“La Danse” (second version, 1909-1910) by Henri Matisse, Photo Credit: Wikipedia
When I was a teenager and I still had an already old fashioned record player, one of my favourite albums from my parents record collection was a record of Ravel’s “Bolero.” The cover was the second version of Matisse’s painting “La Danse.” (I would love to take credit for my great knowledge of art, but I actually found it by first googling “Ravel’s Bolero record” and then “red men dancing impressionist.” It’s amazing what google can do.) The painting and the music melded, and I remember lying on my bed, eyes closed, floating on the sinuous threads of the ballet, as the shiny black record undulated under the needle. The music starts out softly with a single flute and snare drum and then a clarinet, so softly (pianissimo I whisper) you can hardly hear it, and as each instrument takes up the Bolero theme, the orchestra grows louder and more rowdy until it finally ends with a tumbling crash.
I would play it as I daydreamed and as I read and as I wrote little stories that I never finished. It is sensual music that pulls at your body so that you have to follow its rhythms, follow Matisse’s red dancers even if you are lying down.
I think this is the same record. Photo courtesy of Positive Feedback Online, Issue 14.
Sensual. It is a word that comes to me every time I hear Ravel, as does my old Jos room, with its fluttering blue curtains, and yellow record player on the floor, the shimmer of the large flat disc as it spun. A dizzying array of senses: circling vinyl, circling red nudes, circling bolero theme, whirl of instruments.
I have recently discovered Spotify (unfortunately not available in Nigeria), with its endless fields of free music. I write best when I am listening to rhythmic, wordless music, so Ravel’s Bolero is at the top of my “writing music” playlist, followed by a whole lot of Bach. I sway. I type. The orchestra circles and crescendos, trumpets blasting and drums marching. I still get chills.
Outside the windows tonight, there is a mist that shines red in the security lights. The polar vortex with its arctic temperatures has given way to the more gentle Atlanta winter, and the rain comes and goes, tapping against the wood walls. The mist and the rain make me feel safe, provide a companionable solitude. I try to write but I think more of process than content, of memories rather than analysis, round and round with the clarinet.
I am alone tonight, but for two little writing companions, insects that look like knight’s shields, with a delicate inlay of filigreed gold, painted with tiny spots of red and brown. They explore my charge cords and my wallet and patter along the top of my screen with stalk legs, extending their patterned wings out from under their shields to whir away when I startle them. I wonder where they come from, these little beings, in all this cold. I think–I should write about these creatures, but I keep pushing the urge away–attempting to work on a chapter about censorship–until the music and the rain and the living things overcome me and I run through the cold corridors of the house to find my camera and wish as I hold my kit lens close, “Oh, if only I had a macro.”
I arrived in America just in time to enjoy the coldest winter in almost half a century in some places (Reuters says Atlanta is having the coldest weather it has had for 44 years). Even in Florida, one of America’s sunniest southernmost states, as I left my sister’s house yesterday, her poor hibiscus bushes looked shriveled and sad, flowers translucent with cold, which at some points of the night got down to the teens Fahrenheit (around -7 Celsius). Still in Florida, we passed a fountain that had frozen over while the water was running, looking like something out of the The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe film, rather than Florida. Arriving in the Atlanta area where my grandmother lives , we were welcomed with the news that the pipes were frozen. Fortunately, there was still a trickle of water coming out in the kitchen sink and the front bathroom, but the hot water heaters were not working, and the back bathroom was completely frozen up.
We put our bucket bath skills to work, my dad and I going outside to draw water in a small bucket from a creek that runs close by and heating water for dishes on the stove. However, we realized how helpless most of us living in America when faced with power or water outages as compared to Nigerians. First, we just aren’t used to such things and don’t have battery back-up systems or generators for power, or even proper-sized buckets or cisterns for collecting and storing water. Moral of the story being, great infrastructure is great, but it does sometimes leave people a little too comfortable, unable to cope in emergencies. Second, the weather is just so much harsher–North America is not a terribly friendly continent to live on without having a solid house and heat–, so that when such shortages happen, people suffer more in the short term, although the expectation is generally that things will soon be better. I imagine futuristic scenarios where America’s economy continues to spiral downwards into another Great Depression, combined with climate change, and people are left without electricity and water again for long periods of time. In such a scenario, poor people in Africa are much better off than poor people in northern countries, as this exciting new Kenyan science fiction series, Usoni, imagines. (Africa is the only place in the world where the sun still shines, prompting reverse immigration southward). And speaking of science fiction, check out these photos from Chicago!
Fortunately, the power stayed on in my grandmother’s house, though she said she had heard on the radio that it went off in some parts of Atlanta and there have been outages across the continent. According to The Independent, a power outage in Newfoundland Canada “left 90,000 homes without electricity” on Sunday. Imagine being without electricity or heat in temperatures of 20 below… And people have died, especially the homeless. CBC reports that at least 21 people have reportedly died during this freeze.
The most dramatic thing that happened in my grandmother’s house was the toilet freezing and a little flood when the pipes warmed up this afternoon. But fortunately my uncle is a brilliant plumber, so the problem has been solved for now.
ice in the toilet.
When I posted the status update “ice in the toilet” earlier on Facebook, my friend Richard Ali thought I was making some sort of existential statement about America. While it does make make a startlingly original poetic metaphor, this time the ice was literal. As Richard put it a “double entendre” from Nature.
In the meantime, I am hoping that the temperatures warm up before I head to Madison, WI, next week. Please help me pray….
A lot has changed in my life since my last post, over a month ago. When I posted, I had just had a great writing day. I was about to submit a chapter. I was “raring to go” on the next chapter. I could see in my mind, the rest of the dissertation unfolding, almost effortlessly. I felt like it was almost already written. It was a blessing, that day of writing.
The day before my grandmother in the American state of Louisiana had an accident. She ran off the road into a tree. We heard that she was awake when she was admitted into the hospital. I don’t think I realized how serious it was. I’m glad I got a lot of work done that day because by Friday, I was packing up my little house where I had written much of my dissertation in order to fly back to the U.S. for a funeral that we knew would be soon. Initially, we had reserved tickets on Saturday, which we held off on buying because we heard she was getting better. She passed away on Monday, and my parents and I flew to Lagos the next day (almost late because I was still trying to pack and organize the materials I was leaving behind. I am very grateful to a few kind friends who came over to help me and who are still helping me scan a box of magazines and other materials I couldn’t travel with). From Lagos, we flew overnight to Atlanta, and by Wednesday morning Eastern Time, we were in a rental car driving to Louisiana for the funeral. Perhaps I will write another post on the funeral and a longer post on my remarkable grandmother. But for now, here are two of the columns I wrote during that time: “A Death at Christmas-time,” and “Home for Christmas?” (and a third rather random piece from last week as America begins to eat my brain cells, “When the lights go out in America and other thoughts on the last day of 2013” .)
