Tag: West Africa

Timbuktu’s literary gems in a fight for surival

There is a proverb in Timbuktu, the legendary medieval city in Mali’s desert, that says: “The ink of a scholar is more precious than the blood of a martyr.”

What Ahmed Baba, the 16th-century intellectual who said it, would make of recent developments is hard to imagine. At the multimillion-dollar Timbuktu institute bearing his name, fragments of ancient texts litter the corridors. The charred remains of not just scholarly ink, but the antique leather-bound covers that protected them against the harsh desert elements are blown by the hot Saharan wind.

During the last days of the Islamist occupation of northern Mali, the al-Qaeda-linked groups who seized control of the territory for almost nine months turned on the Ahmed Baba Institute. In what many people believe was a final act of revenge, and a senseless crime against some of Islam’s greatest treasures, they set the manuscripts alight.

Men recover burnt ancient manuscripts at the Ahmed Baba Centre in Timbuktu on January 29 2013. (AFP)

“When the French started bombing, [the Islamists] set the manuscripts on fire as they were leaving,” said Abdoulaye Cissé, interim director of the institute. “Even after most had fled the town, a small group of jihadists returned to make sure that the fire was still burning.”

“We are all Muslims, and in Timbuktu our practical version of Islam has existed for centuries,” added Cissé, a native of the city who remained there throughout the occupation.

“But they practise an archaic Islam and do not consider these writings as the authentic Qur’an because they cover not only religion but science, astronomy, history and literature. That’s their ideology and we don’t support it.”

Cissé, who wears a distinctive silver ring engraved with an Islamic blessing that he had to remove under Islamist rule, foresaw that Timbuktu’s occupiers could target his precious charge. He and colleagues in Bamako, along with guards at the institute, the nightwatchman and his son, and numerous co-operative drivers and boatmen, worked for months by night, carefully packing most of the institute’s 45 000 manuscripts and ferreting them away by road or pirogue boat to the capital in the south.

“It was a dangerous thing to do, we would have been punished if we had been caught,” said Cissé.

“But people really came together to help us. Every time we told them what they were carrying, they all kept it secret and kept them hidden until they left the occupied area.

Read the fascinating account of how Cissé and his colleagues saved the manuscripts here.

These ancient manuscripts, which could number up to 400 000 across the region, are a source of pride in Mali – and across sub-Saharan Africa. As Africa gained independence from European colonial powers, the texts – the oldest of which date from the ninth century – became a means for the pan-African movement to refute racist notions of a primitive, unlettered continent with no written history.

Part of the manuscript collection. (AFP)

“People think that African history is oral, that the blacks were not writing until the white man arrived in Africa,” said Cissé. “But we know written literature. That is our mission – to one day recreate the history of Africa through the knowledge contained in those manuscripts.”

Timbuktu, which is now a Unesco world heritage site, was founded in about AD1103 and flourished as a commercial hub of the caravan trade between black Africa and the Maghreb, Mediterranean and Middle East. The Ahmed Baba Institute, opened with much fanfare by the former South African president Thabo Mbeki in 2009, has just received about £65 000 in funding from Saudi Arabia to digitise its manuscripts.

“We want to digitally secure all the manuscripts before they are brought back to Timbuktu,” said Cissé. “But then they must be brought back. The manuscripts are meaningless if they’re not in Timbuktu.”

An unintended consequence of the Islamist occupation of the city has been a renewed global focus on the priceless manuscripts, which although mostly written in Arabic also include centuries-old writings in Greek, Latin, French, English and German.

But while the Ahmed Baba Institute is painstakingly working to preserve preserving this history, other manuscripts in Timbuktu are faring less well.

In a narrow, sandy street in the central Badjinde quarter, Kunta Sidi Bouya climbs a steep flight of cracked, mud-cement stairs to a special prayer room on his roof. He lifts half a dozen worn, fraying books from a shelf in the corner, bound exquisitely in antique and decaying leather, and lays them out on the rug on the floor.

Bouya’s home contains one of Timbuktu’s thousands of private manuscript collections, texts written by the family’s ancestors and handed down through the generations.

“My ancestor, Sheikh Sidi al-Bekaye, was a scholar who lived hundreds of years ago, he wrote these,” Bouya said proudly. “It feels special when you read something your own grandfathers have written. These are part of our family and they are private.

“You are only allowed to handle them when you have attained a certain level of Qur’anic education. Being able to read Arabic is not enough – you have to learn to understand them completely.”

Bouya (35) a teacher at a Qur’anic school in Timbuktu, said he feared for the safety of his family’s manuscripts during the occupation.

