Literary Nigeria: Saraba Magazine

by Sokari on September 2, 2010

in Books: Non-Fiction, Literature, Nigeria, Poetry

Saraba is an online literary magazine created and published by Emmanuel Iduma and Damilola Ajayi, two Nigerian students of the University of Ife. Saraba has just published its 6th edition in just 18 months and has gone from strength to strength. There are a number of Nigerian run literary blogs such as Bookaholic, and Wordsbody by Molara Wood as well as websites like Sentinel Nigeria,and Nigeria Fiction. But Saraba for my mind remains the most comprehensive and progressive literary journal with the potential to move well beyond Nigeria. It is a work of the heart with very little funding and my hope is this short interview will encourage readers to support Emmanuel and Damilola in their work.

SE: Lets start with some background on how you came about the idea of Saraba. When and why did you imagine you could put together a literary magazine? Did you decide alone or did you have a series of conversations with friends and how long was it from the idea to publishing the first issue. How did you cover the costs.

EI: The idea of Saraba was borne after a Colloquium of New Writing I organized alongside two friends, in late 2008 in Obafemi Awolowo University where we school and reside. So, basically, in late 2008, dissatisfied and disenchanted with the loads of rejection mails we were receiving, Damilola Ajayi and myself felt we could start an electronic magazine with little or no sensibility and with support for emerging writers. Of course, we had to immediately define ‘emerging writers;’ and we took the phrase to mean young (or old!) writers who have been published little or not at all, but whose writing showed promise and talent. This definition was necessarily from the viewpoint of ourselves and our writing, since we easily sufficed to be described as such writers.

The time between the decision to begin and our first issue was about three months – November 2008 – February 2009. We started by assembling a team of enthusiasts like ourselves – Ayobami Omobolanle, Itunu Akande and Dolapo Amusan. Dolapo was the technical guy, who helped design the first website – we got this at no cost. The cost of hosting the site was borne by myself and Damilola from savings.
What was most important was the drive; we were inexperienced with literary publishing. In fact, we felt so bad about our first issue that we had to re-issue it in September 2009.

SE: Why – why did you feel so bad?

EI: Well, we felt dissatisfied with the standard of the issue, especially because at that time we had began to read other electronic literary magazines. The hyperactivity and exuberance that had greeted our first publication soon dwindled because, suddenly, we realized we had work to do, and that we were novices. ‘Professional novices,’ I’d like to say. Also we did not know what it meant to distribute an online literay magazine. We just felt you could put it on the site without getting to people who were the readers. By the time the second issue was to be published we had only one or two submissions. I think this was because we didnt communicate with writers who had submitted to the first issue. We didnt write them an acceptance or rejection letters but just put their work on the site.

SE: But you have learned from that now as I know you have a proper structured submission process which is on your site

EI: Yes we do.

SE: You mentioned you were at university. Are you studying anything literature related?

EI: No I am studying law and Damilola is studying medicine.

SE: When did you discover that you had a love of literature and when did you being to read seriously, did you read much as a young child and if so what did you read.

EI: Yes, I started reading quite early say about eight because my Dad had a huge library of theological and philosophical books. I didn’t read them, in the sense of reading. I simply glanced at their covers. Up till today I can tell the titles of most of my Dad’s books. When I began to have the idea that I wanted to write, I started reading novels mostly Nigerian. I read a lot of romance too at that point.

SE: Can you name just a few

EI: I started by reading all of Achebe that I could find. Then the Christian romance series Heartsong, and the Left Behind Series by Tim Lahaye and Jerry Jenkins. Then John Grisham, John D. McDonald, Orson Scott Card, Michael Crichton, and so forth. Afterwards, in 2006 I started to read the kind of books I thought I wanted to write: Adichie, Richard Wright, Umberto Eco, Helon Habila, Salman Rushdie, Isabella Alende, Orhan Pamuk. Well, the list is endless. I acquire new books every month.

SE: What has been the response and support from long established Nigerian writers / the new crop of writers and poets, from the arts in general and of course the general public – do you think there is a need for this or even more “Sarabas” -

EI: On Established writers, the response has not been kind of minimal. Yet, it’s better than when we started. The first ‘established’ writer to support us was Jumoke Verissimo (our first guest editor) then Uche Peter Umez, then Jude Dibia, Tolu Ogunlesi, Eghosa Imasuen, and Lola Shoneyin. Yet, I think there’s a need for us to try harder with getting the support of established writers, whose support would go a long way in increasing our respectability.

