Narrating the New African Diaspora
21st Century Nigerian Literature in Context
Maximilian Feldner
University of Graz
Graz, Austria
African Histories and Modernities
ISBN 978-3-030-05742-8 ISBN 978-3-030-05743-5 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-05743-5
Library of Congress Control Number: 2018966705
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019
This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed.
The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors, and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
Cover illustration: michal812 / Alamy Stock Photo
This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG
The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland
1 Introduction 1
2 Contexts: New African Diaspora, Nigerian Literature, and the Global Literar y Market 13
3 Biafra and Nigerian Identity Formation in Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Half of a Yellow Sun (2006) 37
4 City of Stories: The Lagos Imaginar y in Chris Abani’s GraceLand (2004) and Sefi Atta’s Swallow (2010) 61
5 The Prison of 1990s Nigeria: Helon Habila’s Waiting for an Angel (2002) 85
6 Leaving Nigeria: Ike Oguine, Sefi Atta, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie 107
7 Exploring the Limitations of Afropolitanism in Taiye Selasi’s Ghana Must Go (2013) 127
8 Second-Generation Nigerians in England: Helen Oyeyemi’s The Icarus Girl (2005) and the Negative Experience of Hybridity
9 Returning to Nigeria: Teju Cole’s Every Day Is for the Thief (2007) and Sefi Atta’s Everything Good Will Come (2005)
10 Return Migration in Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Americanah (2013)
11 Conclusion
CHAPTER 1
Introduction
Over the first two decades of the twenty-first century, an impressive body of work by Nigerian novelists has emerged. The most prominent among them is Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, whose work has found considerable success and whose novel Americanah (2013) created a stir in AngloAmerican literar y circles. At the same time, Teju Cole and Taiye Selasi published their novels, Open City (2012) and Ghana Must Go (2013), to great acclaim and attention, while Helen Oyeyemi has made a name for herself by publishing one popular novel after the other. The ground for what can be seen as a resurgence of Nigerian literature was prepared in the early 2000s, when novelists such as Helon Habila (Waiting for an Angel, 2002; Measuring Time, 2007), Chris Abani (GraceLand, 2004), Sefi Atta (Everything Good Will Come, 2005; Swallow, 2010; News from Home, 2010; A Bit of Difference, 2013), and Adichie (Purple Hibiscus, 2003; Half of a Yellow Sun, 2006; The Thing Around Your Neck, 2009) wrote a number of remarkable books.
These writers represent a generation of Nigerian novelists that has achieved “near instant canonization” (Adesanmi and Dunton 2005, 11), and with other Nigerian authors, including Ike Oguine, Chika Unigwe, Okey Ndibe, and Segun Afolabi, they have contributed to what critics Pius Adesanmi and Chris Dunton (2008, viii) call a “phenomenal revival of the Nigerian novel”. There are no signs that this trend of internationally visible Nigerian literature is going to abate any time soon. On the contrary,
© The Author(s) 2019 M. Feldner, Narrating the New African Diaspora, African Histories and Modernities, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-05743-5_1
M. FELDNER
several young Nigerian novelists have published notable novels since 2015, such as Chigozie Obioma (The Fishermen, 2015; shortlisted for the 2015 Booker Prize), Chinelo Okparanta (Under the Udala Trees, 2015), A. Igoni Barrett (Blackass, 2015), and Chibundu Onuzo (Welcome to Lagos, 2017). Together, these writers represent one of the most vital and interesting forces of contemporary literature production.
Living in Europe and the United States while retaining strong connections to Nigeria, these novelists are members of the new African diaspora. They can therefore be subsumed under the heading of ‘Nigerian diaspora literature’. At the heart of this literature lies the fundamental tension of living abroad while being drawn back to Nigeria. This tension is made explicit in a passage from Teju Cole’s Every Day Is for the Thief (2014), in which the protagonist thinks about returning from New York to Lagos. He decides against the return, only to immediately contradict himself, claiming that he needs to move to Lagos:
I decide that I love my own tranquillity too much to muck about in other people’s troubles. I am not going to move back to Lagos. No way. I don’t care if there are a million untold stories, I don’t care if that, too, is a contribution to the atmosphere of surrender. I am going to move back to Lagos. I must. (69)
In his indecision and inability to commit himself to one of the two options, the protagonist expresses a dilemma that, albeit usually not this explicitly, informs much of his peers’ work. Nigeria exerts an undeniable gravitational pull on their characters, a pull that is offset by their difficulties and struggles of actually living in the country. The resulting tension is a typical, perhaps even constitutive, feature of contemporary Nigerian literature.1 The novelists of the Nigerian diaspora divide their time and storytelling attention between the United States, the United Kingdom, and Nigeria. Accordingly, it is not surprising that two dominant areas of concern in their literature are experiences of migration and diaspora, on the one hand, and representations of Nigeria, on the other. Nigerian diaspora literature is therefore positioned in a field of tension whose outer poles can be described as transnational/transcultural hybridity and national identity. Never reaching any of these endpoints, the novels are productively placed between them. They are more or less attracted to one side or the other and together cover most of the spectrum between the poles. Pursuing an analysis along two interlinked lines of inquiry—expressions of
migratory and diasporic experiences in the literature and the varied forms of literary engagement with Nigeria—this study attempts to map the literature of the Nigerian diaspora. After placing this literature in its socio-political, historical, and discursive contexts, the study will present a literary analysis of representative novels and short stories, considering their central literary and aesthetic features as well as their narrative strategies.
The discussion of the selected texts will explore distinct positions between the two poles. It starts in Nigeria in the late 1960s, analysing the way Adichie’s Half of a Yellow Sun (2006) deals with the Biafran War. Then it moves on to literary representations of Lagos in the 1980s, specifically in Chris Abani’s GraceLand (2004) and Sefi Atta’s Swallow (2010), before analysing the depiction of the oppressive military regimes in 1990s Nigeria in Helon Habila’s Waiting for an Angel (2002). Leaving Nigeria, the study looks at how the experience of immigrating to the United States is depicted in Ike Oguine’s A Squatter’s Tale (2000) and short stories by Adichie and Sefi Atta. The following chapter on Taiye Selasi’s Ghana Must Go (2013) examines ‘Afropolitanism’, ostensibly a successful form of African transnationalism. It shows that the hybridity of migrants’ children can lead to fragmented and disconnected identities, an insight that is confirmed and further explored by Helen Oyeyemi’s The Icarus Girl (2005). Teju Cole’s Every Day Is for the Thief (2007) and Sefi Atta’s Everything Good Will Come (2005) then depict the return to Nigeria. The concerns addressed in all these novels culminate in Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Americanah (2013), a novel that exemplifies the transnational shuttling between different countries, usually Nigeria, the United States, and England, that is characteristic of the diasporic and migratory movements in Nigerian diaspora literature. Americanah is also a typical example for this literature’s engagement with Nigeria, portraying the country and contributing to its imaginary in a detailed and complex manner.
In this sense, the novelists of the Nigerian diaspora and many of their characters are representatives of what Kwame Anthony Appiah (2007, 213) calls “rooted cosmopolitanism”, a cosmopolitanism that is partial and attached to narrower and more local communities. Thus, they fit into the pattern described by Akin Adesokan (2011, 179) for postcolonial African artists today. They may live in Paris or New York but are also “engaged with the ‘old home’, out of a sense both of personal or political moralism and of realism”. Toyin Falola (2014, 11) similarly notes the influence Africa has on the members of the diaspora:
M. FELDNER
Located in other parts of the world, Africa creates a meaning for their existence as a cultural source to draw on in order to live and survive, or even as a point of reference to compare and contrast their new places of abode with their places of origins, their successes and failures, the meaning of life, and the understanding of their destinies.
The writers have left Nigeria to live abroad, and yet they remain attached to the country, often returning home permanently or for visits. Novels written abroad engage with Nigeria but, due to the authors’ international experiences and transcultural perspectives, their stories avoid parochialism and aggressive patriotism. They are marked by a combination of expressing a devotion to Nigeria without unduly idealizing it and highlighting its faults and problems while explaining and contextualizing them. Like other African artists, this generation of Nigerian writers is therefore “comfortable being both local and global at the same time” (Gikandi 2014, 243).
This duality is also inscribed in the term ‘Nigerian diaspora literature’, which combines the aspect of this literature’s Nigerianness and the tendency towards migratory, diasporic, or cosmopolitan transnationalism. One advantage of placing the focus on Nigerian diaspora literature is that it connects the relatively straightforward national frame as a selection criterion (novelists from Nigeria) with a transnational perspective. This avoids the parochialism and restrictiveness often associated with the notion of a national literature, while remaining manageable as a literary corpus for analysis. Another reason for the selection of texts discussed here is simple pragmatism. The subject of this study is the fiction of the Nigerian diaspora because it is their novels, published in Europe and the United States, that are readily available. Literature published only in Nigeria is difficult to acquire. Outside the country it can only be accessed, if at all, in special libraries such as the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture of the New York Public Library.
For the purposes of this study, ‘Nigerian diaspora literature’ includes every anglophone novelist who is or was a member of the Nigerian diaspora, that is, every novelist who was born in Nigeria and left it for a significant stretch of time. In addition, it includes novelists who were born and raised abroad by Nigerian parents but are closely connected to Nigeria. The novels selected for analysis fit Wendy Griswold’s (2006, 522) very basic definition of the Nigerian novel, which is “fiction of sixty or more pages, intended for adults or near-adults, and written in English by someone born in or a permanent resident of Nigeria”. But while Griswold’s
definition “excludes children of Nigerians born and raised abroad”, Nigerian diaspora literature also includes novelists who were born abroad to Nigerian parents, such as Taiye Selasi and Teju Cole. Even if Nigeria is not their place of birth, it serves as an important source of meaning to them. An alternative frame for selection could be based on the texts’ thematic preoccupation with the diaspora, which would yield a very similar section of novelists. But since attempts at grouping various novelists together are invariably more or less marked by arbitrariness, the borders of what exactly constitutes Nigerian diaspora literature are necessarily fuzzy.
