Why I’m always mistaken for a lawyer – Kaine Agary
What have you been doing since we last heard from you? Working on Dtalkshop, introducing a new outreach initiative called Dtalkshop’s Law and Policy Club in public secondary schools in Lagos State and just generally running the different aspects of the organisation. You work with lawyers a lot. Are you one? No. My interest in […]
What have you been doing since we last heard from you?
Working on Dtalkshop, introducing a new outreach initiative called Dtalkshop’s Law and Policy Club in public secondary schools in Lagos State and just generally running the different aspects of the organisation.
You work with lawyers a lot. Are you one?
No. My interest in the law stems from my belief that the law defines all of our interactions in society, business, family, etc. So it is important to know what the laws are, what your responsibilities as defined by the laws are and how the laws protect you and your business from being cheated.
Nobody likes to feel cheated and one way to ensure that is to enter into relationships from a position of strength, which knowledge of the law gives you.
What we do at Dtalkshop is to inform people about the law, make the law accessible and inform them about the different access points to justice. It is all well and good to say you are defending people’s rights but I think it is just as important to inform them of their rights, otherwise you find people suffering injustice, not knowing that they have rights in that situation.
We hear you’re prepping your sophomore book. True?
Yes. It’s a story about loss, grief and nostalgia for a city. It is set in Port Harcourt. This story is closer to me than ‘Yellow-Yellow’ because it is giving me an opportunity to deal with my current feelings about Port Harcourt. I loved the city when I was growing up and now I can’t really understand it. I am not excited to visit it and I don’t even like talking about it.
The main character is mixed Hausa and Rivers, so you see some of that culture clash in a community in Port Harcourt. For research, I drew from my personal experiences, talking to friends and I did some focus group sessions last year regarding the militancy in Port Harcourt and the new atmosphere. I chose the Hausa community because of its rich history and cultural heritage. Plus Hausa people are quite interesting.
Do you feel any pressure to perform, given that your debut novel won the biggest prize in Africa?
Of course. But also personally, I want to tell a better story. You always want to improve on your skills, make a bigger impact, etc.
You are a movie buff, actually. In fact you have worked in the film industry internationally and locally. What can you tell us about that?
I love movies, but don’t have time to get involved in the industry as much as could in the past. There is so much that excites me about movies. Being able to move through time and space in a movie excites me. The little technical things that make a movie, from the creative design, costumes, sets, etc. Everything!
It’s probably too early, but what’s your next book going to be about?
After [latest book] ‘In a Garden of Graves’ I’ll most likely work on something related to my family history, probably non-fiction. I’ll have to do a lot of research that I am honestly not looking forward to. I am looking forward to what I shall uncover but not looking forward to the actual work, like digging into archives and human memories.