No Grannies in Africa

Captain Wagna, the snorkeling king of Mombasa

Some people trot around the world just to see animals, or to ogle at old buildings, or to take photos of a ‘wow factor’ that has been photographed a billion times already. True, with me, I find myself going to places that have been talked about over and over again, which is why I went to Mombasa. But the one thing that lures me to travel is the chance to stumble upon stories that have never been told before. Stories that can never be told because travel books are full of stuff like ‘the best hotels in Mombasa’, or ‘the top five places to visit in Kenya’. Stories like that of Captain Wagna, one of the millions of unknown faces who work in the background to make sure visitors enjoy their holidays.

The first time I met him was at the Backpackers Nirvana. In fact, the easiest way to get in touch with him and have him take you out for a day snorkeling would be through this humble hostel. He came in the evening because he heard there was a couple of guy who wanted to go out. He wore a cap, and his dreadlocks fell all over his shoulders. For a brief moment, I thought of Captain Jack Sparrow, for there was a stunning resemblance. Not in looks (otherwise this girl will murder me for suggesting that he is as handsome as Depp) but maybe it was the dreadlocks that made me think of that famous pirate.

A romantic sailing boat in the Indian ocean coast of Mombasa

A glassboat used for snorkeling in Mombasa

When we thought of snorkeling, we had two options. Get on a boat with a glass bottom and join a gang of other tourists in a kind of tour, or hire a traditional boat. We chose the latter. It is no fun snorkeling with a large glass between you and the fish. It’s much more romantic to get into the water and kiss the beauties under there. And certainly, sailing with the wind, the way it has been done for thousands of years, was much more exciting than in an engine propelled boat. Plus, the fun of hiring Wagna is that we could choose to have him for only a few hours, or the whole day, at the same price! What’s that for a bargain? We obviously picked the whole day, and man, it was thrilling just lolling around in the waves of the Indian ocean.

Wagna talks too much, a typical chatter box, but he was such fun that I enjoyed every word he spoke. Seeing that he liked to talk, and having a nose for a story, I started to dig a little into his past, and his story has haunted me ever since I met him.

He has been the Captain of a little boat called Haleluya for over fifteen years now. He told me it’s called an angalewa, and many people in Mombasa seemed to refer it by that name, but I always thought of it as a dhow. He makes his money from tourists, both Kenyans and foreigners, who come to the coast to snorkel. He knows every inch of the marine park and will certainly take you to the best places you can see fish, even at high tide.

Captain Wagna's boat in the marine park of Mombasa

His business thrived before 2007. He enjoyed a good life, and though belongs to the dominant tribe in the Mombasa area, the Giriyama, he had a Kikuyu wife and two children. The eldest is a girl, about thirteen now, and the other is a nine-year-old boy. He dreams of this boy one time ending up a boat captain like his dad. He was wealthy. He could afford to send his daughter to a private school, because many tourists fought over themselves to snorkel with him.

Having fun aboard the boat, Haleluya

“She was only after my wealth,” he told us, referring to his wife. We noticed the sudden change in the tone of his voice. A bitterness crept to the surface, and the smile that hitherto was permanently on his face vanished. Instead, he grimaced. He did not have to tell us what she put him through to know that their once happy marriage turned into a nightmare.

In December 2007, violence erupted in Kenya, following a disputed presidential elections. The tribal divisions in the country left a thousand people dead, and divided a family in Mombasa.

He is not clear on when exactly she left him, but during the height of the crisis, she was not settled. Many Kikuyu were afraid of their lives. There’s a stereotype in Kenya that the Kikuyu are thieves and money-hungry leeches, and so they were the target for ethnic cleansing in many parts of the country. I am not very familiar with why exactly the violence erupted, who started killing who, but it certainly destroyed the tourism industry.

All of a sudden, no one was hiring Wagna anymore. Within months, he was broke.

He pulled his daughter out of private school and put her in a poor public school. He moved from the nice house he was renting to one in the poorer suburbs of Mtwapa.

And his wife left him. “It was not just the violence,” he says. “If she was a good woman, she would have stayed when I ran broke. No one tried to kill her while she was here, so her claims that she is going back to her parents, months after the violence ended, is sheer lies. She saw there were no more tourists and so that I was broke and she decided to pack her bags and go. That Kikuyu leech!”

He has not replaced her yet. He is focusing on his children. You could tell that the wound she dealt him is deep. It might have been the seawater that got into his eyes, but for a brief second I thought he was crying.

Time does not heal, obviously, but he has tries his best to forget her. He does drink a little more than he used to, he accepts it, but well, most of the time there is no work and he sits idle with his mates in the shores of Mtwapa. The brokenness drove him into selling off his boat, and so now he has to work for hire. When he talks about it, you can see the pride in his eyes, as though he wants to say, “A captain like me should have my own boat!”

And he has not given up that dream. He is slowly saving to buy his boat back. On addition, rather than just having a boat, he wants to own his own set of floaters and snorkeling gear. Apparently, everything we were using, from the life jackets to the goggles, were borrowed or rented. Thus he was not making as much money as he used to before the chaos. But at least the tourists were coming back, until another tragedy struck. Terrorists.

They attacked the country of its army’s involvement against the Al Shabab gang in Somalia. They kidnapped some tourists in Lamu island. Mombasa itself suffered a wave of terrorist bombings. Just a few weeks before we arrived, there had been riots in Mombasa town over the death of a sheik who was suspected to be a top terrorist sympathizer.

“The man is already dead,” Wagna said. The anger clear in his voice. “Why then riot? Why protest over the death of an evil man? If I can understand a riot over Mandela’s murder, but that of a terrorist? An evil man? This is why we Kenyans will always remain backward!”

Snorkeling in the marine park, Mombasa

We were there in September of 2012. It was supposed to be the peak season. It was supposed to be teaming with tourists. But there was hardly one in sight. On several occasions, we had the entire beach to ourselves, and in some occasions, Reiza was the only noticeably foreign person on the beach. The rest were locals.

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Normally, I don't kiss and tell, but this happened so long ago that it doesn't matter much. Sometime early in 2010, shortly after I arrived in Nepal, a time when I was still single and had not yet met the Filipino bombshell. A time when I was still befuddled with that timeless question: what is the meaning of love. This is probably the last post recounting my personal experiences of dating in Nepal. (Read here part 1 and part 2). The two years I spent there, I was more concerned with their love and marriage customs, for I was making a film about inter-caste marriage, but some mistook my interested to be a veiled expression of my desire to find a Nepali wife, so I got my fare share of proposals, probably more than most foreigners would get, because I spoke the language and lived in a rural community.

This is what I once found on my doorsteps. Read it here.

Well, last time, I told you about Sweta. I went with her on a date, which I thought went horribly wrong, but which to her seemed to be a big step forward. She asked to come to my place the next day, supposedly to cook for me a meal. I called in sick at work that morning, for she was due to arrive at about 10 am. That, in Nepal, is after lunch. She would make nasta, snacks, maybe chow-chow. I hated it. They were a kind of instant noodles, but cooked with eggs they served as my main meal many times. I wished she offered to cook a chicken dish instead, or something much more romantic than factory food.

When she showed up, she brought me a package. Momo. Dumplings. I loved momo, one of the few Nepali things that I fell in love with. She brought steamed, buff momo, made from buffalo meat. I preferred veg momo, but since it was a gift, I wasn't going to be picky about it.

I lived alone in a huge bungalow. It was walled in and gated. It had three bedrooms, two bathrooms, one living room, a kitchen, a dinning room, and a rooftop space, but Nepalis being very nosy people, I couldn't be certain of absolute privacy. Being day time, I had no intention of doing 'funny business' with the girl. Since I used only two rooms, the bedroom and the kitchen, the other rooms were covered with dust and cobwebs, so I took her straight to my bedroom. She didn't protest, nor did she expect me to dishonor her. Privacy being nearly non-existent, it was not uncommon to end up in someone's bedroom on your first visit. Moreover, most youth lived in single rooms, with shared bathrooms and kitchens. It was not a big deal taking her straight to my bedroom. There being no chairs, so she sat on the bed.

Why is she gloomy while on her date?

I'll skip the boring parts. Our conversation was pretty much a rehash of the previous day. She asked about my country, my people, the foods we eat, the clothes we wear, the things we see on TV, how many people we were in my family, how many brothers and sisters I had. We ate the buff momo, the chow-chow, we drank a ginger-lemon drink with honey.

Then the interesting part came up. The kiss. I don't know who did it, but I guess I made the first move. One second, we were seating on my bed, Kunti Moktan's songs played in the background. The next, my lips touched hers. Nothings serious. Nothing deep. The kind of kiss you could give a sister, or a little child, but the girl jumped away in utter horror.

"You papi me!" she screamed. She fled into the bathroom and washed her mouth.

When she came out, I thought she would be fuming in anger, but she had this playful smile, which encouraged me to give it another go. Another little peck on her lips. They were cold, from the water, I think, and tasted of some lip cosmetic I couldn't name, and again it was not the kind of kiss you would expect in a hot, romantic scene, but this girl jumped up as if her insides were exploding, and again she ran into the bathroom and washed her mouth.

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I did not understand what the word 'papi' meant. I looked it up in my pocket dictionary the moment she had left, and learnt that it meant 'sinful' or 'evil'. Every time I kissed her, she said 'You papi me' and ran into the bathroom to rinse her lips. The washing was a ritual of absolution, of purifying something polluted.

Lovers enjoy a cozy moment in Lama's Cafe, Kathmandu

Nepalis believe the mouth is the greatest polluter. Once you touch something with your mouth, it becomes impure, and must undergo a ritual of purification. They have a concept called jutho. Food that remains on your plate is polluted, and no one other than those lower than you (untouchables, children, your wife, dogs) can touch it. One time, we were eating lunch with my boss, and I asked to eat a lemon she had left. I picked it off her plate without waiting for permission. She was scandalized. Though she had not touched it, it was part of her left overs. She snatched it off my hands, and sprinkled water on it before allowing me to eat it.

During my time there, I learnt to drink water off glasses and bottles without touching the vessels with my lips. It's something that puzzled me a great deal at first. Water vessels were never individually owned. In offices, especially in the terrai region where temperatures hit 40 degrees and you have to drink water constantly, there is a big water bottle on every desk. You cannot have your own water bottle. People take bottles without asking for permission. They expect you to share it. But once your lips touch a bottle, it becomes jutho, and no one else will drink from it, even if they are dying of thirst. It was one of the first tricks I learnt the moment I landed, to drink without letting my mouth touch the bottle or glass. Sometimes I find myself pouring water into my mouth without letting it touch my lips.

A Nepali woman shows love for her husband,
by scribbling their initials S + J

While the mouth is the biggest polluter, water is the purifier (Gold, on the other hand, purifies polluted water). Hindus have great attachment to water and the concept of purity. Some people, I heard, have to bring fresh water into the house every morning, because the one that stays overnight becomes impure and thus unfit for drinking or cooking rice.

So it was with this girl. She washed her lips to purify it for I had made it impure by touching it with my lips. This game went on for about ten minutes. I kiss, she runs to the bathroom to wash her mouth, yet each time she came out I thought she was inviting me to 'papi' her some more, and each time I 'papi-ed' her, she ran to cleanse herself.

Naturally, it killed my appetite. After about ten episodes of the game, she finally excused herself and promised to set up another appointment, but I did not want to go through another nightmare. It scared me off having a relationship with Nepali women. I could not imagine someone going to wash herself every time we kiss.

I made discreet inquiries after this, for I was curious to know if the same thing occurs between married people, and the answer I got was; 'there is no jutho' between husband and wife'. How convenient!

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Sometime towards the end of last year, Matt Ewens nominated my blog for the Liebster Blog Awards. Yay! It humbled me, for this guy, Matt, who I hardly know, but who I met in a google plus writing group, thought my blog is worth a read. You can see list of nominees here. http://mattrobertewens.wordpress.com/ There are rules for accepting the Liebster Blog Award. You can read them below. I have to accept the award by answering questions he has asked, and in turn nominate eleven blogs that I think are worth a read. Well, I'll start by answering questions that Matt asked.

What is the meaning of life?

1. What’s the meaning of life to you, what’s the point?

When I was a little boy, going through pretty tough times and asking God that age old question, 'Why did you create me?', and asking my parents that timeless question, 'Why did you produce me?', I went to church one Saturday. We were taking Baptism lessons. The priest asked us that same question, what is life? And a boy, who had only one eye, stood up and gave an answer that has lived with me ever since. In the darkest of times, I hear his voice, sounding like the voice of God, saying, 'Life is something that cannot be explained, but lived.'

2. What are you best at?
I guess I'm best at telling lies. Isn't that what all writers do? They come up with these weird stories, and they will say, 'It's totally fiction. It's not based on real life.' And yet it is often based on their personal lives, for every story ever told has the emotional footprint of the person who told it. I do it all the time. Even when I'm writing my blog, which is supposed to be a factual thing, I'll add a bit of lies here and there to spice things up. I once told someone that my blog is 90% truth, which is the truth, but I revel in the 10% lies that I put in, for that's actually what makes the readers come back again and again. I think.

3. If you were captured by aliens and put into an arena and they used their power of divination to determine your greatest fear or the one creature/animal/monster fake or real – what would appear out of the shadows to face you?
A woman. :D

4. Favourite gig of all time?
My first job, when I was barely a month out of university. It took me to a world I had never been to before. I not only visited, and for the first time in my life slept in, a village, but I met people living with AIDS, who were about to die. Just talking to them influenced my writing for the next few years.

5. How do you boil an egg?
I don't boil eggs. I swallow them raw. It's supposed to be good for creativity. Ah, so now you know where I get all those crazy ideas from. You see, an egg is like a seed, like life itself. If you cook it, you destroy that life. If you swallow it raw, another life will grow inside you, and materialize in the form of a story.

6. If you could magic your mind into the body of any living human being on planet Earth, who would it be and why? (keep in mind this is a lifetime swap there’s no going back)
A Pinoy bombshell called Reiza, my fiancee, so I can know what makes her tick, how to love her without making her go off the edge in a cloud of anger.

7. If a clown jumped out of a van in the street while you were minding your own business and handed you a big pot of pink paint and a big brush and said ‘You must paint that house over there pink, if you do then you’ll get this,’ he shows you the biggest diamond you have ever seen in your life.
I wouldn't paint it, for I'd know the diamond is a fake and the clown is setting me up for a prank.

8. Favourite food?

I actually have two. Dek ngor, an Acholi dish, and the Chinese style sweet-n-sour fish.