In temporal terms, Nigerian diaspora literature means contemporary literature, that is, novels and short stories published in the early twentyfirst centur y. The year 2000 appears a convenient starting point for several reasons. It may be as arbitrary as any other date, but the turn of the millennium has the advantage of being an emotionally charged date signifying, as Ogaga Okuyade (2014, xxviii) suggests, a “symbolic turning point”. Politically, the new century seemed to ring in a new era in Nigeria, as, since the death of General Abacha in 1998, the country has been in the process of being turned from a military dictatorship into a democracy. In literature, the Nigerian novel has experienced unprecedented success in the first decade of the new century and reached new heights in terms of quality (see Adesanmi and Dunton 2005, 10–11; Dunton 2008, 68). The early 2000s ushered in a new generation of Nigerian literature and saw a revival of the Nigerian novel after it had supposedly been in decline throughout most of the 1990s (see Nnolim 2006, 8).2 Apart from Ben Okri’s win of the Booker Prize in 1991, the 1990s in Nigeria are usually seen as a period of scarcity in terms of novelistic output. It was a period dominated by poetry during which narrative prose literature received little attention (see Adesanmi and Dunton 2005, 8). The literary revival of the last two decades is not limited to Nigeria and makes plausible Thomas Hale’s (2006, 19) optimistic claim that African literature more generally “is bursting at the seams at the beginning of the 21st century” and that the “21st century will be the century of African literature”. Most prominent among the novelists who brought about the resurgence of Nigerian literature are those writers who are the subject of this book: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Sefi Atta, Helon Habila, Chris Abani, Helen Oyeyemi, Taiye Selasi, Teju Cole, and Ike Oguine.
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie is the prototypical representative of Nigerian diaspora literature. She is arguably the most visible, well-known, and popular Nigerian novelist in the twenty-first century, and both her
M. FELDNER
personal trajectory and her literary work illustrate the two major tendencies of Nigerian diaspora literature this study is structured around, namely matters of migration and representations of Nigeria.3 This can, in condensed form, be seen in her short story collection The Thing Around Your Neck (2010), which comprises stories that are centrally occupied with these two sets of thematic concerns. Born in Enugu in Nigeria in 1977, Adichie’s first two novels, Purple Hibiscus (2003) and Half of a Yellow Sun (2006), deal with life in post-independence Nigeria. The Nigeria depicted in Purple Hibiscus, a novel that explores familial relationships in a postcolonial society, is one afflicted with military dictatorships and economic troubles, and can easily be imagined to be the Nigeria that Adichie herself grew up in and eventually left to move to the United States when she was nineteen. Half of a Yellow Sun is concerned with the impact of the Biafran War on the country’s inhabitants, the civil war that threatened to tear Nigeria apart in the late 1960s. Adichie wrote this novel from the perspective of the Igbo, which makes this examination of Nigerian history also a more personal story of her parents’ generation. Both novels, written in the United States, display her strong interest in and engagement with Nigeria, which is typical for other novelists of the Nigerian diaspora as well. Her third novel, Americanah (2013), explores issues of cultural exchange and migration to the United States. It thus also reflects her own life and career in the States, just as the protagonist’s return to Nigeria at the end of the novel parallels Adichie’s own return. Most of her biographical accounts state that “Adichie divides her time between America and Nigeria” (Adichie 2014a, b), which makes her a typical member of the Nigerian diaspora.
Sefi Atta (born 1964 in Lagos) similarly moves between Nigeria, the United States, and England. Like Adichie she is therefore attached to several countries, which is also reflected in her literature, especially her third novel, A Bit of Difference (2013), and her short story collection, News from Home (2012). Her first two novels, Everything Good Will Come (2005) and Swallow (2010), engage with Nigeria in a detailed and complex manner from an inside perspective, depicting a young woman’s coming of age in Nigeria in the 1990s and the struggles of another young woman in Lagos in the 1980s, respectively. After Helon Habila (1967, Kaltungo) graduated from the University of Jos in 1995, he moved to England, and later to the United States. Like Adichie and Atta, he divides his time between Nigeria and the United States, which, however, is not reflected in his novels, as all three of them, Waiting for an Angel (2002),
Measuring Time (2007), and Oil on Water (2011), are exclusively set in Nigeria. Although he is a member of the Nigerian diaspora, he is not concerned with matters of migration in his literature. This he largely shares with Chris Abani (1966, Afikpo), who similarly left Nigeria to live in England and the United States. His first novel, GraceLand (2004), an exploration of life in Lagos in the 1980s, which ends with its protagonist leaving Nigeria, is a key text of Nigerian diaspora literature and has garnered much critical attention.4 With his two subsequent novels, however, The Virgin of Flames (2007) and The Secret History of Las Vegas (2014), he completely diverges from the literary patterns of his peers so that they cannot be subsumed under the heading of Nigerian diaspora literature. In the novel A Squatter’s Tale (2000), Ike Oguine (1967), who lives in Nigeria, tells a story of migration in which a young Nigerian leaving his country has to realize that life in the United States differs from what he hoped for and expected.
Helen Oyeyemi (1984), Taiye Selasi (1979), and Teju Cole (1975) were born to Nigerian parents but grew up abroad. Oyeyemi has published five novels, a short story collection, and two plays, and is thus the most prolific among the Nigerian diaspora novelists. Her first novel, The Icarus Girl (2005), and Selasi’s Ghana Must Go (2013) narrativize in fictional form the experiences of growing up between different cultures. Teju Cole’s output includes his novelistic account of visiting Lagos, Every Day Is for the Thief (2014), the celebrated novel, Open City (2012), as well as numerous essays, and literary online experiments, such as a story told in tweets on Twitter. There are many other novelists whose work displays the tendencies of Nigerian diaspora literature in similar ways and would deserve in-depth discussion but can, due to limited space, only be mentioned in passing. These novelists include Segun Afolabi, A. Igoni Barrett, Diana Evans, Okey Ndibe, Adaobi Tricia Nwaubani, Chigozie Obioma, Irenosen Okojie, Chinelo Okparanta, Yewande Omotoso, Chibundu Onuzo, E.C. Osondu, and Chika Unigwe.5
Nigerian diaspora literature, especially the writings of Adichie, Abani, and Oyeyemi, has certainly been met with attention and interest. This is evident in the considerable number of academic articles that have been published on these writers over the last few years. Many of these articles either attempt to grasp this new literature theoretically (Adesanmi 2006; Adesokan 2012), deal with one particular novelist, such as Adichie, Abani, and Oyeyemi (Andrade 2011; Mason 2014; Ouma 2014), or focus on a specific element in the works of several writers, such as the figure of the
M. FELDNER
child (Hron 2008) and the function of the storyteller (Krishnan 2014). Several of the articles are collected in special issues of relevant journals, such as the May 2005 issue of English in Africa, with its focus on new Nigerian writing (Adesanmi and Dunton 2005) or the Summer 2008 issue of Research in African Literatures, which was dedicated to Nigeria’s third generation novel (Adesanmi and Dunton 2008). The increased attention that this literature receives can also be seen in the yearly review issue of The Journal of Commonwealth Literature, which, since 2008, has included a section on West African literature (Hungbo 2009). In addition, a few collections and book-length studies on one or two individual authors exist, such as Atta (Collins 2015), Adichie (Emenyonu 2017), and Adichie and Abani (Tunca 2014).
So far, however, there has been no book-length study dealing with a broad selection of current Nigerian novelists collectively under the comprehensive heading of Nigerian diaspora literature. This study therefore presents the first survey of twenty-first-century anglophone Nigerian narrative literature, focusing on the ways the writers render literary the various experiences of the Nigerian diaspora both in Nigeria and in the global North. Theirs is a literature that, being about diaspora, migration, hybridity, and transculturality, fictionalizes the increasingly connected world that we inhabit in the wake of globalization, a world in which more people than ever before have been on the move, uprooted, and living between cultures. At the same time, as a literature of and about Nigeria, the novels present detailed, complex, and multidimensional portrayals of Nigeria and thus feature voices from a part of the world that is seldom considered in discourses of the global North. In sum, Nigerian diaspora literature certainly offers a relevant and insightful perspective of Nigeria and its diaspora.
Notes
1. This tension is not exclusively a phenomenon in Nigerian literature but can be found in fiction from across anglophone Africa (see Sackeyfio 2017). Just to mention a few examples, in West Africa there are Ghanaian Ayesha Harruna Attah’s Harmattan Rain (2008), Sierra Leonean Ishmael Beah’s Radiance of Tomorrow (2014), Sierra Leonean Aminatta Forna’s Ancestor Stones (2006) and The Memory of Love (2010), and Liberian Sakui Malakpa’s The Village Boy (2002). From other regions of Africa come Cameroonian Imbolo Mbue’s Behold the Dreamers (2016), Zimbabwean NoViolet
Bulawayo’s We Need New Names (2014), Zimbabwean Brian Chikwava’s Harare North (2010), and Ethiopian Dinaw Mengestu’s All Our Names (2015).
2. Incidentally, the year 2000 also saw the end of the influential Heinemann African Writers Series (AWS), which considerably shaped the production and perception of Nigerian fiction. Ike Oguine’s A Squatter’s Tale (2000), the earliest of the novels covered in my study, is the last novel published by Heinemann AWS.
3. For a comprehensive list of the many academic articles on Adichie that have been published since the publication of her first novel, Purple Hibiscus in 2003, see the bibliography compiled by Daria Tunca (online).
4. See the bibliography on Abani compiled by Daria Tunca (online).
5. This obviously is not and cannot be an exhaustive list of anglophone novelists from Nigeria or even the Nigerian diaspora. There are many more noteworthy writers, who, for a variety of reasons, could not be included in this study, such as Akin Adesokan, Unoma Azuah, Akachi Adimora-Ezeigbo, Biyi Bandele-Thomas, Jude Dibia, Uzodinma Iweala, Dulue Mbachu, Maik Nwosu, Promise Ogochukwu Okekwe, and Tanure Ojaide. And even this list of names merely manages to scratch the surface of the novel in Nigeria today.
BiBliography
Abani, Chris. 2004. GraceLand. New York: Picador.
———. 2007. The Virgin of Flames. New York: Penguin Books.
———. 2014. The Secret History of Las Vegas. New York: Penguin Books.
Adesanmi, Pius. 2006. Third Generation African Literatures and Contemporary Theorising. In The Study of Africa. Vol I. Disciplinary and Interdisciplinary Encounters, ed. Paul Tiyambe Zeleza, 105–116. Dakar: CODESRIA.
