'Cuz I'm An African Flying Machine*

I tried cooking rice this time!

( Coconut rice the Nigerian way )

I was told the local pot is called isasun obe but my aunt calls it koko. Either way it's fun to cook with, my plan is to buy two more when I go back to my "village".

I suspect I haven't been taking care of this one well enough because it's cracking. Apparently you're not supposed to wash it with water but wipe it down after use. I feel bad for not caring enough for my first pot.

Anyways I made peanut sauce with the pot a while back but I've been too lazy/busy to share. Find photos and steps below, remember I'm not a food blogger lol

( Photos of meat cooking and all... )

I spent a couple of weeks in my hometown in March. The plan was to see my grandma and spend time with other family but I also went to a pottery. There women made clay pots in the traditional way, the pots have various uses, there are the ones for cooking, the ones for storing water (and keeping it cool), the ones for brewing agbo (herbal remedies)...the women also made piggy banks. I learned that among the Yoruba, pottery is a profession for women only apparently forbidden to men. The driver that took me there kept referring to the women as witches <_< not to their faces obviously
( Pots and more pots )

First time logging on dw in years. I've miss everyone here! Maybe it's time for a revival. I've been travelling a lot, cooking a lot, venturing into photography, so much to catch up on

Last month I met with Chitra and Saratu for a L Word Night. Now I haven't watched the show before that night, but no one needs to know that. Anyway thanks to that night and Chitra, I left with three books all with queer themes, two from India and one from Lebanon.

Bareed Mista3jil is a collection with writing from lesbian, bisexual and trans women from Lebanon. There are a lot of stories, I'm not sure if I should call them stories even though it is difficult to tell with ones were based on lived experiences, or which ones were fiction. Not that I think that matters, because I took all the writing in Bareed Mista3jil as non-fiction. The writing covers a variety of themes, coming out, religion, family, community, class etc.

Close, Too Close is an anthology of queer erotica from South Asia. I loved all the stories in this anthology more or less equally (though I'll make an exception for that story with the oral sex scene in a morgue :S) but my favourite were "The Marriage of Somavat and Sumedha" by Devdutt Pattanaik, "The Half Day" by Daobi, "Perfume" by D'Lo, "Dreams and Desire in Srinagar" by Michael Malik and "Pity that Blush" by Annie Dykstra.

"The Marriage of Somavat and Sumedha"  is a sweet story about two orphans who grew together as best friends Somavat and Sumedha. They come up with a plan to disguise as a bride and groom in order to get a cow from the queen of Vallabhi who gives cows to newly married couples because they want to get brides themselves. On their way back home, they go to a cave and basically have sex. It turned weird when the paragraph written from the cow's perspective came up. But that's what makes the story awesome, there was the cow and the forest goddess Aranyani who do their part in creating this seductive atmosphere around Somavat and Sumedha, they watch as the friends cross that line. It was a sweet (and obviously hot) read.

As for "The Half Day", I mean it has food and at the end of the story is a recipe for rajma chawal (the Punjabi way) which I now have to try sometime in the future. It's about Mannat's half day Saturday, while she's cooking rajma chawal she remembers that she doesn't have dahi and runs to the cornershop to get some when she bumps into a one-night stand whose name she's forgotten. Anyway the one-night stand, Manpreet comes knocking at Mannat's door later that night, not to cause a scene from Mannat forgetting her name but because "bitches get me wet". I've read that one a couple of times.

"Dreams and Desire in Srinagar" by Michael Malik is an interesting one, about a gay man visiting Srinagar to see Mahmood, his lover but also Shahid a young man who he met when he first went to Srinagar. There may be some desire between Shahid and our narrator but the young man is straight, that doesn't stop our narrator from dreaming about this desire. Ugh there were so many good stories, the one about the woman who couldn't have sex without drinking alcohol and her girlfriend's frustration with this, or Chicu's "Soliloquy". I have to check out these writers to see if what else they've written.

Then there was Facing the Mirror edited by Ashwini Shukthankar, very similar to Bareed Mista3jil, in that it is another collection of writing from lesbian and trans women. I usually take the books I'm reading around with me, so that I can read them when there's a free moment at work or elsewhere. Anyway I didn't realise until a colleague was staring strangely at the book on my desk and then giving me looks that there was "Lesbian Writing from India" boldly written on the cover of this book. (She later went on to make a "joke" about how lesbian masseuses must enjoy their job).

