Badagry Slave Routes

One of the plenary sessions of the just concluded International Colloquium on Slavery, Slave Trade and their Consequences was 'Slave Markets, Routes, Monuments, Relics and Tourism'. It emerged that little is known among the general Nigerian public about Nigeria's slave relics, especially places like Badagry, and not enough people visit these places. It was a bit unfortunate when Dr Yusuf Abdallah Usman, delivering his paper, talked about plans for better preservation and presentation of places like Badagry, so that people could go there for, amongst other worthy things, "entertainment". Delegates promptly advised him to remove such a word from his vocabulary as far as the Transtlantic slave trade is concerned. No one goes to Auschwitz for entertainment.

But the message came out very clearly: we should see Badagry and other places to help us come to terms, if such were possible, with what happened to millions of enslaved Africans shipped across the Atlantic for several hundred years.

Which is why I'm posting this flyer for a tour of Badagry slave routes, setting off from Lagos tomorrow.

International Colloquium on Slavery, Slave Trade and Their Consequences

I'm blogging from the International Colloquium on Slavery, Slave Trade and Their Consequences, which opened at the Royal Park Hotel, Iloko-Ijesa, Osun State, on Monday 23 August.

The Colloquium is organised by the UNESCO Category II Centre of Black Culture and International Understanding, based in Osogbo, headed by Professor Wole Ogundele. Heading the organising committee of the colloquium is Professor Abi Derefaka.

Major scholars, writers and thinkers as well as performers are here: Toyin Falola, Bolanle Awe, Runoko Rashidi, Chinweizu, Edmund Moukala, Paul Lovejoy, Ivor Miller (who's doing major research into Calabar Efik culture in the Diaspora as a result of the Slave Trade), Doudou Diene (UN Special Rapporteur on these matters, who delivered a beautiful Keynote Address on opening day 23 August, in a speech that seemed to come straight from his soul), Ali Moussa-Iye (of the UNESCO Slave Routes Project), Sheila Walker (who's made a major film on the Slave Trade in conjunction with UNESCO), historian E.J Alagoa... The list is endless.

Osun Governor Olagunsoye Oyinlola attended a session this morning, on 'Slave Market, Routes, Monuments, Relics and Tourism'. Other plenary sessions have included: 'Reconciliation, Reparation and Rehabilitation', Globalisation and New Forms of Enslavement', 'Women, Slavery and the Slave Trade' (see my report from one session), 'Regional Pespectives on Slavery and the Slave Trade' and 'Historiography of the Slavery and the Slave Trade'.

Last night Tiki Mercury-Clarke gave a performance on the role on Negro Spirituals during slavery and the roots of Gospel Music (I now have her CD 'Life Every Voice and Sing!). The foregoing URL shows Mercury-Clarke with a bald head, but here in Iloko-Ijesa she's got a locked hair flowing past her shoulders. There's a Gala Night tonight, with a performance by Orlando Julius, the great Highlife musician whose wife is African American.

The Colloquium is accompanied by an exhibition curated by the UNESCO Slave Routes Project (see photo above).

The colloquium had a joint opening ceremony with the Global Conference of Black Nationalities, holding right now in Osogbo. Both come to a close tomorrow.

Osun home of culture? This week it is

It's difficult to crop Ogun State governor Gbenga Daniel out of this picture, so he stays - but the people I'm particularly concerned with, are the men on either side of him. Reason is that these 2 signify for me the bridging of whatever gulf there might be between Africa and her Diaspora. Left is US Academic Runoko Rashidi who has undergone a life's journey to his African roots, and next to him is the king of 'The Source' which African Diasporans often come seeking, the Ooni of Ife, Oba Okunade Sijuwade. Both graced the opening ceremony of the Global Conference of Black Nationalities in Osogbo on Monday 23 August and spoke. When King Sunny Ade started to chant the oriki (lineage praise) of the 81-year-old 'Oonirisa' as the ceremony drew to a close, the Ooni, clearly moved, rose from his seat on the high table and raised a fist in salute, holding the pose for nearly 5 minutes. It was quite something, and the gesture reminded me of the Black Panther salute of yore. As for Runoko Rashidi, I heard him say from the distant stage: "You're not African because you're born in Africa, you're African because Afrise is born in you" - and I thought, Wow! I was to meet the man responsible for that sentiment later in Iloko-Ijesa, Osun State, where we've been since Monday at another major conference, the International Colloquium on Slavery, Slave Trade and Their Consequences' (see Pelu Awofeso's photo of me with Rashidi, below; yes the CNN award winning travel writer Pelu Awofeso is also here, as are academics from all over the world). Rashidi, an electrifying speaker and persona, delivered his paper yesterday but I'm sad to say I missed it, having gone on another culture jaunt to Iragbiji, about which, more anon. Rashidi & Ooni's photo is by Tommy Adegbite, courtesy Osun State Government.