I have spent a few weeks with my sister in Florida, trying to continue writing in her quiet, peaceful house. It has been surprisingly cold here in one of America’s southern-most states, but nothing to complain about these days. I am nearly in tears every time I hear dramatic sub-zero weather forecasts further north and face thoughts of returning to scenes like this (Photos I took in Madison, WI in the winter of 2007).
hard beauty. Flowers of metal and ice. (c) CM
Fangs of ice (c) CM
Welcome to Wisconsin. Have a seat. Make yourself at home. (c) CM
And yet there is life, shed of its green, waiting for the earth to tilt and the sun draw near once again. (c) CM
And winter too has its beauty. (c) CM
It’s hard to be bitter looking at these photos again. These crystal patterns sculpted by Winter herself (c) CM
Her gift to those who stay inside the glass, to those who do not defy her. (c) CM
Yes, I posted too many frost pictures. Let me know which one you like the best.
I think of the homeless at times like this. And I hope that churches and mosques and synagogues and other community centres are opening their arms. I read from Facebook friends in Madison that the Salvation Army and public libraries are opening, and that some organizations are paying for hotel rooms.
I wonder how homelessness can be possible, how the homeless survive winter after winter in these deadly days in this part of the planet that is habitable only by those who can afford four walls and heat?
In the meantime, WordPress has cheered me up with their neat little end of the year report. I have been a little obsessed with SEO [the acronym for site optimization, though I can’t remember what the “E” stands for (UPDATE: Actually, as my friend Nwunye reminded me, its “Search Engine Optmization”… duh)] this year when my site hits dramatically and unexplainably decreased in November by around 70%, but as of December they have sprung back up to normal. That makes me happy. Here is the report WordPress sent me for 2013. Even with my November dip, 2013 still seems to have outranked 2012 by about 10,000 hits:
Here’s an excerpt:
The Louvre Museum has 8.5 million visitors per year. This blog was viewed about 190,000 times in 2013. If it were an exhibit at the Louvre Museum, it would take about 8 days for that many people to see it.
I am sadly late with this post. I was going to do it this morning latest so as to have it in time for the performance tonight, but I was having such a good dissertation writing day that I figured that the dissertation took precedence over the blog. (It was a really, really good writing day. It helps that it was just rewriting a piece that has already been published…) Then when I finally got on, my Glo internet has been atrocious and is refusing to upload my photos of the premiere performance [update: they finally uploaded] or even keep a steady connection to WordPress, so my apologies. (Come back for the photos, which will hopefully upload sometime before next week… 😛 It has currently been trying to upload one photo for over an hour)
Anyway, I was honoured to be able to attend the premiere stage performance of Africa Ukoh‘s play 54 Silhouettes in Jos on 16 November 2013. The play, which won the Stratford East/30 Nigeria House Award also won first runner up in the BBC African Performance Prize and was performed for radio on BBC, which you can listen to here. I thought the stage performance was even better than the radio performance. I liked the character interpretation better in the stage performance, perhaps because the playwright Africa Ukoh himself was directing it. (And I must admit that Chimezie’s accent in the radio performance kind of irritated me…. I thought Promise Ebichi, who played Chimezie in the stage performance, was much better.) I had gone because I saw that the performance was about a Nigerian actor trying to make it in Hollywood, and I am (and have been for years) obsessed with metafiction, that is self-reflexive fiction that is in someway about the creative process. I am so delighted that my random interest in the theme (well… not completely random, because I have been working all week on a “metafiction” chapter in my dissertation) landed me at the premiere stage performance of a really fantastic play.
I reviewed the play for my column in Weekly Trust, which you can read by following this link. I generally archive my reviews on this blog, but recently my blog traffic has dropped dramatically, by around 70%, and I think the google-bots are penalizing me for “scraping content.” Unfortunately, there is no way for me to let google know that I am the copyright owner of this content and that when I archive my articles on my blog, I improve it with links and photos. It’s very frustrating, especially when blogs, which clearly steal almost all of their content are on the first search page–where my blog used to be. (This has made me aware that the Internet is a whole lot less “free” and “fair” than I used to think it was.) Nevertheless, as I am trying to get back on google’s good side, check out my review on the Weekly Trust site. [Update: 4 November 2015, I have archived it on my site here since the Daily Trust site has cut off the first paragraph.] Africa Ukoh has also copied it over onto his Art Theatre blog. He has also put up a post with a lot of positive audience reactions from the Jos performance. Please note that the posters I use in this piece are promotional photos taken by Victor Audu for publicity purposes. (They are therefore used here under fair use laws.)
The play revolves around 5 characters:
Publicity photo by Victor Audu, used by permission of Africa Ukoh
(c) Victor Audu, used by permission of Africa Ukoh
The principled Victor Chimezie, a Nigerian actor played by Promise Ebichi. Chimezie has played Elesin in Wole Soyinka’s Death and the King’s Horseman
(c) Victor Audu, used by permission of Africa Ukoh
and is looking for a break in Hollywood. But all he seems to get are racist roles like “Monkey Man” found by his agent,
Sonny Chuks (Obasi Williams), who has hustled his way into the big league and is cashing in on a favour a big-time producer owes him to get Chimezie a role in a film about Africa, written by
Larry Singer (Idris Sagir), a well meaning Hollywood hack who has directed
(c) Victor Audu, used by permission of Africa Ukoh
The Big Time Hollywood Producer Howard Flynn, played with zest by Africa Ukoh himself, who drops racist slurs like they’re hot. This cigar-smoking Hollywood icon doesn’t care about pronouncing Chimezie’s name correctly. He could be “Chimpanzee” for all he cares. Chimezie irritates the hell out of him, in fact. He is too noble. He doesn’t get excited enough when Flynn announces that Denzel Washington has agreed to play the lead in the film and he is too “fluent.” All Howard Flynn really wants is for Chimezie to act like
Tobi , the Brighton born actor of Nigerian ancestry, who does a mean generic
(c) Victor Audu, used by permission of Africa Ukoh
As you can see from these brief character sketches, the play is filled with biting dialogue that satirizes Hollywood representations of Africa. It slyly mocks everything from the generic African accents, to the focus on the suffering of white characters in Africa (in this case a saintly Irish priest about to be murdered by a child soldier), to the violence of “African” characters set in Nigeria with no precise identifying name, history, or location, to the casting of “Hollywood” actors in Nigerian roles, that is remniscent of the whole brouhaha surrounding the casting of Thandie Newton as Olanna in the recent film adaptation of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s bestselling novel Half of a Yellow Sun.