9. If you were suddenly transformed or transmogrified into a great bowl along with your equivalent selves from every country in the world and you were asked by GOD to compete against each other in a variety of sports and tests, what self from what country would win and why?
My East African self would win, because it wouldn't be an impostor like the others :-)

10. Best thing you’ve done for another human being?
That's a tough one. People tend to think I'm selfish.

11. What are your long-term life goals?

To be the greatest storyteller ever.

Questions for my Nominees

1. What is the happiest memory you have of your childhood?

2. If you were a vampire, whose blood would you drink, and why?

3. If you were to reincarnate, what animal would you choose to be, and why?

4. Imagine you are a character in a story, and you are supposed to kill your lover, what weapon would you choose and why?

6. How do you make a cup of tea?

7. What is the moon, and not the sun, a symbol of romance?

8. What memories does rain bring to you?

9. Suppose you woke up one morning, and you were in the middle of the street, stark naked, what would you do to convince onlookers of your sanity?

10. If you meet your childhood self, what warning you'd give him/her?

11. What's your dream travel destination?

And my nominees are (in alphabetical order);

Corinne Rodrigues, "Everyday Gyaan", http://everydaygyaan.com/

Gay Emami, "Confessions of a Pinay Travel Junkie", http://www.pinaytraveljunkie.com/

Geeta Nair, "Fabrics of Life", http://geetaavij.wordpress.com/
Jairam Mohan, "Mahabore’s Mumblings", http://mahabore.wordpress.com/
Joel Benjamin Nevender, "Hope Never Runs Dry" http://nevender.blogspot.com/
Jyothi Nair, "Jyothi's Day Out", http://jyothisdayout.com/
Mildred Apenyo, "Apeny Writers." http://apenyo.com/
Reiza S Dejito, "Wander if you Must." http://www.wander-if-you-must.com/
Simon Kaheru, "Scare a Hero." http://skaheru.wordpress.com/
Sophie B Alal, "Deyu African." http://deyuafrican.com/
Susan Dusterhoft, "Today's Writing Woman", http://todayswritingwoman.blogspot.com/

I wish I could go on and on, and it's been hard to limit my selection to only these eleven. I should make another much longer list later. They are all worthy reads. Well, congs to you eleven. And happy blogging!

The rules for accepting the Liebster Blog Award:
1- List eleven random facts about yourself.
2- Nominate eleven other bloggers.
3- Notify these bloggers.
4- Ask eleven questions that the bloggers must answer upon accepting the award.
5- Answer the eleven questions that you were asked when you were nominated.
6- Link back to the person who nominated you (mention him/her and include his/her blog link).

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Early this month, I went to Europe, for the first time in my life. It's an overrated place. I never understand why people kill themselves to go there. All the time I was there, questions from a folk tale kept ringing in my head; anansi the spider went to paradise, but why did he not talk about what he saw there? More important, why did he return to earth? Before I offend my German friends with a list of why I hated their country, I'll tell you about the things I enjoyed. I was in Berlin, for about two weeks, hardly enough time to form an opinion of a place, only enough time for me to learn four words, nein, tanka, nikut and kut. Or they sounded like that. I checked with google translate, and the words are probably nein (no), danke (thank), nix gut (no good) and gut (good).

Grafitti art on the East Side Gallery, on what once was the Berlin Wall

The last two words I learnt from a Kurdish guy. I forget his name. He ran a chicken doner kebab place near the central railway station, Berlin Hauptbahnhof. Doner Kebab is a Turkish fast food. This guy made it with chicken cooked on a vertical rotisserie, and wrapped in a flatbread. He called it Turkish Pizza. If you ever visit Berlin (or Europe), a doner kebab is one of the delights you should look out for. It's often sold in roadside fast food stands, which are run by Turkish immigrants. There is a whole lot of them in Germany. I heard that they are the largest group of immigrants into Germany. It's one reason the EU doesn't want to accept Turkey into their community, for they think there will be a deluge of immigrants. I think the best thing to do is to open the gates. The spiders will flood in, see that Europe is not the paradise they believe it to be, and go back home.

Outside the doner kebab, Berlin Hauptbahnhof

And this kebab guy taught me two German words. He said, 'Deutsch nix gut, Turk gut'. So I'm not the only one who thought Deutschland wasn't heaven, but more of that in the next post. In this one, I'm telling you about what I enjoyed there. The delights of Berlin.

The Kurdish guy and his rotisserie

I wouldn't have found anything more than doner kebab if I had not run into a french woman who has lived in there for six years now. Marie. She is an artist, a theater practitioner. We met at a party. I seemed to be attending a party every night. I told her I wanted to see the non-tourist places in Berlin, and she was kind enough to be my guide for a night.

Turkish pizza and Turkish tea.

According to her, Berlin is the cultural hotspot of Europe. Artist love it for it has a vibrant underground art culture, plus it is a cheap city, which makes it easy for artists to survive on their dreams. I must say that I met more non-Germans than Germans in Berlin, maybe because I was moving in the art world. They come from all over the place, France, Ireland, Netherlands, Italy. I sadly never met any African artists while I was there, but I would have treasured such a meeting.

Seeing that I was eating nothing but doner kebab and the horrible currywurst, which is something of the national fast food in German (a sausage, basically), Marie took me to a place that blew me away, and that made me, for a moment, wish to live in Berlin. A restuarant called Clarchens Ballhaus. They dance there every day, starting about ten pm, but we were both too tired to try it out. I had a German meal, Kasespatzle, which is paster served with cheese, roasted onions and apple compote. I didn't like it a bit. But I loved the atmosphere of the restaurant. It reminded me of OR2K in Kathmandu. The old building, the candle lights, the music, the hum of conversation. Too sad it didn't have the kind of aphrodisiac menu and the whiffs of marijuana that made me fall in love with OR2K.

The Clarchens Ballhaus is in an old building, with an old style facade. One of the few that survived the blitz of the second world war. The whole city was destroyed at that time, but some buildings survived, and this was one of them. Or so I was told. Being a freak for architecture, these old darlings made me like Berlin.

The building housing Clarchens Ballhaus.
Below, inside the Ballhaus.

After dinner, as we walked back to the train station, when I told her that I was in love with monsters and all things fantasy, she took me to the Monster Cabinet. A bar. I was curious about what kind of bar would be called a 'monster cabinet.' Outside, it had a huge monster. You drop a coin into its belly and it performs a weird robot dance, with its eyes rolling out of its head in a grisly fashion. Total fun. Marie said arty bars in Berlin has something unique about it, a thing to set them apart from the others, and for this bar, it was monsters. I'd recommend visiting such a bar. There is lot of them in the city.

Inside the club, the atmosphere again was nothing like what I had seen before. I can't describe it. Take a look at the pictures. It's worth a thousand words. They had a bicycle pinned onto the wall, and there were faces of monsters all over the place. The lights, and the (was it wall paper or just paint) gave the place a feel of a sci-fi movie set. In fact, it reminded me of one of my favorite fantasy films, The Mirror Mask. We sat down for a drink, and were surprised to realize that there was a projector beaming a film onto the wall. Cartoons. No sound. We had to listen to the electronic music. I thought that very weird. Why would they show cartoons in a bar?

Maybe they noticed no one was watching the cartoon, for they switched to erotic music videos, and we got our cue to leave the place. I'm sure later in the night, the videos changed into something pornographic.

Like I said before, this Monster Cabinet is in an old house, a relic, called the Haus Schwarzenberg. There was a notice asking for contributions to keep the place afloat, for it was supposed to be an important place for artists. We went there in the night, so we couldn't visit the gallery, but the corridor leading to the bar was covered with graffiti art.

The street to Monster Clarinet. While in other cities this might be
an unsafe place to walk at night, Marie said Berlin is such a safe city
she feels comfortable walking alone in such streets at midnight.

I like Berlin for it's graffiti art. I was told there were works of Banksy somewhere. I went hunting for them, but couldn't find anything. Or maybe I saw it but just didn't know it was Banksy. Still, to crown off my visit, I went to see remnant of the famous Berlin Wall. There is a gallery on it, called the East Side Gallery. As the Wall came down in 1990, some one thought it would be a wise idea to preserve a section of it. And of course, looking at a plain wall, inspite of its hostirical significance, wouldn't be fun, so they invited artists from all over the world to paint. It makes a visit to the Wall worth it. Of all the tourist places in Berlin, I totally enjoyed this, partly because I didn't have to pay anything, but just walking down the street, looking at the fabulous paintings, and at people posing to take photos, brought a smile to my face.

The most famous painting is that of two men kissing. Its based on a photo of two communist leaders kissing in 1979. One is Leonid Brezhnev (Soviet Union) and the other Eric Honecker (East Germany). The painting is by Dmitri Vubel, and is titled 'My God, Help Me to Survive This Deadly Love'. The painting has been defaced by both sides in the gay debate. When I visited, I found a man and a woman kissing in front of it, to the delight of spectators. I don't know if they were trying to make a statement, or if they were just having fun.


A couple kissing on the Berlin Wall, East Side Gallery.

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This is a public apology to Mathew Nabwiso and Tibba Murungi Kabugu, whose reputation is suffering because of a misconception over a video I uploaded on YouTube, a few months ago. The video is being taken out of context. It is not porn, or a sex tape. I appeal to all media houses and tabloids in the country to desist from spreading the lies around this video.

Mathew and Tibba in a scene in The Felistas Fable

I first met both Mathew and Tibba when I was working for The Hostel, a short lived stint that lasted only two months or so, late in 2011. I saw they were fine actors, and since I had a feature film project, The Felistas Fable, I invited them to audition for parts in the movie. I was glad to work with them in this film. It is not a pornographic film. However, there involved a sex scene between the two characters that they would both be portraying. This scene was not simply for the sake of having graphic displays of sex, but it was a plot device and it was also for comic purposes.

It maybe not be possible to show you how we used sex as a plot device or for comic purposes, but I will invite you to watch another short film that I made, in which we use it to great effect. What Happened in Room 13 http://youtu.be/RZnpN86hPzo

Filming sex scenes are the most boring part of making a film. Anyone who works in the industry knows that. There is a certain degree of undressing, to make the audience believe that it is an actual sex scene, but the actors will remain decently clothed throughout the filming process. However, during one of the takes of this scene, our cleaner interrupted, saying she wanted to wash dishes. Being a low budget production, we were filming on location, and therefore any noises in the kitchen would interrupt us.

During the editing, I saw this clip, and I thought it was funny. I laughed every time I saw it. I thought it would be a good tool to promote the film, especially on YouTube, because there was humor in it, and we are trying to market the film as a romantic comedy. Please note that I have already uploaded other behind the scenes or unused sequences from the film, which are not sex related, but which have humor in them. For example this video clip, http://youtu.be/TxBYThXl2Ew.

Unfortunately, after I uploaded this behind-the-scenes clip, some people mistook it as a sex video. They did not see beyond the characters re-enacting the scene. This forced us to remove the video from YouTube. It's also unfortunate that the moment we removed the video, after it was online for about three months, some people uploaded illegal copies on social media. I think that it's because we removed the official video that the false rumors began to spread, and I'm sorry about that. It was been online for more than three months.

I would like to now clarify two things.

1) The clip being spread is not from a pornographic film, nor is it a sex tape. It is from a decent film. That YouTube permitted it to be uploaded testifies to the fact that it falls within YouTube guidelines of acceptable family entertainment. You can watch the trailer of the film here. http://youtu.be/prPKiv0NIqw

2) The scene was not shot in The Hostel. The Hostel, and the team behind The Hostel, have nothing to do with the video.

I would like to apologize to Mathew and Tibba, and to their families, for the hurt this has done. It was not my intention to profit from their embarrassment. The moment the video was misunderstood, I removed it. The video clip was misunderstood and is being spread out of context. I do not understand why, nor why they are associating it with The Hostel, because the clip has text files identifying the true film from which it was taken. My apologies to Fast Track, and the team behind The Hostel.

I would like to end by appealing to all Ugandans, to media houses and to tabloids, and to social media platforms, to please verify the truth behind a rumor before spreading it. It is your social responsibility to spread only what is the truth, and not to take things out of context.

For more details about the film, you can contact me via this website. http://www.dilmandila.com/

I remain yours,

Dilman Dila
Writer/Director/Producer
The Felistas Fable.

There is an African proverb that says a child who does not travel thinks his mother is the best cook. Well, a child who travels, and still thinks his mother is the best cook, has a point. I was in South Africa for a couple of weeks in 2008. Loved the place, the people, and have planned to go and live there ever since. I went to South Asia, lived there for two years until 2011. Great people. Colorful culture. Beautiful but violent, painfully ancient and slow to adapt to modern laws of happiness. In the end, I couldn't wait to get back home. I went to Europe for the first time, earlier this year, stayed in Berlin for about two weeks, and I don't think I was impressed. No, it's not a place I would ever want to live in!

I loved the trains, and the beautiful architecture.

I cannot understand why so many Africans give up their lives to go over there. I met a Ugandan who has lived there for about ten years. He went as a student, got lucky and got a German wife, which paved way for him to become a resident. But he said it was also easy to become a resident if you learn the language, and that many people get deported because they fail to speak German. There is a place, which the Ugandans call kiyumba, where they take illegal immigrants to learn the language and culture. If you are in the kiyumba, then you are called a kamwanyi. Kiyumba is a kind of asylum, a place to train immigrants on how to become Germans. This kind of contradicts what I hear about how illegal immigrants are treated over there.

Yet, it's not really this that made me dislike Berlin. I never encountered immigration problems personally, so I cannot speak much about it. Thing is, the place was too clean, too organized, too systemic, too much like a place for robots to live in. What happened to the dirt and randomness and chaos that makes life fascinating? Too cold! I can't figure out how people live in such a cold country. I went in February, during winter, and they say it was a warm winter. No snow fell during my stay there. But I still hate coldness. It was much like in Nepal, where I had to wear layers of clothing, where I could not get totally naked. Not even while in bed.

Still, the cold would have been tolerable if the place had the human touch. Well, human beings live there, true, but they have made systems to run their lives so much that they have lost what I call the human touch of living. Only robots can be happy in such an environment.

Riding a bicycle seems a better idea than taking the bus or train.

Take their transport system. One morning, I was at a bus stop. A cold harsh wind was blowing. I thought my face was peeling off. There were about twenty other people, feeling the pain of the gale, and there was a bus right beside us. Idling. A bus with air-conditioning. In it we would have been warm and protected from the wind. But the driver did not open the doors. It was not yet time. Nobody complained. I wanted to shout, to scream at the driver to open the doors, but I kept mum because the others waited patiently, braving the cold, until the scheduled time reached. Fifteen effing minutes we spent there in the cold, and this bus guy sat in the warmth, looking at us as though we were -- I don't know what he thought we were. Polar bears?

