reading because of that.</div>
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One thing that grated, though, is how Selasi missed some of the more Nigerian details. It is hard to get past her mixing up mainland and Lagos island (no, Ikeja is <i>not</i> on the island) and I don't know anyone that eats jollof rice and egusi (maybe some poeple do, but it's an unusual combination). Also, I don't remember a woman ever calling her son <i>okunrin mi </i>like Fola (I think) did; it is usually something like oko mi ("oko" can mean husband, so this means something like "my dear").</div>
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I know a book is memorable when it leaves me with more than just a story, but an idea that I am grappling with days after. It is hard to read <i>Ghana Must Go</i> without thinking about the burden that a lot of immigrants living in the Western world face to be great. The Harvard graduates, those with high-flying jobs, those that made good on
the other side in the way that gets celebrated at dinner tables back in home
countries, parents dropping nugget after exaggerated nugget of their sons’ and
daughters’ success in classrooms or offices full of white people. I wonder if
by focusing on the most successful among us we are not reinforcing the deeper
minority problem of having to work twice as hard as anyone else to get
anywhere, to achieve something, to be seen. Even among ourselves, we have
internalized the notion that we must be extraordinary for our stories to count.
The Western world teaches us what and who to celebrate, and because we must be
extraordinary to get noticed, we in turn do not easily forgive ordinariness, and tacitly accept the idea that many of us need be ignored for the few -- and there are always too few -- stars who arguably do not see their due, their achievements often filtered through a racial lens.</div>
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Selasi may not have meant for
this to be so, but I found her novel negotiating with the idea of the
extraordinary. Kweku Sai was an extraordinary surgeon, but his life took a left
turn and he fell from grace. Taiwo, the beautiful writer and lawyer, and her
equally extraordinary artist twin Kehinde, are haunted by a horrific incident
at the hands of an uncle in Lagos demonstrate in different ways a gift for
self-destruction. Baby Sadie, a student at Yale, shares this gift with her
siblings. Olu is the perfect son with anxiety issues that you can just tell
will be the bane of his relationship with his long-term girlfriend-turned-wife
Ling. None of the characters in her ambitious, well-done novel are
insulated from life by their degrees and accomplishments. Even overachieving immigrants get in their own way sometimes. </div>
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It was also very affirming to read a story of immigrants from a writer of African descent that deals with issues that
many of us tend to see as Western. I grew up in a Lagos where
want is laid bare: early morning strivers leave for work as early as four in the
morning so as not to be late for a nine o’clock start at the office; the markets always teeming with people; the street children playing hopscotch between
traffic jams and the police chasing them off the streets. The issues that are readily comprehensible, and therefore immediately deserving of sympathy, were those to which the matter of concern is not directly oneself; like being widowed, being arrested by corrupt police and without just cause, being battered by one’s husband, or being robbed of one’s possessions. It is not that too many of us are without human kindness, but many of us have
trouble understanding more quiet afflictions that affect the self; issues of
depression, bulimia, and suicide are often treated with a wave of the hand, a
tired dismissal, more personal failings than real problems deserving of
sympathy.</div>
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I don't read reviews of books that I plan to read, but I did go back and check out what some folk have been saying about the book. It has been amusing to see journalists marveling over her cheekbones and cosmopolitan upbringing, and bringing up her much-talked-about essay on <a href="https://www.google.com.ng/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&ved=0CC8QFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fthelip.robertsharp.co.uk%2F%3Fp%3D76&ei=XYOjUfKeIYXy7AaX6oCoAQ&usg=AFQjCNG1RxYPhPIgd1SnV8dWiqugQiwPsw&sig2=YFSC_1J2NVGEei_b3EXslg&bvm=bv.47008514,d.ZGU">Afropolitans</a>. In a way, the hubbub made of her appearance and her background reinforces her depiction of the immigrant family in her novel, one that peels away the impressive armor and questions the humanity within.</div>
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Saratuhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15444322081856808447noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8284661635188679438.post-44528204672487818472012-06-05T12:29:00.000-04:002012-06-05T12:30:29.630-04:00Caine Shortlist Blogging - La Salle de Depart<br />
<i>Here's the fourth installment in my blogging of the Caine shortlist, along with others in a <a href="http://zunguzungu.wordpress.com/">ZunguZungu</a>-led coterie of bloggers. The story I'm reviewing is Melissa Tandiwe Myambo's "<a href="http://www.caineprize.com/pdf/2012_Myambo.pdf">La Salle de Depart" (pdf).</a></i><br />
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This is the first of the Caine stories which actually seeks
to thoroughly understand the characters that it depicts. Fatima is wonderfully
drawn, and in beautiful sentences and fantastic imagery that is both tender and
unsparing in its honesty. What you get is a real economy in the sense that we
are told everything we need to know about the characters to neither excuse nor
rebuke them, but to understand them. You can almost see the tension as Fatima
seeks the words to ask Ibou about Babacar, you see the resentment and even the
inadequacy that goes into Ibou’s rejection. In the <i>salle de depart</i>, Ibou does
more than travel back to America; he emphasizes the differences between Fatima
and himself. Even as he physically was in Senegal during his visit, he had left
them a long time before, and would always feel that degree of remove.</div>
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One comes away with a sense of just how
different we become when we leave our respective African countries to live
elsewhere. Nothing looks the same anymore, and there is often this tug between disillusionment of greener pasture you have moved to that clambers awkwardly alongside this new vision of where you have left. Sometimes home benefits from the distance, and other times, in many ways, it does not. Home did not benefit from the distance for Ibou, and you get the sense that Ibou flounders as he tries to explain, because to speak more eloquently will be to express how much he neither wants to be home, nor wants to be reminded of home. Myambo also alludes to
Ibou’s shame of not being well-to-do in Senegal, compared to Ghada’s wealthier
French-educated family. Where she and her mother speak classy French, his
family is simpler, especially the sister he used to be so close to when he was
younger,</div>
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When she reminds him of how her education was sacrificed for his, he
does not say anything, mostly because there is nothing to say. It was never
anything he had to think about. It was not among the list of annoyances that he
thought of when he texted Ghada that he felt “like an ATM machine”. It was just
the way things went. There was nothing he could say about that. It was not his
fault, after all, that she was bound by her womanhood and sisterhood into such
a sense of duty that, even as upset as she was, she would still stay in the
airport until his plane had taken off. It was not his fault that he felt no
similar sense of duty. They were the ones that had sent him away.</div>
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What I love most about this is that, even with the familiarity of this story for a lot of Africans, especially those in the diaspora, Myambo gives us a real story. She takes the time to give us
imagery, to make us feel the words stuck in Fatima’s throat, to understand her
confusion, to get a sense of Ibou’s relationship with Ghada, to stand there in
the airport with Fatima and understand how hard her final words to Ibou must
have been to say. She walks the fine line that African writers often walk
between managing the weight of testimony and the skill of fiction. She does not
for one moment forget she is telling a story, and this story is the better for
it.</div>
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<i>Read all the Caine Prize shortlisted stories:</i></div>
<ul>
<li><i><a href="http://www.caineprize.com/pdf/2012_Babatunde.pdf">Rotimi Babatunde (Nigeria) ‘Bombay’s Republic’</a></i></li>
<li><i><a href="http://www.caineprize.com/pdf/2012_Kahora.pdf">Billy Kahora (Kenya) ‘Urban Zoning’</a></i></li>
<li><i><a href="http://www.caineprize.com/pdf/2012_Kenani.pdf">Stanley Kenani (Malawi) ‘Love on Trial’</a></i></li>
<li><i><a href="http://www.caineprize.com/pdf/2012_Myambo.pdf">Melissa Tandiwe Myambo (Zimbabwe) ‘La Salle de Départ’</a></i></li>
<li><i><a href="http://www.caineprize.com/pdf/2012_Myburgh.pdf">Constance Myburgh (South Africa) ‘Hunter Emmanuel’</a> </i></li>
</ul>
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<i>Other bloggers' reviews: </i></div>
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<a href="http://blackballoonpublishing.com/blog/caine-prize-chronicle-4-zimbabwes-tongues" id="internal-source-marker_0.9346035634766039"><span style="background-color: white; color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline;">Black Balloon</span></a><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><br />
<a href="http://backslashscott.wordpress.com/2012/05/31/caine-blog-la-salle-de-depart-by-melissa-tandiwe-myambo/"><span style="background-color: white; color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline;">Backslash Scott</span></a><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><br />
<a href="http://bookshybooks.blogspot.co.uk/2012/06/blogging-caine-prize-story-4-melissa.html"><span style="background-color: white; color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline;">bookshy</span></a><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><br />
<a href="http://loomnie.com/2012/05/26/reading-stanley-kenanis-love-on-trial/"><span style="background-color: white; color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline;">Loomnie</span></a><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><br />
<a href="http://xokigbo.wordpress.com/2012/05/31/caineprize-the-thirteenth-caine-prize-shortlist-la-salle-de-depart/"><span style="background-color: white; color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline;">Ikhide</span></a><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><br />
<a href="http://totallyhawaya-haywire.blogspot.com/2012/05/long-drawn-out-departures.html?spref=tw"><span style="background-color: white; color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline;">Ayodele Olofintuade</span></a><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><br />
<a href="http://www.practicallymarzipan.com/2012/06/melissa-tandiwe-myambo-la-salle-de-depart.html"><span style="background-color: white; color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline;">Practically Marzipan</span></a><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><br />
<a href="http://cityoflions.wordpress.com/2012/06/04/its-good-but/"><span style="background-color: white; color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline;">City of Lions</span></a></div>Saratuhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15444322081856808447noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8284661635188679438.post-74751195174922327802012-05-25T20:32:00.002-04:002012-05-25T20:32:37.131-04:00Caine Prize Shortlist Review - S. O. Kenani's "Love on Trial"<i>Here's the third installment in my blogging of the Caine shortlist, along with others in a <a href="http://zunguzungu.wordpress.com/">ZunguZungu</a>-led coterie of bloggers. The story is S. O.Kenani's <a href="http://www.caineprize.com/pdf/2012_Kenani.pdf">Love on Trial</a> (pdf).</i><br />
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This Kenani short story takes on the issue of gay rights in
Malawi, but Africa more broadly. There was a real effort on the part on the
writer to go after the rationale for the holding back gay rights and the
dehumanization of people based solely on their sexuality. This frustration for
any progressive-leaning person living in an African country is understandable,
but one must wonder how best to tackle it in fiction (hint: not like Kenani
chooses to here).</div>
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I found the title a bit misleading. I understand where “Love
on Trial” comes from, but there really is just one person on trial here: Charles.