If you are in Abuja tomorrow, go see it. The play is supposed to come back to Jos sometime in January. I’ll update this blog when I find out the date, but it is definitely worth it. In the meantime follow Africa Ukoh’s Art Theatre blog for updates.
Stay tuned also for my own photos of the premiere performance whenever in the next century they upload.
[Update. Now that I’ve been able to upload my own photos, scroll below to see a few of them:]
Chimezie and Chuks open the play (c) Carmen McCain
The scriptwriter Larry is quite smitten by Chimezie (c) Carmen McCain
Things get tense when the generic African actor Tobi arrives. (c) Carmen McCain
And things get even tenser when hotshot Hollywood producer Howard Flynn demands Chimezie act like Tobi. (c) Carmen McCain
There is a Hollywood sized gulf between what Howard Flynn and Larry envision and what Chimezie wants to perform (c) Carmen McCain
Tobi and Chimezie are initially civil. (c) Carmen McCain
But become more heated as Tobi accuses Chimezie of attacking his acting ability. (c) Carmen McCain
More heated. (c) Carmen McCain
And still more heated. (c) Carmen McCain
Things become even more interesting when they begin filming (c) Carmen McCain
And they get guns for props. (c) Carmen McCain
Tobi gets mad again. (c) Carmen McCain
(c) Carmen McCain
Yeah, so there’s more to the play than Tobi brawling, but I like action shots. (c) Carmen McCain
One more action shot. (c) Carmen McCain
Chimezie waxes philosophical on how troubled he is by the role he is being asked to play. (c) Carmen McCain
And draws the audience into his dilemma. (c) Carmen McCain
He finally explains to Larry why he cannot perform the role as written. (c) Carmen McCain
Playwright and director Africa Ukoh who also plays the racist producer Howard Flynn watches the actors in two different levels of production. It was a brilliant play. Congratulations, (c) Carmen
[UPDATE 24 November 2013: SCROLL DOWN FOR THE WINNERS OF THE 2013 KANNYWOOD AWARD]
[Update 4 December 2013, here are a few more links to articles about the Kannywood Award night.
My article “Kannywood Awards Seek Uplift and Unity,” in which I muse over Kannywood history and interview two of the organizers, Hamisu Lamido Iyantama and Ismail Afakallah.
Continue to scroll down to see the winners and read my original blog post.]
I recently received an invitation to the Kannywood Award 2013, which begins at 8pm tomorrow, 23 November 2013 in Kano. Unfortunately, I probably won’t be able to make it, but I thought it was worth blogging about the event and the nominations ahead of time. One of the brains behind the award is filmmaker Hamisu Lamido Iyantama (who suffered a great deal at the hands of the Kano State Censorship Board) from 2008-2010, and whom I have blogged about a lot in the past. Although Iyantama gave out some “Iyan-Tama Multimedia Awards” in 2010, this year in Kano is the first edition of the “Kannywood Award.”
I will try to update this post with the winners after this weekend. [UPDATE 24 November 2013, for a list of the winners, see Kannywood Scene’s list. If you scroll down, I will note the winner next to each nomination] In the meantime, scroll below for the list of nominations.
The Invitation in part reads:
INVITATION – KANNYWOOD AWARD 2013
KANNYWOOD AWARD 2013 is the first edition for “Arewa” music and movie industry (Kannywood) and is the largest gathering of Kannywood artistes, Technical crew, relevant individuals and groups. This is a must attendevent for anyone with responsibility in the entertainment industry. Attending this event is an excellent opportunity to promote Face of Kannywood.
The “Paradigm Uplift and Unity”refers to a movement which seeks not only to implement and achieve this Kannywood Award show, but to advance Arewa cultural heritage by introducing innovative methodology, new thinking and changing the perception of existing outlook of Kannywood image.
The event will feature gathering of Kannywood artistes, technical crew, who is who, yellow carpet, banquet, stage show and jamboree of special guests.
The event is scheduled take place on 23rd NOV. 2013 […]
In view of this and regarding your passion and contribution to the growth of the industry, we write to invite you to grace with your presence the occasion as Special Guest .
The event is supported by MTN Nigeria.
Thank you very for your usual understanding and cooperation .
Kind regards
Hamisu Lamido Iyantama
Chairman Organizing/Security Committee.
The Nominations, which I got from the organizers of the awards, are as follows. [UPDATE: I have filled in the winners with help from Kannywood Scene: Kannywood Scene also lists a few awards that were not on the original list: Zahraddeen Sani won the Best Supporting Actor for his performance in Fulani; Sani Danja recieved an Icon of Entertainment Award; Falalu Dorayi won the Golden Jury Award; and Alhaji Sani Zamfara and Rabi’u Haruna Al-Rahuz won an award for Best Marketers. Unfortunately, the Kannywood Scene list left off a few of the awards that were on the original nomination list. I have also heard from other sources that (my former student!) Nomiis Gee won the award for Best Hausa Hiphop Rapper, Sadiq Salihu Abubakar won Kannywood’s Best R&B Artiste, Jos-based director and producer Sani Mu’azu won a lifetime achievement award, alongside Ibrahim Mandawari, Audu Kano Karkuzu, Samanja, and Hamisu Lamido Iyantama. Thanks to Masaud KanoRiders for a lot of this information.
(Update 24 November 2013. On the list of nominations the organizers of the award provided me before the event, there was no “Best Supporting Actor category,” but that must have been an oversite. According to Kannywood Scene, Zahraddeen Sani won the Best Supporting Actor award for his performance in Fulani.)
A few months ago, I got an email from the NGO MIND (Media Information Narrative Development) associated with the NGO Cordaid asking me if I would be willing to review a documentary The Daughters of the Niger Delta. Not knowing what to expect from a documentary made by an NGO, I was a little reluctant to promise to review it, but I told them to send it to me, and I’d see what I thought. When I watched it, I was blown away. It is an important documentary made by nine woman that tells the story of the Niger Delta (and directed by Ilse van Lamoen-Isoun) as seen through the eyes of the women Hannah, Rebecca, and Naomi. Since I first published my review in Weekly Trust
courtesy of The Daughters of the Niger Delta public Facebook page
“You suppress all my strategies / You oppress, oh every part of me / What you don’t know, you’re a victim too, Mr. Jailer,” croons musician Asa in her song “Jailor.”
The song can be read as addressing many forms of oppression, but it is used over images of a Niger Delta riverside in the 2012 documentary film Daughters of the Niger Delta to comment specifically on what Molara Ogundipe-Leslie, following Mao-Tse Tung, calls the “mountains” on the African woman’s back. In “African Women, Culture and Another Development,” Ogundipe-Leslie identifies six mountains, which include “oppression from outside”; patriarchal “traditional structures” that devalue women’s work and seek to control her own body; “her own backwardness,” which includes poverty and ignorance; men, who refuse to give up their privileges; and finally race and a woman’s own self-defeating internalization of patriarchal ideologies.