Waiting for the bus.

I can't imagine what it is like in the full terror of winter, with snow falling, or rain, and the bus guy refuses to let people in simply because it's not yet time! Why couldn't he let us wait from inside the bus, until it is time to drive off?

Then, just as he set off, a woman came hurrying towards the stop, pushing a pram with a baby in it. She waved, frantically, pleading for the bus to wait. Maybe she was shouting, but we could not hear her voice. The driver saw her, yet he had no expression on his face as he stepped on the gas and sped away. He could not wait a few seconds for the woman and her baby, for then it would mean effing up his schedule, ruining the system. Now the woman had to stand in the cold for another twenty minutes for the next bus.

I wondered how far the mother and her baby had come. Though Berlin seems to have systems to care for disadvantaged people, the insistence that buses and trains only stop at designated spots is a nightmare. If your home is a mile from the bus stop, and you have a baby, or a physical disability, you are screwed. The two weeks I spent there, I was limping most of the time, for I had to walk, walk, walk, and it was such a strain. If they do want to help physically disadvantaged people, then they should go beyond making buildings and vehicles easily accessible. They should make public transport be able to stop wherever such a person wants to jump out of. Like in Uganda, and most of Africa, where you simply tell the driver 'maso awo', even though there is no stage, and the bus will stop.

Anti-Nazi grafitti and stickers, run by http://www.antifa.de/, litter the streets.
This sadly means there is still Nazism and racism.

I thought this impersonal thing was only in the systems, but even the people have lost a sense of comradeship. If you do not have a phone with GPS, or if you are like me who cannot read maps because all my life I have had to rely on asking locals for directions, and you get lost, you are screwed. I was going to a party. After a lot of trouble, I eventually found the train that would take me to the place. On reaching, I couldn't find the street. It was dark, eight o'clock. I asked a woman for directions. 'Oh,' she said, with a big smile, 'you are going to F_strasse? Just go down this way, turn left, and there you are.' I went down the way she pointed, turned left, and I was not in F_strasse. I asked another person, and she gave me directions again, which I followed religiously, only to find that she too had sent me to a totally wrong place. I was lost. They made me walk around in circles for over an hour, with each person I ask claiming to know the place, and then giving me totally wrong directions.

At one point, I was angry and frustrated, and thinking of going back to my hotel, and then I approached a man, who ran away from me, screaming, 'No money! I have no money! I'm just a German! I have no money!' What the f**k was that about? He probably thought I was a beggar, or that I wanted to mug him.

Finally, I met an old man. I asked him if he knew F_strasse (I can't remember how the name is written), and he told me why I had walked around in circles all night. 'Don't you have a phone with GPS?' I did not. He had a map in his pockets. An 'analog map', as he called it, and he was kind enough to stand with me for nearly ten minutes until we figured out how I could reach the street I was going to.

As I made my way to the party, already tired and pissed off, I kept wondering why those people (six of them) gave me totally wrong directions. Did they do it deliberately? Why? Did they just not know their own neighborhood?

I could not help but compare it to a time I got lost in Nepal. When I asked for directions, I ended up in a conversation with the locals. They wanted to know my name, where I came from, what I was doing in Nepal, whose house I was going to, what I had for lunch – and I got to know about them and their families. In Uganda too. You get lost, the locals will give you all the directions you need, and if they do not know, they will tell you so. Sometimes, they will offer to escort you right up to the door you are searching. Asking for directions is an opportunity to socialize, a chance for the traveler and the local to get to know a bit about each other. But apparently not in Berlin.

The trains really fascinated me.

I must say that after that terrible experience, I had much nicer encounters with Germans. A woman saw me at a bus stop, reading the information board, and she asked if I needed help. I said yes, and she did help. Another man saw me puzzling over a map, and he offered help without me asking. It happened more than twice, but the first experience was deeply etched in my head. I never asked for directions again. I instead tried my best to learn how to read maps. One time, I was going to the Neue Synagogue from the Berliner Dome. It was just around the corner, but because I did not trust them anymore, and decided to use the map, I found myself taking two trains and a bus. Its only when I reached the Synagogue and recognized the buildings around the Dome in the nearby distance, only then did I realize what a dork I had become.

Other than the inhuman systems, and the inability to socialize with strangers, the impersonal relationships, the place is bloody expensive. It costs one euro to take a pee! That’s the price of a cup of Turkish tea at the Donner Kebab place I frequented. That’s the price of a decent meal in Kampala. A French woman who now lives there says she makes sure she goes to the toilet before leaving her home, otherwise she won’t be able to afford peeing in the public toilets.

A few days back, my facebook status read: Dear God, please help me. I want to be funny, but the only jokes I can come up with have either sex or poop in them. I don't know why I'm fascinated with the two, but I also do not know why they are taboo. It's something everybody does, and both are vital to human life. Still, they do not seem to be something people want to talk about. Or joke about. So recently, I set out to make a series of funny videos, for distribution via youtube. In this series, I will try very hard to make only clean jokes that can be enjoyed around the family dinner table, in front of your children.

That I called it The Total Agony of Being in Love should tell you where I got inspiration. Love Actually. That film. I loved it when I first watch it, sometime in 2004, and I loved the way they portrayed sex, and relationships, and it made me want to tell funny stories. I believe many stories I've come up with were inspired by this film. I have made four episodes of the series, and I plan to make more. Like the title says, the series will revolve around the pains of being in love.

The episode I love the most is When An African Man Cheats. I first heard a similar joke in secondary school, and it made us laugh real hard at that time. It is a man's joke. I don't think women will find it funny. Well, I adapted the joke, and added a whole new punchline to it. You can enjoy it below.

The other episodes include this one, Why do Men Make Love. We were one time having a chat, a few mornings ago, and a woman was complaining that her husband only makes love to her when he wants to go to sleep. He uses her as a sleeping pill. I at once thought it's something worth talking about. I wonder, how many men use women in this way?

One of the first episodes we did was about a Lonely Girl. It is based on a poem by Rashida Namulondo, who won the BN Poetry Prize in 2013. I have had this wild idea for a long time now, of turning poems into videos, the way they make music videos. It's not an entirely new idea, and several people have already made video poems, but I'm thinking it could be a way to help poets earn cash from their creations.

Well, so there we are. A few videos to give you a great laugh, and you should expect more. Subscribe to our YouTube channel, and you won't be disappointed!

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No sex in this honeymoon

Dilstories is in the pre-production for a TV comedy series, tentatively titled The Love Makanika. We are seeking actors and actresses for the lead roles in this offbeat comedy. We will not hold an open-call audition. Rather, we would like to invite interested talents to email us their biographies and samples of work. We shall then contact potential candidates to audition. The series will be filmed in Kampala, and so interested persons must be able to travel to, or reside within, this city.

LEAD ROLES

MAGGIE (late twenties, early thirties): She has a bachelor’s degree in commerce, but became a hair dresser on failing to find a job. She works from home. She loves African hairstyles, and wears a big Afro. She likes spending on clothing, cook books and food. Her business is struggling. She becomes a relationship counselor to supplement her income. She has never been in a relationship, following a traumatic event in her teenage years, but she believes she knows a lot about love. Many people seek her advice. Though an honest woman, she ends up being something of a con artist. The advice she gives her clients are sometimes outrageous, out of this world, and sends her clients into hilarious adventures as they struggle to find love, and to hold on to their messy relationships.

What Maggie might look like.
Picture borrowed from http://life-reflexions.blogspot.com/2011/07/inspirational-afro-hair-styles-fashion.html

BITU (mid twenties): She likes her hair natural, and is sometimes bald. She has been Maggie’s employee and friend for many years. She grew up in a small town, until Maggie brought her to the city to braid hair. She dropped out of school because of a pregnancy. Her child lives with her mother upcountry. She is unmarried, but is keen on a village pastor, the father of her child, who she wants to get rich before she can accept to be his wife. She has a sharp tongue, and her witty punchlines put her in trouble. She is flirty, but not promiscuous, many men bring her expensive gifts, but she never gives in to any.

What Bitu might look like.
Picture borrowed from: http://www.goodenoughmother.com/2011/11/ask-rene-my-husband-hates-my-hair/

PASTOR (mid thirties): He comes from a strict religious family. After his father dies, he steps into the helm of the village church. It is a broke church, and he is looking for American sympathizers to inject money into it so he can become rich and marry the love of his wife, Bitu, with whom he has a child. When this money doesn’t come, he wants to leave the church and find a real job, but his mother will not hear of it. He still lives with her and she rules his life.

What might pastor look like? You!

If you would like to be part of this, please send us an email with the following information:

1) A headshot. Jpg files no larger than 1mb.

2) Biography. No more than 200 words

3) A sample of your work, either as a link to youtube/vimeo, or on DVD.
Post the DVD to Dilstories, P.O. Box 59, Seeta, Uganda.

Send the email to productions@dilstories.comwith ACTOR/ACTRESS APPLICATION in the subject line.

Only those who get in touch before 15^th April 2014 will be considered for the pilot, the shooting of which is scheduled for the last week of April, in Kampala. Those who get in touch after this date will be considered for roles in future episodes.

Enjoy our hilarious web series on YouTube: The Total Agony of Being in Love

Everything they told me about Nigeria turned out to be true. They are loud people. They talk as though they are quarreling, much like Indians and Nepalis. I have a theory that a combination of high temperatures, humidity, and eating too much pepper (piro in South Asia, pepe in Nigeria), gives one a big mouth and a hot temper.

A street food vendor in Lagos. The city is full of yellow and green.

On the plane, one Nigerian man made the Ethiopian air-hostess cry, because she couldn't give him the food he wanted. She tried to tell him, 'I'm sorry I can't serve you that,' but she doesn't know proper English, so she said, 'I'm sorry for you.' The Nigerian exploded. 'Sorry for me? Did you pay my air ticket?' The others seated around him soon joined in harassing her. They wanted wine. She served them. They insisted on getting more than the tiny bottle they were being given. It nearly turned into a riot. Too much pepe, I think. Their outburst made the poor woman cry. I felt bad for her. I nearly cried too. I had to explain to the ogah what the woman was trying to tell him, and then he felt so ashamed of himself that he followed her to the back room (what do they call that room in the airplane where hostesses hang out?) and he apologized to her.

Boarding the Ethiopian airlines

Granted, not all Nigerians are like this. I was there for only a short time, and didn't get the chance to see the places I wanted to visit, like the Badagry slave museum and the Fela Kuti museum. But I totally enjoyed it. And would love to go back there. The thing about Nigeria is not its many attractions, but it's people. They have a unique culture, a way of life that is close to the comical, for an outsider, and for me who sees humor in everything, I had a great time. I would love to go back.

The streets of Lagos are full of Maruwa, three-wheel cars.

They warned me before setting off that I needed to have a yellow fever vaccination certificate, that I would not be allowed into the country if I did not have one. I set off with a vaccination card, which had a bunch of shots that I had got before going to Nepal. I assumed yellow fever was one of them. But at Entebbe airport, an official almost stopped me from boarding the plane. I think she wanted a bribe. She said I did not have a yellow fever vaccination. It had happened to me before, but this was at the boarder inMalaba, never at the airport. I told her that I travel a lot, and surely of the twenty or so shots listed in that card, yellow fever had to be one of them. She insisted she could not see it, and so she would not let me board the plane. She claimed she was doing me a favor since the moment I reach Nigeria without a yellow fever card they would deport me immediately. That is when I became certain that she wanted a bribe.

They call this a bus. They overload passengers.

I then played a trick that I always do whenever confronted with such corrupt officials. In the pretext of looking for my wallet, I opened my bag and pulled out my DSLR camera. When she saw it, like all the other corrupt officials, I saw panic leap onto her face. 'Are you a journalist?' she asked. I smiled at her, and she gave me a nervous laugh. She handed me back my vaccination card and passport, and said, 'If the Nigerians ask you for yellow fever, say it is this one.' She pointed at an item in the list of shots, Typhod, and before I could say anything, she shoved me away towards the Ethiopian Airlines desk.

Lagos is full of vehicles in
dangerous mechanical conditions

But all the way to Nigeria, I was worried. The camera trick worked on the Ugandan official, because she was afraid of the Ugandan media, but a Nigerian wouldn't give a rats ass about my camera. I was nervous as we queued up to face the immigration officer. A guy from Curacao was pulled out of the line. 'You don't have yellow fever vaccination', they told him. Of course all this was done hush-hush, without anyone overhearing, but he later told me what happened, when we met at the function which we both were going to attend. 'Why do I need it?' he asked the official. 'To enter the country,' the official said. 'Isn't my passport and visa enough?' he asked. 'No. The yellow fever vaccination is more important. If you don't have it, you will be deported.' The poor guy was at a loss of what to say. Just as he thought they would deny him entry, the official said, 'But if you have a hundred dollars...' The Curacao guy's face lit up with a smile. 'No,' he said, I don't have a hundred. But I have fifty.' The official then walked over to his boss, whispered, and the boss gave a slight nod. The official came back to the Curacao, 'Boss says fifty is okay. But you have to add ten for me. Put it in your passport.'

A palm wine seller. When in Nigeria, make it a point to taste it!

They took his money. Crafty like immigration officials everywhere. At least in Kenya, when they fleeced Reiza of a hundred dollars because she did not have a yellow fever vaccination (and she was not even going to Kenya, she was changing planes enroute to South Sudan), they gave her a certificate. The Nigerians just took the sixty dollars and sent the poor guy on his way.

When my turn reached, they did not even bother to look into the card I was carrying. They saw it was a vaccination card and assumed it had a yellow fever shot. I secretly sighed in relief.

The airport itself was hot and stuffy, without any air conditioning. It looked dirty and overcrowded, too noisy, with hundreds of Nigerians screaming at immigration and customs officials. It might be richer than Uganda, but at least we know how to give visitors a good impression of our country. The Nigerians had to pass their baggage through customs. Foreigners however were not required to go through customs, which I found weird. They do not trust their own people? One very fat custom official was yelling into the face of a pregnant woman, in pidgin English. I didn't understand most of it. Two of his friends were trying to calm him down. 'She's pregnant, don't shout at her.' The woman was shouting back. I wonder what that was all about.

eba, one of the delicacies of Nigeria.
And below, wild meat on sale at the roadside.

