Sure, Will Smith repurposed Bill Withers’ classic Just the Two of Us as an ode to his son Trey. And yes, even more recently, Jay Z included both the heartbeat and cries of his baby daughter Blue Ivy Carter on the track Glory, released a few days after she was born. But do both these acts of fatherly Hollywood magnanimity and largesse not fade into insignificance when compared with the actions of one American father, who “claimed” an African “kingdom” so his daughter could be a “princess”?
You read that right. A Virginia father, Jeremiah Heaton, flew to Africa for the express purpose of claiming the 800 square miles that make up Bir Tawil, a desert territory that falls between the borders of Egypt and Sudan. Heaton travelled for 14 hours in a caravan in order to plant the flag (designed by his children) on the soil of Bir Tawil, an act that he reckons makes his claim more legitimate than previous attempts made online. The children have decided to name it the “Kingdom of North Sudan”. His daughter, “Princess” Emily, seven, has said she wants to ensure children in the region have enough food (Bir Tawil itself is uninhabited).
The immediate question for the rest of us has to be: “Are white people still allowed to do this kind of stuff in 2014?” Heaton has said: “I feel confident in the claim we’ve made. That’s the exact same process that has been done for thousands of years. The exception is this nation was claimed for love.”
If ever there were a deed that exemplified the term “white privilege”, surely this is it. It is almost as if Heaton and his children have never watched the Disney classic Pocahontas, in which the Native American princess sings to would-be coloniser John Smith: “You think you own whatever land you land on.
But if you want to make your child feel special and loved – as Heaton wanted to do – surely a princess makeover would suffice. When did the phrase “daddy’s little princess” pass from vaguely creepy societal saying into a literal thing? It also begs the question: where next for Emily Heaton? What can you get a child after you’ve “given” them a country of their own? A Build-a-Bear party with six of her friends will not slake her inevitable thirst for power now. Nothing will. There is nowhere else to go on the gift-giving scale. What have ye wrought, Jeremiah Heaton?
Kenyan author Okwiri Oduor has won the 2014 Caine Prize for African Writing for her short story My Father’s Head.
Described as “an uplifting story about mourning,” Nairobi-born Oduor’s 2013 work begins with the narrator’s attempts to remember what her father’s face looked like as she struggles to cope with his loss, and follows her as she finds the courage to remember.
“Okwiri Oduor is a writer we are all really excited to have discovered,” said Scottish author and chief judge Jackie Kay, as the prize was presented at the Bodleian Library in Oxford tonight. “My Father’s Head’ is an uplifting story about mourning – Joycean in its reach. She exercises an extraordinary amount of control and yet the story is subtle, tender and moving. It is a story you want to return to the minute you finish it.”
Now in its fifteenth year, the annual £10 000 award celebrates short stories written by African authors published in English.
Oduor, who is now working on her first novel, had been shortlisted with South Africa’s Diane Awerbuck for her short story Phosphorescence, Efemia Chela from both Ghana and Zambia for Chicken, Zimbabwe’s Tendai Huchu for The Intervention, and Kenya’s Billy Kahora for The Gorilla’s Apprentice. Each will take home £500 prize money.
Oduor will be able to take up a month’s residence at Georgetown University in Washington DC, and will be invited to appear at the Open Book Festival in Cape Town in September, the Storymoja Hay Festival in Nairobi and the Ake Festival in Nigeria.
The Caine Prize is named after the late Sir Michael Caine, former chairman of the Booker Prize management committee.
Previous winners include Nigeria’s Tope Folarin in 2013 and Zimbabwe’s NoViolet Bulawayo in 2011.
Portugal’s Cristiano Ronaldo (L) takes a free kick during the World Cup Group G soccer match against Ghana. (Pic: Reuters)
Around 200 Ghanaians have requested asylum after travelling to Brazil to watch the World Cup, with officials expecting hundreds more to do so once the tournament ends.
Fans who travelled to see the Black Stars said they were Muslims “fleeing the violent conflicts between different Muslim groups”, police chief Noerci da Silva Melo told the news agency Agencia Brasil. Ghana, one of Africa’s most peaceful countries, has no recorded conflict among a population that is about two-thirds Christian.
Many of the asylum-seekers have taken shelter in a local Catholic seminary, which is helping them prepare official documents.
But dozens arriving daily in Brazil’s affluent southern states of Sao Paulo, Santa Catarina and Rio Grande do Sul – all several hundred miles south of the venues where the Ghanaian team played – had hoped to find work, Da Silva Melo said.