Osun State is the place to be this week. Three major international events are ongoing this week.

The week-long Global Conference of Black Nationalities opened in Osogbo on Monday August 23, with over 2,000 people (my estimate) in attendance. Name them, they were there - major Nigerian and Yoruba and international cultural and political figures. The crowd outside the WOCDIF Centre venue was nearly as large.

The International Colloquium on Slavery, Slave Trade and Their Consequences also kicked off same day at Iloko-Ijesa, Osun State and it's ongoing till tomorrow 27 August.

Tomorrow of course is the Osun Osogbo Festival.

These 3 major events also have smaller breakout programmes associated with them, some holding till Saturday 28th. So, if you're in Nigeria and haven't found your way here yet, it's not too late.

To Labadi

My short-short story, A Gong to the Past (left), published in the new ('Freedom') issue of Calabash Magazine.

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A Gong to the Past is based on a little gem of a historical snippet I heard last year about a place in Ghana called Labadi. Apparently Labadi was so named because the locals' sabotaged plans to build a slave fort on their land during the Triangular Trade.

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However, whilst the bit about the slave fort is based on fact, everything else weaved around it in the story is completely made up.

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I do remain fascinated by the history of Labadi, and will continue to dig. I have not read any reference to the slave fort sabotage anywhere. If any readers know more, do please share.

Juffure

The mirth of June pilgrims
gladdens your century of sorrow
your old heart cloys
your household gods stir
to bless Kunta's ghost
the pains of your
bruised birth
vigorous to scoop away
the silt of your river
the rites of your disintegrated womb
once more observed.

© Mariama Khan

• Juffure is taken from Mariama Khan's poetry collection, Futa Toro; used with permission.


• About Juffureh


• Mariama Khan photographed by MW in Bakau, The Gambia, 15 July 2007.

Simi Bedford Reads for Black History Month

Simi Bedford, author of Yoruba Girl Dancing, reads from her new novel, Not With Silver as part of Black History Month.

An Evening with Simi Bedford is at the Kilburn Library, 42 Salibury Road, London NW6 6NN

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Date - Thursday 11 October

Time - 7pm to 8.30pm

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Event is free

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Read a review of Not With Silver, and interviews with the author on the BBC - News website & Africa Beyond.

Sorry is the hardest word

You always kind of knew that if a major public figure in Britain would do it, it might be someone like Ken Livingstone. "It was the racial murder of not just those who were transported but generations of enslaved African men, women and children. To justify this murder and torture black people had to be declared not human. We live with the consequences today." And Ken wept.
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If you read certain major newspapers the next day you'd have never known it happened, because they completely ignored it. But no matter. Reassuring, to know that man can think upon slavery and weep, regardless of race, creed or colour.

• Website of the International Slavery Museum in Liverpool.

In the Review

Miles Davis famously baffled adoring European audiences time and again by turning his back on them as he played. Turned out the mean, moody persona he cultivated was deliberate, at least some of the time. "Whites love it all too much when we blacks monkey around," he believed, so the turned back was a kind of racial protest; and a refusal to 'monkey around'. No need to wonder about the protest in Strange Fruit, the heart wrenching anti-lynching song immortalised by Billie Holiday. In Review of 18th August, writer Caryl Phillips took another look at 'the greatest song of the 20th Century'.

My love affair with 'the book' - Derek Walcott's first book of poetry that is. VS Naipaul first heard of it as a school pupil in 1949, laid eyes on it in 1955 and met its author in 1960. Walcott at 18 was already a legend of the islands. In a rhapsodic 2-page spread (and an extract from his forthcoming book, 'A Writer's People - Ways of Looking and Feeling'), Naipaul writes about his fellow islander, Walcott.

