While Wordsbody was sleeping

It's getting very difficult to update this blog at present. My monthly internet supply via USB booster is paid up, yet connectivity is often poor or non existent. Many times in the last week or two I've tried to post about forthcoming and ongoing art events, but had to give up after wasting lots of precious time, and with a mounting sense of frustration.

Thus, I wasn't able to blog about the Stakeholders Forum on Taxation and the Arts convened by the Ministry of Tourism, Culture and National Orientation in Abuja last week, in which I was a participant. Nor was I able to blog about the very important 'African Women in Film Forum', the first ever, held in Lagos on June 16 & 17. the screening in Abuja last Tuesday of the Stepping Stones film The Fake Prophet, a screening I attended and still hope to blog about my observations.

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Due to the same connectivity issues, I could not inform about many literary readings which have now passed, like Adaobi Tricia Nwaubani's reading for Infusion in Abuja last Thursday, or her Abuja Writers Forum event, held yesterday. Or the various other readings in Abuja (the literati there like to think Abuja's where it's at now, but the jury's still out on that one...). Or the readings in Lagos yesterday: the ever popular BookJam (the 5th edition featuring Kunle Ajibade, Toni Kan and Abraham Oshoko); and the Farafina Book Review event held at Terra Kulture, oddly timed to clash directly with the more established BookJam. To name but a few.

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Things being the way they are, I'm introducing a 'While Wordsbody was sleeping' series of blog posts, to capture events missed for one reason or another. There's a whole load of these of course, given that Wordsbody was completely inactive during 2009 (relocation blues, rupture caused by finding one's level, having just moved from the UK to good old Naija).

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So, here's the first of such posts, and the images here were taken by me at the 2nd African Regional Summit and Exhibition on Visual Arts, ARESUVA for short, which opened on 19 November 2009. The picture below of the main lobby of Abuja's International Conference Centre, you get a glimpse of the main exhibition. A prominent painting to the left of the hall is of the late President Umaru Yar'Adua and his Turai. Yar'Adua was still very much alive then, but only just. In a matter of days, November 23, he left Nigeria for Saudi Arabia for medical reasons, never to be seen alive again. During my two days in Abuja, I visited the Federal Capital Territory's Millennium Park (there was nothing there...) and saw a big political banner announcing Yar'Adua as 'The Man for 2011' - next year being election year - and I remember wondering if the so-called 'Baba Go-Slow' was even the man for 2009, not to talk of 2011. Oh well, Yar'Adua is dead and gone to his grave now...

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The other pictures here I took of the fascinating Tanzanian sculptor Mwandale Mwanyekwa, who memorably exhibited at ARESUVA. She's tiny in size but large in vision and passion, probably why she's known as Big Mama.

• Images by MW