“FICTION REMAINS MY FIRST LOVE” – Caleb Okereke

“FICTION REMAINS MY FIRST LOVE” – Caleb Okereke

by | Oct 27, 2019 | ISSUE, Issue - Interviews

“Fiction Remains my First Love”

– Caleb Okereke

 Kanyinsola Olorunnisola: Recently, you seem to have made a shift towards journalism from your once-upon-a-time preoccupation with literary publications. From AL Jazeera to African Arguments, you clearly have your plate full. For your avid readers who have been waiting for such massive releases as a follow-up to Safe Journey, is there hope for them (read: us) to get another book from you soon?

Caleb Okereke: For starters, I don’t really see it as making a shift. What I might be doing though is exploring writing and storytelling in new ways because truly, the core of my work has always been stories. That I started out telling stories through fictionalizing them and in the written word doesn’t mean that I have made a shift because I do the same thing now, mostly through real-life experiences and often employing video. I entirely understand your angle, but I must say that while the format or medium might change, the goal remains the same.

I once read somewhere I don’t remember that journalism is what creative writers do to keep body and soul together while they write their first book, I see myself in that quote. Also, journalism for me was about giving non-fiction as much attention and enthusiasm as I gave fiction. It has gone great so far but fiction remains my first love and what it has done is revolutionized my fiction, the type of true stories I am confronted with from doing this reporting work on a daily influences the kind of fictional stories I want to tell. 

To directly answer your question though, I do not have a book in the works. A lot because between reporting and studying, I can barely find enough time to do the hard work that is writing a book, especially because I am aiming to write fiction. I have a few ideas here and there, written a few chapters of some of these ideas but there’s nothing set in stone.

If it helps, I am applying to a few residencies (some of them paid) to at least give me the space and time I need to go past more than a few chapters. But that’s also tricky because I need to find residencies that suit my timeline with school and sometimes what looks like it suits your calendar, doesn’t. I’ve gotten into two this year already, one of them on a partial scholarship but I couldn’t attend because of timing. The bigger challenge nonetheless is that I am looking to have a book out by 2022, this would mean ideally that it has to be written between now and next year if I want to meet that timeline. Well, you can see how that is going.

“Ugandan artists are creating, incredible art, incredible music, my best friend is an amazing musician and actress from Uganda but that this immense art being created rarely crosses East Africa means the knowledge level is lopsided.” – Caleb Okereke

KO: You moved quite a while back to Kampala, Uganda, for school and work-related reasons (I suppose), what was it like moving to a whole new world? Was there a form of culture shock? How did you adapt?

 CO: I love Kampala, I always have. Long before I first came in 2017. Growing up, my father worked for a company that held workshops across the world and so I learned of Kampala first from their training materials. It helped also that my father’s stepbrother is half Ugandan, half Nigerian, make of that story what you will.

To be more specific though, culture shock is something that happens even between states within a country, so yes, there was this new way of life sprawling in front of me that I had to adapt to. And as Africans and owing in part to the gospel of pan Africanism, there is the possible misinterpretation of that concept to mean that Africans have a similar way of life across countries but this is very false and the idea behind a contorted understanding of pan Africanism is to represent Africans within a stereotype, one that subsequently becomes easier to typecast. It’s a case of rather than make this continent of 54 countries diverse, why don’t we make them similar and in so doing, singular? So yes, there was some level of culture shock.

One of my earliest examples happened in the first month I arrived, I was at a Saturday game chill and someone whipped out a deck of cards and suggested we play, the rules were very different from anything I had seen and I who was a champion of cards back home did very badly. Another example was from 2017, I had gone out for dinner with a friend and he suggested that we get a taxi back home so I can get the experience, I said “cool,” imagining that experience referred to something other than Uber which we had been using. I said cool because, in Lagos, a taxi is a special hire, but imagine my surprise when we emerged from this expensive restaurant and my friend flagged down the Ugandan version of a Danfo, I realized then that in Kampala, a public bus was called a taxi.

