No Grannies in Africa

The Ghosts of Dictators in Bukoba

2017-06-18T20:52:00.000+03:00

Some places are like pages of a book that preserves history. Bukoba is one such place. It boasts of something from every chapter in human history; Stone Age rock art in Bwanjai, ancient foundries in Katuruka, a colonial palace in Kanazi, and ruins from one of Africa’s first inter-state wars in Kyaka. I went to Bukoba to look at our distant past, intrigued that the Bahaya could make high-grade steel 2000 years ago, and oral lore has it that they constructed an iron-tower that reached the heavens. But I failed to get a decent look into that past because ghosts of two dictators blocked my view.

Hermes, a descendant of Kahigi,
he was kind enough to show me the ruined palace.

One of these was Omukama Kahigi, who I had not heard of prior to my arrival in Bukoba. I heard about his palace by pure chance. I had run out of places to visit and I was idling on the beach, chatting with a local woman, who mentioned that I might want to see this colonial palace. I jumped at the opportunity, hoping I would stumble upon something grand. Instead, I got a lot of oral stories that have survived for nearly a hundred years.

The German's built the palace for an omukama, Kahigi of Kainja. He was the weakest, and the most looked down upon, of the eight kings who ruled Buhaya shortly after the collapse of the Karagwe kingdom in the 1800s. Each had his own autonomous territory, but Kahigi struggled to hold on to his authority, and he feared being defeated and subjugated by one of other seven. He paid tribute to the Kabaka of Buganda, who helped him cling on to the throne. When the German’s invaded, he found a new ally.

The house the German's built Kahigi. Oral lore has it that
a maze underneath was a torture and death chamber.

At school, when we are taught about colonialism, they say Europeans did not meet resistance, and yet listening to anecdotes like that of Kahigi suggests otherwise. The Bahaya passively resisted. Though they did not take up arms, they refused to cooperate with the colonialists, and this made it difficult for the Germans to gain a foothold. They needed the support of the local leaders, and clever as they were, they saw an opportunity in Kahigi. Being the weakest, hungering for power, Kahigi quickly ingratiated himself towards the Germans, and they used him to conquer the Bahaya.

“He was the first to realize the power of the Germans,” his great-great grandson, Hermes Balige Nyarubamba, apparent heir to the all-but-dead kingdom, told me when I visited. As other kingdoms resisted colonization, Kahigi welcomed the Germans. Warmly. They gave him what he wanted. Power. They made him ruler of the region, and to thank him for his help, they gave him a lot of land, and they made him a German officer, and they built for him a palace in 1905, the ruins of which I was visiting.

When I saw his photos, I at first thought I was looking at a German. I could not see an African man from that period dressed up like that. Hermes told me that his great-grandfather loved the German’s so much that he behaved like a German, he dressed, and ate, and walked, and talked like a Germany. After Germany lost World War 1, Kahigi became lost. He did not know to relate to his new masters, the British. He committed suicide rather than serve another master, some sources say, but Hermes said it was because a British officer mocked him for his love for Germany, that the British officer called him a ‘German pet’ or something to that effect, and Kahigi could just not live with that insult. He was in a worse place than when the Germans found him.

German boy: Kahigi, in German uniform.
It took me a moment to realize he was African.

“Was he loved?” I asked Hermes.

Hermes shook his head sadly. “He was like your Idi Amin,” he replied. He told me that the Germans built a maze under the palace where they tortured and killed people, with the full cooperation of the omukama. After their defeat, the maze was closed. “There is a secret door,” Hermes added. His father, who passed away in 2010, once opened the door, and took him into the maze, but they quickly retreated because the horrors from a century ago still haunt it. He says he saw a huge spirit-snake that roams the tunnels, and he heard ghosts of the people who died in there. “We want to open the maze to the public,” he told me, “but we have to first conduct rituals to cleanse the place. It’s not nice in there. It is terrible and full of horrible memories. It’s still haunted.” After his father passed away, he tried to open the door again, but failed. He cannot remember how to open it.

Nor would he show me the doorway to the maze. “It is a secret,” he explained. “Before we open it to the public we have to first explore it. There might be buried treasure in there.”

There are three buildings in the palace. According Hermes, after the Germans constructed the first, a mbandwa – prophet, or shaman, – warned the king that he had used the visitors to gain power, but a time would come when that power would fade away, when his reign would weaken and die, and he would not have even a house for his children. He would have nothing valuable to give to his children. So Kahigi asked the Germans to build a new house for his son. They did. Kahigi however did not tell his son, Alfred Kalema, the full prophecy, so when Kalema tried to enter the new house, he saw a fire, and a giant snake.

“Is it the same spirit-snake that haunts the maze?” I asked Hermes, interrupting his story.

“Maybe,” Hermes replied. “You see, the prophecy had it that doom would come soon, and Kalema would not enjoy the fruits of his father's gamble with the Germans.” So the snake prevented Kalema from entering the house and Kalema had to build one, the third house, for himself. No one was able to live in the original palace until Kahigi's grandson, Peter Nyarubamba, born in 1958, came along.

A shrine within the palace, where ancestral spirits are worshiped.
Some rooms in the palace are also used for spirit worship.

The family now lives in near poverty, partially surviving on fees tourists pay. The Tanzanian government banned all traditional kingships, and gives royal families no allowances. This palace had fallen to ruins. It resurrected and opened to tourists following the efforts of an American professor, Peter Schmidt.

“There is German treasure hidden away somewhere in here,” Hermes tells me as he explains the family’s financial situation. He thinks that because of the prophecy, Kahigi asked the German's not just for a second building, but for treasure for his descendants. “They gave him a lot of treasure,” Hermes added. “We don’t know what kind of treasure it is, or how much it is, but the German’s buried treasure somewhere here and we are still looking for it. That's one reason we can't open the maze to the public, or reveal the location of the door.”

Ruins of a Rugaruga guardhouse, outside the palace at Kanazi, Bukoba.

Just outside the palace, are trenches, which Hermes said were dug during the 1978 Uganda-Tanzania war. I paused to think about the significance of these trenches, and them being so close to the palace. It put two kinds of people who I think are responsible or Africa’s current socio-political crisis in the same geographical location, two ghosts who are a symbolic representation of how things really fell apart in East Africa; how colonialists easily subjugated our grandparents, and how post-independence misrule and corruption stifled our opportunity to rise. Two people who hungered for power and used it selfishly. I’m superstitious, and I wonder if the ancestors were sort of preserving history by having these two things, the palace and the trenches, exist side-by-side to this day.

Bukoba still talks about Idi Amin’s invasion, even those who were not born at that time give animated narrations of tales from the war, and maybe this is because the Tanzanian government made efforts to ensure the people of the region never forget the war. Bukoba town bore the brunt of aerial bombings, most of which were thankfully wide of the mark. Some historians say Idi Amin’s pilots were not properly trained, and Tanzanian anti-aircraft guns brought down a number of the planes. People display pieces of metal in their offices (at least one that I saw), which they claim was from Amin’s planes. In Kyaka, a town an hour’s drive from Bukoba, Amin’s forces did considerable damage to some buildings, and the Tanzanian army keeps one as a monument to the war.

The ruins of a church in Kyaka, Tanzania,
destroyed during the Uganda-Tanzania war of 1978-79

Before the war, this building belonged to the Lutheran Church (ELCT). At first, there were two parishes, Kashasha and Kituntu, which joined to form Kyaka Parish and it built this church in 1960. The church stood on a hill, and must have been a majestic structure in its prime. Then, in 1971, Idi Amin started a feud with Nyerere, and there was talk of war. The Tanzanian army asked the church to vacate the hill, for it was of a strategic military importance. Whoever controlled the hill would control the town, and the main highway between Uganda and Tanzania. The church then shifted to what was supposed to be a temporal location, but which is where it stands to this day, because in 1978, war broke out and Idi Amin bombed the hill. By that time, it was a purely military post, with heavy equipment. The war left it in ruins, but Amin failed to control the hill, and hence could not control the town of Kyaka, and the highway, and thus he lost the war.

Or so the oral tales have it.

I looked at the new church, and I saw symbolism in the bombed out structure. The new building is nothing compared to the one that was destroyed, it is no architectural wonder, and is not magnificent. Even the ruins is grander than the replacement church. There in I saw the legacy of African leaders, they destroy, and what they destroy, is replaced by things of far less value.

If you enjoyed this post, consider supporting me. You can become my patron at patreon.com/dilstories and help me make short films in the scifi, fantasy, and horror genres, which are tough seeing they require a lot of special effects. Or you could subscribe to my channel on YouTube.com/dilstories, where you can also see some of my films.

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2017-06-14T20:06:00.000+03:00

Visiting Bukoba in Tanzania turned out to be an exciting way to spend the end of year holidays. There was very little information online about its attractions, or how to get there, and this was a pain. I could not just google about an attraction and figure out how to go there. In fact, even in the villages with the attractions, some residents had no idea. At the rock paintings in Bwanjai, for example, I asked a bodaboda rider to take me to the caves, but he had never heard of them, though he said he had lived there for a long time. The scanty information may be because Bukoba doesn’t get a lot of tourists, and the advantage of this is that the hotels are not overpriced. I got very decent self-contained rooms at about 10k TZ shillings, ideal for a budget traveler.

Somewhere to go relax. The beaches are ideal for camping.

The site with the most information, Zamadamu Katuruka, was also the reason I decided to visit. I came upon it while researching iron works in ancient Africa, and was surprised to learn that the Haya produced high-grade steel as far back as 2000 years ago, probably around the time the Bachwezi ruled the region. It told me how little we know about our histories, and how distorted our histories have become after colonialism and foreign religions. I was curious as to what the locals thought of this history, and what the tools the Haya made with this steel.

If you love architectural wonders, Bukoba is full of them!
Old colonial houses like one this make up much of the town.

Beer, roast goat or fish, and ugali at the beach. Hmmmm!

To get to Katuruka, where the most famous ancient foundries are located, one online site suggested I take a dalla-dalla bound for Maruku, but whoever wrote that advice had probably never used a dalla-dalla in the Kagera region. They pack people like firewood. When I took one, from Bukoba to Kyaka, at the end of the trip after I had run out of money, we were twenty six people in a mini-bus meant for fourteen passengers. To Katuruka, I took a boda-boda, mostly for convenience and to save time. In a dalla-dalla, the 40 minute journey would have gone on for two hours. Besides, the boda-bodas are reassuring for they all have spare helmets, and it was far cheaper than a dalla-dalla. I paid about 10K TZ shillings for a return trip, and the rider waited patiently for an hour as I toured the place. I would have paid about 2000 TZ for a one way trip on a dalla-dalla, and then I would have had to get a boda to take me to the actual site.

I liked it that Katuruka is right in the middle of a village, and the tour takes you all over the village. I don’t like visiting ‘dead’ places which exist purely for tourism. It’s the one thing I really enjoyed in Bukoba. All the sites were ‘alive’ with people living within them, and it was often easy to get a guide from the community. In Katuruka, a young man of about 20 years showed me around. He learned about the history of the place from his uncle, the official caretaker, who had gone away for Christmas. From what I gathered, the uncle was bored with the job since it did not get many visitors, and so this young man, who had finished school but had no job, found himself with employment.

There are twelve sites in Katuruka, spread over about a kilometer of the village. We started with a visit to a reconstructed chief’s palace. It looked so small that I wondered if they got their history right. I didn’t like it. The furnaces too were reconstructed, nothing was original. I was beginning to feel a little cheated, for I had seen similar furnaces before that were not built for tourists. Then we got to the spot where an iron-tower ‘that reached the heavens’ once stood, and the tour became a little interesting. And then, the ‘vanishing well’ made the trip totally worth it.

The well is part of the royal history of the Bahaya. One of the kings, Rugomora Mahe, fled to exile following a feud with his father. He lived somewhere in present day Uganda with a one-legged water spirit called Mugasha. Mahe returned to the kingdom after his father’s death and found a severe drought and famine, and he asked Mugasha for help. Unfortunately, the spirit sent too much water and floods killed people. Then Mahe called out to Mugasha again and this time the spirit gave him a well, with instructions that it should be kept clean and pure, and no fish should live in it.

Whenever the well becomes dirty, it vanishes, and reappears in a different place. I saw over ten dry holes, which were previously locations of the well. They are close to each other. At one time, the Lutheran Church built a spring well, and their reverends prayed to break the curse, but the well dried up in no time, rendering their money wasted.

At the well, I found a woman who said her name was Regina. “I think the well keeps vanishing because of drought,” she said. “It moves from place to place depending on the season.” I did not buy her reasoning. I’ve seen seasonal streams and wells before. They never shift position, but here was a well that never stays in the same place!

Regina knew nothing about Mugasha, or Rugomora, or the iron smelting, though she lives just a few meters from the site called Zamadamu Katuruka. “Isn’t that a school?” she asked.

Regina draws water from the current location of the well.

The next day, Christmas, I idled around the beaches and watched birds. The food was great. I mostly ate fish and ugali. I enjoyed the architecture, for I have a thing for old houses. I was thrilled to see houses built on rocks, like in this photo. There were daytime dance spots on the beach, which were enclosed using canvas, mostly for children and youth.

The next day, I wanted to go to Musira. I was told there were caves that were burial sites for traditional doctors, but the locals were not really aware of this and someone whispered to me that those caves are seasonal. During the rains, they flood and are inaccessible. They are not even deep enough to explore, or so I was told. I heard that in Musira I could have seen crashed remains of Idi Amin’s warplanes, from the Tanzania-Uganda war of 1978, but this turned out to be false. The army ferried all the debris away. Discouraged, I instead visited a colonial palace, which the Germans used to conquer the region, but it’s quite a bit of a tale, so I’ll save that for another post.

On my fourth day, I visited the rock paintings at Bwanjai, which is in the same village as the Nyakijoga Shrine of Our Lady of Lourdes. I’ll start with the shrine. If you are Catholic and want to say prayers, visit it, otherwise, it’s a waste of time. To reach Bwanjai, I paid 3000 TZ in a shared taxi, and it deposited me in Mugana town. There, I asked a boda-boda guy to take me to the rock paintings.

That was the icing on the cake, to tour a village with a guide who was born and lives in the area. We rode into the wild and we talked about life in the village. The locals value the caves mostly because they can take shelter as they herd cattle. I was intrigued that nearly all the shelters face away from the sun, with only one getting directing sunlight in the morning. Each cave has a canopy that eerily resembles a front porch, and this makes me think the rocks were constructed. I could not stop asking myself; Is it just nature, or are these ruins of some long lost civilization?

Work of nature or ruins of a civilization?
A Stone Age rock shelter in Bwanjai, Tanzania

Rock art Bwanjai, Tanzania. This set has not been defaced,
other caves were in terrible shape, with feces in some of them.

I know, ‘experts’ say that Stone Age people had no means to build anything grand. But I look at the pyramids of Egypt and wonder where they got the technology. I look at the ruins in South America and wonder how those ancient people hauled huge stones over many miles. And when I look at this, I wonder, is it really just a work of nature, or is there something we are missing? Why is it that all shelters (entry ways?) face away from the sun? Maybe someone should use a scanner to check if there is something inside those rocks.

Amidu, my guide, showed me a way to the rocks via a small stream with a minor water fall. The locals call it kyabazaire (loosely translates to ‘it belongs to those who give birth’). In the old days, after a delivering and the placenta refuses to come out, they would make the mother lie under this water fall to force out the ‘dirt’ inside. He used the word ‘dirt’. These days, a woman might need an operation to remove the placenta. I wondered if the waterfall was an effective method, or if it worsened the woman’s situation....

An illegal brewery near the rock art at Bwanjai, Tanzania

Further down the stream, I found a mother and her son brewing alcohol. It is illegal to brew alcohol in Tanzania and so these people have to do it in hiding, in the bushes, far away from the eyes of the authorities. When they heard our motorcycle, they at first ran away, fearing we were police. They only came out of the bushes when they heard Amidu’s voice. They offered me a jug of the brew, and I paid for it. We sat there in the wild and I enjoyed my Christmas two days late. The brew was so strong I can’t remember how I made my way out of the bush.

Ideal for backpacking and camping, the civilized wilderness of Bukoba
This was taken on the way to the Bwanjai Rock Art Caves, Tanzania

The Cathedral in Bukoba town is worth is a visit, but it is open
only when there is a service, and photos are not allowed.

The exterior of the cathedral in Bukoba town, it is magnificent.

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Seven Tricks Ugandan Girls Use to Hook Men

2017-04-08T21:33:00.000+03:00

A man has a lot of tricks to seduce a woman. Some are outright crude, like using his middle finger to scratch her palm when they greet. Some are outrageous, like whistling at her as she walks down the streets. Others are ludicrous, like telling her lies about his wealth. Because of the gender power play in society, boy-tricks are almost everyday happenings, they are out there in the open. Often, when a woman sees them she knows what’s up, and either slaps him in retort, or kick his balls, or plays along. But the girl-tricks are not always obvious. Sometimes a man has to look real hard to figure out what she is saying. Here are some that I experienced. If you know any, leave a comment below.

A scene from my film, Cursed Widow Blues

1. Sing Me A Song

A long time ago, a certain girl would sing Marc Anthony’s ‘I Need You’ every time she saw me. I always wondered about that, but I never got the hint. She was still a teenager, maybe nineteen, and I had just started working. She was my neighbor. I had a computer, a rare thing in those days, and boasted of a large collection of mp3 songs. She would always urge me to play her that song. Once she came to my room, sat on my bed, and made me play the song seven times in about thirty minutes. I never got the hint. Several months later, she came again to my bed, and she was very angry. She asked me to play for her Ciara’s ‘If that boy don’t love you by now…’ and that is when I got the hint. By then, another neighbor (a married man) had ballooned her, and I could only bite my lips in regret.

2. The Panty-Flash

Some girls however not so coy about it, and one bold trick I encountered many times is the ‘panty-flash’. This first time it happened I was in university. I was alone in my hostel room, reading a novel, when a lady walked in. I don’t remember what she said to me, or what she was looking for, but she bent down to pick up something, and in that moment, from the corner of my eyes, I saw her panties. White. I looked up from my book, and she was smiling, talking, but I did not understand what she was saying. Then she dropped what she had picked up – all these years I try to remember what it was and I can’t! – and again she bent down to pick it up, turning her butt to me, and showing off clean white panties. I did not know how to react. I sat frozen, just staring at her, and she was there smiling at me for a long time. You see, I was still a virgin and I was still very terrified of women. After a while and I did not respond, she jeered and stomped out.

The next morning, I saw her get out of my roommate's bed. My roommate obviously knew how to read the signs and he took the opportunity without hesitation when she repeated the ritual for him (I think she was in a certain mood and had no boyfriend). I slept through their tryst, didn’t even wake up to notice something wild was going on just a few feet away. Only when I saw her walking out, without so much as a ‘good morning’ to me, did the significance of her pant-showing antic strike me.

Click to watch my most famous short film, WHAT HAPPENED IN ROOM 13, feat. Anne Kansiime, Richard Tuwangye, Veronica Namanda, and Gerald Rutaro

Later, I heard another story, of another guy whose girlfriend had bought new panties and she wanted him to see what they looked like. She hid behind a curtain, wore the stuff, and then strutted around the room showing it off. This poor guy was obviously worse than me, for this was his girlfriend, and he did not even read it right? I mean, she tried on like seven panties, or so I heard, and he never made a move. She dumped him straight away.

A few years later, I was in living in Kamuli town. I rented the boy’s quarters of an old bungalow. One day, I looked out of my window to the landlady’s backyard, where the house girl was cooking a meal in the veranda. She sat on a three-legged stool. She saw me looking out, and then her legs parted, slowly at first, hesitantly, then full wide until she could show off her panties. Green with black dots. She left it wide open for about a second, and snapped it closed shut so quickly that if I had blinked I wouldn’t have noticed. When I did not react, she repeated it, the slow, hesitant, teasing opening, then the quick close. I could clearly see what she was up to, but I did not pursue the matter because I had a girlfriend at that time. Besides, this house girl was underage, about sixteen. A few hours later, she crept to my window and whispered “Coward!” and ran away before I could respond. Every day for a week, while she was fixing lunch, she showed me that green piece with black dots (Did she have only one, or many of the same color?), and after lunch she would creep to my window and whisper-shout “Coward!” I was so much relieved when they fired her. Apparently, the landlady caught her doing something with a banana….

Actors do selfie while shooting my horror/sci-fi film
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3. Selfie

These days, with a proliferation of smart phones, a woman does not have to flash her panties. Last year, I was at a friend’s shop and I saw this girl looking through the racks. She was a beauty, with a natural, short hair-do and hardly any make-up. Her jeans were tight and the friend caught me looking at her. Apparently, he was her good friend. He called her over and said, ‘Hey, you both are single. Why don’t you check each other out?’ We exchanged numbers, and a few days later went for a movie at Acacia mall. As we waited outside the theater, she started to take selfies. Then she showed me the selfies, commenting on how she looked weird in each. As she scrolled through the pics, I saw a nude one. She quickly snatched away the phone and she screamed.

‘Oh gash! You weren’t supposed to see that!’

She looked really terrified that I had seen it, and she looked around to see if anyone had seen it. Out of politeness, to calm her down, I said, ‘Oh, I really did not see anything. What is it you are scared about?’

Her face folded from horror to a frown. ‘You did not see it?’ She asked, full of doubt.

‘No,’ I said. ‘I did not see anything.’

'Okay,' she said. She took some more selfies, and started to scroll again. The selfies came up, and then the nude came up again. This time, she did not snatch away the phone. Pic after pic came up, some with Desire-poses, and others – well, she was screaming ‘Oh god! This is so embarrassing! Please don’t look! Please look away! What are all these nudes doing on my phone? Oh my god! Don't look!’

Of course I did not look away. But I was not thrilled either. I bit my lips, and cursed myself: ‘Did I really have to buy overpriced 3D tickets to get into these pants? I could have done it with a rolex!’

Watch my new short film, a sci-fi horror, Cursed Widow blues

We watched the movie, we ate at Sky Lounge, and then I bade her goodnight. She was genuinely surprised. I think she wanted me to say something other than goodnight. But being the good girl that she was, she said, ‘Okay. Let me take a farewell selfie.’

I knew exactly what she had in mind. She would take the selfie, then start scrolling…. At that time I was a little angry. She was treating me like a kid who did not know anything, I mean, you know how you would show a child how to peel a banana?

‘That won’t be necessary,’ I replied, and walked away.

A few days later, I told the shopkeeper friend what had happened and he explained it all. ‘Sorry about that. She asked me how to approach you, and I advised her that you are the shy type so she should take a lead in everything. I guess she scared you off with her boldness.’

I agreed. I wish she had taken the lead in a less subtle manner. She looked nice :-))

Does he look innocent?
Filming Cursed Widow Blues, a horror sci-fi film.

4. I’m A Virgin

The most common trick, and probably the most effective still, is when they claim to be virgins, or to have never been kissed. It that excites a certain instinct in men. You see, men want to have bragging rights – Speke: ‘I was the first man to discover River Nile!’ Masaba: ‘That’s nothing. I was the first man to climb Mount Elgon!’ – and so when men hear of an innocent place waiting to be explored.....

The first time a girl used the trick on me, I fell for the trap, and was utterly disappointed to find that she was not a virgin. I was really disappointed. The second time it happened, the girl looked the innocent type, but when we kissed, hmm, she was an expert. I didn’t bother to find out if she was a virgin. I swear I did not!

Monica and Favor, play man and wife,
in my short film Cursed Widow Blues

5. I’m Married

Closely related to that is them saying 'I'm single but not searching,' for men want women who are free, absolutely free. But again, some women know men go for married women, for it’s a bang-wham without a lot of attachments, and even if you end up ballooning her, well, she has a husband at home to blame. A while back when I had a day job, I shared an office with a certain woman and so we spent nearly eight hours together every day. After five months, I knew everything about her husband, and especially how he could not satisfy her, and how she had always wanted a dark, tall guy who did not tuck in his shirts…. I got the hint, but nothing happened. Believe me. I was so relieved when a third workmate joined our office.

Smell that baby. G'dah and Philip perform on stage
Kampala International Theater Festival, 2014

6. Perfume

Another date. Another disaster. This one a little bit of a spectacular disaster. You see, I have a poor sense of smell. Unless it is really, really very strong, I can't notice it. Sometime in 2014, I was dating this bombshell, and it went on for a few months without things moving forward. Remember, I’m the shy type, the cowardly type; I fear rejection so much that even when a girl is so obviously into me I’ll hesitate to ask her to take things a notch higher. And so this time, we were at a fancy restaurant (I won’t tell you which one), enjoying a nice evening, and I was jittery, wondering how to tell her I wanted to be her boyfriend. I did not know she was thinking the same thing, and that she had decided to let me know with a perfume. But I have a poor sense of smell, and so I did not notice her perfume.

