In Helsinki Times...

Helsinki Times is the first weekly English language newspaper in Finland. My article - A VISIT TO FINLAND - appears in the latest edition, in the "EXPAT VIEW" column. It's online here

I was in Helsinki in late October for the 2008 Helsinki Book Fair

A debt to Uppsala...

As I prepare to leave (these days I somehow manage to start every sentence of mine with that phrase), I think I ought to give something back to Uppsala for all generous love it has given to me, and for the sun and snow it has so selfishly withheld.

Perhaps I will have to return to Lagos first, to put enough distance betwixt myself and this lovely city that has been home for 3 months, before I can attempt to embark on any such creative 'philanthropy'...

While I muse over what Uppsala has meant to me, and while I pray desperately that I shall not have to pay for overweight luggage at the airport when I leave in a little over a week from now, I will share a poem... my gift to Paris after a (forced) 24 hour sojourn there in February 2005...

* 'forced' because Paris was not meant to host me... I was there only to catch a connecting flight to Lagos. I ended up missing the flight, ended up having to spend a night...

PARIS

You look at one another with
measured smiles, pursed lips
or Absolute Hesitations

and speak with your eyes
above the din of your skins
in conversations of many frequencies.

there's the disappointment
that comes when French falls
through the teeth of a kinsman

and you think –
another nigger down.
And there's the Enlightenment

of discovering
that not every black man is
from the country

you left behind.
you glance at one another
in rituals of Suspicion

wondering who's legal
and who smells
of impending deportation

Paris is the City
where you speak the slowest,
like a stammerer,

to avoid tangling your tongue.
the City where
you find your way

around the fastest
despite their speaking
in tongues.

Tolu Ogunlesi (c) 2006

Originally published in Sentinel Poetry #49 (4th Anniversary Issue), here

Things Fall Apart @ 50 in Uppsala, Sweden

The Nordic Africa Institute, Uppsala invites you to a discussion on

Things Fall Apart

Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe is a milestone in African literature, and the 50 years’ anniversary since its publication has been the topic of many conferences and seminars. Now the turn has come to Uppsala. Both Africa and African literature has undergone many changes since 1958, but this book still hangs on as the classic number one. It has been translated to 50 languages, for thousands and thousands of African school children it has been prescribed reading, it has not once been out of print. We will discuss such questions as why is this book about the meeting between the Igbo people and the colonisers still a classic? What did the book mean for the African novel? What does it mean today for writers and readers in Nigeria? Why has it not yet been translated to Igbo?

These and other questions will be discussed by Stefan Helgesson, literature scholar and literature critic, and Tolu Ogunlesi, a young Nigerian writer, presently ending his 3-month grant as African guest writer at the Nordic Africa Institute.
The event is part of the series “The Writers’ Africa”.

Welcome!
Venue: The Nordic Africa Institute (Library), Kungsgatan 38, Uppsala
Date and time: Thursday 20 November 2008, 18.00-20.00. (Note the library is open until 18.00, welcome to browse!)

Mai PalmbergCoordinator for the ”Cultural Images in and of Africa” research programme
Nordic Africa Institute

Images from Oslo - Viking Ship Museum

All images (c) Tolu Ogunlesi, 2008











All images (c) Tolu Ogunlesi, 2008

Op-Ed - We Must Set Forth At Midnight

My article We Must Set Forth At Midnight (title borrowed from Nobel Laureate Wole Soyinka's memoir, YOU MUST SET FORTH AT DAWN appears in The Guardian (Nigeria) - Sunday November 16 - here.

* Apologies for the dodgy formatting (creative line breaks) of the piece - 'website devil' it must be...

