Category: Lifestyle

The Nigerians who dare to speak of love amid an anti-gay crackdown

The party had just started when the gunshot pierced the music. Instantly the men scattered, knowing what it meant: a police raid.

They had gathered in a hotel in the northern Nigerian state of Bauchi, renting out almost a whole floor for a surprise birthday party. But in the minaret-dotted city, where sharia in theory requires gay men to be stoned to death, such stolen moments are fraught. Someone had tipped off the Hisbah – the religious police.

As officials stormed in on that night in 2007, John (not his real name) felt numb with fear. He ran to a room, switched off the lights and crawled under the bed. “They checked room by room. They opened the door and flashed a flashlight, but they thought it was empty.” They arrested 18 others.

A week later, John went to Friday prayers at the mosque. He prayed for 18 of his friends who faced sodomy charges in a sharia court. He prayed for their lawyer, who was forced to sneak into the first hearing via a side door as a mob threatened to stone him for defending “gay marriage”. He prayed for strength to do what he had decided to do next.

“That incident really gave us the courage to start doing something. We couldn’t hide any more,” recalls John. And so, in one of the most conservative states in Nigeria, he started holding underground meetings with other gay people. They supported each other when neighbours accused them of being “demons”. Sometimes money was pooled together to pay bail or buy condoms, handed out to those who couldn’t afford them. Mainly, though, they helped each other cross the lonely horizon of living each day in denial, finding solace in mutual acceptance.

For years, they gathered in secret. But last week Nigeria’s president, Goodluck Jonathan, signed the same-sex marriage (prohibition) bill, unleashing a wave of homophobia that threatens to sweep away seven years spent building a fragile haven. The far-reaching law targets not only homosexuals but also those who support their rights, or who fail to report gay people. At least 40 arrests last week swelled the number of those incarcerated to almost 200 across Nigeria, rights groups told the Observer.

One by one, John and his friends fled the city.

“More than 90% of Nigerians are opposed to same-sex marriage. So, the law is in line with our cultural and religious beliefs as a people,” said Reuben Abati, the presidential spokesperson. The president’s approval ratings soared after months of dismal news about corruption, political violence and a radical Islamist insurgency in the north.

Nigeria is one of 78 countries worldwide where homosexuality is illegal, according to UNAids. (Pic: Reuters)

From his location in hiding, John thinks about what to do next. “I’m not comfortable here at all. I cannot stay here doing nothing.”

In a hotel room in the capital, Abuja, two women in hijabs are visiting Dorothy Aken’ova to buy goods considered contraband: sex toys. Providing a rare place where society women feel comfortable enough to buy roleplay lingerie without being judged is just one way Aken’ova tries to liberate her sexually repressed country. Another is hiring lawyers to defend men or women arrested for being gay.

The mother of three has filled her week with phone calls, trying to find lawyers willing to represent those in detention. One man was arrested after his landlord said it was suspicious he shared a flat with another man.

“The lawyers who accept these jobs will charge the skin on your bum. But then the cost of armed guards to accompany them isn’t cheap,” Aken’ova sighs, before telling the two giggling women the price for bottles of massage oil.

Money – sometimes out of Aken’ova’s own pocket – is no longer the biggest problem. Simply persuading someone to take up cases is much harder, with many fearing they will be targeted by association. “As soon as I mention gender minority rights, people ask me: ‘Are you a lesbian?’ You can tell they’re willing to immediately dissociate with you if you answer in the affirmative,” says Aken’ova, whose quick smile blossoms as brightly as the tattooed flower on her right biceps.

Such reactions are common across Africa, where populist bills have cracked down on homosexuality, often tightening colonial-era laws. International pressure against such moves has fuelled anti-gay sentiment, with leaders using anger at perceived western interference as an escape valve. The Ugandan president, Yoweri Museveni, last week said gay people were the product of “random breeding” in the west when “nature goes wrong”, but blocked an anti-gay bill after months of pressure from international donors. Unlike Uganda, about half of whose budget is supplied by western donors, Nigeria is flush with petrodollars and can defy such pressure.