Many of these forms of oppression and structural inequalities become evident in the testimonies of women featured in the documentary Daughters of the Niger Delta (55 mins) made by 9 women from the Niger Delta trained by the Abuja-based NGO Media Information Narrative Development (MIND), directed by Ilse van Lamoen-Isoun and sponsored by the German Embassy. The documentary seeks to challenge disparities in media coverage. While the oil spill off the Gulf of Mexico in 2010 was the focus of the global media, there has been far less attention to the much greater oil damage in the Niger Delta region. Even recent accidents, such as the December 2011 off-coast Shell Bonga oil spill or the January 2012 Chevron gas explosion in Finuwa, Bayelsa, barely made a blip on the international news radar. Similarly, as the voiceover at the beginning of the film points out, headlines about the Niger Delta often focus on oil output, kidnappings and violence in the resource-rich Niger Delta. However, in fact, as we learn by the end of the documentary, the maternal mortality rate in the Niger Delta is the second highest in the world and 65,000 children under the age of five die each year in the region due to lack of adequate health care and related issues such as pollution and nutrition. These numbers far outstrip the number of those killed due to armed conflicts but the poverty that causes these deaths is also one of the causes of the conflict. Such stories are often invisible not only to the world but also to other Nigerians. Yet it is only with the recognition of these stories that change can come.
The film focuses on three women: Hannah, Rebecca, and Naomi. Hannah Tende, from Bodo City, Rivers State, is a widow who makes a living collecting
Hannah Tende (courtesy of The Daughters of the Niger Delta)
periwinkles from oily mud and working on other people’s farms. Her own home and the land she once farmed was taken over by her husband’s family when he died in 2005. She wants to send her daughter Uke to university, but does not have the money. In fact, her children now survive on two meals a day instead of the three meals they had when their father was alive. But Hannah has limited possibilities, as remarriage for widows is forbidden and her livelihood is threatened by the pollution of the rivers.
Rebecca Churchill, from Tuomo, Delta State, was married at fifteen to an already married man. She describes how she first learned of the marriage when her husband told her that he had paid her bride price to her father. Now, the
Rebecca Churchill (courtesy of the Daughters of the Niger Delta)
pregnant Rebecca narrates how she has given birth eleven times. Only six of those children are still living. While her husband says it is Ijaw culture for his wife to keep having children, Rebecca herself wants to stop getting pregnant after her baby is born. She says she is not willing to let her daughters marry at fourteen or fifteen. Her dream for her children is for them to go to school and go to university.
The educated Naomi Alaere Ofoni, from Yenagoa, Bayelsa State (also a production assistant on the film), represents the dreams the other two women have for their children. Although Naomi’s father abandoned her mother when Naomi was a small child, her mother went back to school to become a
Naomi Alaere Ofoni (courtesy of The Daughters of the Niger Delta)
community health worker and worked to put Naomi through school. Ironically, although school is seen as the path out of poverty, Naomi faced another obstacle once she reached university. She was harassed by lecturers who demanded sex. She refused to sleep with the course advisor who had changed her B grades to two carryovers, and he finally gave her a third class degree only after she offered him money. 10 years after graduating with a disrespected third class degree in Industrial Mathematics, she was yet to find a job. But, like her mother, who took her future into her own hands, Naomi started her own business making soap.
There is a bitter irony here. In each woman’s story, men stand in the way of advancement by women and their children. “Modern day slavery” and “imprisonment” become motifs that run throughout the documentary, from the opening montage set to Asa’s song “Jailor,” to Hannah’s expression of frustration at her life in “bondage” as a widow. The film cleverly juxtaposes
(courtesy of The Daughters of the Niger Delta)
shots of men sitting around drinking—one thirty-five year old man telling of his three wives and the 17 children he hopes to have—with shots of women chopping wood, fetching water, picking periwinkles from oily mud, pounding, grinding, and frying cassava. Patriarchal male culture is behind much of the suffering of women—fathers hand over their teenage daughters to husbands, husbands with multiple wives insist on each wife bearing many children despite not being able to support them, male relatives of a dead man confiscate his widow’s property, male lecturers prey on vulnerable girls in the university. Yet, as Asa notes, “What you don’t know, you’re a victim too, Mr. Jailer.” Larger neocolonial forces imprison both men and women.
(courtesy of the Daughters of the Niger Delta)
Multi-national oil corporations have so polluted the air and water that even rainwater is dirty and unusable. The fish in the creeks and rivers have died, so that the Niger Delta people, whose lives once revolved around fishing, now eat and trade imported fish. The government neglects healthcare and infrastructure for clean water.
The hope for the future, as Ogundipe-Leslie has argued in other essays, is for men and women to join hands in rebuilding their society. While patriarchal male culture is critiqued here, the film also shows male role models. Naomi’s husband, William Omajuwa Emmanuel, an engineer whom she met in university works together with her on her soap business and helps with the children. The male community worker, Inatimi Odio encourages men in the community to involve women in decision making. The film traces positive developments in postscripts, revealing that Hannah has begun to mobilize other women to protest the marriage prohibition for widows, Rebecca has convinced her husband to try birth control, and Naomi has become a principal at a school.
The documentary is beautifully shot and edited. Despite the pollution, the Niger Delta is still exquisite, and the women’s stories are compelling. Indeed, I thought the best parts of the film were the moments where the women were allowed to speak for themselves. The most obvious flaw may have been the extensive use of Inatimi Odio, a man, as the one “expert” to explain the problems facing the community. While this was somewhat balanced by Bogofanyo Inengibo’s female voiceover and a few comments from the teacher Caroline Giadom, the focus on the male expert risks reinforcing the idea of women as uneducated informants and men as the authorities who explain them. Overall, however, I think the documentary is an important and thought-provoking piece that personalizes our understanding of the Niger Delta. In the same chapter in which she identified the mountains on the backs of African women, Ogundipe-Leslie suggests policies to enable women to benefit and control their own labour, the use of media to educate, and assistance for women artists so that they can express their own stories. This film made by women about women seems an appropriate response to her suggestions, giving subaltern women a platform by which to speak to the world.
I’m going to do something today that I haven’t done for a long time on this blog, but which is something I originally started this blog to do, and that is to put up some work in progress–a song that I am working on right now in my dissertation–and ask for help from Hausa speakers in correctly translating and transcribing it.
