Why I started Ebedi Writers’ Residency – Dr. Wale Okediran

I was actually inspired to think along this line when I went to my home town for weekend with my wife and she said, why do you allow this place [the country house] to go to waste, that I could make use of it in a way and she brought this idea of a resort. […]

I was actually inspired to think along this line when I went to my home town for weekend with my wife and she said, why do you allow this place [the country house] to go to waste, that I could make use of it in a way and she brought this idea of a resort. The idea got a good grounding in me because when I recollect in the past when I had worked on a manuscript I wanted just a few weeks to finish it up and I couldn’t get away. So from there, we started asking around for those who had one or two experiences in having attended residencies in the past and their experience. We brought them together to form the board; somebody like Alkasim Abdulkadir, who had gone for residency abroad before, the same thing with Uche Umez, who is based in Imo, he has that kind of experience before and then with two other colleagues, we decided to form a board of directors and sent out calls for applications and the response has been very encouraging. Since then we’ve been running this programme.

Financing the project must cost a lot. Where is the finance coming from?

Well, So far, the financing has been from me for now because I believe anything worth doing is worth some sacrifice. We are in the process of applying for assistance because we’ve been advised and we agree that for such a venture to have a long lifespan, you have to be sponsored because donor fatigue may set in. So far I’ve been sponsoring it.

Have you been impressed by the quality of work that has been going on in the residency?

One thing we want to do is not to be too involved in the project that comes out of the place. We are more interested in people giving us an idea of what they want to work on before they come in and before they leave, we want to see that they really worked on that project so that people will not come there for a holiday or run from some problem to come and hide there for a few days or a few weeks. Regarding the quality, we don’t want to assess that too much because we believe that is the prerogative of the writer but along the line, Litramed Publications based in Lagos volunteered to look at the products of this residency and so far we have sent them four manuscripts out of which one is being considered for publication. Some other writers have their own arrangements. What we want to do is to give a free reign to every writer that is coming. We don’t want to monitor what he’s writing. We just want to make sure that he writes and he writes what he says he will write on.

So what facilities have you put in place to make sure the writer writes?

What we do is to provide residence, private rooms with toilets and everything, tables and chairs. They [writers] come in with their laptops but we provide them with internet facilities so that they can browse and do other things. We have a small book collection which they can use as reference. Of course, there is a sitting room, a television room, where they catch up on happenings all over the world. We have a housekeeper who will take care of their needs so they can be free to write. The cleaning of the place, their laundry and even going to the market to purchase their groceries and other needs, even cooking; all are handled by the housekeeper. All we want them to do is sleep, wake up, write, sleep wake up write. And we have also decided that the community should benefit from the programme and we said that each resident should spend two hours in a week with secondary school students in town. The resident is free to teach those students anything that catches his fancy.

You mentioned plans to expand the funding for the programme. Has there been anything concrete?

No, there hasn’t been anything concrete yet. We are sending out applications and in the next couple of weeks we hope to get responses from them. All we have been able to do is get a parcel of land. We want to make the residency programme bigger than it is. In addition to the residency, we want to have literary seminars, maybe once in a month, where we invite guest speakers to come and talk to writers and maybe students as well. We also want to increase the number [of residents] from two to four or five. Not many so as not to distract them. But we are hoping that in the next few months, before the end of the year, we will get some grants that could sustain the programme.

It seems all the residents are men. What is happening…

No, the first two were women. Out of the six residents so far, two are women, four are men and I think the next set will be women. What we want is to make it a single gender event so that people will be comfortable with each other and it will also enhance their work. So far, we’ve had people from South West, South East. We’ve not got anybody from the north and we are trying to push because we know there are so many good writers from there and that’s why we are not limiting ourselves to writers in English language. We are also considering writers in indigenous languages. In fact, one of the writers who just finished writes in Igbo and we hope that out of the teeming population of Hausa writers in the north we could have one or two who could come and use the facilities so that this could be national and international the way we want it to be.

Judging from the three sets you’ve had so far, how would you assess their impact on the community?

Ah! In fact, I can say that judging from the response from the teachers, students and their parents and community leaders too, it seems as if the community is gaining more than the writers. Some of the students have never met a living writer before. One of the students said, at an event, that she had this perception that all writers are dead because all the books she had read were by Shakespeare and other old English writers. So to them, it is a fascinating experience that they are coming across living writers. And our residents have been able to identify some talents among them, talents that could be nurtured in the future. And the community itself, I could remember during the first passing out ceremony of the first set, we brought the Kaabyesi, the Aseyin of Iseyin as a guest of honour and two of the students read their poems, which they wrote for Iseyin, and the Kaabyesi was happy. In fact, right there, he offered me a chieftaincy title which I have not taken up yet, just to show how pleased he was.

So how many sets do you intend to have in a year?

From our calculations, we want to run it from January to November, that’s 11 months and 11 months is 44 weeks and if each set will stay for six weeks, then we imagine we will have about seven sets in a year. We want to leave December free for those who want to travel or be with family.

So if a writer wants to come to the residency, what does he need to do?

He just needs to send an application to the General Secretary at [email protected]. And the application must consist of a bio data, two references and a summary of the work he intends to do during the residency period and contact addresses. Once that is sent in, the board will look at it and consider if it is suitable or not. And the applicant should also indicate which month of the year will be preferable for him or her. This will enable the board to sort out the applications.

Does this imply that you are receiving applications all year round?

Yes, all year round. We are also receiving applications from all over the world. In fact one of the next residents is coming from Uganda. So it’s all year round. And we give them stipends to take care of their financial needs to cushion the effect on those who work and maybe would be asked to take a leave without pay so that such a person would not lose much.

Is there any flexibility to the programme such that if a writer wants to make some changes in the programme in such a way that will suit his needs, are you open to any such arrangement?

Well, the only flexibility we allow now is on the time. We give six weeks. If a writer feels that four weeks is enough for him or her, then we allow him to go but we don’t want to encourage a stay of less than four weeks because it will defeat the purpose. We don’t want to have someone spend one week or two weeks, maybe he is here for sightseeing. The other flexibility we have notated is in terms of relating with the community. If the writer feels he wants to do adult education for elderly men or elderly women, no problem. Or if he wants to do a study on something peculiar to the area, like the area is noted for asoke, if the writer wants to do a study on this, you don’t want to work with students but with weavers, you want to write about them, you are welcome. But whatever you want to do should be something that can be seen, something tangible.