This is not like that<a href="http://www.google.com.ng/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=4&ved=0CHoQFjAD&url=http%3A%2F%2Fnews.bbc.co.uk%2F2%2Fhi%2Fafrica%2F8434743.stm&ei=gSDAT99ZxLCEB_vSxY8K&usg=AFQjCNG2hKUlM4DA-11a2SJCIbAtB-tTDQ&sig2=ou5I80Y64o8nyoiGC_SbWQ"> the gay couple arrested in Malawi for attempting to marry</a>;
this is a man who people have found out is gay and not has to defend himself in
the open (lucky he is a lawyer, huh?). I quibble with this, because I think it
is unnecessary in its call to our conscience, but also because I find it
strange because there is an actual trial which ends in his being thrown in
jail, and it was not thoroughly dealt with. We’re given a TV show spectacle
instead.</div>
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The sad part is that there was plenty of potential for the
story to take a more subtle, more illuminating path. By starting off the story
with the drunken Lapani Kachigwe who used his recounting of how he came walked in on
Charles and his lover in flagrante to get free alcohol for his friends was, to
me, brilliant. It was a subtle way of showing how unthinking Kachigwe was, how little
he considered that recounting the story over and again would do to someone’s life, and a nice way of introducing the question of privilege.
He could have used the omniscient point of view to put Charles’s actual trial
as the center of the question and really spend time teasing out the cultural
issues and to fully flesh out the frame of mind of the people who are putting
the young man on trial. Kenani could have used his story as a thoughtful rumination
of privilege, a consideration of how we apportion humanity in post-colonial
societies. Rather, he used it to shake his fists at our collective morality.
Hell, he even ended the story with the parable.</div>
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I think one of the hardest things for African writers is to
balance a deep political consciousness with the discipline to prioritize the
writing of a good story. Kenani, with this story, focused too much on former than
on the latter. In focusing on the
brouhaha gathering around Charles, he offers only a cartoonish version of the
townspeople and no real reason why his family, unlike the townspeople, is
tolerant of their son’s homosexuality. When we get to the TV show section of
the story, the writer almost forgets about setting and the importance of characterization
of the people he is depicting. Charles is the gentle, intelligent gay man who
is faithful to his boyfriend and wants to be a lawyer, but all we know about the TV
show host is that he thinks homosexuality is a sin. </div>
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African writers can write about just whatever they please,
like any writer anywhere else, but African writers who know of their cultural setting enough to write about must know the length and breadth of the humanity of those (s)he chooses to depict. As complicated as it is, there are plenty of good, intelligent, even morally-upright people across who would blanch at the thought of equal rights for gay citizens. Kenani, however, makes no notice of this albeit-inconvenient truth. While I agree on full human rights for gay citizens in my country, I take exception to the writer's inconspicuous kindness only at characters who agree with him, and I remain unconvinced that the best response to unresolved cultural issues is to resort to the smugness that will not allow us to see the humanity in those we do not agree with.</div>
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<i>Read other bloggers' reviews: </i></div>
<ul>
<li><a href="http://zunguzungu.wordpress.com/2012/05/23/a-quick-response-to-love-on-trial-by-stanley-kenani-the-third-of-the-shortlisted-caine-prize-stories/" id="internal-source-marker_0.5439008745857551"><span style="background-color: white; color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline;">Stephen Derwent Partington</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span></li>
<li><a href="http://backslashscott.wordpress.com/2012/05/23/caine-blog-love-on-trial-by-stanley-kenani/"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline;">Backslash Scott</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline;"></span></li>
<li><a href="http://cashed-in.com/2012/05/23/love-on-trial/"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline;">Cashed-In</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline;"> </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline;"> </span></li>
<li><a href="http://aaahfooey.blogspot.in/2012/05/caine-prize-shortlist-3-love-on-trial.html"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline;">aaahfooey</span></a><a href="http://www.caineprize.com/pdf/2012_Kenani.pdf"><span style="background-color: white; color: #cc0000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span></a><span style="background-color: white; color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline;"> </span></li>
<li><a href="http://blackballoonpublishing.com/blog/caine-prize-chronicle-3-malawis-mavericks"><span style="background-color: white; color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline;">Black Balloon</span></a><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><span style="background-color: white; color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline;"> </span></li>
<li><a href="http://cityoflions.wordpress.com/2012/05/25/moralism-and-ambiguity/"><span style="background-color: white; color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline;">City of Lions</span></a><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><span style="background-color: white; color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline;"> </span></li>
<li><a href="http://www.practicallymarzipan.com/2012/05/stanley-kenani-love-on-trial.html"><span style="background-color: white; color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline;">Practically Marzipan</span></a><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><span style="background-color: white; color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline;"> </span></li>
<li><a href="http://xokigbo.wordpress.com/2012/05/25/caineprize-the-thirteenth-caine-prize-shortlist-love-on-trial/"><span style="background-color: white; color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline;">Ikhide</span></a></li>
</ul>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br />
<i>Read all the Caine Prize shortlisted stories:</i><br />
</div>
<ul>
<li><i><a href="http://www.caineprize.com/pdf/2012_Babatunde.pdf">Rotimi Babatunde (Nigeria) ‘Bombay’s Republic’</a></i></li>
<li><i><a href="http://www.caineprize.com/pdf/2012_Kahora.pdf">Billy Kahora (Kenya) ‘Urban Zoning’</a></i></li>
<li><i><a href="http://www.caineprize.com/pdf/2012_Kenani.pdf">Stanley Kenani (Malawi) ‘Love on Trial’</a></i></li>
<li><i><a href="http://www.caineprize.com/pdf/2012_Myambo.pdf">Melissa Tandiwe Myambo (Zimbabwe) ‘La Salle de Départ’</a></i></li>
<li><i><a href="http://www.caineprize.com/pdf/2012_Myburgh.pdf">Constance Myburgh (South Africa) ‘Hunter Emmanuel’</a> </i></li>
</ul>Saratuhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15444322081856808447noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8284661635188679438.post-69717523054005258272012-05-23T12:13:00.003-04:002012-05-23T12:13:51.177-04:00Caine Prize Shortlist Review - Billy Kahora's "Urban Zoning"<i>The ever-awesome blogger <a href="http://zunguzungu.wordpress.com/">ZunguZungu</a> has once again arranged a bloggers' review of each Caine Prize story, and once again, I am among the number. Here's a review for Billy Kahora's story "<a href="http://www.caineprize.com/pdf/2012_Kahora.pdf">Urban Zoning</a>" (pdf). Better late than never.</i><br />
<i><br /></i><br />
This one was a hard nut to crack for me.<br />
<br />
Let's start with the plot, shall we? Kandle is a young man who rather prefers a constant state of drunkenness to sobriety. We meet him when he is 72 hours into this particular drunken spell as he walks the tight rope between good and bad zone, keeping his countenance equanimous, his thoughts positive. All this while, he is arranging his face, his thoughts, his mind for his ultimate "performance" the meeting with the board of the bank where he works.<br />
<br />
In the course of the story, we learn that Kandle has a grown into a man wary of closeness to people, and possibly averse to commitment, seeing as every relationship we see him in has him abusive his position (with the house help), manipulative (with his employers), or without any sense of attachment at all (all the references to casual sex). We learn that he is a fair-skinned Kenyan man, and there are hints that his family is at least relatively well off. His name is Kandle, which brings to mind "candle", the inevitable burn-out of youth. We even see, at the end of the story, an attempt by Kahora to universalize him, calling his and his friend Ocuotho's laughter "a language in itself, used to climb from a national quiet desperation." In that final sentence of the story, we are to affix Kandle and his story in the fabric of larger Kenyan society (something I personally cannot speak to).<br />
<br />
The problem is, I don't see what I'm supposed to do with all these observations. I wonder if there is some larger point to this story that I am missing, because the story is set somewhere I am not familiar with, or perhaps I feel this way because there is not much resolution here. We get to know this very interesting character, but then what? <i>Urban Zoning</i> is almost nothing but a character sketch. This is allowed, of course, in an Open City kind of way, but it is not quite enough for me in this particular case.<br />
<br />
I'll give it to Kahora, though; he writes a hell of a story. My only grouse with the writing is how, towards the end of the story, the author "zoomed out" from Kandle's point of view, but even with that, you can't but love Kahora's observant eye, the darkness of the story, and the fantastic prose. There is a real rhythm, real music, to his sentences. I especially like the vividness of this section:<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Starting off toward Harambee Avenue, Kandle wobbled suddenly, halting the crazy laughter in his chest. Looking around, he felt the standard paranoia of the Zone start to come on. Walking in downtown Nairobi at rush hour was an art even when sober. Drunk, it was like playing rugby in a moving bus on a murram country road. Kandle forced himself back into the Good Zone by going back to Lenana School in his mind. Best of all, he went back to rugby-memory land, to the Mother of All Rugby Fields, Stirlings, the field where he had played with an abandoned joy. He had been the fastest player on the pitch, a hundred meters in twelve seconds easy, ducking and weaving, avoiding the clueless masses, the thumbless hoi polloi, and going for the girl watching from the sidelines. In his mind’s eye the girl was always the same: the Limara advert girl. Thin and slender. Dark because he was light, slightly taller than him. The field was next to the school’s dairy farm, so there were dung-beetle helicopters in the air to avoid and mines of cow-dung to evade.</blockquote>
