Bravearts Africa - AVANT-GARDE

sPECIAL iSSUE iSSUE 5

□

jUNE 2016

\

aVANT-GARDE bRAVEARTS aFRICA ▫ aVANT-GARDE (sPECIAL iSSUE)

▫1

Bravearts Africa is a pan-African magazine of the arts.

This PDF Edition, published quarterly as free downloadable digital magazine, is a lifestyle, literary and art accompaniment of the online magazine BraveartsAfrica.com. Bravearts Africa Magazine in PDF is published by Bravearts Africa Initiative and as themePublished by: focused, genre-focused, or general-scope issues. It is released every March, June, September and December exclusively on www.BraveartsAfrica.com and www.issuu.com/BraveartsAfrica.

We celebrate through the PDF Magazine, literary writings and visual art from the new and emergent voices of creative writers and artists from Africa and its Diaspora. So then, Bravearts Africa accepts submissions for the magazine in poetry, short fiction, flash fiction and creative nonfiction/essays genres and subgenres of literature. At the same time, we accept submissions in painting, drawing, graphic art, mixed media, and photography. Call for submissions for a next issue are announced upfront at the end pages of each magazine issue. Also visit our website Activity Updates and Announcements page regularly for more news and information.

iSSUE 5

jUNE 2016

Bravearts Africa Initiative, NIGERIA Web:www.BraveartsAfrica.com Facebook:www.facebook.com/BraveartsAfrica SoundCloud: www.soundcloud.com/BraveartsAfrica Twitter: @BraveartsAfrica │Instagram: @braveartsafrica Email: bravearts.africa@gmail.com in partnership with

All literary and art entries must be previously unpublished whether in print or in electronic literary or art magazines, journals, anthologies or blogs (with only the exception of personal blogs).

Kindly send work(s), alongside a brief profile of about 60 words or less (written in the third person), to bravearts.africa@gmail.com. Please send as email attachment in Word Document (for literary submissions and/or the profile) and JPEG/JPG (for art) formats.

Include a title and an artist‘s statement for artworks submitted.

▫

Story Zetu KENYA www.storyzetu.com ▫ Twitter: @storyzetu ▫ Facebook: Storyzetu

Copyright is owned by individual contributors of works.

Reproduction of any of the works in whole or in part without the written permission of the copyright owner is strictly prohibited.

Collection Copyright © June 2016

Bravearts Africa Magazine is designed with multiple layouts on A4 paper size and is best viewed using Adobe PDF Reader and on a high screen resolution smart phone or pad/tablet, or else on a PC screen.

Cover photography arts severally by Kimani Wandaka, Bryan Jaybee, Esther Mbabazi & Hellen Masido Book Layout & Design: Tae Kae ▫ Font: AvantGarde Md BT & AvantGarde Bk BT bRAVEARTS aFRICA ▫ aVANT-GARDE (sPECIAL iSSUE)

▫2

C R E W

Admin

Advisory Board

Editorial Team

FOUNDERS

Kunle Adewale

EDITORS-IN-CHIEF

Kayode Taiwo Olla Tola Adegbite Kayode-Olla DIRECTOR Kayode Taiwo Olla

Olusola Adeaga Ifeoluwapo Adeniyi Darasimi Adeleke-Olayinka Dami Ajayi

Kayode Taiwo Olla Tola Adegbite Kayode-Olla MANAGING EDITOR (ONLINE MAG) Kayode Taiwo Olla MANAGING EDITOR (PDF PUBLICATIONS) John Odeyemi SEGMENT EDITORS —Literature

John Odeyemi Michael Babajide —Art

Tola Adegbite Kayode-Olla Kayode Taiwo Olla —The Humanities

Adeolu Blessing GUEST EDITORSHIP Njagi M‘Mwenda (of Story Zetu KENYA)

GRAPHIC DESIGN

Tae Kae a bRAVEARTS aFRICA ▫ aVANT-GARDE (sPECIAL iSSUE)

▫3

Two souls bottled in by love, passion and romance, and now finally popped open, fuming with the vapors of boundless love, serenading a new chapter of love and life…

Kayode Taiwo Olla & Tola Adegbite are no more two lone souls in the journey of life: they are now ONE body and ONE soul and ONE throbbing heart, from June 4, 2016 and for a lifetime!

We Team Bravearts Africa wish Mr. & Mrs. Kayode Olla a smooth and beautiful odyssey onwards.

Happy Married Life!

Odeyemi John (PDF Publications Managing Editor)

For Bravearts Africa Mag Team bRAVEARTS aFRICA ▫ aVANT-GARDE (sPECIAL iSSUE)

▫4

EDITORIAL

Sometimes art is about breaking rules, breaking trends…

Avant-garde in the senses with elop. Simply—how do new trends and

boring. And only then again, we

which we pitch our focus in this traditions in the arts develop?

should have some more novelty,

issue, means two related things,

some more experimentation and

going from the definition entries of Microsoft® Encarta® Dictionaries: English (2009). The word Avantgarde, as adjective, thus refers, on the one hand, to something being

It is interesting

innovations, some more avant-

to state here

garde arts. The circle of creating

that trends

new trends by breaking old ones

and

can, thus, continue infinitely.

tra-

However, there is more to this than

artistically innovative, experimental,

just those. We believe also that

or unconventional; and, on the

there is the politics of pioneering

other hand, to someone or some

styles in the arts and of canonizing

people belonging to the group of writers,

artists,

filmmakers,

works. In a master‘s class discussion

or

ditions almost always develop from

experimental, or unconventional.

From where, and precisely how, do artistic

trends

and

traditions

originate and develop? How do style and aesthetic traditions like Gothic or Realist traditions in art, architecture and literature, or Jazz tradition in music, came to be studied

as

prototypes?

established Or

how

do

in literature that Kayode was part

▫ Kayode & Tola Olla ▫

musicians whose work is innovative,

stylistic some

signature artistic style or form typical of an artist‘s practice—how do they become canonical categories to classify future works in such a developed trend? How do new genres like Afro-beat and Afro-pop trends in music—how do they dev-

breaking existing ones while also popularizing and sustaining the new over length of time and distance.

society rebuffs things novel naturally. avant-garde

works

and

practice are sometimes not only considered unconventional, but also as aberrations, a taboo. But the spice of

creativity

will

still

remain

experimentation. However, in time, what is conventional becomes oldfashioned, becomes so over-used like clichés, lacking the sparkle of novelty.

And

then,

the

avant-garde

the

professor

moderating

the

discussion. It was the question about pioneering styles in literature, and the arts in general—if those

It seems, however, that culture and Hence,

of, a question was put forward to

may

become conventional, and likewise

bRAVEARTS aFRICA ▫ aVANT-GARDE (sPECIAL iSSUE)

students of the arts can actually pioneer or front new styles or tradition in literature. Enthusiastic and

vibrant

as

those

young

aspiring critics and student of the arts were, the professor made them

know

they

possibly

just

cannot. Experimentations in styles and forms by aspiring writers, he said,

are

considered

conventionally in

terms

of

incompetence and incorrectness, even by literary critics and scholars; ▫5

EDITORIAL but the same degree of aberrance cesses of getting the works ready. in style or form by a distinguished writer with years of literary practice already, can be acknowledged as deviations significant enough for meaning. This reality is what we have chosen to call the politics of pioneering styles.

