Diaspora home away from home, is it possible?
Cornelius Hamelberg
Recently, spent a week with eleven members of my lovely Swedish family, in the fabled Stockholm Archipelago, on the island of Nåttarö which is about three times the size of the idyllic Bakana island ( Kalabari land) where I lived in Nigeria, 1983-1984. Bakana = Nostalgia though different, without roots to the epic degree of Walcott's Isla Incognita
This year it has been the closest to living in Africa. Perhaps the heatwave sizzling through Europe, radio TV, media, the neighbours, everybody saying, mostly complaining, dear Gad , that it has never been so hot, not since the beginning of the ice age, that these days you can boil your eggs or the water for your coffee by just leaving the pot or mug on the windowsill or on the balcony for the sun to peep in, everything sizzling, the kind old sun, frying everything in sight, everything that it beams upon all the way from down south in Denmark, through Stockholm which is North of Scotland and this it is that has something to do with the back home in Africa feeling, except that today in Stockholm even Africans are complaining about the heat and that includes me, although I still joke with my neighbour that I was born with a sun tan.
In “Away We Trot” Carl Michael Bellman could have well inserted this line “ Is the sun too hot? Than take a dip! “
But don't get me wrong, Stockholm is not the hottest I've been in or seen. The worst so far has been Cairo – which some people forget is slap bang in the middle of the desert and this I found out after two months in Alexandria , that wonderful Mediterranean City located in Eastern Egypt - Alexandria-by-the-Sea. If not Philo of Alexandria then The Alexandria Quartet should provide enough motivation for a visit. In my case after two months there I boarded an air-conditioned bus for Cairo and when we arrived in Cairo and I got off the bus, the first heatwave hit me, I could see it coming, a viscous current moving in the air, with great force, hissing and simmering, coming straight at me. When the first punch hit me I almost fainted, dizzy and swaying, but still managing to stay on my feet, struggling heroically, had to grope on to something like the ropes in a boxing ring, not to fall down and out for the count of more than ten, maybe even out and dead.
In Stockholm right now they have stopped selling bus and train tickets for long journeys, they say that the air-conditioning in Swedish trains and buses was meant for the usual Swedish Climate, not these hellish temperatures. Worst of all, the fires. Have never seen such fires not even in the Harmattan season, in West Africa...
Nåttarö : Wide open spaces for camping, a total of 50 little cottages, we occupied two, numbers 48 & 49 for a week of communal living, no cars, not even motorbikes, just bicycles, all combustible forests and woods, a very dry season, picturesque beaches, altogether for a week of communal living, like plebeians living in a third world/ developing country, the same village life, having to fetch our own water , several buckets everyday, water from a tap about fifty yards away, breakfast, lunch, dinner at a big table , unders some trees, the toilets, like the communal toilets in Buguma – but not quite, four outhouses to serve the community of about six cottages in our area (where everybody did the “ big-business” like birds of the same feather , feel equal, was thinking of Fela ( “Na European man teach us to carry shit”) not so many flies and mosquitoes but plenty of predatory wasps and bees..
As the discussion of Fulani Herdsmen rages , I often think of “The Parable of the Belly” in Coriolanus and that “The belly answered” could speak - that so far no one has proposed a boycott of Fulani beef, I suppose because of the dictatorship of the belly which derives a lot of satisfaction from Fulani beef, no matter what and no matter how, as long as it gets to the dinner table...
An uncanny experience: Well, just as Balaam's ass was made to speak , so too, wonder of wonders ( as in My Life in the Bush of Ghosts) so too out of the blue, about two weeks ago , out in the countryside an old Swedish monkey asked me, “Why don't you want to go to Sierra Leone?” I almost jumped out of my skin - a question that sounded frightfully like, “Have you stopped beating your wife?”
Have you ever heard a monkey speak? The question took me by surprise . Was the monkey actually talking to me or was I dreaming, with my eyes and ears wide open? I took a closer look and saw an decrepit, ugly, old , female Swedish monkey, long past her prime. The monkey – ugly as sin , spoke again , this time more imperiously : “ Yes, I'm talking to you! Why don't you want to go to Sierra Leone?” Monkey was asking me in Swenglish, not Swedish. I could have sung to her in return, “ Do you know what it means to miss New Orleans?” But what do monkeys know about music? Poetry? Literacy? Even basic English? Philosophy? Anthropology? Racism? Inferiority Complex? I could have sung “ Do you know what it means to Miss New Orleans ?” but for the fact that I could only surmise that it would be a waste of time since this old monkey in particular - not at all hip despite any pretensions to the contrary, doesn't have an ear ( not to talk about an understanding) of what jazz is all about, so instead of being smart, I thought that I would explain to her what Sierra Leone means to me , starting with my parents, grandparents, and other close family members and friends , but the ugly monkey didn't want to hear any of that. I wonder what she wanted me to say. Maybe wanted to answer the question for me? Or maybe, she thought that the people that I was talking about are or were all White monkeys like her very undistinguished Darwinian self?