“The jihadists attacked and destroyed the shrine to one of my ancestors and we feared they would come for the manuscripts,” he said. “But in the end they never came door to door looking for them.”

Life was complicated under Islamist rule, Bouya said, and they were happy when the French liberated the town. But now his manuscripts face another, older challenge.

“We fear for their survival. They are old and they are suffering from the elements here,” Bouya admitted. “We try to touch them as little as possible and when people come here asking to see them to do research, we hide them to protect them.”

Unesco said the plethora of private family manuscripts posed a huge challenge to efforts to conserve Mali’s cultural heritage.

“Something has gone wrong with Mali’s documentary heritage,” said David Stehl of Unesco. “There have been various programmes for their conservation but they have not created the conditions to adequately protect the manuscripts. They have lacked transparency and co-ordination.

“Even the legal question of who owns these private manuscripts is unclear. You have hundreds and thousands of them right across Mali and they are very much tied to families and private owners. We are concerned about the degree to which they were handled during the Islamist occupation – people started touching them, dispersing them and, especially for those that were moved to Bamako, they’ve now been exposed to completely different climatic conditions.

“Something has to be done to protect these collections, but it is a huge task – monstrous actually.”

Preserving the manuscripts is crucial, experts in Mali say, not just to learn about the past, but also the future.

“We have not even begun to exploit the knowledge included in these manuscripts,” said Cissé.

“Translation is not enough – we need specialists to analyse and interpret them. They are full of parables, hidden messages, images – all of which take specialists to understand. Only then can we understand the practical value of this wisdom that was written down hundreds of years ago.”

Afua Hirsch for the Guardian.

12 years ago

Ghanaian students’ rocketing ambitions

Their project might not sound like much: On Wednesday college students in Ghana launched a tiny model of a satellite the size of a Coke can on a big yellow balloon.

It went up to a height of 165 metres and then came back down attached to a parachute.

A Deployable CanSat floats back down to earth on a parachute following its test launch. (AP)

Ambitious organisers in the West African country – who recently launched the Ghana Space Science and Technology Centre – see the test as a sign of bigger things to come.

“We hope that this practical demonstration of what can be done by students like them will generate more enthusiasm, fire up their imagination to come up with more creative things, and show that it’s possible that they’ll one day be able to launch their own real satellite into orbit,” said Prosper Kofi Ashilevi, director of the space centre which marked its one-year anniversary earlier this month.

The effort has drawn some skepticism, acknowledged Samuel H. Donkor, the president of All Nations University.

“They think it is a pipe dream, a waste of money,” said Donkor, who has directed $50 000 to the programme.

But Ashilevi, the space centre director, said it was essential for local universities to train students with a passion for space.

“Some wonder why we couldn’t concentrate on our problems of water, sanitation, health, all those things. I categorically disagree,” he said. “Space will help African countries who are very serious with it to leapfrog their development because it cuts across all sectors of the economy.”

Experts say Ghana is probably a good five years or more from developing its own operational satellites, which could one day be used to confront everything from natural disasters to the smuggling of natural resources.

Wednesday’s project, though, started at All Nations University with just a big balloon to carry aloft the miniature model of a satellite, known as a Deployable CanSat. The device reached a height of about 165 metres, just shy of the students’ 200-metre goal.

Students prepare the balloon used to conduct a test launch of a Coke-can sized satellite at All Nations University in Koforidua, Ghana. (AP)

The mini-satellite. (AP)

Owen Hawkins, business development manager for Surrey Satellite Technology in the United Kingdom, called Wednesday’s project “very, very exciting”.

“Ghana is quite a small country and they’re already punching above their weight by doing things like that,” Hawkins said.

It was the first time Ghana has sent a Deployable CanSat into the air, said Manfred Quarshie, director of the Intelligent Space Systems Laboratory at All Nations University College in Koforidua.

Six students spent three months preparing the model, outfitting it with sensors, cameras and Global Positioning System technology, Quarshie said.

It was not without its fair share of challenges. The students initially hoped to launch the CanSat with a rocket, but discovered authorities would not give them permission to import one.

“They think you are going to use it as a missile, like a terrorist,” said Benjamin Bonsu, the lab’s 29-year-old project manager.

They eventually settled on lifting the CanSat with a balloon.

As it floated back to the ground, the device recorded temperature and air pressure readings that were read aloud to the cheering crowd of about 100 students and local officials. The descent lasted less than 30 seconds.

A second device failed to deploy, but Donkor, the university president, said that hitch had not detracted from the event.