The stage of selection of the works submitted

for

this

issue

was

Not

all

works

submitted

were

eventually selected, going by the

forms and contents in the practices of art and literature of just a few really gifted and proficient African writers and artists of our own young course,

this

selection is in no way an inclusive or exhaustive list of African avantgarde writers and artists, or even of the top 8 at all. What we have done is to present a compendium of a few different styles and forms of avant-garde art and artists, and avant-garde writing and writers.

The featured writers and artists were officially

contacted

correspondences

via and

email made

aware of the project of this special issue. Works were either requested from them or chosen from their catalogue

and

Example: i go back to innercore. (It is a single word—and not inner core).

criteria given our editors for this issue; although all solicited writers and

to celebrate avant-garde styles,

Of

I did a little editing while I left others, bearing in mind the right of the poet to break rules.

interesting as well as challenging.

We have released this special issue artists were published.

generation.

certain things, since the poems negate the normalcy in poetry (in structure, form, content and cases).

gotten

express

permission to publish for, and while keeping discussions during the pro-

It

is,

thus,

significant

that

the

An email dispatch containing entries selection of the works you now find that Kayode Olla broadcast, in May, readable in this Avant-garde issue to John Odeyemi and Tola Adegbite posed an interesting challenge to (now Tola Kayode-Olla), and on the us, measuring them against drawn literature segment and art segment criteria; as the idea of Avant-garde editing

respectively,

bears

the itself

is

essentially

anti-rules.

following instruction on our criteria for Sometimes art is about breaking selecting works from solicited entries rules, breaking trends—sometimes, that itself is all of art, in fact!

for the issue.

Note and remember also that the selection criteria of works from the set of works submitted must be that they are sort of experimental, or unconventional, or even pioneering, in style, form or content—such as characterize avant-garde art or writing.

Thus, in the works we have in this edition of Bravearts Africa, there are so

genres;

containing

poem

often

migration

sometimes

a

across vague

demarcation between genres itself.

Poems are written in prose structures;

In response to one of the dispatch art emails

very

essays

take

narrative

forms;

entries fiction is futuristic; photography is like

from an entrant, John Odeyemi movie wrote to Kayode Olla, thus:

pictures…:

Readers,

present you the AVANT-GARDE Issue!

I found the poems attached appealing and in consonance —KAYODE & TOLA OLLA with the concern of this issue. Founders/Editors-in-Chief However, I found it hard to edit

bRAVEARTS aFRICA ▫ aVANT-GARDE (sPECIAL iSSUE)

we

▫6

CONTENTS

Editorial |6 NEO MUSANGI |9 the day i killed my father was exactly like this |10 how do you spell lonely? |12 KIMANI WANDAKA |14 The other points of view |15 WALE OWOADE |19 Wall paintings with bullet wounds |20 The volume of grief, love and poetry |21 To the width of everything |22 ESTHER MBABAZI |23 Alternative living |24 MAZI NWONWU |27 Virulent |28 HELLEN MASIDO |36 Nudexpressions |37 EMMANUEL IDUMA |41 Sentences on freedom |42 Five dispatches on surrender |44 BRYAN JAYBEE |45 Kibera Stories |46 Call for submissions for Issue 6 | 51

bRAVEARTS aFRICA ▫ aVANT-GARDE (sPECIAL iSSUE)

▫7

We are grateful to Story Zetu, Kenya, and for her valuable partnership in this project and for enabling connection with a crop of avant-garde writers and artistes for the project.

We are grateful to Njagi M‘Mwenda, co-founder of Story Zetu, for the necessary readiness to do this with us.

We are equally grateful to all featured writers and artists who have made themselves and their works available.

Very many thanks.

bRAVEARTS aFRICA ▫ aVANT-GARDE (sPECIAL iSSUE)

▫8

NEO MUSANGI

Neo Sinoxolo Musangi was born at an undisclosed place in Kenya sometime between 1980 and 1982, but not in 1981. Musangi is essentially an experimental performance artist, a self-taught photographer and a poet whose practice is a never-ending conversation about gender, madness and place.

Musangi has a previous life in Johannesburg and has Lusaka ambitions. They live, cry and play in Nairobi, blogs about it on www.feministloft.com and rants at @sinoxolomusangi.

[Gender pronouns: They/Neo.]

bRAVEARTS aFRICA â–Ť aVANT-GARDE (sPECIAL iSSUE)

â–Ť9

NEO MUSANGI

the day I killed my father was exactly like this

i wake up to the remnants of semen smell gone stale, aggressive hearts threatening to vomit into tissues left days ago, by lovers we never had

(i go back to innercore. it is a single word)

my aunt battles metastatic cancer in the silence between words; i cannot speak of my war with death: ―yako ni yakujiletea‖ so tonight we open the archival record to scrutiny: the judge asks me to defend myself. (no lawyer will take up my case). i must have been twenty when i first killed a man. the day i killed my father was exactly like this: grey and —like tuesday—with no character

i have become a repeat offender

i start laughing immediately the judge says that. repeat offender. i remember an old friend telling me about anal sex with his girlfriend. i laugh again. they did it several times in a single night somewhere in eastlands

―turn‖. ―get onto your knees‖—the sports teacher used to say, he, holding her waistline and she a contortionist, several fucking times

he comes back to my mind as a collective noun describing the nothingnesses of life. my tail has grown longer in the last eight hours and hanging onto swaying branches no longer hurts. so i hop across eucalyptus trees hoping it won‘t rain on the day my mother clears my flat

bRAVEARTS aFRICA ▫ aVANT-GARDE (sPECIAL iSSUE)

▫ 10

NEO MUSANGI i hear my mother screaming at him for claiming the jacket that scratched my nose with uneven nails is his, my toes start to curl in the stillness of what my body won‘t forget

―my sister told me that our bodies register memory and pain‖, a friend whispers to the guy from forensics, i remember my sister‘s friend crying in the coffin the day they buried him, o stone!

(nothing is a sacred secret here — your lover‘s heart no longer hurts from loveless sex and groins that hate mouths)

i won‘t look at the judge‘s eyes; her eyelashes remind me of a dead camel from my childhood. i can no longer laugh,

(who told you that i almost fucked that cab driver for looking borana? i thought i would tell a kikuyu from nakuru, shit!)

i return to a different set of bewildered kikuyu eyes staring at me with regret, (how would i know how to calibrate ethnic visual acuity?)

―i am sorry‖. my tongue has learnt to coil itself around verbs, ―i am sorry your honour‖,

a single zilizopendwa album plays for the entire distance between us: ―si kitu mimi ni mpita njia, nitakwenda utabaki na wako mliyezoeana‖,

(but giovanni knows about hella and this will take us two hours and a minute); get me out of here. □

bRAVEARTS aFRICA ▫ aVANT-GARDE (sPECIAL iSSUE)

▫ 11

NEO MUSANGI

how do you spell lonely? who first taught you the many meanings of lonely? was it the fold in your heart/ that ironed itself out/ in the presence of bad company? or, the day your father left your mother‘s tears of a permanent absence, or, your siblings‘ silent indifference?

how do you spell lonely?

will you die alone, or in the company of thirteen other souls screaming? what will they do with a body that won‘t stop leaking? will they ask you to clean after yourself, or hire underpaid hands schooled in YESes? how will they carry your body on the day you die alone, Zampano? will they wrap it in a body bag, or in a soiled duvet screaming of germs?

hands will touch your genitals & flapping the lips of your vulva call your penis a clitoris, (dead, you say nothing),

also— your friends keep dying/of a chronic illness called suicide or innocence, so, to whom did you ever belong? + what life did you ever have /but for the slices of death in-between?

bRAVEARTS aFRICA ▫ aVANT-GARDE (sPECIAL iSSUE)

▫ 12

NEO MUSANGI because you are what exactly? come lie to me wrap your head around my chest & call me fuckface give me a chance to make another mistake nasikia ati ukimangana na msee amemarry/ hiyo story/ huwezi sema (lakini pia machali wengine huwa ovyo.