Notes from Uppsala [8] - Counting Down

Published in The Guardian (Lagos) Life Magazine (Sunday, November 16, 2008)

***

My days in Uppsala are slowly grinding to an end (slightly faster however than the wheels of justice). There are many things I’ll miss about this University Town of about 200,000 residents.
*
The only thing I’ll be fortunate to miss (very narrowly) will be the worst of winter. It has snowed once, one Friday evening, a few weeks ago. Perhaps it will snow again before I leave. But the dark days are here, nightfall at 4pm, which has not been as disorienting as I’d assumed it’s be. The mind always gets fooled of course, but there is always the clock to give my sense of chronological balance a helpful jolt.
I’ll miss the forty-minute train ride to and from Stockholm for sightseeing – a lot of my time in Stockholm is actually spent no farther than the Central Station, wandering through the intimidating array of magazines stocked at Pressbyran or browsing through paperbacks at the Pocket Shop.
*
“Sweden is a lovely place with a strong work/life balance culture”
That’s from an email someone sent to me on learning that I was in Sweden.
Many companies (multinationals especially) in Nigeria like to go on and on in a nebulous manner about “work-life balance.” They need to come over to Sweden to see that “work-life balance” is a “life”, not a discussion topic; an “end” and not merely a means to an end.
*
Alas, three months here will not be enough to convert me to the “Lunch at Noon, Dinner at 5pm” religion.
*
I don’t look forward very much to returning to the crazy traffic, the noisy generators, the utter impossibility of anonymity (the kind that I have so nicely settled into here). But go back I will, to the life I know best, the one I have spent the longest experiencing.
*
In the two weeks or so I have my work cut out. Shopping. And more shopping. Or perhaps it will merely be window-shopping.
I have two readings in my last week, one at a gathering of Uppsala poets who meet once a week at the Mission Church, the other at the English Bookstore in Uppsala.
And then there is a last bout of sightseeing to be done.
Tentative plans: A boat trip to the Swedish archipelago, a visit to Swedish furniture giant IKEA, and then to Uppsala’s museums.
Perhaps a night club outing (hoping to God that the songs are in English!). But I know that, on the premise of Newton’s fourth Law of Motion – “White Men Can’t Dance” – I’ll feel far more comfortable flailing my arms and twisting my ankles in a Swedish club than in a Nigerian one.
*
There will be the list of regrets (hopefully not “highway long”) – I’d have loved to travel more around Sweden, away from the Big Cities and University Cities, to get a feel of rural Swedish Life.
I haven’t yet had a taste of Glögg and aquavit, traditional Swedish liquor.
I had hoped to visit a Volvo factory, but that doesn’t look likely any more.
I keep forgetting that I have been meaning to rent a bike.
The much dreamed about photo-shoot with the Swedish Royal Family doesn’t look too feasible anymore.
*
I will miss the Chinese Garden, where I spend the occasional afternoon tucking into an inexpensive (by Nigerian standards) buffet, musing on the fact that Chinese restaurants in Lagos are typically elitist establishments, meant as markers and maintainers of class in a society where people like to entrench separateness between themselves and other people on the basis of the expenses they make.
*
The anonymity is for me the most appealing thing. But it is a strange form of anonymity, a felt (internalised) anonymity – on the basis of skin color alone it is the farthest thing from anonymity; nothing stands out more than the color black in a world of white skins and pristine snow – but unless you are an illegal immigrant there is a feeling that in this strange land no one knows you, there is no one to offer unsolicited advice, no obligatory aso-ebis to buy.
Uppsala I assume is one of those few places left on the face of the earth where a Nigerian can still feel fairly anonymous. You try that in London!

Images from Oslo [2]

All images (c) Tolu Ogunlesi, 2008










All images (c) Tolu Ogunlesi, 2008

Notes from Uppsala [7] - Mixing Races

Written before the historic Elections that brought Barack Obama to power, and published in the Guardian Life magazine (Sunday, November 9, 2008),

