Tag: West Africa

Oya: Rise of the Orisha

An upcoming action-packed feature film takes a pantheon of ancient West African deities known as Orishas and resurrects them as modern-day superheroes. The lead character in Oya: Rise of the Orisha is a young woman named Adesuwa who has the unique ability to transform into the fearsome warrior goddess, Oya, the Orisha of change. When she does, she gains amazing powers.

The film will be presented in a visually unique style, drawing inspiration from related genres including sci-fi, action and martial arts, and aims to be a truly phenomenal spectacle in the art of film. London-based writer and director Nosa Igbinedion hopes it will do for African folklore and oral tradition what 300 and Thor did: they took Greek and Norse mythology and made it fresh and exciting.

This is a synopsis:

For centuries the doorway between the world of the Orishas and our world has remained closed, until now. Our hero, Ade, is one of the few people with a connection to one of the gods, Oya. She has been tasked with the job of protecting the innocent and that means keeping the door to the gods shut. If the doorway to the gods is opened, they will wreak chaos upon us as retribution for our abandonment of them.

To keep the door shut, she must find ‘the key’, a young girl with the potential to open the doorway, and keep her safe. The adventure unfolds with a host of memorable characters and a string of unexpected twists, Ade, goes in search of the key, battling against those who wish to open portal and unleashing a horde of forgotten gods and goddesses into the world, with powers and skills beyond our comprehensive and supernatural gifts which will change the course of history for mankind, forever.

According to the Yoruba religion, which developed in Nigeria and Benin, Orishas are a collective of charismatic deities with specialised supernatural gifts, powers and responsibilities. They are comparable to the gods of the ancient Egyptians and Greeks, and Roman civilisation. Tradition has it that these supernatural beings once walked the earth with humanity. The reverence and worship that was shown to them by the ordinary Yoruba people elevated their status and increased their power.

Orishas are followed in various religions by an estimated 100-million people worldwide (5-million in the US). The fact that they have been left out of popular media is a travesty. Igbinedion’s film is a retelling of black cultural experience that has not been attempted on this scale before, and it’s being done independently.

He and his team plan to shoot a short taster film this April, using money raised through crowd funding. The short film will serve as a visual appetiser to attract more traditional film investors for the feature film. Follow their progress on Twitter and help support this incredible project.

Other African folklore projects include Akosua Adoma Owusu’s short film Kwaku Ananse and Central City Tower’s Spider Stories. These are influenced by the West African fable of Anansi, a trickster who appears as both spider and man.

12 years ago

Guinea-Bissau’s songbird

Renowned Guinea-Bissauan singer Eneida Marta speaks and sings spectacularly in nine native languages – Fula, Biafada, Bijago, Mandjak, Mankanya, Futa Fula, Balanta, Papel and Mandinga. She is well known for infusing her roots into each song, from the lyrics to the language to the instruments. Marta uses traditional instruments like the tchifre cow horn, the onomatopoeic bumbulum tree trunk drum and the tina (made from a wine barrel cut in two, immersed in water and played only by women). She has released three albums to date.

12 years ago

Fashion to dye for

Christie Brown is a Ghanaian-based luxury women’s fashion label aimed at the contemporary African woman. It was founded in March 2008 by creative director Aisha Obuobi and named after her grandmother Christie Brown, a talented seamstress.

Obuobi’s creations extend from bespoke gowns to statement pieces to accessories, all inspired by African culture and art.

They’ve featured on the runways of Africa Fashion Week and Paris Fashion Week, and in the pages of Vogue Italia, Harper’s Bazaar, Black Hair and Glamour.

Obuobi worked with tie-dye and batik for her latest collection, Resort 2013. It’s flirtatious, whimsical and part of a collaboration with Grace of Grazia Fabrics, who has built a 20-year-old batik/tie-dye business.

Click on an image below to view the collection.

[nggallery id=resort-2013]

12 years ago

The stink of Lavender Hill

Sought-after residential neighbourhoods have developed in Accra in the last ten years, some with sophisticated names like Manet Cottage, Manet Ville, Trasacco Valley, Taysec Gardens and Ballon Court. They offer the ultimate suburban lifestyle: beautiful homes, pools, security guards and location. Trasacco Valley, for example, looks like a neighbourhood the desperate housewives of Wisteria Lane could live in.

A street in Trasacco Valley. (Flickr/Talata M)

One of the houses in Trasacco Valley. (Flickr/Talata M)

Lavender Hill sounds like one of these posh gated communities, but it’s not. Despite its pretty name, it stinks. This site is where liquid waste from the city is dumped into the sea daily, and residents and road users have been complaining of the stench and health hazards for years. The Accra Metropolitan Assembly (AMA) has been promising to shut down Lavender Hill since 2010, but the dumping continues daily.

See pictures of the waste disposal here.

I recently took a taxi from the CBD in Accra to Lavender Hill, a mere ten-minute drive. The taxi driver offered some advice on the way there: “My brother, you might throw up by the time we reach the end of [Accra Beach Road]. Even with the windows closed, you’ll still get the stench.”

We passed some houses when we reached Lavender Hill, and I stopped to chat to some of the residents.

Unlike me, Nancy Awuah wasn’t showing any discomfort with the foul smell in the air, and I did not want to show any disrespect by covering my nose. She and her husband moved to the neighbourhood from Maprobi since it was closer to where he works. “The smell was tough in the beginning but we have gotten used to it … other people live with other smells around them. In some parts of the country that l have lived in, the people have to smell cocoa waste all their lives and so [this] is the same,” Nancy told me.

I asked her about the health hazards of living near a highly polluted site. “We only smell the stench, what about those of you who eat the fish that feed on the human waste?” She had a point – most of the fish sold in the markets around Accra are sourced from the James Town fishing community.