Zazzabi (Fever) directed by Sha’aibu Idris Belaz and produced by Auwalu Madaki (story by Salisu Buldoza) for Sa’a Entertainment in 2005 is one of my favourite Hausa films. And the first song in the movie, sung by Sadi Sidi Sharifai, Ikram Garba Ado, and Sa’a A. Yusuf, has obsessed me since 2006. Yes, that long. (I’ve mentioned and posted it in previous blog posts in November 2009 and just the other day in October 2013). It must have been pretty popular with its audiences too, because the songwriter Sadiq Usman Sale gained his industry nickname from the film: Sadiq Zazzabi.
It’s a story full of twists and turns, so I can’t talk too much about the plot here, in case there is someone who ever wants to see the film (if you can find it anywhere). But, as it becomes clear by the 6th verse of the song, it is a film about love and HIV, but it is no NGO film (thank God). HIV is one of the things that complicates the love between the characters in the love triangle between the characters played by Sani Danja, Mansura Isah, (who ended up marrying in real life) and Ibrahim Maishunku. (Because the characters played by Sani Danja and Mansura Isah are not named in the film, I call them Sani and Mansura here. The character played by Ibrahim Maishunku is named Salim in the film.)
What I LOVE about this song is the ambiguity of the word zazzabi (fever). It can be used in the metaphoric sense as a fever of love, and that is the sense in which the audience would most likely initially interpret word. In Ado Ahmed Gidan Dabino’s bestselling novel In da So da Kauna, for example, the young lover Muhammad writes that he is fleeing Kano to Kaduna
Part 1 of Ado Ahmed Gidan Dabino’s bestselling novel In da So da Kauna
because he has been separated from his sweetheart Sumayya, “Ciwon sonta ne ya sa ba zan zauna ba/The sickness of loving her is the reason I won’t stay” (part 1, 85). Sumayya sings on a cassette to Muhammad, that “In na tuna ka sai na farka daga barci na,/ Ciwon so ya sanya wannan ba komai ba/If I remember you I wake from my sleep/ The sickness of love makes it nothing” (part 1, 71). When she dreams that Muhammad has been killed in an accident she sings, “Ciwon so shi zan kashe ni/ The sickness of love will kill me“[or The sickness of love will make me kill myself] (part 1, 87).
However, the word “zazzabi” can also be used literally here, as a literal fever. Indeed it is when Sani complains about a fever that Mansura suggests he go for a medical check-up–a checkup during which he tests positive for HIV. The song thus layers a literal meaning of the “disease of love” on top of a metaphoric usage, creating a striking and disturbing image of the dangers love brings not only the heart but the body. In Verse 6, Sani comes out and says “Kanjamau cutar a jikina. Lafiya bata dawowa/ AIDS is the disease in my body. Health will not return.”
My attempts to transcribe the song (from the video below) and translate it– the transcription file on my computer dates back to 2009–however, has made me painfully aware of how much more Hausa I still need to learn. Of course, the poetic language of the song makes it a bit more difficult to transcribe than ordinary language. I’ve been sitting here with the R.C. Abraham dictionary, the Bargery dictionary, and the Hausa-Hausa dictionary published a few years ago by Bayero University, sometimes wondering if I have even divided the words correctly when I transcribed–or if the words I have written actually exist. So, I would love help from Hausa speakers and readers in checking 1) the transcription of the words of the song, 2) my translation. As I get corrections, I will try to make corrections on this post. At this point, I am not trying to be very literary in my translation–although I did translate “kauna” as “passion,” even though I know that “kauna” has a much milder connotation, because I felt it fit with the overall meaning of the song. For the most part, I just want it to be accurate. After I feel I have an accurate translation, I may try to make it sound more like poetry in English. But mainly, right now, I want a working translation that I can feel confident working with as I write about the song. At the moment, I probably don’t have the room to include an in depth analysis of the entire song in my dissertation–I’m using the refrain and chorus, which I understand fine. But I’m thinking I’d like to write a separate article on the entire song and the film at some point, and any suggestions people can give me here will help me work towards that goal.
UPDATE: 10 November 2013. Anas Musa just sent me some amazing corrections to my transcription via email, and suddenly it all begins to fall into place. I will make his corrections on the transcription here and keep working on the translation. I am so grateful. He heard words and expressions that I just couldn’t quite get like kwarjini and kamani and furucina and kudurina and burin ruhina and dimaucewa and gane batuna and jin lafazina and akwai uzurina and gurbi and kulli yaumin and hangena and the whole proverbial expression “Mai guri ya zo gurbinsa shinfidarka ka zo ka nade ta” and don in zam in ganta and kuwa ya cancanta and hawaye (instead of ta waye) and Gashi na yi biyu ko daya (rather than Ga shi na bude bako) and Wayyo kaina (rather than Wayyo Allah). As you can see he’s made a huge difference! I’m still working on the translation. It’s rough but a lot cleaner now that I can actually hear what words they are saying.
I will post the video and my transcription below that. The cinematography is rather grey and uninspiring, but the song is brilliant. Please note that the video is included in this blog post as part of fair use policies for review purposes:
Zazzabi
Fever
by Sadiq Usman Sale (ie. Sadiq Zazzabi)
Refrain:
Sani:Zazzabi ya sauka jikina, Zazzabi ciwo mai zafi, Ciwon so, ciwon kauna,
A Fever has come to my body, Fever so hot. Fever of love, fever of passion,
Salim: Zazzabi shi ne a jikina
A Fever is what is in my body
Female back up Chorus: Zazzabi ya kama masoya, zazzabi ciwo mai zafi. Ciwon so. Ciwon kauna. Zazzabi ciwo mai kuna.
A fever has caught the lovers, A fever so hot,Fever of love, fever of passion, A fever that burns
Mansura: Zazzabi ya sauka jikina, Zazzabi ciwo mai zafi, Ciwon so, ciwon kauna, Zazzabi shi ne a jikina
Fever has come to my body, Fever so hot.Fever of love, fever of passion, A Fever is what is in my body
Verse 1
Sani: A gaskiya ciwon kaunarki, a tuntuni shi yake kamani.
Truly, lovesickness for you captured me long ago.
Female backup Chorus: Zazzabi ciwo mai zafi
Fever so hot
Sani: In na zo, wurin ji a gareki. Kwarjini shi yake kamani.
If I come to hear it from you. I am overcome with shyness.
Chorus: Zazzabi ciwo mai zafi
Fever so hot
Sani: Ina tsoron furucinki, shi ya sa jinkiri a gareni
I fear what you will say, that’s what made me delay
Chorus: Zazzabi ciwo mai zafi
Fever so hot
Sani: Kin ji, dai, dukkan kudurina, ya a bar burin ruhina
Hear my great passion for you, oh my deepest soul’s desire.