By the time you read this, the United States of America will have a new President. I believe it will be Barack Obama Jr., son of a Kenyan father and an American mother. Barack Obama Sr. left home and family behind to travel to America in search of an education, perhaps a new life. He met Ann Dunham at the University of Hawaii at Manoa, while they were both students there. Not long after, Sen. Obama was born.
*
It is a story that many will be familiar with. In the forties and fifties shiploads of Nigerians regularly set sail from Lagos, headed for colonial Britain’s Universities (and to a lesser extent America – Nnamdi Azikiwe being one of the more famous examples of Nigerian students in America). In the sixties and seventies Russia, Hungary, Poland and other Communist (Eastern European) countries joined the list of destination countries for young Nigerians seeking certificates for a better life. These opportunities were the fallout of the Cold War; it must have dawned on the Imperial Powers that the Cold War was not merely a battle for military supremacy, it was also a battle for the minds of men and women, and Africa was virgin ground, waiting to be taken. So that they turned on Africa and lavished it with scholarships and exchange programs.
*
It was inevitable that many of the young Nigerians who left would fall in love with women from their host countries – like Barack Obama Sr. Some came back home with their (new) families. Others chose to stay behind. Today, in and out of Nigeria there are sizeable communities of “half-castes” (that word is now ‘Politically Incorrect’) of Nigerian origin.
*
Many Ghanaians moved to Nigerians in the seventies and early eighties escaping political and economic turmoil in their country. By the early eighties there was a sizeable Ghanaian population in Nigeria, working at all sorts of jobs, from blue collar jobs ones like shoe-mending to white collar ones like teaching. Most of my primary school teachers were Ghanaians, and they were such excellent teachers it seemed like God had created them specially for that purpose. In 1983 we asked them to leave (see Ghana-must-go). They did. But I’d like to imagine that in the years they spent here, they fell in love with and/or married Nigerian women, and had children, and that there is a sizeable population of Ghanaian-Nigerians, or Nigerian-Ghanaians (take your pick) scattered between Nigeria (those who stayed) and Ghana (those who left).
Interestingly, years before we asked the Ghanaians to leave, they asked us to. In 1969 Ghana deported 50,000 Nigerian migrants, for “economic reasons.” And today, Nigerians are again moving in droves to Ghana, to take advantage of a country where things work better, where there are more possibilities than the one they left behind.
*
A significant number of Koreans moved to Japan during the 2nd World War, and have lived there since (even though they still remain largely as second-class citizens, due to the fact that Japan is (in the words of the New York Times) a “homogenous and insular nation… notoriously unwelcoming to immigrants…”
But once upon a time even the “notoriously unwelcoming’ Japanese had to “move”. I was surprised to discover that the largest Japanese population outside of Japan is found not in a neighbouring Asian country, not even in America –“Home to Everyone” (where there are about 1.2 million Japanese – 2005 figures) – but in Brazil. There are an estimated 1.5 million people of Japanese descent living in Brazil, descendants of the thousands of Japanese who have been traveling to Japan since the Brazil-Japan Immigration Treaty of 1907 permitted the Japanese to seek work on Brazil’s coffee plantations – the same plantations to which millions of Africans were forcefully shipped during the transatlantic Slave Trade.
*
About 6% of Finland’s current population is made up of people known as “Swedish-speaking Finns”, (the percentage has actually fallen to this figure over the centuries) their origins can be traced to the time when Finland used to be a part of Sweden, before the Russian conquest of 1809.
*
A while ago I wrote about the following exchange between myself and an American postgraduate student that I met here in Uppsala:
Him: "Did you know that in Liberia Nigerians are treated as God?"
Me: “Yeah, ECOMOG...”
Him: “And did you know that there is a village (in Liberia) full of half-Liberian half-Nigerian children…”
Me: [laughing] “Yeah... “
It’s a joke even in Nigeria, about the sizeable number of Nigerian-Liberian children in Liberia, whose fathers happen to be Nigerian soldiers.
*
I can’t help ending the way I started, with Barack Obama.
In 2006, on The Oprah Winfrey Show, he said: "Michelle will tell you that when we get together for Christmas or Thanksgiving, it's like a little mini-United Nations... I've got relatives who look like Bernie Mac, and I've got relatives who look like Margaret Thatcher... we've got it all."