Outside the airport, we were taken to a taxi that had been sent to pick us up. 'Hurry! Get in!' the driver shouted at us. Then I saw two soldiers running towards us, weilding guns. 'Go! Go!' One soldier shouted, holding his gun like he wanted to shoot. 'Get in quick!' the driver yelled at us again. We scrambled into the van. I was certain Boko Haram had attacked the airport, and they were whisking us quickly to safety. The vehicle sped away. My heart was pumping fast, like in the cliché, expecting to hear gunfire at any moment now.

Only then did I notice that we were the only ones being whisked away. Other people stood idly on the kerb. Other soldiers looked bored. 'What was that about?' I asked the driver. I did expect to hear something about terrorism, but he instead said, 'We had parked in a restricted area. You see, you are international guests. We did not want you to walk all the way to the car park, and the soldiers gave us only one minute to let you board.' I felt anger stir. I would not have minded the walk to the park to board the taxi without any drama. Maybe this guy gave the soldiers kitu kidogo to allow him to park in a restricted area, but I never understood why he did it. The soldiers must have put a 'No Parking' sign in that area for a reason, but why then do they allow some people to park for only one minute, even if it is to pick 'international guests?'

The word international, I later came to learn, has a special place in Nigera. I spent so short a time that I never fully comprehended the value they put on that word. But I'll give you two examples to illustrate. Markets and churches. We went to a rundown market along the Highway from Port Harcout to Bayelsa. It had only a few vegetable stalls, and a few concrete stands, but it had a big sign proclaiming it to be an 'international market', because it sold goods from outside Nigeria. I wondered what then they called the high class shopping malls in Lagos, 'super international markets'?Yet, calling a market 'international' just because it sells goods from across the boarder would mean every market and every shop is 'international', why then call some local? It defeated my understanding. But I could see why churches include the word in their names. To attract more worshipers (and therefore more money). It seems to me that to say something is 'international', it then is of superior quality. In Bayelsa state, I had a chance to see one of these international churches. The photo says it all.

God's Grace Ministry Inc. Worlwide, Bayelsa, Nigeria.
Why would a church have the word incorporation in its name?

A friend who is married to a Nigerian woman told me that their version of Christianity is rather comical. They are very religious people, I think. As we drove to our hotel, I asked the taxi-driver, 'Who is Murtala Muhammed?' for I noticed that the airport is called Murtala Muhammed International Airport. And he replied, 'A prophet'. I was stunned. Why would they name such an important airport after a prophet? Is he a very powerful prophet? 'He is a dead man,' the driver said. 'They cannot name a place after a person who is still alive.' Only after I had reached the hotel did google tell me that Murtala Muhammed was once a military ruler of Nigeria, and is considered a hero. It amazed me that the taxi-driver did not know this, and instead associated the name with some religious figure.

The nine commandments of dressing, according to
this church in Bayelsa, Nigeria.

It confirmed to me what I had heard, that Nigerians take their religions too seriously, maybe so seriously that it becomes rather comical. Like this church in Bayelsa, that has a set of guidelines for its worshipers. I have heard of other crazy churches, like the one in South Africa where they eat grass, and those in Uganda where they have banned offering coins and where blessings are on sale. But this one, with its own version of the ten commandments, which you can see in the inset, made me laugh out loud! Women, among other things, cannot wear wigs and attachments, nor can they wear trousers, or open back dresses that show off their breasts or shoulders. Reading this list of prohibitions makes me think of radical Islam, not Christianity, yet it is called God's Grace Ministry Inc. Worldwide. The term Inc., (an incorporation) should give you a hint on what it's motivation really is.

Next time I come to Nigeria, I will look out for such hilarious churches. But I will also look out for the food. It's the one thing I totally enjoyed there, and it's the one thing you should look forward to in case you ever find yourself in Nigera. I ate snails, for the first time in my life. They taste like chicken gizzards. I ate bush meat, antelope, the butcher told me, though I wonder if that was really true. And then there was the palm wine, which deserves a whole post on its own. It gave us diarrhea though, so maybe I shouldn't be talking about that!

A snail on a plate, ready to eat, and below, snails on sell.

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She runs the Ranchers Seafood and Steakhouse, where many literary events take place.
This photo was taken during the Commonwealth Writers

Melissa Kiguwa, a feminist and poet, with Helen Nyana, a writer and publisher.

Helen Nyana, writer, publisher, photographer

David Kaiza, Writer and Editor

A participant during the Commonwealth Writers Conversation, Kampala, 14 June 2014. She was not asleep.

A participant during the Commonwealth Writers Conversation, Kampala, 14 June 2014

Patricia, writer.

A participant during the Commonwealth Writers Conversation, Kampala, 14 June 2014

Jackee Batanda, writer.

Rosey Sembatya, writer and board member of FEMRITE

Daphne, a poet, attending the readers and writers club at FEMRITE

Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi, writer, and winner of the Commonwealth Short Story Prize 2014

Goretti Kyomuhendo, writer, and founder of African Writers Trust

A participant at the Commonwealth Writers Conversation.

A poet performs during OpenMic at the Uganda Museum

A poet after her performance during OpenMic at the Uganda Museum

Participants during the Commonwealth Writers Conversation, Kampala, 14 June 2014

Kelsey Claire Hagens

Beverly and Melisa, during a panel discussion at the Writivism Festival 2014

At FEMRITE readers club

Nii Ayikwei Parkes, Writer, Poet, attends the Writivism Festival 2014

Clifton Gachagua, Poet, Writer, Editor at Kwani

Billy Kahora, Managing Editor of Kwani

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This Has Been a Good Year

Women are more afraid of commitment than men. They’ll end perfectly good relationships for no reason at all. Even when they seem perfectly happy in a relationship, so happy that the man is encouraged to buy a ring, the moment he proposes, things start to go downhill. Some of them become serial heartbreakers. They make men need them, and when he’s firmly in a girl’s grasp, when he starts to dream of having children with her, she gets scared and tells him, ‘You are too clingy.’ Well, no man has ever figured out what women want, but I think I have. You might think of the good old reasons, that they are pursuing a career, or that they want to travel and see the world, or that they fear children will make them shapeless, or that they were hurt once and so would rather stay single. Far from it.

A Labwor woman in Karenga. I wonder if she would fear commitment!
What reasons would she give to avoid getting hitched?

1 Women are afraid of men who love them too much. Apparently, the modern guy has seen Titanic, and wants to be a replica of Jack. But the modern girl isn’t impressed. She doesn’t want a man who superglues on her, who calls her every few minutes. They don’t want men who stay home to help with supper rather than go to the bar to watch soccer. Don’t call me pig. I heard all this from women themselves. I thought about this article after I stumbled upon a note a friend of mine, the writer and poet Rosey Sembatya, made on facebook. In it she gives eighteen reasons as to why she is afraid to commit, and four of these had something to do with the attention the man gives her. “He’ll adore me and I won’t know what to do,” she writes. “He’ll be my friend and I won’t know what to do. He’ll like coming home at 5pm just to chat as I prepare dinner. Who said I’ll be home at 5pm? He’ll like crazy buy me flowers like I said I like them.”

2. Women fear the knight will transform into a pig. The man she falls in love with might be a fantasy figure straight out of the glossy magazines, a dashing bombshell with a six-pack. But disfigures all man. He will advance in his career, and get too busy to go to the gym. The money will flow in, and he’ll have one too many beers, and too much pork, and then his tummy will balloon until he looks pregnant, and the fat will cause his neck to disappear. And as Rosey writes, “He’ll grow hair in his nose. Then he’ll refuse, or forget, to clip the hair in his nose until it escapes and connects with his moustache, until it becomes gray. Then he will wake up having drooled and want to kiss me on the lips.”

3. Women never know what they want. In researching this article, I took a peek into the abanonya (those searching for love) section of Bukedi newspaper, where the bold women put ads for the kind of men they are looking for. Many of them give very contradictory characteristics in what they want to see in a man. There are those who write that they want a man who is either a Born Again Christian (the radical holy-spirit firebrands) or a Muslim. Does that make sense?

A Nepali woman. She lives in a culture where staying single is not an option.

4. Women fear men who cook better than they do. This is a strange one. You would imagine that with all this feminist talk and women liberation circus, they would fall head over heels for a man who does the cooking. But no. They prefer to do the cooking. Maybe they are afraid that if the man is a good cook, then he will always find fault with their cooking, and thus they will never be able to satisfy him. I was once in a relationship where she never allowed me to cook. She limited my role in the kitchen to washing the dishes, boiling water for tea, and boiling rice. She thought if she allowed me to cook, I would feed her blackened beans, or half-cooked potatoes. Then one day she saw a picture of a dish I made, and she flipped out. ‘You must have bought it from a Chinese restaurant,’ she said. Maybe we broke up because she realized I was a master chef. J

{Read: Quick recipes forthe love hunting bachelor.}

There are no secrets to cooking great dishes, as many modern men have discovered. They stay single well into their thirties (often because they cannot find women who are ready to settle down), and this forces them to learn to cook. Some will go to restaurants, but eating out every meal is not only costly but outright boring, so these men spend the long years of bachelorhood unconsciously perfecting their culinary skills. When they get bored of pasta and boiled eggs, they search the internet for recipes, then they simply turn on the stove, throw a few things into the pan, and bingo, a Chinese dish. Why then are women afraid of men who cook better than they do?

A dish of pasta, vegetables and beef, made by a bachelor. Me :-)

5. Women are afraid of a man’s wardrobe.‘My future one will love pink,’ Rosey writes, ‘and have pink boxers, and pink shorts, and pink shirts, and a pink key holder to match.’ Hmmm….They will force him to wear costumes of their choice. They think his choice of clothing will kill them with the laundry. ‘He’ll say he feels adored when he sees me washing his jeans with my bare hands.’ A long time ago, an aunt visited us, and she was telling my mother how she hates washing her husband’s jeans. She decided to hide them, and instead bought him a bunch of coats and ties. ‘You look more charming in these,’ she said. He had never won a coat or tie in his life. He drove a bus for a living. She complained about how impossible it is to wash grease off jeans. He did not see how he could go to work in a tie. He wanted his jeans. A fight broke up. They divorced.

6. Women set very weird standards in what they look for in a man. Recently, I was talking to a woman who works at the driving school I went to. She is in her thirties, and not yet married. I asked her what she is waiting for, and she said she has not yet met the right kind of man. She wants a widower, or if not a divorcee, who already has a child under the age of three. She is a born again Christian, and she says it has been her prayer request for seven years now. Every Sunday, she goes to church and asks God for that one thing. Please send me a single man who already has a child under three. ‘Why?’ I asked her. ‘So that I can test myself and see if I am a good woman,’ she said. ‘You see,’ she added, ‘loving another woman’s child is the hardest test a mother can face. I want God to give me such a man so that I can see if I turn into an evil step mother.’

Nothing she said made sense to me, but it clearly was an excuse to stay single. I don’t know what her history is. Maybe she suffered a terrible childhood under a step mother and wants to make amends. I don’t know why she bothers God with such an insane request. I can only pity the scores of men whose heart she has broken because they don’t meet her criteria.

She reminded me of another lady I tried to date, a long time ago, a Mutoro who said she preferred light skinned men. Not white men, just light skinned Africans. Unfortunately for her, most of the men who picked interest in her were dark, like me, and the most insistent of all was a guy so dark he looked blue. He was a sweet man who sent her flowers and chocolates every week. Poor guy.

Rosey Sembatya, who wrote the note. Pre-commitment fears.
Read it here on facebook

7. Women are afraid they will get less sex once they are married. This has to be one of the greatest paradoxes in life. Single men think they don’t get enough bed action because they don’t have a hole dedicated solely to them. They know how difficult it is to convince a woman to open her legs, that’s why they use their hands, or end up gay: D

Single men envy married men, who they think get bongobongo whenever they are horny. But married women complain that their husbands don’t poke them at all. They think single women get all the action because single ladies have all the freedom in the world. At least when you are still single, a commitment-shy lady will say, you can do bongobongo anytime you wish to. All you have to do is wink at any man you see, whether he is a bodaboda rider, or a drunkard staggering home, or a hunky model, and you’ll be sure to catch his attention for chances are that he is a starving animal. But when you are married, hmmm, you are stuck with one guy whose performance leaves you hanging in suspense.

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Many say it’s madness to start a literary magazine. Such a venture, especially one that focuses on African literature, can’t make money because, they say, there is no market to sustain literature on the continent. When I mooted the idea of Lawino to a friend, her advice was, ‘Don’t start it. All work and no pay makes Ojok a poor boy.’ It was discouraging, hearing that I would have to put a lot of energy into the magazine, and maybe never get paid for it. Still, I had this burning urge, for I wanted a journal to promote new writing from Africa, with particular focus on Uganda. ‘Haha,’ this friend laughed. ‘Promote Ugandan writers? You are wasting your time. They never submit their work.’

But I believed that Ugandan writers don’t send out their work because they have nowhere to submit. I think my career would have kicked off a lot earlier if I had somewhere to submit my writing, somewhere close to home, with editors who understand my environment and with readers who live in the cultures I write about. As it is, I had no platform to build a career on.

I started actively writing fiction at an early age, sometime late in September of 1993. I was in Senior Three. St. Peter’s College, in Tororo. End of year examinations were around the corner. Students were panicking, terrified of ‘winds’, slang for failing. If you got ‘blown by winds,’ it meant you were expelled from school for very poor academic performance. However, while other students panicked, I lolled on my bed, legs hanging up in the air, as I read The Stand, by Stephen King. That was the first adult horror I was reading. I just couldn’t put it down. A friend, Tusubira, stopped by my bed on his way to class. He stared at me for many minutes. I became uncomfortable.

‘What?’ I asked him.

‘Kale you,’ he said. ‘It’s a two weeks to exam and you are reading a novel.’ I only smiled at him. ‘Do you cheat?’ he added. ‘You don’t even have notes, yet you are going to pass. Do you cheat?’

I had skipped many classes, to read novels. The school had a big library, one of the largest in Eastern Uganda, with thousands of books that were gathering dust, unread, begging me to read them. I spent a lot of time in the library, and I stole many books as well, but all the time reading novels. The previous year, I had run around begging friends for notes. Sometimes I read their notes as they took a break from revising, especially as they ate. Yet I passed the exams with such decent grades that I maintained my place in ‘M’, a stream reserved for the brightest students. But this boy knew I never cheat. It was easy to think I cheated. In retrospect, I now know I easily passed exams because I read a lot of novels.

‘God is so unfair,’ another boy, Emukule, said. ‘Some of us spend sleepless nights in class but we fail. Yet this one wastes his father’s money on novels and he passes.’