Chorus: Zazzabi ya kama masoya, zazzabi ciwo mai zafi. Ciwon so. Ciwon kauna. Zazzabi ciwo mai kuna.
A fever has captured the lovers, A fever so hot. Fever of love. Fever of passion. Fever of scorching heat.
Verse 2:
Sani: Ki amince da ni, don Allah, kar ki sa ni na dimaucewa.
Trust me, for God’s sake, don’t let me lose my mind.
Chorus: Zazzabi ciwo mai zafi
Fever so hot.
Sani: So da kauna abin girmamawa, kin ga shine tushen kowa….
Love and passion is an inestimable thing, you know it is the root of us all…
Chorus: Zazzabi ciwo mai zafi
Fever so hot.
Sani: Na nutso kogin kaunarki ko dagowa bana yowa
I am drowning in a river of your love, I can’t come up out of it.
Chorus: Zazzabi ciwo mai zafi
Fever so hot.
Sani: Nai jiran amsa a gareki don kuwa duk kin gane batuna.
I wait for your answer, so that you understand all that I’ve said.
Chorus: Zazzabi ya kama masoya, zazzabi ciwo mai zafi. Ciwon so. Ciwon kauna. Zazzabi ciwo mai kuna.
A fever has caught the lovers, a fever so hot. Sickness of love, sickness of passion, Fever a sickness that burns.
Verse 3:
Mansura: Na ji dukka batunka bayani, to, tsaya don jin lafazina.
I’ve heard all, all of what you’ve said. To, stop now and listen to me.
Chorus: Zazzabi ciwo mai zafi
Fever so hot.
Mansura: Tun ada, tun tun na fahimta kai kana kauna a garena.
For long, I’ve understood that you love me
Chorus: Zazzabi ciwo mai zafi
Fever so hot.
Mansura:Gaskiya ni da kai soyayya, ba na yi don akwai uzurina.
In truth, I have my reasons not to agree to love between me and you.
Chorus: Zazzabi ciwo mai zafi.
Fever so hot.
Mansura: Babu gurbi cikin ruhina sam… Salim shi ne a gabana
There’s no place in my heart. Salim, hes the one in my future now.
Chorus: Zazzabi ya kama masoya, zazzabi ciwo mai zafi. Ciwon so. Ciwon kauna. Zazzabi ciwo mai kuna.
It’s a fever that captures lovers, Fever so hot. Sickness of passion. Sickness of love. Fever a sickness that burns.
Verse 4
Mansura: Alkawari, ni da shi mun dauka duk wuya bama canzawa.
It’s a promise he and I have made each other. No matter the difficulty we won’t change.
Chorus: Zazzabi ciwo mai zafi.
Fever so hot.
Mansura: Son Salim, shi ne a gabana, kulla yaumin na ke ta tunawa
My love for Salim is before me, I’m always thinking [of him].
Chorus: Zazzabi ciwo mai zafi
Fever so hot.
Mansura: So da kaunarsa ke ta bugawa zuciyata suke rayawa.
Love and passion are throbbing my heart to life again.
Chorus: Zazzabi ciwo mai zafi
Fever so hot.
Mansura: Son Salim shi ne hangena har ke loda harkar ganina.
Love for Salim is what I see from a far, it fills my vision.
Instrumental Interlude
Refrain
Salim: Zazzabi ya sauka jikina, Zazzabi ciwo mai zafi. Ciwon so, ciwon kauna, zazzabi shi ne a jikana.
A fever has entered my body, A fever so hot. A sickness of love, a sickness of passion. A fever, that’s what’s in my body.
Mansura:Zazzabi ya sauka jikina, Zazzabi ciwo mai zafi. Ciwon so, ciwon kauna, zazzabi shi ne a jikana
A fever has entered my body, A fever so hot. A sickness of love, a sickness of passion. A fever, that’s what’s in my body.
Chorus: Zazzabi ya kama masoya, zazzabi ciwo mai zafi. Ciwon so. Ciwon kauna. Zazzabi ciwo mai kuna.
A fever has captured the lovers, a fever so hot. A sickness of love, a sickness of passion. A fever of scorching heat.
Verse 5:
Salim: Mai guri ya zo gurbinsa shinfidarka kazo ka nade ta
The longing lover has met his fate. Here’s your mat, come roll it up.
Chorus: Zazzabi ciwo mai zafi.
Fever so hot.
Salim: Ga ni gefen abar kaunata, in tsaya don in zam in ganta.
See me here by the side with my heavy love, I’ve paused here to stay and see her.
Chorus: Zazzabi ciwo mai zafi.
Fever so hot.
Salim: Zo mu je lambunmu na kauna, mu shige, don kuwa ya cancanta
Come let’s go to our garden of love, let’s enter it, because it is befitting.
Chorus: Zazzabi ciwo mai zafi.
Fever so hot.
Salim: Kai ku sai ka tsaya, bisa nan gun ke da shi, ku yi bankwana
You just have to stop all the familiarity you have with him, you must say goodbye
Chorus: Zazzabi ya kama masoya, zazzabi ciwo mai zafi. Ciwon so. Ciwon kauna. Zazzabi ciwo mai kuna.
Fever has captured the lovers. Fever so hot. Fever of love, Fever of passion. Fever of scorching heat.
Verse 6
Sani: Yau ina kuka da hawaye sai takaice nake ta tunawa.
Today I am weeping hot tears, I keep thinking of my loss…
Chorus: Zazzabi ciwo mai zafi
Fever so hot.
Sani: Ga shi na yi biyu ko daya babu rayuwata nake tausayawa
See, I have nothing, I pity my life.
Chorus: Zazzabi ciwo mai zafi
Fever so hot.
Sani: Kanjamau cuta a jikina. Lafiya bata dawowa
AIDS is the disease in my body. Health will not return
Chorus: Zazzabi ciwo mai zafi
Fever so hot.
Sani: Rayuwata tana watakila mutuwa ko yau a wurina
I face the end of my life, maybe even today.
Chorus: Zazzabi ya kama
Fever has captured
Sani: Wayyo kaina,
Chorus: masoya, zazzabi ciwo mai zafi.
Lovers. Fever so hot
Sani: Wayyo Allahna
Chorus: Ciwon so. Ciwon kauna. Zazzabi ciwo mai kona.
Fever of love. Fever of passion. Fever that burns.
Refrain
Mansura: Zazzabi ya sauka jikina, Zazzabi ciwo mai zafi. Ciwon so, ciwon kauna, zazzabi shi ne a jikana.
Fever has come to my body. Fever so hot. Fever of love, fever of passion, Fever is in my body.
Sani: Zazzabi ya sauka jikina, Zazzabi ciwo mai zafi. Ciwon so, ciwon kauna, zazzabi shi ne a jikana.