James Mensah, who has lived here for ten years, gave me a short history of Lavender Hill. “At first it didn’t have a name because it was not part of any of the city’s suburbs and no one wanted to live here because it was a waste dumping site. But by the middle of the 90s, with the high demand for accommodation in the city, some smart people thought of making money by encroaching on the land around the place and built houses for rent. Desperate people who could not afford the high rent in the city moved in gradually and before we all knew what was happening, it had become a township and given an exotic name.”

City officials agree Lavender Hill is not fit for human habitation because of the environmental pollution that is caused by the dumping of human waste. “Once in a while, we hear that the city engineers department wants to build a modern waste facility here but it has taken years for the project to happen. We have come to see these city officials as people who only talk and do nothing,” James said.

The most recent promise came three weeks ago when the mayor of Accra, Alfred Nii Okoe Vanderpuije, gave citizens the assurance that Lavender Hill will be eliminated by June 2013. In its place, the AMA is building a scientific liquid waste plant that will recycle waste into organic material and biofuels for further use.

James and Nancy are sceptical about whether government will fulfill its promise this time. Until it does, Lavender Hill remains a blot on the nation’s pride. For the residents who live here, life is anything but sweet-smelling.

Francis Kokutse is a freelance journalist based in Accra. He writes for the Associated Press, Nation Media Group of Kenya and the Indo Asian News Service.

12 years ago

Jollof rice, egusi soup, suya: How to cook Nigerian-style

Like any other nation, Nigerians differ on politics, sport and taste in music but when it comes to food, there’s a consensus: no one makes a better jollof than we do. I can’t pinpoint the exact age I learned to cook but what really peaked my interest was the amount of time my mother spent in the kitchen. She could go from making breakfast to cooking supper without doing much of anything else. I knew there had to be more efficient ways. My mother’s habit got me interested in prepping, and I later fell in love with agriculture and eventually all things Nigerian food.

Simply put, Nigerian food is flavourful and spicy. The typical Nigerian dish has a flavour profile containing salt, chili pepper, bouillon cubes (Maggi and Knorr stock cubes) and other herbs and spices. Due to international influences on Nigerian food culture, we use both local and foreign spices. Some common herbs and spices include thyme, curry powder, grains of paradise, ginger, allspice, African blue basil, nutmeg and cloves.

Typical Nigerian dishes take a while to cook. The average cooking time ranges from one hour to five, depending on the meal and ingredients. As with all dishes, there are a few tricks to save time – the most beneficial being prepping. Prepping and freezing commonly used items like meat, pureed pepper and beans will cut cooking time in half. Tasks like peeling beans for local favourites like moi-moi (steamed beans pudding) and akara (bean cake) take an average of four hours.

Typical cooking ingredients include Maggi/Knorr stock cubes, chili peppers, crayfish and palm oil. For those who live outside Nigeria, sourcing ingredients can be a challenge when it comes to preparing authentic Nigerian food. Most ingredients can be found in local African grocery stores, and close substitutes are usually available in other ethnic grocery stores.

Jollof rice

According to most Nigerians, jollof originated from Nigeria but this has been a topic of many debates. Different countries in Africa have different versions of jollof rice. The Nigerian jollof is made from a combination of pureed red bell pepper and tomatoes, curry powder, thyme leave, bouillon cubes, oil, salt and bay leaves. Jollof is consumed all over the country and is served at most celebratory occasions. Below is my easy, budget-friendly recipe. Follow these step-by-step instructions to get it right.

Ingredients:

1/3 cup pure groundnut oil (a substitute for vegetable oil)
1/4 of a large onion (sliced)
1 small can tomato paste
2 Maggi stock cubes
1/2 teaspoon each of thyme, curry powder, chili powder
1 teaspoon salt
4 bay leaves
2.5 cups basmati rice
Sheet of foil

Directions:

1) Place a pot with a tight-fitting lead on medium heat and heat up the oil in it. Add the chopped onions and fry until they’ve browned.

2) Then add in the tomato paste; fry the onions and paste for 3 minutes. Then add in the Maggi cubes, thyme, curry, chilli powder and salt, and combine.

3) Add 2.5 cups of water and the bay leaves to the pot. Cover and bring to a boil.

4) Reduce the heat to minimum. Add in the rice. Cover the pot with the foil and then the lid. (It’s extremely important that the pot is well covered as we are trying to infuse each grain of rice.)

5) Leave to cook on minimum heat for 35 minutes.

6) Remove the pot from heat and stir the contents. If the texture of the rice isn’t to your liking at this point, simply cover the pot tightly for another 6 minutes. (There is no need to return the pot back to the heat, the retained heat is enough to continue to cook the rice). Otherwise the rice is ready to serve.

7) Remove the bay leafs and serve the jollof rice with your choice of protein. I recently fell in love with jollof rice and poached eggs, it is the best combination.

Egusi soup

Made from a combination of shelled and blended melon seed, palm oil and vegetable leaves, egusi is easily the most popular soup in Nigeria. It is served as an accompaniment to fufu-like starches and it’s often eaten as lunch. The soup is prepared with a range of meat and fish; the popular belief is that the more variety of meat present in the soup, the better it tastes. Follow this recipe to make your own.

Suya

This is a special spice mix of chili powder and de-oiled peanut blend that originated from northern Nigeria. The spice mix is used as a rub on proteins like beef, lamb, chicken and fish. Suya meat, as the end product is called, is cooked over an open barbeque pit. These barbeques only happen at night and the meat from street vendors is usually better than that from specialised upscale restaurants. To make your own, this is all you need to do.

Ronke S. Adeyemi is the creative administrator of 9jafoodie.com, a popular Nigerian food blog.