Lagos - Bamako Trip

Spot of bother - our misadventures in Mali

2009-11-17T13:21:00.000-08:00

Monday 16th 2009

I tell you, if I were superstitious, I’d say today is not our lucky day.

We are all ready to head home. It has been a wonderful yet exhausting two weeks. Productive, energising, relevant are just a few understatements that come to mind, now to feed them into the focus.

It is early on Monday morning and as our two taxis turn off the road into the motor park, several touts mill around us aggressively. It is like stepping into a zone. They commandeer your car, leaning into the open windows. They attach themselves forcibly to you, they won’t let go, no matter what you say. The energy changes around us and from that moment, we have hard faces with cold eyes and dry lips bellowing rudeness at us in foreign languages and harsh voices.

Once they have captured us and our luggage, and brought us into their office, we are little more than prisoners of war and the hostility is unmistakeable. There is juju hanging over the doorway, and the ambience is shoddy and sinister. Lucy is told that as a woman, she has to get off the seat by the desk. Even though she graciously obliges, after that, whenever she gets on the phone the meanie turns the volume on his tinny radio right up. He sits there on his male throne, dozing for most of the morning. The room is full of dust and rubbish, with wires hanging out of the wall and random objects hanging on wall fixtures. There are maps stuck to the wall and price lists for the various destinations stencilled on the walls. There is also a lot of random graffiti, names and phone numbers scribbled on the dirty paint.

It is when he tells her she can not stand in the doorway that I give him a piece of my mind and the sharp side of my tongue. Afterall, we had paid on Saturday night for a Monday morning bus and having today at first been told it was leaving at 4pm, sometime later we have been told it would definitely leave before 9pm. A shouting match ensues during which we express our indignance loudly and vocally and in Franglais. The air is heavy, you could cut the tension with a knife. We are told we are not in our country and this is how it’s done in Mali. Threats are made to break our cameras and to call the police. We are not impressed. We too would like to speak to the police and they soon abandon the idea.

They now try to make us relocate to what Uche has dubbed the holding cell, a room behind the office where other prospective passengers wait uncomfortably and uncomplainingly. We stand our ground, we will only move ourselves and our luggage once a bus is produced. Two young Igbo men on their way from Senegal join our chorus for justice. They had been told the morning before that they would leave at 4pm the afternoon before and had had to sleep at the motor park the night before as they waited for a bus to finally leave.

I am all for quitting while we are ahead. If these people are treating us like this now, how much more when they have us at their mercy for the entire duration of a journey that at best, will last for three days, but on many an occasion, has been known to last longer? Emeka and the others struggle to keep the group together. I call Simone, our landlady at the Bed & Breakfast to book the room I have just checked out of. I am heading back to her beautiful oasis. But Team IB09 stop me. The bus will soon leave, they reckon. Charles has a drink of ataya, a traditional mixture of green tea and peppermint poured into shot glasses from a height. Then the men go off to look for food and luckily for them, come back with greens because I am really no longer in an agreeable mood and chlorophyll never fails to lift one’s mood. Lucy and I have the orange hawker come into the cramped space with her bowls and peel us a dozen oranges.

Eventually, we are called to the bus and as we pile in, the tension rises as if we are prospecting for plots of land, not seats on a coach. We get out to complain yet again. Surely having paid on Saturday, and being a group, we should have first dips on seats. We are all herded out again, and given little benches to place in the limited shade we now also have to fight for. With our benches, we pursue the shadows as they duck away from us during our long wait. It feels like the Sweeper is sweeping us away along with the litter when she sweeps the dust and garbage right in our direction before Crazy Rude Man comes again and starts acting up and flinging his arms around to make us flinch just to exert his power over us by making us move the bench to an impossible spot.

Finally we are told that the manifest will now be called and so everybody rushes to the front door of the bus because the back door is locked. Men are pushing women aside shamelessly until the man with the manifesto asks the women to the front. He then proceeds one by one, to remove bags and clothing and foodstuffs that had been left to colonize the seats. After an eternity of calling out every item and reuniting it with its owner, the bus magically fills with lots of thuggish-looking types and there is lots of shouting in foreign languages again. We stand jostled up against each other holding all out luggage in our hands, supposedly ready to beat everyone else to all the best seats once they say we can board.

We stand there in the heat, body to body, for near on an hour, then at last we board the bus which feels like a sauna inside, and we sit there for going on another hour until we finally leave. They have balanced 15cm-wide planks of wood between the aisle seats and have seated another two passengers on each of them. We are like sardines in a tin, and it occurs to me that this was a mild insight into the way Transatlantic slaves must have felt. We are suffering just a fraction of the indignity, discomfort and anguish, but even this is enough to fill us with despair.

The feeling of temporary elation when we finally drive off is short-lived. At the next stop, just minutes away, we watch with weary eyes and wonder just how many dozens of men it takes to fuel a coach. So much milling around and confusion, and we spot somebody lighting a cigarette, right over the jerry-cans being filled. We begin to knock frantically on the windows but the young man looks at us nonchalantly with disdain and passes it on to another, even closer to the pump. Our knocking and shouting from inside our trap escalates before the cigarette is removed from the scene. The fuelling is done and finally we move again.