“This region, Serra Gaucha, is known as an area of full employment. It has became a magnet for foreign workers,” he said. “You go through the streets and you can see many Haitians and Senegalese selling pirated CDs and watches. The area is overcrowded now.”
The majority of the arrivals said they were victims of an illegal ring who had demanded payment after luring them with false promises of work, said police investigator Vinícius Possamai Della.
A Catholic seminary, the Centro de Atendimento ao Migrante, has been receiving food and clothes donations after taking in 219 Ghanaians, two of them women, the centre’s director said.
The asylum-seekers “faced life-threatening situations back home. They feel they can find work and better living conditions in Brazil,” the centre’s director Vanessa Perini Moojen told the Associated Press.
‘No religious conflict’ But Ghanaian authorities say the country has no religious conflict. “The basis for this alleged request is completely false as no religious conflict is taking place in Ghana,” deputy information minister Felix Kwakye Ofosu said. “Ghana’s mission in Brazil has been instructed to liaise with the Brazilian authorities to investigate the matter.”
The Brazilian justice ministry will decide whether to grant their requests and in the meantime, they are allowed to work and circulate in the country.
An official delegation of 650 fans went to Brazil to support the Black Stars, but police said they are expecting a further 1 000 Ghanaians to request refugee status in the next week.
Ghana’s foray into the Cup was beset by off-pitch woes. President John Dramani Mahama was forced to fly a plane with $3-million in cash to Brasilia after players threatened to boycott a match against Portugal. Defender John Boye, who later scored an own goal in a game the team lost 2–1, was captured on television kissing wads of cash delivered under armed guard to the players’ hotel.
In past international sporting events, athletes from the continent have sometimes disappeared in their host country. During London’s 2012 Olympics, seven Cameroonian athletes went missing, as did an Ethiopian torchbearer.
“You cannot blame them at all. No matter how much they decry it, a lot of our African officials would do the same thing given the first opportunity,” Ghanaian Martin Asamoah said from the capital, Accra.
Nigeria’s literary icon Wole Soyinka turned 80 on Sunday, with friends and foes alike paying tribute to the first African to win the Nobel literature prize.
Dozens of literary and artistic events have been staged across the country over 80 days leading up to the birthday of the poet, novelist, playwright and social activist, whose works often satirised Nigeria’s society and harshly criticised corrupt and inept leaders.
But such is Soyinka’s popularity and stature that many of the targets of his criticism put aside past differences to honour the man who, with his trademark white afro and matching bushy goatee, is a beloved figure in Africa’s most populous nation.
Wole Soyinka. (Pic: AFP)
President Goodluck Jonathan praised his ardent critic in a statement on Saturday, hailing Soyinka’s “life-long dedication and indefatigable commitment to using his acclaimed genius and talents, not only in the service of the arts, but also for the promotion of democracy, good governance and respect for human rights in Nigeria, Africa and beyond”.
Former dictator General Yakubu Gowon, who jailed Soyinka for some two years during Nigeria’s 1967-1970 civil war, paid respect by attending a lecture in Soyinka’s hometown of Abeokuta on Friday.
Soyinka, who looks several decades younger than his age, sprang to his feet and warmly embraced his former jailer as soon as he entered the lecture hall, sparking applause from the audience.
“I have come to Abeokuta for the sake of this particular man, to honour him,” said Gowon, who imprisoned the writer on suspicion of support for his rival in the 1967 standoff that eventually led Nigeria to a 30-month civil war in which an estimated one million people died, mostly of disease and starvation.
The birthday events honouring Soyinka are due to culminate on Monday with a visit to his secluded forest residence in Abeokuta, the capital of southwestern Ogun State, and a presentation of one of his plays.
Born into an Anglican family on July 13, 1934, in Abeokuta, Soyinka cut his literary teeth in the 1950s at the University of Ibadan, Nigeria’s premier university, where he studied English literature.
He also studied literature at the University of Leeds.
Darling of the critics The poet, novelist and playwright has around 30 published works to his name, most of which satirise Nigerian society and which have made him a darling of the critics.
“Soyinka, a literary giant, is God’s gift to Nigeria in particular, Africa and the world at large. His style is inimitable,” Dare Ademola, a literary critic, told AFP.
Chima Anyadike, head of the English department at the Obafemi Awolowo University where Soyinka last taught in Nigeria, said: “Soyinka is a great writer of his time.”
In announcing his Nobel in 1986, the Swedish Academy praised Soyinka for “your versatile writings (in which) you have been able to synthesise a very rich heritage from your own country, ancient myths and old traditions, with literary legacies and traditions of European culture”.
It also hailed him for “your own genuine and impressive creativity as an artist, a master of language, and your commitment as a dramatist and writer of poetry and prose to problems of general and deep significance for man, modern or ancient”.