<br />
I love a well-written story. This one just isn't for me.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<i>Read all the Caine Prize shortlisted stories:</i><br />
<br />
<ul>
<li><i><a href="http://www.caineprize.com/pdf/2012_Babatunde.pdf">Rotimi Babatunde (Nigeria) ‘Bombay’s Republic’</a></i></li>
<li><i><a href="http://www.caineprize.com/pdf/2012_Kahora.pdf">Billy Kahora (Kenya) ‘Urban Zoning’</a></i></li>
<li><i><a href="http://www.caineprize.com/pdf/2012_Kenani.pdf">Stanley Kenani (Malawi) ‘Love on Trial’</a></i></li>
<li><i><a href="http://www.caineprize.com/pdf/2012_Myambo.pdf">Melissa Tandiwe Myambo (Zimbabwe) ‘La Salle de Départ’</a></i></li>
<li><i><a href="http://www.caineprize.com/pdf/2012_Myburgh.pdf">Constance Myburgh (South Africa) ‘Hunter Emmanuel’</a></i></li>
</ul>
Fellow bloggers' reviews of this story:<br />
<br />
<a href="http://blackballoonpublishing.com/blog/caine-prize-chronicle-2-kenyas-zones" id="internal-source-marker_0.36978677922231096"><span style="background-color: white; color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline;">Black Balloon</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><br /><a href="http://zunguzungu.wordpress.com/2012/05/17/on-reading-billy-kahoras-caine-nominated-short-story-urban-zoning-by-stephen-derwent-partington/"><span style="background-color: white; color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline;">Stephen Derwent Partington</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline;"> </span></a><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><br /><a href="http://rereadinglives.blogspot.com/2012/05/urban-zoning-by-billy-kahora-second-of.html"><span style="background-color: white; color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline;">The Reading Life</span></a><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><br /><a href="http://backslashscott.wordpress.com/2012/05/17/caine-blog-urban-zoning-by-billy-kahora/"><span style="background-color: white; color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline;">Backslash Scott</span></a><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><br /><a href="http://xokigbo.wordpress.com/2012/05/17/caineprize-the-thirteenth-caine-prize-shortlist-urban-zoning/"><span style="background-color: white; color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline;">Ikhide</span></a><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><br /><a href="http://loomnie.com/2012/05/18/reading-bill-kahoras-urban-zoning/"><span style="background-color: white; color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline;">Loomnie</span></a><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><br /><a href="http://inkdrops.me/2012/05/blogging-the-caine-prize-a-review-of-billy-kahoras-urban-zoning/"><span style="background-color: white; color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline;">ndinda</span></a><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><br /><a href="http://cityoflions.wordpress.com/2012/05/18/zoning-in/"><span style="background-color: white; color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline;">City of Lions</span></a><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><br /><a href="http://thenewinquiry.com/blogs/zunguzungu/what-it-takes-to-build-your-credit-urban-zoning-by-billy-kahora-week-two-of-blogging-the-caine/"><span style="background-color: white; color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline;">zunguzungu</span></a><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><br /><a href="http://www.practicallymarzipan.com/2012/05/billy-kahora-urban-zoning.html"><span style="background-color: white; color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline;">Practically Marzipan</span></a><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><br /><a href="http://bookshybooks.blogspot.it/2012/05/blogging-caine-prize-story-2-billy.html"><span style="background-color: white; color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline;">bookshy</span></a><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> </span><br /><a href="http://cashed-in.com/2012/05/19/urban-zoning/"><span style="background-color: white; color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline;">Cashed In</span></a><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><br /><a href="http://aaahfooey.blogspot.in/2012/05/caine-prize-shortlist-2-urban-zoning-by.html"><span style="background-color: white; color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline;">aaahfooey</span></a><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><br /><a href="http://mumpsimus.blogspot.com/2012/05/blogging-caine-prize-2012-urban-zoning.html"><span style="background-color: white; color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline;">The Mumpsimus</span></a><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><br /><a href="http://soulfool.me/reading-billy-kahoras-urban-zoning/"><span style="background-color: white; color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline;">Soulfool</span></a><span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span>Saratuhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15444322081856808447noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8284661635188679438.post-22698037450460548272012-05-09T13:25:00.000-04:002012-05-09T13:26:31.126-04:00Caine Prize Shortlist Review - "Bombay's Republic" by Rotimi Babajide<i>It's the Caine Prize Blogathon once again! </i><br />
<i><br /></i><br />
<i>The ever-awesome blogger <a href="http://zunguzungu.wordpress.com/">ZunguZungu</a> has once again arranged a bloggers' review of each Caine Prize story. Check out his introductory post here. It's great to be a part of this for the second year in a row, and I'm hoping that this batch of story is an improvement upon last year's because... well.... <a href="http://methodismadness.blogspot.com/2011/07/trouble-with-caine-prize.html">yeah</a>.</i><br />
<i><br /></i><br />
<i>OK, here comes the first of the reviews. It's for Rotimi Babatunde's <a href="http://www.caineprize.com/pdf/2012_Babatunde.pdf"><u>Bombay's Republic</u></a> (pdf). Co-bloggers' reviews at the bottom of the page.</i><br />
<br />
First of all, I like how the story was written. In addition to some gorgeous phrasing from Babatunde, the third-person narrative and the "clash of cultures humor" reminded me of the film "The Gods Must Be Crazy", especially the scenes where the natives thought the black soldiers had tails, or the Japanese thinking that blacks must be chopped to bits when killed, else they resurrect like zombies. The point of view also provided enough distance from the actual story -- the war, the racism, the absurdity, the pathetic circumstances for the black soldiers -- for some parts of the story to actually be funny. <br />
<br />
I found Bombay's character very well-drawn. He was a simple man to begin with, content with the life of a soldier. I like how Bombay did not return to Nigeria and take up the role of freedom fighter for against the scourge of imperialism. All he seemed to want to do was return to his home country and live a quiet life. For a story that deals with racism and imperialism (<a href="http://t.co/OxhDHCm2">The Oncoming Hope's review</a> will deal with this more), it made sense to not have the lead character initially be exceptional. Too often in African literature, writers foist upon their characters the burden of their history. Babatunde's approach to this story -- from the narrator's distance to the humor and the characterization -- is a shrugging off of any attempt to have this story be much more than a piece of fiction. One could not but smile at District Officer's quandary over whether or not to punish Bombay over refusing to pay taxes, particularly on how Bombay may mount a successful attack against whatever soldiers would be sent to take him in. He had forced his humanity upon DO, made the British see him as a force to be reckoned with.<br />
<br />
Everything Bombay's time at war showed him pointed to his humanity and the humanity of the British he was with. It made sense that he would resist paying taxes, or even use Bombay's Republic as a way of scaring off the British like he used his bellowing at the enemies during the war to scare them into retreat. I was not expecting at all for him to become quite so self-important as to draw up a constitution and call himself President. This new egomania seemed out of character, and it is indeed possible that he went mad. What makes Bombay's madness uncertain, though, is that you see no sign of it when he was in the jungle, and the narrator says nothing about any particular episode that haunts him. <br />
<br />
Further, I know the last bit about his birth country being a foreign one was meant to be funny, but I never got the sense that Bombay held any resentment towards Nigeria for "allowing" itself to be controlled by the British. After all, he did not even seem to really mind being a part of a forgotten platoon in the army. We know later -- and expect even while it was happening -- that also "forgotten" was to be the familiarity between the white and black soldiers, and whatever it is that black soldiers like Bombay had learned was possible.<br />
<br />
In his own twisted way -- even as he channeled his inner Yaya Jammeh and the titles he gave himself became more and more grand -- Bombay's ambition never did grow. He learned so much about what was possible behind the thick curtain of imperialism and got a glimpse of what it was like to be seen as fully human by the white men that he soldiered alongside, but these were obviously never lessons he knew what to do with. Not that one could fault Bombay for that; what does one do with knowing that colonialist is as human as you are, when the state structures in your home country support the idea that he is not? if you're not of the temperament to agitate with the independence activists, what else could you do?<br />
<br />
