In a Congolese cemetery overrun with weeds and rubbish strewn among the graves and banana trees, the living have moved in with the dead – some of them years ago.
For want of money and space, families have built houses out of earth, brick or sheet metal alongside tombs – some of prominent figures like the father of the current first lady – in the Kinsuka cemetery in Kinshasa, the Democratic Republic of Congo’s capital.
As they attempt to lead normal lives in this unlikely setting, the cemetery dwellers, who number at least several hundred, are not only living on the land illegally but also face dangerous sanitary conditions.
“You’re afraid you’re going to dig up a bone,” said 19-year-old Emile as he worked on the foundation for his older brother’s new house just steps away from a well-tended grave.
Should he, or the others, degrade a tombstone they face up to six months in prison, while living without a proper land title could mean a year in jail under the country’s penal code.
A woman and a child stand next to a pit at the Kinsuka cemetery on June 10 2014. (Pic: AFP)
Neighbour Bibiche (23) has lived in the cemetery for two years but says it is still an unsettling experience.
“You feel afraid sleeping amidst the graves, but we had no home,” she said. “The cemetery isn’t good, we have no electricity.”
Yet other cemetery residents say they not only have electricity but pay a “bill” to the national power company, SNEL.
Poverty Despite its vast mineral wealth, two-thirds of the DR Congo’s 68 million people are mired in poverty, exacerbated by back-to-back wars that ravaged the country from 1996 to 2003 and left a complex web of rebel groups still terrorising the eastern provinces.
Finding housing is a constant struggle for many, and large numbers of civilians – and even police and soldiers – have taken to the country’s cemeteries to find a place to call home.
But life among the gravestones is no free ride, explained Therese, a five-year resident of Kinsuka cemetery. The 57-year-old widow paid a local chief to buy four plots of land with her children’s help.
“They cost between $2 500 to $4 000 each,” said Therese, who like all the cemetery residents only gave her first name for fear of reprisal.
Inside her two-room house, the bedroom has a mosquito net but no bed.
“In November, the police came to destroy the houses. They took my things,” she said.
“I had to rebuild my house, but I don’t have the courage to rebuild on my other plots that I wanted to rent out.”
Yet scenes typical of village life can still be found in Kinsuka. The dirt paths are lined with wooden stalls selling food and basic supplies, and children in traditional blue and white kits play football at a Protestant school built inside the graveyard three years ago.
“Today it has about 150 students. Parents pay 78 000 Congolese francs per year, against $300 to $400 dollars elsewhere,” said the school’s director.
In some parts of cemetery the construction of homes has made it harder to locate remaining burial plots. The graveyard was founded in 1978 and is the final resting place of several well-known figures, such as engineer Sita Barnabe Kinsumbu, the father of the DRC’s first lady Olive Lembe Kabila, according to a local burial tax collector.
Public health hazard Government officials say the homes in Kinsuka and other cemeteries across the country constitute a public health hazard, noting that it takes as long as 50 years after a site’s last burial to ensure the ground is fully decontaminated.
“Sometimes people find a source of water but when you sniff it, it smells like a corpse,” said Dr Benjamin Mavard Kwengani, director of hygiene at Kinshasa’s health ministry.
“We haven’t done a study, but there have been abnormal cases in the (cemetery) communities – diarrhoea and abnormalities that we can’t explain,” he said.
According to Pius Ngoie, an advisor to the urban planning ministry, cemetery villages only continue to exist due to negligence and corruption within the civil service.
“Some of the state’s civil servants … are completely irresponsible” and “fraudulently” sell tracts of land in the cemetery, he said.
The cemetery dwellers are under no illusions that their homes could be razed at any moment.
“One day, a [state] tractor is going to come and knock down the houses and they will lose everything,” said Peter, whose father and grandfather are buried in Kinsuka.
His words turned out to be prophetic. Just a few days later, soldiers arrived to destroy some of the homes built on the remains of this final resting place.
Ghana’s players warm up during a training session in Brasilia. (Pic: AFP)
The Ghana government on Wednesday airlifted more than three million dollars in cash to Brazil to stop protests by players ahead of their crunch game against Portugal.
Speaking after a player meeting Wednesday, midfielder Christian Atsu said there was no question of any fallout from the financial dispute on Thursday’s game which Ghana must win to maintain any chance of qualifying for the second round.
The team ended their protests after President John Dramani Mahama personally assured them that he would send a chartered plane with the promised amount, more than $3 million, Atsu said.