—-Here, I return to colonial essentialisms— 5. leo ndio ile siku nilikuwa nakushow ya mauwongo. ngori!

6. andifuni indaba mna. ndiyeke tu, ndiyakucela, enkosi 7. remind me who you are, again 8. tell me what name it is that you respond to, again 9. tell me what happens/ whenever you open your thighs to strangers/ and close your heart to lovers, again 10. tell me, in all the languages in your mouth, what words we shall use in your eulogy

(do not give me your heart, i can‘t take care of mine); (i eat hearts for breakfast; hide yours)

si mse angenishow hii storo inaeza kuwa complicated hivi!

this is bizarre, my brain won‘t stop laughing, at me. □

bRAVEARTS aFRICA ▫ aVANT-GARDE (sPECIAL iSSUE)

▫ 13

KIMANI WANDAKA

Kimani Wandaka is a Nairobi-based photographer who is inclined towards still life photography. He's been working on photography since 2012 and has dabbled into different styles and genres.

Kimani says he has a bias for capturing geometrical objects and that he finds shapes very evocative and as well admire their form and structure a great deal. His aesthetics also involves capturing motion or the idea of motion.

The overall feel Kimani tries to achieve with his photography, he says, is a feeling that life is happening. He says: ―I always try to imply that the photo is an extension of actual life and, hence, my tagline: Images with life.‖

bRAVEARTS aFRICA ▫ aVANT-GARDE (sPECIAL iSSUE)

▫ 14

KIMANI WANDAKA

The other points of view

①

② bRAVEARTS aFRICA ▫ aVANT-GARDE (sPECIAL iSSUE)

▫ 15

KIMANI WANDAKA

③

④ bRAVEARTS aFRICA ▫ aVANT-GARDE (sPECIAL iSSUE)

▫ 16

KIMANI WANDAKA

⑤

⑥ bRAVEARTS aFRICA ▫ aVANT-GARDE (sPECIAL iSSUE)

▫ 17

KIMANI WANDAKA

⑦

bRAVEARTS aFRICA ▫ aVANT-GARDE (sPECIAL iSSUE)

▫ 18

WALE OWOADE

Wale Owoade is a Nigerian poet and creative enthusiast who lives and writes from North-Central Nigeria. His poems have either appeared, or are forthcoming, in About Place Journal, Apogee Journal, Chiron Review, Cordite Poetry Review, footmarks, Radar Poetry, Spillway, The Bombay Review and Vinyl, among others. Some of his poems have been translated to Bengali and German.

Wale is a recipient of 2015 Tony Tokunbo Poetry Silver Award. He is as well the Publisher and Managing Editor of EXPOUND: A Magazine of Arts and Aesthetics. Wale also interviews contemporary poets at The Strong Letters and is the Founder and Creative Director of Bard Studio.

bRAVEARTS aFRICA ▫ aVANT-GARDE (sPECIAL iSSUE)

▫ 19

WALE OWOADE

Wall paintings with bullet wounds Falling soldiers and a shoulder painted the wall red. My dreams broke the midnight. A dancing body dressed in fire, the voice of bullets shouting die, die, die inside every hole they dug. I kissed her till she stretched towards God, I kissed the red spring flowing from her chest.

My body mistook my lover‘s shadow for mine. Her shadow is too still, silent as the tongue of rivers.

I cannot taste salt on my cheek, what is light without darkness?

I cannot find my shadow inside a room lit with light from a burning house, what is love without loneliness?

I cannot stop my heart from burning outside my lover‘s heart. Love is a street littered with ashes, grief is the scavenger‘s lash, my grief is the music of a muffled forest. I belong to the shadow created with my lover‘s blood. □

bRAVEARTS aFRICA ▫ aVANT-GARDE (sPECIAL iSSUE)

▫ 20

WALE OWOADE

The volume of grief, love and poetry I want to appear inside every poem that mourns me. Sometimes, I read with my fingers upon the page that holds me and read the blankness between my cascades and the night. A ping said It’s over and the face is a picture that expires in a frame. A poem said come in, the poem is the lullaby that paddles me to sleep. Every love I knew turned to a blur: my father‘s spent love, my brothers‘ fake love, my lover‘s wrong turn— love is more of water than air— love is the picture that tells me nothing I own belongs to me—love is just a frame—love is a cease fire so I plaster the scars of my grief with poetry and wear my shoulders upright, love upright that even in my grief I can feel my fingers inside a poem. Yesterday, I texted my lover on the road and ask her how I can love with so much grief in the air. Every night, I wait for a line to unsnap me. Every time a poem rises inside my head, my heart mends, writes volume, reads volume, touch volume, I mix poetry with lamplights to dry my tears up. □

bRAVEARTS aFRICA ▫ aVANT-GARDE (sPECIAL iSSUE)

▫ 21

WALE OWOADE

To the width of everything If I drop a drone on your palm, if you stroke it we will die and maybe heaven is what our body craves for, maybe we want to push our secrets to the sound a gun makes when a finger kisses its dick.

It is selfishness to pray to only one God, so we created another in his image.

You stroked flaccid out of a gun and said breathe and it breathe.

A theory said the universe is God‘s huge cigarette, for you, it is my microphone. I like to think of your palm as psalms, so you are all those great things I read in the water I drank.

Anyway, I like the way your psalms adjusts to the width of everything.

This trigger is capital to my gun, I want to feel your fingers trace the lyrics of my song. □

bRAVEARTS aFRICA ▫ aVANT-GARDE (sPECIAL iSSUE)

▫ 22

ESTHER MBABAZI

Esther Mbabazi is a Ugandan female photographer born and raised in Kampala. She is a self-taught photographer who takes the time to learn from everyone in her work spheres. She has worked with different organizations in Kampala, covered different events; she has captured stunning landscapes and engaged storytelling photography. She is presently focusing more on documentary photography and photo-journalism in her career.

The Ugandan Press Photo Award finalist is also significantly a lover of life who believes everyone has a story to tell – an essential background to mostly all her photography works.

Esther‘s works have been displayed in a solo exhibition in Eastern Uganda and have participated in joint exhibitions like at the Bayimba International Festival of the Arts in Kampala and Naam Festival in Kenya, among others. Her works have also been published in Sweden-based Kalangu Magazine and the Eoroticism and Intimacy exhibition catalogue.

bRAVEARTS aFRICA ▫ aVANT-GARDE (sPECIAL iSSUE)

▫ 23

ESTHER MBABAZI

Alternative living

❶

❷

bRAVEARTS aFRICA ▫ aVANT-GARDE (sPECIAL iSSUE)

▫ 24

ESTHER MBABAZI

❸

❹ bRAVEARTS aFRICA ▫ aVANT-GARDE (sPECIAL iSSUE)

▫ 25

ESTHER MBABAZI

❺

❻ bRAVEARTS aFRICA ▫ aVANT-GARDE (sPECIAL iSSUE)

▫ 26

MAZI NWONWU

Mazi Nwonwu is the pen name of Chiagozie Nwonwu, a Lagos-based journalist and writer. While journalism and its demands take up much of his time, when he can, Mazi Nwonwu writes speculative fiction which he believes is a vehicle through which he can transport Africa‘s diverse cultures to the future.