“The students are quite excited and very happy,” he said. “There is a lot of enthusiasm throughout the country that we are even daring to do something like this.” – Sapa-AP

12 years ago

Nigeria’s love of champagne drives sales

The lyrics to Pop Champagne – one of many Nigerian pop songs to pay homage to the ubiquitous French drink – are self explanatory. “We dey pop champagne, pop pop pop pop, pop champagne!” the song goes, as a nightclub jumps with men holding bottles and women glasses full of bubbly.

But Nigerians’ love of champagne is fast becoming fact as well as legend – with new figures forecasting that champagne consumption in the west African country will reach 1.1 million litres by 2017, with 2011 consumption at almost eight billion naira (£31m).

The figures, from research company Euromonitor, found that Nigeria had the fastest growing rate of new champagne consumption in the world, second only to France, and ahead of rapid growth nations Brazil and China, and established markets such as the US and Australia.

“Champagne has its own demographic on the higher end of things – it’s not even about the middle class, it’s about the elite,” said Spiros Malandrakis, a senior analyst at Euromonitor.

“People may find it surprising that Nigeria came second in the rankings, but it has an extremely extravagant elite, with Nollywood and the oil industry.”

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

Nigerians’ love of big spending has attracted growing attention in recent months. Last year figures revealed that Nigerian tourists in the UK are the fourth biggest foreign spenders, ringing up an average £500 in each shop where they make purchases – four times what the average UK shopper spends.

“At all the celebrity parties in Lagos, they always have champagne. And it has to be the finest – Cristal, Dom Pérignon or Moet et Chandon rosé – these are the things that are important symbols here,” said Vanessa Walters, the Lagos-based editor of Nigerian women’s magazine Genevieve.

“People say that at every elite event the champagne has to be flowing, and that how much champagne there is is a one-upmanship thing, like showing people that your house is bigger than theirs.”

But not everyone in Nigeria – 63% of whose 160 million population still live on less than $1 a day – is impressed with the extent of Nigerian champagne consumption.

“Nigerians’ unhealthy enthusiasm for anything foreign or imported is a plague that continues to pull the country back into this sort of wasteful expenditure,” said an editorial in Nigerian newspaper the Daily Trust in response to the figures.

“[These figures] reveal the profligacy that is offensive, if not obscene.”

12 years ago

A foodie revolution’s cooking in West Africa

At first glance, Republic, a revolution-themed bar in one of Accra’s busiest nightlife districts, could be any of the Ghanaian capital’s hotspots. Artsy residents, office workers and expats sit on plastic chairs in front of its wooden façade as dusk turns to night, ordering caipirihnas or snacks such as thick-cut chips and bowls of soup.

But look a little closer and all is not as it seems. The caipirihnas are made from akpeteshie – a traditional Ghanaian palm spirit also known fondly as Kill Me Quick, the chips are deep fried cassava, and the soup is called Fire Go Burn You – a particularly spicy incarnation of Ghanaian pepper soup.

Republic has an ethos of using local ingredients, championing traditional Ghanaian brews and ingredients but serving them up with a twist, and its owners say they are part of a foodie revolution beginning in the region, marking a new dawn in attitudes to eating.

“We are trying to create a new atmosphere here, and to rejuvenate our sense of identity,” said Kofi Owusu-Ansah (39) who founded Republic with his brother Raja last year. “If you look at our spirits, you will find not one single import – the base for all our cocktails is local-made sugar cane spirit akpeteshie”.

The “infamous frozen harmartan” served at Republic. (Pic: Republic/Facebook)

“We want to empower local industry and local brands,” Owusu-Ansah added. “It’s kind of a revolution the way I see it. No one in Ghana has ever experimented with these kind of cocktails using our Ghanaian spirits, even though all the ingredients are here. But now people are beginning to turn away from depending on whatever comes from the west, and making our own thing.”

There are no shortage of delicious ingredients to use. With fresh fish from the Atlantic, abundant and varied crops and a long heritage of spicy, well-seasoned food, some believe West African countries such as Ghana have the potential to be destinations for foodies from around the globe. But years of negative publicity and a failure to make local delicacies accessible to the outside world have skewed perceptions of the region.

“Nobody associates Africa as a continent with good food,” said Tuleka Prah, whose Berlin-based project My African Food Map documents food highlights from across the continent.

“People associate Africa first of all as a continent without food. If they do realise there is food there, they never think of it as good food – but as food that doesn’t taste nice, is difficult to make, stands around for hours, and is rudimentary and functional food,” Prah added.