Adesanmi, Pius, and Chris Dunton. 2005. Nigeria’s Third Generation Writing: Historiography and Preliminary Theoretical Considerations. English in Africa 32 (1): 7–19.
———. 2008. Introduction: Everything Good Is Raining: Provisional Notes on the Nigerian Novel of the Third Generation. Research in African Literatures 39 (2): vii–xii.
Adesokan, Akin. 2011. Postcolonial Artists and Global Aesthetics. Bloomington/ Indianapolis: Indiana University Press.
———. 2012. New African Writing and the Question of Audience. Research in African Literatures 43 (3): 1–20.
Adichie, Chimamanda Ngozi. 2003. Purple Hibiscus. New York: Anchor.
———. 2009a. Half of a Yellow Sun [2006]. London: Harper Perennial.
———. 2009b. The Thing Around Your Neck. London: Fourth Estate. INTRODUCTION
M. FELDNER
———. 2014a. Americanah [2013]. London: Fourth Estate.
———. 2014b. We Should All Be Feminists. London: Fourth Estate.
Andrade, Susan. 2011. Adichie’s Genealogies: National and Feminine Novels. Research in African Literatures 42 (2): 91–101.
Appiah, Kwame Anthony. 2007. The Ethics of Identity. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Atta, Sefi. 2008. Everything Good Will Come [2005]. Northampton: Interlink Publishing.
———. 2010a. News from Home. Northampton: Interlink Books.
———. 2010b. Swallow. Northampton: Interlink Books.
———. 2015. A Bit of Difference [2013]. London: Fourth Estate.
Attah, Ayesha Harruna. 2008. Harmattan Rain. Popenguine: Per Ankh.
Barrett, A. Igoni. 2016. Blackass [2015]. Minneapolis: Graywolf Press.
Beah, Ishmael. 2014. Radiance of Tomorrow. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Bulawayo, NoViolet. 2014. We Need New Names. London: Vintage.
Chikwava, Brian. 2010. Harare North. London: Vintage Books.
Cole, Teju. 2012. Open City. London: Faber & Faber Ltd.
———. 2014. Every Day Is for the Thief [2007]. London: Faber & Faber Ltd.
Collins, Walter, ed. 2015. Writing Contemporary Nigeria. How Sefi Atta Illuminates African Culture and Tradition. Amherst: Cambria Press.
Dunton, Chris. 2008. Entropy and Energy: Lagos as City of Words. Research in African Literatures 39 (2): 68–78.
Emenyonu, Ernest N., ed. 2017. A Companion to Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie Woodbridge: James Currey.
Falola, Toyin. 2014. African Diaspora. Slavery, Modernity and Globalization Rochester: University of Rochester Press.
Forna, Aminatta. 2006. Ancestor Stones. London: Bloomsbury.
———. 2010. The Memory of Love. London: Bloomsbury.
Gikandi, Simon. 2014. Afterword: Outside the Black Atlantic. Research in African Literatures 45 (3): 241–244.
Griswold, Wendy. 2006. Nigeria, 1950–2000. In The Novel. Volume 1. History, Geography, and Culture, ed. Franco Moretti, 521–530. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Habila, Helon. 2004. Waiting for an Angel [2002]. New York/London: Norton. ———. 2007. Measuring Time. New York: Norton.
———. 2011. Oil on Water. London: Penguin Books.
Hale, Thomas A. 2006. Bursting at the Seams: New Dimensions for African Literature in the 21st Century. In New Directions in African Literature, ed. Ernest Emenyonu, 10–19. Oxford/Trenton/Ibadan: James Currey/Africa World Press/Heinemann Educational Books (Nigeria).
Hron, Madelaine. 2008. “Ora Na-Azu Nwa”: The Figure of the Child in ThirdGeneration Nigerian Novels. Research in African Literatures 39 (2): 27–48.
INTRODUCTION
Hungbo, Jendele. 2009. West Africa – A Personal Overview. Journal of Commonwealth Literature 44 (4): 239–243.
Krishnan, Madhu. 2014. The Storyteller Function in Contemporary Nigerian Narrative. The Journal of Commonwealth Literature 49 (1): 29–45.
Malapka, Sakui. 2002. The Village Boy. Northridge: New World African Press. Mason, Lauren. 2014. Leaving Lagos: Intertextuality and Images in Chris Abani’s GraceLand. Research in African Literatures 45 (3): 206–226.
Mbue, Imbolo. 2016. Behold the Dreamers. New York: Random House.
Mengestu, Dinaw. 2015. All Our Names. London: Sceptre.
Nnolim, Charles E. 2006. African Literature in the 21st Century: Challenges for Writers and Critics. In New Directions in African Literature, ed. Ernest Emenyonu, 1–9. Oxford/Trenton/Ibadan: James Currey/Africa World Press/ Heinemann Educational Books (Nigeria).
Obioma, Chigozie. 2015. The Fishermen. New York: Little, Brown and Company.
Oguine, Ike. 2000. A Squatter’s Tale. Oxford: Heinemann. Okparanta, Chinelo. 2015. Under the Udala Trees. London: Granta Books. Okuyade, Ogaga. 2014. Introduction: Familiar Realities, Continuity, and Shifts of Trajectory in the New African Novel. Matatu 45: ix–xxxii.
Onuzo, Chibundu. 2017. Welcome to Lagos. London: Faber & Faber. Ouma, Christopher. 2014. Reading the Diasporic Abiku in Helen Oyeyemi’s The Icarus Girl Research in African Literatures 45 (3): 188–205.
Oyeyemi, Helen. 2005. The Icarus Girl. London: Bloomsbury. Sackeyfio, Rose. 2017. Revisiting Double Consciousness & Relocating the Self in Americanah. In A Companion to Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, ed. Ernest N. Emenyonu, 213–227. Woodbridge: James Currey. Selasi, Taiye. 2013. Ghana Must Go. London: Viking.
Tunca, Daria. 2014. Stylistic Approaches to Nigerian Fiction. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
———. Bibliography. The Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie Website. http://www. cerep.ulg.ac.be/adichie/cnasecond.html. 14 May 2018.
———. Secondary Sources. The Chris Abani Bibliography. http://www.cerep. ulg.ac.be/abani/casecond.html. 14 May 2018.
Contexts: New African Diaspora, Nigerian Literature, and the Global Literary Market
Nigerian diaspora literature’s twofold focus on experiences of migration and representations of Nigeria is not surprising if one takes into account three contexts that considerably shape its concerns. First, the novelists are members of the new Nigerian diaspora, and their fiction is informed by and reflects the various historical, political, and economic push-and-pull factors that lead to Nigerian emigration. Secondly, as Nigerian writers, they inscribe themselves into the country’s literary traditions, particularly the almost seventy-year history of anglophone narrative literature, which started with Amos Tutuola’s The Palm-Wine Drinkard (1952). Clearly influenced by their predecessors, much of the writers’ work is distinctly political, as they “understand themselves to be bearing witness to Nigerian social experience” and “are among the most persistent chroniclers of the contemporary political, economic, and moral problems” (Griswold 2000, 3; 11). Thirdly, if they want to get published and find an international audience, the writers need to position themselves on the global literary market. This involves being marketed as ‘African literature’ and thus being obliged to meet certain requirements, such as marginality, cultural difference, mobility, and political engagement.
© The Author(s) 2019 M. Feldner, Narrating the New African Diaspora, African Histories and Modernities, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-05743-5_2
M. FELDNER
The New AfricAN DiAsporA
‘Diaspora’ typically refers to a collective living outside its homeland, a displaced population. This is also what the etymological meaning of the term indicates, which consists of the prefix dia- (‘through’, ‘over’) and the verb sperein (‘sow’, ‘scatter’). Usually, there are cultural (and religious) connections among the exiled and dispersed groups, which are linked to a homeland via a diasporic network. Over the past few decades, the use of ‘diaspora’ as a term and critical concept has drastically increased. Originally mostly associated with the dispersion of Jewish communities across the globe, ‘diaspora’ is now routinely used to refer to many different groups that are located outside the territories they are originally identified with. As a result, it is possible to talk of a large number of different diasporas, such as the African, Armenian, Indian, Chinese, Caribbean, Irish, Ukrainian, Italian, Russian, German, and Kurd diasporas. With many of these it is possible and sometimes appropriate to differentiate further. Regarding the ‘African diaspora’, for example, there are not only differences depending on which African countries the migrants come from but also where the diasporic group is located, be it in the United States, the Caribbean or China.
This multiplicity has resulted in a dazzling array of different possible meanings of the term, a proliferation that Rogers Brubaker (2005, 1) calls the “‘diaspora’ diaspora”, referring to the “dispersion of the meanings of the term in semantic, conceptual and disciplinary space”.1 In addition to the term’s semantic expansion, ‘diaspora’ is often conflated with a range of related words, such as ‘migration’, ‘exile’, ‘transnationalism’, minority or refugee status, and racial and ethnic difference (Edwards 2007, 82), or used in completely incongruous contexts.2 According to diaspora theorists such as Robin Cohen, James Clifford, William Safran, and Rogers Brubaker, it makes sense to speak of a diaspora if most of the following features apply: a history of dispersal from an original homeland, collective memories, myths, and idealization of this homeland, as well as a collective commitment and desire to return to it, which can also be the result of a troubled relationship with the host society.3 This framework of features can be used to describe a great variety of diasporic formations, which indicates that diasporas should not be seen as something stable and fixed, but as processes, constantly shifting and adjusting their components, and being “formed by a series of often contradictory convergences of peoples, ideas, and even cultural orientations” (Quayson 2013, 631).4
Many contemporary Nigerian novelists are members of the new African diaspora, which has formed as a result of recent African migration to the United States and Europe. Since the 1950s and 1960s the term ‘African diaspora’ (or ‘black diaspora’) has been used to designate the dispersion of Africans across the Americas and Europe in the wake of the transatlantic slave trade and colonialism as well as the histories and experiences associated with centuries of slavery. Having largely replaced ‘pan-Africanism’ as a term to refer to a collective African experience abroad, ‘African diaspora’ describes a diverse and complex phenomenon.5 With more than thirty million Africans living outside their homelands, the importance and magnitude of the African diaspora can be seen in the fact that it was declared the ‘sixth region’ of the continent by the African Union in 2005 (Quayson 2013, 629). If the African diaspora is a consequence of the violent mass enslavement, over the last decade the term ‘new African diaspora’ has been established to designate the comparatively voluntary emigration from Africa in the second half of the twentieth century, and especially from the 1980s onwards. The new African diaspora is a product of the recent African migration movements, which, albeit often caused by constrained circumstances, is largely voluntary, as many Africans leave their homes to seek work and better opportunities elsewhere, particularly in the United States and Europe (Falola 2014, 255).