It might be easier, I would think for a Ugandan moving to Nigeria because Nollywood and the Nigerian entertainment industry as a whole have gone continent-wide, to be honest, and so most Ugandans I meet know a lot about Nigeria. They know Danfo, they know Okadas, they even know Ojuelegba. Nigerian music has crossed to Kampala bars, Nigerian fashion, make-up, but the opposite is the case when the roles are reversed, Nigerians have little idea about Uganda and some of my cousins still think I live in Zambia or Malawi. Only one of these countries is even in East Africa. And it doesn’t mean Ugandans are not creating, Ugandan artists are creating, incredible art, incredible music, my best friend is an amazing musician and actress from Uganda but that this immense art being created rarely crosses East Africa means the knowledge level is lopsided.

Adapting might as well have been facilitated because of this, culture shock is harder when the space in which it happens has no idea about your existence prior, but in some way, knowing a lot about Nigeria meant that most Ugandans were willing to carefully explain things to me and to do so, because they kind of understood the space I was coming from, they did this explanation within context. Boda riders, bar attendants, waiters, almost everyone knows Nollywood (and even though this isn’t an accurate representation of who we are because most people I have met think Nigerians are loud and are surprised to meet a soft-spoken one and that we add “O” after every statement) but this has helped me transition greatly.

KO: From your writings, you are clearly not one to shy from intellectual deviancy. But I’d like to know your take on rebellion? What sort of rebellions do you think are necessary in today’s Africa?

CO: I think rebellion is imperative and I find this interesting because just yesterday I was at a fireside chat with a very famous international journalist who spoke about how being objective and staying out of activism had helped his career. I agreed with most of what he said that night but not that bit, and it is a valid stance to take and one I entirely understand because journalism is about objectivity and taking a stand can often come across as a reduction in credibility, but in my opinion, and what I have known to be true, I believe it is this credibility that in turn leads us to take a stand, that influences the rebellion we choose to take on.

If I am aware that people trust me to be a source of truth, it means that I will invariably take up a rebellion against misinformation and lies. So, one of the rebellions I think is necessary for today’s Africa is fighting fake news, whether from the state or from the masses. 

I have seen firsthand the damage misinformation can do and just a few weeks ago when I was in Lagos during the Xenophobic attacks in South Africa, I literally drove through what must have been hundreds of young people wielding sticks and threating to attack our car, they burned a few, we were just lucky. These people didn’t fully understand xenophobia, all they had seen was old videos of people being killed in South Africa accompanied by new headlines of Nigerians being murdered and this lead both to a loss of life and property.

Another rebellion I think is necessary is the rebellion against how Africa is represented in mainstream media and I like that this is an insurrection that has garnered a lot of support and so people are more cognizant of this typecasting by the West, but it cannot be emphasized enough, because even in 2019, the New York Times can put up an ad for a Nairobi Bureau Chief that; has a tremendous opportunity to dive into news and enterprise across a wide range of countries, from the deserts of Sudan and the pirate seas of the Horn of Africa, down through the forests of Congo and the shores of Tanzania and that this ad went through the international editor without anyone seeing how racist it was? This rebellion is necessary, this anger, we should and be angry and very much so.

KO: Interesting, So, what issues are you most passionate about?

CO: I am very passionate about solutions journalism, this is basically journalism that shifts the focus from what isn’t working to what is working and if you notice, this has been a constant streak in my storytelling. So, the DRC is deep in an Ebola crisis, but what is the DRC getting right? Some of my closest friends are from the Democratic Republic of Congo and they do amazing work detailing solutions in the country.

I am also passionate about minority reporting and not because I think that minorities do not have a voice as most people often assume, a train of thought I find to be very wrong because everyone has a voice, what they might lack, however, is a platform but should they get one then that voice as we have seen in times past, will reverberate across nations. I started Minority Africa in 2019 and with generous funding from the Solutions Journalism Network, we are basically a digital publication providing solutions content on African minority communities and persons using a data-driven multimedia approach that is immersive and interactive.

The goal is to increase the representation and visibility of African minorities in mainstream media and it becomes even more relevant when we consider that in some contexts and in some spaces, we are all minorities. Muslims are a minority in Uganda, for instance, but they are not in Nigeria. The minority also doesn’t always have to be decided by number, you can numerically be the majority but still because of social and economic conditions, be the minority.

