The week Port Harcourt was flooded with books

The Atlantic Hall of Port Harcourt’s Hotel Presidential was a hub for book lovers. It was the interface, if you like, for book lovers and sellers attending the fifth annual Garden City Literary Festival. This year’s festival is significant. It is coming just after Port Harcourt had been chosen as UNESCO’s world book capital for […]

The Atlantic Hall of Port Harcourt’s Hotel Presidential was a hub for book lovers. It was the interface, if you like, for book lovers and sellers attending the fifth annual Garden City Literary Festival.

This year’s festival is significant. It is coming just after Port Harcourt had been chosen as UNESCO’s world book capital for 2014, the first African city to be so chosen in an open bid having beaten off competition from Oxford (UK) and Lyon (France).

Inside the hall, where the book fair  is holding, just past the registrations point, there is a stand with young ladies handing out leaflets and giving information on the significance of  2014.

“We need everyone to support this project, to talk about it and look forward to it,” one of the young ladies manning the stand explained as she handed me a leaflet. It had pictures of Koko Kalango, the brains behind the festival alongside the governor of Rivers State, Rotimi Ameachi. In another picture, she is seen in conversation with Nobel Laureate Wole Soyinka.

Those pictures were a statement. Port Harcourt has been able to draw the big names, local and international. Soyinka seems to be a regular feature and he was scheduled to make another appearance this year. He will be the most prominent male writer to feature this year. The theme for this year is African Women and Literature and Ivorian writer, Veronique Tadjo did justice to that topic in her keynote address.

No surprise then that the featured writers are all women; Tadjo, Doreen Baingana, Noo Saro Wiwa and Chibundu Onozu.

In previous editions,Ghana’s Kofi Awonoor and Kenyan Ngugi Wa Thiongo have also featured and with support from Governor Ameachi, the festival has blossomed to an international event that features a book fair, writing workshops, literary symposiums and the likes.

Outside the Atlantic Hall, budding writers sat in the shade waiting for the creative writing workshop to commence. I recognise Mikail Bashir and Ladi Opaluwa who seemed tired already. They, like most other applicants, had challenges applying online for the workshop, something to do with a cyber glitch that truncated the application of many. But they persisted and were selected.

Participants in the workshops arrived Port Harcourt from different parts of the country. Many others had to let the opportunity of being tutored by renowned writers like Ugandan Caine Prize winner Doreen Baingana, Obari Gomba and Noo saro Wiwa pass. The fact that the organisers did not provide accommodation or feeding for participants was a factor.

The workshop started eventually by 1pm as scheduled just after a group of excited pupils came running out towards the book sellers’ stand. They had just finished a creative writing workshop with British-Nigerian children story writer, Polly Alakija. Things were finally getting on the way.

Up and Running

Koko Kalango was sitting in the stand run by her Rainbow Book Club, the machinery on which the entire workshop runs. For one responsible for the organisation of such a massive event, she seemed relaxed in her white polo shirt and jeans pants, save for the lines of fatigue around her eyes. The lines disappeared as she got excited talking about 2014.

“Well, this year is special. It’s the fifth year. That’s a significant land mark. This year, Port Harcourt was nominated the World Book Capital for 2014, so we are also using that platform to present Port Harcourt as the Book Capital of the World,” she said.

She could afford to smile. The initial hitches had been overcome and the festival was well and truly on the way. Part of the plans is to make the festival bigger. The children’s workshop has been added to the poetry and fiction workshops and a dance drama was introduced –typically themed around women issues.

“All this is a build up to 2014,” she said.

Part of the innovations being worked on is a coffee table book on 50 Nigerian authors, which President Goodluck Jonathan had already written a foreword to and Rivers State Governor, Rotimi Ameachi had contributed an introduction. He is after all the muscle of the festival. The book was presented at the closing of this festival.

In the Royal Banquet Hall, four panelist were discussing ‘Literature and women in National Development.’ They made way for a meet the author session featuring Doreen Baingana and moderated by Nigerian short story writer, Igoni Barret.

“People see men’s writing as writing for the world and women’s writing as writing for women,” the Ugandan writer said. She had been at the forefront of promoting women writing in east Africa through her initiative FEMRITE.

She had read from her award wining book, Tropical Fish before taking on questions from Barret. The author said she doesn’t subscribe to the idea of projecting only positive female characters as “we [women] are a complexity of characters.”

Expectedly, Veronique Tadjo, in her keynote address in a packed Cinema Hall of the hotel buttressed the primal role of women in the evolution of writing in Africa citing the role of women as storytellers and educators in early African societies.

“It seems to me that the characteristic of “female” writing lies primarily in history. Not so much in the themes and styles of the works – as those are changing as we speak -, but in the particular way women authors entered African literature,” she said.

Adding in her conclusion that: “I will say that African women writers are continuing the path opened by their male and female predecessors. Our expectation is that their increased visibility and scope will allow for new readings of history and the elaboration of new thinking about Africa today.”

Days into the festival, book lovers were trooping into the Atlantic Hall to buy new titles brought from far and wide. In one of the stands belonging to Mosuro The Bookseller, Edwin Mba was busy attending to customers impressed by the books he was showcasing.

“The set up is impressive, international standard. The people are friendly,” Mr. Mba said. He would have wanted more turnout for the fair through.

“Now that Port Harcourt has been designated UNESCO World Book Capital for 2014, I was expecting that the awareness for books would have been more. I was expecting more students.”

But the students he was referring to, from the University of Port Harcourt, were equally guests at this year’s festival. The book fair in previous years have held in the school but due to disturbances following the Aluu Four killings, organisers moved the venue to the hotel. That may have affected patronage, that and the prices of the books. They were supposed to be cheaper.

“I wouldn’t say the books are expensive. When you are looking for something valuable, you pay a premium for it,” Mr. Mba said. Despite these setback, he said he was ‘generally impressed’ with the book fair.

Having had enough of the book fair for one day, Nkemjika Crystyn, poet and workshop participant, walked into the evening sun on her way to her accommodation somewhere in Port Harcourt.

“Apart from the class thing, the environment doesn’t really give me what I want. The environment will kill my creativity,” she said.

She had participated in other creative writing workshops where she did not have to worry about where she would lay her head or what she would eat before and after class. This case was different.

“You can’t really connect to the people here. You are more like a stranger her to fill in the gap and then go home,” she added.

But the decision not to accommodate the workshop participants has been longstanding and deliberate, Koko Kalongo said.

“If you go to similar workshops in the world, everyone pays to be in such a workshop. As far as I know, you have to pay to come through the gate,” she said.

The fact that they are not charging entry fees, she said was “very kind and generous of us”. She was laughing when she said that. But she wasn’t when she said they have been considering asking participants to pay a token participation fee so they will take the workshops more seriously.

Nkemjika has no problem with that “if the workshop will be better organised.” She said she is willing to pay because the workshop had helped her “polish the edge” and made her pen sharper.

Kongi’s Harvest

Nobel Laureate Wole Soyinka was at hand for the declaration of Port Harcourt as the World Book capital for 2014. He was undoubtably one of the main attraction at the festival and was his usual ebullient self.

“I believe quite frankly this country is at war; the war is between the forces of darkness and the forces of light, the forces of intellect, the forces of rationality and the forces of atavism, retrograde thinking, the forces of hatred against humanism,” he said

“I believe that if we surrender to these banal forces in our society, we cease to be human beings because we succumb completely to fear and it is the same messages we must take to those in this nation, who believe that books are wrong.”