There have been three waves of African migration to the global North (Arthur et al. 2012, 2–4; Osirim 2012, 225). From the mid-to-late 1950s to the 1970s, African governments sponsored young Africans to get their educations abroad, who were then supposed to return and fill the positions of civil servants and skilled workers in the public and private sectors. This first wave is therefore characterized by temporary migration for the postcolonial task of nation building. It included also notable African writers from that generation such as Chinua Achebe, Wole Soyinka, and Ayi Kwei Armah. The second wave started in the mid-1970s, when it became clear that the aims and ideals of the era of independence had failed and many African states had become entangled in political and economic conflicts. For many Africans the purpose of their migration was an attempt to escape the political situation as well as the poverty and lack of opportunities at home. The third and largest wave commenced shortly after the turn of the twenty-first century, with skilled and unskilled migrants attempting to improve their economic lot and to “share in global economic prosperity, something that has remained elusive for generations of Africans” (Arthur et al. 2012, 4).
M. FELDNER
Several push-and-pull factors help to explain the current wave of African migration. Among the main causes for migration are the manifold political, economic, and social problems and crises. Political conflicts, civil wars and the repression of human rights have created a climate of insecurity and instability that cause many to seek better conditions and political freedoms abroad. In addition, in economies in decline people have to cope with high underemployment, low levels of income, and rampant corruption, as well as limited professional opportunities and education facilities. This is compounded by poor social services, such as intermittent provision of electricity, problems with water supply, and overburdened, underdeveloped, and underfunded transportation and health services (Kaba 2009, 116–119). Although many of these problems are homemade and due to internal conflicts, they are, importantly, also a result of the destabilization of African countries through the structural adjustment programmes (SAPs), imposed by the Bretton Woods institutions (International Monetary Fund and World Bank). As a condition for financial loans, the SAPs required the implementation of austerity measures and the opening up of the national markets to international trade and caused what Paul Tiyambe Zeleza (2009, 36) refers to as “the ‘lost decades’ of structural adjustment programs”.
As for the pull factors, many Africans are attracted by the promises of better living conditions, the availability of jobs, educational opportunities, and the possibility of social advancement in the United States and Europe (Takyi 2009, 237). The United States has been especially attractive, not only because of the common and popular myths about America as a place where everyone can make it, but also because legal changes, such as the Immigration Act, have increased immigration opportunities for Africans and people from other regions of the global South. More generally, the processes and forces that are commonly referred to as globalization have crucially contributed to contemporary migration movements. However, while globalization has facilitated migration for some, borders have largely remained closed or have become even more impenetrable for most people, especially compared to the relatively unrestricted financial flows and movements of material goods.
What distinguishes the new African diaspora is the possibility of return. In contrast to other diasporic formations, where the old homeland is usually an unfamiliar but mythologized place impossible to return to, the new African diaspora is well connected with their homeland. Modern forms of communication and fast and affordable means of transport enable stable connections, visits, and even permanent returns. Members of the new African diaspora, especially those with long-term visas or even citizenships
of their host countries, are able to move freely between the continents, which allows them to remain in touch with, and invest in, their African homelands. Toyin Falola (2014, 101) notes:
Contemporary migrants have intensified the linkages in a global manner, evidenced in monetary remittances from the West to Africa, the movements of goods and peoples in various directions, the greater traffic in ideas, and the spread of popular cultures. Air travel between Africa and the West has increased markedly, carrying thousands of Africans as they move from one part of the world to another.
This connectedness with the homeland is likely the distinctive feature of the new African diaspora. As novelists such as Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Sefi Atta, Helon Habila, Taiye Selasi, and Teju Cole shuttle between the African continent, the United States, and Europe, their dual preoccupation with experiences of migration and representations of Nigeria in Nigerian diaspora literature is comprehensible.
Several of the novels deal with forms of migratory and diasporic transnationalism. Considering that migration is “so large and complex a phenomenon, involving so many individual biographies” (Ahmad 1992, 86), the range of experiences represented in this literature is actually rather limited. It involves several categories, of which the first three are the most typical: (1) migrants trying to build a life in a new country, usually in the United States; (2) secondgeneration Nigerians trying to negotiate their hybrid identities, often in England; and (3) a character’s self-conscious or reluctant cosmopolitanism/ Afropolitanism. In addition to these successful or realized forms of migration, some novels (4) include attempts at migration that have either just started or have been thwarted before they could get underway, or (5) address enforced movement such as human trafficking and travelling for the purpose of smuggling drugs.6 As this literature therefore focuses on comparatively privileged forms of migration, it mostly excludes migration that does not involve plane tickets and visas. For example, it does not depict migrants such as the hundreds of thousands of Africans trying to make their way into Europe.7
NigeriAN LiTerATure
The second major concern of this literature is representations of postcolonial Nigeria. Depictions of Nigeria can be found in most novels, which can therefore be subsumed under the heading of ‘Nigerian literature’. The history of
M. FELDNER
anglophone literature in twentieth-century Nigeria, and Africa more generally, is usually described in generational terms.8 Corresponding to stages in the political development in many African countries since the 1950s, the three generations so far established can broadly be outlined as the early literature of cultural nationalism, a subsequent literature of disillusionment with the failings of the postcolonial state, and a literature that is characterized by an opening up in terms of thematic concerns and narrative experimentation. The novelists of the Nigerian diaspora are usually counted among the third generation, even though the factor of diaspora and migration clearly distinguishes them from their predecessors and earns them their “own discrete place in the evolution of the African novel” (Okuyade 2014, xviii).
With the exception of novels such as Buchi Emecheta’s Second-Class Citizen (1974) and Simi Bedford’s Yoruba Girl Dancing (1991), migration plays a minor role in Nigerian literature. While it is nothing new that Nigerian writers leave Nigeria to work or study abroad—many famous novelists, including Chinua Achebe, Wole Soyinka, Buchi Emecheta, Ben Okri, and Biyi Bandele, lived and published outside Africa—the theme of migration is usually not incorporated into their work to a great extent. Novels that deal with leaving the country, such as Achebe’s No Longer at Ease (1960), Wole Soyinka’s The Interpreters (1965), and Cyprian Ekwensi’s Jagua Nana (1961), feature characters who return to Nigeria after having acquired an academic degree abroad. These ‘been-to’ narratives (Egbunike 2014) reflect the practice of sending young Nigerians to other countries to get an education in the early years after independence, but they do not highlight any aspects of migration. By contrast, as many contemporary writers are members of the new African diaspora, their literature is characterized by a strong international outlook and global orientation.
Nevertheless, Nigerian diaspora novelists have remained strongly influenced by their precursors, especially Chinua Achebe, who is perhaps the single most important representative of the Nigerian novel. For better or worse, his novels, particularly the debut, Things Fall Apart (1958), have considerably shaped the way English-language literature from Nigeria and Africa more generally has been perceived. Elleke Boehmer (2009, 142) notes that Achebe “has become a dominant point of origin, a hyperprecursor one might say, in whose aftermath virtually every African author self-consciously writes”. His influence on the diaspora novelists manifests itself in several ways, including literary style, thematic concerns, and the kind of stories being told, as well as in direct intertextual references to his work.9 Adichie’s short story ‘The Headstrong Historian’ (in The Thing
Around Your Neck, 2010), for example, constitutes a rewriting of Things Fall Apart, while the opening sentence of her first novel, Purple Hibiscus “Things started to fall apart when […]” (Adichie 2003, 3)—is a direct reference to that novel’s title. The phrase is also used in Abani’s GraceLand, where the protagonist learns that “[e]verything for us fell apart when your mother died” (Abani 2004, 131), and in Habila’s Waiting for an Angel, where “[t]hings started falling apart […]” (Habila 2004, 150) as well. However, the writers’ relationship is not only one of reverence. Achebe’s work also serves as a starting point for criticism and the expansion of what Nigerian literature can involve, mean, and stand for. While paying homage to him, writers like Adichie and Atta also challenge him and thus expand his legacy, for example, by including stronger female perspectives into the Nigerian novel.
While the first generation of Nigerian literature in the 1950s and 1960s was concerned with cultural assertion and identity building associated with the emergent nationalisms in the various African countries, the latest generation focuses mostly on the decades following Nigeria’s independence. This period, coming after the success of the anti-colonial movements in the boom years post-1945, is marked by dictatorships and “years of neoliberal austerity, structural adjustment, and political rollback” (Lazarus 2013, 328). The attempts to form democratic governments were repeatedly interrupted by long spells of military dictatorships. Corruption is rampant in Nigeria, and there is a lack of strong institutions and modern infrastructure in critical sectors such as transportation, communication, sewage, water, and power.10 This is partly a problem of leadership, as Chinua Achebe points out in his essay, ‘The Trouble with Nigeria’ (1984), but also due to neocolonial influences.11 Foreign interventions and intrusions into Nigeria’s sovereignty that have considerably contributed to the country’s problems have manifested themselves in a number of ways, including military interventions, the use of financial instruments such as debt and aid, and the extraction of valuable natural resources. As a result of these interventions, national sovereignty is little more than fiction (Young 2001, 46). This is the major political and economic context Nigerian diaspora literature is embedded in and which provides it with ample material and much of its force.
The twenty-first-century diaspora novelists inscribe themselves into traditions of Nigerian fiction writing by picking up and resuming thematic concerns already established by the first generation. Ogaga Okuyade (2014, xviii) has summarized some of these concerns, including
M. FELDNER
the depravity of Africa’s emergent leaderships, military interventions and coups d’état, civil strife and war, the gross violation of human rights in virtually every African country, displacement, transnationalism, globalization, and the unbridgeable gap between the privileged few and the masses and the plight and condition of the African woman.