So when he did found his own republic, it was to rule himself, to make laws governing his one-man republic, and to get independence for no one else but himself. It may be just as well that Bombay never did get any more citizens (the jury is out on whether more citizens would have changed his behavior). For him, this independence was as good as it got, and there was no one to question him as he bestowed himself with titles that he had done nothing to attain. It was also just as well that Bombay was not a rich "country", and perhaps this failure of the lead character's ambition is Babatunde's point: you must check all colonialists at the door, even the ones that look like you.<br />
<br />
<i>Read all the Caine Prize shortlisted stories:</i><br />
<ul>
<li><i><a href="http://www.caineprize.com/pdf/2012_Babatunde.pdf">Rotimi Babatunde (Nigeria) ‘Bombay’s Republic’</a></i></li>
<li><i><a href="http://www.caineprize.com/pdf/2012_Kahora.pdf">Billy Kahora (Kenya) ‘Urban Zoning’</a></i></li>
<li><i><a href="http://www.caineprize.com/pdf/2012_Kenani.pdf">Stanley Kenani (Malawi) ‘Love on Trial’</a></i></li>
<li><i><a href="http://www.caineprize.com/pdf/2012_Myambo.pdf">Melissa Tandiwe Myambo (Zimbabwe) ‘La Salle de Départ’</a></i></li>
<li><i><a href="http://www.caineprize.com/pdf/2012_Myburgh.pdf">Constance Myburgh (South Africa) ‘Hunter Emmanuel’</a></i></li>
</ul>
<br />
<i>Fellow bloggers' reviews: </i><br />
<br />
<ul>
<li><i><a href="http://zunguzungu.wordpress.com/2012/05/09/some-thoughts-on-rotimi-babatundes-bombays-republic-by-stephen-derwent-partington/">Stephen Derwent Partington’s guest post</a> at ZunguZungu</i></li>
<li><i><a href="http://theoncominghope.blogspot.com/2012/05/caine-prize-2012-republic-by-rotimi.html">The Oncoming Hope</a></i></li>
<li><i><a href="http://bookshybooks.blogspot.co.uk/2012/05/my-thoughts-rotimi-babatundes-bombay.html">BookShy</a></i></li>
<li><i>Aaron Bady at The New Inquiry – <a href="http://thenewinquiry.com/blogs/zunguzungu/everything-fantastic-is-credible-bombays-republic-part-one/">Part I</a></i></li>
</ul>Saratuhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15444322081856808447noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8284661635188679438.post-20152398689129980712012-01-11T18:31:00.000-05:002012-01-11T18:31:48.227-05:00Why You Should Keep An Eye on the Northern NigeriaYes, our eyes are trained on the soap opera of the fuel subsidy protests and the re-invigoration of Nigerian civil society, but we should all be very worried about the North. Here’s why.<br />
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1 – Before fuel subsidy protests, we were facing an emboldened Boko Haram striking seemingly at will at a mosque around New Years’ Day and a church on Christmas day (you can read on this <a href="http://methodismadness.blogspot.com/2012/01/holding-up-mirror-to-ineptitude.html">here</a>), and a Nigerian government that has shown that it has no answer to their brutality. Arrests were made on the Christmas bombings, but thanks to focus on the fuel subsidy issue, many Nigerians did not notice that persecution and investigation of the Christmas Day attacks <a href="http://www.thisdaylive.com/articles/ringim-we-ve-only-arrested-boko-haram-s-errand-boys/106104/">have stalled</a>. <br />
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The worst thing that can happen to the situation in the north is for Nigerian media to look away in favor of another story. With the fuel subsidy taking over media coverage and the presidency’s continued ineffectiveness in security issues, the situation in the north will continue to worsen.<br />
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2 – <a href="http://tribune.com.ng/index.php/news/34160-boko-haram-nis-enforces-jonathans-directive-on-border-closure">The State of Emergency</a> has done absolutely nothing to improve the situation of the northern states most impacted by Boko Haram attacks. There have consistently been attacks since the closing of borders and heightened surveillance in the state, and the Boko Haram has been so bold as to <a href="http://af.reuters.com/article/energyOilNews/idAFL6E8CB64A20120111">release a video</a> justifying their attacks on their most recent killings of Christians (perhaps they will release another justifying their killings on Muslims). With their <a href="http://www.google.com.ng/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=boko+haram+ultimatum&source=web&cd=3&ved=0CDwQFjAC&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.vanguardngr.com%2F2012%2F01%2Fexplosions-rock-maiduguri-damaturu-as-boko-haram-ultimatum-expires%2F&ei=ShkOT8zyLIOX8gOp2q3XBQ&usg=AFQjCNEbVeu9K5y5wUjiE8OwuHg6f9KJgg&cad=rja">ultimatum for southerners to leave the north</a>, the islamist sect has declared itself owner of the north and determiner of who stays and who does not while the government looks on impotently. Following the group’s ultimatum for Christians to leave the north, they since killed 12 in Adamawa on the 7th of January, 8 in Yobe, and that's <a href="http://www.thenationonlineng.net/2011/index.php/politics/32457-boko-haram-pushing-nigeria-to-the-brink.html">just to name a few</a> of the atrocities carried out by Boko Haram in January. <br />
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3 – If the situation worsens we will start to see reprisal killings of a higher and higher scale. During the fuel subsidy protests in Benin, there has been the <a href="http://www.google.com.ng/url?url=http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/31e40444-3bb5-11e1-82d3-00144feabdc0.html&rct=j&sa=X&ctbm=nws&ei=G5YNT-_HAYnh8APp06ydBg&ved=0CDgQ-AsoADAB&q=boko+haram+attack+nigeria&usg=AFQjCNFAsIWEofow4L5CdfkrTZ_GWhPFiw&cad=rja">burning of a mosque</a> and citizens have reported killings of Hausas in the Sabo area of Benin on <a href="http://www.twitter.com/eimasuen">twitter</a>. Following <a href="http://www.vanguardngr.com/2011/12/islamic-school-bombed-in-sapele/">the bombing of an Islamic school in Sapele,</a> Delta State, Many southern regional groups like the Igbo Massob and the Yoruba Oodua People's Congress, and the south-south Niger-Delta Youth for Radical Change <a href="http://www.google.com.ng/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=northerners+flee+asaba+&source=web&cd=6&ved=0CEMQFjAF&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.punchng.com%2Fnews%2Fnortherners-flee-warri-sapele%2F&ei=4RgOT-bmIYj98QOVi-GlBg&usg=AFQjCNGcD4SRsjXv9Oe_9JEWhtVBsx9vww&cad=rja">have called for northerners to leave</a> the south-east. Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN) <a href="http://www.google.com.ng/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=boko+haram+attack+nigeria&source=newssearch&cd=10&ved=0CG0QqQIwCQ&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.vanguardngr.com%2F2012%2F01%2Fbombing-christian-youths-warn-boko-haram%2F&ctbm=nws&ei=G5YNT-_HAYnh8APp06ydBg&usg=AFQjCNG3Z9EcNRYaiatbDhYKI9lJM6gCqQ&cad=rja">vow to defend Nigerian Christians from Boko Haram</a> (without elaborating on how) certainly does not help with the petering away of trust that Nigerian society, as any other forward-moving society, is built on. In addition to worsening economic climes and intra-national security, the last thing Nigeria needs is wide-spread ethnic tension and reprisal killings. <br />
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It is not clear that there is anyone that GEJ even must listen to on the issue of fuel subsidy. He will get no pressure from his political party; Nigerians vote personalities, not parties, into power for gubernatorial or presidential elections, so PDP could still win another election regardless of how unpopular Jonathan becomes in his final term as president. It makes sense, then, that GEJ would rather the Nigerian populace focus on the fuel subsidy protests than on the rapidly deteriorating security situation: one problem he has the power to control, and the other he so patently does not. <br />
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The situation cannot stay a stalemate for long; <a href="http://www.google.com.ng/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=senate+fuel+subsidy+jonathan&source=web&cd=1&ved=0CCUQqQIwAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.vanguardngr.com%2F2012%2F01%2Frevert-to-n65-senate-tells-jonathan-2%2F&ei=yRoOT7D7FMb-8QPgsODpBQ&usg=AFQjCNHS79546v5ZMJdgoo7lVpVIpkvQFA&cad=rja">the senate president has been asked by his members</a> to tell the president to revert the pump price to N65.00, but there is as yet no official word from the President. With the protests and strike entering its fourth day, one wonders how long the protesters can conceivably hold on, how long the labour can hold its ground and maintain support, and how much pain the presidency is willing to allow be inflicted upon the citizenry.Saratuhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15444322081856808447noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8284661635188679438.post-63347818270192939812012-01-06T19:25:00.000-05:002012-01-06T19:25:05.519-05:00Holding Up The Mirror to IneptitudeOn <a href="http://www.twitter.com/saratu">my Twitter feed</a>, I’ve been tracking and commenting on the fuel subsidy issue. But in the haze of the nation’s collective rage on the fuel subsidy removal, and in the euphoria of being virtually surrounded by a heightened sense of political awareness on the part of Nigerians on a level made even more intense thanks to social media, it is entirely possible that we may be allowing ourselves to be distracted by other pressing issues at hand.<br />
<br />
Boko Haram has been responsible for two killing sprees in as many days. In Gombe, Gombe State, the Islamic sect sent a <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-16436112">gunman to go to a Deeper Life church service</a> and kill 6 and injure 10. In the other, the sect claimed responsibility for the killing of 20 in a church in Mubi, Adamawa State. These attacks, <a href="http://www.vanguardngr.com/2012/01/catalogue-of-attacks-blamed-on-boko-haram">they claim</a>, were in response to the government’s admittedly-laughable <a href="http://bbc/co.uk/news/world-africa-16373531">State of Emergency</a> in both states. <br />
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And those are only in the past two days. On the 3rd of January, <a href="http://saharareporters.com/news-page/boko-haram-attacks-jigawa-police-station-guns-down-minor">in Dutse</a>, some suspected Boko Haram members attacked Birniwa Divisional Police Headquarters in Jigawa State, killing a teenage girl and a police officer before setting fire to the building. In a ridiculing of the State of Emergency put in place by President Goodluck Jonathan, <a href="http://www.vanguardngr.com/2012/01/explosions-rock-maiduguri-damaturu-as-boko-haram-ultimatum-expires/">explosions</a> rocked both Maiduguri, the sect’s stronghold in Borno State, and Damaturu, Yobe State, late on Wednesday, the 4th.<br />
