Never fly United Airlines if you can help it

Christmas Eve. Sitting in my apartment on the phone with a computer that enjoys hanging up on me. Flight to Los Angeles has been cancelled now twice. They called me the first time at 6am this morning and rescheduled my flight for 10am tomorrow. I prided myself on being extra nice, since I knew that most customers on the cancelled flight were probably pretty irate. I didn't mind the extra day because most of my family is flying in tomorrow anyway.

The second cancellation they didn't call me. I just went to check online before going to bed so I could get some sleep before my 1am taxi to take the 2:20am bus to get to the airport I need to fly out of, and noticed that it said "cancelled" before my flight, and that the new time was 8pm tomorrow, to arrive at 10:30pm.... and the trip to the airport from where my brother and cousin live is at least an hour. Since then, I have talked to a variety of agents, one of whom kept giggling and sounded like he was on pot. Have been hung up on at least 10 times. The first person I talked to confirmed that this was a "crew" problem, not a weather problem. So, when I asked if there was some sort of compensation, she talked to her supervisor, and they told me I could get a $25 voucher on United. "For two days worth of cancellations!?" I ask her incredulously. "That's the best we can do, maam," she says. "All right," I say, "I know it's not your fault. Have a Merry Christmas...." My brother tells me I should call back and insist that they put me on another airline. My dad tells me that I should insist on talking to supervisors if they can't help me. And thus continues the saga (great swell of organ and piano on the staticky "hold" music)...

Now, if this last agent can't help me, I'll take it as a sign from God that I am supposed to spend Christmas studying for my prelims....

......

So, (and I type this live) I finally talk with this very nice agent, who tells me that THAT flight, apparently in the few minutes in which I had been trying to change to an earlier flight, has ALSO been cancelled due to "crew" problems (THIRD flight cancellation today), and that the only flight she can get me on is an American Airlines flight that will get into Los Angeles at 11:10pm. I take it, along with another $100 voucher. But, do I dare ever actually use the vouchers?

I look forward to American Airlines...

I don't think I shall ever fly United again if I can help it....

So, Christmas prelims studying... here I come...

At least I'm at home and not in the airport. We thank God for small blessings...


My conversations with the computer tonight (recorded from memory) at 1800-United1:

Welcome to United Airlines. Please listen carefully. Press 1 to make a reservation. Press 2 if you already have a reservation." If you need time, please say, "please wait," if you don't know it, say "I don't know" Please say the reservation number, since some numbers like B or V are hard to tell apart, please use them with common first names such as "M" as in "Mary."

I have a "v" in my confirmation, so try "v" as in "valentine." They don't get it. I think of names with "v." "Vera?" "Violet?" "Van Damme?"

Got it. What's the first and last name of the passenger. Would you like to confirm the trip, change it, request seats, request a wheel chair, or speak to an agent.

After the 10th time, I consider requesting a wheelchair.

Let me get a reservations agent for you. I'll make sure the agent gets the information you've already given me. Thank you for calling United Airlines, we apologize for the delay. Please stay on the line....

I am on hold for about two minutes and then I hear a polite canned voice (for the upteenth time)

I'm sorry for the difficulty. Rather than take up any more of your time, I'm going to go ahead and end your call....

So be it.... and so ends my relationship with United Airlines.

Photo Credits: http://www.bloggossip.com/index.php?cat=160

Global connections in Music Video objectification of Women: adhiambo sinda

Ok, so, as I'm studying linguistics today... watch for visual motifs in this Kenyan song alongside the Sean Paul and Dare Art Alade that I posted a few weeks ago. I must say this one and Dare Art Alade are "funner" than Sean Paul's.

And what the heck is Che doing in the background. Is that Bruce Lee beside him? Any swahilli speakers out there who could shed some light on this?