As becomes apparent from Okuyade’s outline, the novelists of the Nigerian diaspora have inherited from their predecessors a strong political attitude, a commitment to working in their literature towards positive social and political transformation. One of Nigerian literature’s main functions has, according to Wendy Griswold (2000, 3), always been to “bear witness to Nigerian social experience”. Nigerian novelists are “among the most persistent chroniclers of the contemporary political, economic, and moral problems” (11) and they perceive of themselves as political actors, and “by and large, they do share [a] commitment to social improvement through literature” (39). This attitude, of which Chinua Achebe is the most prominent representative, can also be detected in contemporary Nigerian literature. Accordingly, Ernest Emenyonu (2017, 12) argues, for example, that Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s fiction “is not just art; it is art with a purpose, art with social responsibility”.
A major way in which literature can act politically is by literary nation building, by contributing to the national imaginary. The nation-state is typically understood as an administration apparatus exercising sovereignty over a specific territory. Government, borders, and national laws are the elements that form and organize the state and keep it running. What holds the nation-state together, however, is the idea of the nation. In other words, it is the framework or superstructure made up from national narratives, discourses, beliefs, and symbols that provides a state’s citizens with a collective consciousness.12 After Benedict Anderson’s ground-breaking study, Imaginary Communities (1983), it has become common practice to refer to nations as imagined political communities, meaning heterogeneous groups of people that are unified by their shared belief in a common set of ideas. Because “the nation is constituted by a fiction, a willed belief in unity where there is no natural affiliation” (Sullivan 2001, 72), it is premised on the belief of its citizens, a belief that is based on collective experiences and a sense of a shared and historic identity. Through the collective imaginative effort, a nation becomes a manifest entity. As a concrete reality it provides the state it informs, but is also based on, with stability, affirmation, and justification. Three components that help to constitute a collective
identity are a sense of continuity, shared memories of specific events and personages, and the notion of a common destiny (Smith 1990, 179). Narratives play a crucial role in the creation of collective imaginaries. As the past “is always constructed through memory, fantasy, narrative and myth” (Hall 1993, 395), narratives help to shape identities, being able to order history sequentially and to make meaning of events, personages, and artefacts. Anderson (2006, 25, original emphasis) argues that, together with the newspaper, the novel as a form of imagining was central for the birth of the imagined community, as it “provided the technical means for ‘re-presenting’ the kind of imagined community that is the nation”.
Nigeria may fulfil the requirements for a nation-state, but it arguably still lacks a functioning national consciousness, the collective belief in a cohesive and unified national imaginary that renders a state a nation-state. It is an unfinished nation, a country defined by conflicts, internal divisions, and political instability. With a population of over 150 million, Nigeria includes within its boundaries between 200 and 300 ethnic groups with as many distinct languages. Its borders, imposed during colonial rule, randomly comprise different ethnic groups, the tensions between whom have plagued Nigeria since its independence on October 1, 1960. They caused and exacerbated a number of conflicts, including the devastating Nigerian Civil War of 1967–1970, a succession of coups and military dictatorships, and a permanent state of political instability, even though since 1999 Nigeria has been a democratic nation with relatively correct and free elections.
Nigeria’s internal differences express themselves in terms of ethnicity, religion, and class. Falola and Oyeniyi (2015, 176) argue that for many Nigerians ethnic identity supersedes any national identity: “The nation is the last and the least in Nigerians’ pecking order, which affects intergroup relations, national politics, administration, and control of the nation.” The division of the country also encompasses class, as the southern regions, due to the oil reserves in the Niger Delta and the urban centres on the coast, especially the financial hub of Lagos, are significantly wealthier than the northern regions. The poverty and low education levels in the North have considerably contributed to the rise of Boko Haram and its terror campaign to form an Islamic caliphate. In addition, Nigeria is characterized by corruption and is often criticized for its ubiquitous graft, bribery, and nepotism. The country loses a lot of money through financial mismanagement while being unable to provide stable and permanent infrastructural services in the areas of transportation, electricity, water, and CONTEXTS:
M. FELDNER
sewage. Due to these problems, also the result of its lack of a cohesive and connective national narrative, it is not unreasonable to claim that Nigeria is far from being a stable and functioning polity.
Narrative literature can play a role in the project of nation building by providing a sense of cohesion and unity which could possibly help replacing the current fractured and fragmented Nigerian identity. However, Nigerian diaspora literature is rather unrepresentative, as it is predominantly written by novelists from Igbo or Yoruba backgrounds who were socialized in cultures informed by European and Christian influences. The language used is English, which means that all the other languages spoken in Nigeria, such as Igbo, Yoruba, Hausa, Arabic, and the Pidgin varieties of English, are ignored. This literature is mostly set in urban locations, especially Lagos, and in the southern parts of Nigeria. The northern regions are therefore hardly represented at all. The category of Nigerian diaspora literature further excludes most non-canonized literatures, that is, the various forms of popular fictions, such as thrillers, romances, pornography, and young adult fiction, and the market pamphlets. Griswold (2000, 41) notes that although Nigerian authors “intend to represent their country in their writing, they are very unrepresentative themselves. Compared with the Nigerian people as a whole, they are more male, more southern, more Christian, more Igbo or Yoruba, and much more highly educated.” This is still largely true for Nigerian novelists of the twenty-first century. The only aspect that has markedly changed in the last fifteen years is the ratio of male-to-female writers.13 The other factors that Griswold describes have remained the same: Nigerian writers are still more southern, more Igbo or Yoruba, more Christian, and more highly educated. It is therefore difficult to argue that their work speaks for all Nigerians.
Nigerian diaspora literature can nevertheless be seen as taking part in the creation of the national imaginary. While it constitutes just a small segment of Nigerian literature that only reflects a limited range of Nigerian experiences, it is still literature that is not only from Nigeria but also about Nigeria. As a fictional exploration and narrative mapping of the country, it involves detailed and complex representations of the various lives lived there. Typically, in a postcolonial context, this also means the countering of prevailing foreign views of the country that are based on the dominant discourse of colonialism, which aimed at “establishing epistemic control, monopolising the tropes of representation, and constructing a pliant, psychologically damaged, inferiorised subject of Empire” (Adesanmi 2006, 101). Postcolonial literatures attempt to contradict this colonial discourse,
primarily by providing alternative representations to undermine its tropes and constructions.14 This can involve addressing and subverting stereotypical representations, providing counter-discourses to narratives about Nigeria imposed from the outside, and discussing existing problems in a complex and subtle manner. The novels of the Nigerian diaspora operate in this domain of criticism. When Hron (2008, 27), for example, identifies some of the “prevailing trends in contemporary Nigerian writing”, she highlights the novels’ criticism of neocolonialism in Nigeria, their “problematizing the transnational space of diaspora”, and their “raising awareness about human rights violations stemming from globalization”.
As narrative literature does not need to adhere to empirical criteria or meet any standards of factuality and verifiability but allows readers to adopt the characters’ perspectives and to identify with them, it can convey these issues in comprehensible and engaging ways. Two of the most important strategies in the formation of a Nigerian imaginary that occur throughout this literature are the use of national allegory and the genre of the Bildungsroman. Fredric Jameson (1986, 69) has proposed that the allegory is typical of ‘third-world’ literature.15 Many of the novels of the Nigerian diaspora, including Atta’s Swallow (2010), Abani’s GraceLand (2004), Adichie’s Half of a Yellow Sun (2006) and Habila’s Waiting for an Angel (2002), indeed present national allegories in which “the story of the individual destiny is always an allegory of the embattled situation of the public third-world culture and society” (69). The Bildungsroman, where the protagonist’s process of formation mirrors the nation’s development, is similarly prominent in this literature, as illustrated in Abani’s GraceLand, Adichie’s Half of a Yellow Sun, Atta’s Everything Good Will Come (2005), and Habila’s Measuring Time (2007).16
In addition, questions and discussions of agency and political activism are woven into the narratives, often implicitly, as part of the narrative and thematic concerns. In Sefi Atta’s Everything Good Will Come, the protagonist becomes a political activist in support of female prisoners. Habila’s Waiting for an Angel revolves around the protagonist’s reluctance to be politicized. In Abani’s GraceLand and Habila’s Measuring Time the protagonists’ fathers are politicians running for office, thus allowing their sons to witness directly official political processes. Across the literature, debates concerning the importance and efficacy of political activism can also occur more directly and explicitly when embedded into the narrative in the form of dialogues in which characters discuss the various dimensions of a problem. In Waiting for an Angel, for example, one character tries to convince CONTEXTS: NEW AFRICAN DIASPORA, NIGERIAN
Another random document with no related content on Scribd:
mountains which appeared scattered through the wild and gloomy plain on our right.
After a while the low chain of hills on our left was succeeded by a range of higher mountains attached to the broad cone of the Fáka. A little before we had obtained a view of the rocky mount of Mbutúdi, and we now observed the first gigiña (“dugbi” in Fulfúlde), or delébpalm, the kind of Hyphæna which I have already occasionally mentioned as occurring in other localities, but which distinguishes this place in a most characteristic way. The ground was covered with rich herbage, from which numerous violets peeped forth.
We had now reached Mbutúdi, a village situated round a granite mount of about six hundred yards’ circumference, and rising to the height of about three hundred feet. It had been a considerable place before the rise of the Fúlbe, encompassing on all sides the mount, which had served as a natural citadel; but it has been greatly reduced, scarcely more than one hundred huts altogether now remaining; and were it not for the picturesque landscape—the steep rocky mount overgrown with trees, and the slender deléb-palms shooting up here and there, and forming some denser groups on the south-east side,—it would be a most miserable place.