Then, a third boy, Bruce, asked, ‘But why do you read a lot of novels?’

And I replied, ‘Because I want to write them one day.’

I had tried writing the year before. The central character was a superhero, modelled on The Phantom but with Ninja-like abilities. I never got beyond the first page. I tried writing a play for the Scripture Union, and for the church at home. I remember buying two books about writing drama for churches. I was a devout born-again Christian at that time. But both the SU and the church were not interested in original stuff. They rehashed Heaven’s Gates and Hell’s Flames. So I gave up. Though I had toyed with the idea of writing, until that moment I didn’t know that I wanted it as a career.

Bruce laughed. ‘You? To write a novel?’ He laughed so hard that tears came out of his eyes.

So I started writing. It might have been that same day, or the day after, but certainly it was before the exams. It was a crime book, about a rich woman who hires her childhood friend (his name was Rob, Robert Rugunda) to find robbers who have taken her stash of dollars. ‘Why me,’ the protagonist asks her. ‘I’m not a cop.’ And she replies, ‘You are a good detective. Remember you used to catch pen and pencil thieves while we were at school?’ So Rob takes the job, and it’s gunfight after gunfight, as he uncovers a plot that goes beyond mere robbery into one that involves a government take over. I blame that plot on the likes of Robert Ludlum, Fredrick Forsythe, and James Hardley Chase.

When this Bruce found me on my bed, writing, he frowned in puzzlement. ‘What are you going to call it?’ he asked. ‘Chase the Dollar,’ I said. And he laughed again. This time he laughed so hard that he fell on the floor, holding his sides. He went round telling everybody, and soon the whole dorm was laughing at me. They changed the title to ‘Chase the Adhola’ and they mocked me, ‘Why do you want to chase the Jop’Adhola from their home?’

The First War, the first story I published.

Their laughter didn’t stop me, nor did that of my parents and brothers. ‘You are simply copying another book,’ one said, trying to convince me to abandon the project and stick to my studies. I was not copying any book, but I didn’t tell him that. I passed the exams and stayed in M. I continued to write during the holidays. I lost my faith in organised religion, and became a backslider, as the Pentecostals used to say, and it would be ten years before I went to church again. I wrote, and wrote, and in July of 1994, as the World Cup raged in the US, just before my Senior Four mock exams, I took the train to Nairobi and gave the book to East African Publishers. I had enjoyed their book, John Kiriamiti’s My Life in Crime. I believed they would like Chase The Dollars even better. Well, my Nairobi adventure deserves a whole book of its own, but I got a harsh rejection. They didn’t even read the book. The receptionist gave me one look, saw how dirty I was, and said, ‘We don’t accept handwritten material. Get it typed.’

The second story that appeared
in the Sunday Vision

I returned home one week to exams. Luckily, they didn’t expel me for absconding from school. I passed in second grade. Then I continued to write, but I never managed to get the manuscript typed until the early 2000s, and even then, I only managed to have the first chapter done. I burnt that book, and wrote another, which I called Osu. I typed it up neatly.

I had just finished university. I didn’t want to work for a salary. I wanted a career in writing. I searched for a publisher, and then reality struck. I had nowhere to submit my work. Most publishers, including East African Publishers, preferred text books. None wanted a novel. The best option I had was Fountain Publishers, in Uganda. I gave them Osu, and they gave me encouraging words. I’ve never heard from them since then. I couldn’t go to FEMRITE for they favoured women writers.

For the first time since I started writing, I realised that I might be chasing childish dreams. By 2001, after eight years of trying, I had published only one short story, in The Crusader, and the newspaper collapsed before they could pay me the ten thousand shillings for the story. I wrote another short story and to The Monitor to serialise, for they had done it with Mary Karooro Okurut’s The Invisible Weevil. One of their editors (I forget his name, but he was a Musoga) told me, ‘We can’t serialise your work. We ran Okurut’s book because she is famous. You are not.’ Ngrrr. After all those years of trying to write, I was like a blocked sewage pipe. I needed an outlet for the stories bubbling in me or else I would drown in that shit. But no one cared. No publisher was interested.

I would have given up. I nearly gave up, for who wants live like a malfunctioning sewage pipe? I got a day job with an NGO, and started to work as a volunteer, interviewing HIV-infected people on their death beds. A horrific job. It filled me with more stories, but I was severely constipated because I simply had nowhere to send these stories.

Until I saw a piece of fiction in The Sunday Vision, and they wanted more. I sent them one, called The First War. Well, I have already written before about how Simon Kaheru, Joachim Buwembo, and a lady whose name I forget (it started with A), how they patted my back and gaped in wonder at the story. I have already said how much getting such a pat from these editors gave me the energy to dream on, to persevere. I wrote three more short stories for The Sunday Vision. Those were the happiest days of my life, at that time at least. And then, they closed the fiction section, along with the joys I got from seeing my name in print.

After that, came another phase of constipation. I again wondered why I bother writing yet there were no publishers of fiction in Uganda. I joined an email group, which had people like Binyavanga Wainana and Kinyanjui Wanjiru. I suggested that someone should start a literary magazine, and the idea caught fire, and so Kwani? was born. Yet I never got published in Kwani? for at that time I thought I wanted to write horror stories. I don’t think they liked anything I sent them.

Soon, the constipation returned. I was again a blocked sewage pipe. But this one was short lived, not just because of the encouragement I got from Simon, Joachim, and the Sunday Vision team. I discovered the internet, and a plethora of ezines to which I could submit my horror work. I plunged back into writing, and soon got published. Yet I did not derive much joy in seeing myself in print again, for these ezines were based far outside home. I think I even stripped my stories of overtly African cultures to make friendlier to these alien magazines and their alien readers. It was a very demoralising, and I soon stopped bothering to write for them.

Instead, I wrote with the hope that one day an African magazine that published the kind of stories I wrote would crop up. I wrote and wrote, for I had hope that things will improve. Indeed, time changed. One of the stories I wrote back then, A Killing in the Sun, was shortlisted for the Commonwealth Short Story Prize in 2013. Today, many of these stories are part of my first full length book, a collection of speculative short fiction.

Here it is. My first collection of stories.

Today, the African writer does not have to feel constipated as I did, nor does he have to feel like a blocked sewage pipe. There are many platforms one can submit to, like AfroSF, Saraba, Jalada, Sooo Many Stories, KalahariReview, Kwani?, Short Story Day Africa, BN Poetry Awards and Writivism, and book publishers like CassavaRepublic, Fox and Raven, and Black Letter Media. Yet I still remember those dark years, and I don’t want other writers to go through such trauma. One more litmag won’t hurt. Rather, it expands the options available. Writers do need a platform that has roots in their lives and cultures. A writer cannot grow as long as this platform is far outside their community.

You can read here the first issue of Lawino Magazine

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During the launch of my first collection of short stories, A Killing in the Sun, one very irritating question kept coming up. What inspired you? It's the brother of that question every writer hates. Where did you get that idea? Alongside it came its sisters, how did you get into sci-fi? Why do you write sci-fi and fantasy? I always pause before answering these questions, because it's like asking me how I learnt how to breathe.

Well, maybe not, but I don't like that question because I think I'm never inspired. I always work very hard to drag stories out of the depths where they are buried in a pile of poop. To say 'inspired' is to make it seem like the idea dropped out of the sky and fell into my head. But it's never like that. Every minute, things go into me and they have to come out at some point. The life I live dictates the stories I tell. Am I inspired to live? Well, no, I'm never inspired to live. I just live because I found myself alive. It's a struggle to stay alive, to survive, to find even just an iota of happiness. The experience of it floods my brains like raw excreta. I have to digest all this poop, and then vomit out a refined product that smells of blood-stained roses. These are very negative images with which to describe myself and my writing, but I don't lived a life of sweet roses. Rather, it's one of pain and fear and self-doubt and agony and endless rejection. In other words, life sucks, and it will always suck, and only through writing can I make sense of it.

Take the title story, A Killing in the Sun, shortlisted for the Commonwealth Short Story Prize in 2013. It's about a soldier facing the firing squad, but memories of his childhood surface to turn his execution into a horror. I first wrote it in 2002, I think. At that time, two soldiers in Karamoja were accused of killing a priest, and shot dead after a trial that some people said was questionable. Their pictures appeared on the front pages. One captured my attention. In it the soldier's zip was open, exposing a very clean and white pair of underpants. That image troubled me.

It made me think about the first few years of my life. The night I was born, so I'm told, my mother was screaming in labor. The neighbors did not come to help, for they thought soldiers had attacked our home. There was gunfire that night, for it was on the eve of New Year, and maybe the drunken soldiers, lacking fireworks, were celebrating by shooting into the air. Only one brave woman came to my mother's help. She had nothing but a bed sheet wrapped around her waist, and she drove like mad to take my mother to hospital (by the way, this is how I got the name Dilman, but that's a story for another day). Thus I came to this world under threat of being shot by a drunken, trigger-happy soldier.

For the next ten years there was a civil war in Uganda. It was common for us to find guns and bullets abandoned in our playgrounds. We kept hearing stories of children who were blown up because they played with strange metals. News of people disappearing forever was rather common. One of my earliest memories is of seeing a soldier walking behind a long line of people. Each person carried a heavy piece of luggage. Loot, we were told. The soldier had taken a walk in some neighborhood, looting shops and homes, and he had forced these people to carry the booty to the army barracks. He kept shooting to make them walk faster. The image reminded me of slave trade pictures in history books.

So when I saw the photo of a soldier with his pants unzipped, a few moments before he died, all these things came tumbling through my head and I had to write that story. Some will call that inspiration. I call it taking a poop to relieve myself of accumulated garbage.

I could give similar background material for most of the stories. Like The Doctor's Truck, from my many years working in rural areas with NGOs on community development; Okello's Honeymoon, from a pretty disastrous relationship, or maybe from the fear of getting hitched; The Leafy Man, from an article I read about two scientists trying to change the genes of a mosquito, and I read it at a time when I was sick with malaria every month, and I was scared I would one time go down and never wake up.

Signing a copy for Auma Obama, the first buyer of the book.
Photo courtesy of: Nyana Kakoma, of So Many Stories

Reading from the book during the launch at Storymoja Festival 2014, Nairobi.
Photo courtesy of: Nyana Kakoma, So Many Stories

Two stories in the collection were born from the two years I spent in Nepal. These are Lights on Water, and A Wife and A Slave. Both are sci-fi, set in the future, and both discuss racism in its worst form. I've already written about my experiences in Nepal, but to give you a hint, at one time this woman, a friend to whose house I was going, told her baby something similar to 'that black man is going to eat you.' She was laughing as the baby wailed in sheer terror. At another time a girl screamed on seeing me, thinking she had seen a demon. In Nepali/Hindu cultures, black is associated with demons.

The trauma of living in such an environment gave me evil thoughts, like raping that woman and impregnating her with a child. What I was thinking about was that if she had a black child, she would not think of black people as demons. She would not use me to scare her child. She would not tell her child that I eat people. The reason they think habsis are demons is because they have never lived with habsis. So rape and impregnate one with a kalo child and they will be forced to love all kalo manches.

At that time, I had not read Nnedi Okorafor's book, Who Fears Death. I only got to read it this year, and it was like looking into a dark mirror and seeing my dark self grinning at me. That is the power of speculative fiction, of sci-fi, fantasy, and horror. It presents a platform to examine humanity from a unique point of view. Think of George Orwell's 1984, would it have been as powerful if it were not sci-fi? And Lord of the Rings, born out of the same environment of Nazi Europe, would it have been as powerful if it were not fantasy? If I had not read Who Fears Death, I would have never imagined that my reaction to this Nepali woman was a seed of using weaponized rape in ethnic cleansing. Even if I had read the article that got Nnedi to writing that book, I don't think it would have forced me to re-examine myself. I would have continued to believe that I was a good guy, that I could never descend to such bestial evil, that my reaction was justifiable. I could read that article in one sitting, but the book, I lived with it for two weeks, whenever I got a break from work, whenever I was in a bus stuck in traffic, and every word I read spoke to me with a strong voice.

I had to ask Nnedi what she thought of this, and she responded in a tweet, see below.

@dilmandila that was some REAL writing. Thank you for sharing it. I know that took a lot. Wow. few can write with such honesty. *Applause*.
— Nnedi Okorafor, PhD (@Nnedi) September 25, 2014

After reading an advance copy of A Killing in the Sun, Ivor Haartman, editor of AfroSF, sent me an email, saying he was working on AfroSF 2, and he wanted me to contribute. He particularly wanted a story set in that dark world of the stories mentioned above, Lights on Water and A Wife and A Slave. That world? I don't like even thinking about that world and I was hoping never to go there again. But he said, "Yes, I hear you there, it is a scary world, very scary, and that's why I like it, it's a big warning, a needed warning."

I was recently chatting with a friend, someone I met in Nepal, and she told me, 'Surely Dilman, you did experience some good things in Nepal.' I did. A lot of good things, which kind of outweighed the bad, and which is why I stayed there for two years, but I wish my mind was like the rest of you guys. I wish it could store the good, and never remember the bad. But my head is a terrible thing, and all the shit that happens in my life ends up in a big cooking pot up there, only to come out as stories. Which is why I call myself a social activist, for I want these stories to speak to the reader the way Who Fears Death spoke to me, the way it showed me my dark self.

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Every time I visit Karamoja, it feels like I've stepped into another world. I particularly like the colorful attire, which reminds me of Nepal, in many ways, (strange that they both love colorful clothing, and they both worship cattle). The one thing I can't get enough of while in Karamoja, however, is hats, especially those with feathers attached. I can't keep my fingers off the camera each time I see one, and I am never able to capture what it is that fascinates me about this fashion. I keep wondering if they adopted it in the recent past, or if it is something that evolved from ancient days. I would sure love to investigate it with an afro-futuristic lens.

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The perk of being a hardworking writer, especially if you put out a good piece of work like A Killing in the Sun, is that you get to go on these fully sponsored trips. Last month, I traveled to South Africa, to attend Time of the Writer festival, in Durban, and also to be part of the Literary Crossroads at the Geothe Institute in Jo'burg. I was with the amazing Napo Masheane, in a discussion moderated by the vibrant Niq Mhlongo. I'm not a good public speaker, I often squirm in front of an audience, but the reading I had turned out to be one of the best ever, maybe because Napo and Niq made me feel comfortable and welcome.