For campaigners, the problem starts with the title of the bill. “People read it and think: OK, I agree with this. They don’t question what else is inside that bill,” says Aken’ova, who has never heard of anyone campaigning for gay marriage. “It’s not [just] anti-gay people; it’s anti-people.”

Last year, a lawmaker said of the bill: “You have a right to your sexual preference but by trying to turn it into marriage do you realise you could be infringing on the human rights of the other person who finds it repulsive?”

So far, they haven’t been the victims. Last week Ibrahim Marafaa, a 47-year-old teacher who was arrested before the bill was signed, was publicly flogged and fined 5 000 naira (£20) after “confessing to his abnormality”.

“If he feels an injustice has been done, he has the right to appeal within 30 days,” said Alhassan Zakaria, the sharia lawyer who oversaw the whipping.

Down south, too, floggings aren’t uncommon. Lagos-based rights worker Olumide Makanjuola recounts how a friend of his agreed to be flogged in a bid to “whip the devil out of him”. “He just wanted to stop being the subject of hatred,” Makanjuola says, very softly.

Immaculately dressed and dreadlocked, he talks energetically, at incredible speed, despite several nights awake fielding dozens of phone calls.

Earlier he spent an hour talking to family members to reassure them about his safety. Then two friends called to say they’re leaving the country. One, a doctor, asked if he could be prosecuted for treating gay patients.

Last year Makanjuola documented a case where four men suspected of being gay were publicly stripped, beaten, tied together and paraded naked in a south-western village. The police said they had no evidence of the incident, captured on camera by a jeering mob, but opened investigations to find out if the men were “sodomites”.

Makanjuola refuses to believe the mob’s anger was about homosexuality which, he says, was a scapegoat for their desperation in a country where mismanagement and corruption have left most people jobless and poor.

“They’re a clear example of people who are frustrated by the system. But they should be directing it at our leaders who are buying houses in London and Dubai using looted funds,” he says.

Others have little truck with that argument. “Being gay is due to lack of parental care,” says Abdullahi Sani, a policeman who took time off work to attend the lashing in Bauchi. “Twenty lashes is child’s play compared to the offence. The victim has ceased to be a normal human being. He has lost sight of God.”

It’s in this climate John has worked to forge his place in the world. And life was beginning to make sense, he says.

His goal was clear: to act as a point man in a quiet but growing underground movement. This despite his father sitting him down last month and telling him about a gay friend who had recently been beaten up, to stop “associating with that gay boy”.

“I’ll try but it’s not good to suddenly start avoiding a friend. He’s a human being,” John told him.

Once, his mother, who died last year, took him aside. “She told me: People will always talk. Forget about them. Just be careful and concentrate on your studies,” he recalls. “She loved me so much because I was the last-born son,” he says, his voice breaking.

John tries to remember that advice now, sometimes turning to Aken’ova as a mother figure. Earlier in the day he called her and said he wanted to return home. “Just stay where you are until things calm down,” she told him gently.

But the longing to be among his friends, including those released from jail, is unbearable. “I just want to be with them. Even if it’s just for 30 minutes.” Besides, he wants to get information to pass to the lawyer. He will return to the city under cover of nightfall. He will go to meet the parents of one of the jailed men, and help them with bail money. Do I think that’s a good idea?

Love can make you do crazy things, I say. “Yes,” he agrees despondently.

After a pause, he speaks again. “But if people can learn to hate, do you think they can learn to love?”

Monica Mark for the Guardian

10 years ago

African Queen returns to Nile waters 60 years on

Sixty years after Humphrey Bogart steered her through crocodile infested waters, the African Queen is back plying the Nile.

Lovingly restored, the boat is operated by Cam McLeay, a New Zealand adventurer and Nile enthusiast, and took its first passengers for a ride in December.

“The African Queen belongs on the Nile. So it is so important to have the boat back home over 60 years after the film was made,” McLeay told AFP.