"In Defence of the Films We Have Made" by Odia Ofeimun

When I'm writing a paper, I have such a hard time stopping myself from reading and actually starting to write. There is just so much to read, and I love feeling my mind growing and expanding--of learning--devouring knowledge. Today, I sat down on my couch while the snow fell outside and hand wrote an extended outline, so as to keep myself from turning on my computer and getting distracted, and then instead of turning on the computer and starting to write, I had to read one more thing.

The thing I chose to re-read (having first read it about a year and a half ago) was "In Defence of the Films we have made" the keynote address given by Odia Ofeimun at the 2nd National Film Festival in Lagos on 27 November 2003. Both celebratory and thoughtful, It is simply the best essay I have ever read on the Nigerian film industry, both placing it within a historical context and theorizing towards the future. I have been reading it from issue 8 of Chimurenga (2005), which some friends of mine in South Africa sent me, but when I searched for it online, I see that it has also been published by West Africa Review Issue 5 (2004), so I'll cut and paste a few passages from that.


"In Defence of the Films We Have Made"
by Odia Ofeimun

Excerpt 1:

"Needless to say, the home-video has become the hegemonic means of defining the Nigerian film sense. Whatever is said about any other way of making stories on screen, it is the video film that will necessarily for the foreseeable future dominate the Nigerian film festival. For every day of the year, three new video films are unloaded upon the Nigerian market. Every year in the past half decade, about 200,000 to 300,000 new hands have been lifted from the throes of unemployment and underemployment by the gloss and glitter of the small screen. Conjointly, they generate about five billion Naira annually. Stranded artists, areas boys and area fathers, authors, dramatists, actors and closet fabulists have found their niche in the pack. Actors who had run away from the penury that haunted the stage have been brought back to life! Though they were dead now they are a vibrant part of a community that literally bubbles. Devotees of the stage who had been reduced to breaching their talents, and living near derelict lives, wondering what kind of society leaves her artists to suffer in so many distracting sectors, have acquired the gravitas of an established community. No longer are they among the artists who are sneered at by other moneyed professionals who are no better than what used to be called agbero bourgeoisie because they merely load other people’s wagons. Now the home video artist is not lumped with other artists who are ritually blamed for not being business-oriented. Within the norm of the home video, it is enough to be a scriptwriter, actor, dramatist, cameraman, director or singer although professionalism is still far away.

If you look at our hunger-besotted slums and our beleaguered villages, you find that many, so many, are finding their feet because of a trade that removes the duller moments from the depression of our neglected, unmanaged and generally manager-less towns and cities. Authors displaced by the collapse of the publishing industry have made a detour from the usual haunts in favour of the home-video turf. One look at any home video film, and the gushy life that it carries, brings a sense of how much of our society was dead and dying without finding a time to bloom. As such, gratitude must well up in the hearts of those enamoured of artistes who had given so much to the arts and are only just being saved for a season of eternity in the company of a vibrant younger generation by the home video films. This is to say that what appeared in the beginning as merely making do has opened floodgates to the peculiar Nigerian genius for creativity and enterprise. The burst of social energy that it has unleashed has very few parallels in any other areas of our national life except perhaps in the parallel growth of Pentecostal churches which it has serviced in many cities and which in an uncanny way services it."

....

Excerpt 2
"The avalanche of issues that films have covered bear testimony to unparalleled creativity which should make and have been making Hollywood buffs take notice. The sheer volume is unprecedented even if repetitious and not always obedient to the laws of professional decorum or excellence. For this reason, I would concede that the video films run the danger of merely supplying Hollywood with the raw materials to re-claim our shores in the not too distant future. But for now, in spite of a ritualistic slapdashness, there is so much energy and creativity that older motion picture industries have something to learn from. From boardroom struggles to political power play, military adventurism and godfatherism in politics, ritual murder, drug abuse and the rehabilitation of drug abusers, witchcraft and churchcraft, high living and low life, prostitution and AIDS, the home videos are brashly, even if self-consciously, seductive. They are turning out the Nigerian story in a no-holds-barred fashion which leaves no room for anybody to hide. In this, they recall the sass of junk journalism and, in a sense, what was called guerilla journalism under the military. Undeniably, they reveal an enormous lot about us and our society that is not beautiful. Not infrequently, they themselves are not beautiful or passable. But why judge an artistic culture by its commercial pulp rather than its outstanding performances. It is like the misbegotten booboo in literary criticism which takes the motley of self-published, poorly edited works, as basis for judging the vibrancy of Nigerian literature. In such situations, it is the judges who, inadvertently, are judging themselves."