<br />
This Vanguard piece also has a great <a href="http://www.vanguardngr.com/2012/01/catalogue-of-attacks-blamed-on-boko-haram">timeline</a> of Boko Haram’s attacks on Nigerians. In the face of government’s ineptitude in dealing with them, the sect has even grown <a href="http://www.vanguardngr.com/2012/01/boko-haram-spokesman-threatens-christians-troops/">so bold as to issue ultimatums</a> to Christians to leave the North, lest they be killed. <br />
<br />
It makes sense that the government would rather face a group of protesters it does not believe will hold firm to its purported ideals than its ineptitude in the mirror. And so we must do exactly that: stand firm. And we must hold that mirror up high.<br />
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It is good for us to train our eyes on issues like the fuel subsidy removal that directly affect us, but it is also very important that we do not let the rug be quietly swept from under us in other areas. Let us not be inured to the deaths of those that have suffered at the hands of a ruthless band of crazed men. Let us not forget to hold accountable the government that has allowed them such boldness as to believe that our lives are worth more when we lie blown to bits, our blood on our walls, our eyes devoid of life.Saratuhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15444322081856808447noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8284661635188679438.post-47442485348177276292012-01-06T19:20:00.000-05:002012-01-06T19:20:21.174-05:00The Beginning of the End of a Bad Marriage?<i>I published this piece on the fuel subsidy protests in <a href="http://NigeriansTalk.org">NigeriansTalk.org</a>. </i><br />
<br />
The history of Nigeria has for too long been like a bad Nollywood movie. Nigeria is that battered housewife who has taken her beatings quietly, allowed her earnings to be squandered by her wasteful, alcoholic, extravagant, unworthy husband.<br />
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Even when we choose our leaders, it seems we choose to stay on our most destructive trend. Our political leaders and our religious leaders often look the same. We flock to pastors who call our children witches, imams who sleep with our daughters, empty suits who take our tithes to buy exotic cars and gallivant around the world, then return to us to preach humility and simplicity. These beatings, these abuses, these insults to our intelligence, we have taken silently.<br />
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For decades, nothing has happened. But 2011 has taught us, from Egypt to Tunisia, right down to the most intractable situation in Libya, that in a moment, decades can happen.<br />
<i><br />
You can read the rest <a href="http://nigerianstalk.org/2012/01/02/the-beginning-of-the-end-of-the-bad-marriage/">here</a>.</i>Saratuhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15444322081856808447noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8284661635188679438.post-79253084965924444042011-10-11T18:29:00.000-04:002011-10-11T18:29:16.678-04:00Will We Better Off in MTVBase Was Available Around the World?Africa’s image problem, I submit, is more of an issue of Western media’s trouble with nuance than any real malice. It is hard, it turns out, to portray that people can be more than one thing at the same time -- that one can wear fancy Italian shoes <i>with</i> traditional garb; that there can exist in the same country a place where people drive SUVs to the supermarket <i>and</i> a place where some people have to walk miles for clean water <i>in the same damn city</i>. If one must be true, it seems, surely the other cannot. And relatively few consumers of media will really go to African countries themselves. And the few high-profiles ones that do go (looking at you, Kristof) tend to go to confirm their own biases, not challenge them.<br />
<br />
And that’s where MTV Base comes in. <br />
<br />
MTV Base’s shows an Africa that does not see itself as a problem, but as a party. We are young and sexy. We have style. We go to clubs and drink and laugh and rap and sing along with the best of them. This is us: Our Advertised Version. The "Monkey sweats but you can't tell from its fur" version. In terms of reality, it is not much different from the advertised version of what we are told that we are: overly-reliant on Western generosity, potential atrophying from lack of initiative or care, clay resting too comfortably within the grubby hands of greedy autocrats. In a sense, MTV Base's Africa is as mono-dimensional as the Africa that we see in Western media. It’s just a different dimension, a dimension that we would rather see. <br />
<br />
It is not that music video Africa is any more “real” than the West’s version of Africa. Reality, in fact, is beside the point. It’s just another representation as simple as the one that is currently all the rage. The genius of indulging this fantasy of an MTV Base Africa all over the world – I’m fully aware this will never happen – is that it recognizes the need for simple narratives of Africa, and delivers on this. And by countering one simple narrative with another, it adds shade and color to the already-existing simple narrative. In so doing, It brings simplicity <i>and</i> nuance. And what is more African than that?Saratuhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15444322081856808447noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8284661635188679438.post-84068079327938972082011-09-07T20:51:00.001-04:002011-09-07T20:55:31.494-04:00Those 'Top 20 Africans' ListsThanks to the not-so-mini hiatus and having third world internet issues, I'm only just getting around to posting on these awesome ladies who made <a href="forbes.com/sites/mfonobongnsehe/2011/08/18/the-20-youngest-power-women-in-africa/">Forbes of 20 Young and Influential African women</a>.<br />
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<br />
Someone on Twitter pointed out the difference in the composition of these lists in the US, for example, versus when the roster is drawn up for African countries. These list in the US and in other Western countries tend to be chockful of entertainers, whereas for Africa they're full of intellectuals.<br />
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This was brought up a bit boastfully, but I think the reasoning for this may not necessarily be something folks from African countries should welcome. Indeed, if you took up the 20 Young Americans lists, especially based on poll respondents, it won't feature many intellectuals. That's because it'll be honest. Its also worth pointing out that these Western news outlets are, well, Western, and therefore are more likely to show things as they are in Western countries, not projections of what they'd wish them to be. Forbes, Newsweek, etc, can't know of who really does hold sway in countries like Nigeria, for example. If they did, I doubt they'd put the words 'influential' and 'young' in the same sentence. <br />
<br />
<br />
But this is all by-the-way. I do love that these remarkable women get such coverage. I'm familiar with the work of women like Funmi Iyanda and Ory Okolloh, and they certainly deserve this recognition, and tons more. I just wish it were people like these that actually controlled our political and cultural discourse. A real list of people with real sway over our cultural imagination will probably be overrun half-witted imams, and megachurch pastors.Saratuhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15444322081856808447noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8284661635188679438.post-61864080520668488682011-08-09T17:35:00.000-04:002011-08-09T17:35:49.379-04:00Thank You, Mr. VJ, for Playing My SongIt's been a long time, shouldn't have left you without a dope beat to step to. So here's some dope beats. <br />
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I really like this playful one from Kenya by Stella Mwangi. I'm a sucker for anything with house music influence, especially if it comes from anywhere on the continent.<br />
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<iframe width="560" height="349" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/-9xWIaXTtLk" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe><br />
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South African house machine Liquideep with "Settle for Less".<br />
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<iframe width="560" height="349" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/FvDLQKC99_U" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe><br />
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I think this girl is Kenyan or Zambian or something, but I honest-to-goodness am not sure (which I actually like). Cool song, and the video is really nice and quirky. Side note: She has a song called <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IOKOcKE832s&feature=related">Big Nyash</a>. Does that mean what I think it means? In Nigeria, "nyash" often refers to one's ... well.... <i>ass</i>ets.<br />
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<iframe width="560" height="349" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/9-ERQozmBCA" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe><br />
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Here's one from a favorite, South African rapper AKA. He's one of the best on the continent in my opinion, and this new song is crazy nice. If he keeps this up, I might turn into a stan.<br />
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<iframe width="560" height="349" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/bFW0DzgAUpA" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe><br />
<br />
Last but not least - @okayafrica put out a blast today on South African singer Lira's new EP. Stream it in full <a href="http://t.co/HLZaj8w">here</a>. Saratuhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15444322081856808447noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8284661635188679438.post-75678706593013576412011-07-29T16:50:00.002-04:002011-07-29T16:57:48.464-04:00How Illegitimate Is the Informal Economy?This over at <i><a href="http://nigerianstalk.org/2011/07/26/lagos-a-crisis-of-overpopulation-poverty-and-slums/">NigeriansTalk</a></i> and this piece at The Economist's <a href="http://www.economist.com/blogs/baobab/2011/02/expensive_angola"><i>Baobab</i></a> Africa blog on how expensive Angola is have me thinking about the informal sector in most African countries. <br />
<br />