A harsh critic of military, corrupt or inept governments, Soyinka fled Nigeria during the regime of General Sani Abacha in the 1990s when the government hounded critics including journalists and academics.
A hunter, connoisseur of wines and notoriously private, Soyinka hasn’t let his advanced age dull his social activism. In January 2012, he joined activists in street protests against President Jonathan after the government hiked the pump price of fuel.
Has your love life lost its spark? Too tired after long days at work? Or maybe you suspect your partner’s eye has been wandering?
Zainab Usman, a Muslim from northern Nigeria, says she has the solution for all these problems. Walking through a room lined with jars, bottles and gourds, perfumed air trailing in her wake, she ticks off each remedy on delicately manicured fingers. Out come a stream of names that sound like a cross between children’s sweets and street slang for class A drugs.
There is the “wonder wand”, a vial of peppercorn-sized pills that promise to enhance intimate experiences. Zuman mata, which translates as “woman’s honey” in northern Nigeria’s Hausa language, is guaranteed to “keep a man coming back”. Or how about tsumi, a herb and camel’s milk concoction that Usman has nicknamed “cocaine” which, if its effects match up to the claims, is best taken only if the user has several days spare to recover?
This is the world of kayan mata (“women’s things”), a five-century-old practice in northern Nigeria and neighbouring Niger aimed at keeping married couples’ love lives lubricated, so to speak. Handed down the generations by women, the creams, scrubs, perfumes and tablets are made using local herbs and roots that grow in the arid north. Traditionally meant to prepare a bride for marriage and ensure social stability by keeping couples happily married, they are growing in popularity.
Men have their own version, called maganin maza (“men’s potions”), which includes chilli-infused foods.
Neither country particularly needs a helping hand in the sex department: 11 000 babies are born every day in Nigeria, the world’s eighth most populous country, while Niger has the world’s highest birth rate. But the centuries-old kayan mata is one of the few times when sex is openly discussed amid an otherwise decidedly old-fashioned approach to discussing physical intimacy and its consequences.
“In the north, girls start learning about it at a very young age,” said Usman, whose female in-laws presented her with a kayan matagift box on the eve of her wedding. It accompanied the equally traditional gara – a gift of kitchen utensils as the couple started a new home.
“The south is a good market for me because it’s still new here, although I’m not sure Lagosians are ready for this,” says Usman, who has started selling her wares in Lagos, hundreds of miles south of her home city of Sokoto.
As two giggling friends visit Usman, a third hovers disapprovingly nearby, though not so far as to be out of earshot.
“Do you have ones that uplift breasts?” the first friend asks.
“Of course,” replies Usman, pouring a thick liquid into a tiny jar. For good measure, she adds a green powder called danagadas (“the one from Agadez” – a city in Niger’s Sahara desert). “I can’t use this one very much, I’d be too tired,” she adds.
What happens, one of the women wants to know, if you stop taking the herbs?
“Your husband will notice a massive difference straight away,” Usman says, snapping her fingers. The two friends look at each other and fall about laughing.
“You guys are making me feel uncomfortable,” Usman says, a hint of reproach in her voice. “I’m trying to help you. It’s not a big deal – women have been using this for ages.”
The ingredients of kayan mata have changed little over 500 years except, perhaps, that dried camel’s milk is now preferred to fresh as the goods travel longer distances. Typically, products have a base of rice, honey, millet and tiger nuts. Fish sperm and manatee fat are sometimes thrown in. Key, though, are the roots of the desert-growing jujube, baobab and catchthorn trees, which have long been used medicinally across the Sahara. Some herbs are so localised English translations are hard to come by.
Nevertheless some may be placebos similar to the western perception that oysters are aphrodisiacs, he says. “If dim lights, mood music and a plate of molluscs do it for one culture, why not camel milk and dates for another?”
Business is certainly booming. Big-name dealers include one of the wives of former president Ibrahim Babangida.
In the labyrinthine streets of Wuse market in the capital Abuja, Umar Mohammed, 56, sits in his booth surrounded by imitation gold jewellery, intriguingly named fake perfumes, sequinned headscarves and incense burners.
But at a word from two visiting customers, he springs into life and throws open a cupboard full of the familiar vials and powders. “Why didn’t you say [what you wanted] right away?” after two elderly women in hijabs spend 15 minutes apparently poring over a single stick of incense.
He tries to sell them a dust-covered box of products whose extraordinary price is justified, he says, as it came from Malaysia. “When a woman uses these products, she will look and smell like a flower, which is how it should be.”