“In Berlin, where I live, for example, there are lots of posters saying ‘Bread for Africa,’ accompanied by a photo of a hungry child and a piece of bread. The idea is that all Africans need is food to fill them up.”

A woman sells food from Ghana at a market in Berlin. (AFP)

Frustration at the way African food has been presented to the outside world has prompted a new debate.

“I’m a foodie and a wine writer, and I wanted to create a space where we can talk about anything and everything to do with African food and wine,” said Bukola Afolayan from the influential Africa Is a Country blog, whose new series Africa is a Kitchen looks at cooking across the continent. “It’s not just about taste and design, but also about chemistry, politics and economics.”

“I’ve noticed a change in attitudes recently. For example the big boys Accra and Lagos have always drunk champagne to show off, not because of an appreciation for it. But now I have noticed wine clubs opening up in Nigeria. And whereas it used to be bad wine that was imported to West Africa, there is more of a discernment now, with better wines from South Africa, Portugal and Spain.”

In western Ghana, upmarket beach resort Lou Moon is set on a tranquil bay sheltered from the rough waves of the Atlantic. But it’s the hotel’s food that is the big draw, with chef Yvonnic Ganlonon, who trained in gastronomic French cooking in Benin, using vegetables grown in the resort’s own garden and fish caught daily by local fishermen to offer exquisite food at London prices.

“I think people who come here appreciate the care and passion we take over our food. I love using the natural ingredients we grow here – cabbage, squash, carrots – everything is from our own garden,” said Ganlonon. “I come from a family of chefs, going back to my grandfather who is a master and teacher. My signature dishes are avocado and salmon velote, squash gratin, and a dessert of mango coulis and chantilly cream.”

But although Ghanaians have been going to places like Republic and Lou Moon in search of good food, diners around the world have been eating West African-inspired dishes without realising it.

“A lot of my inspiration comes from my mum, and the Ghanaian food my mother cooked for us growing up,” said Francis Ageypong, head chef at Christopher’s restaurant in Covent Garden, London. “I like food with flavour and I think that shows in my cooking.”

“I’ve noticed a lot of Africans entering the catering industry now – they are starting to see it as a career, instead of a go-between job, and realising how happy you can make people with really good food.”

How to make kelewele (spicy fried plantain)

Ingredients

4-6 ripe plantains cut into bite-sized cubes

1-2 teaspoons Cayenne pepper

½ teaspoon peeled grated fresh ginger root

1 teaspoon salt

2 tablespoons warm water

Vegetable oil to fry

Chopped peanuts to garnish (optional)

Directions

1 Grind together grated ginger root, pepper, and salt and mix them in the water. Leave to stand for 10 minutes.

2 Place the plantain cubes into a bowl and toss together with the water and spice mixture

3 Heat about 2cm of oil in a deep pan of oil until it is hot

4 Add plantains, ensuring they are not touching or they will stick together – fry in several batches if necessary.

5 Cook until golden brown, turning once, then drain on absorbent paper. Sprinkle with chopped peanuts if desired.

6 Leave to cool for 3 minutes, then serve hot!

Afua Hirsch for the Guardian Africa Network.

12 years ago

African debut novelists to watch out for

We Need New Names by NoViolet Bulawayo and Ghana Must Go by Taiye Selasi are two highly anticipated books by debut novelists. Bulawayo won the 2011 Caine Prize for African Writing for her short story “Hitting Budapest” about a group of children navigating life in a Zimbabwe shanty town. Read it here. She turned it into a full-length novel, which I was fortunate to get an advanced reader copy of. The book is scheduled to be released on May 21.

I first encountered Taiye Selasi on a radio interview. She shared her experience of meeting renowned author Toni Morrison who encouraged her to write after she shared her love for the craft with her. Her first short story “The Sex Lives of African Girls” was published in Granta in 2011 and featured in The Best American Short Stories of 2012. Ghana Must Go has generated a lot of hype in the literary world thanks to rave reviews by Morrison and Salman Rushdie.

A common thread in Bulawayo’s and Selasi’s novels is the issue of home. Where in the world do the characters fit in; where do they call home? Both writers show how immigrants fit in (with mixed results) when they move to America, and how they relate to the folks they left the longer they stay away.

We Need New Names

The story is told from the point of view of 10-year-old protagonist, Darling. We first meet her and her friends Bastard, Chipo, Godknows, Sbho, and Stina as they cross a forbidden road which takes them from their shanty into a nice suburb called Budapest. She describes Budapest as having big houses, with satellite dishes on the roofs, neat gravelled yards, tall fences and huge trees heavy with fruit. And for this group of hungry children, it’s the fruit they’re after – guavas. Though they know not to overindulge due to the resulting constipation, they still do because the guavas are the only way to kill the hunger.