Chad's N'Djamena and Gabon's Libreville are second and third, respectively, on the Expensive African Cities list (you can see the world list <a href="http://www.mercer.com/costoflivingpr#City_rankings">here</a>). On Luanda, <i><a href="http://www.thedailymaverick.co.za/article/2011-07-29-capitals-africas-poorest-worlds-costliest">The Daily Maverick</a></i> puts quite succinctly why the trouble of expensive African cities is such a problem:<br />
<br />
<blockquote>As foreign expatriates and the money which underpins them push prices of top end goods and services, so the local elites – who eat in the same restaurants and compete for the same properties – are forced to spend more and more. And to spend, they must earn. As elite salaries rise, so the inequality gap between the vast majority of the country and the few who have made it to the top gets wider and wider. In Luanda, it’s not unusual to see Porsche’s whiz through sprawling shanty towns, their drivers on their way to a top hotel for a R1,000 meal while onlookers ponder how to feed their families on the R10 they earned that day. Not exactly a recipe for social cohesion, or development.</blockquote><br />
What is scary about the high cost of living in many an African city is not just the effect it has on Africa's rising middle class, but also the fact that most Africans find employment in the informal sector. <br />
<br />
According to the International Labor Organization (ILO), the informal sector makes up about 80% of employment in Sub-Saharan Africa, and is also the realm in which most women in the developing world find work, whether we're talking prostitution or selling food on the side of the road (This is in the document below). The number isn't at all far-fetched to me - anyone that has ever walked or driven on a road in an African city can tell that there are far more wooden shacks selling cigarettes and sweets and street hawkers selling recharge cards than there are, say, skyscrapers and shopping malls with banks or salons or boutiques.<br />
<br />
An interesting observation: the more developed the economy, the lesser the percentage of people who work outside the margins. 33% of South Africans and 44% of Namibians work in the informal economy, for example, compared to 74% of Madagascans and 82% of Malians). This observation, though, makes one wonder to what extent the state is complicit in creating an informal economy. To what extent is the pervasiveness of informal economies and the resigned acceptance thereof an admission of failed economic policies on the part of African governments? This, from the <a href="http://www.africanplanningschools.org.za/images/stories/aaps/Web_toolkits/Informal_Economy/InformalEconomyToolkit1.pdf"><i>African Association of Planning Schools</i></a>, frames it interestingly from a planning perspective:<br />
<br />
<blockquote>Ananya Roy (2009:10), in an analysis of the Indian context, argues that planning cannot solve the crisis of Indian urbanisation since ‘planning itself is implicated in the very production of this crisis’. She continues,<br />
<blockquote>Informality then is not a set of unregulated activities that lies beyond the reach of planning; rather it is planning that inscribes the informal by designating some activities as authorized and others as unauthorized.</blockquote>This view is echoed in Oren Yiftachel’s (2009:88) analysis of the political geography of informality.<br />
He posits the notion of ‘gray spaces’ positioned between the ‘whiteness’ of legality/approval/safety, and the ‘blackness’ of eviction/destruction/death. He goes onto argue that planning is always deeply implicated in ‘whitening’ (condoning, approving) and ‘blackening’ (criminalizing, destroying) different types of informality. Yiftachel states bluntly that the ‘informality of the powerful’ is often authorised by the state whilst alternative forms of informality remain indefinitely gray or are officially ‘blackened’. <br />
Urban planning – that is, the combination of relevant spatial policies – is often behind both the existence and criminalization of gray space. Urban plans design the city’s ‘white’ spaces which usually create little or no opening for inclusion/recognition of most informal localities and population, while their discourse continuously condemns them as a chaotic danger to the city (2009:94).<br />
Roy pushes this point further, arguing that ‘informal spaces’ are produced by the state, and that ‘to deal with informality therefore partly means confronting how the apparatus of planning produces the unplanned and unplannable’ (2005:156).<br />
Wilson (1991) echoes these sentiments pointing out that historically, even the most benevolent projects and traditions of state planning have emphasized control and confinement. Although she stops short of advocating the abandonment of planning, she argues, <br />
<blockquote>There is a sense in which all town planning contains both a utopian and a heroic, yet authoritarian, element. Although its purpose may seem purely practical, it does claim to offer, like the utopian work, a permanent solution to the flux and flow of the ever changing city. The plan is always intended to fix the usage of space; the aim the state regulation of urban populations.</blockquote>This would suggest that informality demands a critical analysis of traditional planning tools and techniques.</blockquote><br />
I've included the document here. Check it out.<br />
<br />
<a title="View Informal Economy Toolkit 1 on Scribd" href="http://www.scribd.com/doc/61223136/Informal-Economy-Toolkit-1" style="margin: 12px auto 6px auto; font-family: Helvetica,Arial,Sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; font-size: 14px; line-height: normal; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; -x-system-font: none; display: block; text-decoration: underline;">Informal Economy Toolkit 1</a><iframe class="scribd_iframe_embed" src="http://www.scribd.com/embeds/61223136/content?start_page=1&view_mode=list&access_key=key-1j0gkj0k1i2o6ovpkua6" data-auto-height="true" data-aspect-ratio="0.706697459584296" scrolling="no" id="doc_72493" width="100%" height="600" frameborder="0"></iframe><script type="text/javascript">(function() { var scribd = document.createElement("script"); scribd.type = "text/javascript"; scribd.async = true; scribd.src = "http://www.scribd.com/javascripts/embed_code/inject.js"; var s = document.getElementsByTagName("script")[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(scribd, s); })();</script>Saratuhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15444322081856808447noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8284661635188679438.post-55792813877122565252011-07-24T09:30:00.000-04:002011-07-24T09:30:51.554-04:00Poem for SundayOgaga Ifowodo is criminally slept-on. Something that jumps out at you at every poem of his (my favorite is <i><a href="http://www.africanwriter.com/articles/31/1/God-Punish-You-Lord-Lugard---Poems-by-Ogaga-Ifowodo/Page1.html">Homeland</a></i>) is his use of imagery. He makes you want feel it all, like tiny earthquakes in your head. If you must rhyme a poem, this is how it must be done. <br />
<br />
And those final lines "Unmarked days quench their suns, black into nights/ and dreams enact weighted hearts in free flights".... the music of that. Goodness.<br />
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This one's a favorite from his wonderfully-titled collection <i>God Punish You, Lord Lugard.</i><br />
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<b>Unmarked Hours Beat their Hands Against the Wall</b><br />
<br />
Unmarked hours beat their hands against the wall<br />
<br />
grieve for wings plunged in a waterfall.<br />
<br />
Outside the window, a woman's shoulders<br />
<br />
quake in tribute to a scene of soldiers:<br />
<br />
teeth, fragments of flesh in warm blood painted<br />
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the picture she sees of those that fainted.<br />
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A single call to prayer, amplified<br />
<br />
to all of Sin Town, brings mortified<br />
<br />
legions to banal rites of righteousness.<br />
<br />
As the minister swears his piousness<br />
<br />
birds blessed with greater freedom flee our skies<br />
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abandoning us to death and muted cries.<br />
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Philosophies of suffering dress the walls<br />
<br />
of this cell, make the fate of dead seagulls<br />
<br />
happier than of failed hearts that bled and wept:<br />
<br />
"If men were God!" that mocked the cliff and leapt,<br />
<br />
crying out their grief: "Let Nigeria end now!"<br />
<br />
No one will inquire who, why or how,<br />
<br />
an old or new decree has sanctified<br />
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all wrongs in duty personified.<br />
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Unmarked days quench their suns, black into nights<br />
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and dreams enact weighted hearts in free flights.<br />
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Ogaga Ifowodo<br />
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November 1997Saratuhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15444322081856808447noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8284661635188679438.post-33085407145260723942011-07-21T18:41:00.000-04:002011-07-21T18:41:19.894-04:00The Limits to NGOs' EffectivenessOver at the <i>Boston Review</i>, <a href="http://www.bostonreview.net/BR36.4/pranab_bardhan_who_represents_the_poor.php">Pranab Bardhan is eloquent</a> in making the case against NGOs and their effectiveness and goals. The point that looms in Badhan's argument is that NGOs cannot "dismiss the complexity of issues involved in the problems they hope to remedy or the democratic mechanisms and experiments necessary for finding the best way forward for all parties." When it comes to NGOs working on economic development, though, this gets right to the heart of it for me:<br />
<blockquote>The social activists share with left-wing unions a preoccupation with redistribution, and a lack of concern for generating enough surplus to enable it. There are obvious trade-offs here between incentives for private enterprise and the need for social justice. Faced with these issues, just as the Left might refer to the great things the state can do, social activists refer us to the great things small producers and community-based organizations can do. The small-is-beautiful communitarians often ignore the many cases of local communities tyrannizing minority groups (Forms of lynching reminiscent of the U.S. South continue today in the ethnic villages of Africa and India.) And small local producers often cannot benefit from economies of scale and technological upgrades or invest in high-risk-high-return projects, which require risk pooling with non-local entities. As a result, they remain on the margins, mired in low productivity. While there are scattered examples of dynamic small producers, they don’t represent a viable systemic alternative. When real capacity to create wealth is missing, social activism is often reduced to mere populism, which in the long run can be wasteful and counterproductive.</blockquote><br />