My companions were greatly astonished to find that, since they went to Kúkawa, some Fúlbe families had settled here: for formerly none but native pagans lived in the village. It was, therefore, necessary that we should address ourselves to this ruling class; and after we had waited some time in the shade of some caoutchouctrees, a tall, extremely slender Púllo, of a very noble expression of countenance, and dressed in a snow-white shirt, made his appearance, and after the usual exchange of compliments, and due inquiry on the part of my companions after horse, cattle, mother, slaves, and family[55] , conducted us to a dwelling not far from the eastern foot of the rock, consisting of several small huts, with a tall gigiña in the middle of its courtyard, which was never deserted by some large birds of the stork family,—most probably some European wanderers. However, it had the great disadvantage of being extremely wet, so that I preferred staying outside; and going to some distance from the huts, I laid myself down in the shade of a tree,
where the ground was comparatively dry The weather had been very cool and cheerless in the morning, and I was glad when the sun at length came forth, increasing the interest of the landscape, of which I took a view.[56]
I here tried, for the first time, the fruit of the deléb-palm, which were just ripe; but I did not find it worth the trouble, as it really requires a good deal of effort to suck out the pulp, which is nothing but a very close and coarse fibrous tissue, not separating from the large stone, and having a mawkish taste, which soon grows disagreeable. It cannot be at all compared with the banana, and still less with the fruit of the gónda-tree. It is, when full grown, from six to eight inches long and four inches across, and of a yellowish-brown colour; the kernel is about two inches and a half long and one inch thick. However, it is of importance to the natives, and, like the fruit of the dúm-palm, it yields a good seasoning for some of their simple dishes. They make use of the stone also, breaking and planting it in the ground, when, in a few days, a blade shoots forth with a very tender root, which is eaten just like the kelingoes; this is called “múrrechi” by the Háusa people, “báchul” by the Fúlbe, both of whom use it very extensively. But it is to be remarked that the gigiña, or deléb-palm, is extremely partial in its local distribution, and seems not at all common in Ádamáwa, being, as my companions observed, here confined to a few localities, such as Láro and Song; while in the Músgu country it is, according to my own observation, the predominant tree; and, from information, I conclude this to be the case also in the southern provinces of Bagírmi, particularly in Sómray and Day. However, the immense extension of this palm, which, probably, is nearly related to the Borassus flabelliformis, through the whole breadth of Central Africa, from Kordofán to the Atlantic, is of the highest importance.
While resting here I received a deputation of the heads of families of the Fúlbe, who behaved very decently, and were not a little excited by the performances of my watch and compass. I then determined to ascend the rock, which commands and characterises the village, although, being fully aware of the debilitated state of my health, I was somewhat afraid of any great bodily exertion. It was
certainly not an easy task, as the crags were extremely steep, but it was well worth the trouble, although the view over an immense expanse of country was greatly interrupted by the many small trees and bushes which are shooting out between the granite blocks.
After I had finished taking angles I sat down on this magnificent rocky throne, and several of the natives having followed me, I wrote from their dictation a short vocabulary of their language, which they call “Záni,” and which I soon found was intimately related to that of the Marghí. These poor creatures seeing, probably for the first time, that a stranger took real interest in them, were extremely delighted in hearing their words pronounced by one whom they thought almost as much above them as their god “féte,” and frequently corrected each other when there was a doubt about the meaning of the word. The rock became continually more and more animated, and it was not long before two young Fúlbe girls also, who from the first had cast a kindly eye upon me, came jumping up to me, accompanied by an elder married sister. One of these girls was about fifteen, the other about eight or nine years of age. They were decently dressed as Mohammedans, in shirts covering the bosom, while the pagans, although they had dressed for the occasion, wore nothing but a narrow strip of leather passed between the legs, and fastened round the loins, with a large leaf attached to it from behind; the women were, besides, ornamented with the “kadáma,” which is the same as the seghéum of the Marghí, and worn in the same way, stuck through the under lip, but a little larger. Their prevailing complexion was a yellowish-red, like that of the Marghí, with whom, a few centuries ago, they evidently formed one nation. Their worship, also, is nearly the same.
At length I left my elevated situation, and with a good deal of trouble succeeded in getting down again; but the tranquillity which I had before enjoyed was now gone, and not a moment was I left alone. All these poor creatures wanted to have my blessing; and there was particularly an old blacksmith, who, although he had become a proselyte to Islám, pestered me extremely with his entreaties to benefit him by word and prayer. They went so far as to do me the honour, which I of course declined, of identifying me with
their god “féte,” who, they thought, might have come to spend a day with them, to make them forget their oppression and misfortunes. The pagans, however, at length left me when night came on, but the Fúlbe girls would not go, or if they left me for a moment, immediately returned, and so stayed till midnight. The eldest of the unmarried girls made me a direct proposal of marriage, and I consoled her by stating that I should have been happy to accept her offer if it were my intention to reside in the country. The manners of people who live in these retired spots, shut out from the rest of the world, are necessarily very simple and unaffected; and this poor girl had certainly reason to look out for a husband, as at fifteen she was as far beyond her first bloom as a lady of twenty-five in Europe.
Friday, June 13.—Taking leave of these good people, the girl looking rather sorrowful as I mounted my horse, we resumed our march the following morning, first through cornfields,—the grain here cultivated being exclusively géro or Pennisetum,—then over rich and thinly wooded pastures, having the mountain-chain of the “Fálibé” constantly at some distance. The atmosphere was extremely humid, and rain-clouds hung upon the mountains. Further on the ground consisted entirely of red loam, and was so torn up by the rain, that we had great difficulty and delay in leading the camels round the gaps and ravines. Dense underwood now at times prevailed, and a bush called “baubaw,” producing an edible fruit, here first fell under my observation; there was also another bulbous plant, which I had not observed before. The karáge here, again, was very common. Gradually the whole country became one continuous wilderness, with the surface greatly undulating, and almost hilly; and here we passed a slave village, or “rúmde,” in ruins, the clay-walls being all that remained.
The country wore a more cheerful appearance after nine o’clock, when we entered on a wide extent of cultivated ground, the crops standing beautifully in the fields, and the village or villages of Segéro appearing higher up on the slope of the heights, in a commanding situation. Segéro consists of two villages separated by a ravine, or hollow with a watercourse, the northernmost of them, to which we came first, being inhabited jointly by the conquering tribe of the Fúlbe and the conquered one of the Holma, while the southern village is exclusively occupied by the ruling race. To this group we directed our steps, passing close by the former, where I made a hasty sketch of the outlines of Mount Holma.
The lámido, or mayor, being absent at the time, we dismounted under the public shade in front of his house, till a comfortable spacious shed in the inner courtyard of his dwelling was placed at my disposal; and here I began immediately to employ my leisure hours in the study of the Fulfúlde, as I became fully aware that the knowledge of this language was essential to my plans, if I wished to draw all possible advantage from my proceedings. For these simple people, who do not travel, but reside all their life long in their secluded homes, with the exception of a few predatory expeditions against the pagans, know no other language than their own; several of them, however, understand the written Arabic tolerably well, but are unable to speak it. Meanwhile, a large basketful of ground-nuts, in the double shell, just as they came from the ground, was placed before us; and after a while, three immense calabashes of a thick
soup, or porridge, made of the same material, were brought in for the refreshment of our whole troop.
Ground-nuts form here a very large proportion of the food of the people, just in the same proportion as potatoes do in Europe, and the crops of corn having failed the last year, the people had very little besides. Ground-nuts, that is to say the species of them which is called “kolche” in Kanúri, and “biríji” in Fulfúlde, which was the one grown here, as it seems, exclusively, I like very much, especially if roasted, for nibbling after supper, or even as a substitute for breakfast on the road, but I should not like to subsist upon them. In fact, I was scarcely able to swallow a few spoonfuls of this sort of porridge, which was not seasoned with honey; but I must confess that the spoons, which the people here use for such purposes, are rather large, being something like a scoop, and made likewise of a kind of gourd; the half of the Cucurbita lagenaria split in two, so that the handle at the same time forms a small channel, and may be used as a spout. Nature in these countries has provided everything; dishes, bottles, and drinking-vessels are growing on the trees, rice in the forest, and the soil without any labour produces grain. The porridge can certainly be made more palatable by seasoning; and, if boiled with milk, is by no means disagreeable. The other kind of ground-nut, the “gángala,” or “yerkúrga,” which is far more oily, and which I did not see at all in Ádamáwa, I do not like; though the people used to say that it is much more wholesome than the other kind. For making oil it is evidently the more valuable of the two. I will only add, that on this occasion I learned that the Fúlbe in this part of the country make also a similar porridge of sesamum, which they call “marasíri,” and even of the habb el ʿazíz, or the gojíya of the Háusa —the nebú of the Bórnu people. Sesamum I have frequently eaten in Negroland as a paste, or hasty pudding, but never in the form of a porridge.
The reason why the corn had failed was, that most of the men had gone to the war last year; the turbulent state of the country thus operating as a great drawback upon the cultivation of the ground. I must also observe how peculiarly the different qualities of the soil in neighbouring districts are adapted for different species of grain; while
in Mbutúdi, as I said, millet, géro, or Pennisetum typhoïdeum, was cultivated almost exclusively, here it was the dáwa, “báiri” in Fulfúlde, or sorghum, and principally the red sort, or “báiri bodéri.” Having restored our vital strength with this famous pap of ground-nuts, and having filled our pockets, and the nose-bags of the horses too, with the remains of the great basket, we set out again on our journey in the afternoon, for it appeared to me evident that none of my companions was fond of a strict ground-nut diet, and hence would rather risk a storm than a supper of this same dish. It had become our general rule to finish our day’s journey in the forenoon, as the tempest generally set in in the afternoon.
The fields were well cultivated; but the corn on the more elevated spots stood not more than a foot high. The ground-nuts are cultivated between the corn, the regular spaces which are left between each stalk being sufficient for growing a cluster of nuts underground; just in the same way as beans are cultivated in many parts of Negroland. The fields were beautifully shaded and adorned by the butter-tree, “tóso,” or, as the Fúlbe call it, “kárehi,” in the plural form “karéji,” which was here the exclusively predominant tree, and of course is greatly valued by the natives. Everywhere the people were busy in the fields; and altogether the country, enclosed by several beautifully shaped mountain ranges and by detached mountains, presented a most cheerful sight, all the patches of grass being diversified and embellished with a kind of violet-coloured lily.
We now gradually approached the foot of Mount Holma, behind which another mountain began to rise into view; while on our left we passed a small “rúmde,” or slave-village, and then entered a sort of defile. We were greatly afraid lest we should be punished for the gastronomic transgression of our travelling rule, as a storm threatened us from behind; but we had time to reach Badaníjo in safety. Punished, however, we were, like the man who despised his peas; for, instead of finding here full bowls of pudding, we could not even procure the poor ground-nuts; and happy was he who had not neglected to fill his pockets from the full basket in Segéro.