So I am passionate about representation, about being seen, about balanced representation and visibility that is blinding. So on Minority Africa, you will find a lot of stories about different minority communities and persons, ethnic minorities, religious minorities, sexual minorities and a host of others but these stories will detail what’s working in these spaces, for these people and not what isn’t. 

KO: You have been involved in a lot of interesting initiatives in the past. What next do you have planned? Do you have any scheduled publications or projects you are currently working on? Tell us what to expect from The Caleb Somtochukwu Okereke

CO: Besides Minority Africa which is my full-time job now as I serve as Managing Editor, I am working on a documentary which will be my first stint as a filmmaker, it’s out of Uganda and is funded by a grant from One World Media.

I am also reporting on a few stories which I think will be huge when they do get out because of their relevance and how much work I am putting into them. I have a freelance writer contract with the BBC but I have only been able to do one piece because I am inundated with quite a lot but you should also expect more BBC pieces from me once I can get some space from school and life to pitch and write.

But primarily, I want you to watch out for Minority Africa and the amazing work we’ll create in the coming months, I am working with some of the best minds in journalism and data from Uganda to Nigeria and with a lot of guidance and funding from the Solutions Journalism Network so it’s almost inevitable that we’d create amazing work.

Source: From the Rebel Issue (October 2019)

A HYMN FOR THE FAIR GEESE by Nome Patrick

A HYMN FOR THE FAIR GEESE by Nome Patrick

by | Oct 27, 2019 | ISSUE, Issue - Poetry

A HYMN FOR THE FAIR GEESE 

by Nome Patrick

My father says his son has grown too far from God.

In the light of Lagos, angels nod at him, urge him

to teach me to know God. Why does the vulture fly

so high, when it can fly so close to the heads of foolish

unbelievers? He asks. Can’t unsalt the ocean, why try?

The chapel: tantum ergo. I wake up with my life shorter

than yesterday, isn’t that a belief? I pin my life to the

sleeves of time, that’s prayer enough. The fair geese,

my friends, stand up, ask: But what is God to you –

Why does your life seem a lone play choreographed

by unknown angels?  If I could pay a coin each

to keep them a century quiet, I would.

I’m just a poor boy who can’t tell the dance of

butterflies from the gyration of angels.

The moon so far, I imagine God, if he exists,

builds fences so high, we disintegrate to see his face.

Like the stars, like the moon, I will wander off

someday. What’s it about God that bothers you?

Bother yourselves with the preachers’ false alarms.

They say: this is the voice of another foolish poet.

My silence a heron hovering over an archipelago.

They say: so-called religious rebel, bastard!  Even the birds

perched as witness sing of mockery. For whom?

Their beaks doors creaking to a ghost’s testament:

God is the rivers with their ageless bodies & roar.

God is me whose voice startle humans to mortality.

God is the cold udala orchard & its hair of green.

God is the rainbow, and the boy’s finger pointed to it.

Or the air, how it powers the horses in your bodies.

God is the wind whistling the world to sleep.

I’m mile away from God, but I bear the basket of his fruits.

Who are you? who are you? who are you?

God’s voice in the wind echoes: foolish rebels!


 

Source: From the Rebel Issue (October 2019)

A HYMN FOR THE FAIR GEESE

by Nome Patrick | POEMS

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

NOME EMEKA PATRICK is a blxck bxy and student in the University of Benin, Nigeria, where he studies English language and literature. A recipient of the Festus Iyayi Award for excellence for Poetry in 2018, his works have been published or forthcoming in Beloit poetry journal, Crannóg magazine, Puerto Del Sol, Notre Dame Review, Gargouille, Flapper house, Mud Season Review, The McNeese Review, The Oakland Review, Alegrarse and elsewhere. His manuscript ‘We Need New Moses. Or New Luther King’ was a finalist for the 2018 Sillerman First Book Prize for African Poets. He writes from a small room close to banana trees and bird songs in Benin city.

