Palapala Magazine

Palapala Magazine #3: A Tribute to Hunger

A Tribute to Hunger: 4 Nigerian Cities Seen Through the Imagination of a Wandering Stomach

By Tolu Ogunlesi

[1]Orisa bi ofun ko si, ojojumo lo n gbebo lowo eni – Yoruba proverb
 
Not many people would know Wole Soyinka (Africa’s first – and Nigeria’s only – Nobel Laureate for Literature) for an essay, Salutation to the Gut, a paean to the culinary culture of the Yoruba people of Southwestern Nigeria. One reviewer called it “[a] tribute to hunger”; which I find a very striking description, especially considering the fact that I would have far more easily imagined a tribute to “food”, and not to its “absence.”

A tribute to hunger. Hunger, the unacknowledged god; the totalitarian regime of the lifeless (plate) over the restless (man).

Eyewitness Account: Fela Resurrected [On Stage]

By Mkuki Bgoya

It was supposed to be all about Fela.  It was all about Fela, his politics, poetry, rants, music, struggles, pain and legend.  The stage possesses the unmistakable potency of Fela’s shrine.
 
The story begins right before his departure from Nigeria for Medical school in London (where he studied music instead); his travels in the US and his eventual return to Nigeria; his political activism and countless clashes with the Nigerian Army, which eventually led to his mother’s murder by soldiers and how that affected him personally and musically. 

Chicken and Me

Kangsen Feka Wakai

It was during a conversation about diet with an acquaintance, a Houston native and self-professed Ifa priest, when the subject of chicken came up. He told me he’d been a vegetarian for over a year when he started having the dreams. Night after night he would see them  crowing, pecking and running.  He said the recurring dreams about chicken were causing him to lose his balance, new age parlance for emotional turbulence, and focus. That alone pestered him. So he did what any priest would do. He consulted the oracle. 

Fiction - Wages of Plunder (Part 1)

By Dipita Kwa

Edimo, the twenty-four-year-old president of Mukunda Vigilant Youth Group loved to dance after a heavy meal of roasted fresh sea fish accompanied by at least two cold bottles of castle beer in the company of a new girl. He couldn’t see himself staying in Mukunda this weekend while preparations for the Mt Cameroon Race of Hope were steaming out there in Buea. His only hindrance as usual was that he was broke. And whenever his pockets were dry of money, especially when a weekend like this one was around the corner and the strong memories of nightclub ambience in Tiko, Buea and Limbe were beckoning seductively at him, he must do something.

From My Parisian Diary (A Poem by Mbella Sonne Dipoko)

Thirty centimes is all the money I have left
But am full of hope without knowing why.
I laugh at the world and laugh at myself
Something of a child at thirty-five.
It has been a hard life since I ran out of cynicism
And stopped selling for a commission
Just any newspaper in the world
Deciding exclusively on pamphlets of the Left
By which I am now earning death by installment
On a starvation diet
And the rent is long overdue.
Surely this is not a way of earning a living
Peddling slogans of a better world
In the garrison of troops armed to defend these cruel days.
But the struggle must continue
And we must open new fronts even in our dreams.

Mbella Sonne Dipoko is the author of two novels A Few Nights and Days (Heinemann, 1966) and Because of Women (Heinemann, 1974), and a poetry collection, Black and White in Love (Heinemann 1972). He resides in Cameroon. 

Photo by Orock Eta

Presidential Election 3012

By Kangsen Feka Wakai

  Conservative presidential nominee Ian Gables recently gave a speech before the Council of Elders at the Ejagham Shrine in Downtown Washington D.C. According to the Gables campaign, the purpose of the meeting between their candidate and the powerful, pro-Africa lobby group was to reassure his African allies that a Gables administration will be committed to the unconditional support for the growing economic and military might of the ASU (African States United).

“A Gables presidency will continue in the tradition of previous administrations and stretch its hand beyond the dark shark infested Atlantic ocean that separate us.  Let me assure our tanned friends of the solar friendly tropics that if I am elected president they will continue to drink and eat from the banquet of our democratic generosity. 

Journey to a Farm on a Lake in Cameroon (A Poem by Viola Allo)

Heaven is a strange place,
I don't want to go there.
I do not think it is the place
Where my ancestors have gone.

When I die, I would like
My spirit, if worthy,
To wander silently
Back to the lighted City on the Lake.

A Belated Review of the Late Dilla’s Donuts

Damien Mickel

Before the completion of Donuts, the last album in his lifetime, James Yancey, otherwise know as J Dilla, had unquestionably become a legend amongst aficionados and chroniclers of hip-hop.  In fact, the construction of Dilla’s homage to the golden era of soul was underway as he engaged in a brutal battle with a rare blood disease that will claim him as a victim.   The completion of Donuts under such circumstances is a testament of his dedication to the craft especially in this age of diminishing sonic sensibility.

The Canvass of Memory

Vonetta Berry Danner was trained as a visual artist at the Art Institute of Chicago.  She was featured in FotoFest 2008 and has performed and exhibited her works around the country.  Vonetta says the transition from traditional canvass to the human canvass was a practical decision that resulted from motherhood.  In a medium often dominated by white males, she is amongst a handful of African –American body painters asserting themselves in that artistic cosmos.

Palapala magazine and Vonetta explore the human body as organic canvass for expression, the politics of her art and genetic memory. 

Epkere - A Poem by Joyce Ashutantang

Epkere

Three days have passed
Enough for the Christ to rise
Three full days.
I counted as I came to you
Right inside these ekperes
But three days are like one
Trinity for fufu
You are so fresh,
Echieh but fresh
And between my palms
I feel you soft yet firm
The soup is hot
Steaming right here
Three full days
All fufu days

Rites of Passage (For the Youth of Cameroon)

By KFW

Daybreak.
So we substitute imminent adversity
With fantasies of bread loafs and sardines
Sixty pushups in twenty-seven seconds
Inhale Buddha’s breadth
Through the rusty tunnels
Of Babel’s abandoned underground towers
Exhale the fumes of yesterday’s infernos
So we can soar above today’s slums
And glimpse into the vast void of tomorrow.

Interview with Martha Elive, founder of The Women’s House

Excerpt from The Weekly Correspondent (Culled from House of Falling Women by Rosemary Ekosso)

Weekly Correspondent: What exactly is this edifice?

Martha Elive: This is a place of solace and self-fulfillment for women.  It was created to provide women with more choices than they have so far.

Weekly Correspondent: So this is for the empowerment of women?

Martha Elive: I dislike catchwords. It seems…trite and somewhat hypocritical to reduce the struggle of fully half of the human race to a blithe, fashionable concept coined by a combination of briefcase NGOs, meddlesome and ineffectual do-gooders and so-called development partners. As I said, the aim is to provide women with more options concerning the direction their lives take.  I want them to be able to influence their future.  I want them to think and act like mistresses of their own fate.