To read the whole essay, see West Africa Review.

Ron Eglash on Fractals in Africa: art, design, and philosophy

Ok, Dr. Eglash is definitely talking to a Western audience, but his subject is absolutely fascinating!

Global connections in Music Video objectification of Women: Dare Art Alade's "Fuji Music"

YES, I'm studying....

Note the visual connections between Dare Art Alade's music video "Fuji Music" and Sean Paul's "Ever Blazing," which should appear below this post.

Both songs feature obsessively catchy rhythms and "obscenely" shaking booty...

There is another paper waiting to be written here...

Global connections in Music Video objectification of Women: Sean Paul's "Ever Blazing"

Gidan Iko: House of Power

Em, so, I'm in the midst of studying for prelims.... and preparing for a film paper...

One of these days, I'm going to write a paper on the genre of the Hausa film trailer (and perhaps its use on YouTube), which becomes in itself a mini-film, woven together by the chorus of one of the film's catchiest songs and dances. Note here framing and composition (especially in that opening shot), use of colour, the rhythmic graphic matching in the editing. Through the use of the song to weave together significant moments of the film, we see a concern with the power structures of the nation, alongside the crowd pleasing rhymes about love.

And to make this relevant to my prelims studying, note the magnificent examples of linguistic code switching. I love being a scholar of popular culture! {-;

And to link this to my other research, here is a very bad video I took on my digital camera in Kano last year in an open-air theatre of Abbas Sadiq and Zainab Idris (the dancers seen in the video here) dancing to the playback version of this song "Gidan Iko." (I have heard that this open air theatre may have since been destroyed. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tTqD6GQx0q0
Apparently the lyrics of this song are by Adam Zango (Usher), the artist and musician currently imprisoned for trying to market his music video "BaHaushiya", that had not been censored, during the film ban in Kano. (According to his critics, he was defaming Hausa women by calling a song where a woman dances provocatively "BaHaushiya" (Hausa woman).

Warm Fuzzy teaching moments

So, one wouldn't think, after my post of a couple of days ago, that I would write something like this. But after having taken a couple of days break from grading (too much other stuff to do) I'm back at it, and this time getting warm fuzzies. What is exciting (now that I've gotten past the initial bad papers--I'm sure there are more to come) is to see students learning and writing about things that interest them. We gave them a variety of paper topics and the option to do what they are interested in rather than the "formula" paper, and, although I'm nervous about grading our "creative options" (I've set those aside for last), it's such a joy to read those few stellar papers that are almost perfect: well written, well-researched, intelligently thought out, engaging.... I just wrote on one paper, "I've been reading dozens of papers tonight, and it's so pleasurable to come across a paper that I not only enjoy reading but from which I learn something. You write very well..." On another (a student I know was just accepted into grad school), I wrote "You already sound like a graduate student!"

This is why we teach, I suppose, for those brief moments of joy when we see students synthesizing and connecting with what they are learning. You see all those sources in their works cited, and you think, "They know this now." This is now a part of their knowledge. Perhaps they will bring up the points they've cited in this paper in conversation with family and friends in related conversations.... And in the exceptional papers, you think "I just learned something new." And that is exciting.

I also have students post a comment or question on the readings or lectures to an email listserve once a week, and, despite a few mid-semester evaluation grumbles (most like it; a few don't), it always gets progressively better throughout the semester. I love seeing them think through things and using the tools they've learned to better analyze what they are reading and hearing.