“BEING A REBEL IS ABOUT REJECTING CONFORMITY” – Logan February

“BEING A REBEL IS ABOUT REJECTING CONFORMITY” – Logan February

by | Oct 27, 2019 | ISSUE, Issue - Interviews

“Being a Rebel is About Rejecting Conformity”

– Logan February

Kanyinsola Olorunnisola: What approach do you take to the subject matter of your work? Do you specifically seek to write within a frame of pre-conceived themes or do you, as Ruth Stone puts it, “follow invisible patterns”?

Logan February: I think I’m naturally predisposed to working around themes and archetypes, because I often find myself besotted with ideas. And I don’t know what to do with them—most times I do need to find that invisible thread before any of it makes sense. Otherwise, I’m just talking to myself and not really going anywhere; which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. It can be quite good to talk to oneself. But I’ll hardly ever put out those confused works.

“Toni Morrison had this incredible practice of unapologetically centering her own realities in her writing. It’s kind of sad that that should be considered rebellious, but for a Black woman in her own zeitgeist, it was.” – Logan February

KO: You have a primary reputation for your astonishing poetry. But you have also written some non-fiction (I absolutely loved “The Mania of Queer Desire” by the way) and fiction too. Is there a distinct experience in navigating each of these genres? 

LF: Thank you very much! That essay was a challenge—took me almost a year to write. It’s naked in a way that I’ve been keeping my poems from getting, lately. I guess poetry will always be home base for me, but I also like to leave my comfort zone from time to time. I’ve been reading a lot of Anne Carson—her writing is quite experimental, spanning across genres, styles and forms—and I love the way that she refers to most of her work as “texts”. I find that gets rid of many unnecessary pressures surrounding genres and their rules. I’d rather stick to the serious business of playing with language and having it play with my thoughts. That’s where the pleasure is.

KO: What’s your take on the definition of a rebel today? And I mean that in terms of social justice and the African literary community?

LF: Being a rebel is about rejecting conformity, isn’t it, when you realize it just doesn’t work for you? People should be free to live on their own terms, obviously. I think rebellion can really help people discover themselves; it did for me. And there’s this argument for conformity that conflates it with the civic currency of morality—I don’t buy that. Society is a disordered institution, regardless. What forced conformity does is create boredom and unhappiness, at least for me.

With regards to the African literary community: I’m not a very collective-minded person, but it’s always refreshing to see all the fierce and rebellious spirits on the scene. I think rebellion thrives in literature and among writers. I have to say, though: I sometimes am appalled by the transphobia within the community. I wouldn’t call it a general thing, but there does seem to be a popular intellectual commitment to missing the point, when it comes to transgender issues. For me, as a young non-binary writer, it was disheartening to see how many Nigerian writers reacted to Akwaeke Emezi’s Freshwater being shortlisted for the Women’s Prize earlier this year. I thought it was a good time to have useful, illuminating conversations about gender and identity. Instead, some writers chose to make spiteful comments or congratulate every Nigerian on the shortlist except for Emezi. It was a lot of vitriol; I didn’t like to see that. I want to see Africans supporting each other, not tearing each other down. Embracing possibility in radical ways that dissolve margins and normalize diversity.”

KO: Which three people represent the OG rebels for you? Can you tell me why?

LF: Toni Morrison had this incredible practice of unapologetically centering her own realities in her writing. It’s kind of sad that that should be considered rebellious, but for a Black woman in her own zeitgeist, it was. And that rebellion has led so many writers after her to feel permitted to represent themselves in literature.

In music, one of my favorite rebels is The Knife, a duo of Swedish siblings: Karin and Olof Dreijer (Karin also has a solo career as Fever Ray, who I wrote about in “The Mania of Queer Desire”). The Knife are independent electronic artists; their music is always ahead of its time, and they focus on making the process fun, which allows them to always make something new. Their last record was called Shaking the Habitual—an idea I’ve welcomed into my own life.

Lilith is one more rebel that inspires me; she is an OG in a way no one else is. To have been edited out of the Bible, simply for owning her desire, for refusing submission and self-negation—that’s so chaotic and impressive to me. I guess I just love a transgressive woman.

KO: With your career taking off at breakneck speed, where do you see yourself in five years? 

