Palapala Magazine

Palapala #12: Noise

 

Living in Bedlam: Invasive, Pervasive, and Perverting Noise In Urban Cameroon

Wirdzerem G Barfee

Can a people think reflect and contemplate profoundly in a culture of noise? If to think, reflect and contemplate is to create and (re)solve, and if to create and (re)solve is to construct and produce, and to produce and construct is to develop; then can a people really develop sustainably in an ambience of deafening noise? Can a society really thrive purposefully in bedlam?
 
These series of logical interrogation seek to address the state of noise in urban Cameroon, a disease that has attained alarming, if not thunderous proportions.

Omoseye Bolaji and the African Detective Genre

Raphael Mokoena

Omoseye Bolaji, the creator of the Tebogo Mystery series, is often asked  how  he churns out the twists and turns in the intriguing plots in the adventures of Tebogo Mokoena, the sleuth protagonist of his books.

But the Nigerian-born Omoseye shrugs off this question with a smile.

“I really don’t know!” he said. 

 “Or simplistically, let’s just say the inspiration for the books just come and go intermittently.”

A Tale of Double Estrangement: A Review of Benjamin Kwakye’s 'The Other Crucifix.'

Peter W. Vakunta

Ben Kwakye’s latest novel, The Other Crucifix, is a captivating tale of double estrangement. Born and raised in Ghana by an indigent but affectionate family, Jojo Badu finds himself obligated to undertake a journey he describes as “the road not taken”(1) in pursuit of Western education. The metaphor of a leap into the dark, as it were, is the thread that holds the multiple facets of this exhilarating narrative intact.

Indigenous Nudity, Viewer Discretion Advised: Desexualized Images of Black and Brown People

Nducu wa Ngugi

I was watching a documentary called “Living with the Kombai”, which aired on the Discovery Channel, an American television station, a few months ago.  While watching this film, I began to ponder how media (perpetuate and) construct ‘Otherness’.
 
The Kombai (c) Discovery Channel

In this documentary two white men leave their “civilized” world (their words not mine) and enter deep into the jungles of New Guinea to live with the Kombai. The idea behind the show was for these two men to immerse themselves fully into the Kombai’s way of life and “become” a part of them for a few weeks after which they will return to the “civilized” world. 

Françafrique, the Media and the Ivorian Crisis

An interview with Terrence B. Wakai - publisher and online editor of TFT Magazine , a multimedia magazine dedicated to news reporting and analysis about English speaking Cameroon and its various communities.

What is Françafrique?

Françafrique is a word initially coined by the former Ivorian dictator, Félix Houphouët-Boigny, in 1960 to describe and invoke a special kind of austere, sophisticated and mutually beneficial relationship between metropolitan France and her African periphery.

Three Poems by Hannah Edeki

Out of Zong

“The last ten victims sprang disdainfully from the grasp of their executioners, and leaped into the sea triumphantly embracing death.” 

—F.O.Shyllon

They leapt out of Zong like flying fish
Their pectoral fins
Seized the hands of death

 They serenaded the spume of the sea
And speckled its deep with a scarlet red

Like a throng of messianic angels
Their voices swelled like rippled waves—
A new spiritual conceived
Inside the gullet of the cerulean grave

 Notes

*Zong –a British Slave ship
*Quote taken from Shyllon, F. O. (1974). Black Slaves in Britain. London: Oxford University Press.

Three Poems by FB Omondi Otieno

The Vague six

  At 6 .p.m. he was sworn in as Mr. President
And Six weeks of madness engulfed the nation
Six thousand litres of Blood was shed in death
Six African elders flew in trying to stop this unfolding hell
Six provinces were burning with ethnic gall
Sixty days did they need to talk, to save a people?

Poems By Yemi Soneye

Surgery

Kindergartens stay still.
Pathogenic juices of dense pawpaw
Whacked on your heads
May have seeped into your fontanelles
Corrupting your angelic infancies,
You must stay still!

Let hell arise to carcass form No biscuits until scooped, the rupturing fluids.

(Poetry) The Killer Traffic

James Lisandro Jr.

Blaring horns go sonorous
Overriding the cries of mourning engines
We are frustrated at this snail-like pace
It’s trying my last input of patience
It’s killing the adrenaline of my sporty car!
I look around and we are upset on all four lanes

Just Published - Nest of Stones by Wanjohi wa Makokha

Wanjohi wa Makokha. Nest of Stones: Kenyan Narratives in Verse | 184 pages | 216 x 140 mm | 2010 | Langaa RPCIG, Cameroon | Paperback

Wanjohi wa Makokha's Nest of Stones is the second book of poems, since the publication of Sitawa Namwalie's Cut off my Tongue (Storymoja: 2009), devoted in principal to the moment of the 2007-2008 Kenyan Crisis. The crisis is locally known as the Post-Election Violence (PEV). The book collects over sixty pieces of his recent verse chosen on the basis of artistic merit and social relevance. The poems focus sharply on the tumultuous period between the General Elections of 2007 and August 4th Referendum of 2010. Some of the poems relate to events drawn out of earlier moments in Kenyan history but are invoked as contexts of the recent discord.