So, even though I have about 50 more papers to grade and even though I'm stressed out of my mind because my prelims dates have been set for January 16 and 18 (sooner than I was planning--I'm not at all ready), I'm happy, sitting here at my kitchen table with papers all around me--sorted into various grades. I'm happy because I have 70+ students, who I really like even if I do still forget their names sometimes, most of whom are smart and interested in Africa. And if some of them still use the word "tribe" and "native," well, hopefully they'll remember my comments on their papers.... WWWD.

stylee

so... i'm trying to prepare for a short lecture on African popular culture tomorrow before showing Djibril Diop Mambety's film...and...

WWWD: What would Wainaina do....

So, I'm in the midst of grading some 70+ papers and finding myself making loud growling noises--I SWEAR if I see "native Africans" or "tribal" or "nation" (for the continent of Africa) used one more time after I sent an explicit email to my students outlining my peeviest of pet peeves.... And after one dear child ends her otherwise insightful paper about the mis-uses of humanitarian aid in Africa with the phrase "we will start to see a country coming out of the darkness and into the light," I find myself writing: "What would Binyavanga Wainaina say?"

Because, you see, they had to read that Binyavanga Wainaina essay "How to Write About Africa" at the beginning of the semester, and he is my reference point whenever I think the dang textbook Understanding Contemporary Africa (a rather bad textbook trying to condense "understanding" all of Africa [politics, economics, religion, literature, history, etc] to about 200 pages) is over-generalizing, which is most of the time--or we see an old cliched documentary in lecture.... or someone asks in class how "we" can "save" Africa....

"What would Wainaina say?" I ask... WWWS

So, I FINALLY get to teach a film (Mambety) this week and Dangarembga's Nervous Conditions next week--back to African voices--thank GOD! After a semester teaching an African Studies introductory survey course, I am grateful that I chose to follow literature and film and spend the rest of my life teaching what African writers have had to say for themselves rather than what other people have to say for them.... I open each discussion section with a poem by an African writer--whether we are studying economics or politics, and whether it totally relates or not... Just my own little way of trying to remind the students that those voices do exist...

Photo Credit: Creative Writing @ EMU

The Heroism of Ordinary People: An Interview with Helon Habila

Thanksgiving day in America... a cornbread dressing in the tradition of my Louisiana grandmother is in the oven and a pumpkin pie is done and cooling on the counter. I'm going to my advisor's house later for dinner to celebrate with some other African students. My interview with Helon Habila was published this week. I am thankful:

This is the 1000 word (ie. gutted) version of an interview with Helon Habila I conducted via telephone last Tuesday before he left for his book tour in Nigeria. (The easy part was transcribing. I spent hours cutting it to get it to 1000 words... ughh...) The story of the interview itself is a longer one, which perhaps I will post about sometime, but Habila was one of the most gracious people I have met via telephone.... The following was published in Leadership this past Monday, 19 November 2007. Unfortunately, the link is no longer up, but this is how it appeared in the newspaper. (In an interesting aside, my dad met him today after the reading at the University of Jos.) Perhaps I'll post the entire interview on my other blog when I have a chance to edit it properly; it will be published in the journal Abiku early next year. But here is the short version:

"The Heroism of Ordinary People: An Interview with Helon Habila"

Award winning novelist Helon Habila grew up in Gombe State. After earning his BA in English at the University of Jos in 1995, he taught at the Federal Polytechnic, Bauchi. Moving to Lagos in 1999, he became the arts editor at the Vanguard and wrote a novel, published as Waiting for An Angel in 2002, which won the Caine Prize for African Fiction in 2001 and the Commonwealth Writers Prize in 2003. Habila has published stories, articles, and poems in journals world-wide and is currently a PhD candidate at the University of East Anglia. After a stint as the first Chinua Achebe fellow at Bard College in New York, Habila took a position at George Mason University where he teaches creative writing. He is in Nigeria from November 17 to November 24 to promote his second novel Measuring Time. In this interview on behalf of LEADERSHIP, he speaks with Talatu-Carmen [my real name used in the publication; i suppose i should stop this ridiculous attempt to protect my identity--pretty much everybody who reads this blog knows who I am], a PhD student at a university in the USA, about his writing.