It's a despotic question - behind which could lurk many erroneous assumptions that long-time African sojourners occasionally have to answer or are confronted with and of course the reasons can vary depending on factors such as time and place - how long you've been away, where you are and whatever fond or not so fond memories you have of the place that's really no longer there. A short answer could have been , “ I have already bought my one way ticket and I will be leaving tomorrow!” but talking to a serious person one could discuss the proposition that, “Sierra Leone has gone to the dogs” assuming that an uneducated monkey would not possibly understand what it means to miss New Orleans. Most probably on hearing the phrase “ gone to the dogs”, ugly & decrepit old monkey would probably wanna know - if only she were capable of that kind of intellectual curiosity, “ Who are the dogs?”
Joni Mitchell appeals : Help me !
Harrow, Kenneth
cornelius
i love your writing. let's come back to the idea of a memoir that you write?
ken
Sent: Saturday, July 28, 2018 11:47:03 AM
To: USA Africa Dialogue Series
Subject: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Diaspora home away from home, is it possible?
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Cornelius Hamelberg
Dear Ken,
As Dr. Dylan crooned,
“Yesterday's just a memory
Tomorrow is never what it's supposed to be”
Of late, we have heard so much about terrorism in Nigeria, bloody internecine warfare etc. and I'm sure that we would all much prefer to see some verifiable first person testimonies /witness accounts surface on this forum, before it's too late (memoirs could be too late)
Of late I too, I have been inspired by the pithy story telling in Professor Obododimma Oha's latest series
Last week watched a programme in which Professor Christopher Ricks talked about Bob Dylan's poetry
Any future memoir must include reading his Dylan's Visions of Sin
Visions of Johanna
Visions of Obama
Visions of Johanna & Obama
Could also be visionary
rhyme with missionary
Emeagwali, Gloria (History)
But speaking of the weather, the topic that the Brits relish in, I couldn't help think that a climate revolution was taking place, when traveling through Ethiopia and Kenya over the last two months. Ethiopia's, Gondar, Addis Ababa, and Shashamane down south - as well as Kenya's Nairobi, Malindi, and Mombasa were all ice boxes compared to steaming, muggy Hartford, Connecticut right now. And there were lots of Europeans roaming around ,too. I was told that Kenya's Malindi had a good share of Italian migrants.What would "the monkey" say to that?
Professor Gloria Emeagwali
Sent: Saturday, July 28, 2018 2:16:40 PM
To: USA Africa Dialogue Series
Cornelius Hamelberg
Dear Gloria In Excelsis Emeagwali,
Re - What would "the monkey" say to that?
Well, have you ever had this kind of encounter?
In the very early years in Sweden , circa 1971, I used to sing along with this song Think I'll go back home ( I was a great Stephen Stills and Eric Clapton fan then)
You know there's the Sierra Leone National Anthem , there's the French National Anthem , there's Nkosi Sikelel iAfrika , there is Hatikvah and in Sweden we sing The Swedish National Anthem which is also beautiful and very moving, especially when we sing , “Ja, jag vill leva jag vill dö i Norden.” ( Yes, I want to live, I want to die in the North). I don't know so much about the blue monkeys but I know for a fact that the most beautiful of the honeybees sing it and love it too...
Some food for thought: What happens if in the coming years the heat-waves increase in the Northern Hemisphere, – the Polar icecaps melts etc. throwing much of Holland under the Sea ( God forbid) ? Won't the participants at the 1884-85 Berlin Conference want to re-settle in Africa? Will they all be granted visas? Climate Asylum?
It's good to know that relatively speaking - climate wise, all is well in Ethiopia and Kenya and that Gringos are still travelling to Kenya following in the footsteps, less of Cecil Rhodes and more in the spirit of Elspeth Huxley . As for the I-talians - I like them , the ones working for AGIP that I met in Nigeria, some in Bonny, were temperamentally a lot more Nigerian than many other Oyibos ( exceptions of course such as Kalabari man Robin Horton) – not necessarily more civil, but certainly not hypocritical : whereas in the go- slow (traffic jam) the Scandinavian is a lot more cautious about letting his temper flare – for fear of being accused of racism , the Italian shows the same temperament the frustrated/impatient Nigerian – he gets out of his Fiat and starts shouting at the guy in his made-in-Nigeria Volkswagen or Peugeot “ Oga, please move your wheelbarrow !!!!” - or “ God punish you!!!!” even gives his middle finger. ( BTW, sometimes I wonder to what extent Hon. African Scholars like Kenneth Harrow is Nigerian/ Cameroonian/ Senegalese/ French in temperament ( We are all individuals of course, but is there something like a national temperament ? As far as Sierra Leone goes , temperamentally I am Temne – we don't take no shit! )
This is serious: The truth about mobile phone and wireless radiation -- Dr Devra Davis