I admittedly skipped a few stories here, it'll be a good anthology to have in my library so that I can return to it but sadly this isn't my copy. From the stories I read (I skipped the poems), the three that stood out were "The Letter" by Kanchana Natajaran, "Yo no soy Mexicana...!" by Extranjero and Lesbians in Indian Texts and Contexts by Mina Kumar. The latter is more of an essay that I particulary liked it for the historical analysis and Extranjero's story...well it has an interracial relationship between the protagonist (who is Indian, speaks Spanish and gets called Mexican a lot) and the (Black) woman who cuts her hair, I can't remember any names from this story. As for "The Letter", a woman receives a letter from her former lover asking her to run away with her, and through flashback we get to know how they met as neighbours and how they separated.


I remember going through several books last month, and it took me a while to do a mental inventory. I have been reading Cara d'Bastian's urban fiction series set in Singapore. I stopped after the third volume because there's only two more left and I need to know if there'll be more before continuing. I don't want to catch up and then be stuck waiting. I am now reading D.O. Fagunwa's "Forest of a Thousand Daemons" and have a lot to say on Yoruba hunter sagas but that's another post for another day.

THIS BOOK!

*inhales deeply to calm self down*

Amos Tutuola is a Nigerian writer that is slept upon. His book The Palm-Wine Drinkard was completed in the 1940s, it should be remembered as a hallmark in Nigerian fiction writing but sadly isn't. Tutuola wrote books that drew heavily from Yoruba folklore, he also really never went to school so even though he wrote in English his grammar, spelling and such are not on point. I think these are the two reasons he isn't as celebrated as he should be. I first came across Tutuola on the African literary blog, The Brittle Paper whose owner iirc said something like Tutuola paved the way for Chinua Achebe who then paved the way for other Nigerian and African authors. Yes he is that important.

I bought several of Tutuola's books while in New York earlier this month. I skipped The Palm-Wine Drinkard and started with The Brave African Huntress simply because of its title and premise. Adebisi is a brave young lady who becomes a huntress and ventures into the most dangerous Jungle of Pigmies to save her four elder brothers who have gone missing there. She is 8 years old when she decides to be a huntress and take over her father as the King of Hunters. I'm going to share the scene where Adebisi reaches this decision, also to show Tutuola's style of writing.


So Adebisi starts practising how to hunt and when she's old enough inherits her father's position and starts her journey to the Jungle of the Pigmies.

On the way she encounters many obstacles, a huge giant-cyclops "Odara", a human-bird hybrid that terrorises a Ibembe town, the horned King of Ibembe town, an animal with 16 horns and "reflecting eyes" that continued to shine brightly even after Adebisi killed it. She is captured by the pigmies, enslaved and taken to their town which is beneath some rocks. There she meets all the hunters who have been imprisoned and is forced to work mercilessly. With her wits, she manages to escape this custody and destroys the entire town of pigmies freeing her fellow enslaved hunters even though she gets trapped in the rubble. A kind gorilla saves her but she goes on to lose her weapons (a gun, poisonous cudgels, the "juju" she inherited from her father) and finds herself in a town comprised solely of bachelors where the men tell her to choose who she wants to marry (she chooses an old man and that leads to a fight) before she is installed as a queen and given the key to a room she is told not to open. Of course Adebisi opens that room and finds herself back in the forest her clothes tattered and torn. But her adventures don't end there, she meets an old man and settles with him in his hut, but they are accosted by a forest thief who is bent on stealing all the old man's property. Eventually Adebisi is separated from the old man, she makes her way back to the Jungle of the Pigmies where she is again captured by pigmies who want to kill her for destroying their town she escapes obviously. Then she is reunited with her weapons, fights and defeats the "snake of snakes" (boa constrictor), and goes back to fight the pigmies. Oh and between all this she manages to kill all the wild animals in the jungle (to make it safe for other hunters in the future). Eventually she finds the hunters she saved and becomes their leader. With their help she builds several canoes while gather precious metals, animal skins, and a fruit that tastes like ice-cream. Using the canoes they row back to her village where all the hunters are reunited with their families and Adebisi becomes a rich woman.