‘This smells nice,’ she said, sniffing at a bottle of mineral water.

I frowned. Mineral water? I wondered if they had started producing scented water. I sniffed at my bottle. Nothing. So I explained to her, ‘I have a poor nose.’

Shortly after, she excused herself and went to the bathroom. When she came back, she again picked up the water bottle and sniffed at it. ‘Can you now smell it?’ she asked. I did not know that she had added a bit more of her perfume to tickle my poor nose, so I said, a little confused, ‘No. I still don’t smell it.’

And again, she went to the bathroom, and again she asked if I noticed the smell, and still, I didn’t realize it. Honestly, I did not know she was hinting at her own perfume (I’m very slow in these things, which is why I’m still single) and all along I thought she was indeed talking of the scent of the mineral water. I did wonder why she thought the mineral water bottle would smell differently after she visited the bathroom, yet it stayed on the table. If she had taken it to the toilet, that would have been a different matter, I would have thought she had peed in it or something, but she left it behind, and believe me, her question troubled me a lot. I nearly told her that I noticed the smell, out of politeness, for she seemed very eager for me to realize the water companies had started packing scented water, but I am the honest kind, so I said I did not notice the smell. If only she had spoken directly of her perfume, I would have pretended I noticed it and the disaster wouldn’t have happened. But she kept talking in metaphors, and so she kept going to the bathroom, and adding the perfume, and adding, until eventually everyone in the restaurant was sneezing.

Okay, at that moment, I did realize there was a new smell in the air, a little different from the fumes and dust that wafted in from the streets, and I asked her; ‘Are you wearing perfume?’

Before she could reply, a waiter approached us. He had a handkerchief over his nose, and he spoke firmly. ‘I’m sorry, your perfume is bothering everyone. You have to leave.’ When she hesitated, the waiter grabbed her by the arms and dragged her out of the chair. Poor girl.

I caught up with her on the pavement outside the restaurant. She was trying to flag down a boda, but oh gash, each boda who came close to her rode off very quickly without even bothering to ask her anything. She was in near tears. ‘I did this to show you I want to be your girlfriend but you are too stupid!’ She slapped me, a real hot slap that I still feel to this day, and then she stormed off into the night. I wonder how she got home. I haven’t heard from her since then.

If you want to know the seventh trick, subscribe to my YouTube channel because I’ll make a movie about it :-) Hey, if you enjoyed this article, you sure will enjoy the films I make. They are free to watch on YouTube. Naye do you know how expensive making a good quality film is? Kati if I have a lot of subscribers, and hence a lot of views, I’ll make enough money to invest in the seventh trick. Show me some love :-) Subscribe www.youtube.com/dilstories

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I Was Arrested for Abandoning a Baby #UGblogweek Mama Gundi, Hold Your Baby: Part II B

2017-02-14T14:03:00.000+03:00

I did not want to talk about it, but this lady at OleeBranch went public about it, and so I have to continue the conversation, to tell you what her actions did to me. I don’t think she meant harm. I think she is a nice person, but there is an Acholi saying that goes ‘Yom cwin oneko latina’ – forgive my inability to write in Luo – which means ‘being too kind hearted killed my child’. She says she kindly offered to baby-sit for a stranger in a taxi, even as this strange mother showed no gratitude at all, and I believe her for she seems like a good person.

A child cries for something.
I took this photo in Kit Mikaye, Kisumi

At that time, I did not know her. We had met maybe only once before. I can’t remember where - one of those art things (was it Bayimba last year?) and we had barely talked. Just a dry hello and brief introduction. So that day, when she walked into the taxi, I thought I recognized her from her sandy-colored dreadlocks, but I was not sure.

I was not sure either where I was going. I am more used to Jinja-Mukono road, I know all the stages. But with Entebbe road, I only know where to pick the taxis, and where to get off in Entebbe town. So I was fidgety all the time, wary of being robbed if I asked fellow passengers for directions. See, I had a camera bag. I was going for a gig, to take photos at someone’s birthday party. With Kampala what it is today, I feared if someone thought I was a stranger to the place, they might want to take advantage of it and mug me. I had to get off in Zana and I was not sure where that was. If she was near me, I would have asked, but she was like three rows in front, and I was squeezed in the back-row. Besides, I was not sure if she was the lady I knew. She had a baby, which confused things some more.

Watch my new short film: What Happened to Jilted Lovers

So when she alighted, I followed her to ask for directions. I thought a woman with a baby would not try to rob me. By the time I got out, I found her arguing with another mother. My Luganda is not the best, and I could only understand fragments here and there, but I thought they were arguing about a child. Olive said to the other woman ‘Have you forgotten the child you gave me?’ Now, I was certain I had misunderstood that Luganda phrase. Surely, a woman can’t give another woman a child unless they use hi-tech reproduction and cloning, which, as far as I know, is still science fiction. ‘Me? I gave you a child?’ the other woman asked Olive. ‘You rasta must have smoked weed and it is making you deny your own child.’

That’s what I thought I heard. My brain still refused to process the information, for I thought I was misunderstanding. But then, someone had paid me to take photos at a birthday party, and I had to get there, so I interrupted the quarreling. ‘Excuse me, are you Olive?’ I asked her, tapping on her shoulder. She turned to me and her face was folded in a frown, her glasses caught the lights from a street lamp so I could not see her eyes. I wondered if indeed she had smoked weed and forgotten her own baby. I once read a story about a woman in the US who smoked and then put her baby in a blender to make juice. She later told the police that she thought the baby was a giant pineapple.

‘Yes,’ she replied. ‘I’m Olive.’ And then she recognized me. ‘Dilman!’ Yep, she was the one I met. ‘You are the guy who writes those crazy scifi stories.’ I was impressed that she remembered what I do. ‘Can you believe this woman? She gave me her baby and now she’s denying it!’ A tear rolled down from beneath her glasses and I felt sorry for her. Either she was too high or she was telling the truth. I could not decide which was which.

Grandmother and Child in Kit Mikaye, Kisumu

I turned to the woman, but to our great surprise, the woman was gone. Just like that. We looked around, and I saw her disappearing into an alley. ‘There!’ I said.

‘Hold the baby,’ Olive said. ‘I’ll bring her back.’

She thrust the baby at me. She was so mad that I could not refuse, and so I took the baby. Olive sprinted off after the woman and soon she too disappeared in the same alley. I do not remember the last time I had a baby in my arms. I did not even know if I was holding it right, since I was wary of my camera bag being snatched, but the little thing seemed happy to be in my arms and it was laughing and smiling at me. Its toothless gum caught the street lights and glistened like (an angel? I suck at such descriptions) but yes, it glistened, and it gave me an idea for a sci-fi horror story, in which a man finds what looks like a human baby but a weird light radiates from its mouth……

Watch my famous short film. Over six million views on Youtube: What Happened in Room 13

Nearly thirty minutes passed and Olive did not return. Now I got worried. My phone was ringing. The birthday people were calling, but I could not answer for my arms were the full of baby. And my legs being weak, my knees were wobbly, my ankles hurting. Standing for so long had left me woozy. I had to find this Olive fast, and give her back her baby, but I didn’t have her number. As my phone continued to ring, it occurred to me that I was stuck in a place I didn’t know with a strange baby in my arms. It was early night, just coming to 9pm, and the street was already largely deserted. Only a few boda-bodas laughed at a stage, and a rolex stand glowed somewhere in the scene. I thought maybe I could give a boda guy the baby, and ask him to take it to the nearest police station, so I walked over to the charlies.

A calabash protects a baby from the harsh world in Kitgum district

‘What?’ one guy said, after I explained, and I knew he had not understood my Luganda. ‘You want us to do what?’

‘I’ll pay for the transport,’ I said, speaking slowly so they would understand me, mixing in a lot of English. ‘Just take it to the nearest police station. I have to work. I can come later to make a statement. I’ll leave my number. Bambi, help, I have to work.’

‘Are you throwing away your baby?’ the body guy said.

‘It’s not my baby!’ I said.

‘We saw you and your wife coming out of the taxi with it,’ another boda guy said. ‘Now you want to throw it away?’

‘That was not my wife!’ I said.

‘Da-dee,’ the baby said. Now, I’m sure it did not say those exact words, but it made a sound that could pass off for Daddy, and it was laughing with me, pulling on my shirt.

‘See how it calls you daddy,’ one guy said. ‘See how it laughs with you? And you deny it?’

Things happened really fast after that. A mob formed quickly. They threw all sorts of accusations at me. ‘He stole the baby.’ ‘He impregnated a woman and she dumped the baby on him and now he wants to dump it on us.’ And the mob grew rowdy. Someone suggested they lynch me. Another said it would not be a wise idea for what would they do with the baby? Another suggested they beat me up to teach me a lesson. Then a police car showed up. God, was I glad to see the cops? At least the mob wouldn’t beat me up, or lynch me.

‘What is the problem here?’ a policeman asked.

‘This man wants to throw away his baby,’ the bodabodas chorused.

‘Take him in,’ the officer said to one of his juniors.

They ripped the baby off my hands, and the baby started to howl. They handcuffed me, and threw me into the back of the pickup. We sped off to the police station, the baby howling all the way. When we reached, they gave me back the baby, and the moment it was in my hands, the baby stopped crying, and promptly fell asleep, snuggling against my chest.

‘You are in big trouble,’ the policeman said.

If you enjoyed this, you will enjoy my short films. Subscribe to my channel and watch them on youtube.com/dilstories Do subscribe and share with your friends. I upload a great short film every month.

Beautiful drooly smile in Kitgum district.

Do you know what happened next? Then please, tell us. Leave a comment, or write it in your blog and let Olive know. This is a chain story for the #UGBlogWeek. The first is available here. Another response is here.

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Africanized Christianity and Enchanted Places of Kenya and Uganda

2016-12-21T20:26:00.002+03:00

This Christmas, I can’t stop thinking about how Christianity in Africa is gradually morphing into a hybrid religion spiced with local traditions, just as it did in pagan Europe. One strong indicator of its future is visible in Legio Maria. I first heard of them in my childhood, after a neighbor’s child fell off a tree and died (apparently). A group of Legio Maria prayed for him and he resurrected. A few years later, we planted a moringa tree in our home. They have something against that tree, so one day they showed up at our fence and said prayers to curse the tree, and the tree grew so big that it threatened the house and we had to cut it down. In spite of these strange happening, I never bothered to find out about them until I visited Western Kenya in March of this year.

I only wanted to see rocks. People think Stonehenge is a human structure, but are quick to dismiss the beautiful formations in many parts of East Africa as works of nature. I think these rocks have something about them worth looking into, and so I went to the famous ones in Kisumu, not like an archeologist, but to get a sense local views about them.

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The Crying Stone, Ikhongo Murwi

After finishing some business in Nairobi, I took a bus to Kakamega and then a boda boda to the Crying Rock, a pillar-like structure about forty meters high with a smaller rock sitting at its top. It is so named because water runs down its sides, leaving a tear-like stain, from a mysterious source at the peak. The boda guy said it was far outside town, but it was only a short ride, and it would have been quicker if the road was good and if he knew exactly where we were going. He did not, in spite of the rock’s alleged fame, because, he said, he did not see its use. In the past it was visible from the road, but the family that owns the land planted trees around it, and now the only way to see it is to go right up to it. Not a difficult journey, though the road petered out and I had to climb the hill on foot. Good for exercise. I met an old woman who insisted I pay for seeing the rock. I gave her 200 bob. She showed me a cave at the foot of the rock, which she claimed Legio Maria use for worship, but I saw no evidence of this, no candles, no pictures of holy people. Then she told me the secret of the Crying Rock. “I’ll tell you because you are not a mzungu,” she said. “We tell wazungu something different.” It’s hollow at the top. When it rains, water collects, and overflows. Since I came during the dry season, there was no overflow. That was the end of the visit. I felt cheated. I asked her about the significance of the rock to the local community, for I read somewhere that they held rituals there, to end droughts, to cleanse those who commit incest, and such, but she said the only people who bother to go to the rock are tourists, and Legio Maria (of which I saw no evidence). If you want my advice, don’t go there. It’s a waste of time. A place whose essence is consumed in less than ten minutes is not worth visiting.

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I jumped on a bus, and sped off to Kisumu, to explore Kit Mikayi. I arrived at about one o’clock and had lunch at Kit Mikayi Hotel, where a girl with a charming smile served me dry fish, sukuma wiki, and ugali. It was great to feast on a local delicacy. Her name was Qintar. Not sure how she spells it. I asked her about Kit Mikayi. “I went there once,” she said. “I prayed and fasted for three days for a good husband.” She is still waiting, but is hopeful that soon he will come along.

Qintar, in Obama t-shirt, at her hotel, Kit Mikayi, Kisumu

As I rode on a boda to the rocks, I asked the boda guy about the rocks. “I don’t fully believe in its powers,” he replied. The area is called Seme (or is it Sende?) and is full of rocks, many with very interesting shapes and formations, yet only one set, called Kit Mikayi, has magic. The rest are considered ordinary, even those just a few feet away from Kit Mikayi. There are many legends about its origin. All of it are about a man who loved that place so much that he visited it every day. “This shows devotion of a man to his wives,” Qinta told me. “That’s why I prayed there for a husband.” Her version was that the man’s first wife turned into a stone. Many other people believe this (kit is Luo for stone and mikayi for first wife). Qinta did not know why the first wife become a stone (some Legio Maria believe it refers to Lot’s Wife), but the man visited it every day until he became a snake, to live with her forever, coiling himself around her and living in her warm caves. The tourist office version of the legend is that the man loved that place so much that his wives got jealous. When visitors came to his home, they wives would say, “He’s not here. He has gone to that place as if that is his first wife.” Eventually, his real first wife went to the place to be with him and, unable to persuade him to return him, turned into a rock. The second wife followed suit, and sat on top of her, and the third wife sat on top of the two, all becoming rocks. Seeing this, the man stood beside his three wives, and he too turned into rock. Other versions have it that the man turned into stone first, and his three wives piled themselves one top of the other beside him.

Watch a short comedy film, on what happens when African Men Cheat

I must note here the importance of folk history attributing the rock formation to human activity. Why this set? Why not all the others around? Does it allude that an earlier civilization or probably humanoid species constructed it? Sadly, colonialism and Westernization has taught us to treat this lore as hogwash not worth of archeological investigation (I sometimes relate such legends to Krishna’s submerged city of Dvārakā).

If you visit Kit Mikayi, walk around the village. It's worth it.
John was kind enough to host me at his home for a few hours.
It's a very beautiful place. You'll enjoy the scenery, and the rocks.

An old man I met, John Obuyo Ngeso, who lives near the site, and serves as a tour guide, told me it became a shrine a long time back during a severe drought. The leaders consulted a shaman, who said the rock had ‘tied up’ rain. To perform rituals to end the draught, they smashed a hen’s head against the rock, then slaughtered a goat. They grilled and ate these without ugali, then threw the goat entrails mixed in chicken blood into a crag in the rock, where the shaman said certain prayers. Within a day, rain fell. Apparently, every other place got rain, but not this rock. He added that in times of drought, the rock ‘cries’ and water flows down to save the land. I wondered how to relate this tale to others about the origins of the rock. He could not explain.

One ritual closely related to origins goes like this; when a young man marries a woman who is not from the area, they have to perform certain rituals inside this rock, to not only make the woman part of the community, but to ensure she never leaves. That is why there is hardly any divorce in the area, Obuyo said. He took me to the cave where they take the girl, and he demonstrated the ritual; it involved the woman making ululation sounds, or maybe screams. He was an animated storyteller.

Oddly, these rituals take place in a cave that has Christian artefacts – pictures of a European Jesus alongside that of a Black Jesus. That is the magic of Kit Mikayi. All kinds of religious sects consider it a very holy site. During my visit, I saw two: A group of Legio Maria rested under a shade after a trekking over ten miles in a sort of pilgrimage. Behind a rock, a group of Roho Mawa (sic) Christians sang, prayed, and meditated. I asked the Legio Maria why they worshipped at a place associated with ancestral spirits. “God is Everywhere,” they replied.

Two Legio Maria faithfuls rest under a rock after a long
pilgrimage to Kit Mikayi. They were part of a larger group.

Inside the cave, where Legio Maria pray. Notice the candles,
the potraits of a white Jesus, a black Jesus, and a black Virgin Mary.
Locals worship ancestral spirits and perform cultural rituals in this same spot.

Legio Maria faithfuls in a procession, holding portraits of their founders,
Mama Maria (right portrait), black Mary and spiritual mother of Ondetto (left portrait) the black Jesus.

Later, I googled Legio Maria. They have over three million followers, some in Nigeria. It started in the 1930s when, its believers say, the Virgin Mary reincarnated as a black woman and had a spiritual son, a black Jesus, as was prophesied in the Third Secret of Fatima. They broke away from the Catholic Church, which refused to believe in a Black Mary or a Black Jesus. Today, they worship both the white Jesus and the black Jesus, and unlike Catholicism, they allow polygamy, marry priests and nuns, and they have saints from African folk lore. Like Luanda Magere, who they made a saint because his story is similar to that of Samson and Delilah.

The next day, when I went to Luanda’ Magere’s grave, I was not surprised to find a photo of Melkio Ondetto, the black Jesus who founded the sect. According to lore, Luanda Magere was made of stone. He never lost in battle, until his enemies sent a Delilah to figure out his powers, then they killed him. He turned into a rock on the spot upon which he fell. His rock, for all his legend, is a tiny lump half-buried in the ground. In the past, the place was bare, but a man (they didn’t tell me who) got a dream in which Luanda complained about being out in the rain and sun, so this man built a house over the rock. There’s a second house in the compound, for Luanda’s mother, because Luo sons build their homes to the right of their parents. Locals worship in the shrine, seeking blessings and, in the past, warriors would sharpen their spears and knives on his rock for good fortune. It is not uncommon to see both Legio Maria and ancestral spirit worshippers in the same room, kneeling in front of the same rock, praying to the same god.

One of the Legio Maria followers, also a caretaker at Luanda Magere’s grave, told me they believe Luanda Magere reincarnated as Dedan Kimathi, that Luanda Magere’s spirit keeps possessing different people. I wonder if they’ll make Dedan Kimathi a saint, or if he is already one of their saints.

Luanda Magere's shrine. The rock is in the shelter on the right.
The portrait of Melkio Ondetto, founder of Legio Maria,
hangs at the entrance to the shelter above the grave.

After Luanda Magere’s site, I proceeded to Angoro Bethlehem (they have so renamed several villages in Western Kenyan that are significant to their faith), the village where Legio Maria’s founder, and the black Jesus, Melkio Ondetto, was born and raised. The brother of Melkio Ondetto, and the second Pope of the sect, had passed away and was due to be buried the next day. I sadly could not stay to witness it, for I had work back home. It was a fascinating place, with and the Legio Maria are warm and welcoming, humble and unassuming, their Cardinals are not pompous. I intend to visit Angoro Bethlehem another time, maybe when there is nothing going on there like a huge funeral.

Christian grafitti at Ssezibwa falls.

To wind up, I’ll tell you of Ssezibwa Falls, in Mukono, Uganda. On the surface it’s a touristy place, a popular weekend picnic site. Yet the Baganda consider it to be of great cultural and spiritual significance. They say the river came about many hundreds of years ago when a woman, instead of giving birth to twins, bore two streams (the river, after falling down a cliff, splits into two.) Today, mothers of twins (nnalongo) offer sacrifice of thanks there, while infertile folk seek blessings. I remember reading, a while back, a story about a woman who drowned while performing a ritual to get wealthy. Apparently, the shaman (a fake one, I suppose) told her to wade into the stream with three eggs on her head. Strangely (or not so strange given Uganda’s history), the Anglican Church of Uganda owns land in this site. Sometimes, Christians go there to baptize, while others pray and fast. Christian graffiti is scribbled all over the rock faces.

I am sure all over the continent, there are other such sites, places where both Christians and traditional African spiritualists worship, just like places in the Middle East that is holy both to Muslims and Christians. I wish I could live into the future to see if Christianity and ancestral spirit worship morph into one, and if these sites will become some kind of temples.

A devout Christian prays at the top of Kit Mikayi, Kisumu

Men enjoy raw cassava in front of Luanda Magere's memorial site.

A man relaxes at the foot of the crying stone of Ilesi, Kakamega

If you enjoyed this article, consider support me so I can bring you more like this. Follow me on youtube.com/dilstories, watch my films, share my films, share my articles, or you could donate to me via patreon.com/dilstories

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Why I'll Focus on Making Films for Online Distribution

2016-12-15T00:20:00.000+03:00

My New Year resolution is to make a short film every month. I started very early, with this scifi/horror, What Happened to Jilted Lovers, and I hope to carry the momentum into the new year. I had this same ambition way back in 2008, the year I quit a salaried job to focus on writing and filmmaking. Back then, I didn’t achieve it because I had no equipment, filmmaking was way too expensive, and there was no market. Today, I have no excuse. Only motivation. And each film I make will be strictly for direct-to-consumer distribution online.

Me, somewhere in Nothern Uganda,
making a documentary.

I’m not giving up on festivals, or on being discovered by the big players, I’m just not going to throw my energy and resources into that direction anymore. Maybe it’s just me. Maybe it’s just that the films I make can’t get their attention. Or maybe there is a systematic bottleneck that ignores independent films produced in sub-Saharan Africa? Many indie films from Europe, America, or Asia, produced entirely in the country of origin, go on to make it big on the world stage, but I’m yet to see one produced entirely in sub-Saharan Africa, without a grant from the likes of World Cinema Fund, and without a co-producer from Europe or America attached, making it (and by making it I don’t mean a token selection in one or two or a few of the major festivals). This makes me wonder; Is it a reflection of the broader picture framed in neo-colonialism and imperialism? Is it a symptom of how the system perpetuates Africa’s dependence on the West?

Kansiime Anne in my film, What Happened in Room 13

In 2007, I made my first professional short film, What Happened in Room 13. Some people, who have had successful careers in Hollywood, saw it, and called it a masterpiece. With their connections, I submitted it to many festivals, without success. They put it in the hands of programmers, made sure the programmers saw it, but none of the festivals took it on. Only a few little ones bothered to show it.

Watch my new short film, What Happened to Jilted Lovers, on YouTube

I tried again, with my first feature film, The Felistas Fable, but I didn’t push that too much, for I had made a few mistakes in it, and I knew early on that it would not make it big internationally. So when I got making my second film, I played my cards right. I had made contacts with programmers at major festivals, and as they advised, I shared with them the script before going into production. Three of them read it, and gave me feedback. ‘Yes! If you shoot this film, it could be in our festival!’ they all said words to that effect. So I threw all my energy into production, using money I had made from working on Disney’s Queen of Katwe. Once I had a rough cut, I again contacted the programmers, and all three said; ‘Very exciting stuff! Send us the final cut by this date and we’ll consider it for the next edition of our festival.’ And again, I threw all my heart into the final cut, running very broke in the process. They were all kind enough to give me promo codes so I wouldn’t have to pay a fortune in entry fees. I was very excited. I knew one of them would say yes. My big moment had come. Alas. One by one, they said, ‘We liked it very much. Your film was shortlisted, your film was there right up to the last selection round, but unfortunately we got a high number of very high quality submissions blah blah blah…’

Shooting a film, with high-end equipment.

That was my wake up call. After the third rejection, I sat on my bed and thought hard about my career. It’s not that I’m a bad filmmaker. It’s not that these programmers lied to me. They surely loved my film and they surely thought it was the kind the big festivals would fall in love with. But so were a hundred other films. Sadly, festivals have only a very limited slot. They can’t accept all films they like. It had happened with Room 13. It was happening again. I felt suffocated. I felt like a bird without wings. What could I do? Keep waiting for a major breakthrough in the traditional platforms, or respond to the fact that my short film has attracted over six million views on YouTube?

Me, making a documentary in Nepal. This was during teej.

This film is What Happened in Room 13, the same film the festivals rejected. People love it. People are watching it and sharing it and commenting on it. Over six million views! And above that, I get paid for Google runs ads on the film. Some months it’s as little as US $100. Other months it’s as much as US $600. Festivals wouldn’t pay me anything to show it!

Donate. Support me on patreon.com/dilstories

The more I thought about it, the more it made sense to put energy into making films for YouTube, and other online platforms. If I have several that people are enjoying, and sharing, then my revenue might go well into thousands of dollars a month.