The new crop of writers and poets are our biggest assets. By this I mean that the response have been overwhelming. At present, we have published (or going to publish) writers from India, Botswana, Malawi, the U.K., South Africa, Ghana, Turkey, Paris, etc.; this is aside the numerous writers in Nigeria we have already published. It’s interesting because we feel unstarted, and being in school means we might have achieved more if Saraba was done full-time.

The general public, well, knows little or nothing about Saraba. I assume the general public in this context means readers. I can safely say there’s little known about Saraba, and the goodwill we enjoy comes mostly from writers and literary enthusiasts. This is no fault of theirs. We have not exactly done good publicity, owing to schoolwork and financial constraints.

Of course, more Sarabas would be useful. The caveat in this regard would be that I hope more Sarabas would attempt to have a signature of their own – the market should not be laden with efforts that are only replicas of existing ones. What Saraba has tried to do is have a signature of our own, separate and distinct from existing efforts. Anyway, I am open to any new ‘Saraba,’ for I think we need to do this – to take our literary destiny into our hands.

SE: As the publisher of one of the few Nigerian literary magazines what do you see your role and what is your impression of the calibre of new writings coming out of Nigeria, W Africa and the continent?

EI: My role is simple. The first thing to say is that I do not want to be looked upon as a messiah of some sort, but a young man with love for the literary arts. Again, as a preliminary remark, I’d like to add that it is somewhat difficult and demanding to give perfect and equal attention to writing and publishing. They are too roles that I think should not be fused. But increasingly, we find that we must make exceptions. And I think my life is that exception! . I think we can have a conversation on the role of a writer as a publisher.

If I have any role, let it be one that has a definitive outlook. I desire to create a forum, a hub, of expression, without limitation as to status or achievement in literary circles. As such, I wish to help create a symphony of simplicity and ambition, a place where writers meet unashamed, and well, without restraint.

I’d talk about caliber in two angles. The first angle is simpler. I think good writing is coming out of Nigeria, and of that many agree, so I don’t need to spend time on this. The second angle is that I find many new writers seeking to conform to certain standards, or viewpoints, set and shared by newly established writers. Many seem to define good writing by the achievement of others, and feel that certain sensibilities must be reflected in a work before it achieves merit. I’ve had conversations with several of my peers and I feel this is a major challenge; and I also feel it is cautionable. The caliber of any writer’s writing is self-defined, and such feet-licking is highly destructive. I think a writer is to define his ambition himself; whether he gets there or not is left to no one’s judgment, but his.

SE: Nigeria has a growing publisher scene with Cassava Republic and Farafina being the most well known – is there a danger of these becoming the spokespersons for Nigerian literature and acting as the entry points for new writers in the same way that the established European publishers have in the past.

EI: I feel the need to extricate the issues (and you might want us to consider them separately). First, whether these publishing houses can become spokespersons for Nigerian literature is not a question of sentiment, but of fact. The facts that make this a reality outweigh the facts that do not. For one, these houses seem to have entered a market that is disfavourable, a forgotten market. It becomes necessary that they assert their presence – publish the writers they want to, whose writing would publicize the publishing houses. As such, it is easy for them to dictate to Nigerian literature, whether they do so rightly or not is another issue. I mean, look at what Farafina has done with Chimamanda Adichie. They have literarily told us that she’s an Amazon, and fed us with what to imagine about her and her writing. I think this is only incidental to the fact that they came into the Nigerian literary industry the time they did. They have to stay in business. But if this position remains the same after a decade, then they would have done worse to Nigerian industry than the military dictatorship.
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James Baldwin “Precious Lord, Take My Hand”

by Sokari on August 31, 2010

in African History, Black America, History is a Weapon, James Baldwin

“Precious Lord, Take My Hand” – I learned a great deal from James Baldwin and haven’t written as much as I had planned. But I read and read. On my bedside table I have copies of Notes of a Native Son and The Fire Next Time. I randomly opened the latter with the hope of finding a suitable quote and this is what I came upon

“The White man’s Heaven sings a Black Muslim minister, is the Black mans Hell”………The Africans put it another way. When the white man came to Africa, the white man had the bible and the African had the land, but now it is the white man who is being, reluctantly and bloodily separated from the land, and the African who is still attempting to digest or vomit up the Bible”

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Baldwin then delves into the historical relationship between Christianity, politics, power and morals – a religion like most which is more concerned with the “soul” then the “body” – souls are saved as bodies of the unrighteous are massacred! Killing the homo will save his/her soul. It’s for their own good, that way they wont burn in hell.