“We love our country and we will play,” said Atsu, who with team-mates boycotted Monday’s training session.
Ghana coach Kwesi Appiah, whose side must beat Portugal and hope either the United States or Germany inflict a heavy defeat on the other so they go through on goal difference, said he was relieved the government had intervened.
“The president has intervened. That is a good thing, the government took matters in hand,” Appiah told a pre-match press conference.
“The money should arrive in a few hours as the plane took off some time ago,” he added.
Because of the bonus row, the team only arrived in Brasilia late on Wednesday and missed training.
Appiah, who has been coach since 2012, explained the bonuses should have been paid before the finals where the Black Stars had been hoping to repeat their 2010 exploit in reaching the quarter-finals.
“Our habit is to pay the players in cash because not all the players have bank accounts in Ghana.
“I am not saying that is the best way to do things but one has to understand in Africa things are done differently to Europe,” said Appiah.
“FIFA pays the federations only when they arrive. The players have to wait to be paid and the country must find the money before they arrive and that is where the problem lies.”
However, Appiah said he sympathised with the players. “From the moment one agrees the size of the bonus it is important the players receive it.”
Bonuses also caused a furore in the Cameroon camp with the players delaying their flight to Brazil until cash promises were made.
Fourteen years ago, Sudanese author Leila Aboulela made history when she won the inaugural edition of the Caine Prize for African Writing.
She’s gone on to publish a short story collection titled Coloured Lights (2001), in addition to two critically acclaimed novels – Minaret(2005) and Lyrics Alley (2011), which won the Scottish Book Awards.
In this exclusive interview, she takes us back to the first Caine Prize ceremony and tells us what it was like inaugurating what would become one of Africa’s most prestigious literary prizes. She also comments on contemporary African fiction and leaves the five authors shortlisted for the 2014 edition of the prize with sound advice.
Can you tell us what the inaugural edition of the Caine Prize was like? What was the general feeling about this new prize breaking into the global literary scene and being hailed as the “African Booker?”
In some ways the inaugural prize was low-keyed; hardly any attention, for example, was paid to the announcement of the short-list. It was only when the short-listed writers arrived in London, for the week’s events culminating in the award dinner at Oxford, that the excitement really started. All the major UK newspapers reported the announcement of the winner and there was coverage from the BBC World Service. With few exceptions, African literature was marginalised in those years, perceived to be of niche or academic interest and not attractive to the general reader. The expectation was that the prize would break through these assumptions in order to widen readership and this was very much welcomed. A few days after the prize dinner in Oxford, we all flew to Harare to take part in the Zimbabwe Book Fair and there was large, official award ceremony and dinner hosted by the Caine Prize.
What was it like arriving in Zimbabwe to participate in this brand new initiative for African writing?
It was hugely exciting. My husband and daughter came with me and she actually turned two the day after our arrival. Harare reminded me of Khartoum and I enjoyed my time there. The first person I met in the lobby of the Monomotapa Hotel as we were checking in, was Yvonne Vera. She had edited Open Spaces, the anthology which contained my winning story, and she was warm and encouraging. She gave me excellent advice which I still hang on to today. She said, “As a writer, you lead and your readers will follow.” There was a lot of excitement at the book fair about the new prize and it was especially apt and meaningful to be awarded the prize in Africa, during such a significant literary event as the Zimbabwe Book Fair.
Looking back, do you think winning the prize made an impact on your writing career?
It certainly did. It gave me greater confidence in myself and it gave my work more exposure. From a practical point of view, it speeded up the publication of my short story collection Coloured Lights which included my Caine winning story. It also enabled me to get a deal with a London publisher for the publication of my second novel. Before winning the prize, I was published by a small university press. Also after winning the prize, the Heinemann African Writers Series published an imprint of my first novel The Translator for sale in Africa.
Generally speaking, what do you think is the significance of prizes in a writer’s life and work? There is a ‘stamp of approval’ effect, for the public there is a highlighting of a particular writer or a particular work from among others and (so important nowadays for widening readership) there is greater publicity. The significance of prizes can’t be overestimated. They can make or break a career. Unless you are a best-seller, you are judged by the prizes you won or were short-listed for.
Your winning story is The Museum. Ben Okri, who was one of the judges, describes the story as “moving, gentle, ironic, quietly angry and beautifully written.” Do you ever go back to that story? Does is occupy a special place in your body of writing?
