Missing Kannywood

During the celebration of Kannywood at 20, Kano, December 2010 (c) Sani Maikatanga

There are many posts I have wanted to write, but I put them off because there is always something else I am supposed to be doing.  I am currently skipping over an important post I have been planning for a month, namely, the election and the euphoria of Buhari’s win (when people stood in line all day and all night to vote and partied on Twitter) and a series of photos I took in Lagos during the second election for House of Assembly members and governors. Hopefully I will get to that.

Today, though, I am missing Kannywood. Where I live now, in western Nigeria, I have made friends with a young Hausa girl in Junior Secondary 2. She comes to my house to visit me, and we talk in Hausa, she braids my hair and asks to see photos of Kannywood. I scroll through old albums. She wants to see photos of Adam A. Zango and Sadiq Sani Sadiq, who she calls “mijina.” I have so many folders ordered by month and day that I cannot quite remember where everything is, so I swoop in at random and pull things up, and usually it is something she wants to see. I think maybe on this blog, I should start posting random photos every week, if I don’t have anything else to write about.

So, here, today, I will post a few photos of the years I was in Kano and involved in Kannywood– it was equal parts glamor and exhaustion, occasionally terrifying for a shy me, at over-long bikis, on film sets, and industry meetings, workshops, and award ceremonies.  But more than anything, it was community. I felt like I had been adopted into a family, and I spent much of my time in Kano in studios and offices, hanging out, listening to gossip and political debates and jokes. I miss that. And those days in Kaduna, Zaria, Jos, on sets, smooshed five to a backseat in cars on the way to the next location, five ladies to a bed in hotels while one actress watches the Zombie Apocolypse on DSTV until 2am and another has long midnight calls, the times you sit around watching people saying their lines over and over again, the banter and the long conversations that happen behind the scenes, while waiting for the last scene to wrap.

Where I am now, people continuously shout “oyinbo” at me. It is nothing new. I grew up in Nigeria and I know that it is rarely malicious, often affectionate. But is alienating nevertheless. It reminds me that I am foreign, that I do not belong. In Kano, there was a familiarity, in my own small community that spilled over to the larger public once people began to recognize my face. I was not just a “baturiya.” I was “their” baturiya–a Baturiya Bahaushiya–a baturiya at home. Most of all I miss that. The ability to, if not to quite fit in, to belong, to be in a place where I was not just an alien but a “member” of a community who can straddle two worlds.

The last time I was in Kano was briefly in 2013. It was not the same as I remembered it. Homes left behind never are. Lives move on. Friends marry, move studios, leave film for other work. But from 2008 to 2011, this place was my community. These people, my home.

In the past couple of days, I have gotten phone calls from my Golden Goose crew, the studio I spent much of my time in the first few years in Kano. I thank these my friends for remembering me. Much love to them all.

Golden Goose Studio, Kano, 2008 (c) Nazir Ahmad Hausawa aka Ziriums

Kannywood actress Fati Tage and me at the wedding of Binta Mohammed and Tahir I. Tahir in March 2009, Kano.

Dan Auta and me joking around on set of Likita, Zaria, May 2010.

On set Likita, Baba Ari and Gatari, Zaria, May 2010

On set of Jidda, Kaduna, January 2010.

Golden Goose buddies at the wedding of editor, Sulaiman Abubakar MPEG, March 2010.

With Kannywood peeps, BOB-TV, Abuja, 2009.

Kannywood peeps hanging out in the Sheraton parking lot, at BOB-TV, Abuja, March 2010.

On set of Ibro Ya Auri Baturiya, Kano/Jigawa, 2009.

On set, Mutallab, directed by Aminu Saira, written and produced by Nasir Gwangwazo, Kaduna, August 2010.

Ali Nuhu and me on set Mutallab, August 2010.

The last day of the Mutallab shoot, Kaduna, August 2010.

Mirror selfie on set Janni-Janni, Kaduna, August 2010.

On set of an AGM Bashir film, Kano, 2010.

On set of the Hajiya Aisha Halilu film Armala, April 2011

On set of Abbas Sadiq film, Jos, 2012.

Sai na dawo.