Talatu-Carmen: I was wondering what your creative process is like. Where do your stories come from?

HABILA: I really cannot say exactly, but I am really inspired by books. Sometimes I write in reaction to books I have read. Then there is also my experience: Measuring Time has a lot of that—my experiences as a child growing up. There was a time when I realised that I wanted to write about my hometown. From that moment whatever I did I viewed it through the eyes of fiction, thinking of how to represent the people I met, the things I did, the places I saw. I was thinking of them as already a part of my book that I was going to write. I was going to write Measuring Time even before I started writing Waiting for an Angel.

In both of your novels the act of writing itself seems to take on a political significance. What, to you, is the political responsibility of the writer?

Well, quite a lot, especially as an African writer. I think there is that tradition which started from the first generation of African writers. They were writing against the whole colonial system, which was very repressive, very racist, very dictatorial. They actually used to have congresses where they would discuss the best way to write fiction in a way that would address the political issues of the day. Even before that, in traditional African society, from the folk tales, there’s always a kind of moral lesson, a kind of didacticism that is seen as an aesthetic part of that story. So politics more or less becomes an aesthetic in African fiction. There are no boundaries between what is purely political and what is art. Art becomes politics and politics becomes art. So I think people like me who find themselves in that tradition, and have that temperament, that awareness of what is going on, who feel that things shouldn’t be the way they are, have a duty to speak out. It is tradition and it’s also a matter of temperament, because there are definitely writers in Africa who don’t write about politics. They write art for art’s sake, or whatever you want to call it.

Could you say more about the influences of Hausa literature on your writing?

Definitely. I grew up reading the translation of One Thousand and One Nights in Hausa and the works of Abubakar Imam, Magana Jari Ce, Ruwan Bagaja, etc. So there is that magical or folkloric representation of reality, which is very different from pure realism. I was definitely influenced by that. And before that I was also influenced by folktales told to me by women in the compound. So, these Hausa books I discovered later were almost a continuation of that story tradition with the magical elements, spirit figures and things like that.

Both of your novels deal with history. In Measuring Time, the character Mamo wants to write a biographical history. Is this one of your own goals?

Definitely, I think so. Because so much that we have is fast fading away and being taken over by the modern, I see writing itself as cultural conservation. That is exactly what Mamo’s project is, conserving the history of people…, because they were misrepresented by the [missionary] Reverend Drinkwater. If you represent what has been misrepresented, you are putting the records right. And that is what history is supposed be. Taking moments of glory, and also ordinary moments—moments of humanity, of value to the community, and putting it down in books. It doesn’t have to be about generals, it doesn’t have to be about chiefs, it could be about ordinary people, their heroism. That is the whole point of the book, that lives should be celebrated, regardless of what office or what lack of office that person has.

Newton Aduaka, the winner of the Golden Yennenga Stallion at the FESPACO film festival, is making a film based on Waiting for an Angel. How involved have you been with this?

I’m not really involved. I’m just the author of the novel. I see film as being totally different from literature. They are both narrative art forms, but they have different ways of representing their story, their subject. I trust him as an artist. I think my novel is strong enough to stand on its own, even if the movie is a bit different in some of its portrayals.

Have you ever thought of writing a screenplay or becoming involved in film?

I really want to do that some day. Some people approached me to write a movie script. I started writing it and then it became a novel! I’m really enjoying the experience. I don’t know how far it’s going to go, but I’m definitely going to go into movies one of these days. To write, or even direct, if I have the chance. The movie industry is just incredible, and I think this is the moment to get involved.

All right, thank you so much.

Thank you, you’re welcome.