Filming the wonderful poet, Linda Nabasa, Nada

I have several ideas running through my head. The first, and the easiest to get off, is #HorrorRomance, a series of loosely interconnected films, told very much like What Happened in Room 13, dark, thrilling, no dialog, and with romance that goes horribly wrong. There’s a group of bad guys, The Clique of Jilted Hearts, who vow to avenge broken hearts, and who I hope will someday be as famous as SPECTRE. What Happened to Jilted Lovers, which you can see on youtube, sets the pace. Then I plan to produce Safari Nyota, a multimedia project featuring prose, a graphic novel, interactive fiction, and a film series. Safari Nyota is Kiswahili for 'journey to the stars', and it is about a pioneer space trip that goes horribly wrong. Being a little too expensive, that might wait a while. What I will produce alongside HorrorRomance is Fashion Fixer, a comedy series about a girl who fixes people’s relationships by advising couples on what to wear.

This is very ambitious Dilman, how will you manage? You might ask. That’s why I need your support. It’s simple. Subscribe to youtube.com/dilstories Watch my films. Share my films. Tell all your friends about them. And, you can support me on patreon. Patreon is a little bit like Kickstarter and indiegogo, but the contributions are not one-off. Instead, you get to contribute every time I make a film, and there are a lot of rewards for each contribution you make. For as little as $1 a film, you get stories, photographs, digital art, wallpapers, tutorials and behind-the-scenes, and many, many other cool perks. Head over to patreon.com/dilstories and give me wings to fly.

Producing a TV series.

Filming a documentary in Biratnagar, Nepal

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Travel Blues - Abandoned at midnight on the roadside - Corruption at OR Tambo Airport - Racism at Charles De Gaulle Airport

2016-10-25T12:16:00.000+03:00

Sometimes, when travelling, you pray for something to go slightly wrong, not to derail your holiday or make it a horror, but just wrong enough to provide excitement and thrill on a very long and boring trip. For me, I’ve encountered all kinds of wrong. There were times when the journey was more exciting than the destination, and times when the journey was such a pain that I wished they could invent teleportation machines.

The call of the road. Here I was in Saptari district, eastern Nepal

The beauty of documentary film making is you travel.
In Surkhet, western Nepal, filming in the mountains.

In March of this year, I traveled to Nairobi for business, and to check out the enchanted places of Western Kenya. I picked Mash Poa because I thought it was the coolest bus, fully air-conditioned, with enough leg room for a tall person like me to enjoy fourteen hours on the road. I was wrong. I’ll never take that effing bus again. Never.

At the border, I delayed in a long queue at immigration and the bus drove off without me. Just like that. I was shocked and angry. Why would they drive off without me? In April 2015, I was in CDG Airport, Paris, stuck in a very long queue, until officials of Turkish Air came looking for their passengers. They talked to migration officers to let us jump the queue, and we took off, a little late, but no one was left behind. I’ve seen it happen a lot in airports. I expected Mash Poa to do the same since they charged a lot more than ordinary buses, especially since it was two am. They did not. They just took off and left me stranded in the middle of the road in the middle of the night.

Recommended short film. What Happened in Room 13. 6m views on Youtube!

They left with my phone and my luggage. I had to awake a Mash Poa official in Busia, who then made several phone calls to the driver, who told me to find my luggage in Nairobi. So I jumped on the next available bus and did not get to Nairobi until midday. Guess what, the Mash Poa bus had not yet arrived! They had a mechanical fault. I sat idle all day waiting for it, for my phone and all my luggage was in it. Mash Poa is certainly not cool!

Queuing at Charles de Gualle airport, Paris

That time at Charles de Gualle Airport, I spent over two hours going through racist security (see below) and then passport control. It officially made CDG the worst airport I've ever visited, worse than Murtala Muhammed in Lagos, and certainly worse than Moroto airstrip. I thought the long queues were a freak occurrence, but on the way out, I suffered three long queues, one to get a boarding pass (I guess that was a Turkish Air problem) then to get through Passport Control. Half of the booths were empty. Was it understaffed? Unluckily, after over thirty minutes of queuing, when I nearly reached the booth the security guy took a break. He just got up and left. No one replaced him. We had to suffer a longer time at the queue. No wonder the Turkish Air flight was stuck for almost an hour on the runway, not for any technical problem but because the lines at passport control and security were ridiculously long.

In March 2015, I had to go to South Africa. Being caught up in making a TV series, I asked a travel agent to book my ticket and arrange my travel. They sent me the ticket. The flight was to take off from Entebbe at 7 am, so I was at the airport by 4 am. Yet I could not board. The agent had booked the ticket, but not paid for it, yet I had given him the money. I made frantic calls, but he was asleep and his phone was off. I didn’t have enough cash to pay for the ticket, so well, I had to go back home looking like a fool.

The beauty of the airport in Addis Ababa

A few months later, I was travelling to Cannes Film Festival on a government sponsored trip. They arranged my flight, booked me on British Airways without telling me that I needed a transit visa to go through London. I stupidly did not double check this, but I was held up on a job, shooting the making of Queen of Katwe. I dashed from the set, dumped my equipment at home, and went straight to the airport, only for BA to tell me I can't board without a transit visa. I raised hell, but they wouldn’t hear me. Eventually, I paid with cash for a Turkish Airways ticket, otherwise my program at Cannes, with all the meetings I’d set up, would be screwed. The government people assured me my money would be refunded, since BA issues a refund if the ticket is not checked in, but to date I’ve not seen the refund.

This is me, aboard Ethiopian.

From Cannes I flew to Johannesburg to continue filming behind the scenes of Queen of Katwe. At OR Tambo immigration wouldn't let me in because I didn’t have a return ticket. They threatened to deport me to Turkey. “I'm not Turkish!” I protested. “You can’t deport me to Turkey!” The guy simply shrugged and said “You arrived from Istanbul, that’s where we’ll send you back.” They took me to a cell awaiting deportation, unless I produced a return ticket. I made frantic calls to the QoK team and they issued a return ticket to Kampala. Then there was another problem. It was electronic. I didn't have internet access. “What a stupid excuse,” an immigration officer told me. “You are going to be deported.” At a loss of what to do, I asked if I could use their computers to access my mails. After a lot of pleading, one of them said “Kitu kidogo” and then a phrase in Kiswahili that I did not understand. I was surprised that he knew kitu kidogo. How did he know Kiswahili? I paid fifty dollars for three minutes at the most expensive internet café I’ve ever used.

I loved the road in Nepal. There was always fun and pain.
Here I was in Dhangadi town, far west Nepal.

A roadside market in Kapilbastu, western Nepal.
I loved the road trips!

My worst travel nightmare was in Paris, at Charles de Gualle, where I suffered outright racism. A few other people have told me they had similar experiences at that airport. I went there early in April 2015, to present a paper at a workshop, Manufacture/Domestication of the Living in Science Fiction, at Le Cube. I'd just been on a long flight, after staying up all night because take off was at 4 am. All I wanted was a bed, but this security woman took a long look at my passport and then said, “This passport is very old.”

I gave her my best smile. “Yes,” I replied. “I got it in 2008. I use it a lot. It has to be old.”

“Stand aside,” she said. “For verification.” And she shoved the passport into her pockets.

Verification? Because my passport is old?

I was too shocked and too tired to ask, but maybe something on my face betrayed what I was thinking, for she suddenly stood on her toes (being short, she wanted to be on eye level with me, as if the gun on her waist wasn’t intimidating enough) and her eyes glowed with a wild fire.

Train travel in Europe is said to be less stressful.

“You disobeying me?” She shouted.

That’s when I noticed something strange. A group of Africans (or people of African descent) where huddled in a corner beside the door, their faces haggard and creased with frustration. One man, three women. There were three security people, one woman, two men, and they let Europeans pass without so much as a second glance at their passports. Now the other two security men saw my hesitation, and maybe they thought they had a situation in their hand that could get ugly, for they all turned to me, and one said, while placing a hand on his gun, “Wait over there, sir.” In that funny French accent.

I went to the corner beside the door. I kicked the wall to vent my anger. Unfortunately for me, the wall was of steel, so the loud bang that followed – I panicked. A loud bang in a place with tense soldiers is a very bad thing. I held the wall to stop it from making noise, but of course this was no sci-fi and I had no superpower, I couldn't take back the noise. It was sharp and it must have drilled holes into the ears of the security guys. I at once put my hands up, in surrender, even though they had not asked me to, for I knew they would pull out their guns. The hall froze. Everyone stared at me. The security woman walked up to me, and again stood on her toes to look straight into my eyes, “You want trouble?” she said. “You want to make trouble?”

“No,” I said, surprised at how calm my voice was, though inside my heart was on fire. For nearly a minute she kept asking if I wanted to make trouble and I kept saying no, all the time praying that my nerves hold and I don't start trembling, or worse that I don't pee my pants.

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Eventually, the other two men spoke to her in French, they exchanged a few words, and went back to their work. They checked the passports of all those who had just stepped out of planes, and let white Europeans go, and detained a few more Africans. They harassed one Arab-looking woman, who had a hijab. They wanted to see her ears and her hair. She had a French passport. She spoke to them in French, she was smiling all the time, while they glowered and seemed to be barking. The big smile never left her face. Eventually they told her to stand aside too. After nearly forty minutes, when there were no more white people passing by, the security woman went with the smiling Arab woman somewhere, and they returned shortly afterwards. They let her go. I think the Arab woman had insisted on removing her hijab in a private room.

Now, they surely had to 'verify' our passports, and finally let us go. By this time my legs were on fire, my blood was boiling in anger and in frustration, and I knew what these security people were doing was highly wrong. I ached to take their picture. Why did they single out only African (and three Arab-looking) people? What was going on?

To make it worse, I thought they would take our passports to some machines for verification, which is what machines are for, but the three hurdled in a corner, and leafed through our passports, and they talked to themselves, they even giggled, then called us one at a time. I got the courage to take out my phone, and take a picture of what was happening, I wanted to complain to someone.

Unfortunately for me, the security woman stepped quickly to me. I was too busy with the phone to notice her until I held up the phone camera and she filled the screen. I nearly pressed the shutter button, but instead went for cancel. Lucky for me, I hadn't pulled out my DSLR as I'd at first intended to.

“Are you taking my picture?” she started her show again, barking, standing on her toes, trying to look intimidating, but by this time I wasn't scared of her. I knew I was on the right and whatever she was doing was wrong, so I said “No, I didn't take your picture” at the same time thanking God for giving me a stupid Alcatel phone which is too slow. I cut her shot. I gave her the phone. “Check and see if your picture is there.”

Passengers wait for their flights at Ataturk Airport, Istanbul

Now she must have realized her show was for nothing. She couldn't continue shouting. She took my phone, but the idiot didn't even know how to check for photos, so she handed it back without a word, and then I wished I had taken that pic.

She asked for my hotel reservation, and return ticket, then she said, “Go.”

Always ask for the window seat, and you will enjoy these sites!

My anger came to the surface. “You made us wait all this time just so you ask for a hotel reservation and a return ticket?”

But the only word she said was “Go,” without the bravado she had exhibited earlier.

Had they held us behind because they did not want to waste the time of white Europeans, or was this harassment, pure and simple?

She was already walking away from me, and I felt helpless and furious and I wanted to kick her butt. Instead, my legs reminded me of how tired I was, so I hurled at her a few words in Kiswahili, involving her pussy and bhangi. She stopped and turned back to me, but maybe thought that whatever abuse I'd hurled at her didn't matter since she didn't understand it. If she had, she would have pulled out that gun and shot me.

“Terrorism,” a Parisian told me when I later narrated to him the ordeal. “After that Charlie Hebdo incident, the security forces are jittery. They don't want to be caught napping again, but instead of looking for the real terrorists they are harassing innocent people who they think are weaker than they are. It's just like the boys at school who tease younger ones yet are themselves teased by older bullies. But it doesn't make sense to target out Africans and Arabs because Paris has a large population of those, and there are people who've been here for generations. It doesn't make sense at all.”

That's how the terrorists win. They sow doubt and suspicion and xenophobia and racism and they make the world a worse place, not by what they do but by how we react to what they do.

See what I said about window seats? I saw the Himalayas!

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2016-07-01T22:16:00.001+03:00

I've been to a few caves before, some that human ancestors inhabited two million years ago, but the caves in Olumo rock blew me away. Historically, it's similar to Lamogi Hills in Gulu, which locals used as a base to fight British colonialists, and the locals were only defeated after the British poisoned their drinking water. In Olumo rock, locals found a refuge against enemy attacks, but they went a step further and built mud walls to create rooms within the caves, thus turning the caves into homes. To this day, caretaker families live in these caves, and some chambers are still used for ritual worship, which makes it much more than just a tourist site, the kind of place I like to visit.

One of the caretakers, and spiritual priestess, who lives in Olumo rock

I saw spots marked with red and white flags, where sacrifice is made. The flags got me thinking, for they reminded me of the Hindu and Budhist temples in Nepal, which also had red and white flags in places of worship. When I visited the Legio Maria sect in Kenya, I saw similar prayer flags, and it got me thinking, what is the significance of these flags? It is something I have to look into.

After visiting Olumo rock, I knew I was in for a real treat in Nigeria, for my mission was to see real historic monuments, structures that predated colonialism, but not those that are in every tour guide. Olumo rock was the most famous of the places I visited.

Fascinating Mud houses built in the caves.

My next stop was in Irefin palace. If you have not read my previous post, please do before visiting this place, for it is a live site. People live in there, and they are not caretakers like those in Olumo, but the families that have occupied the building for dozens of years. They are a bit squeamish about visitors popping out of nowhere to take photos and tour the place. They would not let me in, because I had not pre-booked, because no one had told the caretaker chief that I was coming, and because I carried a black backpack and because I looked like a Hausa from Nothern Nigeria, hence I was mistaken for a Boko Haram agent. The strange thing is that no website ever mentioned anything about booking in advance. I learnt the heard way. The best place to start is the National Council of Museums and Monuments.

A woman prepares a meal in Irefin palace, Ibadan, Nigeria

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What fascinated me about Irefin was the architecture. It's mostly of wood, a storeyed structure, about two hundred years old, but I could see European influence in it, or more accurately, it is similar to the buildings freed folk set up once they returned from America. I've seen similar buildings in photos of Freetown. It was not quiet what I was looking for. Still, I found the area around the palace to be of greater interest, for there are dozens of buildings with fascinating architecture, and I could have spent the whole day just taking pictures of them, or trying to discover more about them. Sadly, security people mistook me for a terrorist rece-ing the place, and I had to cut short my visit. You can read about that here.

Scenic. Idanre town in Nigeria. Totally worth a visit.

Idanre turned out to be the most interesting place I have visited in a long time. It's not as old as Akure, but certainly older than Irefin, and the people who first settled there chose a plateau on top of a rock, accessible only by one path. This was for security reasons, as it is virtually impossible to attack the place up there.

The best part about it is getting there. I went up over six hundred steps curved into the stone steep, and when I got there I thought I would find the ancient palace right away, but no, we had to trek through a mini-forest, which might have been a jungle in ancient times, past a grassland, past huge boulders that stood on our way. I got the feeling that I was a real explorer, going through the wilderness in search of lost cities and pre-historic palaces. This hard to access location gives Idanre an exciting and adventurous character, for modern day civilization is yet to encroach upon the plateau. You can see signs of it, on the graffiti people scratch on the walls, but when you are up there you get a feeling that you have walked right into the past in some kind of time machine. You don't hear urban noise, or see anything 'modern looking'; you catch a real glimpse of what life might have been like over a hundred years ago.

The village is still settled. Until the late 1970s, the village was still very much alive, but now only a handful of people stay up there to farm it. They however fully use the palace for some rituals and sacrifices. A lot of the old buildings have been preserved from the way they were a hundred or more years ago. There's the court house, the prison, the royal burial ground, a rich man's homestead – marked by the number of animal skulls that hung from the eaves of his houses. Not just the number but the type of skulls, the animals he ate. Just as animal skin was a symbol of wealth or power, (for example only a warrior who has killed a leopard would wear leopard skin, in some communities), the types of animal skulls on the eaves showed what kind of meat the household ate, and how much.

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Skulls served another purpose, as some kind of bone calendar. One of the falsities pumped into our brains in the colonial-influenced schools we attend is that Africans did not record the passage of time. I have a whole argument against this, but seeing the bone calendar in the palace of Idanre opened my eyes. Skulls were piled in one corner of the courtyard. According to the guide, at the end of every year the king held a feast/ritual, a bull (or some such animal) was slaughtered, and its skull kept in that corner. At the end of his rule, the number of skulls in the corner would indicate how long he ruled. In the much older palace at Akure, there were skulls in several rooms, each room belonging to a king/oba and recorded how long that particular king ruled.

Skulls of wild game hung from the eaves of a rich man's house.

A skull in a pile that forms the 'bone calendar' in Idanre palace.

Trekking through the ancient village raised my appetite to see the palace, but when I eventually saw the palace, I got a feeling of 'Is this it?' After the long hike up the steeps, after plodding through forests and jumping over streams and crossing boulder-filled bushes and feeling like a true explorer, I expected something grand, something to match the hype of a village that has stood for hundreds of years. But it's a mud house, after all, and I shouldn't have expected anything grandiose. I should have only looked forward to the experience of being there, of seeing it, of touching it. As they say, it's not the end of the journey that matters, but the journey itself. It was a worthwhile experience, and I would recommend a visit.

Weird rules in Idanre, a house just outside palace.
- Nobody should wear clothes inside this house.
- Shaking of hands is forbidden here
- Carrying of loads on head without holding it is forbidden

The next day when I set off for another ancient palace in Akure, I did not expect to see grand structures, but rather to experience an architecture that has survived for nearly a thousand years. The palace was first built in the 1100s AD, and it has stood for all these years. Again, like in Irefin, I had trouble getting in, because the gatekeepers said I did not have a 'document' allowing me to visit the palace. They did not know where I could have gotten this document, or what it looked like, but they thought I needed a letter introducing me to them, and my purposes there. I almost failed to see it, until I went to the neighboring building, a museum, where I found staff of the National Council of Museums and Monuments. The staff were appalled that the security people had failed to see me as a genuine visitor, and they smuggled me into the palace for a secret tour.

It is still an active site, with some of the courtyards inhabited by the widows of the late kings, and maybe that is why they are cautious about letting people walk in unannounced, but they should have stated that in their websites.

For a moment, as I toured the palace, I kept asking myself, what is all the bother about? Do I really want to see a collection of mud walls and dark rooms so bad that I have a shouting match with 'security' people for nearly thirty minutes? When we started to go through the palace, I knew why it was worth the bother. The palace is like a maze of sorts. It has over twenty courtyards, with some courtyards being inside courtyards, we had to keep consulting a map otherwise we could have gotten lost.

One fascinating courtyard is the stuff of legends. It is said that even if a thousand people peed in this courtyard, it would not smell. Christian Odutola, an architect who acted as my guide, had no explanation for this phenomenon. He thought they used a type of soil, or maybe a chemical that absorbs the urine and smell, to make the courtyard.

He however was full of praise for the drainage system in the palace. In its thousand years of existence, it has never experienced flooding, compare that to the incessant floods in many African cities today which are a result of poor planning. Of course, the palace is so small a place it can't be compared to a city, but still, it has over twenty courtyards, with courtyards being inside courtyards, and thus the designers needed a drainage system that would ensure the inside courtyards never flooded.

Also, they built it in such a way that there is enough sunlight in every courtyard, or enough sunlight to see by. It reminded me of the German Bundestag in Berlin, which was also built with care taken to minimize artificial lighting. When you take these little details into account, you realize that Akure palace is a work of sheer genius.

Clever architecture allows natural light into every courtyard, Akure palace.

An aerial view of Akure old palace

Unfortunately, it's crumbling, and the current governments are not doing enough to preserve it. I think after they built the new palace, they forgot this. Some parts of the walls that have fallen away, and they have replaced it with concrete, which I think is not a good idea. Christian Odutola also thinks it is a very good idea. He is working with the NCMM to preserve the palace as it has been in the last a thousand years, and if the structure has withstood the test of time, there is little point in trying out new materials that might be tricky maintaining in the long run. Besides, using cement waters down the historic value of the walls that have stood the test of time.

The problem is they do not have enough funds to maintain the place as it has always been, and are lobbying UNESCO declare it a world heritage site (along with the palace in Idanre), then maybe it will attract enough attention and funding to keep it running, and to maintain this ancient genius artwork.

The wife of a former chief takes shelter from the midday heat
in one of the courtyards, Akure palace

Exploring the ancient, abandoned village in Idanre

A woman prepares a meal in Irefin palace.

Preparing to face the six hundred steps to the ancient village of Idanre.
In the past, there was no steps, just a path up the steep cliffside

Life inside Irefin palace, Ibadan.

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The Fun of Backpacking in Nigeria Pt 2: Mistaken for a Terrorist

2016-06-05T21:35:00.000+03:00

It’s not what lies at the end of the road that makes travel irresistible, but the road itself. When I returned to Nigeria last November, I needed an excuse to trek around the country, a reason to get from point A to point B, and in between I expected to see things, to encounter interesting characters, and maybe to get an insight into the Nigerian way of life. I told you about some of this in the last post, and I promised to tell you about my escapades with security men.

The road is more fun than the destination.
Only in Nigeria will you see people hawking raw meat!

The excuse I gave myself was that I wanted to see old palaces, not the grand tourist attractions, but the little ones that you hardly hear about. So I spent a lot of time searching online, and I came up with a few targets, some of which were mentioned in less than five websites. I have a thing for old buildings, I think I am an architectural tourist, whatever that means, so when I heard of mud structures that were a thousand years old, my appetite soared. Because of time, I could not travel more than five hours from Lagos. The itinerary I came up with would take me from Abeokuta to Ibadan, to Idanre, to Akure, then to Lagos. Of these sites Idanre is the most popular, and it features prominently in many tourist sites, so I nearly struck it off my list, but they said it was up on a plateau that had stayed unchanged since the early 1900s so it promised to be an adventure.

Irefin Palace, Ibadan, Nigeria. Families still live in it.

A market thrives outside Irefin Palace, Ibadan, Nigeria

The first I went to was Irefin Palace in Ibadan, and only after I got there did I realize why it’s not a popular attraction. I thought it would be a prominent landmark in the city, but nobody knew where it was, or even what it was. I had to use Google maps to direct the okadaman. When he saw the building, he asked; “Is this the place you are coming to visit?” I said, “Yes,” and he said, “What do you want to see in this place?”

I did not have an answer, and for a moment I thought Google maps had deceived me and led me to a market with women selling vegetables under a veranda. But the building was made of wood and mud, and the houses in the neighborhood had the feel of history, so I thought I'd look around. I asked the vegetable women just to confirm that I was in the right place, and they said “Yes, it is a palace.” I walked in. I expected a booth where I'd pay an entry fee, as is the norm in touristy places, but there was only a couple of men idling at the entrance. I asked them if I could take a look. “First see the chief,” one said, and pointed at a veranda. When I heard ‘chief,’ I thought of Nollywood, fancy agbada and fancy regalia, but I met a simply dressed man. He looked elderly, maybe fifty. I thought he would take me to the chief, but he said he was the chief, so I told him I wanted to see his palace….

“Why?” he asked, cutting me short. His eyes on my camera. “Why are you interested in this palace?”

I thought that was self-explanatory, but now the question the okadaman asked seemed to make sense. To me, it’s a historical relic, a tourist attraction. To them, it’s just another old building in the neighborhood. Why would anyone want to see it? I tried my best to explain my motivation, but words failed me. How could I express my desire to see a building that was about two hundred years old? So I put it in the simplest way. “I’m a tourist,” I said. I showed off my camera, hoping it would drive the point home.

“Nobody told me you were coming!” the chief said. “Whenever visitors are to come, I am informed in advance. So get out. Go!”

I felt like a fool. The few websites that mentioned Irefin said nothing about informing anyone in advance. I soon learned that in spite of it being a historical monument, it is a home to several families, and so walk-in tourists will always find it tricky to see the place. I wish they had explained this in the websites! So I explained to the man, who I learned was not a chief but a caretaker, that I had come from very far away and did not......

“Where is the permission?” he cut in again. “You say you come from very far, where is the document allowing you to come here?”

I tried to tell him about my visa, but he did not seem to understand the concept, so I gave up and asked instead, Where can I go to get this permission?”

“I don’t know,” he said, and he started to shout at me. “Tourists come here in big numbers! We get big groups of people from America, from England, from Canada. Why are you alone?” He again gave my camera a long look, and now I begun to fear that he wanted to take it. “What is your mission?”

My mission? I kept hearing that phrase over the next few days. I think they are used to tourists in big tour cars, with tour guides, and who do not look African. Whites, Asians, whatever. I think they found it difficult to digest the concept of a broke traveler hoofing it solo from an African country they had never heard about.

“How did you learn about this place?” the ‘chief’ asked while I struggled to explain that I did not have any 'mission', and was a solo version of the white tourists he was used to.

“From the internet,” I replied, and then he exploded.

“Get out! GO! GO!” he started to shove me. I stumbled away from him. I thought he was going to beat me. “You will not be allowed to take photos of this place! Go!”