Cam McLeay stands on his boat with his colleagues on the shores of the River Nile in Jinja, Uganda. He bought the boat, made it functional and will use it to offer cruises on the river Nile in Jinja. (Pic: AFP)

In 1950 Bogart and Katherine Hepburn flew into Uganda together with a huge team from Hollywood to shoot the movie of the same name.

The film told the story of a prim missionary and a gruff adventurer, the captain of the African Queen – two totally different characters – who in true silver screen fashion end up falling in love despite the odds.

Hepburn wrote a frothy account of the making of the African Queen, which was shot between Uganda and neighbouring Democratic Republic of the Congo, subtitled “How I went to Africa with Bogart, Bacall and Houston and almost lost my mind”.

Based on a 1934 novel by C.S. Forester, the movie was set during World War I in German-occupied east Africa.

“There were actually two of these boats, one of them was in Congo and this is the Nile’s African Queen,” explained McLeay, who recounts his love affair with the Nile.

“I’m very attached to the Nile. I’ve travelled the full length of the river, from the Mediterranean to the source in Nyungwe,” the father of three recounted. “I’ve been up and down the river for 16 years.”

Back in the 1990s he set up a rafting company in Uganda’s Jinja area, and then had an eco-lodge built on an island in the river.

McLeay says he wants his projects to be sustainable – from both an economic and an environmental point of view.

He then started thinking about a river boat to do trips and sundowner cruises for tourists, showcasing the scenery and the very varied birdlife.

“Just on this section here, we have over 100 species of birds. It’s just beautiful to be on the river here at the sunset on the Equator,” he told AFP.

McLeay learned of the existence of the African Queen when on holiday on Kenya’s island of Lamu, where traditional Arabic-style sailing dhows with lateen sails are common.

“I was looking for an authentic African boat to run on the Nile and I was thinking of buying a Swahili dhow,” he recounted.

“Then this hotel owner said: ‘Why don’t you buy the African Queen? She’s from Uganda!'”

A week later McLeay had gone to Nairobi and tracked down Yank Evans, a septuagenarian who explained how he had found the hull of the boat abandoned in northern Uganda’s Murchison Falls national park 20 years earlier and had done it up.

When he left Uganda for Kenya he brought the boat with him.

Another five years went by between the boat’s return to the banks of the Nile and the start of services on the river.

One of the challenges was to rebuild the steam engine, which was more than 100 years old.

In the movie, directed by John Huston and released in 1951, the boat was powered by a diesel engine that was made to look like a steam engine.

But when Evans restored it he decided to fit a real steam engine and had one airfreighted from Britain.

“When we got this boat, the boiler had been sitting around for a very long time,” explained Gavin Fahey, the African Queen’s captain and mechanic, adding that he had to strip down the engine and re-machine it.

McLeay explains that he has tried to recreate an atmosphere of times gone by on board his African Queen, the time when huge tracts of Africa were – for Western adventurers at least – still virgin territory waiting to be explored.

“Gavin wears the same kind of clothes as Humphrey Bogart. We have adopted the fez for the waiters, which is associated with the Sudan, where the Nile makes most of his journey,” McLeay said.

“And we are serving gin and tonics, like Humphrey Bogart drank in the movie.”

Keeping the engine fed with wood has virtually no environmental impact, McLeay says, since he is using wood left over from a construction project, and he has planted trees to ensure supply when that stock runs out.

“It’s probably more environmental friendly then a modern boat,” he says. – Sapa-AFP

10 years ago

Nigeria offers promise for investors looking for the next growth story

If you want an idea of what Nigeria can offer the world’s more fearless investors, raise a glass to South African supermarket chain Shoprite. Last year, its seven Nigerian branches sold more Moët & Chandon champagne than its 600 South African stores combined.

Nigeria may be best known for Islamist militants, bomb attacks, advance fee fraud and large-scale oil theft, but with a population of 170-million and a decade of annual growth rates around 7%, it also offers some outsized returns for investors willing to take the risk.

Just ask FTSE-listed Afren, whose share price shot up 9% in November when it discovered a “giant” oilfield in Nigeria, which is already the continent’s biggest energy producer.