The Jo'burg skyline, as seen from the Melville koppie

I stayed in a quiet suburb, Melville, one of the safest places in Jo’burg. I could move around with my camera without fear of being robbed. That first day, I forgot to change money at the airport. Big mistake. I took a tuktuk to a bank. I was indeed surprised to see these in South African. They tell me they are still new, and have not been rolled out to all cities, but I’m glad they had the service in Melville, for they are so much cheaper than taxis. My driver, a Nigerian who goes by the name BB, told me that all tuktuk drivers were foreigners. I could not understand why, though he tried to explain that South Africans don't like doing the dirty work. He has lived in Jo'burg since 2001 and has suffered xenophobia and stereotyping, but he likes it there and he only goes back to Nigeria once every few years.

Sights of South Africa. Whatever art this is!

At the bank, I realized I had made a mistake in not changing money at the airport. They asked for my passport, then for proof of residence, for my visa, and they started making phone calls, I don't know to who, and I couldn't understand what they were saying over the phone for they were speaking in their language, though I heard the bank teller spelling out my names, my date of birth, my passport number. The calls freaked me out. I only wanted to get a few rand so I could buy lunch, why was there such a fuss? I was starving. Finally, after about an hour, the teller gets a phone call, and she tells me, ‘Now everything is okay, you can get your money.’ By then, I had lost appetite. All that time just to change 50 euros?

His t-shirt reads, Not Made in China.

Getting a simcard the next day, I thought it would be another hustle, and I was prepared for an hour of them making phone calls and reading out my name to whoever at the other end, but it was quick and easy. I guess it was just the banks being pricky (but why would they go through all that trouble when all I wanted to change was fifty euros?)

I could not go to all the attractions in Jo’burg, since I had only two free days after the reading, so I had to make choices. I could visit Mandela's home in Soweto, but I thought the Cradle of Mankind would be a better outing. I convinced my publisher, and she was so kind to take time off her busy schedule to drive me all the way to the caves. I thought we were going to a mountainside, but the caves turned out to be underground.

Experts don't think that the caves were inhabited, because it is a steep drop into the ground. They cannot imagine that homonids might have used rope ladders to get in and out. There is a certain arrogance that modern man has. He thinks he is more intelligent than his ancestors. But if homonids could control fire, if they could make stone tools, then they could make rope ladders to descend into deep holes. Ha, archeologists have no imagination. Just because they have never found fossil rope ladders doesn't mean there were no rope ladders two million years ago. I know, they use other clues to determine if a cave was inhabited, but there might have been a flood (or something) that wiped away all evidence. This is two million years ago, you know, and you need a lot of imagination to come up with what life was like in this cave. I think those guys lived in there, and had a hell of a great party.

The Elephant Room, a chamber in the caves. I think someone sculpted that trunk.

There’s a lake in the caves. It has never been explored. They don’t know how deep it is. They once sent in divers, but the rope got cut, and the diver's body surfaced sixteen days later. They do not say if the body was eaten, or if some creature in the water killed him, but I wonder, why would they stop exploring the lake just because of an accident? I think they don't know what killed the diver, and I think they are afraid of what they will find in the water. Well, they claim there is nothing alive in the lake. But how can they be certain there are no living creatures in there if they don't know how deep it is? They haven't even visited all its shores, and the caves are endless. Every day, they find a new chamber. It’s an active site, with excavations going on alongside tourist visits. I think homonids still live in there, two million years later, maybe they have evolved into creatures who can only live in the dark caves (By the way, AfroSF 2 comes out soon, be sure to check out my story with pre-historic cave dwelling creatures). I say, archeologists have no imagination.

Found anything? A live excavation inside the cave.

I found the archeological museum at Maropeng to be a waste of time.
I think it was designed for children.

After the caves, I got brave enough, and toured Jo'burg. I just couldn’t leave without seeing a bit of the city life. I went through Hillbrow, which they say was a center of resistance during apartheid, one of the few suburbs that defied segregation laws. The iconic Ponte tower was particularly of interest, for mixed-race couples lived there in those times. But it fell into disuse over the years, gangs took it over, two floors became brothels and crime hide outs. Then, it recently got refurbished, and is now one of the places to live in Jo'burg. I think that building tells the story of South Africa.

From Hillbrow, I went to Newtown. I passed scenes very similar to Kampala, bustling markets, colorful wares, music blaring from pick-up trucks in which people hawked DVDs and music CDs. It was very much Kampala without the bodabodas and striped taxis. Though just 6:30 pm, I passed a bar that was filled to capacity, with a lot of drunken people on the pavements, dancing. I wished I could take out my camera and capture it all, but my hosts had warned me not to flash expensive gadgets in the streets, for that is a sure way of attracting muggers.

Dancers perform at The Market Theater

Even with my camera safely hidden away in the bag, I could feel the fear in my bones, the sensation that someone would jump at me and rob me. The fear was alive in my skin, crawling through the pores like worms. I did try to ignore all the negative news I’d heard about the city, but I kept seeing signposts with ‘crime spot’ warnings, and I kept recalling this youtube clip of a live robbery, of SABC journalists getting mugged with the cameras rolling, and I thought, well, maybe Jo’burg really has a crime problem. I feared to even ask for directions, for I feared they would notice I’m a foreigner and rob me, but I got lost and I did ask for directions and I reached The Market Theater without any incident.

I don’t think you’ll find this theater in many tourist guides. I recommend visiting it, especially to see a performance. It is known as South Africa’s ‘Theatre of the Struggle’, opened in 1976, the same week as the Soweto Uprisings. The founders converted an old Indian Fruit Market into three theaters, I guess that’s where it gets its name. Over the years, it staged controversial plays that tackled the inequities of the aperthied, and was one of only a few places were blacks and whites shared the stage and performed for non-racial audiences. That’s the info on the plaque outside the building.

In front of the magnificent theater.

As I returned to my hotel in Melville, it struck me that I had just made a journey through human history. I wondered if the homonids two million years ago also struggled with issues of segregation and discrimination, and I wondered if the world would be a better place had there been no racial differences, and I wondered if two million years later there will be an utopia where our descendants live without any kind of injustice.

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In September of 2014, during Storymoja Festival in Nairobi, I launched my first collection of speculative short stories, A Killing in the Sun, which features sci-fi, fantasy, and horror genres. A few weeks later, I got an invite to present a paper in Paris, at a workshop title Manufacture/Domestication of the Living in Science Fiction, at Le Cube, Center for Digital Creation. The organizers had chanced upon the book, and were impressed with the stories that tackled manufactured living beings. Below is a version of the talk I gave, last Friday.

In Paris, reading the sci-fi story, Lights on Water

Many African communities are technologically dependent on richer nations. Some governments, like that of Uganda, plan to boost technical capacity by promoting science subjects in schools. Already, there is a private initiative to promote the study of robotics in secondary schools in Uganda, by FundiBots. But critics of these initiatives say they are more or less copy-paste projects, that they simply borrow from research that has happened elsewhere and duplicate it. One such project is the Electronic Vehicle of Makerere University, which critics say was assembled rather than created.

In my opinion, there are two essential factors that could lead to a technological revolution in the continent, and a revolution that could guarantee true independence for many communities. The first is indigenous knowledge, the technologies that have existed in the continent for many centuries. After colonization, and westernization, African sciences were regarded as backward, as redundant and inferior compared to sciences of European origins. This sadly continues today.

Traditional medicine is one of the sciences that have persisted in African communities through the years, withstanding onslaughts of slave trade, colonialism, the invasion of Christianity and Islam, and more recently our own governments and educated elites who still hold the view that traditional medicine is redundant. In Uganda, though herbalists are allowed to operate, they face constant harassment from the government, especially when they claim to have a remedy for sicknesses that Western medicine has failed to cure. We saw this recently in Northern Uganda, when the nodding disease struck, and we've seen it with regard to AIDS. While it's true that some herbalists are quacks out to milk citizens, and that the government is right in trying to protect its people, I believe the government on a whole doesn't treat traditional healers with respect. If they did, and gave them resources to conduct research, maybe we would have already gotten a home-grown cure of AIDS.

The Ugandan government has particularly been harsh on traditional birth attendants. It has banned them from practicing, and it has threatened to imprison those who carry out deliveries. I don't know if anyone has yet been imprisoned for helping a woman deliver. I think it all comes down to money. Reproductive health is a major focus of the donors, and it generates a lot of money for both governments and non-governmental organizations. But the government cannot earn if people are not using their facilities, as is the case in most rural areas, where women prefer traditional midwives to the corrupt and rotten Western-style health facilities.

I became a stronger advocate for traditional medicine when I learnt that traditional healers in Bunyoro had perfected the science of ceasarean operations to help mothers, long before the missionaries arrived. This was observed in 1879, by a Catholic missionary Robert Felkin, and he wrote about it in a science journal.

Felkin's impression of the c-section he witnessed in pre-colonial Uganda

Now, I know, that knowledge is all but lost, and I'm not advocating for a total return to nativity. I'm not even saying that we should abandon Western technologies completely. What I'm saying is that Africa lacks confidence in itself. It believes that there was nothing before the Europeans came, that we were backward, and that whatever we have came from Europe. And that is the tragedy of many African communities. Indigenous technologies cannot evolve because African scientists think such technologies are inferior. These scientists have ignored to investigate their own brands of physics and chemistry and mathematics, and instead imitate sciences from Europe. They need to believe in their past, in their abilities, they need to believe that things can come out of Africa without the input of richer nations, and that is where science fiction can play a key role.

When I set out to write, I often think of myself as an activist, and I want to provoke people into thinking differently about their own worlds. Take the first story in A Killing in the Sun. It's titled The Leafy Man, and you can read it as a sample on smashwords. It's about genetically modified mosquitoes that run out of control in an African village, creating an apocalypse, but the main protagonist is a traditional healer, and he uses his knowledge of herbal medicine to survive, and to eradicate the mosquito from his village.

I got the idea for it at a time when I was frequently suffering from malaria. Like reproductive health, malaria is another major focus of donors, which makes it a lucrative phenomenon. It has become a big business, like AIDS, and so I've grown to distrust what they tell us about it. Sometime back between 2002 and 2004, I would fall sick almost every month. Each time I went to the clinic, the treatments got more and more expensive. The doctors told me that the parasites were becoming resistant to drugs, so I had to dig deeper into my pockets for stronger drugs. I wasn't earning a lot of money and I thought I would die. But after about two years of frequent sickness, I stopped going to the clinics. I investigated organic ways of keeping healthy, and I changed my diet, and I practiced simple malaria control habits, and for the next many years until last month, (after I moved to a house beside a swamp, and so neighbor a plethora of mosquitoes) I never fell sick from malaria. I almost became certain, like many other Ugandans, that these clinics will diagnose you as having malaria even if you don't have it just so they can make you pay for drugs. (BTW, I went to clinics of good reputation, some of which are agents of multi-national health insurance companies)

Well, during my frequent bouts with malaria, I read an article somewhere about two Indian scientists who were trying to modify the genes of the anopheles mosquito so that it is not able to transmit malaria, and that's when I saw this story.

The tragedy of we human beings is that we ignore solutions that already exist in nature. One of the biggest criticisms of biotechnology is that it is trying to fix things that are not broken. Why change the genes of the anopheles yet you can simply use already effective methods to control the disease?

The simple answer is that no one can make money out of organic methods. No one can make money out of knowledge that isn't copyrighted.

So when I write stories like The Leafy Man, I'm hoping to inspire readers to stop looking at indigenous knowledge as inferior to modern science and technology. Maybe, such stories will provoke the curiosity of scientists so they can invest in researching about indigenous technologies and see how indigenous technologies can evolve to meet challenges of the modern world.

According to this presentation, you know an alien is good if it has blue eyes

But that brings me to the second item that can boost science and technology in Africa. The president of Uganda is known to despise the arts, he is probably ignorant of role that literature, especially science fiction, has played in provoking scientific curiosity and research. There are plenty of examples of science fiction inspiring scientists in richer nations. There is the tale of Frankenstein which provoked research in the area of manufacturing of living things, and there is the Japanese Astro Boy who inspires scientists in robotics and artificial intelligence.

One question I keep asking myself is why sci-fi did not inspire a technological revolution in Africa. Certainly, the genre is not new to the continent. Only the label is new. Like in any other communities, the stories that have been passed on from generation to generation in African communities have many aspects of science fiction, like that of Luanda Magere, a man who had no flesh, and was made of stone. But why did Luanda Magere not provoke scientific curiosity in manufacturing living beings? Why did African scientists not try to create a man made out of stone? Why did they not want to create new life forms when they grew up on stories that told of mythical but human-like creatures, like ogres and shapeshifters?

Would it be because of strong attachments to religious belief? In Ugandan slang, shaman science is called Afrochem, which is short for African chemistry, and it is an assertion of the alternative sciences employed in what others call magic. But it also relates to the phenomenon where many traditional healers have adopted Western technology, yet still attach spiritual importance to disease, and yet still believe in the power of spirits. I've visited a few of these healers (while making a documentary that I never finished), and witnessed them using modern lab techniques to check for malaria parasites, and then dispensing herbal medicine. Some will send their patients to Western hospitals for a check-up, and once they get the lab results, use traditional medicine and spiritual rituals for the healing process.

Mixing science and religion controlled the thinking of scientists. There are areas they feared to venture into, like that of manufacturing of living things, for they believed this was a preserve of the gods. They left this to nature, and to the supernatural, the ultimate creators of living things.

Today, this correlation of science and religion is largely absent in industrialized nations. I believe the break came about as a result of the spread of organized religion in Europe. When people stopped believing in magic, they put their faith in religion, but then, they started to question religion, and they saw that religion is actually man-made, and so they started to think that God too is man-made. Atheism gave rise to unethical and selfish scientists. Today, scientists do not work for the greater good, nor do they work to improve nature or the living standards of their communities. Instead, they seek to increase profits, and military might, and they work to maintain the ruling systems in power.

Paradoxically, the dominant religion in industrialized countries, Christianity, gave the green light to scientific innovations that put our future at risk. Christianity teaches its believers that God gave human beings dominion over this world, which is bound to perish. It teaches about heaven and hell as being the true home of human beings, and so this home, this world, is temporary, thus it's okay to destroy it. I tackle this theme in the The Healer, the second story in my book, for I believe this kind of thinking has contributed to reckless, scientific adventures in not only creating new life forms, but also creating things that harm the planet.

I love sci-fi for it offers a broad playing field to explore humanity. I want my readers to remember that as we strive to improve our lives with technology, we are children of nature and servants of supernatural forces. Creating unnatural, biological life forms, will lead to our eternal doom.