He is the co-founder of Omenana [www.omenana.com], an Afro-centrist speculative fiction magazine, and he is also the Managing Editor of Olisa.tv, a blogazine.

Mazi Nwonwu's works have appeared in Lagos 2060, Nigeria‘s first science fiction anthology; in AfroSF, first pan-African Science Fiction anthology; in Sentinel Nigeria and Saraba Magazine; in It Wasn’t Exactly Love, an anthology on sex and sexuality published by Farafina in 2015; and in other various places.

bRAVEARTS aFRICA ▫ aVANT-GARDE (sPECIAL iSSUE)

▫ 27

MAZI NWONWU

Virulent DUSK IS PLAYING A LULLABY ON the stained glass windows of the catholic cathedral across the street as I sit here, pondering about life and death under the shadow of the blue and white tent that has served as home for my family for two weeks.

The tent, one of hundreds in an internally displaced refugee camp in the outskirts of Benin City, is part of a tent town that started life as a screening center made up of a couple of tents. Now, it provides shelter for thousands of families.

The number will grow, the tents will grow, eating deeper into that space farmlands and palm plantations habit now, and the line of cars that stretch back to the expressway will grow, clog the access and this place will become even more crowded. We would have to move then, for more people would mean less hygiene and death would follow.

Death, a word that denotes a finality, decay, and hearts rubbed raw by sorrow, has become a constant expression. I see it in the crosses that find ample expression in the stained windows and the steeple that crowned the cathedral, in the promise of resurrection, but only after death. I see it on the net and see it scrolling through live feeds, where individual experiences give way to numbers that only grows. I look at

interactive maps and see it crawling across place names, a black tentacle that follows the roads and the rivers, moving from one town to the next, creating more numbers.

I wonder about what will become of the world if more than three quarters of us fall victim to the new scourge, as the wild eyed researcher had insisted would happen in the news yesterday. I am too scared to admit to myself that everything appears to prove him right—except blind faith.

I had looked at the interactive maps a few hours ago. It is creeping closer, maybe not as fast as it was a week ago, but it is coming. With our forward flight halted by stern faced Guardsmen, I try not to listen to my wife and kids talking inside the tent.

I throw my mind back to the recent past, back to that sunswept afternoon in Agege, three weeks ago, when we first encountered the death that is stalking us now. ▫▫▫

her.

Wondering why she would drop a statement like that during what was a leisure drive along Old Capitol Road in Agege, I followed her eyes through the passenger side window to where two willowy men stood over two calves, arms akimbo. The calves were lying prone on a makeshift cattle pen and a bluish secretion seeped from their nostrils to mix with the dark green of droppings and muck. It was two days to Sallah and makeshift livestock markets tend to sprout like sudden sores to taint the environment until the festivities were over and the sanitation people found the will to act without fear of a divine punishment. ―They are too dark to be Fulani.‖ I said as I looked away from the dead animals and their distraught keepers: cattle were expensive, especially after the big drought two years ago.

I could feel Adunni‘s eye boring into the side of my face, but I keep my eyes on the road. She does not like being challenged, but I didn‘t care. I waited for her to say something, to tell me that she was the one who spent the first 20 years of her life in the North and as such knew the Fulani better.

―Fulani don‘t eat carrion,‖ Adunni We must have travelled for five had said with that know-it-all air minutes, without saying anything to that was still trying to get used to each other when Adunni broke the after ten years of being married to silence. Not with a cutting remark as I

bRAVEARTS aFRICA ▫ aVANT-GARDE (sPECIAL iSSUE)

▫ 28

MAZI NWONWU expected.

We must have travelled for five minutes, without saying anything to each other when Adunni broke the silence. Not with a cutting remark, as I had expected.

did for the rats. In the context of the war we declared on the rats since we moved into the compound at New Oko-Oba in December 2058, I was in no state to be charitable to them. To me, their demise was the welcome result of another round of poison baiting.

―What do you think killed the cows?‖ she asked.

Surprised that she had let my jibe go unanswered, I shrugged, wondering why the sight of death had affected her that way. It was rare for Adunni‘s tongue to lose its keen edge.

Later, I noticed a pair of dead rats outside the burrows they had honeycombed around the soakaway in our compound, I felt a sense of poetic justice—of a death well deserved. The buggers got I did not apply any poison and my what was coming to them. wife, a nutritionist, who had wanted to By this time I had forgotten my initial be a nurse, abhorred poison of any cold shiver at the sight of the dying kind and so could not have applied rats. Victims of poison or the stray them.

Silence, broken only by the horns of impatient drivers and the soft hum from the climate control cats now and again made their system I had installed in the car home under the water tank at our the week before, followed us backyard, who tend to play with home. dead rats when they have had their fill of the fish heads my neighbor ▫▫▫ was wont to pile into the refuse I did not think anything was amiss instead of into her family‘s tummy. when rats no longer scurried across our living room, their movement only captured by the I felt more pity for the cows than I corner of the eyes. did for the rats. In the context of I started noticing the demise of the war we declared on the rats the rats two days after we drove since we moved into the past the dead calves, and it was compound at New Oko-Oba in with a sense of panic that I couldn‘t place that I side-stepped December 2058, I was in no state three large rats jerking in their to be charitable to them. To me, death throes near the garbage their demise was the welcome collection point by the gate that lead into our estate. result of another round of poison I felt more pity for the cows than I

Perhaps I should have been alarmed when less and less rats darted away from my headlights as my car felt its way into its customary parking space beside the large water tank where the charging units stood, regal, blinking in an electronic symphony. I was also not alarmed when first the compound and then the house proper was saturated by the stench of putrefying meat. I was not too bothered and easily laid the reason for the deaths squarely on a highly efficient poison.

baiting.

I could have asked the neighbours— they occupied the upper floor of our one storey house—but a week before, Adunni had quarrelled with the wife. She keeps throwing dirty water on my vegetable garden,‘ Adunni fumed when I asked what the war of words was about. She forbade any of her brood from speaking to them.

Adunni, I confess, has the temperament of a rattlesnake and can take things very far when she feels she has been ill-treated. Did I already mention how sharp her tongue could be? So, even though she was cussing all through the grimy task of seeking for putrid rats in crevices, cracks, and worst of all, inside her stow-away box, where she stashes all her favourite special-

bRAVEARTS aFRICA ▫ aVANT-GARDE (sPECIAL iSSUE)

▫ 29

MAZI

NWONWU

occasion Georges, Hollandis, Synto-wraps and other party-going wrappers and blouses, she still persisted on not asking the neighbors what kind of wonder rodent killer was at work.

