Christian Mafigiri: Telling Ugandan stories through graphic novels

Christian Mafigiri is a Ugandan artist whose love for American comic books led him to pursue a career in art. He later trained as a journalist and he has combined his skills in journalism and art to tell stories through different forms of graphic story-telling.

Mafigiri has recently collaborated on a multimedia project with Scottish photo-journalist Marc Ellison that tells the stories of 6 former child soldiers who were abducted by the LRA and their struggles to integrate into society, while trying to deal with their own trauma.

Mafigiri has also produced graphic novels for sell which use the style of the comic books he loved as a child to tell stories that resonate with Ugandans.He hopes that one day his graphic novels and comics will give Ugandan readers the sort of entertainment he got from reading American comic books like Superman and Batman.

A chat with Bernard Sabiti, author of "Uglish: A Dictionary of Ugandan English.

English has become an international language to the extent that it now has many different varieties of which the most well known are the British and American varieties.

However, because English has been adopted as an official, or second, language in many countries, the language has developed as many flavours as there are communities that speak it.

In this regard Uganda is no exception in that a variety of English that is flavoured by the peculiarities of Uganda's cultures and languages has emerged over the past few decades.

Ugandan English, or Uglish as it has come to be known in some quarters, has hardly been studied and, as such, there is very little written about it.

It is this lack of literature on the subject of Ugandan English that motivated Bernard Sabiti to write a a book on the history and nature of this variety of English. The result of Sabiti's work is the little book "Uglish: A dictionary of Ugandan English".

This book attempts to give a bit of an academic treatment to Ugandan English while not taking itself too seriously. The result is a fun read for people interested in Ugandan English or Uglish.

I had a chat with Bernard Sabiti about his book, and Uglish in general, and this video is a summation of his thoughts on the subject of Ugandan English and the discoveries he made while writing his book.

Africa Reading Challenge 2012

I recently committed myself to taking part in the Africa Reading Challenge 2012, whose rules are pretty basic. Here they are as originally suggested by Kinna who started the whole challenge.

Challenge Period  January 1, 2012 to December 31, 2012

Region The entire African continent, including its island-states, which are often overlooked. Please refer to this Wikipedia “list of sovereign states and dependent territories in Africa”. Pre-colonial empires and regions are also included.

Reading Goal  5 books.  That’s it.  There will be no other levels.  Of course, participants are encouraged to read more than 5 books.  Eligible books include those which are written by African writers, or take place in Africa, or are concerned with Africans and with historical and contemporary African issues. Note that at least 3 books must be written by African writers.

But some guys thought that a year was too long a period and they decided to tweak the rules a bit by  suggesting that each person taking part should read one book a month from March to July. 

I decided to set the following rules for myself;

1. I'd read only books written after 2000
2. I'd choose 1 book from (or written by an author from) North, East, Central, South and West Africa
3. The books would be mostly about contemporary life and if possible in genres not generally associated with African fiction. 

Generally speaking, I knew I didn't want any of the stuffy overly literary stuff that reminded me of secondary school if I could help it or the kind of books that Binyavanga Wainaina seemed to have in mind when he wrote his satirical essay How to write about Africa. No books romanticising a pre-colonial Africa and not too much on the wars, corruption and poverty of the post-colonial period. 

With the above rules in mind to guide me, these are the books I have zeroed in on.

Open City by Teju Cole (2011) Nigeria

This is a novel narrated by an introspective psychiatrist of Nigerian descent living in New York city, who reflects on aspects of his life both in the US where he currently lives and Nigeria where he was raised. I read through. It felt deep. I decided to add.

 The Yacoubian Building by Ali Al Aswany (2002) Egypt 

I first heard about Al Aswany and his book on BBC's world book club a while ago and it was the only  book from North Africa that came to me immediately. It was the best-selling Arabic novel for two years. Considering, as the translator points out in his notes,

...the reader need not pay too much heed to the fact that the events described nominally take place before and during Iraq’s 1990 invasion of Kuwait: the novel reflects the Egypt of the present.