On Religion and Soccer (for lack of a better title)

Update (07 November)
Thanks Waffy for 'reminding' me that actually, Lagos is no longer the capital of Nigeria.

Hey, folks, that was a (Freudian?) slip. I take all the responsibility for it.

Lagos stopped being the administrative capital of Nigeria in 1991, when the then President Babangida moved the seat of Government to Abuja (wiki)

But in a sense it remains the defacto commercial capital, and of course the most populated. And it's where I live. The (personal) question I get asked the most here is "So where in Nigeria do you live?" to which I answer, LAGOS. So somehow I must have answered the Kebab guy below with the same confidence, without thinking about what exactly it was he was asking me.
And then I went ahead to blog, still without thinking about it (Note to self: Do Not, Ever Again, Blog After Midnight!).

This error suddenly makes me feel like I'm Sarah Palin...

For the purposes of this blog, I think I might leave the exchange below as it is. But please, for the purposes of history and history lessons, Lagos is no longer the capital of Nigeria. It is only where I live...

I'm off to find the Kebab guy to admit my error...

***

I'm on the last lap of my tour of duty...
I don't want to think about it, about how much I'll miss this life, these cities, quaint Uppsala, big city Stockholm, how I'll miss getting lost in the midst of these people whose language I cannot speak, miss stopping people to ask for directions and having to quickly say "English, English" when they start talking to me in Swedish, miss the kebab joints and 'Chinese garden' and being stuck with BBC world...

But now's not the time to dwell on memories...

Yesterday evening I went to a kebab place. The guy at the counter, of Middle Eastern origin started to speak Swedish to me.
"English, English" I said. He complied. I made my order. Then he asked me where I was from.
Nigeria, I told him.
The capital of Nigeria is what?
Lagos.* (see Update)
Ah, Lah-gos...

*
...so are there both Christians and Muslims in Nigeria?
Yes.
In equal numbers?
Well, there seem to be more Muslims than Christians, I say. (At least that's what I think)
But all your football players are Christian, eh?
Well... most...

*

(I want to explain that most of Nigeria's soccer superstars are Igbos, from South Eastern Nigeria, and that the Igbo are mostly Christians - Catholics to be precise. I want to further explain that I can't recall having ever met a Muslim Igbo, even though I'm sure they exist...)

But this is not seminar session on 'Religion, Geography and Soccer in Nigeria: A critical appraisal'

Then he starts to reel out names of Nigerian soccer players:
The usual suspects - Kanu Nwankwo, JJ Okocha ("the guy at Bolton" is what he says as he tries to recall the name), Julius Aghahowa, Sunday Oliseh, "Uche" (he's forgotten the surname)...

When he says 'Uche' I suggest 'Uche Okafor', which I think he hears as 'Kuffour' because he immediately tells me that Kuffour is from Ghana.

I marvel at his knowledge of Nigerian players, and he tells me that he's a fanatic, and even apologises that his knowledge has diminished over time...

It's somewhat refreshing to be away from literary circles for once, where the first question I am asked always has something to do with Chinua Achebe or Wole Soyinka.

*

Just before I leave (after eating) I walk up to him to ask where he's from.
He hesitates for a moment, then speaks.

"Let's talk later" he says "It's complicated"

Complicated? I leave almost scratching my head. How complicated can it be? As complicated as the "it's complicated" of Facebook?

I guess he's right. The Identity Question always manages to be one of the most complicated in the world... ask Barack Obama for further details...

How to write (books) about Africa: A Guide for the Aspiring Westerner

by Tolu Ogunlesi

This was inspired by the now-famous Binyavanga Wainaina (wiki) article, How to Write About Africa, originally published in Granta

1. Join the Peace Corps. In all honesty, this is enough. Join the Peace Corps, and you will write about Africa. Whether you’d really like to, or not. There’s something about the Peace Corps that makes you suspect that it’s an undercover MFA program, haunted by muses and sundry writing spirits

But then, here’s more specific guidance on what to do after you join the Peace Corps:
Spend 1 year in a lost village. This is the "100% Proven and Guaranteed" way to get inspiration for a book on Africa. Visit the city, or even a small town at your own peril; there you will waste your mornings at the local Starbucks and your evenings fighting obesity and gorging on greasy McDonald’s fare and Heineken six packs, almost like you were back home in Minnesota or Idaho. Another drawback, one year in an African City is a sure way to go back home without setting eyes on even one African beast.