To end with the topic of my presentation, that is, can sci-fi lead to technological independence in Africa? I believe it can, but the stories that come out have to champion local histories, to glorify indigenous knowledge and technologies, so as to inspire scientists to look within their own communities for solutions to modern problems, rather than to import foreign solutions.

Of recent, there has been a wave towards embracing African science fiction, especially in online communities, but it remains an alien genre to publishers and to the majority of readers of African fictions. This is because African writers are still expected to write about 'realistic things', and to focus on political problems, so there is no room for sci-fi. To many, sci-fi is 'unAfrican', something predominantly European and American. A recent New York Times article (I sadly can't find the link -- oh, here it is, New Wave of African Writers with an Internationalist Bent), mentioned notable writers of African descent, but left out names like Nnedi Okorafor and Sofia Samatar and Lauren Beukes, because they do not fit what the New York Times considers 'African writings'. Even the works of Ben Okri, which are essentially SFF, are labelled 'African Magical Realism', instead of sci-fi.

But times are changing, and the internet makes it possible for the genre to grow. Hopefully, in future, once Afro sci-fi has come of age, we the writers might inspire future generations of scientists and leaders with our creations.

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For the first time in my life, I met a female cab driver. Women had driven me before, in their personal cars, and in an organization that I worked for once who insisted on hiring women for drivers, but I'd never met a female taxi driver before. She said her name was Nazira, and it's a family business, her husband and their son are both taxi drivers. They mostly have corporate clients, which is how she came to be taking me to OR Tambo Airport that sunny Sunday morning in Joburg. Like many in conversations I had in Joburg, crime somehow crept up.

Police in Durban arrest a suspect.

"It was better during apartheid," she said. She's of Asian origin, which strangely in South Africa, means she is 'colored' while the Africans are 'black' and the Europeans are 'white'. "We lived in Durban at that time and we could leave our house unattended for many weeks. But when we would return there wouldn't have been any incident." Many other South Africans agree, even the Africans who were supposed to have been the oppressed during apartheid, they all said security back then was so much better, that the ANC government isn't capable of creating enough jobs to stop crime.

Just a few weeks before, she told me, robbers had broken into their home. They have adequate security, but somehow the thugs went in through the ceiling. They didn't to steal anything though, for armed response came in and took them away. They are probably in jail already. There is nothing she can do about burglars, but she is smart enough to outwit the criminals who patrol the roads. They pretend to be policemen, and drive in cars that look like police cars, so if you are not conscious, you pull over when they tell you to. Sometimes, they pull up beside you, in plain clothes and in civilian cars, but flashing IDs that look like police cards. These criminals watch the airport route, knowing they can make a good kill if they hit any car headed to or from the airport.

Westville Prison

One time she was driving a mini-bus full of tourists. The fake cops pulled up beside her, and flashed their IDs, and gestured that she stop the vehicle. She instead stepped on the accelerator. They gave chase. She had never driven above speed limit before, but that day, what gave her courage was that there was a police station just a few kilometers ahead, and if she kept her cool, she could outrun the criminals. They would not dare to follow her to the station. She also knew that if they were real cops, she would be in trouble. But she stepped on it and after a brief persistence, the thugs vanished from her tail.

Her husband nearly fell into the trap, a few weeks later. He pulled over when they told him to, but then he remembered her story, about the criminals pretending to be cops. By then, the thugs had already stopped in front of him, they were getting out of their car, and walking towards him. One had an AK 47. He hit the reverse gear. Luckily, this gang used only one car, so they had not blocked his rear end. He reversed at full speed, with his indicators flashing to warn vehicles speeding toward him – he still cannot know how an accident didn't happen, or why the thugs did not open fire. He got away.

I was on my way to Durban, to attend the Time of the Writer festival. I'd read the profiles of other writers, and one of then was Tshifhiwa Given Mukwevho. His story reminded me of the famous Kenyan gangster-turned-writer, John Kiriamiti. My Life in Crime was a publishing sensation in the 1980s. I remember my father, who owned the only photocopier in Tororo town in the early nineties, selling photocopies of the book. That's how successful it was. (When I saw the book making money, I told my father that I wanted to quit school and be a writer -- I wanted to go to a technical school to become a radio repairer and avoid the hustle of university -- because, I told him, John Kiriamiti never went to university but his book is making millions!) I don't know yet how much success Given has had with his books.

Tshifhiwa Given Mukwevho

Given was born in 1984 (the same year that John Kiriamit's book came out!) He went to jail at the age of 15 to serve twenty two years for theft, and breaking and entry. Before that, he had been in an out of jail many times, for many smaller crimes, but this time he was in for keeps. He wrote his first book, A Traumatic Revenge, a collection of short stories based on his life in jail, while still a prisoner. Later, he won a prize of 30,000 rand to write his first novel, The Violent Gestures of Life, which UKZN published. Today, he works as a news reporter in Limpopo.

Now, other than write, he gives talks to minors in prison on how turn their lives around. Time of the Writer festival have writing programs for school children, one of which was run in a prison in Westville, by the beautiful xhosa writer Celiswa, who taught creative writing to jailed minors. I visited Westville with Given, to give inspirational talks to participants of this program.

John Kiriamiti, in a photo stolen from Margaretta's Jua Kali Diary
http://margarettawagacheru.blogspot.com/2013/05/john-kiriamiti-backstory-of-man-who.html

Given's two books

One of the inmates, a boy who looked 13 years old, but was said to be 17, caught my attention. He looked so little, so innocent, so humble, I could not understand what he was in jail for. I asked the wardens, and at first they wouldn't tell me. Then one female warden stepped closer, and whispered in my ears one word that terrified me. "Rape."

Rape? How could a boy who looks like a frail 13 year old be in for rape? The warden speculated that maybe it was the games children play, you know, you be mummy I be daddy, but the parents of the girl took it seriously and called it rape, so this young man went in.

I found him to be the most avid on the writing program. Though I didn't get to read his work, he later followed us to where we were eating and asked questions about writing, which he had feared to ask in the class where he was mixed with much older looking boys. I hope he turns out okay.

His case further saddened me when a warder told me that a serial rapist had escaped from this same prison a few years before. She didn't tell me the rapist's name, for she said it happened before her time, and I've tried searching google in vain, but this escapee had raped and killed 27 women. He was in jail for life. The escape was said to have been an inside job, involving drug dealers, and the rapist took advantage of it. He is the only one who got away, and has never been apprehended.

It's just sad to think about these two people, how unfair the system and life is, but Given did not have kind words for the little boy. He thinks the boy deserves jail term, and that there is nothing wrong with a justice system that sends little boys who playhouse with little girls to jail for rape, to mix with criminals who have actually killed and raped women. Given believes prison will straighten this boy out, just as it worked for him – and I think he is a little naïve in that belief – but he was enthusiastic about the writing program. He told me he has been to many prisons to give inspirational talks, but this was the first time he was giving minor inmates talk on how to use writing to change their lives.

He started his session with a spoken word poem about street life, it had verses that went something like //I have no guns in my hands// just pens and books// and he went on and on about how he is making a life for himself. He said when in prison, he forgot about what happened to him, and focused on his future. He didn't want to continue a vain life. He wanted a new start. Today, many years after getting out, he still has nightmares. He wakes up at night thinking he is back in prison, and then he screams in terror, but it comes to him that it's just a bad dream. He is terrified of going back in there.

Police in Durban arrest a suspect.

I want to share his optimism, that prison will actually make these boys better, for after all he is a living testimony of how prison turned him from crime to a respectable citizen, but I'm one of those who don't believe that prison is an institution worth investing in, especially when it comes to juveniles and crimes that I consider 'minor', and that both governments and communities have to do a lot more to make the neighborhood peaceful.

Unfortunately, some crimes just keep coming up, and while South Africa is still grappling with ordinary crime, one of a worse kind is slowly cropping up. It's not xenophobia, though that is compounding the problem, or continued racism, but religious fundamentalism.

The day before I went to Westville Prison, I visited Chatsworth Education Centre with two other South African writers, ZP Dala and Charlotte Otter, where we had a lively discussion with children from more than six schools. I was impressed, and I found myself wishing that I had been given this kind of exposure when I was starting out to be a writer. As a teenager in St Peter's College Tororo, instead of encouragement I got laughter and derision, but I stuck to my guns. I imagine my fellow writers also suffered discouragements, so we were eager to give these kids whatever hope they could cling on to, then maybe their paths to success would be easier. So we earnestly answered their questions.

At one point, a little girl asked us, 'Who inspires you? When times are hard, as they always are for you writers, who do you look up to for the strength to go on?' Charlotte mentioned her writers, (I think it was Sarah Lotz and someone else I can't remember because I had not read their works), Dala mentioned Arundhati Roy and Salman Rushdie, I talked of my grandmother. As I was explaining to these kids how my late granny inspired me, a group of students stood up to leave. I noticed them for they all wore burqas. I had not noticed them before, but when they stood up at the same time, they became noticeable.

An hour later, Dala started receiving threatening texts, and hate tweets. Apparently, she had offended radicals when she said that she liked Salman Rushdie. What followed next is beyond my comprehension. The threats became violent, and a few days later as she was driving home, a bunch of thugs forced her off the road. Like the taxi driver Nazira, she was smart enough not to stop when flagged down, but these men were determined to hurt her, and they made it so that she either stopped or smashed her car into theirs. So she stopped, thinking they would probably just rob her, or if it was the radicals who had been buggering her maybe they would just say words to hurt her. Instead, they put a knife on her throat and then smashed a brick into her face. All because she said she admires Rushdie.

Beaten for liking a fellow writer. Photo from bookslive.co.za

I heard in the news recently that ISIS was recruiting in SA. I think that country is already struggling with a lot, to add fundamentalism and terrorism onto the headaches they already have might just break that beautiful country.

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African writers are traumatized. They forever have to defend their work. If it’s not someone questioning why they are not tackling the problems of their societies, it’s someone wondering why they only write about misery and gloom in the continent. When they discover that African writers are churning out stuff like speculative fiction, they say ‘copycat’. Or something worse. The something worse happened to me. Shortly after my book came out, a Ugandan living in the UK asked; ‘Are you really Ugandan?’ I said yes, and she said, ‘But your names….’ And I said Is your name Margaret (anonymised) more Ugandan than mine (Dilman is Asian, Dila is Luo/Nilotic)? And her next question, ‘But surely, you didn’t grow up in Uganda. No one who grew up in Uganda can write such stories.’ I stopped responding.

A muti market in Durban, South Africa, where you can buy any charm.

In recent years, there has been a burst of activity with regard to SFF in Africa. Some liken it to Afrofuturism, but I don’t like that idea, for African Americans (our children :-D) operate in a slightly different world. I’d prefer the term AfroSF/Horror/Fantasy, etc, or African SFF, so as to market products that are from the within continent. African Americans, and Africans in the diaspora, though disadvantaged compared to their siblings from the other mother (whites), enjoy a richer pool of resources and opportunities compared to us who work and live in the continent. (See? The Caine Prize is often dominated by people in the diaspora)

In writing this article, I want to add my voice to those that stress that scifi is not alien to Africa. Why? At this early stage we are trying to win an audience, thus talk of AfroSFF being a mimic can put readers off. True, some stories are imitative of popular Western films and books. We can’t ignore that influence, it would be hypocrisy. I often site Stephen King and Margaret Atwood as having big influences on my work. I wrote one of the stories in A Killing in the Sun, The Yellow People, right after reading The Tommyknockers and encountering a spaceship buried under the ground. When I started to read Zoo City, I at first thought of Philip Pullman's Nothern Lights, but after the first page, that comparison stopped, for I was lost in an alternate Joburg, with a very fascinating heroine and her sloth. So if anyone is to look at the surface, and not go into detail to appreciate the characters and worlds we create, that person is doing us a disservice.

A genetically modified karoli (marabou stork),
maybe created to clean up man's garbage,
graces the cover of the recent issue of Lawino Magazine

A recent article even went so far as to claim that when we create superheroes, we are merely copying x-men and Superman, that we should invent something unique the same way Western scifi has the ray gun, but this article forgets that our works are only starting to come out, and they have not hit the popularity levels of Western or even Asian products. With time, our creations will be part of the popular culture, but we won’t get there if myopic detractors keep nibbling at our efforts.

The simple fact is that human stories have always been speculative stories. Branding stories as scifi, or fantasy, or literary, is a recent phenomenon. It probably came about with capitalism, as the volume of written works grew and publishers needed a way of selling to various readers. African societies were not unique. They too told scifi stories. I’ll cite two examples from Acholi folk tales. These stories do not use magic, or the supernatural, but feature technology that does not exist in the world of the characters, which I believe is ultimately what makes a story scifi.

The first issue of Omenana

In both, Hare is the hero. In the one I love, the king sends his best and strongest warriors to bring Hare to justice over some mischief. Warriors like Elephant. Surely, mighty Elephant would have no trouble beating Hare, but Hare devised a weapon. I think a gourd with fake brains stuffed in it. When it struck Elephant’s head, the fake brains stuck to Elephant. It must have caused Elephant enough pain that when Hare said, ‘Look, I’ve smashed your head and your brains are hanging out,’ Elephant believed, and fled before Hare could do more harm.

The other story has the village digging a well, but Hare refuses to participate. To punish him, they set guards to watch the well and ensure he doesn’t drink from it. Hare gets into a calabash, which he modifies so he can hide in it, and roll in it. In a way it was some kind of vehicle. He then comes rolling toward the well, while singing ‘Oh people of the well let me drink water.’ The gourd amplifies his voice until it sounds like he is a terrible ghost. When the guards hear this, they flee, and Hare get his drink.

Of course, these tales were not labeled as scifi, but in writing stories like How My Father Became A God, in which an African scientist, living at time before Europeans arrived, invents a super weapon, I’m not thinking about all the cool weapons like ray guns and heat rays. I’m simply thinking of this crafty Mr. Hare, as I remembered from my grandmother.

Same goes with superheroes. Again, I can name one who did not use any kind of supernatural powers, Kibuuka, but he was able to fly and shoot arrows from the sky. The Baganda, after he died, deified him. The other is Luanda Magere, a man made out of stone. So when I craft a superhero story like The Flying Man of Stone (coming soon in AfroSF 2), I’m not thinking of Superman, or Spiderman, or Captain America, but of these two people who I met before I met these Westerners.