God travelled in different directions – Christianity, “rising on the wings of power” became white as it travelled north and west whilst Islam “out of power” became Black and travelled south and east on the dark side of Heaven [in the minds of the Christian church] so in this way they, Muslims, can now fill the void of the necessary evil that is craved.

He makes the observation [sometimes I wish Baldwin were still here so he could see how his observations remain the same today as 50 years ago] that questioning the authority of the true faith, questions the right of those that hold the faith to rule over them which goes back to his point about power, politics and morals and the role of religions in controlling the political and personal agendas. Baldwin knew about religions, he was steeped in the Black church with a father who was a pastor. These things never leave you. I should know I was brought up in a catholic high church school system where there is much fire and brimstone. The fortune I had was this brainwashing and fear mongering was not replicated at home so remained like a cover of dust rather than sticking to me like clogs of mud. Notice how often mass fear mongering and hatred are justified with religious texts of one kind or the other; how religions are drenched in oppression and supremacy.
Baldwin ends by saying that if God, whatever the religion, cannot be used to make us “freer and more loving” as in the God of “Precious Lord”, then we had best get rid of “Him”.

Precious Lord, take my hand
Lead me on, let me stand
I’m tired, I’m weak, I’m lone
Through the storm, through the night
Lead me on to the light
Take my hand precious Lord, lead me home

When my way grows drear precious Lord linger near
When my life is almost gone
Hear my cry, hear my call
Hold my hand lest I fall
Take my hand precious Lord, lead me home

When the darkness appears and the night draws near
And the day is past and gone
At the river I stand
Guide my feet, hold my hand
Take my hand precious Lord, lead me home

Precious Lord, take my hand
Lead me on, let me stand
I’m tired, I’m weak, Lord I’m worn
Through the storm, through the night
Lead me on to the light
Take my hand precious Lord, lead me home

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James Baldwin 8 : Who is the Nigger? or Reclaiming the Dream 2010

by Sokari on August 31, 2010

in Civil Rights, James Baldwin, USA

A short clip from “Take This Hammer” in which Baldwin throws the “nigger” back at whiteness who invented him in the first place. Very pertinent in these moments of escalating right wing anti-Muslim hatred – a hatred invented to fill a void of hate that must always be full. Without hate there is no one to blame, nothing to rally behind.

“What you are describing is not me and what you are afraid of is not me”

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Reclaiming the bones: The African Cemetery on Higgs Beach, Key West

by Sokari on August 30, 2010

in African History, Black America, History is a Weapon, Quick Links, USA

Last week I went to Key West – the southern most tip of the US and part of the Florida Keys.   The Keys are a series of small islands joined together by bridges and causeways.   I had heard nothing but good things about them especially Key West which was home to Tenneesee Williams and Ernest Hermingway and even today the island remains  a creative refuge for artists and writers.  I had not anticipated  the hospitality of the Conches [the name for people from the Keys].   I cant remember when I last visited a place where the local people were so open and inviting – we had our meal covered at dinner by someone we met in a restaurant – another person invited us to their home for dinner and another to his balcony for a festival plus other signifiers of openness and friendship especially amongst the Black population.  The main reason for going to Key West was to celebrate and remember 294 Africans who died on the island in 1860.
Here’s the story.
As well as being the southern most point of the US, Key West was also the closet port to trading routes of the Middle Passage.  The island is at the center of the Middle Passage and therefore very much part of our African collective history with layers of connections between the continent and the Americas.   Many historical documents such as court cases, ships cargo and manifests  have been found and preserved.  And many Africans who managed to escape sought refuge on the island.   In 1860 three ships carrying Africans to be sold into slavery in Cuba were rescued by the US Navy.    The ships, Wildfire, William and Bogota were captured and forced to sail to Key West.  The Africans from the first two ships [508 & 513 survivors] were from the Eastern Congo but there is no record on the origin of the people on the Bogota. Altogether 1,432 Africans were rescued [269 people died at sea] given food, clothing and housing.
Above: Africans, mostly young boys, aboard the Wildfire
The Sadness of Princess Madia