I figured it would be as good book as any to give me a glimpse into pre-Tahrir Square/Arab spring Egypt and a good read in the process.

Nairobi Heat by Mukoma Wa Ngugi (2009) Kenya

This one had me at "crime novel set in Kenya". After a look through the first pages (courtesy of an amazon sample) I learnt that the main character is an African-American cop called Ishmael (hmm..) who while investigating the murder of a young woman on a university campus in Madison ,Winsconsin, in the USA, unearthes leads about the main suspect, Joseph Hakizimana, a genocide hero who is now teaching at the university, that take him to Nairobi where he partners up with a Kenyan detective called David Odhiambo, who might be high off something illicit when we first encounter him. I mean what was there not to like. Nairobi Heat fits every single rule I had set for myself in this challenge-it is written by a Kenyan (American) post 2000 in a genre that is not popular among African authors (crime fiction).
Though most reviews are largely positive they all seem to hint at some giant leaps taken (or expected of the reader) and plot holes therein but I am guessing Ngugi Wa Thiongo's son makes up for that in other brilliant ways. I mean, his daddy is like the most acclaimed author in our corner of the world. The apple can't have fallen that far from the tree (hopefully).

Broken Glass by Alain Mabanckou (2005) Republic of Congo (the other one of Brazzaville)

I first learnt of Alain Mabanckou while reading a list of recommended reading for 2012 and everything that was written about him seemed to suggest that he was the kind of writer I needed to be familiar with  (eg. he seems to have an issue with fullstops and hardly ever uses them). So when I came across Broken Glass (Verre Cassé) I thought I'd give at a look through and I was immediately impressed because its a funny book and it is about the kind of people and place I was all too familiar with until recently-regular patrons in a popular, somewhat rundown, neighbourhood bar (called Credit Gone West). Apparently critics and readers in Francophonia were going gaga about it when it came out. Even the French cultural minister referred to the author as Mabancool . Such a rare convergence of liking is a major plus in the book's favour. Critics, culture ministers and the hoi polloi rarely agree on what's cool.

Zoo City by Lauren Beukes (2011) South Africa

This one I have reservations about. It makes it on the list basing purely on its genre-bending credentials. According to wikipedia;

Zoo City is set in an alternate version of the South African city of Johannesburg, in which people who have committed a crime are magically attached to an animal familiar – those who receive such punishment are said to be "animalled". The novel's chief protagonist, Zinzi December – who was "animalled" to a sloth after getting her brother killed – is a former journalist and recovering drug addict, and is attempting to repay the financial debt she owes her drug dealer by charging people for her special skill of finding lost objects, as well as making use of her writing abilities by drafting 419 fraud emails. The book's plot focuses on Zinzi's attempts to find the missing female member of a brother-and-sister pop duo for a music producer, in return for the money she needs to fully repay her dealer.

It doesn't get more unconventional than that and I can't help thinking of the book as a kind of cross between Tsotsi and The Golden Compass. I downloaded it yesterday but I haven't looked through it to see how the writing hits me. I am guessing the book must be worthwhile because it won something called the Arthur .C. Clarke award in 2011. I happen to know that during his lifetime Arthur .C. Clarke was the dog's bollocks  in science fiction writing. 

So that's my list for the African Reading Challenge for 2012. I haven't decided in what order I will read them  beyond deciding that Open City will be the first. I will post a review after I finish each book. I hope I have as much fun as I think I am going to have.

P.S. the links above lead to Amazon pages that will let you have a peek inside the books.

Interviewed on books I read

I was interviewed by the Daily Monitor for a the column The Books They Read a few weeks ago, which has been published today. When the writer approached me asking if she could interview me for the column I thought it would be an easy interview since I read a lot.

