Litro #120 Africa Teaser

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Africa Tracey Iceton Raoul Colvile Inua Ellams Komla Dumor Alain Mabanckou Ailsa Thom

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Warwick in Africa Enhancing Education

“Maths and English are great liberators from poverty” Over 120,000 learners and teachers in township schools in Ghana, South Africa and Tanzania have benefitted from transformed Maths and English teaching since our start up in 2006. Like many of the people we help we are nowhere near fulfilling our potential. If you’d like to help us grow please donate here:

www.warwick.ac.uk/go/warwickinafrica For further information please contact: Rachael Swann University of Warwick Coventry CV4 8UW +44 (0)24 7657 4417

Book now ‘A super seductive art world enigma’ The Guardian

Mariko Mori Rebir th 13 December 2012– 17 February 2013 www.royalacademy.org.uk Mariko Mori, Tom Na H-Iu II (detail), 2006.

Glass, stainless steel, LED, real time control system, 450 x 156.3 x 74.23cm. Courtesy of: Mariko Mori Studio Inc. © Mariko Mori. Photo: Richard Learoyd

ADVERTISING Durham University’s Oriental Museum is the only museum in Northern Britain devoted entirely to the art and archaeology of the Orient. Founded in 1960 to support teaching and research at Durham University, it is now open to everyone and welcomes thousands of tourists and local visitors each year. Learning remains central to its role however, and the museum and its collections continue to be used to support research and teaching at university level, as well as being a hugely popular destination for the region’s schools.

The museum is home to an extraordinary selection of artworks and archaeological artefacts from Ancient Egypt, the Ancient Near East, the whole continent of Asia and the Islamic cultures of North Africa and the Near and Middle East. The collections contain more than 23,500 objects, including over 6,700 from Ancient Egypt and in excess of 10,000 from China. The date range covered by the museum stretches from prehistory to the present day. Visitors can see finely carved Egyptian stone vessels dating back to the 3rd millennium BC, headhunting swords from Borneo and contemporary Japanese graphic art.

The museum is currently part way through a major redevelopment project.

This started in 2009 with the creation of the first of two new Ancient Egypt galleries, designed to provide an appropriate setting for the display of the highlights of the Egyptian collection. In 2011 the second Egyptian gallery opened, this time with a strong emphasis on supporting our work with schools and engaging with visiting families. Two new Chinese galleries have followed.

FEATURE Marvels of China offers visitors an introduction to this amazing culture through thematic displays exploring topics ranging from symbolism in Chinese art to festivals, scholarship and agriculture. The newest display space is the Malcolm MacDonald gallery, which focuses on the museum’s internationally important Chinese ceramic and jade collections in more detail, providing detailed information for those with a specialist interest as well as the general visitor.

China has also been the theme chosen by young people working in the museum this year as part of Stories of the World, a London 2012 Cultural Olympiad project. As their contribution to the Cultural Olympiad these young people, aged 15 to 25, curated the exhibition ‘Made in China: exports and experiences’. This exhibition explored relations between Britain and China over the last 500 years, drawing both on historic collections and on the real-life experiences of members of the North East’s vibrant Chinese community.

The young curators chose to use not just the Chinese collections housed at the Oriental Museum, but also the local history archives housed in Durham University’s Palace Green Library and ceramics exported from China in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and subsequently discovered during the course of archaeological excavations conducted in Durham’s historic core. In this way the exhibition explored local links to China, the kind of Chinese objects that were owned by local families in the North East of England in the past and how these objects were used.

Litro Magazine Africa ISSUE 120

A Letter From The Editor Welcome to Issue 120 of Litro How much do you know about Africa?

We tend to speak of it as though it’s one giant, inscrutable territory, and yet Africa contains 54 different countries, all with different cultures, geographies, and people, amongst which are some of the world’s fastest growing economies. For many of us, the only time Africa appears on our radar is when it’s in the news — Somali Pirates, KONY 2012, Darfur, email scammers, the World Cup. Most of our references are sadly negative.