Relief once again washes over our exhausted bodies and fatigued spirits. Once again, it is short-lived. We have moved no more than twenty metres and are now parked in front of the public toilets, as is manifest in the odours that waft into the bus. Another near hour on that spot, and even those whose need for the toilet might have been induced by the stench, are not getting off the bus to use the ‘facilities’.

We do move in the end and the drive through Bamako and onto a dual carriageway on the outskirts would seem to indicate that we really had this time finally set off on our journey. We check our watches, it is two minutes to nine. The guy had been right. The bus had left before nine, just like he’d said. When the bus suddenly pulls over yet again, we are wondering if it is to fasten luggage properly, or check a wheel or something that might have been noticed in the nick of time before we have left town. We are but mere spectators as the crew – the driver, the guy in the t-shirt with the capsule on it, and all the rest of these guys – get off to buy drugs, which they begin to smoke even as we watch from inside our prison, as we roast in the overcrowded bus. Emeka has had enough and gets out to enquire what the reason is for this zillionth stop.

Out of nowhere, a scuffle ensues and before you can say Babangida, a full fledged fight has broken out, in which the junkies are baying for Emeka’s blood. There is total confusion. Emeka is holding his own, but none of us is about to allow anybody harm one of our team mates and we are all right in there – yes, in the very middle of the fight – trying to deter the mob of drugged-up motor park gangsters from injuring Emeka. It has now become a Nigeria-Mali thing and the thugs are threatening that somebody will die today and that there is no way they are taking us on this journey. Music to my ears. Emeka’s T-shirt and vest have been shredded, ripped off his body during the fight but our luggage is tied to the roof of the bus, so he will have to continue to show off his gorgeous black torso.

We all get back in the bus and after a while realise that it is actually headed back for the motorpark, where it parks outside the ticket office and a renewed fight breaks out. Not only are we outnumbered and trapped in the bus, but this is the motorpark and these guys are all on drugs. One of them gets onto the bus brandishing a knife and baying for the Rasta’s (Emeka’s) blood. There are scuffles, hoarse shouting matches, much threatening and a lot of gesticulation, before the owner of the bus, who had ordered it back to the motorpark because his accounts were not balanced (though we did not know this at the time) begins peace-making, because we are asking for our money back and there are seven of us. Everyone else Team IB09 allows him to placate them, but I have decided I’m disembarking. I ask Lucy to look after my suitcase , which is tied to the roof of the bus, and I call a taxi, gather my hand luggage and leave for the Bed and Breakfast. No toothbrush, no fresh clothes, but I couldn’t care less.

An hour after I arrive back at the bed and breakfast, Lucy calls to say she is coming to join me. The bus had been unloaded and a ‘new’ bus had been brought to do the journey instead. Lucy and Uche had taken one look at the old American school bus and decided that they too had had enough. Modu, our landlord, a Senegalese Sufi goes to pick them up.They soon arrive and we sit around in the beautiful grounds of the Bed & Breakfast and recount our experiences, joined by our fellow guests, Andrea and Sophie from Berlin, and none other than Akinbode Akinbiyi. The rest of the guys had decided to leave by whatever means of transport was available. Dan, a lovely caring young member of our team had lost his mother just before we had left for Bamako. He had spent the days before our departure from Nigeria arranging her funeral, and was rushing back to make it. He could not afford to stay on. And the others went with him out of solidarity.

But after many more trials and tribulations, even Dan and his group trooped into the Bed & Breakfast in the small hours. Uche, Lucy and I were already asleep, but I got up to welcome them, just as Modu, our landlord brought out a huge tray of spaghetti Bolognese and four forks. I cannot describe to you the looks on their faces or the exclamations of sheer joy from my four battle-weary teammates. Surely we must have exhausted our lifetime supply of bad luck today.

As I said before, if I were superstitious, I’d think that today has not been a lucky day. But because I’m not superstitious, I am certain it was a really lucky day. There’s nothing like real-life action to make you feel alive. Nothing like seeing the grass on the other side to remind just how lush and green-white-green your own grass actually is. Today I am extra-specially proudly Nigerian. Tomorrow is another day.

Pure Luck by Unoma Giese

2009-11-13T15:05:00.000-08:00

Many aspects of western culture have crept in to fuse with our own many African cultures, and today on Friday the 13th, I ask myself if as many people here on the continent are preoccupied with the concept of luck on this day as are in America, Australia and Europe. Incidentally, Friday the 13th has always been lucky for me.

What exactly is luck? A rationalist perspective on luck maintains that luck is probability taken personally. Fortune favours the prepared, another saying goes. But there are times when, no matter how hard one tries to prepare, it is as if there is a conspiracy of forces to hold one back. Is this what is conceived to be bad luck? The troubles we had last week with Maria our van were uncanny at the time. One minute she would be working perfectly, the next she would just not work. Every single time that happened, it happened when Maria had got us to a point where we had to be. Every single time. Was that good luck , or was that bad luck, or was it both? And if you had both good luck and bad luck, then did that mean they cancelled each other out and you had no luck at all?