It meant a great deal to me that Ben Okri, of all people, was the chair of the judges and I very much appreciated his comments. The Museum has been more anthologised and read than any other of my stories. Ironically, it never was my favorite story. I never particularly liked the characters and I felt distanced from them. My favorite story at the time was The Ostrich, but it didn’t meet with the same success. I suspect that The Museum was artistically better developed and more mature.
Back in 2000, Okri could say to the Guardian readership: “I recommend a general interest in African writing to widen taste and see how other people live, dream, and overcome.” It appears to me that today African writing is so ubiquitous that it is hardly necessary to make such an exhortation. What do you think?
I wish I could fully agree. Within literary and academic circles, perhaps, but for the average reader in the West, an African novel can still means one written by Wilbur Smith or Alexander McCall Smith. Just a couple of months ago, The Telegraph newspaper listed the Ten Best Novels About Africa with Barbara Kingsolver’s The Poisonwood Bible making the list at the expense of anything by Ngugi Wa Thiong’o or Nuruddin Farah.
Which contemporary African novelists inspire you most?
I have always been inspired by Ahdaf Soueif. Her breakthrough novel In the Eye of the Sun is The Golden Notebook of the Arab woman. Soueif brought the North African novel firmly from the village into the elegant city apartments of the chattering classes and that was a breath of fresh air and a dazzling step forward. In completely different ways, Hisham Matar and NoViolet Bulawayo are exciting, excellent writers. I am also a huge fan of Sefi Atta, her work is always distinctive and unforgettable. The Sudanese writer Amir Taj Elsir writes in Arabic but he is a worthy successor to Amos Tutuola. His bizarre and delightful novel The Grub Hunter has recently been translated into English and published by the AWS.
More recently, there has been a lot debate about what constitutes an African writer. There are those who don’t want to be called African writers because, they claim, it is a reductive term. There are those who complain that certain individuals called African writers are not African enough – case in point: Tope Folarin, the Nigerian-American, who won the Caine Prize last year. What’s your thought on this age-old issue of the African writer’s ambivalence toward national identity?
We need to ask ourselves why is it that being an American writer, a European writer or an Arab writer is not reductive but being an African writer is perceived to be so. If the market or the literary establishment is ghettoising or infantilising African literature then that is what needs to change rather than how African writers describe themselves. As for being not African enough, I suspect that when people make this accusation they are trying to say something else, more subjective, as in not ‘my kind of African’. This is a denial that there are an infinite number of ways of being African, it is not a monolith and one of the exciting things about literature is just how much it challenges our assumptions of national identity by zooming in on cultures within cultures and exposing fluid boundaries.
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie caused quite a bit of a controversy last year when she said: “I suppose [the Caine Prize] is a good thing, but for me it’s not the arbiter of the best fiction in Africa. It’s never been.” What do you think of such a statement? If the Caine Prize is not “the arbiter of good writing in Africa,” what is it then? Do you care to comment on what you think is the role of the Caine Prize, or any prize for that matter, in the contemporary African literature scene?
The Caine Prize focuses on the short story rather than the novel and, over time, it has developed a very effective process of discovering and nurturing new talent. At the moment there is no prize that is awarded to the best African novel of the year regardless of whether the writer is established or a first-time novelist. It would be a welcome thing if such a prize was set up. The Man Asian Prize, for example, shortlists writers such as Orhan Pamuk and Amitav Ghosh, sadly we don’t have an African equivalent. Most of the newly established prizes such as the Etisalat, the Kwani? Manuscript and the Commonwealth are dedicated to new writers. For unpublished, unknown writers this is excellent and African literature will benefit from all this energy and dedication by moving further into the mainstream.
Any words of encouragement to the five authors shortlisted for the 15th edition of the Caine Prize?
If you win, remember there will be another winner next year taking the limelight. So make the most of this year in terms of connections and publication possibilities. Push with all your might.
If you don’t win, go online and see how well previous Caine Prize short-listed authors have done. In many cases, they have had greater success that the winners.
The winner of the £10 000 Caine Prize will be announced at a celebratory dinner at the Bodleian Library, Oxford, on Monday 14 July.
Brittle Paper is an African literary blog featuring book reviews, news, interviews, original work and in-depth coverage of the African literary scene. It is curated by Ainehi Edoro and was recently named a ‘go-to book blog’ by Publisher’s Weekly.
With his pilgrim’s staff and panama hat, Father Godfrey Nzamujo nips up and down the paths of Songhai, the organic farm he created nearly 30 years ago to fight poverty and rural migration in Africa.
The small farm covered barely a hectare when it was set up in Porto Novo in 1985 but has since become a pilot project for the rest of the continent badly in need of new ideas to maximise yields.