We had the utmost difficulty in buying a very small quantity of grain for the horses; so that they also came in for a share in the remains of
the ground-nuts of Segéro; and my host especially was such a shabby, inhospitable fellow, that it was painful to speak a word to him. However, it seemed that he had reason to complain, having been treated very harshly by oppressive officers, and having lost all his cattle by disease. Not a drop of milk was to be got in the village, all the cattle having died. The cattle, at least those of the large breed, which apparently has been introduced into the country by the Fúlbe, seem not yet quite acclimatized, and are occasionally decimated by disease.
Badaníjo is very picturesquely situated in a beautiful irregularly shaped valley, surrounded on all sides by mountains, which are seen from the interior of the valley. The scarcity of provisions was entirely due to the great expedition of last year, which had taken away all hands from the labours of the field; for the land around here is extremely fertile, and at present, besides sorghum or holcus, produced dánkali, or sweet potatoes, góza, or yams, manioc, and a great quantity of gunna, a large variety of calabash (Fueillea trilobata, Cucurbita maxima?). Badaníjo is also interesting and important to the ethnologist, as being the northernmost seat of the extensive tribe of the Falí, or Farí, which, according to the specimens of its language which I was able to collect, is entirely distinct from the tribe of the Bátta and their kinsmen the Záni and Marghí, and seems to have only a remote affinity with the Wándalá and Gámerghú languages. At present the village is principally, but not exclusively, inhabited by the ruling race, and I estimated the population at about three thousand.
Saturday, June 14.—After we had left the rich vegetation which surrounds the village, we soon entered a wild and hilly district, and while passing over the spur of a rocky eminence on our left, observed close to the brink of the cliffs overhanging our heads the huts of the pagan village Búggela, and heard the voices of the natives, while at some distance on our right detached hills, all of which seemed to consist of granite, rose from the rugged and thickly wooded plain. The rugged nature of this country increases the importance of Badaníjo in a strategical point of view. The country became continually more rocky and rugged, and there was scarcely
a narrow path leading through the thick underwood, so that my friend the pilgrim from Mélle, who rode his tall camel, had the greatest possible trouble to make his way through; however, I had reason to admire his dexterity. All through Negroland, where so many extensive tracts are covered with forest, travelling on camel’s back is very troublesome. It was certainly very lucky for us that for the last five days scarcely any rain had fallen, otherwise the path would have been extremely difficult.
However, when we reached the village Kurúlu, the country improved, spreading out into wide pastures and cultivated fields, although it remained hilly and rather rugged; even close to the village a lower range appeared, and granite masses projected everywhere. A short distance further on I sketched Mount Kurúlu and the heights near it.
Several of our party had gone into the village, and obtained some cold paste, made of a peculiar species of sorghum, of entirely red colour. This red grain, “ja-n-dáwa,” or “báiri bodéri,” which I have already had occasion to mention, is very common in the southern parts of Negroland, below the tenth degree of latitude, and in some districts, as in the Músgu country, seems to prevail almost exclusively; but it was at the time new to me, and I found it extremely nauseous. The paste of white durra, “fári-n-dáwa,” or “báiri dhannéri,” is generally so well cooked in Ádamáwa, being formed into large rolls of four inches in length, and from two to three inches thick in the middle, that even when cold it is quite eatable, and in this state generally formed my breakfast on the road; for my palatable
chébchebé from Kúkawa, like all nice things in the world, were soon gone.
Gradually we entered another rugged wilderness, from which we did not emerge till a quarter before ten o’clock, when a máriná, or dyeing-place, indicated the neighbourhood of a centre of civilization unusual in this country. A few minutes more, and we reached the northern village of Saráwu, which is inhabited almost exclusively by Bórnu people, and is therefore called Saráwu Beréberé. On the side from which we arrived the village is open, and does not seem to be thickly inhabited, but further to the south the population is denser. Having halted some time on a small open space in the middle of the village in the shade of a small terebinth, we were conducted into very excellent quarters, which seem to deserve a short description.
It was a group of three huts, situated in the midst of a very spacious outer yard, which was surrounded by a light fence of cornstalks. The huts consisted of clay walls with a thatched roof of very careful workmanship, and were joined together by clay walls. The most spacious of these huts (a), of about twelve feet in diameter, formed the entrance-hall and the parlour, being furnished with two doors or openings, one on the side of the outer, and the other on the side of the inner courtyard, from which the two other huts (b and c), destined for the women, had their only access. The outer opening or door of the chief hut (a), therefore, although rather small according to our ideas, was very large considering the general custom of the country, measuring three feet and a half in
height, and sixteen inches in the widest part, its form being that of an egg.
In this hut there was only one very large couch measuring seven feet and a half in length by five in width, and raised three feet above the floor, made of clay over a frame of wood, on the right side of the door, where the landlord used to receive his guests, the remaining part of the hut being empty, and capable of receiving a good many people. Between the couch and the door there was a fireplace, or fúgodí, or fúgo kánnurám in Kanúri, “hobbunírde” in Fulfúlde, formed by three stones of the same size. Of this airy room I myself took possession, spreading my carpet upon the raised platform, while the Mállem, my servants, and whosoever paid me a visit, found a place on the floor. The wall, which was rather thicker than usual, was all coloured with a reddish-brown tint, and upon this ground several objects had been so unartistically delineated, that, with the exception of wooden tablets, “alló,” such as the boys here use in learning to write, it was impossible to tell what they were intended for.
The hut opposite this parlour (b), which was smaller than (a) but larger than (c), seemed intended for the ordinary dwelling of the landlady, being ornamented in the background with the “gángar,” as it is called in Kanúri, “nanne” in Fulfúlde, a raised platform or sideboard for the cooking utensils; here four large-sized new jars were placed, as in battle array, surmounted by smaller ones. With regard to the other arrangements the two huts were of similar construction, having on each side a couch, one for the man and the other for his wife. In both the woman’s couch was the better one, being formed of clay on a wooden frame, and well protected from prying eyes by a thin clay wall, about five feet high, and handsomely ornamented in the following way: running not only along the side of the door, but enclosing also half of the other side, it excluded all impertinent curiosity; while the man’s couch, which was less regular and comfortable, reached to the very border of the door, and on this side had the protection only of a thin clay wall, without ornaments. With the privacy thus attained, the size of the doors was in entire harmony, being of an oval shape, and very small, particularly in (c), measuring only about two feet in height, and ten inches in width, a
size which I am afraid would refuse a passage to many a European lady; indeed, it might seem rather intended to keep a married lady within doors, after she had first contrived to get in.
Notwithstanding the scanty light falling into the interior of the hut, through the narrow doorway, it was also painted, (c) in this respect surpassing its sister hut in the harmony of its colours, which formed broad alternate bands of white and brown, and gave the whole a very stately and finished character. The whole arrangement of these two huts bore distinct testimony to a greatly developed sense of domestic comfort. In the wall of the courtyard, between (b) and (c), there was a small backdoor, raised above the ground, and of diminutive size (r), apparently intended for admitting female visitors, without obliging them to pass through the parlour, and at the same time showing much confidence in the discretion of the female department. In the courtyard were two large-sized jars, (g) the larger one being the bázam or corn-jar, and the smaller (d) the gébam or water-jar. In the corner, formed between the hut (a) and the wall of the courtyard, was the “fúgodí,” or kitchen, on a small scale.
The house belonged to a private man, who was absent at the time. From the outer courtyard, which, as I have observed, was spacious, and fenced only with corn-stalks, there was an interesting panorama
over a great extent of country to the south, and I was enabled to take a great many angles. From this place also I made the sketch of a cone (page 442) which seemed to me very picturesque, but the exact name of which I could not learn.
Saráwu is the most elevated place on the latter part of this route, although the highest point of the water-partition, between the basin of the Tsád and that of the so-called Niger, as I stated before, seems to be at the pass north of Úba. The difference between the state of the corn here and in Múbi and thereabout was very remarkable. The crop stood here scarcely a few inches above the ground.[57] The soil also around the place is not rich, the mould being thin upon the surface of the granite, which in many places lies bare. The situation of Saráwu is very important on account of its being the point where the road from Logón and all the north-eastern part of Ádamáwa, which includes some very considerable centres of industry and commerce, particularly Fátawel, the entrepôt of all the ivory trade in these quarters, joins the direct road from Kúkawa to the capital. Cotton is cultivated here to some extent. Ádamáwa is a promising country of colonies.
Saráwu, too, was suffering from dearth from the same reason which I have explained above; the second crop, which is destined to provide for the last and most pressing period, while the new crop is ripening, not having been sown at all last year on account of the expedition, so that we had great difficulty in obtaining the necessary corn for our five horses. It would, however, have been very easy for
me to obtain a sufficient supply if I had demanded a small fee for my medical assistance, as I had a good many patients who came to me for remedies; but this I refrained from doing. I had here some very singular cases, which rather exceeded my skill; and among others there was a woman who had gone with child full two years, without any effort on the part of her imaginary offspring to come forth, and who came to me now with full confidence that the far-famed stranger would be able to help her to motherhood. Among the people who visited me there was also a Tébu, or rather Tedá, who in his mercantile rambles had penetrated to this spot; indeed these people are very enterprising, but in general their journeys lie more in the direction of Wándalá, where they dispose of a great quantity of glass beads. This man had resided here some time, but was not able to give me much information. He, however, excited my curiosity with regard to two white women, whom I was to see in Yóla, brought there from the southern regions of Ádamáwa, and who he assured me were at least as white as myself. But, after all, this was not saying much; for my arms and face at that time were certainly some shades darker than the darkest Spaniard or Italian. I had heard already several people speak of these women, and the natives had almost made them the subject of a romance, spreading the rumour that my object in going to Yóla was to get a white female companion. I shall have occasion to speak about a tribe of lighter colour than usual in the interior, not far from the coast of the Cameroons, and there can be no doubt about the fact. My short and uncomfortable stay in the capital of Ádamáwa deprived me of the opportunity of deciding with regard to the exact shade of these people’s complexion, but I think it is a yellowish-brown.