Of  those that landed safely, 294 mostly young boys  died on the island of Key West from the trauma, sadness and disease of the journey and were buried in mass graves in what became known as the African Cemetery at Higgs Beach.   Documents were found showing the location of the graves and so far 9 have been found.   Using special underground radar, Conch archeologist and curator,  Corey Malcolm, was able to locate the bodies and in  2002 the ground was concentrated.  Today there stands a living memorial to those who died in 1860 and to all Africans who were forcibly removed from their homes and who suffered the most horrific of experiences and were scattered across the Americas.  Many of those who survived the Middle  Passage later left Key West for  Liberia but two more young men were drowned as the boat carrying them to the ship capsized. Their bodies were never recovered.
The importance of remembrance!
I know that we must reclaim the bones in the Atlantic Ocean.  Do you know that there is not a plaque, a memorial, a day, a ritual or an hour that is erected in memorial to those one hundred million bodies in the Atlantic Ocean?  All those African bones in briny deep.  All those people who said “no” and jumped ship.  All those people who tried to figure out a way to steer, to navigate amongst the sharks.  We don’t call upon that power.  We don’t call upon those spirits.  We don’t celebrate those ancestors. We don’t have a marker, an expression, a song that we use to acknowledge them.  We have nothing to indicated that those were our people and they mattered!  We willingly self-administer knockout drops.  More horrendous is the fact that we dont tap; we don’t tap into the ancestral presence in those waters. [Toni Cade Bambara]
The African Cemetery
Being at the memorial and actually seeing the positions of the bodies buried beneath, looking out to the Atlantic ocean and knowing millions are buried from the Middle Passage in those seas – I felt such a sadness standing in the cold damp rain.  The beach would have been empty of buildings except for the Fort.  There would not have been the park and the road, just tropical trees, bananas, coconuts palms, breadfruit.  In fact it may have looked very much like home to many of the Africans who survived.   At the cemetery we were reminded that 200 years later, Africans are still dying on the high seas or being washed ashore in Florida.  And still being refused their dignity in death.   Africans from the Senegal and from Haiti died in those waters as recent as 2006, 2007 and 2009.  In June 2006, 53 Senegalese, most from the village of Casamance, left by boat from Cabo Verde to the Canaries and were later set adrift  by traffickers in the  Atlantic where they all died at sea.

The boat was relatively large (see annimation link below) but had no cover or shade. There appears to have been some chaos around the departure of the boat as apparently the Spaniard in charged jumped ship at the last minute.    5 of the Senegalese also left the boat and another got scared after the boat set off and jumped out and swam back to shore. He managed to get his money back from the Spanish “pirate” and later made a report to the police.

The boat is thought to have gone past Mauritania but when it reached Nuadibu (Nouadhibou, Mauritania ) there was a storm and they lost control of the boat. They then started to call friends and family. One of the people they called was the Spanish pirate. A few hours later they were rescued by another boat which towed them to the middle of the ocean and then abandoned them. They only had 40 litres of fuel which ran out plus they had to cope with storms and high seas of the Atlantic.

According to the medical report the people died in the first month. There were a series of storms, the first on January 6th then one approximately every 10 days and with the high winds they were pushed towards Barbados over the 4 month period. The people died of hunger and thirst with bodies being thrown overboard one by one as they died.

Some messages were found on the boat.

“I don’t think I will live (survive) – please call my friend”

“I am from Senegal, I was living 1 year in Cabo Verde. Things are going very badly. I don’t think I will survive. I need the person who finds me to send this money to my family. Please call my friend Ibrahima Drame on this number…” signed Diaw Sounkar Diemi. He left 1300 euros.