For a day and half, we—Adunni, our twin girls and I—struggled to rid the house of dead rats and their stench. However, by the time we finished with the house, carrying the little dead things into the collection bucket my wife had thoughtfully kept in the middle of the parlor, with hands that were, as per her instructions, wrapped in plastic bags; we discovered that the stench coming in from the open windows was as strong as the one indoors.

upstairs peeping from her bedroom at me, a worried look on her face, window, and that gave me enough ―Think this must be a reaction to the insight into the source of her anger. poison they ate, though I‘ve never seen or heard of any substance ―Please don‘t let her spoil your that could cause this.‖ mood, you know she sees this type of work as beneath her,‖ I said, trying ―Neither have I,‖ I said, but I was to calm that storm brewing in sure I felt a twinge of recognition Adunni‘s eyes. She had never liked somewhere at the back of my Nneka. mind. Not being much of the analytic thinker my wife and Our neighbor‘s wife was, according children are, I did not dwell on it. to my wife, a spoilt brat, the sort whose parents granted too many I do not recall who suggested we concessions to make up for their check the rats already collected in lack of parental qualities. I do not the plastic bucket inside, but I recall know how true my wife‘s assessment it was my wife who suggested was, but knowing how annoyed she sending the twins back indoors, was already about our neighbors not away from the excitement, but not paying attention to the stench she before they had thoroughly insisted they caused, I felt it wise not scrubbed their hands with soap and to inflame her more. rinsed it with water.

Out into the compound we went.

Adunni moved away from me. It was Out came the shovel and leather as if my words irritated her. I was gloves. surprised when she beckoned me over to the large pit I had dug to It was easy gathering the rats we bury the dead rats. I followed her could find in the open; however, pointing finger, and saw for the first those in holes and deep crevices – time the bluish secretions on the even though they did not smell as nose of a first one; and then, with bad as the ones in the open – glowing alarm, on all of the rats I posed a challenge until I came up could see – those not already with the idea to seal them up covered with earth or other rats. where they lay. We made easy work of the buggers: a shovel of ―What is that?‖ earth here, a well-mixed lump of Never in all my years of rat baiting, cement and sand there. poisoning and outright stumping, I noticed my wife getting madder had I seen such secretions on dead and madder as we worked. rats.

Though she did not say what the ―Don‘t know,‖ Adunni turned to look matter was; I caught the neighbor bRAVEARTS aFRICA ▫ aVANT-GARDE (sPECIAL iSSUE)

―Know what?‖ Adunni said to me as she closed the door behind the protesting twins she had just scolded thoroughly for acting naughty and not shutting up and doing what they were told. ―What angers me is not that someone killed off these damn pests, but that that person is calmly watching behind a curtain while I clean the smelly mess.‖ I did not respond, not that she expected me to. I know enough about our neighbor to know that the wife was not one to get her manicured nails dirty carrying garbage or smelly rats. Although the petite woman had not been wearing a surgical mask when I ▫ 30

MAZI NWONWU spied her earlier, I had expected to did not talk about much – sports, a find her cupping her face. little bit of politics, how exorbitant car parts were getting, and of course, Without doubt, the stench would the newest 4X4s. have reached their floor—it was that strong. Anyway, my wife Anyway, it was on one of those insisted she was responsible for the mornings a few days after we had bunch of dead rats thrown from the buried the last of the rats that I ran top floor towards the general into our neighbor. Like me, he was direction of the bins. ―Her husband on his way to work and had left the would not be callous enough to not spiral staircase leading to their flat a bring the rats down to the few moments after I walked by. I garbage,‖ she said. turned at the sound of footsteps behind me to behold his sheepish ▫▫▫ grin. Why does that guy always appear to be laughing at The husband, a jolly fellow with a something? taste for flashy cars, was a cyberjournalist. Though I worked for ―Good morning Mr. Dotun,‖ he said myself as a building contractor, I with more enthusiasm than I had ever noticed in him.

We walked together to our cars.

Mine was closer. I stood by and watched as the door of his opened on auto as the installed AI responded to his sub-vocalized command. I know I shouldn‘t feel envy, but I couldn‘t help myself when the cool smell of real leather hit me. Chike‘s car was brand new, equipped with auto-nav and full body protective cocoon. It was the type of car the guys in my club were all salivating over. I looked away.

―Good morning, Chike,‖ I responded, not willing to endure his habitual frown at any use of the officious ‗Mr‘ for him. ―Well,‖ that annoying smile crossed his face again, ―we haven‘t had the time to thank you for what you did with the rats.‖

problem at all.‖ I managed to say this with more civility than I had hoped possible in the circumstance.

Anger and its attendant violence are so tedious. So, while the grimy job of finding and burying all the dead vermin was a lot of bother, I did not say so, couldn‘t say so. I tend to leave all the heavy lifting to my wife.

I am used to it.

We walked together to our cars.

Mine was closer. I stood by and watched as the door of his opened on auto as the installed AI responded to his sub-vocalized command. I know I shouldn‘t feel envy, but I couldn‘t help myself when the cool smell of real leather hit me.

Chike‘s car was brand new, equipped with auto-nav and full body protective cocoon. It was the type of car the guys in my club were all salivating over. I looked away. I thumbed my remote, and my everreliable tokunbo‘s door slide open, silent as a night hunter – a conventional door, unlike Chike‘s eagle wing affair. Yes, we did not have the ―in vogue‖ feel of Chike‘s Benz, but we were not far off—even if the look was of a third model Toyota Catcher, from five years back. However, it is not easy to not envy, not when the thing in question was parked opposite the disused storeroom I call my home office.

Despite myself, I felt a touch of anger. Not only was the guy trying to apologize for letting us clean up their mess, he even had the audacity to tell me ―we haven‘t had the time to thank you.‖ I bit down my anger and made it a point of duty to leave turned to him – yes, I had looked I was trying my best not to look back home at the same time with the away to hide any telltale sign. at Chike‘s very becoming car interior blue collars. As such, we ran into when his voice forced me to turn each other now and then as we ―No problem, Chike; the rats were a again to behold that wonder on readied our cars for the day. We serious nuisance to us too. No bRAVEARTS aFRICA ▫ aVANT-GARDE (sPECIAL iSSUE)

▫ 31

MAZI NWONWU wheels, with its wing doors, now extended to their full height, appearing to kiss the skies. ―By the way Mr Dotun,‖ he began, eagerlike, ―what kind of poison did you guys use? My wife and I had wondered for long whether it is a new variety. It sure doesn‘t work like something stocked by ratkeller hawkers.‖ I cannot exactly remember what I mumbled to Chike; whatever it was, it must have been satisfying, for I recall stepping aside for his car to edge past and, while with a cheerful wave of his hands, autodrive out of the auto-gate. ▫▫▫ ―What do you mean they‘d not apply the poison?‖ My wife asked for the umpteenth time.

Who would‘ve spread the poison?

Who else lives in this house with us?

We didn‘t apply it, so it must be they.

I intend to speak to that condescending woman and her husband o. I don‘t care if her father owns this house.‖ ―Calm down, Adunni,‖ I said, as she was already shouting, not caring if anyone was listening. ―It could have come from any of the houses nearby. You know rats socialize. One visit to a poisoned meat and the scourge spreads through the kingdom of those four-legged things.‖ My intention was to diffuse the tension with some light humor. Her sour look at me told me humor would not work. I persisted; no humor though. My reward was the sight of her beautiful smile replacing her scowl. However, it would be much later that I would found out that my summation of the situation was correct.

―Just that, Adunni. Chike asked me what poison we used and where we bought them. Why would he ask that question if they used it?‖ I said, knowing that she was not exactly ▫▫▫ hot, but was warming up as her paranoia kicked in.