It’s this perception that Ghanaian journalist and presenter of BBC Focus on Africa, Komla Dumor, tackles in his piece, A New Focus on Africa — in which he explores the very different reality of a continent that’s all too easy to write off in one way or another.

So the pieces we’ve chosen this month try to offer a vision that offers, to borrow Mr. Dumor’s phrase, a new focus on Africa.

In Tracey Iceton’s atmospheric Grass Wars, a day job is anything but mundane; in Ailsa Thom’s delicately unsettling Menengai, tourism and everyday life collide; while Raoul Colvile examines the struggle between myths of the past and the reality of the present in his evocative Harare Revisited. We’re also thrilled to be featuring an extract from Alain Mabanckou’s touching and witty autobiographical novel, Tomorrow I’ll Be Twenty, as well as poetry by award-winning performance artist and poet Inua Ellams.

We hope you enjoy this month's issue of Litro. It’s rare to have a chance to explore unfamiliar territory. It’s even rarer to do so in such good company.

Andrew Lloyd-Jones

EDITOR November 2012

CONTENTS Tracey Iceton GRASS WARS

06

Raoul Colvile

14

Inua Ellams

17

HARARE REVISITED

FRAGMENTS OF BONE.

Komla Dumor A NEW FOCUS ON AFRICA

Alain Mabanckou Photo by: Georges Seguin

20 24

TOMORROW I’LL BE TWENTY extract

Ailsa Thom MENENGAI

Events

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GRASS WARS

Tracey Iceton

The herd wakes me, hungry again and baying for grass, green and juicy. They huddle round the basher, lowing and groaning.

Their rolling backsides butt up against the bent branches. Their snot-dripping snouts nose into gaps between the hide-roof and branch-walls. One snorts right over my face. Hot, stale breath clouds over me; spittle rains onto my cheeks and into my eyes.

I sit up and rub my face on my robe. Next to me Shahuri continues to snore. It’s his turn to do the milking. I reach over and shake his smooth black shoulder. He grunts like a hog and tries to roll away from my shaking hand. I slap his leg.

“It’s light, get up.”

He sits and rubs sleep from his eyes.

“I’m up.”

“Only half-way.”

I crawl out of the basher. The cows have closed us in during the night. The cold keeps them near the fire. The thorn corral is really for the lions. They’d gorge on the herd given the chance. On me and Shahuri as well. I keep the AK47 for them. For the Nyangatom too. Thieving bastards.

I push tan flanks out of the way. Gentle slaps and sharper prods with my stick if they are stubborn. Squatting over the dead grey ash, I poke around in the embers hoping to find something glowing. I told Shahuri to build it up more last night. If he wants fire he can get his arse out here and get busy with the sticks. I find the faintest breath of heat from right in the fire’s heart. Two handfuls of dry grass, the morsel of heat clutched between them and three soft blows. The grass flares up fiercely as Shahuri emerges from the basher. I feed more grass to the flames.

“Good fire, eh?” he says, “Which cow you want me to milk, Aratula?”

“That one.” I point out one with hanging udders. He takes up the basin and starts pulling on the teats, his fuzzy black head buried in her tan side.

While he’s making himself useful I dismantle the basher. Crushed and crumpled grass shows where our bodies slept. I take up my bow and draw an arrow from the quiver. The arrow is tipped with flint. The point is sharp. Sunlight winks off it. There is no flight.

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HARARE REVISITED Raoul Colvile

There is no souring air in memories, no corrupting bacteria, no dirtying teeth. Memories instead remain vacuum packed, their fruits refrigerated, plush and solid amongst the parts of the past we have each lived through and then quietly forgotten.