Excerpt - "The competing empires of Europe had beaten fiercely on these islands, repeopled after the aborigines had gone, turned into sugar islands, places of the lash, where fortunes could be made, sugar the new gold. And at the end, after slavery and sugar, Europe had left behind nothing that could be called a civilisation, no great architecture, no idea of local beauty, no memory of style and splendour (the splendour created by the sugar wealth would have occurred elsewhere, in Europe), only the smallest small change of civility. Everything that remained was touched with the pain of slavery: the brutalities of the popular language, and the prejudices of race: nothing a man would wish to call his own. And when, in the 1940s, middle-class people with no home but the islands began to understand the emptiness they were inheriting (before black people claimed it all) they longed for a local culture, something of their very own, to give them a place in the world.

Walcott in 1949 more than met their need. He sang the praises of the emptiness; he gave it a kind of intellectual substance. He gave their unhappiness a racial twist that made it more manageable."

And let's not forget this profile of the Booker winning author of The Famished Road, Ben Okri, whose new novel, Starbook will (as is the wonderful fad these days) be published in Nigeria almost the same time as the UK.

About the new book - This book, he says, was "the fruit of a personal transformation through fire and suffering, and eventually through humility". He admits a link to a period of bereavement, when his mother, Grace, died in 1996 (an "appalling, emptying experience") and his father, Silver, in 1998. "It's Mum, it's Dad - it's Africa," he says. "Africa's pain, invisibility, misconception. One's living it all the time. Not just the media perception of it, but in terms of individual lives - the stuff you see in people's eyes. How Africa's perceived; how we perceive, and fail to perceive, one another."

Gorée

"We don't call Gorée an island," the unofficial tour guide said many times. "We call Gorée a continent - because people from all over West Africa passed through here, into slavery."

• Images of Gorée Island, Senegal, taken on 12 July 2007 - ©M.Wood
• Virtual tour of Gorée

Gorée Island

• Images taken on Goree Island, Senegal - 12 July 2007 ©M.Wood.

Voyages...

Artistic Director of the October Gallery, Elisabeth Lalouschek, stands on a chair to give some appreciative words about the 2 African artists exhibiting in the now concluded exhibition (just like Wordsbody to post after the event!) - Voyages, Crossing the Lake of Fire - 16 May. The exhibition, which displayed until 16 June, featured artists exploring the theme of 'Voyages' in commemoration of the bicentennary of the Slave Trade abolition.

In the blue agbada is Beninoise artist Julien Sinzogan whose 'Egungun' (masquerade) piece was the signature work of the exhibition. Here it is on the wall as Lalouschek speaks. She had visited Sinzogan in Benin to see an egungun for herself.

Next to Sinzogan is Zimbabwean sculptor Tapfuma Gutsa who is now based in Austria and, his usual materials (stones, calabashes...) being in short supply in his new abode, has begun to work with clay. Some of his clay pieces were on show in the exhibition. Gutsa is now a regular exhibitor at the October Gallery, which has a major interest in showing works by African artists. "In 1979 in Harare, I triggered an epidemic of sculpture," Gutsa declared during Africa 05 - and I recorded it in my article on him, published in the Lagos Guardian on 20 March 2005. Gutsa was dismayed by some of the words attributed to him in the piece (public utterances, mind you), but respected my right to report the truth as I saw/heard it. We remain friends. His piece, "The Miracle of Moses" & another stone work, inspired a poem of mine. Like a sculpture, the poem is taking a long time, and remains unfinished even after a year... Gutsa, a true artist.

• Voyages was @ the October Gallery from 17 May to 16 June. Images by MW.

African Voices

African Voices in Bristol... ongoing till Friday 6th July.

Abolition 200

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Free Event

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Bristol, the West & the World

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@ The New Room, John Wesley's Chapel, Broadmead, Bristol

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Sunday 1 July

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@ 3pm

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Programme

• Abolitionism & African Revolt in the Translatlantic Slave Trade - Dr Edson Burton
• Sincerity & Abolitionism in Hannah More & John Newton - Dr Kerry Sinanan
• Bristol & the Slave Trade: An Overview - Madge Dresser
• Kobina Sekyi and Kofi Annan: National & Internationalists - Dr James Gibbs
• Abolishing Contemporary Forms of Slavery - Dr Christien van den Anker
• Roundtable: Local Action/Wider Concern - Oxfam, African Initiatives et al

According to organiser James Gibbs, "Literary elements will include reference to the work of Kobina Sekyi, whose Blinkards was given a rehearsed reading at the Drill Hall and was scheduled for performance as part of the Ghana@50 drama programme in Accra."