Life went back to normal, kind of; Adunni still refused to be on friendly ―Daddy twins, I can‘t believe how terms with our neighbors. We never easy you agree to his lies. He‘s just saw another rat again; not in the trying to divert attention, especially house, and not within the since they left the cleaning to us?‖ compound. We felt that was a good sign. We never talked much about ―No. He sounded very sincere to the issue with the poison as my me.‖ hypothesis of the poison‘s source carried even with my cynical wife. ―He would – Dotun Akintoye; he Perhaps the neighbors had would. You can so be gullible, eh? overheard my argument with Adunni bRAVEARTS aFRICA ▫ aVANT-GARDE (sPECIAL iSSUE)

about their culpability, because Chike never mentioned the issue to me again. Perhaps this was because there were no rats left to kill? Whatever the reason was, I never asked.

We would have gone on living our lives, happy that the brief pauses and quick darts of the rats across the living room and those irksome scratches they inflict as they make their way across a sleeping body were now stories to be told with relief. We—I to be precise— maintained a somewhat cordial relationship with our neighbor, trading polite greetings and swallowing the anger of having to mow the lawn and take care of the surroundings alone.

Things did not remain normal for too long. No, the rats did not come back; they never did. It was something worse that came. ▫▫▫ It was late afternoon when I returned from picking the kids from school. Adunni‘s car was in the car park but the silence of the house and the scent of fresh disinfectant baffled me. The kids‘ shriek of ―mummy we‘re home‖ went unanswered. I walked into the bedroom, checked the bathroom, the guest room, and kitchen too.

Adunni was not in the house. A quick check at the backyard showed she had been weeding her vegetable patch. The old-style hoe ▫ 32

MAZI NWONWU she was very fond of was lying between the ridges she had made me dig for her beloved plants – beside the hoe were uprooted weeds, with clumps of wet earth still attached.

saying nothing, staring at my wife and Chike‘s wife.

I went back into the house, ignored the twins‘s chorused ―Where‘s mummy?‖ and stepped to the front yard. I was crossing the spiral stairs that led to the second floor when a faint whimper reached my ears. I paused, and cupped my hands to my ears. Sure enough, the sound came again, accompanied this time by soft whispers. I looked up.

The windows to the Nwaogu‘s living room were open; the sounds came from there.

―What‘s going on here?‖ I asked.

The twins stood beside me, silent, hanging to my hands as if stalking territory, watching the scene.

The women, who until then were oblivious of my presence, turned to look at me.

I noticed tears on Bisi‘s cheeks.

Adunni was dry-eyed, but I knew her enough to know that what I saw in her eyes was fear. ―What is going on here?‖ I asked again.

I was crossing the spiral stairs that led to the second floor when a faint whimper reached my ears. I paused, and cupped my hands to my ears.

Sure enough, the sound came again, accompanied this time by soft whispers. I looked up. The windows to the Nwaogu‘s living room were open; the sounds came from there. I opened the door and thrust my head in; the sight before me was enough to stop me in my tracks, and it did. Mrs. Bisi Nwaogu, Chike‘s ajebuttter wife and my Adunni were in each other‘s arms on the single settee in the Nwaogu‘s sitting room.

Adunni did not pull away from the woman‘s embrace. She opened her arms wide, beckoning on us to come gentle sobbing to open wailing. to them. I held the twins back, stood Adunni looked at her for a moment my ground, my eyebrows quirking, and shook her head sadly. I flexed askance. my fingers; my hands felt limp. The I opened the door and thrust my ―Darling, did you not get my bewildered twins squirmed out of my grasp and ran to their mother. head in; the sight before me was message?‖ Adunni asked. enough to stop me in my tracks, Darling? Could she be so brazen? What the hell is going on? and it did.

My legs were rubbery when I began walking up the stairs, and they got more so by the time I was turning the door handle to get into the room.

Mrs. Bisi Nwaogu, Chike‘s ajebuttter wife and my Adunni were in each other‘s arms on the single settee in the Nwaogu‘s sitting room.

I heard a noise behind me and turned to see the twins coming up the stairs. I pushed the door all the way open and stepped into the room; the twins came in behind me. I stood in the room, numb,

She only calls me darling in the bedroom, the only place she lets go of that stern exterior of hers and lets me be the boss. Yes, that is fear in her eyes.

―Eko Atlantic City is under quarantine; Chike is there,‖ Adunni‘s voice was flat and devoid of emotion, as if she was announcing yet another curfew for the twins.

―I did not; the twins were singing all ―Quarantine; what quarantine?‖ I through the drive back,‖ I said, asked, wondering what game they throwing darts at her with my eyes; or, were playing at. at least, I thought I was.

Beside her, Mrs. Nwaogu went from

bRAVEARTS aFRICA ▫ aVANT-GARDE (sPECIAL iSSUE)

Adunni did not answer; she instead ▫ 33

MAZI NWONWU managed to free one hand from a twin and pointed. I followed her finger to the left and saw a hologram that filled one part of the sitting room.

allincom; those are real-time images from his camera. I‘ve tried reaching my colleagues in Eko Atlantic but the connection‘s busy,‖ Adunni said, finally coming to stand beside me. The everperceptive twins stayed with the All my attention, when we walked sobbing Mrs. Nwaogu. in, had been on the women on the ▫▫▫ couch. I had not even noticed the hologram.

I walked to the communication hub In the projected image, men in and as I dialled Chike‘s call code on protective gear were leading their high-end video phone, I could several sickly looking people into feel Bisi‘s hostile eyes burning holes in tents; others, too weak to walk, or my back. At least she is not crying perhaps dead, lay limp on anymore, I thought. stretchers. However, that was not what struck me. I stood there, Chike‘s face came into view on the stunned, trying but failing to deny large view screen; he seemed the suggestion that came to mind. relieved to see me. ―What is going The sick people all had bluish on?‖ I asked. secretion noses.

coming

out

of

their

―Mr. Dotun. Thank God. I can‘t talk much. Things are getting crazy out Captivated by what I was seeing, I here. Things are worse than I thought. moved closer. ―How are you But tell me; the rats – did you notice getting this?‖ I asked, noticing that any strange thing as you buried the screen was without a media them?‖ Chike was tense; he kept logo, so it could not be coming looking over his shoulders, even though he appeared to be in a sort of from a mainstream news outlet. enclosed lab. ―Chike planted a spy camera yesterday. He suspected that ―Yes,‖ I said, somehow knowing what something is going on and wanted he would say next. to get firsthand information. He says ―That means the plague has already an epidemic is on us. I told him not reached the mainland and will soon to go; I told him not to go,‖ Mrs. climb up the food chain. You have to Nwaogu said through her sobs. leave Eko now. Please take my wife ―How come this is not on the news with you; force her if you have to.‖ then?‖ I asked no one in particular. ―Chike‘s camera‘s streams to Bisi‘s

I saw the door behind Chike burst open and two burly soldier types enter the room. ▫▫▫ We left Eko the next morning, way ahead of the mass exodus and death that turned that beautiful city-state into a hell on earth, but not fast enough. By the time we made it to Benin four hours later, the quarantine was fully in place in Eko. We hoped to cross Benin and make it to Enugu where Chike‘s brother promised safety in the form of a close-knit clan of hill dwellers, but a hastily set up quarantine zone for people coming in from Eko negated our plans.