The boat was found 76 miles off Ragged Point in the St Phillips parish in SE Barbados with 11 bodies more or less mummified of the 47 who had left Cabo Verde 4 months earlier. The authorities used the telephone messages to reconstruct the story. The 11 bodies are in Bridgetown mortuary

Haitians arriving in the US have always been subjected to discriminatory  immigration policies compared with those arriving from Cuba or Venezuela, dating back to the 1980s when all Cubans and Haitians were labeled “Cuban-Haitian entrants”.  Decisions on entry were discretionary and left to the Attorney-General and no surprise Haitians – fleeing from the Jean-Claude Duvalier [Baby Doc] regime and poverty were the ones refused entry whilst Cubans fleeing from Castro were not.    Later under President Reagan, Haitians were further subjected to humiliating and discriminatory treatment when Duvalier and the US government sanctioned the search of Haitian ships on the high seas.  In November 1997, the US Congress passed the Nicaraguan Adjustment and Central American Relief Act [NACARA], which allowed Nicaraguans and Cubans to become legal citizens as well as other Central America and Easter European citizens, Haitians were not included.

I think it is important to recognise the connections between death on the Middle Passage and death on the seas between Haiti and Florida, West Africa and Europe.  How many Africans died on the way to Haiti we may never know.  What we do know is that the African descendants in Haiti rose up and revolted against the French slavers and declared independence from Napoleon in 1804.   For this Haiti has been punished by the West ever since.
To return to Key West and the survivors of the Middle Passage.  Some 1,137 set off to return to Africa and of those 861 made the journey.  Though they were not able to return to the Congo they at least did reach the shores  of  Africa as they landed in Liberia.
I intend to return to Key West in mid-October for the “Bahamian festival, Goombay” and also to visit the Mel Fisher  museum and the “Last Slave Ships” and the Henrietta Marie exhibitions.  The curator of the museum, Corey Malcolm who also worked on the African Cemetery,  has been researching the origins and journeys of the Henrietta Marie ,  a slave ship which also sailed from Calabar in the Niger Delta.   This is interesting for me as Duke Town – Calabar,  was at the center of the slave trade in the Niger Delta and I have wondered on the relationship between Duke Town and the Duke  family whose descendants  remain one of the most prominent Calabar families today including Donald Duke the former Governor of Cross River State.   The area is too small for there not to be a connection between Duke Town and the Duke family.   The book “Two Princes of Calabar” is also set in  Duke Town.
Now we have one more memorial, a plaque, a ritual, a place and an hour to remember all those 100 million bodies from then and now!  We Africans have all, in some way  at least one connection to all those who died and survived.  In my mind the memorial and being part of the ritual, brought those  million back to life.  They become individual people who lived -  women men and children who had families, who loved, who worked, who laughed and cried.  As you can see from the photo above many of those who survived this particular journey and landed in Key West were young boys.  You can see the sadness, the despair and confusion in their young faces and body language
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Tweets of the Week

by Sokari on August 28, 2010

in Twitter

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“First Love,” by Geoffrey Philp