This takes me back to the early 2000s when coffee farmers and social justice was the sexy issue of the day, and we still see the same thing rearing its head in the push-and-pull between small farms and commercial agriculture. <a href="http://www.bostonreview.net/BR36.4/pranab_bardhan_who_represents_the_poor.php">Read the whole thing</a>.Saratuhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15444322081856808447noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8284661635188679438.post-59360528062020678802011-07-13T21:09:00.004-04:002011-07-13T21:18:15.551-04:00The Trouble With the Caine PrizeThe Caine Prize has a new winner. From the<a href="http://www.caineprize.com/news_2011_winner.php"> press release </a>at the Caine website.<br />
<blockquote>Zimbabwe’s NoViolet Bulawayo has won the 2011 Caine Prize for African Writing, described as Africa’s leading literary award, for her short story entitled ‘Hitting Budapest’, from The Boston Review, Vol 35, no. 6 - Nov/Dec 2010.<br />
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The Chair of Judges, award-winning author Hisham Matar, announced NoViolet Bulawayo as the winner of the £10,000 prize at a dinner held this evening (Monday 11 July) at the Bodleian Library in Oxford.<br />
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Hisham Matar said: "The language of ‘Hitting Budapest’ crackles. Here we encounter Darling, Bastard, Chipo, Godknows, Stina and Sbho, a gang reminiscent of Clockwork Orange. But these are children, poor and violated and hungry. This is a story with moral power and weight, it has the artistry to refrain from moral commentary. NoViolet Bulawayo is a writer who takes delight in language."</blockquote><br />
Hisham Mattar, writer of the amazing <i>In the Country of Men</i> that I just finished last week, said that? Well, that's another story. You can read my review of the story <a href="http://methodismadness.blogspot.com/2011/06/caine-prize-for-african-literature.html">here</a>.<br />
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One of the most depressing things about being from an African country, and I suspect it is the same for being from any post-colonial society, is the need to seek validation abroad or by Western standards. You can be the best writer ever, but if a bunch of white guys in academies don't see it, you're not. This applies to disciplines outside of literature as well. It's really as simple as that.<br />
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That is what is so extraordinary about the Caine Prize. Folks call it the "African Booker Prize", and with the mantle of premier African literary award comes the weight that The Booker, The Pushcart, The Pen or any other literary award doesn't have - the burden of representation, of validation, of choosing by dint of one's position the face of and state of African literary scene.<br />
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If you so much as scroll through the blog, you would see my reviews of each of the five stories that made up the shortlist for the prize. I tried not to absolutely skewer things in reviews (unless, of course, it's really that abominably bad), but as a whole I'm agree with <a href="http://234next.com/csp/cms/sites/Next/ArtsandCulture/Art/5701351-147/email_from_americathe_2011_caine_prize.csp">Ikhide Ikheloa from 234Next</a> on the quality of this year's shortlist:<br />
<blockquote>The good news is that the Caine Prize is here to stay. The bad news is that someone is going to win the Caine Prize this year. This is a shame; having read the stories on the shortlist, I conclude that a successful African writer must be clinically depressed, chronicling in excruciating detail every open sore of Africa. Apologies to Wole Soyinka. The creation of a prize for “African writing” may have created the unintended effect of breeding writers willing to stereotype Africa for glory.<br />
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The mostly lazy, predictable stories that made the 2011 shortlist celebrate orthodoxy and mediocrity. They are a riot of exhausted clichés even as ancient conflicts and anxieties fade into the past tense: huts, moons, rapes, wars, and poverty. The monotony of misery simply overwhelms the reader. Fiammetta Rocco, the Economist’s literary editor who chaired last year’s judges, crows that the stories are “uniquely powerful.” The stories are uniquely wretched. The chair of this year’s judges Hisham Matar declares presumptuously that the stories “represent a portrait of today’s African short story: its wit and intelligence, its concerns and preoccupations.” Really? Is this the sum total of our experience, this humourless, tasteless canvas of shiftless Stepin Fetchit suffering?</blockquote><br />
I hope to goodness that this applies only to this years, but judging from Olufemi Terry's <a href="http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&cd=1&ved=0CB4QFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.guardian.co.uk%2Fbooks%2Finteractive%2F2010%2Fjul%2F06%2Fstickfighting-olufemi-terry&rct=j&q=stickfighting%20days&ei=Zz8eTpyXJJKZhQe4gbWdAw&usg=AFQjCNHaYoOAVfXnTZhpfB6rz4L2EfU_xQ&sig2=TgJTcMy3FSskOWEkEOMqfA&cad=rja"><i>Stickfighting Days</i></a>, pathetic stories seem to be their thing. Emmanuel Iduma, publisher of Saraba Magazine, <a href="http://www.blacklooks.org/2011/06/ikhide%E2%80%99s-complaint-emmanuel-iduma/">responded to Ikheloa's comments</a>, which seemed to cause quite the firestorm on the internet and, I hear from someone present, was even talked about in the discussion part of a Caine Prize event that happened in London today:<br />
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<blockquote>I believe what is more important is the objective of the story. I assume it is unhelpful to draw a line on what a writer’s process/objective is by his story. Granted, critics do this continuously – yet in the final analysis if we can define a “grand” objective of “the story” we can go past these questions of stories that dance to a Western tune. And what is the West, anyway? And what is even human? So our grand objective must transcend western lines, become human, and take a more particularized stance. Can this grand objective be grasped? I propose that memory, fraternity and essence are merged, so that every writer, of whatever African descent, plugs his narrative into this fusion. Hopefully.</blockquote><br />
Knowing my own writing process and how much is involved, I'm wont to agree with Iduma. I'm not willing to be cynical enough to say that these writers are, as Ikheloa says, "willing to stereotype [Africa] for glory". I have no idea what led NoViolet Bulawayo to write the story she did, chockful of such familiar tropes on woe-is-me African literature (IMF street? <i>Really??</i>) And I should say here that this is what annoys me the most about the counter-argument to this brand of literature. Writing about Africa does not absolve one from writing well, and bringing complex characters to life, and, indeed, having a plot and creating a believable world for a reader from which (s)he can take away something of value. It really does not.<br />
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Writers write. Readers have opinions. It's really that simple. One has a right to put pen to paper or fingers to keyboard and churn out just whatever (s)he pleases. I certainly did not like <i>Hitting Budapest</i>, a plotless story that does not seem to have a point beyond "these kids are poor and live squalidly and you should pity them", but I do not really care about Bulawayo; she can write whatever she wants. I'm madder at the Caine Prize for seeming to favor stories of a particular strain, the ones that are less about characters and the network of trip-wires that make up their humanity and more about flattening characters to render them tools to make a political point, and absolving them from the basic responsibilities that come with writing a good story. I'm madder at them for not asking for complexity, and buying into an oversimplified narrative of Africa - poverty, war, disease, starving/fighting children -- just like most Western media does. I'm madder at the Caine for saying that this collection of stories is the best they could get out of Africa. I'm mad because I and so many people out there know that that is not true.Saratuhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15444322081856808447noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8284661635188679438.post-55694552019993387822011-07-11T20:30:00.001-04:002011-07-11T20:30:34.649-04:00Al-Jazeera Being AwesomeAl-Jazeera's Inside Story has a great piece on famine and conflict in the Horn of Africa. It'll never stop being annoying how you can't embed a video from AJE, but the video is Africa's Drought: Is War or Weather to Blame? and the link is <a href="http://english.aljazeera.net/programmes/insidestory/2011/07/201171185829495562.html">here</a>.<br />
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I like the effort they go into to get at the question of why the situation is so intractable. If you have all these reports predicting a riot in the Horn of Africa, then why don't you use your knowledge to get at some more sustainable solution (Ugh, I just used the world "sustainable)? How is the long-term vulnerability of NGOs' funding affecting the situation? What do we do about the overflowing refugee camps? How is this all affecting Kenya? It's a good examination on the issues at hand in a way I don't see in most other media, and acknowledges the complexity of the situation.<br />
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I have no answers, but this put voice to a lot of questions that I have/had.Saratuhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15444322081856808447noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8284661635188679438.post-4007591560434586012011-07-05T10:02:00.000-04:002011-07-05T10:02:47.030-04:00Is the AU too Respectful to Gaddafi?Can't say I didn't see this coming -- the AU has decided not to honor the ICC arrest warrant, meaning that Gaddafi is still free to travel around Africa as he likes. From <a href="http://www.news24.com/Africa/News/AU-members-disregard-ICC-Gaddafi-warrant-20110702">News24</a>:<br />