• With thanks to JG for the info

October Gallery

Here's artist Owusu-Ankomah, photographed by me at the opening of the From Courage to Freedom exhibition. The exhibition is extended till the 12th of May @ The October Gallery, London.

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The October Gallery hosts Imprint on Lagos - a Bukka Event - on 19th May. An illustrated talk on the effects of the abolition of slavery a modern African metropolis, speakers include Kaye Whiteman (editor of the defunct West Africa Magazine; he is writing a book on Lagos), Giles Omezi & Sola Ogunbanjo, Director, Bukka Research.

• Time of the Bukka Talk is 3 - 6pm on Saturday 19 May 2007.
• Artist Siobhan Lennon (top right) beside an El Anatsui bottletop cloth.
• I thought Dominique Eyoun (a Paris-based Cameroonian) - on the right - was a moving piece of art in herself. She happily posed for my camera.
• Pics taken at the October Gallery, 21 February 2007 - by MW.

Slavery - Alternative Voices 3

Uncomfortable Truths, Hidden Histories, Unheard Voices

You will by now have heard or read something about Uncomfortable Truths, you might even have seen the exhibition for yourself. I haven't been there, but I know a man who has. Poet Odia Ofeimun was at the V&A Museum yesterday and in a telephone conversation, expressed serious misgivings about the much talked about exhibition on Slavery. And from what he has to say, it seems clear that the subject of Slavery remains an 'Uncomfortable Truth' indeed - especially here in the heart of the British Empire.

Ofeimun observed that Britain has more resources than many African countries to mount a large scale exhibition on Slavery, but the V&A effort seems to him a wasted effort, and deliberately so. "It's as if the attempt is to make it impossible to really know the story of the Slave Trade."

Uncomfortable Truths, the poet reported, is scattered all over the museum amongst other unrelated exhibits, so that the viewer is made to go round searching - and sometimes failing - to find it. "It is expressed in terms of a conversation with the pre-existing artworks in the museum, so that the story of Slavery is actually hidden in the place. Hidden in other stories."

The installation that comes the closest to telling the story is an Audio-Visual which, crucially, is unaccompanied by any visuals. The very powerful, painful and at times beautiful images of Slavery - are left out. As for what the audio-visual says, it went something like (and the blogger paraphrases): I was once a king but now I make rings. I have rings. Or something to that effect.

Images - or the lack of them - led Ofeimun to share his impressions of Goree Island in Senegal, where millions of African were shipped off into bondage. "I went to Goree. I was angry." In Goree, the images that tell the story of the enormity of Slavery survive, but they are being eroded due to ineptitude and carelessness on the part of those responsible for the UNESCO World Heritage Site. "It is painful," Ofeimun said. "Our leaders are in a mess, sucking up to the West so much that they don't want to offend. It's as if, 'don't tell them too much' so they won't be angry."

Still, in Goree, you see the images and that counts for a lot. "What I saw in Britain (and the V&A) is that the story of Slavery is being destroyed. It is not ineptitude or anything like that, but a deliberate watering down." Ofeimun added that what passes for images in Uncomfortable Truths are often quite bland. He described a sculpture of a headless hunter in adire (tie & dye) fabric (presumably by Yinka Shonibare) which, if you saw it outside of the context of this exhibition, would tell you nothing. Many viewers brought children to see the exhibition and Ofeimun regretted the fact that the children would actually learn nothing about the brutality of Slavery from Uncomfortable Truths.

The poet touched on Charles Dickens' Great Expectations which "told the story of gentlemen being made in Britain by the money from the Slave Trade," with only the merest nod of acknowledgement to Slavery itself - and Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice which simply washes over the whole subject of Slavery. That white-washing, talking-over, call it what you like "is still being done," according to Ofeimun.

"It's a travesty," he declared.

• Uncomfortable Truths is at the V&A until 17 June.