Harare was always a plum to me, a gorgeous memory; blue-black, full and ripe, luxurious and sweet to the tongue. I recall a veranda fringed city, snug with waiters, sunk into earth that feels hot and old. A place punctured with plentiful, crystalline pools. Impressive, near utopian. Of all the things that my unconscious cast away, its grip on Harare, that boyhood visit, never slackened.

In the memory, the hour of your approach to the city does not matter. The airport is expanding then, the city well lit at night.

British Airways are operating a direct service. But now, from a private jet, I am unable to see the broken roofs below. Night has unfurled itself, stretched out across the ground, and the land is a black blanket. From the plane’s window the terrain below holds no mirror to the stars. Harare is without power it seems; mute to sight. The faintest bump as we touch down. Despite recent landings in places their tongues are less familiar in shaping, the pilots (two slabs of tough Rhodesian meat amongst the levers of the cockpit) seem edgier on this arrival. I do not press them; the heartbeat of the past double taps me as the wheels meet the ground. I see my family, returning from Victoria Falls. My sister with a crayon colouring book, hand like a typewriter in fast forward, pinging back and forth, weaving an incantation against her fear of flying, next to me. She is just another small, safe, holiday maker in the packed passenger cabin, another of the many tourists who disembark to see well groomed runway, lines of other planes like cards in a pack, a strongly-lit tower. A vision in order.

But in the present the jet’s door rises only into inky skies and it is the smell of Zimbabwe, unchanged, that greets me. Sensory compensation; the prominence of its reach, its incense, where the order of the eye once reigned. We peer across the cracking concrete, at motionless dark. The airport seems abandoned, only the sigh of our engines cooling for company. One of the pilots stoops from the cockpit, “Number One has just left”, he says and gestures around. Even the pilots refer to him that way. “It’s closed for him. We were lucky to get in.” We aren’t without our own influence then, but still we huddle together in the cavernous bus which takes us to the terminal. It is built for fifty, rotten with ghosts.

Getting closer, finally I see faint emergency lights, bleeding from 14

FRAGMENTS OF BONE. Inua Ellams

Let me begin again, I say, as the bar blurs invisible, its volume reduced to the merest suggestion of others and it’s just us spotlit in the black womb-like silence of theatre and your question themes the play; let me begin again: I went to church last Sunday.

The pastor preached: put not your faith in man who only is good as his next breath; align your faith with he who gives breath.

Here I stutter, my answer splintering like fragments of bone against the mud soil of memory. Moments before, I recalled

the call to prayer: In the Name of Allah Most Gracious, Most Merciful — the slow unfurling Imam’s son’s voice as dusk touched the courtyard, the dust settling, the sun solemnly bowed on the horizon — thin as a prayer mat — and the gathered performing ablutions: Bismillah, they say, washing hands, mouths, nostrils, faces, arms, head, ears, feet, kneeling to pray Allah Is Great, God Is Great, they say.

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A NEW FOCUS ON AFRICA Komla Dumor It was 3:30 in the afternoon sometime in 2010 and I was just about to leave for Heathrow Terminal 5 — virtually my second home — to catch a flight to Mozambique when my daughter loudly inquired, “Daddy, is everybody poor in Africa?”

I decided the taxi outside could wait for at least few more minutes. “Why are you asking such a question my dear?” Her answer — “Because every time I see Africa on telly they don’t have nice clothes and their houses are really small and the children are all sad.”

For the next five minutes I tried to explain a few hundred years of a history of exploitation, sometimes questionable leadership, and economic choices. An impossible task. But at the same time, I wanted to leave her with the level of optimism and energy I experience when I visit Botswana, Tanzania, Kenya and elsewhere across Africa. My thoughts boiled down to a single question: Who owns Africa’s image? It’s a question that is relevant and compelling, regardless of your response.

Over the past few years a silent revolution has been occurring across Africa. Some people are very much aware of it, while others are just coming to the realisation. But there are still others who are stuck in an old view of Africa and its challenges. The fact that most of the fastest growing economies in the world are in Africa is lost on them.