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<blockquote>The decision passed late on Friday states that the warrant against Gaddafi "seriously complicates" efforts by the African Union to find a political solution to the crisis in Libya.<br />
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AU chairperson Jean Ping told reporters that the ICC is "discriminatory" and only goes after crimes committed in Africa while ignoring those committed by Western powers including in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan.<br />
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"With this in mind, we recommend that the member states do not co-operate with the execution of this arrest warrant," said the motion which was shown to The Associated Press and whose passage was confirmed by Daniel Adugna, a spokesperson in the AU commissioner's office.<br />
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If the AU's 53 member states abide by the decision, it opens the possibility that Gaddafi could avoid prosecution by seeking refuge on the soil of neighbouring nations. </blockquote><br />
In light of this news, Elizabeth Ohene <a href="http://www.royalafricansociety.org/component/content/article/908.html">has a piece</a> at the Royal African Society pointing out the black African leaders' relative distance to what's happening in Libya, and positing that the AU may just be being too respectful in their dealings with the Libyan dictator. Not that they were that far up his ladder of priorities anyway:<br />
<blockquote>The black Africans, the sub-saharan Africans, the Africans treated this stranger with care and respect. They nodded and said yes knowing fully well they had no intention of doing what he was saying. Of course it helped that he had money and could pick up some of the bills for the organization, but nobody felt squeamish about that.<br />
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Prestigious world universities were taking his money. Important world figures were all beating a path to his tent or rolling out the red carpet for him in their capitals. Condoleeza Rice, Tony Blair, Nicholas Sarkozy Silvio Berlusconi, to name a few and they don't come any more important and the deals that come out of those meetings would show his generosity in African countries to be peanuts. <br />
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Unfortunately the AU has not learnt that “Obunfura” does not work with the western powers. Saying yes because you do not want to offend does not work in the world of realpolitik. Saying yes in the fond hope that when push came to shove there would be no unpleasantness as dictated by “Obunfura” has landed the AU in a mess. They knew that Gaddafi's time ought to be up after forty years in power, but since you have to treat strangers with care and respect, they couldn't bring themselves to tell him as much and once the uprising started and the rebels made Gaddafi's exit from office their main demand, the AU could not be an honest broker.<br />
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They voted for and supported Security Council Resolution 1973 in the hope the enforcement of a no-fly zone would bring peace, and they chose to ignore the gathering war clouds. Not surprisingly their current protests have been drowned in the bombs over Tripoli.</blockquote><br />
This seems a bit incomplete to me, though. I'm not convinced that the AU is averse to unpleasantness in the Gaddafi situation because he's from North Africa. If AU's were just a North Africa problem, Mugabe and Obiang wouldn't be in power, some heavy focus would be on Museveni with his crackdowns on the population, and there would be pressure on Wade to peacefully cede power instead on trying to going for another term. As we saw in Niger and Cote d'Ivoire, there are certainly situations that the AU would speak up forcefully. I just don't think geography has anything to do with it.Saratuhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15444322081856808447noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8284661635188679438.post-44825677256459060332011-07-01T16:03:00.001-04:002011-07-01T16:12:26.215-04:00Caine Prize for African Literature - Story Blogging Week V<i>In an initiative hosted by Aaron Bady (<a href="http://zunguzungu.wordpress.com">ZunguZungu</a>), I am joining a coterie of awesome bloggers in reading and reviewing entrants for the Caine Prize for African Literature this year. You can read along with us -- all the stories are available online in PDFs and linked from the <a href="http://www.caineprize.com/">Caine Prize website</a>. The fifth and last story on the shortlist is South African writer David Medalie's "Mistress's Dog". Here is my post on the <a href="http://methodismadness.blogspot.com/2011/06/caine-prize-for-african-literature.html">first</a>, <a href="http://methodismadness.blogspot.com/2011/06/caine-prize-for-african-literature_10.html">second</a>, <a href="http://methodismadness.blogspot.com/2011/06/caine-prize-for-african-literature_16.html">third</a>, and <a href="http://methodismadness.blogspot.com/2011/06/caine-prize-for-african-literature_24.html">fourth</a> stories</i>.<br />
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Like <i>In the Spirit of McPhineas Lata</i>, this is another story that ostensibly not about any politics, but about the characters and the relationships between them. Here, though, the real story is about power and resentment. <br />
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I very much liked the way the story was told, the pacing of it. We see a lot of Nola's bitterness coming through, but the constant calling of her Nola's husband "the powerful man" is an excellent choice, as it tells us so much about their relationship without going into too much detail. The power imbalance in the relationship is driven home by how we do not even know they are married until about half-way through the story.<br />
<i><br />
The Mistress's Dog</i> is very much like <i>What Molly Knew</i> in its themes, albeit less dark and less political. I hate to compare both just because their South African and written by white men (and I did compare Keegan's story to J.M. Coetzee's <i>Disgrace</i> in my review), but they bought struck a similar chord in that one moment when the oppressed figure in the story had one chance at making their own decision, and the self-defeated stance each woman took. Molly did not take the letter to the police in the face of evidence that Rollo may have killed her daughter. Nola chose to roll over and accept a situation she did not want, even when she had a choice to say no. This looks to me a definite point of view regarding power relations in the country, but I'm trying not to make too much of it. <br />
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Even as Nola obviously derives pleasure from seeing the mistress's efforts at fitting in, from the interior decorator to the dinners and wine, you get the sense that Nola felt a certain kinship to the mistress through what she sees as their mutual oppression. This passage, in particular, illustrates this:<br />
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<blockquote>Nola saw in the mistress the hesitation that the hearty laugh could not hide, the timorousness that was silent but present all the time, like a heart murmur. It was evident to her that the mistress had become a snob largely because she dreaded the judgement of snobs.<br />
In everything she did and said, the mistress declared her determination to be free. She was, she believed, making and remaking herself. It was very hard work. It was expensive too. But it would be worth it if, by chipping away at herself, she could set herself free forever: a complete metamorphosis.<br />
Nola knew, however, that the mistress had not even begun to emancipate herself. And she suspected that she never would. For she, Nola, was not free either, except from anxieties about money. She knew what the mistress had not yet discovered, which was that nothing grew in the shadow cast by the powerful man.</blockquote><br />
And you get confirmation of that notion as the story draws to a close:<br />
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<blockquote>We are the survivors, she thought, the two of us. The powerful man had died in a Cape Town hospital after weeks on a ventilator. The mistress had died in the frail-care section of the retirement village in Johannesburg. The mistress’s dog had outlived them both. And so had she."</blockquote><br />
The mistress, then, is a fellow traveler in a sense. Nola hates the mistress not so much for daring to have an affair with her husband, but for reminding her so much of herself. The dog Nola is now saddled with, then, is a ticking time-bomb that threatens her with the possibility of power, a decision waiting to be made that will lead to her emancipation. <br />
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Of all the Caine Prize shortlisted stories, I'd call this the most subtle in the delicate way it handles its themes. I like that delicateness, but I wonder if it does not have too soft a touch. It was not a very vivid story, and the character herself does not really come into her own at all in the story. Perhaps that was on purpose -- a woman who has spent so much time being suppressed could come across as flat -- but I do not think this needs to have been the case. For one thing, this character hides her lack of esteem well behind resentment. I would have liked to see some more of that anger come across, however seething. Her reaction to the lady in the supermarket rang false to me, because Nola is not a woman unaware of her privilege. I expected her to be apologetic but curt, not to hover and make excuses.<br />
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At the end of the story, Nola asks questions we wish Molly had asked herself.<br />
<blockquote>Had she chosen him? Or had she ended up with him by default because she had not, during her life, made the wise, the adroit choices? If we are our choices, then what did it say about her that the mistress’s dog was her last companion?</blockquote><br />
One finds oneself relieved at the soul-searching and hoping she does indeed hold on to the strength to take her life into her own hands.<br />
<i><br />
A big shout-out to ZunguZungu for being so awesome and hosting the awesome reading session. Go to his <a href="http://zunguzungu.wordpress.com">blog</a> for links to the posts from the other bloggers reviewing this story.</i>Saratuhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15444322081856808447noreply@blogger.com2