Examples of existing "peace-corps books":
· The Village of Waiting (1988) by George Packer
· Black Papyrus: A Year in the Life of an African Village (2003)
· Why the Sky Is Far Away: A Folktale from Nigeria, Retold by Mary-Joan Gerson (1974)
· In Bikole: Eight Modern Stories of Life in a West African Village, illustrated by Monica Vachula, 1978
· State of Decay: An Oubangui Chronicle; A Novel of African Adventure (2001)
· The Children of Mauritania: Days in the Desert and by the River Shore (1993)


2. Make sure your book title has at least one of the following "buzz-words" –
Tribe, Genocide, Slave, Hills, AIDS, Scramble, Matchete, Village or Grave.
These words help magnify searchability on Amazon and Google, and standoutability in crowded bookstore shelves, and rumors have it that Amazon actually preferentially ranks such books e.g.

· Nine Hills to Nambonkaha: Two Years in the Heart of an African Village (Henry Holt, 2003)
· The Graves Are Not Yet Full: Race, Tribe and Power in the Heart of Africa (Basic Books, 2001).
· Machete Season: The Killers in Rwanda Speak (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2005).
· My Traitor's Heart: A South African Exile Returns to Face His Country, His Tribe, and His Conscience (Atlantic Monthly Press, 1989).

Also very importantly, try to make sure that the word Africa appears in the title. See Rule 1 for more examples.


3. Still on titles. "Farther is better" is the Golden Rule.
The farther your title is from ordinariness, and the closer it is to the Exotic and/or Fantastical, the better:
· When a Crocodile Eats the Sun: A Memoir of Africa (Little, Brown, 2007)
· We Wish to Inform You that Tomorrow We Will Be Killed with Our Families: Stories from Rwanda (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1998)

4. Get blurbs from at least 2 of the following:
– the latest African-baby-adopting white celebrity diva
– the latest celebrity African ex-child-soldier
– a Chinese Government official extolling the "rich" virtues of the continent (caveat: this might not go down well with the US State Department, and will therefore invariably affect your chances of getting a US Publisher)
– one of the growing numbers of African hawker-or-herdsgirl-turned-new-york-supermodel...
– Bono


5. Last but not the least. Your cover photo. You certainly need to get this right. Instead of the hackneyed (Conradian) images you’d find in The Economist (No. 1 Suspect) – fly-covered, potbellied children, an AK-47 clutching "rebel", a family posing outside a hut, cows, a queue of black-skinned humans clutching bowls and smiling) – Be Positively Different
It's now called CSR - Continental Social Responsibility. Use a toothless, smiling, saggy-breasted black-skinned African "Ma" clutching Coca Cola in one hand, and an iPod in the other.
It's a globalised world after all…

Images from Stockholm [5]

All images (c) Tolu Ogunlesi, 2008






All images (c) Tolu Ogunlesi, 2008

Images from Stockholm [4]

All images (c) Tolu Ogunlesi, 2008






All images (c) Tolu Ogunlesi, 2008

Meet Adorna and Desiderus...

I'd like to introduce you to two new friends, ADORNA and DESIDERUS... both of whom have just started blogging.

It's a crazy blogworld out there, millions of blogs, as ANON, that most famous of writers puts it, "NEVER BEFORE IN THE HISTORY OF MANKIND HAVE SO MANY PEOPLE BEEN TALKING TO SO FEW."

Show them some love ok, every new blogger needs all the support and encouragement they can get.

Especially when these two bloggers promise to offer you more excitement than you might be able to handle... (keep your blood pressure gauges nearby is what that means I guess...

Show some love...