For some in the media, Africa is still a corrupt incompetent at the mercy of the random benevolence of rock musicians or Hollywood stars who care more about African children than Africans themselves. These tiresome stereotypes of day-to-day life in Africa are not only outdated but increasingly irrelevant to an emerging continent.

Some networks seem obsessed with stories of child witches and feed us with a constant diet of war weary, famine stricken lives.

In 2009 I was asked by the BBC to anchor a new television program about Africa called Africa Business Report. For the next 2 and a half years, I racked up close to 200,000 air miles travelling to Uranium mines in the Namibian desert, diamond centres in Botswana, fish markets in Dar es Salaam, oil rigs off the coast of Ghana, real estate projects in Rwanda. I held conversations with bankers, businessmen and women, entrepreneurs and politicians, as well as a few African billionaires. I visited 22 countries in total that captured the real meaning of Africa’s rise.

I have made new friends and heard fascinating stories. For every city I visited I make it a personal point to find my way to the 20

TOMORROW I’LL BE TWENTY extract

Alain Mabanckou We’re sitting outside the front door. Maman Martine is scaling the fish we’re going to eat this evening when everyone’s here. It doesn’t matter if it’s not beef and beans. I eat everything here, and I pretend I like everything. I can be fussy with maman Pauline but not with maman Martine, it would really upset her.

At home there’s only Mbombie, Maximilien and little Félicienne, who’s just pissed on me when I was being really kind and giving her her bottle. I don’t know where the other children have gone. Yaya Gaston left early this morning for the port, and papa Roger won’t get back till sundown. My other brothers and sisters ought to be here too, because it’s the end of year holiday.

Seeing I can’t stop looking at the white bits in her hair, maman Martine says, ‘Ah yes, I’m not young like your mother Pauline, now. She must be the same age as one of my little sisters, the youngest, she’s just twenty seven, she still lives in Kinkosso.’

She looks up at the sky, murmuring, as though she was talking to someone else. She begins to talk, and she tells me how she grew up in Kinkosso and that to get to the village from the district of Bouenza you have to go in an Isuzu truck which takes four or five days. You go through other villages, across bridges which are just two trees laid side by side from one bank of the river to the other, so the trucks can pass.

The only time they ever replace the trees is when there’s an accident, and lots of people die. That’s where she and papa Roger met.

I like the way maman Martine’s voice sounds when she tells the story about her and papa Roger. Somehow she puts a bit of magic into it.

I sort of believe her, but sometimes it sounds a bit like one of those stories from the time when animals and men could talk to each other about how to live together in peace.

When maman Martine talks about when she met papa Roger, she has a smile that lights up her whole face, and smoothes out the little lines, she looks young again, like maman Pauline. Her face is all smooth, her skin is like a baby’s, her eyes shine and you forget about her grey hair. I imagine her as a young girl, turning boys’ heads. Somehow she manages to forget I’m there, and imagine it’s someone different listening to her, her eyes are somewhere above my head, not focussed on me directly. She’s talking to someone who doesn’t exist, and I think: ‘That often happens, it happens all the time, grown ups are all like that, they’re always talking to people from their past. I’m still too little to have a past, that’s why I can’t talk to myself, pretending to talk to someone invisible.’

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MENENGAI Ailsa Thom

Menengai, Alex our guide tells us, means “the place where God is not”. It is a word from the Masai, the great African tribe that traverse the land with their cattle, naming the places as they find them. Looking down into the vast green caldera, all that remains of the immense volcano, I can imagine the handsomely dressed Masai, their scarlet cloaks vivid in the foliage, and their great herds. A desultory drift of smoke catches Nick’s eye.

“Is that from the volcano? Is it still alive?” He is almost excited.

Alex tells him local people often go there to make charcoal.

No one lives in the caldera; it is too hot, too difficult to reach.