I was baffled. I do not know what he expected me to say. Where else could I have learned about Irefin? I got angry, and started to hurry out, but then, one of the men I had spoken to at the gate talked to the ‘chief’ in their language, and a few seconds later the chief calmed down, and he said to me, “Okay, take the pictures.”

I suspected a trap. I became a little wary. What was all that drama about? One moment he was screaming at me, the next he allowed me to tour the palace? Still, I looked around. I took pictures, but I was uneasy and I did not enjoy the visit. After only a few minutes, I thanked him and walked. I thought the buildings in the area would be of more interest, maybe I could chat up with the locals and ask them about the history of these buildings. So I started to take pictures, as I looked out for someone to talk to. Then, two men stopped me.

“Why are you taking pictures?” they asked.

Fascinating building just outside Irefin palace, Ibadan.

Another interesting piece of architecture, somewhere in Ibadan.

I did not want to say I was a tourist again, so I said "I’m a travel blogger. I’m a writer. I’m learning about ancient Nigeria." That explanation had worked before. In Abeokuta it got me to see a masquerade. A year earlier in Lagos whoever had asked nodded in understanding and walked away without any drama. I had a very friendly smile as I talked to the two men. Maybe they would eventually tell me about the old, fascinating buildings all around me.

But they had grim faces. “Where is your ID,” they asked, and I stopped smiling. I showed them my passport, but they did not understand what it was. “This is not issued by the government,” they said, and I smiled even louder, “Oh, I’m not Nigerian,” I said. “I’m from Uganda.” I pointed at the words on my passport that spelled out Uganda.

“Uganda?” They said. “We have never heard of it. You look like Hausa. You are from the North.”

“No,” I said, laughing. “I’m not Nigerian.” I hurriedly dropped the Nollywood accent that I was using. Too late. While it had gotten me good rates when shopping and while it ensured Okadamen did not cheat me, it had backfired. These men identified themselves as members of something called the Civil Defense. They thought I was rec-ing the place for Boko Haram. Now I wondered why the men at the palace had allowed me to tour it after the outburst. Had it been a trick to keep me there as they summoned these operatives? “Why are you taking pictures? What is your mission?” They asked over and over again. A mob formed very quickly. Everyone was shouting at me. The women were the worst. When they started to prod me with their fingers, I knew I was in trouble.

“Why are you interested in this place?” they asked. “Why are you taking pictures of this place?”

“It’s a tourist site!” I screamed. I wanted to tell them about my desire to see buildings that are old, that have survived the test of time, but the words got choked in my throat, and I was now trembling and afraid, for it would take only a spark and they would start beating me up. They did not believe I was not Nigerian. They were convinced I was Hausa and a Boko Haram agent. “Who are you? What is your name? What is your mission?” They asked repeatedly. “What is your mission?”

Then an okada came by. “Jump on,” one of the men who claimed to be from the civil defense said. “We are taking you to the police.” I got on the bike quickly for I wanted to get away from the mob before it turned berserk. The man climbed behind me. Only after we rode off did I realize that I might be in a kidnap situation. I thought of screaming at bystanders to alert them, but I kept my cool. The okada was speeding and I was afraid of causing a commotion that would result in a terrible accident. I was immensely relieved when the bike stopped at a place marked immigration, but now I was wary of bribes, so the moment I jumped off the bike I threw a tantrum. I went to the nearest uniformed man and said, “These men are harassing me! They are kidnapping me! I’m just a tourist but why are they harassing me!” The trick was to become the complainant, and to get the uniforms to take me to an officer other than whoever the defense guy was taking me to, and it worked.

We ended up in an office with a crowd of uniformed officers, though there was only one desk. It was hard to tell who was senior, if it was a mess room of some sort, or whether it was an actual office. The uniformed men around the desk questioned the two men in their language, but I kept up my outburst. “Speak English!” I said. “Speak a language I understand!” The officers were not amused, but continued in English. They questioned the two men, and praised them for being vigilant. Now I knew I was in real trouble. One of them asked for my passport, he checked it, and passed it around the room. They questioned me, and after hearing my side of the story, I was surprised when they berated the two men for harassing me. “You have to forgive them,” one said to me. “There are security concerns in this country and you look like you are from the north. They had to be careful since you are carrying a black bag.” As he handed me back my passport, he added; “You are lucky you are not Nigerian, otherwise we would have put you in jail first and asked questions later.”

Now scared of Ibadan, I hurried to the motor garage and took a bus to Idanre. I went to the palace the next day, expecting trouble, but it is very touristy. I paid a thousand naira at the gate and got a guide for another thousand to take me up to the palace. At the end of the day I wrote off the Irefin experience as an exception, so when I went to Akure I had sort of forgotten about it and thought it there would be no trouble. Wrong.

Me at Idanre. Do I look like a Hausa?

A statue of a soldier at Idanre palace.

There are two palaces in Akure, the new one is right beside the old one. Since I came upon the new one first, I walked up to a man at the gate and asked; “I want to see the old palace. Where can I start?”

He looked at the camera dangling from my neck, he looked at my face for a few seconds, and then said, “Follow me.” We went to another gate, which I took to be the gate to the old palace, and I thought he was going to take me to an office where I would pay an entry fee and get a guide, but he took me to another man who he said is the ‘chief’.

“What is your mission?” this chief said. I had a sense of de javu. I knew it was going to be repeated all over again. “Where is the permission allowing you to come here?” the chief asked. I showed him my passport, and my visa, and he got angry. “I didn’t ask for your visa! I want to see the government document allowing you to come here!”

I got angry too. “What document is that?” I asked.

“I don’t know!” he said.

“Then why are you asking me for it?” I said.

I regretted asking that question, for at once a uniformed guard jumped in, pointing his gun at me. “Open your bag!” he said. “Open it!”

Again, a mob formed very quickly. We were in the veranda of this building, there were a lot of people. It seemed like a waiting area because there were benches and stuff like that, and doors opening to offices. There were about a hundred people or so, and now they crowded around me, and the gun was right in my face.

“Isn’t this a tourist place?” I said. I do not know why the anger stayed in my voice. I had not raised my voice in many, many years, but here I was, shouting at Nigerians twice in three days. I think they only listen to you when you shout at them. “What document then are you asking for? There was nothing about that in the Ondo state government website! It said Akure old palace is open for visits between eight and four pm! Nothing about documents! If you people don’t want tourists to come to your palace just say so! Take it off the websites! Unlist it! Don’t waste our time!”

A man grabbed my bag, to forcefully open it, but I clung on to the bag. I wrenched it off him. I did not care that a gun was pointed at my nose. “Let him open it!” the armed man said, and the other let goof the bag. "Open it!" the gunman said to me again.

It was a black backpack. I put it on the ground, and flung the contents out, “Look! Look!” I screamed. “Is this what you want to see!” There was nothing in there, no bomb, no guns, just a few t-shirts, a pair of jeans, a toothbrush, a roll of tissue (I had learned my lesson), and my laptop.

“Go before we arrest you,” the chief said. “Get out! Go!” And they shoved me out of the gate.

I walked away so pissed, wondering what I had done wrong, wondering if it was all just security concerns or if I had failed to see some cultural thing. I could not help asking myself; Would I be treated like this if I were a white person? Or if I had come as part of a tour group? (When I told this story to a Canadian friend, a white man who has been to Nigeria several times, he told me he was once thrown into jail in Lagos for taking pictures of the National Theater. He could not understand what his crime was, or why the policemen were harassing him, for they did not even ask for bribes, and he would have been in serious trouble if he did not know a prominent play write whose play was running.)

Just next to the palace is a museum, and I went in, now in defiance, for I wanted to see if I would be turned away as well. The first question I was asked was, “What is your mission?” and I started to bark at the man who asked it. “Why do you people list these in tourist sites when you don’t trust solo black tourists?” He could not understand my anger, and I felt foolish shouting at him, so I explained that I had been denied entry into the old palace for unknown reasons. "Come tell my oga," he said, and led me to the oga in charge of the Museum. I forget his title.

The oga, on hearing my story, apologized for the way I was treated. “You should understand the security concerns,” he said. “You look like Hausa from the north and you are carrying a black backpack. There could be a bomb inside that bag. It’s black, you know. Maybe if it was red they would not bother you too much, but black….” I looked at my bag and wondered if terrorists used only black bags.

When the oga satisfied himself that I was nothing other than a writer exploring the old palaces of Nigeria, he again apologized for the way the palace people had treated me. “You should have come to us first,” he said. “These palaces are under the National Commission for Museums and Monuments. If you had come to our office, you would have walked into any palace without trouble. You wouldn't have even paid a thousand naira to enter Idanre.”

But why isn’t that information available anywhere? No website mentioned it! I would not have known about it if I had not walked into that museum. Probably the tour companies know. That I think is the problem with tourism in many countries in Africa. They market to travelers who use tour guides and companies, and often they target people from Europe, America, and Asia, not fellow Africans.

The oga then called one of his staff, Odutola Christian, and instructed him to give me a tour of the old palace, just so that I don’t leave with only bad things to write about Nigeria. Odutola is not a guide, but he gave me a tour, although he had other pressing duties, and I learned a lot about the palace, for he is an architect and is involved in a project to preserve it. I learned things I would not have learned from any guides. So in the next post, I will review three palaces.

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Odutola leads me through the old palace in Akure

Idanre. Beautiful History.

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The Fun of Backpacking in Nigeria

2016-04-10T22:54:00.001+03:00

When I made my second visit to Nigeria last November, I thought I’d find nothing new. I certainly did not expect trouble with security men who thought I was a Boko Haram agent, but I’ll tell you about that in a later post. Yet, that is not strange, given the terror situation in the world today. What I totally did not expect however was trouble with toilet paper. It’s something I never thought about much before, but after it hit me, I begun to question the meaning of life. Toilet paper!

A traveler enjoys the view on Olumo rock, Abeokuta

It’s the beauty of travel. You learn about other cultures, how they use words and things in a way totally different from what you know. Like a garage is a place to fix broken cars, but in Nigeria a motor garage is a taxi or bus park. And then tea. In the big hotels when you ask for tea you get tea, but I asked for it in a small hotel in Ibadan, and the waiter replied, “Do you want Milo, Bounvita, or Lipton?” I did not think Milo and Bounvita counted as tea. I thought she was merely offering me options. In Idanre I asked for tea in a small shack. The young man did not offer me options. He at once mixed me hot water and evaporated milk. “No!” I said. “Not that. I want tea!” He got cross. “But this is tea!” And we entered an argument. I tried to explain that I wanted only water and a tea-bag, but he only kept shouting at me about wasting his time, so I gave in and said, “Okay, just give it to me.” It was an awful drink. Only after I took a sip did I see a box of Lipton teabags on the shelf, and I said. “That! That is what I want.” And he laughed, “Why then did you say you want tea?” I learned rather late that in Nigeria, and most of West Africa, cocoa is tea. If you want actual tea, ask for Lipton.

Breakfast is served. 'Tea' and bread.
A shack restaurant in Idanre.

A woman uses a razor blade to peel an orange in Ibadan

Before all that fun, I was in Abeokuta for a week, at the fabulous Ake Arts and Book Festival. Life was easy in the luxury of Park Inn by Radisson. I did not feel the pinch of the power cuts, and I had access to great wifi and lovely Nigerian food. It did feel like my trip would be uneventful, that I’d have nothing to write about, until I wanted to change money. Then I got my first adventure.

I had thought that changing money would be as easy as it is in Uganda, that I would not have problems the way I did the South Africa. Nigeria shares many similarities with Uganda, and so I didn’t expect problems. I was wrong. I should have changed the money at the airport. A few friends offered to do it for me, but they said it would take a long time. I'd have to wait a whole day. I didn’t want to wait. I had only a hundred naira left. At the hotel they said they could change it for me, unofficially, but at ridiculous rates. I turned down their offer. They advised me to try the banks, but each bank I went to said they only change money for account holders. I nearly gave up until someone whispered, “Go to the black market.”

“Where is that?” I said.

“You can’t go alone,” he said. “They'll cheat you. They might rob you. Better you give the dollars to a Nigerian and he'll do it for you. Don’t go alone.”

I thought about that. It was wise advise. But I was looking for an adventure. I wanted a story to tell. So I thought it would be fun to find this black market on my own. I pled with him, and he reluctantly gave me a name of a place. Itoku.

I stepped into the streets with a mad sense of thrill. I had to go to Itoku, wherever that was, whatever I'd find there, a place where dollars are sold and bought illegally. Itoku. I didn’t even know which direction it was, so I asked the first pedestrian I met, and he pointed it out. “That way.” Still, I didn't know how far I'd have to go, or how I'd know if I reached it. I didn't even know if it was within Abeokuta town, or if I would have to travel an hour. Once I got there, how would I know the black marketeers? If they were doing it illegally, then they sure would not have sign posts that said ‘Dollars for sale’.

Rocks lend Abeokuta town a surreal beauty.

Well, I put my trust on an okadaman. It’s the beauty of travel, the way you throw yourself at the mercy of strangers, trusting that their good side will overwhelm the dark side. Naively. Trusting that they will always be nice to a traveler if you smiled your best. The okadaman agreed to take me for 70 naira, I then knew that Itoku wasn’t far out of town, but I had only 100 in my pockets and if things went wrong I might have only 30 left and no way to get back to the hotel. As we sped on the bike, I told him I wanted to change money. I held my breathe, knowing now was the time for his dark side to show, for surely he now knew I was a foreigner and that I had dollars.

“No problem,” he said. “I’ll take you to my friend.” Alarms went off in my head. How can it be that an okadaman I picked at random has a friend who sells dollars in the black market? I became suspicious. I almost told him to stop, but I bit my lips and waited for what would happen next. After all, I wanted thrill. An adventure. We stopped under a bridge, and several people crowded around us. “These are my friends,” the okada man said.

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“You want dollars?” one of the men said, and I replied that I wanted Naira. I kept looking around, expecting someone to pull a knife, or a gun, but we were at a roadside, with cars zooming by and pedestrians heading to a nearby market. That comforted me a bit. On addition, it struck me that I knew this kind of people. I grew up in a boarder town in Uganda. We used to call them ‘money changers’ and they dealt in Ugandan and Kenyan currencies. They always had huge bundles of money in their palms. They are still common in Busia and Malaba. But here were Nigerian men, in a small town about three hours from Lagos, a town not anywhere near a boarder, and they were dealing in dollars. It made me think about the Nigerian economy.

I should have haggled and gotten a better rate, but the 215 Naira for a dollar they offered was above the rate I saw online (200 for a dollar) or in the bank (196 for a dollar) and way above what I was offered at the hotel (180 for a dollar), so I took it without asking questions. I later learnt that at the airport I could have gotten a better rate of 220-225 for a dollar. Thus my trip to the dollar black market turned out to be uneventful. Only that the okadaman changed his mind, and instead charged me 200 Naira, up from 70. When I tried to argue, he became quarraleous and wanted to fight, so I gave him the money.

A man buys bagged water from a truck. Nigeria seems to have
a drinking water problem. The safest water comes in plastic bags
and I wonder how much environmental damage that does.

A poster in the streets of Lagos illustrates gender disparity.
Female workers are paid less than males.

The next day, I struck travelers luck. I intended to explore Nigeria by walking the streets. It’s the best way to get a feel of a country, to experience something other than what you read in guide books. Just walk the streets, talk to people, blend in. I could pass for a Nigerian so it was a plus. I even spoke like them, putting an o! sound at the end of every sentence. (I’m exploring Nigeria o!) I wanted to look at the old streets of Abeokuta, at its historic architecture, and then, I saw it. Three very tall things swaying in the street. A masquerade. I at once started to take pictures. When they saw me do it, they posed and invited me to join them. I had a rare treat!

A masquerade in Abeokuta town

A poster for a Juju fantasy film from Nollywood

It opened my eyes. Some Nollywood films and all the news about pastors and Christianity had made me to imagine that ancestral spirit worship was dead. This igonuko masquerade was a small family event that happens once every three years. They used not to do it, but tragedy befell the family and four prominent members died within a year. A shaman advised them to do it or else the rest of the family would perish. In it they pray for blessings, and for protection. A few days later, in Ibadan, I saw a dead chicken in a calabash at a road junction. I at once recognized it as a sacrifice, for I had seen something similar in Nepal. A Nepali once explained the significance of sacrifice in road junctions, but I was not paying keen attention. Now, after seeing that both Nepalis and Nigerians leave sacrifice at road junctions, I am anxious for an explanation. Still, these two incidents showed me that Nigerians were worshipping their ancestors openly, unlike in Uganda where people are afraid of their Christian and Muslim peers.

Sacrifice left in at a road junction.

The sacrifice, or that's what I think it is, up close

A man hawks religious artefacts and charms.

One reads 'protection from evil.'

Ibadan is supposed to be an hour’s journey only from Abeokuta. I paid a thousand naira to share a small car with three other passengers. If I was in a hurry I could have paid four thousand to travel alone, but I was not, so I waited for two hours as the others trickled in. I reached Ibadan shortly after darkness. I had no accommodation, but that was the thing about this trip. I didn’t want to pre-plan anything. I was seeking thrill, so I’d hop into a car and get to the next town blindly. I did try googling and asking friends, but found no useful info for cheap hotels. I knew it had to be like Uganda, where you only get the cheap and comfortable places after you have reached town and ask help from locals.

In Ibadan I had in mind the university guest house. It cost 10k naira a night yet my budget was 5k, so I for the second time I put my trust on okadas. “Take me to a hotel,” I said. “Which one?” he asked. “Any good one,” I said. “But cheap.” He took me to Plaza Park. I paid 5k for a room without a shower. I had to scoop water out of a bucket using a cup. 5k was too high for that kind of room! “We have air-conditioning,” the receptionist said when I complained. That explained everything. They charge according to whether a room has air-con (Cabs in Lagos with air-con charge higher too). However, the air-con was broken. I couldn’t change the temperature and it made a lot of noise. It kept me awake most of the night.

I paid 5000 N for this room in Plaza Park, Ibadan,
because of air-conditioning

I paid 2500 Naira for this room in Infinity Hotel, Idanre.

It had no air-con. No difference with the 5k Naira room.

External view of Infinity Hotel, one I'm not about to forget soon.

The next night I was in Idanre town. There was a power cut that had lasted four days, so even if I was to get a hotel with air-con, I'd have paid a high price for nothing. (Nigeria has a huge power and fuel problem that is cyclic. The power problem worsens the fuel crisis, for everyone uses generators, which compete with vehicles for gas.) Idanre gets a bit of tourists so there is online info on hotels. Everyone recommends Valley Rock, but in the spirit of my trip, I did not book in advance. I got in at 10pm, and the okadaman told me Valley Rock is far outside the town, too late to go there. “Then take me to the nearest hotel,” I said. He took me to one called Infinity. I knew it was the wrong place the moment I saw the receptionist – No, there was no reception. There was a bar, and there was a woman sitting at one of the tables, wearing nothing but an ill-fitting t-shirt, and red knickers, her legs spread open. She gave me a big smile and said “Welcome.” Did she open her legs wider or was it only my imagination?

“Buy me a beer,” the okadaman said, sitting at a table.

“Do you want a room?” the naked woman asked, coming closer. She had a strong perfume mixed with the stench of alcohol. I wanted to get out of there, but it was 10pm, and I wanted to take a poop, for I had spent the entire afternoon – let me backtrack. In Ibadan town, I was at the motor garage (car park) at 2pm when the urge to ease my bowels struck. I ran to the public toilets, but they had no tissue. “Use water,” the attendant told me. At once, the urge vanished. Water? I’d have to use my fingers to wipe –no. I couldn’t do it. I thought I’d wait until Idanre, so I jumped into the bus (mini-van). It took four hours to fill up, and only after we set off did I go into ‘labor pains’. By the time I reached Idanre at 10pm, my bowels were bursting, so I overlooked the naked woman and dived into the first room she showed me.

I paid only 2,500 Naira. There was no air-con, but they had a fan. I thought it was going to be a tough night to sleep, then I remembered that in Nepal, temperatures and humidity was just as bad, yet I slept soundly with only a fan. So I took the room. And dashed into the toilet. At least it had a shower, but the toilet set was broken, and there was no tissue. I went to the receptionist. The okadaman was still there. “I want my beer,” the okadaman said. “Me and you we get drunk tonight.” I got angry and told him to return the next day. He left. The naked woman laughed.

“I want tissue,” I told her. “What is that?” she said. “Toilet paper,” I said. “Toilet what? What does it do?” And so I made a motion of whipping my behinds, and she said, “Oh. You mean toilet roll. No. We don’t have that.” And I said, “Send someone to buy.” She replied, “No. We have to go to Akure (an hour’s drive away) to buy it.” And I said, “Then what shall I do?” And she said, “Use water o!”

By this time I could not hold it anymore. I found a piece of paper on the floor, a card from a Pentecostal church inviting people to a fundraising function, and I took that. I searched through my bag for scraps of paper, receipts, anything, and they did help.

The next day, I went to Idanre town and was pissed off to find tissue in every shop. The naked woman had just refused to buy me a roll. Or maybe she just couldn’t be bothered and wouldn’t understand why I could not use my fingers to wipe my butthole.

Continues here. In the next post I tell you how security people took me for a Boko Haram agent. Enjoy the read.

Meanwhile, enjoy a few more pics :-)

A sword woman guards spirits during the dance.

A masked spirit dancing

Not sure what his role was, but it looked like he was blessing everyone

by sprinkling them with stuff from the palm fronds.

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I'm in Love with Old Buildings

2016-03-20T14:00:00.000+03:00

About two years ago I went to Europe for the first time. I visited Berlin. Being an enthusiast for old buildings, I thought I’d quench my thirst for architectural tourism, but I never enjoyed ancient buildings in Berlin, and I could never figure out why until last year when I visited the ancient towns of Vence and St. Paul de Vence in France. At first I thought the buildings in Berlin were not old in the strict sense of the word, since the city was obliterated during WWII and many sites had to be reconstructed, or rebuilt from scratch, but I did not feel any thrill while exploring Vence and St. Paul de Vence.

Travelers admire Belvedere auf dem Klausberg,
in Sanssouci park, Potsdam, Germany

I love old buildings, not just because of the fantasy that they might be haunted. Something about man-made structures that have lived for eons captivates me. Each time I see one, I wonder why has it stayed alive all this time?

Bazar street, Tororo, Uganda, where I grew up.

I grew up in one such house, in Tororo, not old in the way someone from Europe or Asia would think of old, for Tororo was built in the 1920s by migrant Indian traders who came to profit from the building of the Ugandan railway. It was among the first urban centers in the modern (colonial) history of East Africa. Maybe that's why I'm fixated on ancient sites, and maybe that's why whenever I travel I look out for those things that have stood since before my great grandfathers were born.

A sadhu, holy man, in Pashupati temple, Nepal

Nepal is a haven for relic hunters, especially Kathmandu, where it seems like every building is over a century old. I lived there for two years, and traversed much of the country, satisfying my quest. Walking into temples that had stood for several hundred years, and still serve the same purpose, was like stepping into a time machine. I saw monks dressed pretty much the way they were dressed five hundred years ago; I saw worshipers lighting candles in the Stupa, an activity that has gone on for centuries; and I saw Sadhus smoking ganja on the banks of the Bhagmati as they await the next fistful of ash from cremated bodies in the Pashupati temple; I saw people doing the same things that had been done thousands of years, worshiping gods in the same way, and I heard of temples where the same fires have been burning for eons. That experience took me to worlds I could only dream of.

On returning home, I tried to find similar buildings. I went to Fort Patiko in Gulu and to Fort Jesus in Mombasa, but I was a little disappointed for I could not get the same orgasm as I did from the temples of Kathmandu. I couldn't understand why. I thought it could be because they were built by foreigners, so their presence was more like somebody else's history.

A view from a windmill near Sanssouci Palace.

When I went to Berlin in February of 2014, I expected to see places with similar emotional histories as those in Nepal. I took a walk from the Brandenburg Gate to check out the Berlin Cathedral, maybe the most impressive building I’d ever seen, and in between there was plenty of buildings to see. I totally enjoyed the art installations in the museum island, and then on the Berlin Wall – that was probably my best moment in Berlin. I visited the Reichstag building, with its stunning views of the city, but I still had a hankering and someone advised that if I wanted to see the real old ones, I had to go to Potsdam, for most of Berlin is a reconstruction. So I jumped on the train and headed off to Potsdam, for a one day trip.

Anything interesting in there?
A woman peeks into Orangery palace.

Belvedere auf dem Klausberg, Sansoucci park

I was disappointed. Sanssouci Palace did not look old at all. It could looked like something the English might have built in colonial Uganda. It felt nice for a picnic, for a walk around the park with a girlfriend, and I saw many people doing just that. I jumped on the bus and headed off to the New Palace, but on the way I saw the Orangery Palace and I decided to stop for a look. The disappointment deepened. It looked like a something set up with a pretentious effort at art, overrated, I should say. I found it closed for renovation the day I went, which is probably why I disliked it.