Photo credit: Helon Habila with Jeremiah Gyang and Ola Soyinka. Kudus to amazing middlebelt artists! From Naijablog

Helon Habila Tours Nigeria

African Film Conference

Having just returned from an absolutely amazing conference on African film at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, I thought I'd share a few photos. In addition to my academic heros, there were representative filmmakers from the continent. Among the academics I was excited to have a chance to talk with further: Abdalla Uba Adamu, Brian Larkin, Matthias Krings, Onookome Okome, Jonathan Haynes, Birgit Meyer, Kenneth Harrow, and many more. "Nollywood" reps: Joke Silva, Madu Chikwendu, Francis Onwochei, Ghanian filmmaker Socrate Safo, and Cameroonian filmmaker Joyce Ashuntantang. Photo 1: Onookome Okome and Abdalla Uba Adamu; Photo 2: Ghanian filmmaker Socrate Safo was passionate about his craft and was a delight to watch "in action" as he grounded the often flighty academic theorizing with practical examples of current issues of technology and practice in the Ghanian film industry; Photo 3: Brian Larkin and Abdalla Uba Adamu on a panel; 4) Socrate Safo presents clips from three of his films; 5) Cameroonian filmmaker and actress Joyce Ashuntantang shows a clip from her film, Potent Secrets, and speaks about her feminist motivations.

One of the best parts of the conference was getting to interact with the filmmakers from Nollywood, Ghana, and Cameroon. Hearing them speak in conjunction with the academic papers, I was particularly struck by their passion and their professionality--the absolutely brilliant business that Nigerian (and Ghanaian) filmmaking has become. But while there were still a few academics who echoed the cliched critiques of "Nollywood" filmmaking being "only about making money," Socrate Safo, Joke Silva, Madu Chikwendu, and Francis Onwochei emphasized (and embodied) the intentionality of the craft. These filmmakers are not greedy amateurs out to just make money (although money is certainly a very practical concern in an artform that is also a business--films cannot be made without money), but artists and performers who love and are passionate about what they do. I was particularly impressed with the few clips I saw of Safo's films--lighting, camera angles, mise en scene, and wonderful use of an original music score.

The main impression I came away from the conference with was that the dichotomy between "African cinema" and the "video film" is a false one, and that while various histories, funding, and technologies must be taken into consideration, films on celluloid and video can and should be put side by side in analysis of African film. This is why (even before this conference) I have been calling Nollywood and Kannywood productions "films" rather than "video films." As digital technology becomes prevalent even among filmmakers coming out of a celluloid training (Jean Pierre Bekolo's Les Saignantes, for example), the technical differentiation between "video" and "film" seems to be a rather useless one. At the conference, the prevalent terms used were "Fespaco films" and "video films;" however, much of the discussion centered around the need to complicate the framework that has so far divided analysis of one from the other.

Rest In Peace Cyprian Ekwensi

This is a little bit late, but a post in honour of the late Cyprian Ekwensi, author of Jagua Nana, Burning Grass, and others. He died at age 86.

Here is a 2006 interview that Basil Okafor conducted with him for the Daily Sun.

Illustration credit: Basil Okafor

Shari'a Court bans satirical play in Kaduna

Shehu Sani's satirical play on the political misuse of shari'a, The Phantom Crescent, has been banned from being performed or circulated by the Kaduna upper shari'a court. According to Shehu Sani the recent "Hiyana" scandal "became an excuse for a new onslaught against artists," spreading out from the ban on film and harsher restrictions on novels to the ban on his play in Kaduna. See the article here.

The Passion of Saint Talatu

3:40am: Why I love Hausa films

It is 3:40am, and I am cutting, cutting, cutting extra words out of a fellowship proposal that is too verbose and too vague, and too BS-y, which is a shame because I know this stuff really well. It's just hard to say when you have to put all the details of research methods, background, argument in 10 pages, when you haven't quite ironed out your dissertation proposal yet.