There are no animals either. A few houses perch near the western rim, but mainly people live in the scatterings of buildings in the wide flat valley. On the way up the steep dirt road, we had passed through a village — painted signs declaring a primary school, a shop, and a hotel — at the point that Alex said was half-way. We had passed donkeys, strung around with empty 50 gallon plastic drums, walking in patience towards us. And women drudging, backs bent under sacking stuffed with charcoal or firewood, held to their bodies by straps around their foreheads.

At one point, the long dusty road had almost defeated Alex’s car.

The radiator fizzed and boiled, and we sat in silence, listening to it, blocking the rutted track of fine golden earth. When it was calm again, he restarted the engine, and our sweat cooled on our skin in the revived breeze. At the top, Alex drew the car up in the shade of an empty kiosk. There were only a few stall holders, stone carvings and necklaces on display. Few tourists take the time to come to the lowering green ridge. There isn’t much to see, apart from the view itself.

Teenage school children mill in small groups around the edge of the crater. I take out my camera, still new, still expensive, wary of both the dust and the curiosity. Four girls appear in shot, as I line up the digital screen with the plain of Nakuru and Lake Elementeita beyond. Grouping together, they eye the brushed steel with envious curiosity in their open faces. Their uniforms are fresh, clean, and show no signs of wear, and their shoes fit their feet. These are children from well-off Kenyan families, and suddenly I don’t feel so bad about my own privileges.

The three of us slip and skid further along the rim, down a slope to a promontory. Underfoot are tiny pieces of pumice, light and aerated, in shades from yellow to grey.

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EVENTS THIS MONTH

It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas – so we have a special selection of seasonal events and attractions for you to choose from this month – including a Santa’s Eye View of London, festive carols, seasonal menus, and of course, the traditional holiday pantomime. Listings compiled by Litro’s Alex James.

Make Merry this Christmas at the EDF Energy London Eye From November 2012 - 1 January 2013

Take in London's spectacular Christmas lights from 135 metres above the city by booking the Mulled Wine and Mince Pie Private Capsule. Guests will also delight in the luxury by being served by a private host as they get into the festive spirit. And if you prefer a more glamorous celebration, why not treat yourselves to Christmas merrymaking with the London Eye's Champagne Cocktail Capsule? Guests will be waited on by a host as they choose from a range of cocktails including peach bellini, Kir Royale or a classic Champagne cocktail, all whilst taking in the stunning panoramic views of the Capital.

Robin Hood Greenwich Theatre, 22 November - 6 January 2013

This all-singing, all-dancing pantomime is one for the whole family and follows last year's spectacular production of Aladdin making it one not to be missed.

The Snowman Peacock Theatre, 28 November 2012 - 6 January 2013 The stage show based on Raymond Briggs' classic book and its subsequent film has become a much-loved festive tradition at the Peacock Theatre, and returns for a record-breaking 15th year. Featuring Howard Blake's Walking in the Air, performed by a live orchestra. This is the perfect Christmas treat for all the family with its wonderful mix of storytelling, spectacle and magic.

All aboard the Liberty Express The Liberty Christmas windows 2012 take inspiration from the Victorian age of the steam train and specifically Queen Victoria's train carriage which was a decadent saloon designed for the most opulent of comfort. The Liberty Express departs on the 8th September with the opening of the Liberty Christmas shop on the 4th floor. This year it has expanded to take over the central atrium of the 4th floor too which opens a week after the east atrium gallery. Themes for Christmas baubles reflect Victoriana with a strong Dickensian overture celebrating the 200th birthday 37

EVENTS THIS MONTH of Charles Dickens this year.

Old Royal Naval College Carol Concert 2 December 2012

The Old Royal Naval College will launch its Christmas celebrations with a Christmas Carol Concert in the Chapel on Sunday 2 December. From 6.30pm, carol lovers can join Greenwich and Bexley Community Hospice for a torch-lit procession by the Sea Cadets with carols led by the ORNC Chapel Choir. Tickets are priced from £20, which includes a glass of mulled wine and a mince pie.