by Rethabile on August 28, 2010

in Caribbean, Writing

Mark watched Patrick as he entered the showers and wondered how it would feel to have Patrick’s arm around his waist and the ripple of his thighs against his buttocks.
For two weeks now that was all he could think about every time they took the long walk from Manning Cup football practice (at the bottom field of Jamaica College, JC) and past the newly built chemistry and physics lab while the grounds men mowed the grass on “Holy Ground.”
The shadow of Long Mountain fell across the trunks of the Australian pines gathering the amber light dying on the corrugated roofs of Standpipe. They trampled over the grass soaked by an afternoon squall that had drenched the field, but had not stopped their game.
“They were sufferin’, rude boys gave them Bufferin!”
Their raucous hoots seemed to mock the Latin inscription Fervet Opus In Campis over Scott Hall and the austere names of the houses: Cowper, Musgrave, Hardy and Murray-the school’s homage to English boarding school tradition.
Mark had been in top form that afternoon-making impossible saves seem ordinary, orchestrating the attacks from the goal line by lobbing the ball to Patrick, his midfielder, or organizing the defense behind Charles, his sweeper. Although they played for different houses during the school year, they came together for their practice match as if they hadn’t missed a beat.
“Blood claat game,” said Charles. He banged his cleats against the benches with the same ferocity that he showed whenever he was sulking over a lost game. Yet they had won, so Mark was confused.
“Are you going to mash up everything?”
“No, no, something else is on my mind. You made some great saves today, man!”
The rest of the team joined in. For if they had not yet respected Mark’s ability before, his performance that afternoon made them realize why the boys in the lower school had nicknamed him the “football ginigog,” and also proved that he was almost assured of a place on Jamaica’s national football team-something that had been anticipated by all of Mark’s family.
Mark lived and breathed football, and had showed signs from primary school of surpassing his older brother and cousin, both of whom had played for Jamaica during the early sixties. But unlike his brother and cousin (who were both as tall as he was, six feet two inches) he knew how to use his size to intimidate the opposing players.
When Mark let out his blood curdling scream, “My ball!” and left his goal line, there weren’t many strikers who challenged him. He had done that twice this afternoon and he remembered how the striker just curled up “like a pussy” (according to Charles) and allowed Mark to get the ball.
But for now, there were other things on Mark’s mind. He kept going over and over how Patrick’s hands had met his in the dark when they had gone with Patrick’s cousins, Jennifer and Althea, to see Lethal Weapon 2.
Patrick had leaned over, whispered, “Where there’s a will, there’s a weapon”, and touched his hand. It had happened so fast that Mark wasn’t sure if it was the attraction or the danger that excited him.
And it was dangerous. It didn’t matter that he was the best goalie in Kingston. For even though he was the captain of the football team, he still went to JC, and the school, since its founding in 1789 had always had a reputation for harboring gay teachers and students. Two hundred years later, after the government of Michael Manley (himself a JC alumnus) dismantled the entrance rules that had only allowed the sons of the white landed class and the sons of the brown middle class to enter JC’s hallowed halls (which led to Patrick’s father saying that Manley had betrayed his race and class), every JC boy was still suspect.
In fact, a week after JC had beaten the team from Kingston College, KC, while Mark and his teammates were waiting in the bleachers of the National Stadium, for a game against Calabar, the KC boys, who were up in the highest section of the bleachers, were throwing peanuts at them and singing:

Don’t let batty boys invite you to dinner
Or you will become a sinner
Don’t let batty boy give you bread and jelly
It will give you pain in you belly
Batty boy jelly O. Don’t want no batty boy jelly O
Batty boy jelly will give pain in you belly O

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James Baldwin 7: In search of the self

by Sokari on August 27, 2010

in Black America, History is a Weapon, James Baldwin

After spending the past few weeks reading and listening to snippets of James Baldwin I have come to the conclusion that much of his writing was concerned with the search for himself and his people. By trying to understand himself, who he is he would be able to understand the core of America which was race. His exile in France was very much part of this search. How clearer things are when we look at them from afar and one is able to make some sort of adjustment or disconnection to the object of our gaze. IN ‘Notes for a Hypothetical Novel’ he comes to the realisation that the white world also contains suffering albeit a cleaner, safer and more polite suffering but suffering nonetheless – the pain of not knowing who you are is an undiscriminating American affliction.

But I didn’t meet anyone in that world who didn’t suffer from the same affliction that all the people I had fled from suffered from and that was that they didnt know who they were. They wanted to be something that they were not. And very shortly I didnt know who I was either. I could not be certain whether I was rich or poor, really black or really white, really male or really female, really talented or a fraud, really strong or merely stubborn. In short I had become an American. I had stepped into, I had walked right into, as I inevitably had to do, the bottomless confusion which is both public and private, of the American republic. [The Price of the Ticket]

In ‘Notes of a Native Son’ he writes of his search for the source of his father’s bitterness and failure and his own fear that he too would end up bitter and full of hate.

“I discovered the weight of white people in the world. I saw that this had been for my ancestors and now would be for me an awful thing to live with and that the bitterness which had helped kill my father could also kill me” [The Price of the Ticket]

He later goes on to tell the story of his ‘New Jersey” experience where he learned that as a black person you were invisible yet at the same time at the mercy of “the reflexes” your skin colour aroused. In New Jersey he contracts the “chronic disease” which afflicts all Black people – rage, a pounding blind fever of a rage. After being refused service at the American Diner, he leaves and on finding a fancy resturant he enters, sits down and waits to be served. Again he is refused service and his rage boils over. The realisation that his rage was so strong that he could commit an act of violence was more shocking to Baldwin than the refusal to serve “negroes’. Now he has a clear view of his father’s bitterness and the rage of Black folk.