However, when the interviewer said that she was interested in only fiction I soon realised that I was going to have a harder time because I have read very little fiction in the last 6 years (as I had alluded to in a recent post). So Some authors I have enjoyed recently like Bill Bryson, David Landes, Richard Friedman, Christopher Hitchens, Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins, and others were not going to get a mention. The interview was made harder because I do not have any particular favourites (or rather I have many different ones).

That was just as well because it was probably going to be heavily edited anyway- as the final published interview proved.

I have pasted it below. Here is the link for the story in The Daily Monitor.

What do you like about books?
I like books first of all because they allow me to experience a different world and life through the words and experiences of the characters. Books are a kind of teleportation device that enable one travel to a place and time different from one’s own which in many ways contributes to broadening one’s outlook and perspective. Books even when they are not based on real events can be a wealth of knowledge on real life issues.

Which are your favourite books? 
I do not have any favourite book(s) but Great Expectations by Charles Dickens would feature prominently if I had to make a list. It’s the one book I have read the most. About three years ago I read The Good Earth by Pearl S Buck and though I found it bleak and depressing at times, its central character Wang Lung’s, struggle to obtain land, till it and prosper against some pretty tough odds was moving and not easily forgotten. I also like short stories like those in A Quiver full of Arrows, A Twist in the Tale and 12 Red Herrings, all by Jeffery Archer, or like those in The Veteran by Frederick Forsythe.

Who is your favourite character in books you’ve read?
Characters come and go and they are your favourites for a while until other characters come along and become your favourite. I tend to find that characters that are also narrators of their stories somehow linger on longer in my head because I feel they are telling me their story themselves. For this reason, Pip from Great Expectations is among my favourites. My current favourite is Calliope “Cal” Stephanides from Middlesex by Jeffery Eugenides because I finished it recently.

Which books didn’t you enjoy reading? Why?
There are many books I have started and not completed (or read and not liked) in all genres but self-help books seem to feature heavily in this category. I have come to realise that many (not all) self-help books in our bookstores, especially those on growing rich or gaining financial independence, are only marginally useful to people like me because they are written with a western (mostly American audience in mind). For example, though the general advice on being successful in business maybe the same everywhere, some factors like rampant corruption, systems and institutions that are non-existent or don’t work as they should and the all-pervasive technical “know-who” that characterises Ugandan society renders some of the advice in these books inapplicable.

Which Ugandan books have you read? 
I am a bit ashamed to say this but I haven’t read that many Ugandan books and even the few I have read were those that were around the house when I was growing up almost all of them written in the 60s and 70s. These were books like Dare to die, The Prodigal Chairman and the Trials and Tribulations in Sandu’s Home, all by Geoffrey Kalimugongo, or the famous poems, Song of Lawino, and Two Songs by Oko p’Bitek and quite a few others from that era like Return to the Shadows by Robert Serumaga.
However, I have recently come across a group of people who have been pointing me to Ugandan authors I had hitherto not known so I plan to be reading more Ugandan books.

Which book(s) are you reading?
Right now I am reading a pair of funny novels; one is by Mohammed Hanif called A Case of Exploding Mangoes and the other is White Teeth by Zadie Smith
.

Read a lot? Of course. You sure?.

A recent post on a Facebook page asking members to name their favourite book of the year and why they liked it got me thinking back on the books I have read in 2011. Initially I was wondering how I would chose from so many but it soon dawned on me that I had not read that many books this year and the choice of best book was not that hard. The fact is, though I have started to read many books this year I have only finished an embarrassing total of 3.

The result of my own analysis somewhat surprised me because I am always reading something-just necessarily a book. I read at least 15  feature articles a day and as a user of Kampala’s public transport I always have something at hand to peruse through to take my mind off the sounds around me and the lengthy periods of no motion due to the traffic jams. Because of this I had initially assumed I must have read quite a number of books.