LF: Hopefully I’ll have written more books, and still be writing and working with artists in other disciplines. I should have a master’s degree in something I’m interested in, too. Travel more. I’d like to be in a place where I can love and live and breathe without as many anxieties. But five years is a long time, man. I don’t really know. I just always try to do my work and go with the flow.

Source: From the Rebel Issue (October 2019)

“I WOULD CHANGE HOW THE WORLD PERCEIVES WOMEN” – Frances Ogamba

“I WOULD CHANGE HOW THE WORLD PERCEIVES WOMEN” – Frances Ogamba

by | Oct 27, 2019 | ISSUE, Issue - Interviews

“I Would Change How the World Perceives Women”

– Frances Ogamba

Kanyinsola Olorunnisola: Congratulations on winning the Koffi Addo Prize for Non-fiction. Your entry was absolutely amazing. How did it feel winning? I doubt you were surprised, I mean you were nominated for both the fiction and non-fiction categories. You were the star of the event already.

Frances Ogamba: Thank you, K. I must confess that when my name was announced I wasn’t as thrilled as I was when the shortlist announcements came. Making the two shortlists was my real win, like it was quite surreal. When friends crowded around me at Kampala and asked how I felt, I was short of words. I didn’t know what to say, didn’t want to hurt their feelings. (Lol.) Yet, winning began to feel exciting only a day or two later when my name splashed across many news sites.

“In social justice, activists who rage in their small Twitter and Facebook corners, who hold up placards in the face of injustice or a need are rebels.” – Frances Ogamba

KO: So, what next for Frances Ogamba? Should I clear my shelf for the next Booker-winning novel?

FO: A collection of short stories perhaps. Almost every writer I meet wonders why I am not writing one yet. Writing a book-length story is equally appealing but I am struggling with what ideas to stretch that long. I sincerely admire people who wake up with their heads brimming full with novel ideas.

KO: What does the word “rebel” mean to you? And I mean that in two contexts: social justice and the African literary traditions.

FO: I choose to think of ‘rebel’ as the act of going against the norm, shattering boundaries and daring to spill over the lines. In social justice, activists who rage in their small Twitter and Facebook corners, who hold up placards in the face of injustice or a need are rebels.

Storytelling, as an integral chunk of the traditions in Africa, is thriving and has no fixed styles of delivery. What happens is that writers respond to contemporary times through their stories, and sometimes the literature we read from other continents influence us. But then the human mind is fluid and assumes any form when hit by a thought or an idea. This is why we have writers narrating in styles so different from what we are used to. This may be a form of rebellion. Look at Tram 83 for example, what the author did with all those characters and events, cramming that entire world into a book, replicating the noise in our heads.

KO: Who would you describe as the ultimate rebel? Why?

FO: There are many women and men who speak up against hostile customs. I don’t think of any as the ultimate rebel because all their fights are valid. But I respect people who fight from very uncomfortable corners, especially in religiously conservative societies. I revere women especially (because they bear the brunt of unjust laws) who speak up in countries like Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Iraq, South Africa, Nigeria and the other countries like these where women are placed many rungs lower than men. There is Mariam Awaisu, there is Fakhriyya Hashim, there is Alaa Salah.

KO: If you could change one thing about the world…just one thing at this exact moment, what would it be?

FO: I would change how the world perceives women.

Source: From the Rebel Issue (October 2019)

AFRICA DIES EACH TIME SHE FAILS TO OWN HER STORIES by Karino Emmanuel

AFRICA DIES EACH TIME SHE FAILS TO OWN HER STORIES by Karino Emmanuel

by | Oct 27, 2019 | ISSUE, Issue - NonFiction

Africa Dies Each Time She Fails to Own Her Stories

by Karino Emmanuel

Not long ago, I was talking to a fellow writer from Nigeria, an astute lady with beautiful brains; that is if her works of art are anything to go by. Since I was the one who initiated the conversation, I had to start somewhere and with something that connects us as Africans. Although I admitted to her that there is something about being African that I haven’t quite made out that connects us from North to South, East to West, regardless of whether we have met or not, I came to know better in the course of our conversation: the arts.