Uppsala Notes: Finland, Nokia & Other Stories

POSTCARD FROM FINLAND
Expanded version published in the Guardian Life magazine (Sunday, November 2, 2008)

I arrived Helsinki’s Vantaa airport at 3pm on Friday, 24th October eager to see how the country would differentiate itself from its Scandinavian neighbours.
*
Nokia. Sauna. Guns. Ice hockey. Crayfish. Vodka. Reindeer meat.
What do the above all share in common?
Finland.
I think it’s fair to say that there is no mobilephone-owning Nigerian who does not currently own – or has not at one time or the other owned – a Nokia phone. It’s always seemed that there are two kinds of mobile phones: Nokia, and The Rest. Many are the jokes about the durability of the Nokia phone, so that if you see any Nigerian who’s owned the same phone for a few years, it’s more likely than not to be a Nokia. (It doesn’t seem to occur to Nokia that manufacturing phones that last for eternity is a bad way to do business. How will people buy new phones if the old ones don’t go kaput?)
*
The Finns are mighty proud of their Nokia. You can’t blame them. If you’re a country of five million people (a third of Lagos State), yet own such a global brand like Nokia (it is the world’s largest manufacturer of mobile phones, and a major pillar of the Finnish economy; in Business Week’s 2008 ranking of the ‘Best Global Brands’, it is Number 5), you are entitled to be super-proud, arrogant even.
Think how nice it’d be if Nigeria had even one “Nokia” of its own. I keep arguing that while it’s good to have super-banks, and Super Eagles, Nigeria will not become a great economic power (i.e. Vision 2020) without becoming a visible player on the global technological field. The road to Vision 2020 is not paved with good intentions, and it is certainly not paved with Chinese generators and Korean automobiles.
*
‘Nokia’ is originally the name of a town in Western Finland, and the original Nokia Company was a wood-pulp mill established in 1865, which later merged a rubber factory. (Today there are still Wellington boots in Finland known as “Nokia boots.”)
*
I have been taking lessons in Finnish history since I arrived. It's all so colourful and varied that I want to learn more, and write about it. Finland appears to be caught between the devil and the deep blue sea – one is Russia, the other is Sweden (Don't ask me which is which, I don't know), and both once fought a bloody battle over Finland.
*
Brief History Lesson: Finland used to be a part of Sweden. The Russians eyed it, and wanted it. Russia and Sweden fought over it (1808 – 1809). Russia won, and Finland became Russian territory. (Apparently the Finns got greater autonomy under Russia than under 'brotherly' Sweden). The Russian Revolution (1917) freed Finland to emerge as a nation on its own.
*
In the past I have had cause to complain about Language. And Food. And Food. And Currency Confusions.
Now, let me add something else to the Gripe List.
Time.
At 4a.m. on Sunday the 26th of October the Finns altered Time. One hour backwards.
My brilliant conclusion was this: "This time machine business is beginning to get annoying." Arriving Finland from Sweden on Friday, time changed (Sweden is one hour behind Finland). I left Stockholm at 1pm, on a one-hour flight and landed in Helsinki at 3pm local time, losing one hour for flying a mere one hour.
Now just as I was settling down here I was being told we had to reverse the earlier decision. As though some Cosmic Powers could not make up their minds on what they wanted the Time to be.
I was going to insist on not changing any Time. At a point I was trapped between three different Time 'Zones'. My laptop bore my Nigerian Time. My phone bore Swedish Time. And my hotel room clock bore Finnish Time.
*
My conclusion: The Portrait of Time as an unsettling Trinity.

Images from the Uppsala International Guitar Festival [16-19 October 2008]

Website here
[I didn't really attend the Festival, only found time to pop in on a Saturday morning to take a few photos...]

All images (c) Tolu Ogunlesi, 2008









All images (c) Tolu Ogunlesi, 2008

Images from The Helsinki Book Fair 2008

All images (c) Tolu Ogunlesi, 2008









All images (c) Tolu Ogunlesi, 2008