As I waited for the next bus, which I realized would take over an hour, I decided to explore the wilderness around the Orangery Palace. That was more exciting than the actual palace. I stumbled upon this building, it looked small and alone in the bushes, and strangely out of place. I would expect it to have been in Asia, with its style imitative of pagodas and with it being on top of a hill where you had to go up a steep flight of stairs to get to it. It reminded me of many small temples I saw in Nepal. Curious, I went up the stairs, and entered the building. It turned out to be a restaurant, very warm inside. Almost everyone was an elderly white person. I was the only young man, and black at that. The waiter too looked young, and he spoke a little English. I looked through the menu, and the prices were murder. I couldn't afford anything in it, so I excused myself and stepped out into the coldness. A sign-post I came up shortly after said this was building was called Drachenhaus (dragon house).

Drachenhaus in Sanssouci Park, Potsdam, Germany

Well, the jewel in the clichéd crown was supposed to be The New Palace completed sometime in 1769 by Frederick the Great. The architecture of the kitchen was like something you'd find in Game of Thrones. I enjoyed it more than I enjoyed the palace. The king apparently did not want the chaos and noise of the kitchen to disturb his peace, so he built the kitchen way off from the main house.

Hitherto, I had not peeked into the insides of any of these palaces. Though I was broke, having lost 200 Euros stupidly (believe me, the money just fell out of my pockets, twice, a hundred euros at a time), curiosity overcame me. I paid eight euros for a ticket. I was eager to see what it looked like inside, and I was disappointed to find it wasn't any different from what I'd already seen in the movies and the photos. The extra money to take photographs was a complete waste. I could have as well used my phone camera, but because I had a DSLR they made me pay extra and I stupidly did. Idiot. The furniture, the paintings, the décor, there was nothing new I was seeing. Even the history of the individual rooms (this was where so and so died, this is where so and so committed suicide, this king used to have breakfast here, this was the music room) well, knowing all that didn't move me. I thought it was because I wasn't German and didn't know any of the people they were talking about.

But then, in Nepal, I wasn't Nepali and didn't know any of the kings and goddesses, yet I still enjoyed Nepal, for I wasn’t visiting museums. The palaces in Berlin on the other hand are just that, museums, huge monoliths without life. In Nepal, I could go to the Kumari's courtyard and though I would find a group of tourists, if I hung around long enough I'd be lucky to see the living goddess at the window, looking into a mirror, or having her hair combed, or something fun, something that told you the house is still what it was a thousand years ago, a house full of life, not dead and commercialized.

The servant's section in New Palace was more interesting

than the building where the king resided and hosted parties.

Vence and St. Paul de Vence were a little better experiences than the trips to Berlin. The Grand Jardin was a captivating park, full of life, and the architecture in old Vence was interesting enough, different enough from what I had seen and know about Europe. I enjoyed St Paul de Vence more than I did Vence. I didn't know about St. Paul until I was on the way to Vence, when I looked out of the bus window and saw a surreal village sitting on top of a rock. For a moment, it struck me like a movie set, something straight out of Game of Thrones, and I wanted to jump out of the bus and go to it, but I had set my eyes on Vence so I stayed in the bus and chose to visit St. Paul's commune another day.

The problem is that both places are dead, not in the museum sense like the palaces in Berlin, but still dead. They have more shops and art galleries than real life. The art galleries are supposed to continue the culture of these ancient cities. Some famous artists, writers, and actors are said to have lived and worked there, and two including an American writer James Baldwin is said to have died there. I went off the main track and explored the alleys where few tourists went, I found people living in the little cottages. One cottage had a sign saying a poet, Jacques Prevert, lived in it in 1940. I wonder if there is a poet living there now. I wonder what kind of people were living in the houses right inside a tourist attraction. St. Paul de Vence and Vence were not as dead as Sanssouci park, and they keep their culture alive with galleries selling really high-end, and extraordinarily expensive art. But I still did not get the thrill for they are not really the kind of places they were at the time of construction. They had changed with the times, and though they were a little better than museums, I did not get into any time machine when as I explored them.

Artwork on display in St Paul's Commune, Vence

In St Paul I came upon a chapel, The White Chapel, that intrigued me. The guide said it was a penitentiary of the White Brotherhood. I paid 4 Euros to enter. It was billed as the Church of Folon. I didn't know who Folon was, but I was so curious I wanted to see this secret chapel that a brotherhood used. Maybe I would experience something from the Da Vinci Code. So I paid, and went in, but what did I see when I got in? An empty room. Yes, that's exactly what it was, this chapel that the guide books had said was a penitentiary of the White Brotherhood, that they called the Church of Folon, I don't know what exactly I expected to see, but an empty room? Come on. Okay, it was not exactly an empty room for there was a woman sitting by the door to make sure only ticket holders came in. But why put a guard to prevent people from entering an empty room? Do you have to pay to see the paintings on the wall and the sculptures? What made no sense was that both the paintings and sculptures had nothing to do with the Brotherhood. It would have been worth it if these paintings were old, or if they were from the brotherhood itself, but they were done by this Folon guy in the 1950s. Charging 4 Euros to enter an empty room to see ridiculous works of art is outright robbery. Maybe it would make more sense if I know who exactly Folon was, a version of Da Vinci?

Inside the chapel, this is all you see.

Impressive. St Paul's Commune in Vence, France

The one exciting thing I remember from the trip to Vence was the sight of St. Paul's Commune on the hill. It’s a good thing I had not known about it before, so it was a pleasant surprise to look out of the bus window and see an ancient city on top of a rock. I found a similar spectacle in Cannes, this time it was not a city but a castle, complete with a flag waving about. I grew up on literature featuring castles, and so they are kind of romanticized in my head. I had searched for them in Germany, but was told there was none near Berlin and I didn’t have time or money to go exploring far, so when I saw this one in Cannes, I was thrilled for a few seconds, until I remembered that it would no longer be a living place, but a museum. So I went to it without expecting much, and I didn’t find much thrill, but I enjoyed the chapel, where I saw people praying, and I think it’s still used for regular service. It then struck me that if I wanted to find that joy in visiting old buildings as I did in Nepal, I would have to go to places of worship, for they certainly would still be in use. I just hope I don’t find more scams like the Folon Church in St. Paul’s Commune.

So when I heard of a castle in Nice, La Chateau, or Castle Hill, it turned out to be just as unsatisfactory. It sits on a hill, but does not offer any romantic façade like Chateau de la Castre in Cannes, though from the top, just as from the one in Cannes, you get a grand view of the scenery below. I went mostly because I had heard that old town Nice was not only ancient, but still a home to people. I took joy in walking through the very narrow streets, though they were mostly empty, and as I wandered about, I came upon an old church, Cathedral of Saint Reparata, built around 1650. The thing about travelling is to not find out as much about a place as possible before going there, just the basics, and so just as I didn’t know about St. Paul’s Commune though I knew of Vence, I didn’t know about this church in old town Nice, so I got a pleasant surprise. Outside the cathedral a street band was playing some great music. That’s one thing I enjoyed very much about Europe, the street bands composed of seemingly talented musicians, crooning for pennies.

Beautiful music for pennies in front of the Cathedral of St Reparata,
old town Nice, France

After the church, I toured the flower market, expecting to see something like Owino, but it did not live up to its expectations. I guess you have to be a flower enthusiast to experience joy at visiting a flower market.

As a side note, if you visit Vence, or St Paul’s Commune, or even the Sanssouci park, make sure you don't miss the last bus or you are screwed. There aren't any taxis nearby. I've heard so much about transport in Europe, how it's so cool and everything is on time and you can schedule your movements, but I found it a great, big inconvenience. You can't travel at any time you want, as is the case in Kampala, where you go to the roadside and you'll be sure a taxi will come along at some point. You have to stick to a creepy schedule, and if a train runs late, then you are screwed. I made the mistake of jumping on the wrong train once, to Grasse, yet I was to going to St. Raphael, and only then did they tell me that there is no train going back the other way. It was 8pm, and the trains had stopped running, the buses as well. My only option was a taxi, it cost me 200 Euros. I guess you have to live there long enough to get used to that system.

Well, that's it for the old buildings in Europe, at least for now until I learn of better places to go to. I will be exploring more in Africa, and I got a taste of it in Nigeria in November 2014. When I went there I did not expect to see so many old buildings, there was one in almost every street in the cities that I went to, Abeokutta, Ibadan, Idanre, and Akure. I didn’t go to Benin for I feared it was more of a touristy place, and I instead went to little known palaces built using mud that had stood for nearly thousand years, yet still alive. Like the temples of Nepal, they are not relics, people living in them, and they still serve the same purposes as when first built. I have reserved another blog post for my trip to Nigeria. While there, I heard of the wooden houses in Freetown, Sierra Leon, and I think that should be my next stop, if I ever get the chance, but I also want to satisfy my curiosity about the old towns on the East African coast. I’ll definitely be making a visit there later this year.

A market booms in front of Irefin Palace, Ibadan, Nigeria

Tororo Town, one of the first urban centers in modern East Africa

New Palace in Sanssouci Park, Potsdam

Where a poet lived, in St Paul's Commune, Vence

A couple explores St Paul's Commune, Vence

An old house in Vence

A woman and her dog in ancient Vence

A view of old town nice, with the cathedral prominent

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9 People of Colour Scifi and Fantasy Books I Enjoyed in 2015

2016-01-02T13:53:00.000+03:00

2015 was such a busy year for me. I started it with producing a TV series, which got me deep in debts, but which finally paid off :-)), and I ended it by producing a feature film, a scifi that I wrote and started making on a whim. Maybe this year you'll get to see it. In between those two projects, I worked on the Disney film, Queen of Katwe, directing 'the making of' documentary, I traveled twice to South Africa, twice to France, twice to Kenya, and once to Nigeria, attending five festivals (thanks to the success of my book, A Killing in the Sun). I wrote several short stories and a novella, some of which appeared in The Apex Book of World SF 4, African Monsters, Imagine Africa 500 (coming this year), and AfroSF v2. I completed a radio script, and nearly finished my novel. Yet, I found time to date a few girls, though non got stuck on me, thankfully, and above that, I managed to read, maybe fifteen books, and a countless number of short stories. I set out to read diverse books, but really I read anything that I came upon. Still, of those I read, here are books by, or featuring, people of color that I enjoyed the most.

Taty Went West, Nikhil Singh
Nikhil has a vivid and very entertaining imagination. The first thing that struck me when I opened his book was the illustrations - I had never read an adult novel with pictures, not one that I remember anyway. This book has lots of them. They do help advance plot and define characters. The author is multi-talented, a writer, an artist, a musician (witchboy), and a filmmaker, so it makes sense that the book has lots of drawings by him, and it has music which is an essential to the plot. It's the story of a teenage girl who escapes from home, and runs west into a place called the Outzone, spurred on by a song, In with the outzone (Listen to it here: auralsects.bandcamp.com/album/in-with-the-outzone), but the Outzone is not a place for any teenager. It is lawless, under the rule of criminal gangs and infested with a plague from another dimension. There, Taty, a scrawny girl, comes of age and learns to appreciate her talents, to accept who she truly is. The book is full of memorable characters, like Number Nun, a missionary robot reprogrammed to serve an underworld crime boss as a bodyguard of sorts and as a sex slave.

An illustration from Taty Went West
borrowed from http://thelake.co/?p=954

My Life in the Bush of Ghosts, Amos Tutuola.
While not as exciting as The Palmwine Drinkard, this is a beautiful tale. Sometimes the plot stagnates, for the protagonist is stuck in a spirit world, encountering all kinds of creatures, making it more of a collection of short stories, but it still was a very good read. In each chapter, you meet a new type of ghost, some are benevolent, others are deadly. The one that stuck, and that haunted my dreams for many nights, is the Flash-Eyed Mother. Her mountain of a body is made up of living human heads, each with eyes that see and mouths that talk independent of each other. There is a bit of humor, especially when the heads start arguing with each other, or when they start whispering dissent against the mother. Her eyes, which give her her name, are a deadly weapon, for they can flash out heatrays. When she led her town into battle, with her eyes blasting heatrays at the enemy, it made me want to make an epic horror-fantasy film. She would make one badass villain. Tutuola's works are a constant reminder that science fiction and fantasy are not alien to Africa, that the first African novels ever published were in the SFF genre, but after independence quasi intellectuals and quasi elites sprung up, and they were determined to show the world that they were modern and did not believe in superstition like their 'backward' forefathers, and so they killed the genre, and helped relegate it to children's stories. I think Achebe was one of them.

Fledgling, Octavia Butler
While Amos Tutuola introduced me to African SFF, Octavia introduced me to people of colour SFF. I remember reading Wild Seed in the early 2000s, and knowing it was an American book, I was puzzled to see a non-white protagonist. In Fledgling, Octavia made me rediscover my love for vampires. I do not remember the last vampire book I enjoyed, but it was long ago when I was still a teenager. Holywood somehow contributed to the death of vampires, but here they resurrect to great effect. They are the vampires I love, very close to how Bram Stoker imagined them, with a scientific twist. I won't spoil the story for you. It was a joy read, sexy, very entertaining.

The Left Hand of Darkness, Ursula K Le Guin
I started reading this book without expecting the protagonist to be a person of color. Rather, I was more interested in the gender-less world Ursula had created, and was surprised when she mentioned the protagonist is black. He is an envoy on a mission to a new world, whose people he is supposed to help join a galactic conglomeration of human civilizations, but the people of Winter (as humans call that world) think creatures who have only one gender are sub-human. In Winter, people change their gender, they can be male or female. As I read the book I begun to see how much Ursula influenced SFF, gifting us things like the ansible and creatures like the snat. I first came across a snat in Margaret Atwood's Oryx and Crake, and I thought it was a pretty cool monster (a splice of snake and rat), then I read Left Hand of Darkness and I thought it might have influenced Atwood. What makes me wonder is why Ursula's influence did not extend to characters, for "The majority of her main characters are people of color, a choice made to reflect the non-white majority of humans, and one to which she attributes the frequent lack of character illustrations on her book covers" (from Wiki) Why then didn't other authors pick up on this the way they picked up the ansible and the snat?

Zoo City, Lauren Beukes
The moment I started reading this book I thought of Phillip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy, for she borrowed the idea of animals being attached to humans as a sign of sin. After a few pages I was drawn into an alternate Jo'burg bristling with gangs and spiced with a memorable heroine. While Pullman centers heavily on original sin (the Christian version) and by the third book you get a feeling he was trying to challenge Christian dogma and the Christian idea of God, Jesus, and angels, Lauren focuses on sins we commit in our lifetimes, which makes her allegory much more powerful, and I would say much more relevant to today's world. It's rather out dated to say we are paying for sins committed at the beginning of time. That was an excuse some evil people came up with to wash their hands of crimes they had committed by saying, 'Look, I'm not responsible! Blame the first man!'

Moxyland, Lauren Beukes
I did enjoy this book, though after Zoo City I felt it was a little bit of a disappointment. I found the multi-character point-of-view a little too distracting, and a little of a drag, but I enjoyed reading about this futuristic South Africa riddled with corporate apperthied and I enjoyed the rebels fighting against the system.

Redemption in Indigo, Karen Lord
This book started out great, with a lot of humor, and it had me laughing out loud. Karen certainly has the comic muse. The plot sort of reminded me of Hitchcock's Psycho, where you follow a character for a long time thinking he is the protagonist, only for him to be nothing more than an introduction. It is essentially a story about a woman who is gifted an instrument of supernatural power, making her a superheroine if she can learn how to use it, and she then goes on a journey with a djombie who is trying to steal this power. It would have been a good book, but it has so many point of views that I kept losing track of the characters. Sometimes, the pov would change within a chapter, which is a bit jarring. But this style works nicely for comedy, and I must say that Karen has written a horror story the way I remember how it was told in my childhood: With humor.

Stories for Chip: A Tribute to Samuel R. Delany, edited by Nisi Shawl and Bill Campbell

Being a fan of short stories, it is always satisfying to come across a collection as diverse (stories are from every continent), as colorful, and as entertaining as this. I particularly loved these stories; Capitalism in the 22nd Century by Geoff Ryman, Nilda by Junot Diaz, Song for the Asking by Carmelo Rafala, For Sale: Fantasy Coffins (Ababua need not apply) by Chesya Burke, The Last Dying Man by Geetanjali Dighe, and Be Three by Jewelle Gomez. The book does not disappoint in being a tribute to Samuel R Delany. If he were to read them, he would have enjoyed every story in it, just as I did, and just as you will, if you love scifi.

Dhalgren, Samuel R Delany
I came across Delany's book in a list (can't remember which one) about the greatest people of color who wrote science fiction and fantasy. I was surprised that I knew nothing about Delany, especially given the awards he won, and the time he wrote in, and when I read Dhalgren, I was drawn in right from the first page, and taken for a thrill ride into a burning city by a man who cannot remember his own name. I'm sure glad I discovered Delany. I will be reading more of his books next year!

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Hats Galore at Ake Festival 2015

2015-12-26T17:14:00.000+03:00

I love hats, though I hardly ever wear one, and at the recent Ake Book and Arts Festival, it seems like everyone had a hat on, so my camera got busier than usual. Here are some of my favorite portraits.

The hat seller of Ake. The man probably responsible for the flood of hats.

Novuyo, a Zimbabwean writer.

Adeola, of Keeping it Real With Adeola, Sahara TV

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Praise for A Killing in the Sun

2015-09-21T18:46:00.002+03:00

One year ago during the Storymoja Festival, I launched my book, A Killing in the Sun, a collection of short speculative stories, featuring African science fiction, fantasy and horror. The reception of the book has been, surprisingly, warm, at times awed, and at times an outright 'oh wow! Unbelievable!' I did not expect this. I thought it would be only me sweating it out to sweet talk people into buying it, but somehow the book has marketed itself. To celebrate a year in print, here are a few of the reviews, some from renown African writers like Binyavanga Wainaina, Zukiswa Wanner, and Beverly Nambozo.

"...punchy and awkward and well worth reading."

K. Kamo, in Strange Horizons

Me, at the launch in Storymoja Festival 2014

"perfectly poised between the robustness of genre fiction and the more literary concern"

Mark Bould, in LA Review of Books

"From the first page of the of the first story, I felt that surge of anticipation of the possibility of something really special coming....." Binyavanga Wainaina on Facebook on Tuesday, August 25, 2015

Here is the full snap review by Binyavanga

Dilman Dila was mentioned in a post.

6:03pm

Am about halfway through Dilman Dila's collection of short stories, A Killing in the Sun. From the first page of the first one, felt that surge of anticipation of the possibility of something really special coming. With the best books, you sense it very early, and unconsciously. It is a kind of body-mind tingle, and then my buttocks shuffle about on the bench and I hunch forward to tunnel forward, and my eyes are now on eat, gobble, and eventually devour, and time disappears and I lift my eyes halfway through the book with a very familiar and rare fear (that it is going to end soon and life as I know it will be drab). For now, I have no grand things to say, except, fuck Facebook, I am diving back into the spell, only gently so I can draw it out. somehow.

"Many have been raving about Ugandan writer Dilman Dila, whose short story collection A Killing in the Sun (Black Letter Media) is what I want to spend my Christmas reading."

Binyavanga Wainaina, in The Guardian

"...as I read story after story, many times miserly-like, I kept being grateful that I hadn’t put it off any longer. It surpassed my expectations...... read A Killing in the Sun. You’ll be pleasantly surprised."Hannah Onoguwe http://books.alextwino.com/a-killing-in-the-sun-dilman-dila/

"This short story collection by Ugandan writer, Dilman Dila, is sheer entertainment with a thick seam of seriousness....The beauty of these stories is that each in their own way shows a human side, of people who love, hate, fear and yearn. Dila’s wonderful imagination lifts this collection into an alien yet familiar space, where the ‘other’ is lampooned in a fantastical way. "

Penny de Vries, African Writing Book Reviews,

"Intriguing.... There is a lot of pretty rich writing... rich storyteling..." Sunday Recommendations: Books and Podcasts https://youtu.be/-xE71byf_8I

"Enjoyable.... Dila has good material and can clearly write brilliant speculative fiction." Tade Thomson

"Memorable. Well plotted, well edited, with a cool Afro flavor in each story."
Zukiswa Wanner

"Still turning pages. Will I get up tomorrow AM!" Vincho

"A treat for readers."
Beverly Nambozo, in The Daily Monitor

"Something unique"

The R.R.A.P.Magazine

Hmm, so what are you waiting for? Click here to get yourself a copy of the book from Amazon, either the print version or ebook, make it part of your Christmas gift purchases.

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Searching for the taste of South Africa

2015-09-08T22:20:00.003+03:00

The first time I went to South Africa, in 2008, the one thing I wanted to taste very much was umqombothi. Chaka Chaka’s hit song in the 80s has never gotten out of my head, just as it has stuck in the heads of millions of other Africans. There were bars called Mukomboti in the low cost suburbs of Kampala, and I think it there was once a drink called that, or maybe it was slang, I can’t remember, but it filled my dreams and longing that even as I flew (for the first time in a big plane), I saw clouds below me forming into shapes to spell out the drink.

Me, at the Alan Paton museum.
I visited the great author of Cry the Beloved Country.

In 2008, I was naïve in travel, and did not make much use of that trip, apart from taking a few photos like a dumb tourist. Then this year, I got to go twice, and to live there for over a month. I thought, well, this is my chance to taste that famous drink, and other delicacies. The ‘smiley’, which is a sheep’s head, and so called because it seems to smile at you with all its teeth as it sits on the plate. A whole sheep’s head. Then there is the ‘walkie-talkie’, a combo of chicken legs and heads. Okay, these are not really strange in my part of the world. As a child, I remember eating a cock’s head – the eyes, the cheeks, the comb. Our houseboy roasted it for me, and he said it would make me intelligent (now you know how I got my brains :-o). In Tororo where I grew up, there are a people who are said to cook everything after slaughtering a chicken. The legs, the head, the intestines, everything. When I lived in Kirewa village as part of my first job (it was to arrest men who beat their wives, but I’ll tell you about that later), I found a man roasting chicken intestines. He had wrapped it around a stick. I wanted to ask for a bite, curious as I am about delicacies, but I couldn’t find my voice because he did not seem so clean and I wondered if he had washed those intestines properly. (Chicken intestines are called 'ashy shoe laces' in the South African townships, or so I hve just been told on Facebook).

But there is something about South Africa that wants you to taste these things when you go there. It’s maybe a curiosity about the people, who are said to be our children – the Bantu who moved so far down south and even retained a lot of our words in their language. I guess in desiring these delicacies, I wanted to see if we are the same, if umqombothi is really just another version of malwa, or kwete, or ajono (I tasted a sister of the drink in Nepal, called Tumba, just a jug was enough to make me go dizzy and I imagined three Limbu girls dancing naked on a table, though they were just sitting there laughing with their drinks). I guess I wanted to satisfy my curiosity that we are one people, however far apart we live, though in Uganda or in Durban or in Kathmandu, our cultures have a similar origin as evidenced from what we eat and drink.

Bunnychow, a delicacy of Durban.
I didn't know about it until I got there.

I never got the chance. I met many friendly South Africans, as friendly as Nepalis who never say no to a visitor. ‘Yes, yes,’ one told me. ‘On Saturday, I’ll take you to this place where they’ll slaughter for you a whole sheep and give you the head. But culturally, as a woman, I am not allowed to go into that shop, so maybe I’ll organize for my brother to take you there.’ I waited. Saturday came, and she postponed to another day. I only smiled, for I knew she was so nice she did not know how to say no to disappoint me. Another one said, ‘Next Thursday, on our day off, I’ll take you around Soweto, you’ll eat all these things and you’ll drink umqombothi until you can’t find your legs.’ When Thursday came, he said, ‘But Dilman, why do you think straight like a white man? When I said Thursday, it didn’t mean this Thursday, but one Thursday before you return to Uganda.’ Well, that Thursday never came.

Problem is I was stuck in a tiring job, six days a week, and on that one day I had off I was often too tired to explore on my own. When the contract ended, it was too cold to go out for Johannesburg winter was at its worst. I just wanted to rush back to warm Kampala.

What I instead ate in Johannesburg, seafood. Tasty! :-))

They did tell me that umqombothi is not readily available in traditional bars, the way malwa and ajono is enjoyed in Uganda. They make it on only on special family occasions and ceremonies. That’s a pity. I think a people who lose touch with their brew get completely lost, culturally, and South Africa is sort of going that way. The place is so Westernized you wouldn’t know you are in Africa. Even their music, which once ruled the continent, has lost its touch. Listening to bands like Freshly Ground, I don’t find that magic that made the likes of Chico Chimora and Brenda Fassie and Pat Shange household names. Their songs, in the 80s and 90s, were so popular in Uganda that everywhere you went, you found local versions. Somehow, because the languages were relate-able, each nation in Uganda would come up with their own version of South African songs. But how times change! And how South Africa has changed! Did the end of apartheid mean a death of a certain culture?