As each day passes every one of them shares their dream of leaving for a better place. Times are tough in Zimbabwe; economic and political instability have rocked the foundation of many people’s lives. Jobs and money are scarce, and those with means (or sheer courage) have fled, often leaving behind the elderly and the very young. Darling’s dream is to go to America, to be with her Aunt Fostalina. Her friends mock her, saying this will never happen but she hangs onto it against all odds. They each hang on to the promise of a better future, elsewhere.

Darling eventually gets her chance to move to America but not before bearing witness to some pretty grim happenings that could have been pulled from the front page of Zimbabwean news dailies. These would otherwise be painful encounters to describe but Darling’s naïveté and innocence take away some of the ugliness.

In the second half of the book, Darling is now in America living with Aunt Fostalina and her family. She bears the bitter cold winters and homesickness with a shocking level of maturity for someone her age. She reasons that she can deal with the snow and the absence of her closest friends because at least she has food, lots of it, and all kinds of it. Here, she doesn’t go hungry.

Though she struggles to make friends due to the typical, idiotic behaviour of school children, who make fun of others for looking and sounding different, she remains focused and adjusts quite admirably to her new life.

As time passes, the more she adjusts to America, the further she drifts from Zimbabwe and the people she left behind. This guilt eats away at her, and she becomes exiled in a sense.

Overall, this is an enjoyable book. Bulawayo does a good job of illustrating the effects of poverty on a nation’s psyche, the alienation felt by those who make the difficult decision to leave home, and their longing for home.

I had some minor quibbles. There are some areas of the book, particularly in the second half, that I felt could’ve been touched on better and perhaps even tied up a little neater for better flow. It felt a little disconnected at times and took away some of my enjoyment.

However, if this book and its writer has been on your radar, definitely give it a try.

Ghana Must Go

“Kweku dies barefoot on a Sunday before sunrise, his slippers by the doorway to the bedroom like dogs. At the moment he is on the threshold between the sunroom and garden and considering whether to go back to get them. He won’t.”

These are the opening lines that introduce us to Kweku Sai, “a renowned surgeon and failed husband”. It is through his dying that we learn about him and the family he leaves behind. In this three-part story, Selasi goes back and forth in time unravelling the tale of the Sai family.

As a young man, Kweku leaves Ghana on a scholarship to attend medical school in the US. In New England, he meets and marries Folasadé (Fola), a young Nigerian émigré. Fola abandons her dream of attending law school with the understanding that supporting Kweku’s dream is enough. Together they have four children – Olu, Taiwo, Kehinde and Sadé (Sadie).

Their story is typical of most immigrant families in the country: both parents working extremely hard to make ends meet while demanding academic excellence from their children so as to escape the traps of poverty with which they are all too familiar. Kweku loves his children but he struggles to understand and relate to them. His duty is that of a provider, not a friend or confidant. When the eldest three children are in their teens, an unfortunate situation spirals out of control and Kweku leaves. Fola must regroup, pick up the fragments and forge ahead.

The second part of the novel focuses on how Fola and her children, now adults, react to Kweku’s death. Each of them carries painful personal secrets. These secrets, like boils, are painful and need to be lanced and drained before healing can begin.

In the third part of the book they all agree to travel to Ghana (where Fola is now living) for Kweku’s funeral. Though not easy, their time there allows them to finally deal with the emotional fallout of events that have held them back for so long. This time is fraught with incredible pain, confusion and mistrust but ultimately they emerge better from it. Kweku’s second and final departure brings his family together again in every sense, in contrast to his earlier exit which fractured familial bonds and sent them all reeling.

Selasi’s writing is enjoyable, poetic and quite dense, but at times the writing gets in the way of telling the story. Since the story unfolds through flashbacks, it’s often hard to follow who the speakers are and what exactly is happening. This is true especially for the first part of the book, which I found to be slower and difficult to read due to the amount of detail the reader has to wade through.

With the added psychological dimensions given to each character, it’s hard not to be affected by their pain and anger. My heart grieved for this family.

Ghana Must Go is definitely worth the read. I look forward to seeing how Selasi’s writing evolves during her career. There is strength in it that begs for more stories.

Bwalya Chileya was born in the early 80s and raised in Malawi and Zambia. She holds a masters in business administration and works as a project manager. She reads and writes stories in her free time. Connect with her on Twitter.