But it is not just the traditional, grubby business of oil extraction that stands to make a mint. A youthful population is showing glimmers of a consumer boom: outside Ireland, Nigeria is the biggest market for Guinness, while brands from Porsche to men’s luxury clothes brand Ermenegildo Zegna have scrambled to open shops recently.

Champagne bottles displayed at a roadside shop in Lagos. (Pic: AFP)

“It’s caught on with investors. They recognise that there’s a resemblance to what we saw in Asia [in the 1980s] and those who missed the incredible growth story [there] now have the opportunity to invest in the next growth story,” said Charles Robertson, global chief economist at Renaissance Capital.

The group forecasts that Nigeria’s GDP will hit $5tn (£3tn) by 2050, which would be on a par with Japan today as the world’s third-biggest economy. A statistical rebasing exercise next month – in which the base year for calculating GDP will be changed from 1990 to 2008 – could lead Nigeria to rival South Africa for the spot of the continent’s largest economy, with a value of close to $400bn. That would mean the economic output of Lagos, the vibrant commercial hub, alone overtaking Ghana.

Despite a decade of breakneck growth, two-thirds of Nigerians still endure crushing poverty.

After decades of false starts, Nigeria is slowly addressing its feeble electricity generation. It still produces only enough to power one vacuum cleaner for every 25 inhabitants.

“Nigeria cannot be ignored any more as an investment destination, but I’m not convinced [the Mint group – four countries identified as emerging economic giants, the other members being Mexico, Indonesia and Turkey – is] where it fits in,” said Samir Gadio, an emerging markets strategist at Standard Bank.

“If you take a closer look, Nigeria is the least developed, trails in terms of manufacturing base and displays limited economic diversification.”

Gadio said that the government relies on oil for up to 80% of its income. Shocking education levels – especially in the north, where one report found only a fraction of 16-year-olds could add up two numbers – have provided a way in for the Boko Haram Islamists. The attacks have sometimes shut down swaths of the north, prevented truck drivers from delivering goods there and prompted traders to flee south.

Along the southern shores, too, where 2m barrels of oil are pumped each day, militancy has increased amid anger as decades of oil wealth have failed to trickle down to people living in the heart of the oil industry in the Niger Delta.

Corruption and lack of transparency pushed Nigeria down nine places to 147 out of 189 countries on the World Bank’s Ease of Doing Business index this year. Business people say local oligarchs have such a stranglehold on most sectors of the economy that it is impossible to operate unless you “know someone”.

“If you don’t have the right person holding your hand in this country, you’re going to get your fingers burnt,” said the director of a multinational food brand.

But some see potential progress from a low base.

“The challenges we have here, if you look at them differently, they’re actually opportunities,” said former bank chief executive officer and business magnate Tony Elumelu. “For example, infrastructure is a limiting factor but it’s also an opportunity for investors.”

His gleaming glass and chrome office overlooks the leafy Lagos suburb of Ikoyi, which nicely sums up how Nigeria’s economic growth has failed to radiate. Tucked behind high walls, there are more millionaires living in this part of Lagos than anywhere in Africa, and most cities in the world. But the potholes are some of the city’s worst and flooding caused by blocked drains quickly turns roads into rivers, where sometimes barefooted fruit-sellers can be seen wading through with baskets on their heads.

Clearly, there’s a lot that needs doing – and no doubt plenty of money to be made doing it.

Monica Mark for the Guardian

10 years ago

Being African abroad: Are we a lost generation?

A few weeks ago, I was approached by an elderly Somali man who asked about my ethnicity. I responded that I was Somali. He then began to ask for help in Somali. As he described what he needed, I stood there blank-faced, staring at this man and trying to figure out how to explain to him that I could not understand Somali. I mean, yes I am Somali. But I do not speak the language.

When I finally mustered up the courage to tell him, a wave of frustration appeared on his face. He was dumbfounded. “You do not understand,” he said. “Your language is your passport. Without it, you are just a Somali by appearance and nothing else,” he protested rather poetically. I realised he made a very valid point. I truly had nothing that separated me from my fellow Canadian peers besides my skin complexion. I could not speak my language and the older I became the more I realised I had picked the ‘westernised’ card over the ‘embracing my ethnicity’ card. It was time I found my roots.

