A divided city, apartheid in Writivism’s shortlisted nonfiction

On July 17, a shortlist of three stories (by two Nigerians and a South African) was released for the Koffi Addo Writivism Prize for Nonfiction, administered by the Center for African Cultural Excellence (CACE). They were Charles King’s (South Afirca) ‘Meat Bomb’, Sada Malumfashi’s ‘Finding Binyavanga’, and Vivian Uchechi Ogbonna’s ‘A Long Way From Home’. […]

On July 17, a shortlist of three stories (by two Nigerians and a South African) was released for the Koffi Addo Writivism Prize for Nonfiction, administered by the Center for African Cultural Excellence (CACE). They were Charles King’s (South Afirca) ‘Meat Bomb’, Sada Malumfashi’s ‘Finding Binyavanga’, and Vivian Uchechi Ogbonna’s ‘A Long Way From Home’. Here are their reviews.

 

Meat Bomb

If you are used to fiction, then get ready, because Charles King’s ‘Meat bomb’ is bloody and graphic and so…so nonfiction. It’s about finding ones’ self (or even identity) in the midst of contradictions, in the strangest of circumstances, ever.

In this narrative, I found myself in the middle of nowhere, like the combatants who were trained to kill, to not feel. But the storyteller, an eighteen-year-old, isn’t unfeeling, in the quest for blood and death in the mountains of Southern Africa. He knows they were brainwashed to fight for a wrong course, where the blacks were the enemy and the whites, victims. Welcome to apartheid!  

We were machines that had been trained to unflinchingly, unquestionably operate on autopilot. We’d been broken down before being built up again to do what we were told to do.

I had to go to Google to quickly check the names of places mentioned, to learn their location, like Sesfontein in Namibia. 

“There are journalists on their way here, on the only road between Sesfontein and Opuwo. We’ve sent a patrol south to blow up the bridges so that they can’t get here.”

Our narrator, an unwilling soldier fighting for a cause he doesn’t believe in, keeps a diary through everything, and is resigned to his fate, his death. 

One of the major flaws of this story is the typographical errors and omissions, which excellent editing would have solved, but this doesn’t water down the strength of this engaging story. It started, a bit cryptic, and then built up, revealing more about the battle and the mission of a group of soldiers. In this way, suspense was in place.  

This story ran back and forth, between the narrator and a third voice. Even in the midst of death, the central character managed to think about women and inevitably sex. And just when you are taking this in, you realise you are on an excursion and shown the Himba people living in northern Namibia and in Angola.

So this soldier learns about Africa, the weight of his rifle an ever present companion. But still, he learns, discovering it isn’t what he has always been told-that the rest of Africa was dangerous, alien and threatening. Right there and strangely, he begins to experience something new, a feeling of oneness with the dark-skinned people of Africa. Right there, at war, where the colour of his pale skin was white against black, he finds his identity. There’s no white, no black, only a refreshing humanness. 

 

Finding Binyavanga

The title of this story immediately got me wondering if it’s the same Binyavanga Wainaina, the Kenyan author. And it was. 

It was the first time I was encountering Malumfashi (through his work, of course) and so I was eager to begin the adventure. Around a visit from the Kenyan writer, Malumfashi takes a reader to the heart of one of Kaduna city’s biggest challenges, that of a divided city. If you know next to nothing about Kaduna, his story would only arouse your curiosity, giving hints here and there, never really delving into how the city split along religious lines-the Muslims in the north of it, the Christians in the south. 

As the story progresses, Wainaina and Kaduna its central focus, you learn about the former, his curiosity, his humility, his tone of voice, the colours in his hair and more. While getting to know (and find) Wainaina, the reader is taken on a tour of Kaduna, to the beauty that’s Fifth Chukker Polo and Country Club. 

In this tour the author, who is now himself stuck more to the city’s north, seems to see nothing different. Suddenly the past is a blur and he sees only Kaduna, one city, one people. He forgets that Barnawa is on the south side and Unguwan Rimi on the other. They look alike while they drive through.

Kaduna has lost so much over the years. What used to be the famous Hamdala Hotel, one among many northern edifices (built by Ahmadu Bello) is a shadow of itself. So also is the city’s textile industry in Kakuri. This is what Malumfashi’s story reminds you of. Of broken dreams, mangled visions, and yet still something beautiful, the culture, the language, the music… Something beautiful about the now peaceful city that welcomes a guest from Kenya.

Although, like other stories on the list, Malumfashi’s harbours a number of typo’s (and sometimes these are just omissions and very separate words joined together), there’s so much song in the flow of words, a rhythm the writer sustains till the very end.

 

A Long Way From Home

Reading this story made me not envy the judges of the Koffi Addo Prize. Vivian Uchechi Ogbonna’s seven journeys outside Nigeria, to Germany and the United Kingdom, reminds you of how home is always home and irreplaceable. 

From the onset I wondered if all I was reading was a travelogue: Ogbonna’s first trip abroad took her to Frankfurt, Germany for a trade fair. Excited, she was at the same time struck by the absence of familiar sounds and sights. The gay couple, for example kissing in public made her stare in shock. She thought people were unfriendly, unlike where she came from.  

From a visitor in Germany in January 2001, Ogbonna turned into a regular as she visited twice in 2007, and then 2016. She also visited London several times. 

In these visits she met three people that changed and shaped her perspective about her hosts. The first happened in London, October 2015, when she was welcomed by a stranger: “Welcome Home,” the elderly Indian man called out with a smile as I left Baggage Claim. This is not home, I thought. My ears buzzed a dull, hollow sound and tiredness saturated my bones, but I still smiled and waved at him. I had never been gifted by such spontaneous, genuine warmth from a total stranger in the United Kingdom. He disarmed me. 

The second was when a lady helped her with her heavy luggage: Thirty minutes later, I was still struggling with the same suitcase when a young lady offered to lift one end while I held the other. We spilled out at the next landing, out of breath. I thanked her over and over again as she disappeared into the crowd. Perhaps, these people are not as cold as I perceived.

Now Ogbonna sees gay couples and isn’t affected by it. She has come to accept that that’s just the way they are over there. Travelling, as it is said, is education, and she has generously shared hers with the world.