All through the drive, we had kept abreast with developments.

Though the truth was still scanty and bitterly guarded by the Eko government, Chike had managed to get the story out and the net links were abuzz.

I worried for a while when we could not get clearance to travel further into Chike‘s ancestral home where we felt we might find safety.

In the quarantine camp, which grew by the minute as more refugees flowed in, we waited two weeks for the second round of test results to either clear us or sign our death warrants.

I was about to inquire when the My wife and Bisi, more like sisters screen went blank, but not before now, comforted each other – they

bRAVEARTS aFRICA ▫ aVANT-GARDE (sPECIAL iSSUE)

▫ 34

MAZI NWONWU each other – they both lost family in bow hue Eko. Then, Bisi died; not from the windows. scourge, no – I think of heartbreak.

Of Chike we heard little. Some say he was placed him in a government facility safe from the plague; others said he tried to help the afflicted and contacted the late stage of the infection.

Because we left when we did, we managed to cross Ogun before the militiary blocked all exits. From there, only horror tales escaped.

from

the

cathedral ‗What?‘ I ask, grateful for the intrusion but wondering what he wanted. The Guardsmen were notorious with how harshly they‘ve been treating people In the quarantine camp, which since emergency law came into effect last week. Adunni says it is the grew by the minute as more tension; that they are human after all. refugees flowed in, we waited two ‗Please head to the meeting tent, the weeks for the second round of test result for the tests are out,‘ he says, turning to walk away. results to either clear us or sign our death warrants. My wife and Bisi, more like sisters now, comforted

▫▫▫

each other – they both lost family in

―Sir… sir,‖ an urgent voice intrudes on my thoughts, drawing me back to the present.

Eko. Then, Bisi died; not from the

I look up to see a Guardsman looming over me, blocking the rain-

scourge, no – I think of heartbreak.

Of Chike we heard little.

‗Wait,‘ I call out, stopping him in mid stride. ‗What happens now?‘ The Guardsman looks at me as if he was pondering how much to tell me; and then, he just shrugs and continues on his way.

I get up from the plastic chair, take one last look at the Cathedral, and went into the tent to fetch my family.□

This work of speculative fiction first appeared in the author‘s blog www.frednwowu.blogspot.com.ng as ‗Virulent (Parts 1 – 6)‘. Used with direct consent from the author.

bRAVEARTS aFRICA ▫ aVANT-GARDE (sPECIAL iSSUE)

▫ 35

HELLEN MASIDO

Hellen Masido is a versatile artist who enjoys fusing the visual, performing and literary arts.

Writing has always been in her and she's been blogging for about six years already.

She took a Film and Theatre degree at Kenyatta University, Nairobi, where she fell in love with photography and film making.

Nude photography piqued her interest after stalking artistic nudes on Tumblr; and later on, seeking to tick an item off her bucket list, she had her first nude photoshoot. Since then, she found herself taking nude photos on her phone and liking them a lot; seeing more and more what ideas the nude form could express.

A radical against censorship, Hellen plans to use nudity to break boundaries against the policing of women's bodies as well as championing the freedom of expression. Naked for her goes beyond an unclothed body. It is also about uncensored thoughts about uncovered issues that deeply affect us as people. ―I am closest to my true self when naked,‖ she says. ―When naked I am a blank canvas upon which so many worlds of art can come alive.‖

bRAVEARTS aFRICA ▫ aVANT-GARDE (sPECIAL iSSUE)

▫ 36

HELLEN MASIDO

Nudexpressions ❶②③④

bRAVEARTS aFRICA ▫ aVANT-GARDE (sPECIAL iSSUE)

▫ 37

HELLEN MASIDO

①❷③④

bRAVEARTS aFRICA ▫ aVANT-GARDE (sPECIAL iSSUE)

▫ 38

HELLEN MASIDO

①②❸④

bRAVEARTS aFRICA ▫ aVANT-GARDE (sPECIAL iSSUE)

▫ 39

HELLEN MASIDO

①②③❹

bRAVEARTS aFRICA ▫ aVANT-GARDE (sPECIAL iSSUE)

▫ 40

EMMANUEL IDUMA

Emmanuel Iduma, born and raised in Nigeria, is a writer and art critic. He is the author of the novel Farad and co-editor of Gambit: Newer African Writing.

Emmanuel has contributed essays on art and photography to a number of journals, magazines, and exhibition catalogues, including Guernica, ESOPUS, and The Trans-African for which he works as managing editor. Moreover, his interviews with photography and writers have appeared in the Aperture blog, Wasafiri and Africa Is A Country.

Emmanuel was nominated for the Kwani? Manuscript Prize in 2013. He co-founds and directs Saraba magazine. A lawyer by training, Emmanuel Iduma also holds an MFA in Art Criticism and Writing from the School of Visual Arts, New York.

bRAVEARTS aFRICA â–Ť aVANT-GARDE (sPECIAL iSSUE)

â–Ť 41

EMMANUEL IDUMA

Sentences on freedom Think of it this way, I told a friend: the nature of conviction is to appreciate the opposing argument, and despite that remain committed to what you have become convinced about.

It was Novalis who wrote, ―All doubt, all need for truth.‖ It was Novalis who wrote, ―The power of faith is therefore the will.‖ Last week, I told a colleague our obsession with sex must have something to do with thrusts of freedom. ―I love dancing, and I especially love being in a club at 2 a.m.., when one or three drinks, good company and a gifted D.J. collectively liberate me into my body,‖ writes Teju Cole.

And, ―I stop my habitual overthinking and become, quite simply, a body in the half-dark.‖ Two paragraphs in Ingrid Winterbach‘s The Elusive Moth made me stop for a smile, in order to recognize myself:

▫ Julie Maroh, untitled, 2014. Acrylic on colored paper, A4.

THIS ONE IS FOR MY FRIENDS, WHO understand this madness.

The starting point was when, on my phone, I followed an e-flux trail and looked at a painting by Julie Maroh—a human shape is being ferried across; a traversal, an outdistancing, a collapse, a surrender.

Surrender is the beginning of freedom. bRAVEARTS aFRICA ▫ aVANT-GARDE (sPECIAL iSSUE)

―She danced on her own into the early hours of the morning and drove back through a landscape shrouded in primordial mist…. After a night‘s dancing she would usually return tired but content, her mind a blank, her calves numb.

Occasionally something more would happen. While dancing ▫ 42

EMMANUEL IDUMA

she would unexpectedly enter a different plane of awareness.

Whenever this happened she felt that all the years of dancing as if on hot coals had not been wasted.‖ Reading novels, at this point in my life, is a revolt—I speak often about critical demons, their blessings and curses given as one token, and how they push me to revel in the redemptive power of novels. In one stretch I read Abani‘s The Secret History of Las Vegas, and I thought, ―oh he has named freedom, grace, and all the ambiguities in between.‖

Last week, I told a colleague our obsession with sex must have

Freedom is a form of hallucination.

What I love about this year‘s Oscars is how our Lupitain celebration was founded on an existing, primordial prejudice—how is it possible that even today, racial binaries still exist, small victories are still celebrated, and dreams still require validation?

something to do with thrusts of freedom.