We started off with books and she asked why I like Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart. With little or no thought, I told her, in its protagonist Okonkwo and the other characters around him and the situations that befall them, Chinua Achebe paints the real picture of Africa back in the day. And it is written in a simple language. And the thought of it being the archetypal modern African novel is inspiring especially for an emerging writer like me. When it was time to talk about film, we lacked these straight answers. We turned taciturn and chose to channel our thoughts elsewhere because there is not so much to pride ourselves in film. She seemed to sum up her thoughts about film in the title of a book – Nollywood: The Creation of Nigerian Film Genres by Jonathan Haynes – that she asked if I had read while I, before digressing, quickly mentioned that my thoughts on the same were being expounded in something that I was writing, a piece that would become this essay.

The arts – art, music, theatre, film, and literature – are like children responsible for putting their mother, Africa, somewhere on the global map. Except for film, the other arts have considerably made the motherland continent proud, especially literature and music. In no particular order, among others in Ngugi wa Thiong’o, Chinua Achebe, Wole Soyinka, Ben Okri, Mariama Ba, Nuruddin Farah, Aminatta Forna, Alaine Mabanckou, and Dinaw Mengestu, we have African literature rife with diversity and well-crafted stories: in Fela Kuti, Lucky Dube, Salif Keita, Brenda Fassie, Angelique Kidjo, Hugh Masekela, Yvonne Chaka Chaka, Franco Luambo and Oliver Mtukudzi, to name but a few, we have had works of music that speak the language of a global audience while at the same time oozing African authenticity. And even though the works of this generation’s artists are worlds apart from most of the artists’ I have mentioned above, the voices and sounds I read and listen to now is an homage that bridges the generation gap hence telling the African story in a fresh way but one which still resonates with the global audience. These two groups of artists have done something that we haven’t borrowed whenever we write a typical African film. Film, like a troublesome rebel teenager, has refused to tap into the success of its brothers, making the same success they have achieved look like something that is not in the realms of possibility.

I am afraid that whenever we talk about the African film industry, we have to bring in the West. It is inevitable, because Hollywood, the world’s most successful film industry, is the ultimate standard. It is one which anyone who wants to partake in the eating of this cake that is the film industry, wants to break into.

For an industry whose stakeholders hold such profound devotion and respect for the arts, take these two thespians, for example, Anthony Hopkins and Bradley Cooper, ineptitude is our undoing, a chance for this industry to keep knocking on our doors and, sadly, most of the time we open these doors. Known for his Academy Award for Best Actor winning portrayal of Hannibal Lecter, the screen version of the protagonist in a series of bestselling novels by Thomas Harris, that once signed on a project, Anthony Hopkins goes over his lines in excess of two hundred times until they roll off his tongue, and; Bradley Cooper spent close to four years learning to sing and play the guitar and piano, and an additional eighteen months to train his vocals for him to sufficiently embody the character of Jackson Maine in A Star Is Born, a film he produced, co-wrote, starred in, and helmed in his directorial debut. This film was released to critical acclaim and went on to receive multiple nominations at the 91st and 76th Academy and Golden Globe Awards respectively. Giving credit where it is due, Hollywood is at its best when it tells the American story, but everything falls flat when it tries to masquerade as the spokesperson for the African story.

I have heard good things about films like Hotel Rwanda, The First Grader, Sometimes in April, Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom, Mandela, Blood Diamond, Half of a Yellow Sun, Sarafina among many others, some of which, to some degree, I have enjoyed watching. The common thing about these films is that they are our stories. The events depicted in them happened right under our noses but somehow, someone from outside had to come and tell them for us. Sprinkling black actors like Idris Elba, Djimon Haunsou, Terrence Howard, Jennifer Hudson, Naomi Harris and Whoopi Goldberg here and there with an excuse of a joint production between Hollywood and our studios, something which ends up compromising our creative control, doesn’t make them our stories anymore.

