Palm Wine, Chibok Girls, Art, and Race

Palm Wine Evening in London

The Igbo Conference is presenting Palm Wine Evening: An African Experience as the final event for this year’s Igbo Conference. The main conference was months ago, but this event is on Friday August 2nd. In addition to palm wine drinking, there will be a film screening of Iko Ndu – the Palmwine Story, and a discussion of Amos Tutuola’s The Palmwine Drinkard.

I wish I could go! It’s in London, so if you’re near, you can attend. But you have to buy tickets ahead of time – no tickets at the door, they say.

Trevor Noah’s Guest

Trevor Noah often invites an author with a recent book on an important topic for the final 5 or 6 minutes of his show. Recently he featured the author Isha Sesay who just published Beneath the Tamarind Tree.

The book tells the story of some of the girls in their own words.

As she says, she had been covering the story of the 219 Chibok girls from the beginning for CNN. She was in Nigeria when the first girls were released, and despite being there with her dying mother who was in a coma, made the trip to Abuja.

Her mother, she says, grew up in a way similar to the Chibok girls, and felt connected to them. And when the author faced the decision of whether or not to leave her mother’s side to meet the newly released girls, she knew her mother would have wanted her to go.

That’s how she was able to meet the girls and hear their stories.

She urges all audience members at Trevor Noah’s show, and by extension those of us who watch, to use the hashtags, #BringBackOurGirls, or others she names, to push the Nigerian government to do more. She says, “hashtags work!”

Local Accents in Africa

Google has unveiled new features which will offer detailed city maps to motorcycle ride-hailing services in Lagos. They say this is a first for Africa; they will soon provide these services in other African countries as well. “The technology behemoth owned by Alphabet Inc said it is aiming to capture new users and expand its appeal beyond just drivers.”

They promise to offer travel advice in local accents, that is, in Nigerian voices.

They will allow Lagos users to get directions on “informal transit.” And what is that? There are yellow min-buses that are everywhere in Lagos, but their routes are not known, even to many Lagosians.

A great concept – I hope it will work! And of course it will make money for Google!

Nigerian Artist and Sculptor Ben Enwonwu

Our friend from Nigeria days, Mike Briggs, called my attention to an article in the online publication Quartz Africa. It tells the fascinating story of a family in Texas who just discovered that they have an early portrait by the Nigerian sculptor and artist Ben Enwonwu.

I remember learning about Enwonwu during Peace Corps training in 1962. As the article says, he was “one of the most revered African artists of the 20th century.”

His statue of Sango, the Yoruba god of thunder, still stands, I believe, outside what was the headquarters of Nigeria’s Electricity Corporation. I remember it well – that’s where my husband Clem was the Chief Electrical Engineer when I met him.

Something I didn’t know, but learned from the article is that, “Despite being widely celebrated as a painter and sculptor, Enwonwu was also a distinguished writer and art critic.”

He was outspoken about the way African art was relegated to second-class status in the Western art world, even though many world-renowned European artists were influenced by it.

Good News for Nigeria

Nigeria has come close to being declared polio free before. Will it actually happen this time?

https://www.premiumtimesng.com/health/health-news/342526-who-set-to-declare-nigeria-polio-free.html?mc_cid=7954e5813d&mc_eid=643dac4565

Let’s hope so!

Democratic Debate

Now I have to watch the last minutes of the Democratic Debate. I did catch the segment on racism and white supremacy. There were some great comments, I thought. Several candidates said they support reparations. I like that.