And space travel, many societies around the world link our ancestry to aliens. The famous ones are the Dogon in West Africa, and the Sumerians in the Middle East. A couple of years back, while researching about European missionaries coming to East Africa, I came across a paragraph in a book, The Wonderful Story of Uganda, of course written from a European Christian point of view so they were belittling the belief, but I could see beneath the ridicule, and I found something that makes me think the Baganda too believed their ancestors were aliens from outer space. Not only that, they could visit these ancestors before death, as in they didn’t have to die to travel to the sky. The Baganda have no gods as we know it. They worship ancestors, who become deified like Catholic saints, and if there was a way of going to join the ancestors in the skies, before one dies, doesn’t that allude to star-travel?

How to go up into the Sky.
Instructional text found in an old book about Uganda

This way of star-travel was preserved orally, I’m not sure anything about it exists anymore. But telling scifi stories orally continues today, and not just the folk tale kind. I grew up in Tororo, a small town in Uganda, unlike what the reader above thought, and I fed on strange urban legends. At that time, in the eighties, there was no TV, no Internet, and the biggest source of news was Radio Katwe, which was slang for rumors. Like that of Akii-Bua. He was the only Ugandan to win an Olympic gold medal. When adults talked about him, they said things like, ‘He can run faster than a car,’ and that ‘He went to compete in the Safari Rally. The white people came with cars, but he ran so fast that he left all the cars far behind him.’ These were adults telling each other tales, and we children would eaves drop. One time, while my parents were complaining about a broken down bridge, a bus driver said, ‘In Kenya, they have planted a tree in such a clever way that the branch grows over the river. So there is no need for a bridge, you just drive over this branch and you get to the other side of the river.’ They believed him, for he was a bus driver, a man who sees the world.

So when some claim that the genre is alien to Africa, that Africans don’t consume scifi, that there is no audience, I want to ask; which African community are you talking about? When they say Africans are not ready for scifi, what do they really mean? I think such people are based in the diaspora and are completely out of touch with the streets of the continent. Africans won’t relate to Captain America, or Star Wars, or Spiderman, but they’ll relate to stories of John Akii-Bua running faster than a rally car, or to stories of trees whose branches are living bridges strong enough for buses and lorries to drive over, or, as we see in Nollywood films, they pay to watch alternate worlds spiced with juju fantasy.

I grew up with such stories, and I did not encounter books until I was about ten years old and eligible to borrow books from the library. The first I remember reading was called Yoa (or Yao?) and the Python, about a boy (West African?) who befriended a python. I did not encounter Western stories until much later on. I read Peter Pan when I was already fourteen, or fifteen. I did not get to read Little Red Riding Hood until three years ago, when I visited a friend and saw it in a pile of her children’s books. I’m lucky in that sense, for I believe the best writing is heavily influenced by childhood. I never understand why someone would question my background simply because I write a certain type of stories.

A herbalist (muti) market in Durban, South Africa

I’ll end with a piece of advice to writers: Set your stories in the continent. Create characters who are deeply rooted in the cultures you are familiar with, whether urban, rural, traditional, or modern, you won’t come off as a hack if you do. If you are in the diaspora and have never been to Africa, but want to write AfroSFF, welcome, but then, do research, and more research, and some more research, until your story comes out as uniquely African. Hint, fellow writers, there is a plethora of monsters and yarns that are doing the rounds in the streets and village paths of your homes. Don’t ignore them. Those are the kinds of materials that will win you an audience.

That said, I’m pessimistic. I’m wary of this ‘new wave’ of AfroSFF, of this growing interest in the genre. Of course I’m happy. For the first time in my life I’m not afraid to write what I like. In fact, I’m so motivated that I’ve written two scifi scripts in three months and I plan to shoot one before the year ends, using my own money. I hope the interest continues to grow until the genre finds a firm foundation. But you heard of what happened to the horror genre? Following the success of Stephen King, everybody wanted to write horror, and then came a deluge of terrible, awful, ridiculous, and crappy books that put off readers. Soon writers became afraid to tag their books with ‘horror’. It happened with vampires and werewolves. Many publishers won’t touch those creatures. It might happen to AfroSFF. Are my fears unfounded? Nope. It’s happened before. You can’t sell a child soldier story now because at some point everyone was writing about child soldiers in Africa. I’m afraid this new interest will attract all sorts of gold chasers and wannabes and people seeking a quick road to fame, and the deluge of crappy imitative work will kill the genre.

My fears were confirmed recently when I got invited to judge an international science fiction screenplay competition. I can't name it for the process is ongoing. Some of the entries from Africa are truly original, very exciting to read, but a lot of them are hack jobs, putting black faces on, and using Africa as a backdrop for, stories already told elsewhere. It can happen and such a deluge can kill the genre.

Unless the publishers, producers, editors, and other gatekeepers, prevent it. How? Simple. Don’t publish just because AfroSFF is selling. Use editors who know the genre pretty well. I’ll illustrate. I wrote a novella for AfroSF 2, edited by Ivor Hartman. I’ve never seen Lost, the TV series, but Ivor pointed out that a creature I had created resembled the Smoke Monster, so readers would simply say, ‘See, this African is copying Lost.’ I thanked him for it. I re-imagined my creatures and I hope they are as original as can be. But that’s the crucial role editors and other gatekeepers can play, to ensure that AfroSFF works are as unique as possible. Only then can we hope to win an audience.

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Creatures from the Other World

The first time I went to South Africa, in 2008, the one thing I wanted to taste very much was umqombothi. Chaka Chaka’s hit song in the 80s has never gotten out of my head, just as it has stuck in the heads of millions of other Africans. There were bars called Mukomboti in the low cost suburbs of Kampala, and I think it there was once a drink called that, or maybe it was slang, I can’t remember, but it filled my dreams and longing that even as I flew (for the first time in a big plane), I saw clouds below me forming into shapes to spell out the drink.

Me, at the Alan Paton museum.
I visited the great author of Cry the Beloved Country.

In 2008, I was naïve in travel, and did not make much use of that trip, apart from taking a few photos like a dumb tourist. Then this year, I got to go twice, and to live there for over a month. I thought, well, this is my chance to taste that famous drink, and other delicacies. The ‘smiley’, which is a sheep’s head, and so called because it seems to smile at you with all its teeth as it sits on the plate. A whole sheep’s head. Then there is the ‘walkie-talkie’, a combo of chicken legs and heads. Okay, these are not really strange in my part of the world. As a child, I remember eating a cock’s head – the eyes, the cheeks, the comb. Our houseboy roasted it for me, and he said it would make me intelligent (now you know how I got my brains :-o). In Tororo where I grew up, there are a people who are said to cook everything after slaughtering a chicken. The legs, the head, the intestines, everything. When I lived in Kirewa village as part of my first job (it was to arrest men who beat their wives, but I’ll tell you about that later), I found a man roasting chicken intestines. He had wrapped it around a stick. I wanted to ask for a bite, curious as I am about delicacies, but I couldn’t find my voice because he did not seem so clean and I wondered if he had washed those intestines properly. (Chicken intestines are called 'ashy shoe laces' in the South African townships, or so I hve just been told on Facebook).

But there is something about South Africa that wants you to taste these things when you go there. It’s maybe a curiosity about the people, who are said to be our children – the Bantu who moved so far down south and even retained a lot of our words in their language. I guess in desiring these delicacies, I wanted to see if we are the same, if umqombothi is really just another version of malwa, or kwete, or ajono (I tasted a sister of the drink in Nepal, called Tumba, just a jug was enough to make me go dizzy and I imagined three Limbu girls dancing naked on a table, though they were just sitting there laughing with their drinks). I guess I wanted to satisfy my curiosity that we are one people, however far apart we live, though in Uganda or in Durban or in Kathmandu, our cultures have a similar origin as evidenced from what we eat and drink.

Bunnychow, a delicacy of Durban.
I didn't know about it until I got there.

I never got the chance. I met many friendly South Africans, as friendly as Nepalis who never say no to a visitor. ‘Yes, yes,’ one told me. ‘On Saturday, I’ll take you to this place where they’ll slaughter for you a whole sheep and give you the head. But culturally, as a woman, I am not allowed to go into that shop, so maybe I’ll organize for my brother to take you there.’ I waited. Saturday came, and she postponed to another day. I only smiled, for I knew she was so nice she did not know how to say no to disappoint me. Another one said, ‘Next Thursday, on our day off, I’ll take you around Soweto, you’ll eat all these things and you’ll drink umqombothi until you can’t find your legs.’ When Thursday came, he said, ‘But Dilman, why do you think straight like a white man? When I said Thursday, it didn’t mean this Thursday, but one Thursday before you return to Uganda.’ Well, that Thursday never came.

Problem is I was stuck in a tiring job, six days a week, and on that one day I had off I was often too tired to explore on my own. When the contract ended, it was too cold to go out for Johannesburg winter was at its worst. I just wanted to rush back to warm Kampala.

What I instead ate in Johannesburg, seafood. Tasty! :-))

They did tell me that umqombothi is not readily available in traditional bars, the way malwa and ajono is enjoyed in Uganda. They make it on only on special family occasions and ceremonies. That’s a pity. I think a people who lose touch with their brew get completely lost, culturally, and South Africa is sort of going that way. The place is so Westernized you wouldn’t know you are in Africa. Even their music, which once ruled the continent, has lost its touch. Listening to bands like Freshly Ground, I don’t find that magic that made the likes of Chico Chimora and Brenda Fassie and Pat Shange household names. Their songs, in the 80s and 90s, were so popular in Uganda that everywhere you went, you found local versions. Somehow, because the languages were relate-able, each nation in Uganda would come up with their own version of South African songs. But how times change! And how South Africa has changed! Did the end of apartheid mean a death of a certain culture?

I can’t say I am an authority in this matter, just stating my observation as someone who grew up on South African music, and who grew up curious about Zulus, and who wanted to satisfy this curiosity and didn’t find what I was expecting. Maybe if I stay for a longer period, I’ll get the full taste of South Africa, but for now, I’m only left with glimpses, with a hunger for more.

Like the herbal market. While in Uganda herbalists have been demonized, and treated as backward and satanic, that they operate in hiding, I was surprised to walk into a market in Durban that sells nothing but herbs and charms and juju. It was like walking into one of the stories of Ben Okri, or into a scene in The Palmwine Drinkard. In Uganda, herbalists are only starting to come out, and to get publicly accepted (I’m making a documentary about it), but I wonder if they’ll ever hit this kind of acceptance, where a whole market is reserved for nothing but their medicines and charms.

A young man in a shop selling herbs and charms.
I wonder if he is a shaman, or has any such training at all.

A walk through the market left me depressed, especially the sight of dead animals and birds hung up on hooks like designer clothes, with dried innards spilling out. The smell stirred a protest in me. ‘It’s not effective’, a taxi driver told me when I later asked him. ‘If you go to the villages you’ll find sangomas whose medicine work, but here, they are just making money.’ It made me think about all those animals dying for nothing, maybe going extinct, because of some fraudulent shaman.

It still was a surreal experience, with the herb dealers trying to peddle their wares as I passed by; ‘Do you want to kill your enemy?’ one young man told me. ‘Use this one.’ He pointed at a monkey hang upside down, its tummy split open, its intestines in its mouth, something poking out of its anus spewing a thin trail of smoke. Others tried to get me to buy manhood medicines, or abortion drugs (so cheap, 200 Rand only, no side effects!), or to get charms to prosper my business.

The herbal market, with Durban in the background.

Then there was the thing about uniforms. On 16^thJune, I went to work and found every adult in school uniform. It was both exciting and disturbing. I know men always get dark thoughts when they see women dressed as sexy, little school girls, but well….. The rest of Africa calls this the Day of the African Child, there they just call it Youth Day, and on this day adults wear school uniforms in memory of the children who died during the Soweto Uprising of 1976.

Sweet things in uniform and lollipops, on 16th of June,
commemorating the 1976 Soweto uprisings.

Apartheid, though more than twenty years dead, still lingers over the nation. I don’t know if I was pleased or saddened to learn about Fanagalo, and that it is no longer used. It’s a language that developed in the mines to ease master-slave communication. It combined many languages into something everyone could understand, English, Afrikaans, Zulu, whatever language was available, all mingled into one called Fanagolo. Every time I think of it I tend to compare it to Lingala, and especially to Swahili which was born out of trade between Hindi-speaking people, Arabs, and Bantu. But maybe Fanagalo, having been born out of slavery and oppression, had to die out. The same way Swahili was never really accepted in Uganda. At first, the English resisted its spread, for they wanted to promote their own language. Today, some Ugandans, especially the Baganda, do not like it for they say, in the 70s and 80s, soldiers used it to terrorize them, looting and killing.

Still, you can look at Fanagalo the same way other languages absorbed words or tongues of their oppressors. In East Africa, many English words are now part of the languages. Like the word ‘sorry’. And there are words like posho (ugali), which came about during the building of the dam on River Nile. At meal times, the supervisors would tell the workers to ‘Come for your portion’, and the workers thought posho is actually the name for ugali. There are other words I saw recently on a facebook post, very dirty words, see if you can figure them out; mwathafaga, blurry hero, burr-sit.

The beauty of Durban just after sunset,
but these signs below spoil the fun.

The beaches in Durban are captivating, and tell the South African story. It’s not just the stadium in the background, a reminder of the 2010 world cup. The people who go there and the activities they do left me wondering…. I found the white men surfing, white women swimming, Indians fishing, and Africans taking selfies (that’s if they were not building sandcastles to charge tourists a few pennies for poses or working as life guards). It all said a bit about race in South Africa today.

Beautiful artwork at the beachside

Indians fishing while, below,
white men surf and Africans take selfies.

Then, I saw women (and some men) coming down to the beach, fully dressed, and stepping into the water as though they were made of salt, and then filling plastic bottles with sea water. I puzzled very much over this, until I approached one girl, who told me she had travelled all the way from Johannesburg. I looked at her phone, it’s cracked screen, at her worn out shoes, at her bag that had a hole and a broken strap, and I could not imagine why anyone would make a six hour bus journey that costs a lot of Rands just to get sea water.

Why? I asked her. For prayers, she said. Prayers? I said. The pastor sent me, she said. And she wouldn’t say anymore, but those four words said everything. The pastor sent me.

A woman fills a bottle with sea water, for religious purposes

Later, someone told me they use it to regurgitate. Why? I asked. Regurgitation purifies the body, and hence the soul. It did not make sense, but these people believe the sea has magic powers, supernatural powers. I was told that if I go to the beach before dawn, I might find sangomas performing rituals, or some other kind of religious ceremony going on, and that there’s always fire involved in these rituals. My curiosity swell. I did try to wake up before dawn, for I was staying in a hotel that overlooked the sea, but I failed. I have definitely kept that for the next time I go to Durban.

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