I sat down with a pen and notepad and listed every book I had attempted to read during the year and in the end  even the list including the unfinished books was not impressive. Here they are in no particular order (there are many others but I only list those of which I read more than 4 chapters)

God is not great-How Religion Poisons Everything- Christopher Hitchens (he passed away 16/12/2011)
A Short History of Nearly Everything- Bill Bryson
A Case of Exploding Mangoes- Mohammed Hanif
White Teeth- Zadie Smith
The Believing Brain-Michael Shermer
Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy- John Le Carré
Middlesex- Jeffery Eugenides

Of these I only got to finish Middlesex, God is not great and Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy. Technically speaking I didn't read all of God is not great because when I was a few chapters into it I came across the audio book and that's how I got to finish it. The rest are in various states of “unfinishedness” from almost finished for A Case of Exploding Mangoes to just got started for White Teeth with many others being somewhere in-between.


After reflecting on my list I asked myself why I am always reading many books at a time and why I can't seem to finish any (at least not immediately). The answer I realised is, in part, due to how I decide what books  I should read. I sometimes get interested in a book because its been reviewed on a programme or some internet forum (and in my case The Strand on the BBC is a major culprit). Take Tinker  Tailor Soldier Spy, for example . I decided to download a copy of it after listening to an episode of The Strand on a new film version of the John Le Carré classic cold-war spy thriller starring Gary Oldman as George Smiley. I had grown up around Le Carré books but I had never read any and I also learnt from The Strand that George Smiley was as different from James Bond as a spy could possibly be, which got me thinking that the movie must be an intelligent (less brawn, more brains) kind of spy movie. I wanted to watch the movie but I knew it would be a while before I had any access to it so I decided to acquaint myself with the characters so that I could play a better game of compare-the-movie-to-the-book when I did eventually get to watch it.

However, while still reading Le Carré , I was listening to The Strand (again) and they had on a Pakistani author called Mohammed Hanif talking about his second novel (something about a nurse in a Karachi mental hospital). During the interview they kept referring to his first book and talking about what a surprise hit it was, how it was darkly satirical and not afraid to tackle subjects considered taboo by Pakistani writers etc. Immediately, the words dark, satirical and taboo had me hooked because I had this stereotypical idea of what novelists in a predominantly Muslim country were allowed to write about and I sensed Hanif didn't quite fit into that box. Smiley was forgotten for a while and I turned my attention to the shenanigans of Ali Shigri Pakistan Air Force pilot and Silent Drill Commander of Fury Squadron. Shigri was soon overthrown by Bill Bryson’s A Short History of Nearly Everything (whose review I had read on some internet forum). Bryson’s book was in turn overthrown (albeit very briefly) by Michael Shermer’s  The Believing Brain before both were permanently dethroned by Middlesex, which I finished like three days ago after going back to finish Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy and almost finish with the exploding mangoes. Hitchens’s book survived interruptions because I listened to it while I was on the road and I didn’t have much else to keep me occupied.

I also realised that because I read mostly e-books and I am too broke to get myself a Kindle or a Samsung Galaxy tab (definitely cannot afford an iPad) I read mostly off my laptop, which unfortunately also has the internet and all those other websites and articles all too eager to distract me the minute I log on. Oh yes It also has work stuff that needs doing. I cannot carry the laptop with me everywhere. I did download a small ebook reader for my not-very-smart phone on which I read most of Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy while trying to pretend that the queue at the bank is not that long or that if I concentrated hard enough the advertisements for the latest Kiggunda Kyo Mwaka blaring out the taxis speakers would disappear.

I have come to accept something I had known before but forgotten, my brain probably works best with small, different, portions to read at any given time. I say I had realised this earlier because for the last 6 or so years I have hardly read any fiction but I have read many non-fiction books. With non-fiction I tend to take my time and I don’t sweat it if I read a chapter a month. With fiction on the other hand I feel I need to take in everything at once lest I forget some important bits but my wandering brain just wont let me. The upside is that I get to read a little something on nearly everything.

Hmmm… I am sure some shrink has an ADD-like new agey name for my (dare I call it one?) condition.

Oh and my favourite was Middlesex