I love Lupita Nyong‘o because thinking about her success has made me find words for the strange dynamics of visibility—this strange object that dangles within my sight. ―We live in a colossal novel,‖ writes Novalis, to complete my revolt against overthinking. □ This essay of art criticism first appeared in the author‘s blog www.mriduma.com. Used with direct consent from the author.

bRAVEARTS aFRICA ▫ aVANT-GARDE (sPECIAL iSSUE)

▫ 43

EMMANUEL IDUMA

Five dispatches on surrender

I

IV

“…it is because the world is not finished The ill-fated Pantheus said to Dionysus: ―In the hollow of thine hand I that literature is possible.” (Roland Barthes) lay me. Deck me as thou wilt.‖ I do not want a version of surrender in which predestination is akin to destruction. There are children and I want to surrender to this unfinished project, women and men in northeastern Nigeria who are decked by the because ultimately I root my faith in trauma of Boko Haram, whose capacity to imagine alternatives is happiness, which is a form of justice, and being stolen by a Government that can‘t tell the difference literature always takes side with the world, between an insurgency and a war. If justice will begin, it must although of course the world‘s meaning is address, and circumvent, ill-fate. unutterable, and the project remains V unfinished for the simple fact that we keep trying to utter the world‘s meaning.

“For the writer, literature is that utterance which says until death: I II shall not begin to live before I know the meaning of life.” (Roland Barthes) My first impulse, on a second look at Julie Maroh‘s painting, was to think that it is a The ultimate goal of surrender is to know the meaning of life. The woman‘s prerogative to carry things world‘s meaning is unutterable, yes, but literature is an utterance— across—and a man‘s courtesy lies in his with literature we begin to live and have our being. Compared to surrender to her strength. This sort of photography, literature does not mediate between us and the argument has nothing to do with gender known world. It is the meaning, not merely the surface that points to roles. Instead it points to a realization that the meaning. Thus, we can surrender to literature in seeking to there are two duties in every interaction. decode photography, thinking of the world not as a sprawl of The first is to carry things across. The second images but as a giant body of text that signifies the unutterable meaning of life. □ is to surrender to being carried. ▫ Julie Maroh, untitled, 2014. Acrylic on colored paper, A4.

III A chorus ends The Bacchae of Euripides: There may be many shapes of mystery, And many things God makes to be, Past hope or fear.

And the end men looked for cometh not, And a path is there where no man thought.

So hath it fallen here.

This essay of art criticism first appeared in the author‘s blog www.mriduma.com. Used with direct consent from the author. bRAVEARTS aFRICA ▫ aVANT-GARDE (sPECIAL iSSUE)

▫ 44

BRYAN JAYBEE

Bryan Jaybee, born Brian Otieno, is a freelance photojournalist with base in Kibera, Nairobi, Kenya. He takes photos of people and places to show their potentials and their life. More importantly, he takes photos of anything and everything – to make memories, meet new people and have fun while at it.

Bryan Jaybee strives to make every image he takes a world changer and an award winner – and that is his approach to art, he says. ―I want to capture the visual realities of life from the people around me and beyond,‖ he writes, ―and be able to tell the stories through publications, and while also helping to understand what‘s going on in their lives. I do this by creating a visual and unique point of view through photography.‖

bRAVEARTS aFRICA ▫ aVANT-GARDE (sPECIAL iSSUE)

▫ 45

BRIAN JAYBEE

Kibera stories

Kibera is Africa's largest informal urban settlement, located in Nairobi, Kenya. It is home to an approximated 600,000 people. Most of its inhabitants are the youth, the majority of which is unemployed but then has lots of potential and opportunity to utilize. Despite its problems of poverty, insecurity, crime and poor sanitation, Kibera is a buzz of life, a city of its own, a growing economy where both men and women are in the rush, working really hard to better their lives.

❶ A man walks amidst smoke from burnt houses – looking for anything of value in Kibera, Gatwekera after a ghastly fire caused by electrical fault gutted down over 30 houses leaving families homeless and in a state of complete misery- to start from the very scratch.

bRAVEARTS aFRICA ▫ aVANT-GARDE (sPECIAL iSSUE)

▫ 46

BRYAN JAYBEE

❷ Kids swimming in brown, murky waters formed as a result of an ongoing road construction, after a huge pit was left open by the road constructors.

bRAVEARTS aFRICA ▫ aVANT-GARDE (sPECIAL iSSUE)

▫ 47

BRYAN JAYBEE

❸ A woman covers herself with an umbrella stands in the rain, stranded after a heavy downpour blocked an entire section of a drainage system in Kibera, Olympic Estate. In Kibera, rainy season is a sign of misery and devastation.

bRAVEARTS aFRICA ▫ aVANT-GARDE (sPECIAL iSSUE)

▫ 48

BRYAN JAYBEE

❹ Two women stand on top of what is left after a massive fire gutted down business stalls in Kibera. The fire that started from one of the stores was caused by an electrical fault before being triggered by gas explosions from a nearby gas refill store and quickly spreading to the other stalls. Properties worth millions of shillings were lost as the fire spread through Kibera‘s business center, Olympic.

bRAVEARTS aFRICA ▫ aVANT-GARDE (sPECIAL iSSUE)

▫ 49

BRYAN JAYBEE

❺ Nubian ladies pose for a photo while wearing their colorful traditional attires during a wedding ceremony in Kibera. The Nubians are few of the remaining Kenyan communities who have exclusively preserved their traditions and customs.

bRAVEARTS aFRICA ▫ aVANT-GARDE (sPECIAL iSSUE)

▫ 50

Call for submissions for Issue 6, ―JUVENILE‖

The quarterly Bravearts Africa Magazine in PDF, a literary, art and lifestyle accompaniment of the online magazine of the arts BraveartsAfrica.com, is calling for submissions for its next issue, Issue 6. The issue will be published in September 2016 and, as usual, on www.BraveartsAfrica.com and www.issuu.com/BraveartsAfrica.

Bravearts Africa Issue 6 will be themed-based and will be tagged: JUVENILE. We solicit for literary works of short fiction, creative nonfiction and poetry or artistic works of

painting,

photography, drawings and graphic art that engage and explore the the experiences, concerns, questions or topical issues of the subject of Juvenility (or adolescence). We expect such relatable concerns as: puberty, innocence/maturation,

juvenile

experimentations/sexperimentations,

peer

group/influence,

juvenile

delinquencies, juvenile prison life, high school life, high school dating, juvenile-parent relations, and so forth.

Please feel free to extend the list of possible thematic associations and to choose from any you find most convenient to engage.

Submission is open to any writer or artist regardless of age, location or race, or experience in the arts. Our desire is to weave a collage of young and adult voices on this subject; we would love you to freely respond.

Submission for the JUVENILE Issue (Issue 6) of Bravearts Africa Magazine in PDF is, therefore, open to all from FRIDAY JULY 8, 2016 to MONDAY AUGUST 15, 2016.

Kindly send submissions as email attachment – alongside a brief biography of about 60 words in length or less and written in the third person – to bravearts.africa@gmail.com, and with the subject line ‗SUBMISSION‘. Please include a brief message regarding submission in the body of the email.

And until then, please keep the pen writing!

—KAYODE, TOLA & JOHN

bRAVEARTS aFRICA ▫ aVANT-GARDE (sPECIAL iSSUE)

▫ 51

iSSUE 5

▫

jUNE 2016

bRAVEARTS aFRICA ▫ aVANT-GARDE (sPECIAL iSSUE)

▫ 52