I can’t say I am an authority in this matter, just stating my observation as someone who grew up on South African music, and who grew up curious about Zulus, and who wanted to satisfy this curiosity and didn’t find what I was expecting. Maybe if I stay for a longer period, I’ll get the full taste of South Africa, but for now, I’m only left with glimpses, with a hunger for more.

Like the herbal market. While in Uganda herbalists have been demonized, and treated as backward and satanic, that they operate in hiding, I was surprised to walk into a market in Durban that sells nothing but herbs and charms and juju. It was like walking into one of the stories of Ben Okri, or into a scene in The Palmwine Drinkard. In Uganda, herbalists are only starting to come out, and to get publicly accepted (I’m making a documentary about it), but I wonder if they’ll ever hit this kind of acceptance, where a whole market is reserved for nothing but their medicines and charms.

A young man in a shop selling herbs and charms.
I wonder if he is a shaman, or has any such training at all.

A walk through the market left me depressed, especially the sight of dead animals and birds hung up on hooks like designer clothes, with dried innards spilling out. The smell stirred a protest in me. ‘It’s not effective’, a taxi driver told me when I later asked him. ‘If you go to the villages you’ll find sangomas whose medicine work, but here, they are just making money.’ It made me think about all those animals dying for nothing, maybe going extinct, because of some fraudulent shaman.

It still was a surreal experience, with the herb dealers trying to peddle their wares as I passed by; ‘Do you want to kill your enemy?’ one young man told me. ‘Use this one.’ He pointed at a monkey hang upside down, its tummy split open, its intestines in its mouth, something poking out of its anus spewing a thin trail of smoke. Others tried to get me to buy manhood medicines, or abortion drugs (so cheap, 200 Rand only, no side effects!), or to get charms to prosper my business.

The herbal market, with Durban in the background.

Then there was the thing about uniforms. On 16^th June, I went to work and found every adult in school uniform. It was both exciting and disturbing. I know men always get dark thoughts when they see women dressed as sexy, little school girls, but well….. The rest of Africa calls this the Day of the African Child, there they just call it Youth Day, and on this day adults wear school uniforms in memory of the children who died during the Soweto Uprising of 1976.

Sweet things in uniform and lollipops, on 16th of June,
commemorating the 1976 Soweto uprisings.

Apartheid, though more than twenty years dead, still lingers over the nation. I don’t know if I was pleased or saddened to learn about Fanagalo, and that it is no longer used. It’s a language that developed in the mines to ease master-slave communication. It combined many languages into something everyone could understand, English, Afrikaans, Zulu, whatever language was available, all mingled into one called Fanagolo. Every time I think of it I tend to compare it to Lingala, and especially to Swahili which was born out of trade between Hindi-speaking people, Arabs, and Bantu. But maybe Fanagalo, having been born out of slavery and oppression, had to die out. The same way Swahili was never really accepted in Uganda. At first, the English resisted its spread, for they wanted to promote their own language. Today, some Ugandans, especially the Baganda, do not like it for they say, in the 70s and 80s, soldiers used it to terrorize them, looting and killing.

Still, you can look at Fanagalo the same way other languages absorbed words or tongues of their oppressors. In East Africa, many English words are now part of the languages. Like the word ‘sorry’. And there are words like posho (ugali), which came about during the building of the dam on River Nile. At meal times, the supervisors would tell the workers to ‘Come for your portion’, and the workers thought posho is actually the name for ugali. There are other words I saw recently on a facebook post, very dirty words, see if you can figure them out; mwathafaga, blurry hero, burr-sit.

The beauty of Durban just after sunset,
but these signs below spoil the fun.

The beaches in Durban are captivating, and tell the South African story. It’s not just the stadium in the background, a reminder of the 2010 world cup. The people who go there and the activities they do left me wondering…. I found the white men surfing, white women swimming, Indians fishing, and Africans taking selfies (that’s if they were not building sandcastles to charge tourists a few pennies for poses or working as life guards). It all said a bit about race in South Africa today.

Beautiful artwork at the beachside

Indians fishing while, below,
white men surf and Africans take selfies.

Then, I saw women (and some men) coming down to the beach, fully dressed, and stepping into the water as though they were made of salt, and then filling plastic bottles with sea water. I puzzled very much over this, until I approached one girl, who told me she had travelled all the way from Johannesburg. I looked at her phone, it’s cracked screen, at her worn out shoes, at her bag that had a hole and a broken strap, and I could not imagine why anyone would make a six hour bus journey that costs a lot of Rands just to get sea water.

Why? I asked her. For prayers, she said. Prayers? I said. The pastor sent me, she said. And she wouldn’t say anymore, but those four words said everything. The pastor sent me.

A woman fills a bottle with sea water, for religious purposes

Later, someone told me they use it to regurgitate. Why? I asked. Regurgitation purifies the body, and hence the soul. It did not make sense, but these people believe the sea has magic powers, supernatural powers. I was told that if I go to the beach before dawn, I might find sangomas performing rituals, or some other kind of religious ceremony going on, and that there’s always fire involved in these rituals. My curiosity swell. I did try to wake up before dawn, for I was staying in a hotel that overlooked the sea, but I failed. I have definitely kept that for the next time I go to Durban.

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Is Science Fiction Really Alien to Africa?

2015-07-22T23:48:00.002+03:00

African writers are traumatized. They forever have to defend their work. If it’s not someone questioning why they are not tackling the problems of their societies, it’s someone wondering why they only write about misery and gloom in the continent. When they discover that African writers are churning out stuff like speculative fiction, they say ‘copycat’. Or something worse. The something worse happened to me. Shortly after my book came out, a Ugandan living in the UK asked; ‘Are you really Ugandan?’ I said yes, and she said, ‘But your names….’ And I said Is your name Margaret (anonymised) more Ugandan than mine (Dilman is Asian, Dila is Luo/Nilotic)? And her next question, ‘But surely, you didn’t grow up in Uganda. No one who grew up in Uganda can write such stories.’ I stopped responding.

A muti market in Durban, South Africa, where you can buy any charm.

In recent years, there has been a burst of activity with regard to SFF in Africa. Some liken it to Afrofuturism, but I don’t like that idea, for African Americans (our children :-D) operate in a slightly different world. I’d prefer the term AfroSF/Horror/Fantasy, etc, or African SFF, so as to market products that are from the within continent. African Americans, and Africans in the diaspora, though disadvantaged compared to their siblings from the other mother (whites), enjoy a richer pool of resources and opportunities compared to us who work and live in the continent. (See? The Caine Prize is often dominated by people in the diaspora)

In writing this article, I want to add my voice to those that stress that scifi is not alien to Africa. Why? At this early stage we are trying to win an audience, thus talk of AfroSFF being a mimic can put readers off. True, some stories are imitative of popular Western films and books. We can’t ignore that influence, it would be hypocrisy. I often site Stephen King and Margaret Atwood as having big influences on my work. I wrote one of the stories in A Killing in the Sun, The Yellow People, right after reading The Tommyknockers and encountering a spaceship buried under the ground. When I started to read Zoo City, I at first thought of Philip Pullman's Nothern Lights, but after the first page, that comparison stopped, for I was lost in an alternate Joburg, with a very fascinating heroine and her sloth. So if anyone is to look at the surface, and not go into detail to appreciate the characters and worlds we create, that person is doing us a disservice.

A genetically modified karoli (marabou stork),
maybe created to clean up man's garbage,
graces the cover of the recent issue of Lawino Magazine

A recent article even went so far as to claim that when we create superheroes, we are merely copying x-men and Superman, that we should invent something unique the same way Western scifi has the ray gun, but this article forgets that our works are only starting to come out, and they have not hit the popularity levels of Western or even Asian products. With time, our creations will be part of the popular culture, but we won’t get there if myopic detractors keep nibbling at our efforts.

The simple fact is that human stories have always been speculative stories. Branding stories as scifi, or fantasy, or literary, is a recent phenomenon. It probably came about with capitalism, as the volume of written works grew and publishers needed a way of selling to various readers. African societies were not unique. They too told scifi stories. I’ll cite two examples from Acholi folk tales. These stories do not use magic, or the supernatural, but feature technology that does not exist in the world of the characters, which I believe is ultimately what makes a story scifi.

The first issue of Omenana

In both, Hare is the hero. In the one I love, the king sends his best and strongest warriors to bring Hare to justice over some mischief. Warriors like Elephant. Surely, mighty Elephant would have no trouble beating Hare, but Hare devised a weapon. I think a gourd with fake brains stuffed in it. When it struck Elephant’s head, the fake brains stuck to Elephant. It must have caused Elephant enough pain that when Hare said, ‘Look, I’ve smashed your head and your brains are hanging out,’ Elephant believed, and fled before Hare could do more harm.

The other story has the village digging a well, but Hare refuses to participate. To punish him, they set guards to watch the well and ensure he doesn’t drink from it. Hare gets into a calabash, which he modifies so he can hide in it, and roll in it. In a way it was some kind of vehicle. He then comes rolling toward the well, while singing ‘Oh people of the well let me drink water.’ The gourd amplifies his voice until it sounds like he is a terrible ghost. When the guards hear this, they flee, and Hare get his drink.

Of course, these tales were not labeled as scifi, but in writing stories like How My Father Became A God, in which an African scientist, living at time before Europeans arrived, invents a super weapon, I’m not thinking about all the cool weapons like ray guns and heat rays. I’m simply thinking of this crafty Mr. Hare, as I remembered from my grandmother.

Same goes with superheroes. Again, I can name one who did not use any kind of supernatural powers, Kibuuka, but he was able to fly and shoot arrows from the sky. The Baganda, after he died, deified him. The other is Luanda Magere, a man made out of stone. So when I craft a superhero story like The Flying Man of Stone (coming soon in AfroSF 2), I’m not thinking of Superman, or Spiderman, or Captain America, but of these two people who I met before I met these Westerners.

And space travel, many societies around the world link our ancestry to aliens. The famous ones are the Dogon in West Africa, and the Sumerians in the Middle East. A couple of years back, while researching about European missionaries coming to East Africa, I came across a paragraph in a book, The Wonderful Story of Uganda, of course written from a European Christian point of view so they were belittling the belief, but I could see beneath the ridicule, and I found something that makes me think the Baganda too believed their ancestors were aliens from outer space. Not only that, they could visit these ancestors before death, as in they didn’t have to die to travel to the sky. The Baganda have no gods as we know it. They worship ancestors, who become deified like Catholic saints, and if there was a way of going to join the ancestors in the skies, before one dies, doesn’t that allude to star-travel?

How to go up into the Sky.
Instructional text found in an old book about Uganda

This way of star-travel was preserved orally, I’m not sure anything about it exists anymore. But telling scifi stories orally continues today, and not just the folk tale kind. I grew up in Tororo, a small town in Uganda, unlike what the reader above thought, and I fed on strange urban legends. At that time, in the eighties, there was no TV, no Internet, and the biggest source of news was Radio Katwe, which was slang for rumors. Like that of Akii-Bua. He was the only Ugandan to win an Olympic gold medal. When adults talked about him, they said things like, ‘He can run faster than a car,’ and that ‘He went to compete in the Safari Rally. The white people came with cars, but he ran so fast that he left all the cars far behind him.’ These were adults telling each other tales, and we children would eaves drop. One time, while my parents were complaining about a broken down bridge, a bus driver said, ‘In Kenya, they have planted a tree in such a clever way that the branch grows over the river. So there is no need for a bridge, you just drive over this branch and you get to the other side of the river.’ They believed him, for he was a bus driver, a man who sees the world.

So when some claim that the genre is alien to Africa, that Africans don’t consume scifi, that there is no audience, I want to ask; which African community are you talking about? When they say Africans are not ready for scifi, what do they really mean? I think such people are based in the diaspora and are completely out of touch with the streets of the continent. Africans won’t relate to Captain America, or Star Wars, or Spiderman, but they’ll relate to stories of John Akii-Bua running faster than a rally car, or to stories of trees whose branches are living bridges strong enough for buses and lorries to drive over, or, as we see in Nollywood films, they pay to watch alternate worlds spiced with juju fantasy.

I grew up with such stories, and I did not encounter books until I was about ten years old and eligible to borrow books from the library. The first I remember reading was called Yoa (or Yao?) and the Python, about a boy (West African?) who befriended a python. I did not encounter Western stories until much later on. I read Peter Pan when I was already fourteen, or fifteen. I did not get to read Little Red Riding Hood until three years ago, when I visited a friend and saw it in a pile of her children’s books. I’m lucky in that sense, for I believe the best writing is heavily influenced by childhood. I never understand why someone would question my background simply because I write a certain type of stories.

A herbalist (muti) market in Durban, South Africa

I’ll end with a piece of advice to writers: Set your stories in the continent. Create characters who are deeply rooted in the cultures you are familiar with, whether urban, rural, traditional, or modern, you won’t come off as a hack if you do. If you are in the diaspora and have never been to Africa, but want to write AfroSFF, welcome, but then, do research, and more research, and some more research, until your story comes out as uniquely African. Hint, fellow writers, there is a plethora of monsters and yarns that are doing the rounds in the streets and village paths of your homes. Don’t ignore them. Those are the kinds of materials that will win you an audience.

That said, I’m pessimistic. I’m wary of this ‘new wave’ of AfroSFF, of this growing interest in the genre. Of course I’m happy. For the first time in my life I’m not afraid to write what I like. In fact, I’m so motivated that I’ve written two scifi scripts in three months and I plan to shoot one before the year ends, using my own money. I hope the interest continues to grow until the genre finds a firm foundation. But you heard of what happened to the horror genre? Following the success of Stephen King, everybody wanted to write horror, and then came a deluge of terrible, awful, ridiculous, and crappy books that put off readers. Soon writers became afraid to tag their books with ‘horror’. It happened with vampires and werewolves. Many publishers won’t touch those creatures. It might happen to AfroSFF. Are my fears unfounded? Nope. It’s happened before. You can’t sell a child soldier story now because at some point everyone was writing about child soldiers in Africa. I’m afraid this new interest will attract all sorts of gold chasers and wannabes and people seeking a quick road to fame, and the deluge of crappy imitative work will kill the genre.

My fears were confirmed recently when I got invited to judge an international science fiction screenplay competition. I can't name it for the process is ongoing. Some of the entries from Africa are truly original, very exciting to read, but a lot of them are hack jobs, putting black faces on, and using Africa as a backdrop for, stories already told elsewhere. It can happen and such a deluge can kill the genre.

Unless the publishers, producers, editors, and other gatekeepers, prevent it. How? Simple. Don’t publish just because AfroSFF is selling. Use editors who know the genre pretty well. I’ll illustrate. I wrote a novella for AfroSF 2, edited by Ivor Hartman. I’ve never seen Lost, the TV series, but Ivor pointed out that a creature I had created resembled the Smoke Monster, so readers would simply say, ‘See, this African is copying Lost.’ I thanked him for it. I re-imagined my creatures and I hope they are as original as can be. But that’s the crucial role editors and other gatekeepers can play, to ensure that AfroSFF works are as unique as possible. Only then can we hope to win an audience.

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2015-07-08T21:00:00.000+03:00

For the first time in my life, I met a female cab driver. Women had driven me before, in their personal cars, and in an organization that I worked for once who insisted on hiring women for drivers, but I'd never met a female taxi driver before. She said her name was Nazira, and it's a family business, her husband and their son are both taxi drivers. They mostly have corporate clients, which is how she came to be taking me to OR Tambo Airport that sunny Sunday morning in Joburg. Like many in conversations I had in Joburg, crime somehow crept up.

Police in Durban arrest a suspect.

"It was better during apartheid," she said. She's of Asian origin, which strangely in South Africa, means she is 'colored' while the Africans are 'black' and the Europeans are 'white'. "We lived in Durban at that time and we could leave our house unattended for many weeks. But when we would return there wouldn't have been any incident." Many other South Africans agree, even the Africans who were supposed to have been the oppressed during apartheid, they all said security back then was so much better, that the ANC government isn't capable of creating enough jobs to stop crime.

Just a few weeks before, she told me, robbers had broken into their home. They have adequate security, but somehow the thugs went in through the ceiling. They didn't to steal anything though, for armed response came in and took them away. They are probably in jail already. There is nothing she can do about burglars, but she is smart enough to outwit the criminals who patrol the roads. They pretend to be policemen, and drive in cars that look like police cars, so if you are not conscious, you pull over when they tell you to. Sometimes, they pull up beside you, in plain clothes and in civilian cars, but flashing IDs that look like police cards. These criminals watch the airport route, knowing they can make a good kill if they hit any car headed to or from the airport.

Westville Prison

One time she was driving a mini-bus full of tourists. The fake cops pulled up beside her, and flashed their IDs, and gestured that she stop the vehicle. She instead stepped on the accelerator. They gave chase. She had never driven above speed limit before, but that day, what gave her courage was that there was a police station just a few kilometers ahead, and if she kept her cool, she could outrun the criminals. They would not dare to follow her to the station. She also knew that if they were real cops, she would be in trouble. But she stepped on it and after a brief persistence, the thugs vanished from her tail.

Her husband nearly fell into the trap, a few weeks later. He pulled over when they told him to, but then he remembered her story, about the criminals pretending to be cops. By then, the thugs had already stopped in front of him, they were getting out of their car, and walking towards him. One had an AK 47. He hit the reverse gear. Luckily, this gang used only one car, so they had not blocked his rear end. He reversed at full speed, with his indicators flashing to warn vehicles speeding toward him – he still cannot know how an accident didn't happen, or why the thugs did not open fire. He got away.

I was on my way to Durban, to attend the Time of the Writer festival. I'd read the profiles of other writers, and one of then was Tshifhiwa Given Mukwevho. His story reminded me of the famous Kenyan gangster-turned-writer, John Kiriamiti. My Life in Crime was a publishing sensation in the 1980s. I remember my father, who owned the only photocopier in Tororo town in the early nineties, selling photocopies of the book. That's how successful it was. (When I saw the book making money, I told my father that I wanted to quit school and be a writer -- I wanted to go to a technical school to become a radio repairer and avoid the hustle of university -- because, I told him, John Kiriamiti never went to university but his book is making millions!) I don't know yet how much success Given has had with his books.

Tshifhiwa Given Mukwevho

Given was born in 1984 (the same year that John Kiriamit's book came out!) He went to jail at the age of 15 to serve twenty two years for theft, and breaking and entry. Before that, he had been in an out of jail many times, for many smaller crimes, but this time he was in for keeps. He wrote his first book, A Traumatic Revenge, a collection of short stories based on his life in jail, while still a prisoner. Later, he won a prize of 30,000 rand to write his first novel, The Violent Gestures of Life, which UKZN published. Today, he works as a news reporter in Limpopo.

Now, other than write, he gives talks to minors in prison on how turn their lives around. Time of the Writer festival have writing programs for school children, one of which was run in a prison in Westville, by the beautiful xhosa writer Celiswa, who taught creative writing to jailed minors. I visited Westville with Given, to give inspirational talks to participants of this program.

John Kiriamiti, in a photo stolen from Margaretta's Jua Kali Diary
http://margarettawagacheru.blogspot.com/2013/05/john-kiriamiti-backstory-of-man-who.html

Given's two books

One of the inmates, a boy who looked 13 years old, but was said to be 17, caught my attention. He looked so little, so innocent, so humble, I could not understand what he was in jail for. I asked the wardens, and at first they wouldn't tell me. Then one female warden stepped closer, and whispered in my ears one word that terrified me. "Rape."

Rape? How could a boy who looks like a frail 13 year old be in for rape? The warden speculated that maybe it was the games children play, you know, you be mummy I be daddy, but the parents of the girl took it seriously and called it rape, so this young man went in.

I found him to be the most avid on the writing program. Though I didn't get to read his work, he later followed us to where we were eating and asked questions about writing, which he had feared to ask in the class where he was mixed with much older looking boys. I hope he turns out okay.

His case further saddened me when a warder told me that a serial rapist had escaped from this same prison a few years before. She didn't tell me the rapist's name, for she said it happened before her time, and I've tried searching google in vain, but this escapee had raped and killed 27 women. He was in jail for life. The escape was said to have been an inside job, involving drug dealers, and the rapist took advantage of it. He is the only one who got away, and has never been apprehended.

It's just sad to think about these two people, how unfair the system and life is, but Given did not have kind words for the little boy. He thinks the boy deserves jail term, and that there is nothing wrong with a justice system that sends little boys who playhouse with little girls to jail for rape, to mix with criminals who have actually killed and raped women. Given believes prison will straighten this boy out, just as it worked for him – and I think he is a little naïve in that belief – but he was enthusiastic about the writing program. He told me he has been to many prisons to give inspirational talks, but this was the first time he was giving minor inmates talk on how to use writing to change their lives.

He started his session with a spoken word poem about street life, it had verses that went something like //I have no guns in my hands// just pens and books// and he went on and on about how he is making a life for himself. He said when in prison, he forgot about what happened to him, and focused on his future. He didn't want to continue a vain life. He wanted a new start. Today, many years after getting out, he still has nightmares. He wakes up at night thinking he is back in prison, and then he screams in terror, but it comes to him that it's just a bad dream. He is terrified of going back in there.

Police in Durban arrest a suspect.

I want to share his optimism, that prison will actually make these boys better, for after all he is a living testimony of how prison turned him from crime to a respectable citizen, but I'm one of those who don't believe that prison is an institution worth investing in, especially when it comes to juveniles and crimes that I consider 'minor', and that both governments and communities have to do a lot more to make the neighborhood peaceful.

Unfortunately, some crimes just keep coming up, and while South Africa is still grappling with ordinary crime, one of a worse kind is slowly cropping up. It's not xenophobia, though that is compounding the problem, or continued racism, but religious fundamentalism.

The day before I went to Westville Prison, I visited Chatsworth Education Centre with two other South African writers, ZP Dala and Charlotte Otter, where we had a lively discussion with children from more than six schools. I was impressed, and I found myself wishing that I had been given this kind of exposure when I was starting out to be a writer. As a teenager in St Peter's College Tororo, instead of encouragement I got laughter and derision, but I stuck to my guns. I imagine my fellow writers also suffered discouragements, so we were eager to give these kids whatever hope they could cling on to, then maybe their paths to success would be easier. So we earnestly answered their questions.

At one point, a little girl asked us, 'Who inspires you? When times are hard, as they always are for you writers, who do you look up to for the strength to go on?' Charlotte mentioned her writers, (I think it was Sarah Lotz and someone else I can't remember because I had not read their works), Dala mentioned Arundhati Roy and Salman Rushdie, I talked of my grandmother. As I was explaining to these kids how my late granny inspired me, a group of students stood up to leave. I noticed them for they all wore burqas. I had not noticed them before, but when they stood up at the same time, they became noticeable.

An hour later, Dala started receiving threatening texts, and hate tweets. Apparently, she had offended radicals when she said that she liked Salman Rushdie. What followed next is beyond my comprehension. The threats became violent, and a few days later as she was driving home, a bunch of thugs forced her off the road. Like the taxi driver Nazira, she was smart enough not to stop when flagged down, but these men were determined to hurt her, and they made it so that she either stopped or smashed her car into theirs. So she stopped, thinking they would probably just rob her, or if it was the radicals who had been buggering her maybe they would just say words to hurt her. Instead, they put a knife on her throat and then smashed a brick into her face. All because she said she admires Rushdie.

Beaten for liking a fellow writer. Photo from bookslive.co.za

I heard in the news recently that ISIS was recruiting in SA. I think that country is already struggling with a lot, to add fundamentalism and terrorism onto the headaches they already have might just break that beautiful country.

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Can Science Fiction Inspire Technological Independence in Africa?

2015-04-20T21:26:00.000+03:00

In September of 2014, during Storymoja Festival in Nairobi, I launched my first collection of speculative short stories, A Killing in the Sun, which features sci-fi, fantasy, and horror genres. A few weeks later, I got an invite to present a paper in Paris, at a workshop title Manufacture/Domestication of the Living in Science Fiction, at Le Cube, Center for Digital Creation. The organizers had chanced upon the book, and were impressed with the stories that tackled manufactured living beings. Below is a version of the talk I gave, last Friday.

In Paris, reading the sci-fi story, Lights on Water

Many African communities are technologically dependent on richer nations. Some governments, like that of Uganda, plan to boost technical capacity by promoting science subjects in schools. Already, there is a private initiative to promote the study of robotics in secondary schools in Uganda, by FundiBots. But critics of these initiatives say they are more or less copy-paste projects, that they simply borrow from research that has happened elsewhere and duplicate it. One such project is the Electronic Vehicle of Makerere University, which critics say was assembled rather than created.