Fever has come to my body. Fever so hot. Fever of love, fever of passion, Fever is in my body.
Chorus: Zazzabi ya kama masoya, zazzabi ciwo mai zafi. Ciwon so. Ciwon kauna. Zazzabi ciwo mai kuna.
This fever has captured the lovers. Fever so hot. Fever of love. Fever of passion. Fever that burns.
So today there was a partial eclipse. I hadn’t heard about it until I went to lunch with a friend, and in her car, she had armed herself with a box with a piece of white paper pasted on one side and a hole cut in the other, over which she had taped aluminum foil and pricked with a pin. This was her eclipse viewing device, she told me. I had heard about people making these things to view eclipses before. I wasn’t sure I wanted to go to the trouble. But around 2pm, as I sat on my couch reading the Sunday Trust, I looked outside and noticed that the light was long and harsh and strange, so I called her and asked if she was watching the eclipse through her box. Was it happening now? She told me I still had time, as the peak of the eclipse was supposed to happen at 2:40pm, so I went and found an old regulator box and made the same device.
It was not that dramatic as I was expecting. I had thought I might see some sort of photographic image coming through the pin–hole onto the white paper. Yes, people, there is a reason I’m not in the sciences. Instead, it was just a new moon shaped sliver of light, which showed the shape of the moon as it passed in front of the sun. I was too afraid to look up at the sun itself. Next time I’ll have to prepare myself ahead of time with properly treated goggles.
I showed the neighbours, and wandered about looking at it from different angles.
I had some poetic thoughts about it all, but in between going back inside to keep working on my current chapter and staying up too late before deciding to post, the eclipse poetry will have to wait for the next eclipse. In the meantime, here are a few of the photos I took of the sliver of light in my box. Note: there is nothing fancy or dramatic about these photos. I did not risk pointing my camera lens or my eyes towards the light. It’s just a recording of my delightful, dorky afternoon wandering around with a box with a hole taped over with tin foil and paper.
Look for the sun, look for the moon, they are there in the light, in the shadow, in the cardboard box.
Eclipse viewing device (c) CM
the sun, the moon, the box, and me.
The sun, the moon, and an evil forest (c) CM
The sun disappears behind the moon and the trees. (c) CM
I am working right now on a dissertation chapter on spectacle in Hausa films and currently on the “music video” portion of it. I actually had to come to my blog to find one of the songs I wanted to look at, as it seems to have mysteriously disappeared from my computer. Here it is. The cinematography is rather boring, but the song (seen alongside the film) is brilliant.
In the meantime, Weekly Trust did not post my column on my WT page this week for some reason, so at the request of Twitter followers, I am posting it here on my blog. It has actually been three years since I started my column in Weekly Trust, and, though I have sometimes turned in late, sleep deprived and occasionally incoherent articles that I am less than proud of, I have actually never missed a week since I started–even when deathly ill! So, if you check my Weekly Trust page and something is missing, get in touch with me and I will try to post it on this blog. This week was kind of an index to what I have written this year, which may be why WT didn’t post it. I will include links below, so that if you missed reading something this year, you can find it here.
My Thoughts Exactly: Year Three in Review
Last week marked the third anniversary of this column “My Thoughts Exactly,” which I began writing on 16 October 2010. Last year, in my second year review, I wrote that I planned “to take a slightly more scholarly turn in the upcoming year while I finish writing my PhD dissertation.” I’m not sure if this year was more scholarly, but it did become more literary, as I focused more on reading, libraries, and a lot of book reviews.
I reviewed Aliyu Kamal’s English-language translation, Sin is a Puppy…, of Balaraba Ramat Yakubu’s novel Alhaki Kwikwiyo Ne, published by Indian publisher Blaft. The skillful translation is a historical event as it marks the first English translation of a woman’s novel in Hausa. I also later reviewed Hajiya Balaraba’s novel Wa Zai
Elnathan John, Abubakar Adam Ibrahim, Chinelo Okparanta, Pede Hollist, and Tope Folarin at one of the Caine Prize Events, London, July 2013 (c) Carmen McCain
The sadder literary events of the year included the death of two of Africa’s literary icons, Chinua Achebe, [I was honoured to be the only non-Nigerian writer included in Weekly Trust‘s piece “How Achebe
Chinua Achebe speaking at Asbury Hall, Buffalo, as part of the “Babel: Season 2” series by Just Buffalo Literary Center, Hallwalls, & the International Institute. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
I often receive emails from readers asking where they can find the books I’ve reviewed. While I often direct them to bookstores in Abuja and Lagos, and online stores like jumia.com, konga.com, and mamuwa.com, I also explored literary resources available online [which WT didn’t post online and I haven’t yet uploaded the hard copy to flickr–I’ll try to do that soon] and addressed the need for better library resources, whereby people who don’t have the money to buy sometimes outrageously-priced books can read them by borrowing. The secretary of Jos Association of Nigerian Authors Onotu David Onimisi told me in an interview (see part 1 and part 2) about the ANA project to develop a community library in Jos. He directed me to the excellent American Corner library in Jos which is open to the public and is currently hosting the ANA library while they build another location. I also interviewed Kinsley Sintim who during his NYSC youth service started a community library in Tasha outside of Abuja and has been able to get a massive number of donated books for children in the community. (See Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3. I really should have edited it down to just two parts, but I was travelling….] For a comparative perspective, I interviewed an old college classmate Elizabeth Chase, who is a senior librarian at a library in Frisco, Texas. I shared some of the feedback I’ve received about my “literary pieces,” in an August readers column.
this year: Hausa film director Balarabe Sango, who passed away in December 2012, and an old schoolmate Dr. Rachel Horlings, one of only three underwater archeologists working off the coast of West Africa, who was killed in Elmina, Ghana in a freak electrical accident. In “As the Rains Begin” I linked tragedies to the rhythmic seasonal motion of the earth, celebrating the birth of a baby born to a friend who lost her husband the year before.
Thank you for reading this year. If you missed any of these pieces or want to read any of them again, you can find most of them under the “My Thoughts Exactly” tab on the Weekly Trust website. I am trying to push through to the end of my PhD dissertation this year, so I will likely continue to feature guest columns and more “academic” material as I try to close this chapter of my life. I love receiving emails from readers, so please keep sending your feedback. Thank you.
Dul Johnson at his 60th birthday celebration with the Association of Nigerian Authors, Jos Chapter, September 2013. (c) Carmen McCain
The Plateau International Film Festival, which is scheduled to take place from 24-26 October 2013, will kick off at the National Film Institute, Jos, tomorrow at 9am. There will be film screenings, workshops, seminars, exhibitions etc, and Dul Johnson’s documentary There is Nothing Wrong with My Uncle will screen Thursday at around 11am.