Sunday, June 15.—Having been busy in the morning writing Fulfúlde, I mounted my horse about ten o’clock, accompanied by Bíllama and Bú-Sʿad, in order to visit the market, which is held every Thursday and Sunday, on a little eminence at some distance from the Bórnu village, and close to the south-east side of Saráwu Fulfúlde, separated from the latter by a ravine. The market was furnished with thirty-five stalls made of bushes and mats, and was rather poorly attended. However, it must be taken into consideration, that during the season of field-labours all markets in Negroland are
much less considerable than at other seasons of the year There were a good many head of cattle for sale, while two oxen were slaughtered for provision, to be cut up and sold in small parcels. The chief articles besides were ground-nuts, butter, a small quantity of rice, salt, and soap. Soap, indeed, is a very important article in any country inhabited by Fúlbe, and it is prepared in every household; while very often, even in large places inhabited by other tribes, it is quite impossible to obtain this article, so essential for cleanliness. No native grain of any kind was in the market,—a proof of the great dearth which prevailed throughout the country A few túrkedí were to be seen; and I myself introduced a specimen of this article, in order to obtain the currency of the country for buying small matters of necessity.
The standard of the market is the native cotton, woven, as it is, all over Negroland, in narrow strips called “léppi,” of about two inches and a quarter in width, though this varies greatly. Shells (“kurdí,” or “chéde”) have no currency. The smallest measure of cotton is the “nánandé,” measuring ten “drʿa” or “fóndudé” (sing. “fóndukí”), equal to four fathoms, “káme” or “nándudé” (sing. “nándukí”). Seven nánandé make one “dóra”—meaning a small shirt of extremely coarse workmanship, and scarcely to be used for dress; and from two to five dóra make one thób or “gaffaléul” of variable size and quality. The túrkedí which I introduced into the market, and which I had bought in Kanó for 1800 kurdí, was sold for a price equivalent to 2500 shells, which certainly is not a great profit, considering the danger of the road. However, it must be borne in mind that what I bought for 1800, a native certainly would have got for 1600, and would perhaps have sold for 2800 or more.
Having caused some disturbance to the usual quiet course of business in the market, I left Bú-Sʿad behind me to buy some articles which we wanted, and proceeded with my kashélla towards the ravine, and ascending the opposite bank, entered the straggling quarter of the Fúlbe, which, in a very remarkable manner, is adorned with a single specimen of the charming gónda-tree, or “dukúje” (the Carica papaya), and a single specimen of the gigiña or dugbi, the Hyphæna which I have frequently mentioned; at all events not more
than these two specimens are seen rearing their tapering forms above the huts and fences. Then we directed our steps towards the dwelling of the governor, which impressed me by its magnificence when compared with the meanness of the cottages around. A very spacious oblong yard, surrounded with a high clay wall, encircled several apartments, the entrance being formed by a round cool hut of about twenty-five feet diameter, the clay walls of which, from the ground to the border of the thatched roof, measured about ten feet in height, and had two square doors of about eight feet in height, one towards the street, and the other on the inside,—altogether a splendid place in the hot season. Here, too, the floor was at present thickly strewn with pebbles.
But the master of this noble mansion was an unhappy blind man, who, leaning upon the shoulders of his servants, was led into the room by a mʿallem or módibo, one of the finest men I have seen in the country, and more like a European than a native of Negroland, tall and broad-shouldered, and remarkably amiable and benevolent. The governor himself, also, was remarkably tall and robust for a Púllo. The módibo, who spoke Arabic tolerably well and officiated as interpreter, had heard a good deal about me, and was most anxious to see those curious instruments which had been described to him; and as I wore the chronometer and compass constantly attached to my waist, I was able to satisfy his curiosity, which, in so learned a man, was less vain and more interesting than usual. But the poor blind governor felt rather uneasy because he could not see these wonders with his own eyes, and endeavoured to indemnify himself by listening to the ticking of the watch, and by touching the compass. But he was more disappointed still when I declared that I was unable to restore his sight, which after all the stories he had heard about me, he had thought me capable of doing; and I could only console him by begging him to trust in “Jaumiráwo” (the Lord on High). As, on setting out, I did not know that we were going to pay our respects to this man, I had no present to offer him except a pair of English scissors, and these of course, in his blindness, he was unable to value, though his companion found out immediately how excellent they were for cutting paper. The governor is far superior in power to
his neighbours, and besides Saráwu, Kurúndel, or Korúlu, and Bíngel are subject to his government.
While recrossing the ravine on my return to Saráwu Beréberé, I observed with great delight a spring of water bubbling up from the soil, and forming a small pond—quite a new spectacle for me. After I had returned to my quarters I was so fortunate as to make a great bargain in cloves, which I now found out was the only article in request here. The Bórnu women seemed amazingly fond of them, and sold the nánandé of léppi for thirty cloves, when, seeing that they were very eager to buy, I raised the price of my merchandise, offering only twenty-five. I had also the luck to buy several fowls and sufficient corn for three horses, with a pair of scissors; and as my mʿallem Katúri had several old female friends in the village who sent him presents, we all had plenty to eat that day. But nevertheless my old friend the mʿallem was not content, but, in the consciousness of his own merits, picked a quarrel with me because I refused to write charms for the people, while they all came to me, as the wisest of our party; and had I done so, we might all have lived in the greatest luxury and abundance.
In the evening, while a storm was raging outside, Bíllama gave me a list of the most important persons in the capital of the country which we were now fast approaching. Mohammed Láwl, the son of Mʿallem Ádama, has several full-grown brothers, who all figure occasionally as leaders of great expeditions, and also others of more tender age. The eldest of these is Bú-bakr (generally called Mʿallem Bágeri), who last year conducted the great expedition towards the north; next follows Aíjo; then Mʿallem Mansúr, a man whom Bíllama represented to me as of special importance for me, on account of his being the favourite of the people, and amicably disposed towards Bórnu, ʿOmáro, Zubéru, Hámidu. Of the other people, he represented to me as the most influential—Móde Hassan, the kádhi; Móde ʿAbdallahi, the secretary of state; and the Ardo Ghámmawa, as commander of the troops. As the most respectable Háusa people settled in Yóla, he named Káiga Hámma Serkí-n-Góber, Mai Konáma, Mágaji-n-Hadder, Mai Hadder, and Búwári (Bokhári). I
introduce this notice, as it may prove useful in case of another expedition up the river Bénuwé.
Monday, June 16.—Starting at an early hour we passed the market-place, which to-day was deserted, and then left the Púllo town on one side. The country being elevated, and the path winding, we had every moment a new view of the mountains around us; and before we began to descend I made the accompanying sketch of the country behind us, stretching from N. 30 E. to E. 20 N.
The country continued rugged and rocky, though it was occasionally interrupted by cultivated ground, and a mountain group of interesting form, called Kónkel, stood out on our right.
Having entered at eight o’clock upon cultivated ground of great extent, we reached a quarter of an hour afterwards Bélem, the residence of Mʿallem Dalíli, a man whom I had heard much praised in Saráwu. Bíllama wished to spend the day here, but I was very anxious to proceed, as we had already lost the preceding day; but at the same time I desired to make the acquaintance of, and to pay my respects to, a person whom every one praised for his excellent qualities. I therefore sent forward the camels with the men on foot, while I myself entered the village with the horsemen. Crossing a densely inhabited quarter, we found the mʿallem sitting under a tree in his courtyard, a venerable and benevolent-looking old man, in a threadbare blue shirt and a green “báki-n-záki.” We had scarcely paid our respects to him, and he had asked a few general questions in Arabic, when an Arab adventurer from Jedda, with the title of sheríf, who had roved a good deal about the world, made his appearance, and was very inquisitive to know the motives which had carried me into this remote country; and Bú-Sʿad thought it prudent to pique his curiosity, by telling him that we had come to search for
the gold and silver in the mountains. Old Mʿallem Dalíli soon after began to express himself to the effect that he should feel offended if I would not stay with him till the afternoon; and I was at length obliged to send for the camels, which had already gone on a good way.
A rather indifferent lodging being assigned to me, I took possession of the shade of a rími, or béntehi,—the bentang-tree of Mungo Park (Eriodendron Guineense), of rather small size, and there tried to resign myself quietly to the loss of another day, while in truth I burned with impatience to see the river which was the first and most important object of my journey. However, my quarters soon became more interesting to me, as I observed here several peculiarities of arrangement, which, while they were quite new to me, were most characteristic of the equatorial regions which I was approaching. For while in Bórnu and Háusa it is the general custom to expose the horses, even very fine ones, to all changes of the weather,—which on the whole are not very great,—in these regions, where the wet season is of far longer duration and the rains much heavier, it is not prudent to leave the animals unsheltered, and stables are built for them on purpose,—round spacious huts with unusually high clay walls; these are called “debbíru” by the Fúlbe of Ádamáwa, from the Háusa word “débbi.” Even for the cattle there was here a stable, but more airy, consisting only of a thatched roof supported by thick poles, and enclosed with a fence of thorny bushes.
The vegetation in the place was very rich, and an experienced botanist might have found many new species of plants, while to me the most remarkable circumstance was the quantity of Palma Christi scattered about the place, a single specimen of the gónda-tree, and the first specimen of a remarkable plant which I had not observed before on my travels,—a smooth soft stem about ten inches thick at the bottom, and shooting up to a height of about twenty-five feet, but drawn downwards and inclined by the weight and size of its leaves, which measured six feet in length and about twenty inches in breadth. The Háusa people gave it the name “alléluba,” a name generally given to quite a different tree which I have mentioned in speaking of Kanó. The plant bears some resemblance to the Musa, or banana; fruits or flowers it had none at present.
I had been roving about for some time when the sheríf, whom I mentioned above, came to pay me a visit, when I learned that he had come to this place by way of Wadáy and Logón, and that he had been staying here already twenty days, being engaged in building a warm bath for the mʿallem, as he had also done for the sultan of Wadáy.
The reader sees that these wandering Arabs are introducing civilization into the very heart of this continent, and it would not be amiss if they could all boast of such accomplishments; but this rarely happens. Even this very man was a remarkable example of these saintly adventurers so frequently met with in Negroland, but who begin to tire out the patience of the more enlightened princes of the country. He brought me a lump of native home-made soap, with which, as he said, I might “wash my clothes, as I came from the dirty, soapless country of Bórnu.” This present was not ill-selected, although I hope that the reader will not thence conclude that I was particularly dirty,—at least, not more so than an African traveller might be fairly expected to be. I had laid in a good store of cloves, which, as I have had already occasion to mention, are highly esteemed here, so I made him very happy by giving him about halfa-pound weight of them.
More interesting, however, to me than the visit of this wandering son of the East was the visit of two young native noblemen, sons of