In my opinion, there are two essential factors that could lead to a technological revolution in the continent, and a revolution that could guarantee true independence for many communities. The first is indigenous knowledge, the technologies that have existed in the continent for many centuries. After colonization, and westernization, African sciences were regarded as backward, as redundant and inferior compared to sciences of European origins. This sadly continues today.

Traditional medicine is one of the sciences that have persisted in African communities through the years, withstanding onslaughts of slave trade, colonialism, the invasion of Christianity and Islam, and more recently our own governments and educated elites who still hold the view that traditional medicine is redundant. In Uganda, though herbalists are allowed to operate, they face constant harassment from the government, especially when they claim to have a remedy for sicknesses that Western medicine has failed to cure. We saw this recently in Northern Uganda, when the nodding disease struck, and we've seen it with regard to AIDS. While it's true that some herbalists are quacks out to milk citizens, and that the government is right in trying to protect its people, I believe the government on a whole doesn't treat traditional healers with respect. If they did, and gave them resources to conduct research, maybe we would have already gotten a home-grown cure of AIDS.

The Ugandan government has particularly been harsh on traditional birth attendants. It has banned them from practicing, and it has threatened to imprison those who carry out deliveries. I don't know if anyone has yet been imprisoned for helping a woman deliver. I think it all comes down to money. Reproductive health is a major focus of the donors, and it generates a lot of money for both governments and non-governmental organizations. But the government cannot earn if people are not using their facilities, as is the case in most rural areas, where women prefer traditional midwives to the corrupt and rotten Western-style health facilities.

I became a stronger advocate for traditional medicine when I learnt that traditional healers in Bunyoro had perfected the science of ceasarean operations to help mothers, long before the missionaries arrived. This was observed in 1879, by a Catholic missionary Robert Felkin, and he wrote about it in a science journal.

Felkin's impression of the c-section he witnessed in pre-colonial Uganda

Now, I know, that knowledge is all but lost, and I'm not advocating for a total return to nativity. I'm not even saying that we should abandon Western technologies completely. What I'm saying is that Africa lacks confidence in itself. It believes that there was nothing before the Europeans came, that we were backward, and that whatever we have came from Europe. And that is the tragedy of many African communities. Indigenous technologies cannot evolve because African scientists think such technologies are inferior. These scientists have ignored to investigate their own brands of physics and chemistry and mathematics, and instead imitate sciences from Europe. They need to believe in their past, in their abilities, they need to believe that things can come out of Africa without the input of richer nations, and that is where science fiction can play a key role.

When I set out to write, I often think of myself as an activist, and I want to provoke people into thinking differently about their own worlds. Take the first story in A Killing in the Sun. It's titled The Leafy Man, and you can read it as a sample on smashwords. It's about genetically modified mosquitoes that run out of control in an African village, creating an apocalypse, but the main protagonist is a traditional healer, and he uses his knowledge of herbal medicine to survive, and to eradicate the mosquito from his village.

I got the idea for it at a time when I was frequently suffering from malaria. Like reproductive health, malaria is another major focus of donors, which makes it a lucrative phenomenon. It has become a big business, like AIDS, and so I've grown to distrust what they tell us about it. Sometime back between 2002 and 2004, I would fall sick almost every month. Each time I went to the clinic, the treatments got more and more expensive. The doctors told me that the parasites were becoming resistant to drugs, so I had to dig deeper into my pockets for stronger drugs. I wasn't earning a lot of money and I thought I would die. But after about two years of frequent sickness, I stopped going to the clinics. I investigated organic ways of keeping healthy, and I changed my diet, and I practiced simple malaria control habits, and for the next many years until last month, (after I moved to a house beside a swamp, and so neighbor a plethora of mosquitoes) I never fell sick from malaria. I almost became certain, like many other Ugandans, that these clinics will diagnose you as having malaria even if you don't have it just so they can make you pay for drugs. (BTW, I went to clinics of good reputation, some of which are agents of multi-national health insurance companies)

Well, during my frequent bouts with malaria, I read an article somewhere about two Indian scientists who were trying to modify the genes of the anopheles mosquito so that it is not able to transmit malaria, and that's when I saw this story.

The tragedy of we human beings is that we ignore solutions that already exist in nature. One of the biggest criticisms of biotechnology is that it is trying to fix things that are not broken. Why change the genes of the anopheles yet you can simply use already effective methods to control the disease?

The simple answer is that no one can make money out of organic methods. No one can make money out of knowledge that isn't copyrighted.

So when I write stories like The Leafy Man, I'm hoping to inspire readers to stop looking at indigenous knowledge as inferior to modern science and technology. Maybe, such stories will provoke the curiosity of scientists so they can invest in researching about indigenous technologies and see how indigenous technologies can evolve to meet challenges of the modern world.

According to this presentation, you know an alien is good if it has blue eyes

But that brings me to the second item that can boost science and technology in Africa. The president of Uganda is known to despise the arts, he is probably ignorant of role that literature, especially science fiction, has played in provoking scientific curiosity and research. There are plenty of examples of science fiction inspiring scientists in richer nations. There is the tale of Frankenstein which provoked research in the area of manufacturing of living things, and there is the Japanese Astro Boy who inspires scientists in robotics and artificial intelligence.

One question I keep asking myself is why sci-fi did not inspire a technological revolution in Africa. Certainly, the genre is not new to the continent. Only the label is new. Like in any other communities, the stories that have been passed on from generation to generation in African communities have many aspects of science fiction, like that of Luanda Magere, a man who had no flesh, and was made of stone. But why did Luanda Magere not provoke scientific curiosity in manufacturing living beings? Why did African scientists not try to create a man made out of stone? Why did they not want to create new life forms when they grew up on stories that told of mythical but human-like creatures, like ogres and shapeshifters?

Would it be because of strong attachments to religious belief? In Ugandan slang, shaman science is called Afrochem, which is short for African chemistry, and it is an assertion of the alternative sciences employed in what others call magic. But it also relates to the phenomenon where many traditional healers have adopted Western technology, yet still attach spiritual importance to disease, and yet still believe in the power of spirits. I've visited a few of these healers (while making a documentary that I never finished), and witnessed them using modern lab techniques to check for malaria parasites, and then dispensing herbal medicine. Some will send their patients to Western hospitals for a check-up, and once they get the lab results, use traditional medicine and spiritual rituals for the healing process.

Mixing science and religion controlled the thinking of scientists. There are areas they feared to venture into, like that of manufacturing of living things, for they believed this was a preserve of the gods. They left this to nature, and to the supernatural, the ultimate creators of living things.

Today, this correlation of science and religion is largely absent in industrialized nations. I believe the break came about as a result of the spread of organized religion in Europe. When people stopped believing in magic, they put their faith in religion, but then, they started to question religion, and they saw that religion is actually man-made, and so they started to think that God too is man-made. Atheism gave rise to unethical and selfish scientists. Today, scientists do not work for the greater good, nor do they work to improve nature or the living standards of their communities. Instead, they seek to increase profits, and military might, and they work to maintain the ruling systems in power.

Paradoxically, the dominant religion in industrialized countries, Christianity, gave the green light to scientific innovations that put our future at risk. Christianity teaches its believers that God gave human beings dominion over this world, which is bound to perish. It teaches about heaven and hell as being the true home of human beings, and so this home, this world, is temporary, thus it's okay to destroy it. I tackle this theme in the The Healer, the second story in my book, for I believe this kind of thinking has contributed to reckless, scientific adventures in not only creating new life forms, but also creating things that harm the planet.

I love sci-fi for it offers a broad playing field to explore humanity. I want my readers to remember that as we strive to improve our lives with technology, we are children of nature and servants of supernatural forces. Creating unnatural, biological life forms, will lead to our eternal doom.

To end with the topic of my presentation, that is, can sci-fi lead to technological independence in Africa? I believe it can, but the stories that come out have to champion local histories, to glorify indigenous knowledge and technologies, so as to inspire scientists to look within their own communities for solutions to modern problems, rather than to import foreign solutions.

Of recent, there has been a wave towards embracing African science fiction, especially in online communities, but it remains an alien genre to publishers and to the majority of readers of African fictions. This is because African writers are still expected to write about 'realistic things', and to focus on political problems, so there is no room for sci-fi. To many, sci-fi is 'unAfrican', something predominantly European and American. A recent New York Times article (I sadly can't find the link -- oh, here it is, New Wave of African Writers with an Internationalist Bent), mentioned notable writers of African descent, but left out names like Nnedi Okorafor and Sofia Samatar and Lauren Beukes, because they do not fit what the New York Times considers 'African writings'. Even the works of Ben Okri, which are essentially SFF, are labelled 'African Magical Realism', instead of sci-fi.

But times are changing, and the internet makes it possible for the genre to grow. Hopefully, in future, once Afro sci-fi has come of age, we the writers might inspire future generations of scientists and leaders with our creations.

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The History of Humankind in Johannesburg

2015-04-06T21:08:00.001+03:00

The perk of being a hardworking writer, especially if you put out a good piece of work like A Killing in the Sun, is that you get to go on these fully sponsored trips. Last month, I traveled to South Africa, to attend Time of the Writer festival, in Durban, and also to be part of the Literary Crossroads at the Geothe Institute in Jo'burg. I was with the amazing Napo Masheane, in a discussion moderated by the vibrant Niq Mhlongo. I'm not a good public speaker, I often squirm in front of an audience, but the reading I had turned out to be one of the best ever, maybe because Napo and Niq made me feel comfortable and welcome.

The Jo'burg skyline, as seen from the Melville koppie

I stayed in a quiet suburb, Melville, one of the safest places in Jo’burg. I could move around with my camera without fear of being robbed. That first day, I forgot to change money at the airport. Big mistake. I took a tuktuk to a bank. I was indeed surprised to see these in South African. They tell me they are still new, and have not been rolled out to all cities, but I’m glad they had the service in Melville, for they are so much cheaper than taxis. My driver, a Nigerian who goes by the name BB, told me that all tuktuk drivers were foreigners. I could not understand why, though he tried to explain that South Africans don't like doing the dirty work. He has lived in Jo'burg since 2001 and has suffered xenophobia and stereotyping, but he likes it there and he only goes back to Nigeria once every few years.

Sights of South Africa. Whatever art this is!

At the bank, I realized I had made a mistake in not changing money at the airport. They asked for my passport, then for proof of residence, for my visa, and they started making phone calls, I don't know to who, and I couldn't understand what they were saying over the phone for they were speaking in their language, though I heard the bank teller spelling out my names, my date of birth, my passport number. The calls freaked me out. I only wanted to get a few rand so I could buy lunch, why was there such a fuss? I was starving. Finally, after about an hour, the teller gets a phone call, and she tells me, ‘Now everything is okay, you can get your money.’ By then, I had lost appetite. All that time just to change 50 euros?

His t-shirt reads, Not Made in China.

Getting a simcard the next day, I thought it would be another hustle, and I was prepared for an hour of them making phone calls and reading out my name to whoever at the other end, but it was quick and easy. I guess it was just the banks being pricky (but why would they go through all that trouble when all I wanted to change was fifty euros?)

I could not go to all the attractions in Jo’burg, since I had only two free days after the reading, so I had to make choices. I could visit Mandela's home in Soweto, but I thought the Cradle of Mankind would be a better outing. I convinced my publisher, and she was so kind to take time off her busy schedule to drive me all the way to the caves. I thought we were going to a mountainside, but the caves turned out to be underground.

Experts don't think that the caves were inhabited, because it is a steep drop into the ground. They cannot imagine that homonids might have used rope ladders to get in and out. There is a certain arrogance that modern man has. He thinks he is more intelligent than his ancestors. But if homonids could control fire, if they could make stone tools, then they could make rope ladders to descend into deep holes. Ha, archeologists have no imagination. Just because they have never found fossil rope ladders doesn't mean there were no rope ladders two million years ago. I know, they use other clues to determine if a cave was inhabited, but there might have been a flood (or something) that wiped away all evidence. This is two million years ago, you know, and you need a lot of imagination to come up with what life was like in this cave. I think those guys lived in there, and had a hell of a great party.

The Elephant Room, a chamber in the caves. I think someone sculpted that trunk.

There’s a lake in the caves. It has never been explored. They don’t know how deep it is. They once sent in divers, but the rope got cut, and the diver's body surfaced sixteen days later. They do not say if the body was eaten, or if some creature in the water killed him, but I wonder, why would they stop exploring the lake just because of an accident? I think they don't know what killed the diver, and I think they are afraid of what they will find in the water. Well, they claim there is nothing alive in the lake. But how can they be certain there are no living creatures in there if they don't know how deep it is? They haven't even visited all its shores, and the caves are endless. Every day, they find a new chamber. It’s an active site, with excavations going on alongside tourist visits. I think homonids still live in there, two million years later, maybe they have evolved into creatures who can only live in the dark caves (By the way, AfroSF 2 comes out soon, be sure to check out my story with pre-historic cave dwelling creatures). I say, archeologists have no imagination.

Found anything? A live excavation inside the cave.

I found the archeological museum at Maropeng to be a waste of time.
I think it was designed for children.

After the caves, I got brave enough, and toured Jo'burg. I just couldn’t leave without seeing a bit of the city life. I went through Hillbrow, which they say was a center of resistance during apartheid, one of the few suburbs that defied segregation laws. The iconic Ponte tower was particularly of interest, for mixed-race couples lived there in those times. But it fell into disuse over the years, gangs took it over, two floors became brothels and crime hide outs. Then, it recently got refurbished, and is now one of the places to live in Jo'burg. I think that building tells the story of South Africa.

From Hillbrow, I went to Newtown. I passed scenes very similar to Kampala, bustling markets, colorful wares, music blaring from pick-up trucks in which people hawked DVDs and music CDs. It was very much Kampala without the bodabodas and striped taxis. Though just 6:30 pm, I passed a bar that was filled to capacity, with a lot of drunken people on the pavements, dancing. I wished I could take out my camera and capture it all, but my hosts had warned me not to flash expensive gadgets in the streets, for that is a sure way of attracting muggers.

Dancers perform at The Market Theater

Even with my camera safely hidden away in the bag, I could feel the fear in my bones, the sensation that someone would jump at me and rob me. The fear was alive in my skin, crawling through the pores like worms. I did try to ignore all the negative news I’d heard about the city, but I kept seeing signposts with ‘crime spot’ warnings, and I kept recalling this youtube clip of a live robbery, of SABC journalists getting mugged with the cameras rolling, and I thought, well, maybe Jo’burg really has a crime problem. I feared to even ask for directions, for I feared they would notice I’m a foreigner and rob me, but I got lost and I did ask for directions and I reached The Market Theater without any incident.

I don’t think you’ll find this theater in many tourist guides. I recommend visiting it, especially to see a performance. It is known as South Africa’s ‘Theatre of the Struggle’, opened in 1976, the same week as the Soweto Uprisings. The founders converted an old Indian Fruit Market into three theaters, I guess that’s where it gets its name. Over the years, it staged controversial plays that tackled the inequities of the aperthied, and was one of only a few places were blacks and whites shared the stage and performed for non-racial audiences. That’s the info on the plaque outside the building.

In front of the magnificent theater.

As I returned to my hotel in Melville, it struck me that I had just made a journey through human history. I wondered if the homonids two million years ago also struggled with issues of segregation and discrimination, and I wondered if the world would be a better place had there been no racial differences, and I wondered if two million years later there will be an utopia where our descendants live without any kind of injustice.

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Hats and Feathers: The Fashionable Men of Karamoja

2014-12-07T21:19:00.001+03:00

Every time I visit Karamoja, it feels like I've stepped into another world. I particularly like the colorful attire, which reminds me of Nepal, in many ways, (strange that they both love colorful clothing, and they both worship cattle). The one thing I can't get enough of while in Karamoja, however, is hats, especially those with feathers attached. I can't keep my fingers off the camera each time I see one, and I am never able to capture what it is that fascinates me about this fashion. I keep wondering if they adopted it in the recent past, or if it is something that evolved from ancient days. I would sure love to investigate it with an afro-futuristic lens.

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The Darkness Behind My Book

2014-09-28T19:20:00.001+03:00

During the launch of my first collection of short stories, A Killing in the Sun, one very irritating question kept coming up. What inspired you? It's the brother of that question every writer hates. Where did you get that idea? Alongside it came its sisters, how did you get into sci-fi? Why do you write sci-fi and fantasy? I always pause before answering these questions, because it's like asking me how I learnt how to breathe.

Well, maybe not, but I don't like that question because I think I'm never inspired. I always work very hard to drag stories out of the depths where they are buried in a pile of poop. To say 'inspired' is to make it seem like the idea dropped out of the sky and fell into my head. But it's never like that. Every minute, things go into me and they have to come out at some point. The life I live dictates the stories I tell. Am I inspired to live? Well, no, I'm never inspired to live. I just live because I found myself alive. It's a struggle to stay alive, to survive, to find even just an iota of happiness. The experience of it floods my brains like raw excreta. I have to digest all this poop, and then vomit out a refined product that smells of blood-stained roses. These are very negative images with which to describe myself and my writing, but I don't lived a life of sweet roses. Rather, it's one of pain and fear and self-doubt and agony and endless rejection. In other words, life sucks, and it will always suck, and only through writing can I make sense of it.

Take the title story, A Killing in the Sun, shortlisted for the Commonwealth Short Story Prize in 2013. It's about a soldier facing the firing squad, but memories of his childhood surface to turn his execution into a horror. I first wrote it in 2002, I think. At that time, two soldiers in Karamoja were accused of killing a priest, and shot dead after a trial that some people said was questionable. Their pictures appeared on the front pages. One captured my attention. In it the soldier's zip was open, exposing a very clean and white pair of underpants. That image troubled me.

It made me think about the first few years of my life. The night I was born, so I'm told, my mother was screaming in labor. The neighbors did not come to help, for they thought soldiers had attacked our home. There was gunfire that night, for it was on the eve of New Year, and maybe the drunken soldiers, lacking fireworks, were celebrating by shooting into the air. Only one brave woman came to my mother's help. She had nothing but a bed sheet wrapped around her waist, and she drove like mad to take my mother to hospital (by the way, this is how I got the name Dilman, but that's a story for another day). Thus I came to this world under threat of being shot by a drunken, trigger-happy soldier.

For the next ten years there was a civil war in Uganda. It was common for us to find guns and bullets abandoned in our playgrounds. We kept hearing stories of children who were blown up because they played with strange metals. News of people disappearing forever was rather common. One of my earliest memories is of seeing a soldier walking behind a long line of people. Each person carried a heavy piece of luggage. Loot, we were told. The soldier had taken a walk in some neighborhood, looting shops and homes, and he had forced these people to carry the booty to the army barracks. He kept shooting to make them walk faster. The image reminded me of slave trade pictures in history books.

So when I saw the photo of a soldier with his pants unzipped, a few moments before he died, all these things came tumbling through my head and I had to write that story. Some will call that inspiration. I call it taking a poop to relieve myself of accumulated garbage.

I could give similar background material for most of the stories. Like The Doctor's Truck, from my many years working in rural areas with NGOs on community development; Okello's Honeymoon, from a pretty disastrous relationship, or maybe from the fear of getting hitched; The Leafy Man, from an article I read about two scientists trying to change the genes of a mosquito, and I read it at a time when I was sick with malaria every month, and I was scared I would one time go down and never wake up.

Signing a copy for Auma Obama, the first buyer of the book.
Photo courtesy of: Nyana Kakoma, of So Many Stories

Reading from the book during the launch at Storymoja Festival 2014, Nairobi.
Photo courtesy of: Nyana Kakoma, So Many Stories

Two stories in the collection were born from the two years I spent in Nepal. These are Lights on Water, and A Wife and A Slave. Both are sci-fi, set in the future, and both discuss racism in its worst form. I've already written about my experiences in Nepal, but to give you a hint, at one time this woman, a friend to whose house I was going, told her baby something similar to 'that black man is going to eat you.' She was laughing as the baby wailed in sheer terror. At another time a girl screamed on seeing me, thinking she had seen a demon. In Nepali/Hindu cultures, black is associated with demons.

The trauma of living in such an environment gave me evil thoughts, like raping that woman and impregnating her with a child. What I was thinking about was that if she had a black child, she would not think of black people as demons. She would not use me to scare her child. She would not tell her child that I eat people. The reason they think habsis are demons is because they have never lived with habsis. So rape and impregnate one with a kalo child and they will be forced to love all kalo manches.

At that time, I had not read Nnedi Okorafor's book, Who Fears Death. I only got to read it this year, and it was like looking into a dark mirror and seeing my dark self grinning at me. That is the power of speculative fiction, of sci-fi, fantasy, and horror. It presents a platform to examine humanity from a unique point of view. Think of George Orwell's 1984, would it have been as powerful if it were not sci-fi? And Lord of the Rings, born out of the same environment of Nazi Europe, would it have been as powerful if it were not fantasy? If I had not read Who Fears Death, I would have never imagined that my reaction to this Nepali woman was a seed of using weaponized rape in ethnic cleansing. Even if I had read the article that got Nnedi to writing that book, I don't think it would have forced me to re-examine myself. I would have continued to believe that I was a good guy, that I could never descend to such bestial evil, that my reaction was justifiable. I could read that article in one sitting, but the book, I lived with it for two weeks, whenever I got a break from work, whenever I was in a bus stuck in traffic, and every word I read spoke to me with a strong voice.

I had to ask Nnedi what she thought of this, and she responded in a tweet, see below.

@dilmandila that was some REAL writing. Thank you for sharing it. I know that took a lot. Wow. few can write with such honesty. *Applause*.
— Nnedi Okorafor, PhD (@Nnedi) September 25, 2014

After reading an advance copy of A Killing in the Sun, Ivor Haartman, editor of AfroSF, sent me an email, saying he was working on AfroSF 2, and he wanted me to contribute. He particularly wanted a story set in that dark world of the stories mentioned above, Lights on Water and A Wife and A Slave. That world? I don't like even thinking about that world and I was hoping never to go there again. But he said, "Yes, I hear you there, it is a scary world, very scary, and that's why I like it, it's a big warning, a needed warning."

I was recently chatting with a friend, someone I met in Nepal, and she told me, 'Surely Dilman, you did experience some good things in Nepal.' I did. A lot of good things, which kind of outweighed the bad, and which is why I stayed there for two years, but I wish my mind was like the rest of you guys. I wish it could store the good, and never remember the bad. But my head is a terrible thing, and all the shit that happens in my life ends up in a big cooking pot up there, only to come out as stories. Which is why I call myself a social activist, for I want these stories to speak to the reader the way Who Fears Death spoke to me, the way it showed me my dark self.

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Why I Started a Literary Magazine

2014-09-05T23:57:00.002+03:00

Many say it’s madness to start a literary magazine. Such a venture, especially one that focuses on African literature, can’t make money because, they say, there is no market to sustain literature on the continent. When I mooted the idea of Lawino to a friend, her advice was, ‘Don’t start it. All work and no pay makes Ojok a poor boy.’ It was discouraging, hearing that I would have to put a lot of energy into the magazine, and maybe never get paid for it. Still, I had this burning urge, for I wanted a journal to promote new writing from Africa, with particular focus on Uganda. ‘Haha,’ this friend laughed. ‘Promote Ugandan writers? You are wasting your time. They never submit their work.’

But I believed that Ugandan writers don’t send out their work because they have nowhere to submit. I think my career would have kicked off a lot earlier if I had somewhere to submit my writing, somewhere close to home, with editors who understand my environment and with readers who live in the cultures I write about. As it is, I had no platform to build a career on.

I started actively writing fiction at an early age, sometime late in September of 1993. I was in Senior Three. St. Peter’s College, in Tororo. End of year examinations were around the corner. Students were panicking, terrified of ‘winds’, slang for failing. If you got ‘blown by winds,’ it meant you were expelled from school for very poor academic performance. However, while other students panicked, I lolled on my bed, legs hanging up in the air, as I read The Stand, by Stephen King. That was the first adult horror I was reading. I just couldn’t put it down. A friend, Tusubira, stopped by my bed on his way to class. He stared at me for many minutes. I became uncomfortable.

‘What?’ I asked him.

‘Kale you,’ he said. ‘It’s a two weeks to exam and you are reading a novel.’ I only smiled at him. ‘Do you cheat?’ he added. ‘You don’t even have notes, yet you are going to pass. Do you cheat?’

I had skipped many classes, to read novels. The school had a big library, one of the largest in Eastern Uganda, with thousands of books that were gathering dust, unread, begging me to read them. I spent a lot of time in the library, and I stole many books as well, but all the time reading novels. The previous year, I had run around begging friends for notes. Sometimes I read their notes as they took a break from revising, especially as they ate. Yet I passed the exams with such decent grades that I maintained my place in ‘M’, a stream reserved for the brightest students. But this boy knew I never cheat. It was easy to think I cheated. In retrospect, I now know I easily passed exams because I read a lot of novels.