Is any person of colour considered African? Not in my opinion. To me, Charlize Theron with her whiteness, born in Gauteng Province, South Africa, is more African than Naomi Harris with her melanin-rich skin born in London, United Kingdom. Of course, Charlize Theron has a better idea of what being African really means. Although it makes no sense, Charlize Theron is just a white African and Naomi Harris a black Briton. Regardless of their skin colour, what matters is the place where someone is born and spends their formative years. There is something to write home about being African – we all go through a kind of struggle from the moment we are born, and we traverse through the streets of life trying to triumph over it. It is this triumph over our struggles that animate us into telling our stories and therefore, to bring our stories to the silver screen and have actors who aren’t native Africans and ones who know nothing about these struggles personate our heroes, is the biggest injustice of our time.

For example, what is so hard to get to the point of casting Naomi Harris in Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom, one of the most important biopics in the history of Africa, when as general knowledge, the character profile of Winnie Madikizela clearly states, South ‘African’. On Half of a Yellow Sun, a film adapted from Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s novel of the same name, Nollywood Reinvented critics: “The movie builds on amazing sets, actors, supporting actors and music, but the characters lack depth”. Like in many Hollywood films about Africa, the lack of depth is a problem that could easily get solved by letting the owner of this story tell it. You can have the looks – black – but being African is something you can’t drive into yourself with a hammer. You must live it.

It has been the same old story: We will finance this project. We will involve you. But what is the point of playing second fiddle in telling our stories? How can we tell our stories when we are shoved in the background, away from the ostentatiously beautiful frames? Passion and truth precede the need for any amount of money to produce any kind of art. To achieve aestheticism, especially in our genre films, sometimes what is needed is an attention to detail, a claustrophobic premise, a clever contained script, a minuscule budget, and a minimal crew and cast. Some independent filmmakers across the world have achieved this and we, too, can. The perfect examples of these kinds of films whose high production values belie the finitude of the things aforementioned are Buried and Primer.

Although inspired by some of the darkest moments in our history as a people and continent like the South African apartheid, the Rwandan genocide, the Ebola epidemic in West Africa and atrocious governance in most African countries which over time has healed even though the scars still etched deep on the walls of our hearts are constant reminders, in a sea of sloppy productions, we have been able to make films with production values that are grounded in meticulousness if not pedantry, films that have garnered continental acclaim and won awards. At least with some of these films – ’76, October 1, 93 Days, Amin: The Rise and Fall – we owned and told our stories to our future generations, we took control of our destiny, for what good is living in a future without having any knowledge of the past?

I have always echoed acclaimed writer-filmmaker Christopher Nolan’s thoughts on sincerity and ambition in filmmaking, that: “Films are subjective – what you like, what you don’t like, but the thing for me that is absolutely unifying is the idea that every time I go to the cinema and pay my money to sit down and watch a film go up onscreen, I want to feel that the people who made that film think it’s the best movie in the world, that they poured everything into it and they really love it. Whether or not I agree with what they’ve done, I want that effort there – I want that sincerity. And when you don’t feel it, that’s the only time I feel like I’m wasting my time at the movies”.

This lack of sincerity in Hollywood films about Africa leaves Africa as a shadow of her real self, a depiction that Soek in her essay, Hollywood’s Strange Addiction to Bad African Accents, terms as: “Hollywood imagination, divorced from reality”.

We don’t tell our stories to seek validation from the West. But whatever the thing that is in our music and literature in its crude African state that the West can’t help but love, we definitely should hit that same spot with our films. Do you know what that thing is? Truth. Honesty. Sincerity. But how can they love something that in its making, we have always let them keep messing up with, allowing them to create their own kind of truth? Isn’t Genevieve Nnaji’s Lionheart, the first original film from Nigeria to be acquired by Netflix, evidence enough of what sticking to our truth can be a boundless factor of places our stories can traverse?

Source: From the Rebel Issue (October 2019)

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

KARINO C. EMMANUEL who for some reason he doesn’t know, chose to write his poetry under the name KC Manuel, is an emerging Kenyan writer and poet, and student at Kibabii University whose works have appeared on The Kalahari Review, Kreative Diadem, Praxis Magazine Online, and Ghana Writes Journal. His piece, ‘The Rough Ride Home’, was shortlisted for the Igby Prize for Nonfiction. He’s currently working on his first novel. He believes that there’s timeless magic between the tip of a pen and the face of a paper, and that’s why early drafts of all his works are written longhand.

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