Growing up, I was always the token black kid in most of my classes. I had the darkest skin, the roughest hair. To put it simply, I was always the “sore thumb” in all my class photos. Despite being born and raised in Toronto, I was still subjected to societal segregation due to my appearance. It was nothing drastic, but I was still bullied or stereotyped by my peers and teachers. However, over time, I learned to adapt. Like a turtle, I mastered the ability to live both in water and on land. Or, I should say, I learned to survive at home and outside of my home.

I was taught at school that unlike the United States and their forceful melting pot, Canada embraced all of our various ethnic descendants. Usually, when a teacher would discuss Canada and our ‘tossed salad’ analogy, he/she would make it a fact to point at my direction while enthusiastically claiming I was an example of this wonderful multicultural nation, then ignorantly ascribing me to a random African country of his/her choosing to prove their point. During moments like those I wished that I was not a case study for my social studies class; that I could fit in with the Rebeccas and Ashleys sitting around me. To me, fitting in was entirely different from belonging. I did not feel as though I wanted to belong as I understood that I could never truly belong in this society. Instead, I felt I needed to learn how to adapt mannerisms, so that I would avoid such situations in the future. Being westernised seemed ideal.

My parents made it a point to make sure I acknowledged that I was both Somali and Muslim, as these descriptors became almost entirely interchangeable. However, at school I was just the black kid so these descriptors truly meant nothing to my classmates. As Christian beliefs dominated throughout my schooling life, trying to explain an Islamic holiday or fasting during Ramadan became irritating as my classmates could not fathom why I was not eating during lunchtime. They would ignorantly assume I forgot my lunch – every day for a month. This explanation appeared to be more logical for them to believe, rather than to care to understand that I was fasting for God. The reality was that westernised values collided with my traditional Somali values.

A “double identity” was not easy to achieve. My parents were traditional Somalis living in Toronto; my peers were all Canadians. I spent most of the day with my peers rather than my parents, so as time passed I slowly began leaning towards my Canadian identity rather than my parents’ traditional Somali one. The task of forging an ethnic identity is compounded by opposing demands from the two worlds. At school and with my peers, the more “westernised” I was the easier and more relatable I became. I wouldn’t call my parents ‘hoyo’ (mother) or ‘abo’ (father) in public, I would address them as mom and dad. I would not carry any Somali food in my lunch bag, I’d take a peanut butter and jelly sandwich with suitable snacks that I could be able to trade with the other kids during lunchtime.

I highly doubt my parents or parents of other second-generation children would imagine that their kids would be put in a situation where they would have to deal with the clashing of values. As I grew older, I began to witness the extremes: some second generation children began rejecting their culture or even effectively removing themselves from interaction with members of that culture just to avoid the stigmatisation of being associated with their nationality. Others began to develop a heightened sense of ethnic pride, often in reaction to discrimination or hostility from the host society. Either way, both seemed extremely drastic to me.

(Pic: Reuters)

The manner in which Somali youths, or even second generation African youths, understand their identity is complex. The majority of second generation Somalis struggle with the notion of identity simply because identity and culture are deeply intertwined – as religion is an identity, and nationality is an identity, and so on. It seems as though rather than incorporating various aspects of both the western culture and our traditional culture, the majority of Somalis seems to have lost the overall Somali culture in their process of attempting to assimilate into society. There are more of us, who are unable to speak the language, or who do not generally uphold our cultural values.

We tend to forget that we are the future of our cultures. We are the ones who will carry forward our language, and our traditions. However, if we are too busy attempting to assimilate into a society that essentially rejects us, who will continue to keep our traditions alive? I would like to think there is hope. We have a chance to change our situation. Rather than suppressing one’s identity, I feel as though it is time we began embracing the variety of identities.

If not now, when will we?

Iman Hassan is a specialised political science student at York University in Toronto, Ontario.