‘God is so unfair,’ another boy, Emukule, said. ‘Some of us spend sleepless nights in class but we fail. Yet this one wastes his father’s money on novels and he passes.’

Then, a third boy, Bruce, asked, ‘But why do you read a lot of novels?’

And I replied, ‘Because I want to write them one day.’

I had tried writing the year before. The central character was a superhero, modelled on The Phantom but with Ninja-like abilities. I never got beyond the first page. I tried writing a play for the Scripture Union, and for the church at home. I remember buying two books about writing drama for churches. I was a devout born-again Christian at that time. But both the SU and the church were not interested in original stuff. They rehashed Heaven’s Gates and Hell’s Flames. So I gave up. Though I had toyed with the idea of writing, until that moment I didn’t know that I wanted it as a career.

Bruce laughed. ‘You? To write a novel?’ He laughed so hard that tears came out of his eyes.

So I started writing. It might have been that same day, or the day after, but certainly it was before the exams. It was a crime book, about a rich woman who hires her childhood friend (his name was Rob, Robert Rugunda) to find robbers who have taken her stash of dollars. ‘Why me,’ the protagonist asks her. ‘I’m not a cop.’ And she replies, ‘You are a good detective. Remember you used to catch pen and pencil thieves while we were at school?’ So Rob takes the job, and it’s gunfight after gunfight, as he uncovers a plot that goes beyond mere robbery into one that involves a government take over. I blame that plot on the likes of Robert Ludlum, Fredrick Forsythe, and James Hardley Chase.

When this Bruce found me on my bed, writing, he frowned in puzzlement. ‘What are you going to call it?’ he asked. ‘Chase the Dollar,’ I said. And he laughed again. This time he laughed so hard that he fell on the floor, holding his sides. He went round telling everybody, and soon the whole dorm was laughing at me. They changed the title to ‘Chase the Adhola’ and they mocked me, ‘Why do you want to chase the Jop’Adhola from their home?’

The First War, the first story I published.

Their laughter didn’t stop me, nor did that of my parents and brothers. ‘You are simply copying another book,’ one said, trying to convince me to abandon the project and stick to my studies. I was not copying any book, but I didn’t tell him that. I passed the exams and stayed in M. I continued to write during the holidays. I lost my faith in organised religion, and became a backslider, as the Pentecostals used to say, and it would be ten years before I went to church again. I wrote, and wrote, and in July of 1994, as the World Cup raged in the US, just before my Senior Four mock exams, I took the train to Nairobi and gave the book to East African Publishers. I had enjoyed their book, John Kiriamiti’s My Life in Crime. I believed they would like Chase The Dollars even better. Well, my Nairobi adventure deserves a whole book of its own, but I got a harsh rejection. They didn’t even read the book. The receptionist gave me one look, saw how dirty I was, and said, ‘We don’t accept handwritten material. Get it typed.’

The second story that appeared
in the Sunday Vision

I returned home one week to exams. Luckily, they didn’t expel me for absconding from school. I passed in second grade. Then I continued to write, but I never managed to get the manuscript typed until the early 2000s, and even then, I only managed to have the first chapter done. I burnt that book, and wrote another, which I called Osu. I typed it up neatly.

I had just finished university. I didn’t want to work for a salary. I wanted a career in writing. I searched for a publisher, and then reality struck. I had nowhere to submit my work. Most publishers, including East African Publishers (who I learnt that their full name is East African Educational Publishers), preferred text books. None wanted a novel. The best option I had was Fountain Publishers, in Uganda. I gave them Osu, and they gave me encouraging words. I’ve never heard from them since then. I couldn’t go to FEMRITE for they favoured women writers.

For the first time since I started writing, I realised that I might be chasing childish dreams. By 2001, after eight years of trying, I had published only one short story, in The Crusader, and the newspaper collapsed before they could pay me the ten thousand shillings for the story. I wrote another story, novella length, for The Monitor to serialize, for they had done it with Mary Karooro Okurut’s The Invisible Weevil. One of their editors (I forget his name, but he was a Musoga) told me, ‘We can’t serialise your work. We ran Okurut’s book because she is famous. You are not.’ Ngrrr. After all those years of trying to write, I was like a blocked sewage pipe. I needed an outlet for the stories bubbling in me or else I would drown in that shit. But no one cared. No publisher was interested.

I would have given up. I nearly gave up, for who wants live like a malfunctioning sewage pipe? I got a day job with an NGO, and started to work as a volunteer, interviewing HIV-infected people on their death beds. A horrific job. It filled me with more stories, but I was severely constipated because I simply had nowhere to send these stories.

Until I saw a piece of fiction in The Sunday Vision, and they wanted more. I thought I could write better than what they had published. I sent them one, called The First War, which they printed under the title Cowards Live Longer. Well, I have already written before about how Simon Kaheru, Joachim Buwembo, and a lady whose name I forget (it started with A), how they patted my back and gaped in wonder at the story. I have already said how much getting such a pat from these editors gave me the energy to dream on, to persevere. I wrote three more short stories for The Sunday Vision. Those were the happiest days of my life, at that time at least. And then, they closed the fiction section, along with the joys I got from seeing my name in print.

After that, came another phase of constipation. I again wondered why I bother writing yet there were no publishers of fiction in Uganda. I joined an email group, which had people like Binyavanga Wainana and Kinyanjui Wanjiru. I suggested that someone should start a literary magazine, and the idea caught fire, and so Kwani? was born. Yet I never got published in Kwani? for at that time I thought I wanted to write horror stories. I don’t think they liked anything I sent them.

Soon, the constipation returned. I was again a blocked sewage pipe. But this one was short lived, not just because of the encouragement I got from Simon, Joachim, and the Sunday Vision team. I discovered the internet, and a plethora of ezines to which I could submit my horror work. I plunged back into writing, and soon got published. Yet I did not derive much joy in seeing myself in print again, for these ezines were based far outside home. I think I even stripped my stories of overtly African cultures to make friendlier to these alien magazines and their alien readers. It was a very demoralising, and I soon stopped bothering to write for them.

Instead, I wrote with the hope that one day an African magazine that published the kind of stories I wrote would crop up. I wrote and wrote, for I had hope that things will improve. Indeed, time changed. One of the stories I wrote back then, A Killing in the Sun, which is a horror fantasy, was shortlisted for the Commonwealth Short Story Prize in 2013. Today, many of these stories are part of my first full length book, a collection of speculative short fiction, thanks to an adventurous South African publisher, Duduzile Mabaso, of Black Letter Media.

Here it is. My first collection of stories.

Today, the African writer does not have to feel constipated as I did, nor does s/he have to feel like a blocked sewage pipe. There are many platforms one can submit to, like AfroSF, Saraba, Jalada, Sooo Many Stories, KalahariReview, Kwani?, Short Story Day Africa, BN Poetry Awards and Writivism, and book publishers like CassavaRepublic, Fox and Raven, and Black Letter Media. Yet I still remember those dark years, and I don’t want other writers to go through such trauma. One more litmag, one more platform, won’t hurt. Rather, it expands the options available. Writers do need a platform that has roots in their lives and cultures. A writer cannot grow if this platform is far outside their community.

You can read here the first issue of Lawino Magazine

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Seven Reasons Why Women Fear Commitment

2014-07-20T17:37:00.000+03:00

Women are more afraid of commitment than men. They’ll end perfectly good relationships for no reason at all. Even when they seem perfectly happy in a relationship, so happy that the man is encouraged to buy a ring, the moment he proposes, things start to go downhill. Some of them become serial heartbreakers. They make men need them, and when he’s firmly in a girl’s grasp, when he starts to dream of having children with her, she gets scared and tells him, ‘You are too clingy.’ Well, no man has ever figured out what women want, but I think I have. You might think of the good old reasons, that they are pursuing a career, or that they want to travel and see the world, or that they fear children will make them shapeless, or that they were hurt once and so would rather stay single. Far from it.

A Labwor woman in Karenga. I wonder if she would fear commitment!
What reasons would she give to avoid getting hitched?

1 Women are afraid of men who love them too much. Apparently, the modern guy has seen Titanic, and wants to be a replica of Jack. But the modern girl isn’t impressed. She doesn’t want a man who superglues on her, who calls her every few minutes. They don’t want men who stay home to help with supper rather than go to the bar to watch soccer. Don’t call me pig. I heard all this from women themselves. I thought about this article after I stumbled upon a note a friend of mine, the writer and poet Rosey Sembatya, made on facebook. In it she gives eighteen reasons as to why she is afraid to commit, and four of these had something to do with the attention the man gives her. “He’ll adore me and I won’t know what to do,” she writes. “He’ll be my friend and I won’t know what to do. He’ll like coming home at 5pm just to chat as I prepare dinner. Who said I’ll be home at 5pm? He’ll like crazy buy me flowers like I said I like them.”

2. Women fear the knight will transform into a pig. The man she falls in love with might be a fantasy figure straight out of the glossy magazines, a dashing bombshell with a six-pack. But disfigures all man. He will advance in his career, and get too busy to go to the gym. The money will flow in, and he’ll have one too many beers, and too much pork, and then his tummy will balloon until he looks pregnant, and the fat will cause his neck to disappear. And as Rosey writes, “He’ll grow hair in his nose. Then he’ll refuse, or forget, to clip the hair in his nose until it escapes and connects with his moustache, until it becomes gray. Then he will wake up having drooled and want to kiss me on the lips.”

3. Women never know what they want. In researching this article, I took a peek into the abanonya (those searching for love) section of Bukedi newspaper, where the bold women put ads for the kind of men they are looking for. Many of them give very contradictory characteristics in what they want to see in a man. There are those who write that they want a man who is either a Born Again Christian (the radical holy-spirit firebrands) or a Muslim. Does that make sense?

A Nepali woman. She lives in a culture where staying single is not an option.

4. Women fear men who cook better than they do. This is a strange one. You would imagine that with all this feminist talk and women liberation circus, they would fall head over heels for a man who does the cooking. But no. They prefer to do the cooking. Maybe they are afraid that if the man is a good cook, then he will always find fault with their cooking, and thus they will never be able to satisfy him. I was once in a relationship where she never allowed me to cook. She limited my role in the kitchen to washing the dishes, boiling water for tea, and boiling rice. She thought if she allowed me to cook, I would feed her blackened beans, or half-cooked potatoes. Then one day she saw a picture of a dish I made, and she flipped out. ‘You must have bought it from a Chinese restaurant,’ she said. Maybe we broke up because she realized I was a master chef. J

{Read: Quick recipes forthe love hunting bachelor.}

There are no secrets to cooking great dishes, as many modern men have discovered. They stay single well into their thirties (often because they cannot find women who are ready to settle down), and this forces them to learn to cook. Some will go to restaurants, but eating out every meal is not only costly but outright boring, so these men spend the long years of bachelorhood unconsciously perfecting their culinary skills. When they get bored of pasta and boiled eggs, they search the internet for recipes, then they simply turn on the stove, throw a few things into the pan, and bingo, a Chinese dish. Why then are women afraid of men who cook better than they do?

A dish of pasta, vegetables and beef, made by a bachelor. Me :-)

5. Women are afraid of a man’s wardrobe. ‘My future one will love pink,’ Rosey writes, ‘and have pink boxers, and pink shorts, and pink shirts, and a pink key holder to match.’ Hmmm…. They will force him to wear costumes of their choice. They think his choice of clothing will kill them with the laundry. ‘He’ll say he feels adored when he sees me washing his jeans with my bare hands.’ A long time ago, an aunt visited us, and she was telling my mother how she hates washing her husband’s jeans. She decided to hide them, and instead bought him a bunch of coats and ties. ‘You look more charming in these,’ she said. He had never won a coat or tie in his life. He drove a bus for a living. She complained about how impossible it is to wash grease off jeans. He did not see how he could go to work in a tie. He wanted his jeans. A fight broke up. They divorced.

6. Women set very weird standards in what they look for in a man. Recently, I was talking to a woman who works at the driving school I went to. She is in her thirties, and not yet married. I asked her what she is waiting for, and she said she has not yet met the right kind of man. She wants a widower, or if not a divorcee, who already has a child under the age of three. She is a born again Christian, and she says it has been her prayer request for seven years now. Every Sunday, she goes to church and asks God for that one thing. Please send me a single man who already has a child under three. ‘Why?’ I asked her. ‘So that I can test myself and see if I am a good woman,’ she said. ‘You see,’ she added, ‘loving another woman’s child is the hardest test a mother can face. I want God to give me such a man so that I can see if I turn into an evil step mother.’

Nothing she said made sense to me, but it clearly was an excuse to stay single. I don’t know what her history is. Maybe she suffered a terrible childhood under a step mother and wants to make amends. I don’t know why she bothers God with such an insane request. I can only pity the scores of men whose heart she has broken because they don’t meet her criteria.

She reminded me of another lady I tried to date, a long time ago, a Mutoro who said she preferred light skinned men. Not white men, just light skinned Africans. Unfortunately for her, most of the men who picked interest in her were dark, like me, and the most insistent of all was a guy so dark he looked blue. He was a sweet man who sent her flowers and chocolates every week. Poor guy.

Rosey Sembatya, who wrote the note. Pre-commitment fears.
Read it here on facebook

7. Women are afraid they will get less sex once they are married. This has to be one of the greatest paradoxes in life. Single men think they don’t get enough bed action because they don’t have a hole dedicated solely to them. They know how difficult it is to convince a woman to open her legs, that’s why they use their hands, or end up gay: D

Single men envy married men, who they think get bongobongo whenever they are horny. But married women complain that their husbands don’t poke them at all. They think single women get all the action because single ladies have all the freedom in the world. At least when you are still single, a commitment-shy lady will say, you can do bongobongo anytime you wish to. All you have to do is wink at any man you see, whether he is a bodaboda rider, or a drunkard staggering home, or a hunky model, and you’ll be sure to catch his attention for chances are that he is a starving animal. But when you are married, hmmm, you are stuck with one guy whose performance leaves you hanging in suspense.

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Potraits from Kampala's Literary Scenes

2014-06-21T09:54:00.001+03:00

She runs the Ranchers Seafood and Steakhouse, where many literary events take place.
This photo was taken during the Commonwealth Writers

Melissa Kiguwa, a feminist and poet, with Helen Nyana, a writer and publisher.

Helen Nyana, writer, publisher, photographer

David Kaiza, Writer and Editor

A participant during the Commonwealth Writers Conversation, Kampala, 14 June 2014. She was not asleep.

A participant during the Commonwealth Writers Conversation, Kampala, 14 June 2014

Patricia, writer.

A participant during the Commonwealth Writers Conversation, Kampala, 14 June 2014

Jackee Batanda, writer.

Rosey Sembatya, writer and board member of FEMRITE

Daphne, a poet, attending the readers and writers club at FEMRITE

Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi, writer, and winner of the Commonwealth Short Story Prize 2014

Goretti Kyomuhendo, writer, and founder of African Writers Trust

A participant at the Commonwealth Writers Conversation.

A poet performs during OpenMic at the Uganda Museum

A poet after her performance during OpenMic at the Uganda Museum

Participants during the Commonwealth Writers Conversation, Kampala, 14 June 2014

Kelsey Claire Hagens

Beverly and Melisa, during a panel discussion at the Writivism Festival 2014

At FEMRITE readers club

Nii Ayikwei Parkes, Writer, Poet, attends the Writivism Festival 2014

Clifton Gachagua, Poet, Writer, Editor at Kwani

Billy Kahora, Managing Editor of Kwani

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How to Enjoy A Holiday in Nigeria

2014-06-10T14:32:00.002+03:00

Everything they told me about Nigeria turned out to be true. They are loud people. They talk as though they are quarreling, much like Indians and Nepalis. I have a theory that a combination of high temperatures, humidity, and eating too much pepper (piro in South Asia, pepe in Nigeria), gives one a big mouth and a hot temper.

A street food vendor in Lagos. The city is full of yellow and green.

On the plane, one Nigerian man made the Ethiopian air-hostess cry, because she couldn't give him the food he wanted. She tried to tell him, 'I'm sorry I can't serve you that,' but she doesn't know proper English, so she said, 'I'm sorry for you.' The Nigerian exploded. 'Sorry for me? Did you pay my air ticket?' The others seated around him soon joined in harassing her. They wanted wine. She served them. They insisted on getting more than the tiny bottle they were being given. It nearly turned into a riot. Too much pepe, I think. Their outburst made the poor woman cry. I felt bad for her. I nearly cried too. I had to explain to the ogah what the woman was trying to tell him, and then he felt so ashamed of himself that he followed her to the back room (what do they call that room in the airplane where hostesses hang out?) and he apologized to her.

Boarding the Ethiopian airlines

Granted, not all Nigerians are like this. I was there for only a short time, and didn't get the chance to see the places I wanted to visit, like the Badagry slave museum and the Fela Kuti museum. But I totally enjoyed it. And would love to go back there. The thing about Nigeria is not its many attractions, but it's people. They have a unique culture, a way of life that is close to the comical, for an outsider, and for me who sees humor in everything, I had a great time. I would love to go back.

The streets of Lagos are full of Maruwa, three-wheel cars.

They warned me before setting off that I needed to have a yellow fever vaccination certificate, that I would not be allowed into the country if I did not have one. I set off with a vaccination card, which had a bunch of shots that I had got before going to Nepal. I assumed yellow fever was one of them. But at Entebbe airport, an official almost stopped me from boarding the plane. I think she wanted a bribe. She said I did not have a yellow fever vaccination. It had happened to me before, but this was at the boarder inMalaba, never at the airport. I told her that I travel a lot, and surely of the twenty or so shots listed in that card, yellow fever had to be one of them. She insisted she could not see it, and so she would not let me board the plane. She claimed she was doing me a favor since the moment I reach Nigeria without a yellow fever card they would deport me immediately. That is when I became certain that she wanted a bribe.

They call this a bus. They overload passengers.

I then played a trick that I always do whenever confronted with such corrupt officials. In the pretext of looking for my wallet, I opened my bag and pulled out my DSLR camera. When she saw it, like all the other corrupt officials, I saw panic leap onto her face. 'Are you a journalist?' she asked. I smiled at her, and she gave me a nervous laugh. She handed me back my vaccination card and passport, and said, 'If the Nigerians ask you for yellow fever, say it is this one.' She pointed at an item in the list of shots, Typhod, and before I could say anything, she shoved me away towards the Ethiopian Airlines desk.

Lagos is full of vehicles in
dangerous mechanical conditions

But all the way to Nigeria, I was worried. The camera trick worked on the Ugandan official, because she was afraid of the Ugandan media, but a Nigerian wouldn't give a rats ass about my camera. I was nervous as we queued up to face the immigration officer. A guy from Curacao was pulled out of the line. 'You don't have yellow fever vaccination', they told him. Of course all this was done hush-hush, without anyone overhearing, but he later told me what happened, when we met at the function which we both were going to attend. 'Why do I need it?' he asked the official. 'To enter the country,' the official said. 'Isn't my passport and visa enough?' he asked. 'No. The yellow fever vaccination is more important. If you don't have it, you will be deported.' The poor guy was at a loss of what to say. Just as he thought they would deny him entry, the official said, 'But if you have a hundred dollars...' The Curacao guy's face lit up with a smile. 'No,' he said, I don't have a hundred. But I have fifty.' The official then walked over to his boss, whispered, and the boss gave a slight nod. The official came back to the Curacao, 'Boss says fifty is okay. But you have to add ten for me. Put it in your passport.'

A palm wine seller. When in Nigeria, make it a point to taste it!

They took his money. Crafty like immigration officials everywhere. At least in Kenya, when they fleeced Reiza of a hundred dollars because she did not have a yellow fever vaccination (and she was not even going to Kenya, she was changing planes enroute to South Sudan), they gave her a certificate. The Nigerians just took the sixty dollars and sent the poor guy on his way.

When my turn reached, they did not even bother to look into the card I was carrying. They saw it was a vaccination card and assumed it had a yellow fever shot. I secretly sighed in relief.

The airport itself was hot and stuffy, without any air conditioning. It looked dirty and overcrowded, too noisy, with hundreds of Nigerians screaming at immigration and customs officials. It might be richer than Uganda, but at least we know how to give visitors a good impression of our country. The Nigerians had to pass their baggage through customs. Foreigners however were not required to go through customs, which I found weird. They do not trust their own people? One very fat custom official was yelling into the face of a pregnant woman, in pidgin English. I didn't understand most of it. Two of his friends were trying to calm him down. 'She's pregnant, don't shout at her.' The woman was shouting back. I wonder what that was all about.

eba, one of the delicacies of Nigeria.
And below, wild meat on sale at the roadside.

Outside the airport, we were taken to a taxi that had been sent to pick us up. 'Hurry! Get in!' the driver shouted at us. Then I saw two soldiers running towards us, weilding guns. 'Go! Go!' One soldier shouted, holding his gun like he wanted to shoot. 'Get in quick!' the driver yelled at us again. We scrambled into the van. I was certain Boko Haram had attacked the airport, and they were whisking us quickly to safety. The vehicle sped away. My heart was pumping fast, like in the cliché, expecting to hear gunfire at any moment now.

Only then did I notice that we were the only ones being whisked away. Other people stood idly on the kerb. Other soldiers looked bored. 'What was that about?' I asked the driver. I did expect to hear something about terrorism, but he instead said, 'We had parked in a restricted area. You see, you are international guests. We did not want you to walk all the way to the car park, and the soldiers gave us only one minute to let you board.' I felt anger stir. I would not have minded the walk to the park to board the taxi without any drama. Maybe this guy gave the soldiers kitu kidogo to allow him to park in a restricted area, but I never understood why he did it. The soldiers must have put a 'No Parking' sign in that area for a reason, but why then do they allow some people to park for only one minute, even if it is to pick 'international guests?'

The word international, I later came to learn, has a special place in Nigera. I spent so short a time that I never fully comprehended the value they put on that word. But I'll give you two examples to illustrate. Markets and churches. We went to a rundown market along the Highway from Port Harcout to Bayelsa. It had only a few vegetable stalls, and a few concrete stands, but it had a big sign proclaiming it to be an 'international market', because it sold goods from outside Nigeria. I wondered what then they called the high class shopping malls in Lagos, 'super international markets'?Yet, calling a market 'international' just because it sells goods from across the boarder would mean every market and every shop is 'international', why then call some local? It defeated my understanding. But I could see why churches include the word in their names. To attract more worshipers (and therefore more money). It seems to me that to say something is 'international', it then is of superior quality. In Bayelsa state, I had a chance to see one of these international churches. The photo says it all.

God's Grace Ministry Inc. Worlwide, Bayelsa, Nigeria.
Why would a church have the word incorporation in its name?

A friend who is married to a Nigerian woman told me that their version of Christianity is rather comical. They are very religious people, I think. As we drove to our hotel, I asked the taxi-driver, 'Who is Murtala Muhammed?' for I noticed that the airport is called Murtala Muhammed International Airport. And he replied, 'A prophet'. I was stunned. Why would they name such an important airport after a prophet? Is he a very powerful prophet? 'He is a dead man,' the driver said. 'They cannot name a place after a person who is still alive.' Only after I had reached the hotel did google tell me that Murtala Muhammed was once a military ruler of Nigeria, and is considered a hero. It amazed me that the taxi-driver did not know this, and instead associated the name with some religious figure.

The nine commandments of dressing, according to
this church in Bayelsa, Nigeria.

It confirmed to me what I had heard, that Nigerians take their religions too seriously, maybe so seriously that it becomes rather comical. Like this church in Bayelsa, that has a set of guidelines for its worshipers. I have heard of other crazy churches, like the one in South Africa where they eat grass, and those in Uganda where they have banned offering coins and where blessings are on sale. But this one, with its own version of the ten commandments, which you can see in the inset, made me laugh out loud! Women, among other things, cannot wear wigs and attachments, nor can they wear trousers, or open back dresses that show off their breasts or shoulders. Reading this list of prohibitions makes me think of radical Islam, not Christianity, yet it is called God's Grace Ministry Inc. Worldwide. The term Inc., (an incorporation) should give you a hint on what it's motivation really is.

Next time I come to Nigeria, I will look out for such hilarious churches. But I will also look out for the food. It's the one thing I totally enjoyed there, and it's the one thing you should look forward to in case you ever find yourself in Nigera. I ate snails, for the first time in my life. They taste like chicken gizzards. I ate bush meat, antelope, the butcher told me, though I wonder if that was really true. And then there was the palm wine, which deserves a whole post on its own. It gave us diarrhea though, so maybe I shouldn't be talking about that!

A snail on a plate, ready to eat, and below, snails on sell.

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