Thanks to Saratu for reminding me of the publication of The Cross of Redemption – review here

Essay by Claudia Roth Pierpont “Another Country”

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LGBTI activism in Kenya & strategies of intervention

by Sokari on August 26, 2010

in African LGBTI, Gay Imperialism, Kenya

Keguro Macharia provides an historical overview of LGBTI activism in Kenya which he states has taken place through “a strategy of association rather than an articulation of identity” specifically through health work and activism around HIV/AIDs. However as he points out this strategy has it’s problems…

By allying themselves to health work and activism around HIV/AIDS, and serving underserved populations, especially men who have sex with men (MSM), LGBTI activists have been able to raise funds and demonstrate their commitment to Kenya’s health and future. Donors have also found it easier to fund HIV/AIDS activism as opposed to more direct LGBTI causes, thus escaping scrutiny from government agencies.

While health work is important, it risks allying LGBTI practices and identifications predominantly with HIV/AIDS. Approached through the lens of pathology, LGBTI identity and identification might be seen as a vector for pathology: LGBTI populations spread HIV/AIDS; as caretakers for the sick: LGBTI activists nurse the sick; and as mourners for the dying and dead: LGBTI activists grieve for the dead. While these roles are important, they risk marginalizing LGBTI activism from broader national conversations.

Simultaneously, this focus on HIV/AIDS makes invisible other kinds of illegal actions against LGBTI people in Nairobi, who are often subjected to blackmail and other forms of harassment. Many of these illegal activities remain unreported or are carried out by law enforcement. The LGBTI community has yet to find effective ways to make existing laws work in their favor.

Keguro is also critical of a new initiative towards decriminialisation across Africa which requires of “internationalization’ of the struggle through external interventions such as in the case recently Malawi case of Steven Monjeza and Tiwonge Chimbalanga who were pardoned.

Kuria is right to the extent that non-interference has been the dominant model of inter-African interaction. Even in the most egregious abuses of human rights, African organizations, from the now defunct Organization of African Unity (OAU) to the equally moribund African Union (AU), have been unwilling or unable to intervene in member state affairs.

However, Kuria’s strategy also reveals a fundamental misunderstanding of the relationship between the local and the global in the arena of human rights. Although the global might be the stage on which human rights are enacted and, ideally, upheld, global forces cannot enforce those rights in any sustained manner in any sovereign nation without taking away that nation’s sovereignty. Indeed, Kuria seems to be calling for a new rights-based imperialism, in which the object will be to protect sexual minorities against their sovereign nations.

More crucially, Kuria’s call reveals an ongoing weakness within LGBTI activism in Kenya. To date, LGBTI activists have not been able to articulate their claims within the frame of Kenya’s histories, presents, and futures. While they have certainly invoked pre-colonial paradigms in which some ethnic groups recognized same-sex relationships and welcomed transgendered individuals, LGBTI activists have not embedded their activism within Kenya’s anti-colonial struggles, nationalist pasts and presents, and future aspirations.

Read the full article on Kenya Imagine

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All Africa bishops in Entebbe

by Sokari on August 25, 2010

in African LGBTI, Kenya, Religion, Uganda

The meeting of African Bishops in Entebbe, Uganda has not surprisingly, been used to reaffirm the church’s homophobic stance. The bishops spoke about “African Values” and “alien beliefs”. Since the rights of LGBTI people are being denied this implies that the notion of ‘human rights’ is not part of our values and beliefs. The hatred expressed through homophobia and criminalisation also implies that the idea of people’s humanity is not part of our values and beliefs. This is not true – not because we as Africans are special, though the bishops statements completely contradict “Ubuntu” but because these are universal values and beliefs which are both within religions and outside them.

One Bishop made a slight variation to the usual homophobic rhetoric presumably addressing the statement that Christianity itself is not “African” by claiming that there was a church in North Africa before there was one in Britain.

Before Christianity went to Britain, he added, there was a church in North Africa….
“So Christianity did not begin in Britain; we should counteract false ideologies that creep into the church and blur the truth,” he argued.