So, this post is just to say why I love Hausa films. I love Hausa films because I can click on my you tube clips at 3:40am when I am stressed out of my mind and they make me smile. Yes, the editing is corny, and there are mispellings in the subtitles, and the melodrama is sometimes over the top, Yes, they make me laugh here in on my hard chair at 3:45am. But I also love them because there are beautiful compositions, and fast, obsessive, editing, and strong colour motifs that run through the trailers. I love them because the music is so obsessive that I listen to it minimized as I write, and the deep focus shots and the stop motion dances are so mesmerizing that I have to go back and watch the whole thing over again. At 3:46, when I'm stressed because I've overphilosophized my project, I go back to the concrete videos and know I have to keep on, because it is my opportunity to work with artists who make a living from their art. And no matter how denigrated they are, they'll figure out a way to make it work, insha Allah.

No, I don't like censorship, but in some ways, the adaptations people come up with because of censorship makes more creative products. I've been watching early Hollywood pictures that couldn't show violence so came up with creative off-screen sound. I think it will work the same for the Hausa films.

But, oh, I mourn those brilliant song and dances. I hope that the ban on those is lifted--because they encapsulate so much sheer creativity on so many different levels and are at the very heart of what I want to write about.

Because I love it. That's why I'm up at this time, and why I'm in this cold place, stressed out all the time. Because I love it.

cherish the day

Sade makes me lonely. I sit on a hard wooden chair in front of a blinking computer screen. I have been putting off this grant application all weekend. I have gone through half of the anthology of Hausa film essays. I have reread my own past grant applications and those my friends have sent me. I have brainstormed on paper. I have rethought my entire project 10 times. This morning, I went to a one hour mass at the Catholic Church down the street and then came back to lay in my bed, warm under a down comforter. The rain fell outside and the air from the open window was sharp on my face. The radiators clanked and creaked. I lay in bed making myself write the proposal in my head, dream the proposal. I wake to the phone ringing. It is my mother together with my brother, who is back in Nigeria on a preliminary documentary project. We chat until they are interrupted by a Skype from my Dad calling from Khartoum. I eat a quarter bag of chips and salsa at the kitchen table, trying to write down in a notebook the proposal I had dreamed. When I finally go to the other room and lift the screen and try to write, it is dark outside. I watch 20 minutes of the screensaver, my life in photos: weddings, other people’s children, my pregnant cousin, stills from Hausa films and an old black and white German vampire film, graduations, parties, conferences, famous African writers, unflattering close-ups of people I don’t know, and my own solitary self portraits in teapots and distant mirrors. Sade sings a mournful Hallelujah. I tap on the keyboard to face the march of words again.

Barka da sallah!!

To my Muslim Friends,

Barka da sallah! Happy Eid Al-Fitr!! Allah ya ba da albarka!

T-C

(and in other news I went to a Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie reading and panel discussion tonight, and RANDOMLY bumped into a woman who had been two years ahead of me in high school. She comes up to me and says... you look so familiar... and so we go quickly down fourteen years of life history, where we had overlapped in certain places but not met, till we got to high school in nigeria and that was where it was... what a lovely small world it is...)

Albashi 2 trailer

Today I called my friend Abbas Sadiq, the intense, one-of-a-kind-dressing Hausa actor and director, to see how he is doing during this suspension of the Hausa film industry. "Babu aiki, wallahi," he told me. "kawai muna jira..."

So, one of the things that upsets me so much about the Hausa film wahalla is that thousands of people are out of work. How exactly are they supposed to live now...? And when the suspension is finally lifted will anyone have any money left to make films?

And the dancing and singing has been banned as well (See Ba Haushe Mai Ban Haushi's post on the new censorship guidelines). Wallahi, ina so in kuka da na tunani a kansa."

Not being able to do anything about it really, other than write and rant, I spend the afternoon that I was supposed to be spending writing a grant application, uploading singing and dancing numbers to You Tube....

So, here's the trailer for Abbas Sadiq's Albashi 2, the sequel to Albashi (salary) that I wrote my big paper on that I've given at so many conferences. How can they ban this wonderfully creative dancing and singing? How? Kash! Wayyo! Kaico!