The story ends;Only things to note, Adebisi never encounters another woman in her adventures. It's strange because here we have a book that is awesome with the brave lady heroine Adebisi. Yes she's a woman, she dresses like a man, she gets scared (then she "sells" her death as Tutuola put it, she stopped caring about death), she struggles to overpower the men...or man-like beasts she encounters and battles with, and she rules over men (twice!). But she doesn't encounter another woman at all. In fact except from that woman through which she found out that she had four brothers, the only other mention of women are of mother and powerful witches. I wish there were more women present in this, even as villains. Also there is a lot of violence, in the end Adebisi basically commits genocide against the pigmies.

Still it's an interesting book that I really enjoyed. Part of me finds it hard to believe it was published in 1958! I am looking forward to reading more from Tutuola with this lovely introduction. The Palm-Wine Drinkard and My Life in the Bush of Ghosts is next!

Because I've been scarce around dw this year... Funke of DynamicAfrica compiled a playlist of the best African music of 2013. I've embedded videos of the ones I loved and a few extra additions.


"Xigubu" by DJ Ganyani & FB. I love this song, the video always brings tears to my eyes, I think it's because of the traditional clothes and dances. I think the "tradition" shown here may be Tsonga, because the entire song is in xiTsonga. Ha, apparently "xigubu xiba ngofu" means the drums are playing or something. Xigubu is a type of drum played in Tsonga festivities, the entire song is about going out and having fun.

( Music, dance, music, dance )

Takeifa is a band of siblings from Senegal. I'm in love with this video from them, "Supporter".


I really like this, there seems to be a growing rock trend in several African countries. So far I'm aware of metal in Angola, Mozambique and Kenya but Takeifa would be the first I'm aware of in West Africa.

Can I talk about this book with or without spoilers? Okay there are most likely going to be spoilers.

I bought Rose from the Bayou after reading this review on Sistas on the Shelf. Although I feel the review only told half the story, and I got really agitated while reading the book and kept on looking back and the review and going, "what?". Rose from the Bayou is set in 1990s New Orleans (for some reason I read this as 1900s and was so excited), the story follows the "friendship" of Scarlet Rose Laveau, a magic woman and Koral Baptiste, a very naive fool. There are several characters in the book, but I think Brazil Tio who appears later as Scarlet Rose's lover and the third wheel in her and Koral's "friendship" qualifies as a main character. And I couldn't believe that Koral and Scarlet Rose shared any kind of strong bond, Scarlet Rose had just been using and bullying the weaker party, that is Koral, for most of her life.

So Scarlet Rose and Koral are friends, they are also lovers and have been since they were teenagers, and maybe even before that. Koral is completely in love with Scarlet Rose and will do anything for her but Scarlet Rose believes that she is not meant to be in one relationship. Koral is such a fool, ugh she is sensitive and naive and sweet, and ignores anyone who warns her about Scarlet Rose. Scarlet Rose is the bad apple, she's cold, evil according to some and completely selfish. As a magic woman, it is not clear if what she practices is voudou, but it certainly is black magic and it is insinuated that she got it from her mother's side of the family and her mother is white and I'm not sure how popular voudou is among white folks.

As a magic woman, Scarlet manipulates her ability to communicate with the otherworld, at the same time she is also driven with the need to murder someone. She tries to get Koral to help her with this, but Koral is too sweet and weak to help Scarlet realise her dark goals. This is where Brazil Tio comes in handy, she is a cop whose androgyny attracts Scarlet Rose and disturbs Koral who views her as a threat. Scarlet Rose uses Koral and Brazil to get what she wants, sex, companionship and murder.

I love the darkness in Rose from the Bayou. The way the murder scenes were told from Scarlet Rose's perspective was new to me. Scarlet Rose is such a formidable character, I hated her and it is definitely hard to find her likeable but she's interesting. It was Scarlet Rose's character that kept me reading till the early morning, Koral is much weaker but no less developed tbh. I hated both characters honestly, but there's something about Scarlet Rose.

Rose from the Bayou is an excellent dark story, I'd love to write stories like this in the future.

Lots of food under the cut.

( Food food food )