The centre in Benin’s capital now stretches over 24 hectares and employs an army of workers and apprentices, who toil from sunrise to sunset growing fruit, vegetables and rice, as well as rearing fish, pigs, poultry.
“Nothing is wasted, everything is transformed” according to Nzamujo’s principle, with even chicken droppings turned into the bio-gas that powers the centre’s kitchens.
Father Godfrey Nzamujo, director of Centre Songhai. (Pic: AFP)
Songhai in tiny Benin has big plans for Africa. It already has similar operations in Nigeria, Liberia and Sierra Leone and wants to set up shop in 13 more west and central African countries.
Nzamujo’s raison d’etre is how to help Africans increase yields through simple techniques, without using pesticides or fertilizers, and while cutting production costs and protecting the environment.
The Nigeria-born priest, who was raised in California on the US west coast, said he was shocked by the appalling images of famine in Africa on television at the start of the 1980s.
He then left to discover the continent to see how he could put to good use his university training in agronomics, economics and information technology and fight against poverty on his own terms.
How it began After visiting a number of countries, he ended up in Benin where the country’s then-Marxist government gave him a small plot.
“It was abandoned land, killed by chemical fertiliser and conventional agricultural practices. It didn’t work,” he told AFP.
“There were seven of us. We dug wells and watered with our own hands. And during the main dry season, this grey surface became green,” he recalled with a smile.
Nzamujo’s secret is in imitating nature, encouraging “good bacteria” present in the soil to maximise production without having to rely on chemicals.
Yields at Songhai speak for themselves: the farm produces seven tonnes of rice per hectare three times a year, up from one tonne per hectare once a year at the beginning of the project.
“Songhai is facing up to the triple challenge of Africa today: poverty, environment and youth employment,” said Nzamujo proudly.
The cleric’s system centres on local production and distribution, creating economic activity to tackle poverty head on.
At Songhai, jam simmers in large pots while chickens are roasted and soya oil, rice and fruit juice are packaged for sale in the centre’s shop or served at its restaurant.
Discarded parts of agricultural machinery are reused to create ingenious contraptions and used water is filtered using water hyacinths.
A man wheels coconuts in a wheelbarrow at the Centre Songhai. (Pic: AFP)
The centre also has an internet point and even a bank so that local people can avoid going into the city centre.
Youth employment is encouraged and some 400 farm apprentices – selected by competition – are trained every year. The 18-month course is entirely free.
Apprentices, interns Paul Okou is one of them. The 25-year-old from Parakou, northern Benin, would like to follow his parents into farming but is hoping to work in a more profitable way.
“My parents use traditional, archaic methods while at Songhai we learn the modern way, albeit makeshift,” he said.
“What we used to do in two days now we do in two hours.”
The apprentices are sent into villages where they apply what they have learned. Once in charge of a farm, they join the Songhai network and are checked regularly.
Songhai also welcomes interns who are paying for their own training.
They include Abua Eucharia Nchinor, a Nigerian in his 30s, and Kemajou Nathanael, a 39-year-old former salesman from Cameroon, who both want to open an organic farm in their respective countries.
According to Nzamujo, Songhai is not a cure-all for Africa’s problems but tackles their root causes.
“Imagine if all the young people who hang around big cities did their training here and we equip them. … Imagine the productivity of Africa today.” he said.
Fifa is investigating a possible racial discrimination case after photographs circulated of fans with blackface makeup at Germany’s match against Ghana.
Images posted on social media networks showed two men, appearing to be Germany fans, with blackened faces in the Fortaleza stadium on Saturday.
A spectator at the Germany-Ghana World Cup match on June 21. (Pic: Reuters)
Fifa said on Sunday that its disciplinary committee is considering opening a case. It will also consider a report by the Fifa match commissioner, Eggert Magnusson of Iceland.
“We do not respect any discriminatory messages,” spokesperson Delia Fischer said.
Fifa holds national football federations responsible for their fans’ behavior inside stadiums.
In a second incident, a man ran onto the pitch in the second half of the 2-2 draw.
The shirtless fan had an email address and telephone number written on his back. He was ushered away by Ghana midfielder Sulley Muntari before being detained by stewards.
Brazil’s organising committee spokesperson Saint-Clair Milesi said the man was reportedly from Poland.
“He came running, charged and jumped over the stewards,” Milesi said. “Such behavior is totally unacceptable. He was taken to the local authorities for the proper measures.” – Sapa-AP