Carol concert 2012 in aid of Blind Veterans UK St Marylebone Parish Church, 4 December 2012

With readings and addresses by TV star Sarah Parish, former Defence minister, The Rt Hon Nicholas Soames MP, HRH Crown Prince Pavlos of Greece, Commodore Barry Bryant CVO RN and Blind Veterans UK member Billy Baxter. Music will be provided by Seraphim Trumpets.

Natural History Museum Ice Rink From 2 November 2012

Set within the historic Victorian grounds of the Natural History Museum, the ice rink is decorated with 76,000 fairy lights that adorn the surrounding tall trees with a backdrop of one of London's landmark locations. The impressive 1,000 square metre ice rink is one of London's must-see winter attractions. Guests can warm up in the cosmopolitan and cosy Café Bar, offering a menu of sumptuous food, hot and cold drinks and entertainment for all to enjoy.

Skate at Somerset House 16 November 2012 - 6 January 2013 Somerset House ice rink returns for its annual season from, with a spectacular programme of activities on ice in a beautiful setting.

This season's highlights include, Club Nights with a glittering line up of DJs, a luxury pop-up shopping mall called the Christmas Arcade, Skate School and Penguin Club for the children, and a great selection of food and drink at Tom's Skate Lounge, devised by Michelin-starred chef Tom Aikens, and Fernandez & Wells café and bar, located in Somerset House's East Wing.

Christmas at Mestizo - Mexican Restaurant & Tequila Bar 38

1 - 23 December 2012 Head to Mestizo for a special Christmas celebration, with 3 authentic Mexican menus for you to enjoy. You can choose from the Christmas menus or stick with the authentic Mexican a la carte menu. The tequila bar displays over 230 tequila, and the tequila cocktail menu provides a selection of 40+ tequila & mezcal cocktails. With Mexican owners, chefs and staff, Mestizo is where Mexico meets London.

Taste of Christmas ExCeL London, 7 - 9 December 2012 Taste of Christmas is the UK's biggest Christmas food festival, a celebration of food, drink, restaurants and world-renowned chefs.

To celebrate the world coming to London in 2012, this year's Taste of Christmas will be launching a brand new feature called 'Festive Flavours of the World'. This will showcase the best quality international festive cuisines and take visitors on a journey of discovery to find out how different countries and cultures celebrate Christmas.

Alongside a mouth-watering international feast, the festival will showcase unique Christmas gifts, celebrity chef cooking demonstrations and expert master-classes in essential skills for Christmas dining, seasonal baking and festive decorations.

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Publisher & Editor-in-Chief: Eric Akoto eric.akoto@litro.co.uk Magazine Editor: Andrew Lloyd-Jones andrew.lloydjones@litro.co.uk Poetry Editor: Ian Parks Contributing Editors: Katy Darby and Sophie Lewis Listings Editor: Alex James listings@litro.co.uk Online Literary & Culture Editor: Emily Ding emily.ding@litro.co.uk Assistant Online Literary & Culture Editor: Robin Stevens robin.stevens@litro.co.uk Litro Lab Podcast Producer: Emily Cleaver litrolab@litro.co.uk Magazine Layout & Design: Laura Hannum Online Film & Arts Editor: Becky Ayre becky.ayre@litro.co.uk Sales & Marketing: Angelina Wangsha and Emma Osment

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LITRO | 120 Africa

Harare was always a plum to me, a gorgeous memory; blue-black, full and ripe, luxurious and sweet to the tongue. I recall a veranda fringed city, snug with waiters, sunk into earth that feels hot and old. A place punctured with plentiful, crystalline pools. Impressive, near utopian. Of all the things that my unconscious cast away, its grip on Harare, that boyhood visit, never slackened.

Harare Revisited by Raoul Colvile page 14 Cover Art: David Adjaye OBE www.litro.co.uk ISBN 978-0-9554245-5-7 43