It’s interesting that North Africa [I assume he means Egypt were the Orthodox church dates back to 471AD] has now become part of the African Bishops consciousness but he either forgot or isn’t aware that one of the oldest Christian churches in the world is the Ethiopian coptic church which predates the colonial period. So yes there is a history of pre-colonial christianity on the continent but that is not the case for Uganda and other parts of the continent where the religion was imposed by colonial rule – and maybe he should be reminded of the violence surrounding that imposition. Origins of christianity and churches aside I think it is well worth putting things into perspective and pointing out that millions have died and been excluded in the name of Christianity. Those engaged in buying and selling of Africans, engaged in Apartheid, Jim Crow, those who murdered millions of indigenous Americans and Caribbeans all did so in the name of Christianity so personally I am not that taken in by their values and beliefs – they are simply bigots like all those aforementioned that dehumanize people in order to justify their exclusion. In fact they are following in the very un Christ like traditions of Christianity.

Links:

Global Strategies in Kenya’s LGBTI Activism

Glocal Strategies
In a just-announced major initiative to decriminalize homosexuality across Africa, David Kuria, the manager of the Gay and Lesbian Coalition of Kenya, writes, “The reason why Africa cannot decriminalize of its own accord is because it requires enormous political capital and since homosexuality has become a religious hot potato, the stakes have gone so high, no government will touch the subject.”

This nascent initiative consists of a discussion group where members are invited to “brainstorm, strategize and take action.” Its beginning premise is that international intervention and global pressure from outside the continent will be necessary to enact sexual minority rights in Africa. Certainly, this strategy seemed to have worked in Malawi, where Steven Monjeza and Tiwonge Chimbalanga, who had been jailed for allegedly breaking colonial-era anti-sodomy laws, were released following global outcry and economic pressure.

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Charissa Granger and the musical possibilities of the steelpan

by Sokari on August 23, 2010

in African Diaspora, Music, Women making a difference

I first heard Charissa Granger on a short video someone had posted on FaceBook. She was playing a soft haunting melody called Raindrops which was made even more interesting because she was playing the tune on the steel pan. The steel pan is an instrument we associate with the Caribbean and the sounds of Calypso and Soca music rather than with classical music. I recently spoke with Charissa on her choice of musical instrument as well as briefly on the history of the steel pan.

The origins of the steel pan can be traced back to slavery in the Caribbean (on the island of Trinidad and Tobago) and grew out of instruments called Tamboo-Bamboo which were bamboo sticks that were hit on the ground. The different sounds were made possible by the different lengths of the sticks but still there wasn’t that much melodic range (it was a rhythmic instrument) and probably came across as dull thuds. In Trinidad, the Tamboo Bamboo then evolved into beating of old scraps of metal, biscuit tins, oil pans and gin bottles. In the 1930’s musicians discovered they could produce different melodies by beating on used oil drums. They began to experiment and study the sounds of the steel so they could understand the tuning and through this the modern steel pan was born. By the 1950s the steel band as we know it today was in it’s prime in the form of Calypso in Trinidad with bands as large as 100 musicians.

Charissa who is from the island of Aruba began playing at the age of 11 in an after school program. At that time the steel pan was a dying instrument on the island so her mother thought it a good idea if she studied the instrument more seriously. By the time she was 16 and was traveling to workshops in Antigua, Barbuda and performing in the Antilles. From there it seemed a natural progression to study at university level. Northern Illinois University is the only university where one can obtain a Bachelors and Masters degree in music with the steelpan being the main instrument of study. Charissa was able to major in the steel pan and study under Liam Teague [Head of Steelpan Studies and is an Associate Professor of Music at Northern Illinois University] and Clifford Alexis co-director of the NIU Steelband . Charissa chose to interpret classical pieces and focused mainly on the challenge of the technical application of classical music on the steelpan. Under the guidance of Clifford Alexis, Charissa has the privilege of watching the process of building and tuning the pans – a learning process that could take over 10 years to master. The pans are largely made by hand using a 6 pound sledge though electric pneumatic tools are now being used to sink the metal.

Charissa started to play classical music to show the versatility of the steelpan and like many other instruments can be used for a range of genres. People are blown away and impressed with hearing the steelpan playing classical music. You can take the scores of say a violin or piano, transcribe and play it in a steel band. Charissa also enjoys playing jazz, improvising and soundscapes, the variety enables her to have a musical balance between traditional steelpan music and other forms of music. Playing the steelpan in this way has given her an additional technical ability. She is presently a graduate student of musicology at the University of Amsterdam and has hopes for the future is to get steelpan into a new musical space but also to research more into the music itself and again achieve a balance between being a musician and being a musicologist

Raindrops composed by Liam Teague and interpreted by Charrisa Granger

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