10 years ago

‘This is not a good place to live’: inside Ghana’s dump for e-waste

The orange flesh of a papaya is like an oval gash in the landscape at Agbogbloshie, Ghana’s vast dumping site for electronic waste, where everything is smeared and stained with mucky hues of brown and sooty black. A woman kneels among the carcasses of discarded computer monitors, scooping the fruit’s flesh for workers hungry from a morning’s work scavenging to eat.

If the appliances at Agbogbloshie were not being dismantled – plucked of their tiny nuggets of copper and aluminium – some of them could almost be technology antiques. Old VHS players, cassette recorders, sewing machines, computers from the 1980s and every period since lie haphazardly on large mounds in the dump, which stretches as far as the eye can see.

See photos of electronic waste dumping in Ghana here

“Electric waste comes here from all over the world – but especially from Europe,” says Karim (29) who, like almost all the scrap dealers at Agbogbloshie, originally comes from northern Ghana but has been salvaging, buying and selling at the dump for 10 years. “We get a lot of health problems here, but we manage, because we need the money.”

Last week, the UN’s “Solving the E-Waste Problem” initiative (Step), which was set up in 2007 to tackle the world’s growing crisis of electronic waste, warned that the global volume of such refuse is set to grow by 33% over the next four years. Much of it will be dumped in sites such as those in Agbogbloshie, increasing the risk of land contamination with lead, mercury, cadmium, arsenic and flame retardants.

Agbogbloshie seems chaotic, apocalyptic in places, but there is an order to the large, desolate, rubbish-strewn site. At one side, boys and young men gather in groups, picking their way through piles of old hard drives, untangling wires, and breaking up old air-conditioning units and even irons.

Abdoullaye (19) and a group of other teenage boys sit under makeshift iron shelters on the upturned cases of old PC monitors, working at a pile of e-waste with chisels and pliers and by hand.

The boys are surrounded by rows of rusty chest freezers, each one dangling a heavy padlock. Inside them, they store the fruits of their labour – piles of copper and aluminium – until the metal is bought by traders.

Ghanaians working in Agbogbloshie. (Pic: Wikimedia/Marlenenapoli)

“I came here from Tamale five years ago,” said Abdoullaye, who wears turned-up blue jeans and a blue and white striped polo shirt smeared with dirt. “I make between two and five cedis (£0.50 to £1.30) each day, and each month I send 50 cedis (£13) back to my family in the north. I would like to go back home, but my family needs the money, so I stay. We get too many problems here – sometimes I have to go to the hospital. It’s not good for us.”

Deeper into the heart of Agbogbloshie, huge plumes of foul-smelling smoke rise up from three large fires, where the dismantled items are burned to remove traces of plastic, leaving the metal behind. The fumes are head-pounding, but the men, women and children weaving in and out of the fires seem oblivious. Goats sleep deeply beside the upturned remains of a tree, now strewn with plastic rubbish.

Roles are gender divided at Agbogbloshie. Women and girls wander the sprawling site, hawking peeled oranges, water sachets and cooked food. Many have tiny babies wrapped in cloth tied tightly to their backs, all inhaling the toxic fumes. There are special jobs for children, who trawl the site with magnets tied on to the end of a piece of string, picking up any tiny scraps of metal left behind in the dirt.

In the centre of the dump, a clearing has been turned into a football pitch, and two teams are in the midst of a match. Agbogbloshie is not just a site for trading, burning and dumping electrical waste; it’s also home to thousands of people, who carry on their lives and raise their children in the midst of its filth and fumes. There are shacks dotted throughout the central area of the dump. In the doorway of one, next to a large heap of discarded computer hard drives, is a large, grubby cloth poster of Thomas the Tank Engine.

Ghanaians have nicknamed Agbogbloshie “Sodom and Gomorrah,” after two condemned Biblical cities, but its residents take a less hostile view.

“This is not a good place to live. But we don’t want the people in Europe and all those places to stop sending the waste,” said Karim. “This is a business centre, and we are using the money we make here to help our families to have a better life.”