The 62-minute documentary, There is Nothing Wrong with my Uncle, co-produced with French filmmaker Sylvie Bringas, is the kind I like, one that lets characters speak for themselves without any overbearing voiceover. Dul Johnson’s poetic narration in Tarok, with English subtitles, does not explain, it questions. The documentary is about Tarok burial and reburial practices, but it is also a story about the filmmaker’s quest to find his identity between the Christian tradition he has adopted since childhood and the tradition of his Tarok ancestors.
We see Dul at a desk writing in the middle of a green field, driving to Langtang through the breathtaking hills of the Jos Plateau, drinking kunu as he asks questions of a bereaved family or the old man Domshal Nden, to whom the film is dedicated.
still used by permission of Dul Johnson
The film does much to defend and contextualize sometimes misunderstood practices. The Ibyari ceremony, in which the skull of a deceased elder is taken to the mountains to be buried, is performed out of respect. The skull is carefully washed, gently wrapped in white cloth, and placed softly into a clay bowl for burial inside a mound. A chicken and sheep are sacrificed, and the elders pray that the spirit will bless their family left behind.
still used by permission of Dul Johnson
The title of the film is a quote from the man who is sponsoring the Ibyari ceremony for his uncle. “There is nothing wrong with my uncle,” he says. “He has made me proud. May God bless the person who will take care of him.” By using these words as the title of the film, the filmmaker makes a similar statement of the Tarok community’s collective pride in their traditions. “There is Nothing Wrong With My Uncle,” becomes a larger assertion that, though it may be denigrated by adherents of other religions, there is nothing wrong with their culture. The spiritual leader of the Gbak, asserts that, although there are some tensions between the two communities, Christians and Tarok traditionalists co-exist peacefully. “Everybody is mine. The church standing there I contributed to building it. I, the Spiritual Leader, I made the gruel for the workers. I am invited to every wedding.” “God is like me,” he says, “he doesn’t reject anybody. […] What we are doing at Ibyari is calling God.”
still used by permission of Dul Johnson
The film is formally quite beautiful. While a few of the hymns inserted whenever Christians pray at the funeral sometimes feels a bit abrupt and distracting—perhaps the intention—the soundtrack of the abwa, dinding, and ntali flute at other moments fit the mood perfectly. The sound, recorded by Alfa Vyapbong and mixed by Philippe Ciompi, is crisp and atmospheric. You can hear footsteps on dry grass, a fly buzzing, voices emerging out of the murmur of the crowd. The cinematography is often quite beautiful. The crisp close-up shots during the interview with the elder Domshal Nden draw out the quiet charisma of this old man. And the landscapes alone make the film worth watching: the road winding through misty purple and green hills, the long shots of neat villages on the plains, round houses with thatched roofs under an old Baobab.
still used by permission of Dul Johnson
Perhaps the only drawback to not having an authoritative voiceover is that the audience is forced to draw connections for themselves, which can sometimes be confusing. The speakers are rarely identified by name. The entire film, including the voiceover, is in Tarok and occasionally Hausa—the English coming through only in the subtitles. However, the language and the poetic subtitles are among the things I like best about the film. Unlike the exoticizing documentaries of the sort made by National Geographic, this film establishes these traditions firmly in a modern present. By subtitling even off camera remarks, it allows a non-Tarok audience to hear the jokes and debates surrounding the ceremonies. The reburial of a man’s skull is not a silent mysterious ritual, but more like a family picnic, filled with laugher and a patter of commentary from many different voices.
still used by permission of Dul Johnson
The subtitles also allow us to hear the opinions of the people being filmed about the filmmaker. As the camera focuses on the mourning widow, a woman off camera remarks, “This woman is grieving, and the man is busy filming her. Lebong, be quiet so that the man will stop filming you.” Elsewhere, the elder Domshal Nden, when telling about burial customs women are normally not allowed to see, looks around and says with a laugh, “I hope there are no women nearby.” His immediate male audience laughs, but of course, the audience of the film (including me and the editor and co-producer Sylvie Bringas), watching and listening to him through the camera, is made up of women.
still used by permission of Dul Johnson
Elsewhere during the reburial ceremony, an elder complains, “In the olden days, the Elders did their thing alone. It’s the breakdown in our belief system that causes trouble. You said children should be allowed, so that they learn. Isn’t this asking for trouble? Your heart must be mature. Because this is no child’s play. Now our people have broken the beehive, exposed our secrets.” This is a dilemma that has long been faced by those who want to preserve traditions but in capturing them divest them of the secrecy that made them sacred, such as Camara Laye who in his autobiographical novel The Dark Child exposes secret manhood rituals.
still used by permission of Dul Johnson
Dul Johnson here seems to defend himself to the elder about the presence of the camera, telling him, “I am Tarok. I stayed in this village before, and this is my Uncle here. I would not do anything that would hurt the Tarok. Everything you’ve said can be done in the presence of women. There is nothing you’ve said that is a secret in our culture.” And his argument seems to have prevailed since people, for the most part, good-humouredly participate in the film. Children laugh as they pass by climbing the mountain. “They want to take our picture!” As he’s wrapping the skull with cloth one of the men says, “Damn, this cameraman is not giving me space.” Everyone around laughs, “You brought them here,” says another, “shouldn’t you let them do their work?”
still used by permission of Dul Johnson
The film is built around several conflicts, conflict between older and younger generations, conflicts between Christianity and Tarok traditional practices, conflicts over which aspects of culture should be open to which people. These conflicts war within the filmmaker himself. When he attends the Ibyari ceremony, he says, “I felt like a total stranger and a great sense of loss”. His discomfort is related to a larger conflict between the old and young generations. Throughout the film, the elders complain about the inattentiveness of the younger generation. Dul Johnson asks, “I wonder… what will happen to the Traditional man?” Part of the solution he seems to have found is to record it. He asks as many questions as he can on camera. The spiritual leader of the Gbak tells him that a son or nephew performs the Ibyari ceremony, “because he does not want to forget his father’s name.” It is not hidden from women, or small boys, even from Christians. Everybody is welcome to attend. Dul states that his own Christian head will not go to the mountains, but he has found another way to honour his father and his ancestors, another way to remember their names: through a film, which like the Ibyari ceremony, is welcome to all, and a film, which like the ceremony, keeps the memory alive.
still used by permission of Dul Johnson
“The death of a person does not mean he’s gone,” says Domshal Nden, “Otherwise we wouldn’t dream about them. But we dream and see people, and we talk to them. You see the shadow that walks with someone? It is the person.”
still used by permission of Dul Johnson
A dream, a shadow, a prayer, a film. They help us remember.
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A Tunanina... 