At the time it was happening to us, we saw it as bad luck because we felt we had done the necessary prep and because we needed to get to Bamako by a particular time. But in hindsight – which everyone knows is always 20-20 vision – we realised that the journey would have been arduous if not impossible with Maria. Moreover, the control we lost with the grounding of our vehicle meant that we were then set to truly encounter and explore hidden borders of the type we had no way of even anticipating. That was what we had wanted, right? Be careful what you wish for…

Luck is a thing that many Nigerian Christians do not believe in. Some even claim the word luck comes from the name of Lucifer and such people will revoke it if you wish them luck, vehemently claiming a blessing in its place. I was actually pleasantly surprised to find a young lady at the Music Society of Nigeria wearing a horse-shoe, who upon being asked, said it brought her luck.

I don’t believe in luck myself. Perhaps this is because I do not believe in coincidence. But I believe in Providence, or God, as some of us call it. So I wake up this morning after very little sleep and don the bikini and go for a quick swim with Lucy before breakfast, with the charming Andrew and Guy for company as they have breakfast by the pool. And I think to myself how lucky we are! Thank you Lord.

Then we check out of the hotel and get a taste of Mali traffic – perfect for making images, this is fortuitous. We’re off to visit Malick Sidibe at his atelier. There we get ushered in to have our portrait taken by the master himself. Again we're feeling very fortunate, we hadn't reckoned with this! There’s a lot of arranging of clothes and legs and arms and chins and we freeze for the photo. Trust me to blink just as he clicks.

Anyway after that we check into the most charming Bed and Breakfast (with bread for breakfast) in the Hippodrome area of Bamako. By now we're feeling like we’ve hit the jackpot. Who says Friday the 13th is unlucky?

So as I catalogue all the good stuff life has given me – my children, this trip with nine huge personalities and great individuals, and so many countless things, big and small, mundane and profound - I find myself doing exactly what Uche Okpa Iroha did when presented with the Grand Prix – I find myself thanking God before all else, for everything that is good, everything that is blessed, everything that is lucky in our lives.

Writing the Journey Bobo Dioulasso to Bamako

2009-11-13T04:52:00.000-08:00

direction Bamako, photo by Unoma Giese

Monday 9th November 2009

Monday morning; and we are all up, dressed and ready to roll by 5:30am. We leave and head for the bus terminal in Bobo-Dioulasso. Formalities proceed as in interstate travel with luxury buses back home. Our luggage is tagged and stowed away. We commence our journey at 9.00am. All goes well until we begin to receive all manner of visitors as “attachment” passengers. We allow none in our part of the aisle as our laptops are stowed there and we want no damage to them.

The sun is an ever constant force, in this part of the continent. The sky is free of clouds and the sun bursts through in radiant glory. The sun’s energy zaps our energy. We sleep. We wake. We alight for border checks. We board the bus again. We pick up more passengers on the route including a ram. We can’t wait to arrive Bamako.

Expectations rise, dip, rise, dip… Bamako Bamako, where art thou Bamako? Almost twelve hours tick by and then, we arrive the outskirts of Bamako. Brightly shinning orange street lights announce the city. Tired, and tense, Bamako elicits different things to different people. For Chicken Feathers, “It is almost an anticlimax, having paid so high a price in time to reach it.” She is however willing to explore the surprises that the 2009 Biennale Africaine de la Photographie will unfurl.

Bamako looks like old, old Lagos trapped in a time warp. The buildings look as tired as we are. Immediately, one notices the flashing of a green neon crosses as one drive into town. It is Bamako’s way of designating its pharmaceutical stores. The flashing green neon breaks the monotony of the night.

photo by Lucy Azubuike

We have missed the opening ceremonies of the Biennale. But we are in time for the evening get together. We dash into our hotel for a quick check in and rush off to the Musee National -the National Museum – venue of the PUMA Creative sponsored get-together. Photographers of all hues across Africa are munching, drinking, dancing, chatting, hugging, and reminiscing.

Ah ha! Ah ha! We see a number of our compatriots - Bisi Silva – Art Curator and Director of the Centre for Contemporary Art, Lagos, George Osodi , Bode Akinbiyi, Andrew Esiobo, Abraham Oghobase- photographers, Mr. Ozolua of the Nation Newspapers. There’s also Antwyn Bryd, our adopted brother and Fulbright Scholar currently on a stint with the CCA.

From other places, there’s Sita Valloni of Congo- Brazza(ville), Pieter Hugo, Billy Bijoka of Cameroon who has flown in from France, Claude Agnel of the Foundation Jean Paul Blachere, Kenneth Montague of Wedge Curatorial Projects, the lovely Lucy Taiya of Cultures Finance, Simeon Ndjame from Cameroon, And so many other great people.

We get compliments about our blog- a surprise because we didn’t know so many people were following

our journey. We feel honoured and encouraged.

The party goes on and winds down about midnight. Later, we drift off to the BlaBla restaurant. The place is pulsating with the sound of photographers- among them George Osodi who insists on buying us food and drinks. We accept. George regales us with exciting tales about his evolution as a farmer, banker, and now a photographer. He flips through the store house of memory and exclaims,“I will do photography for life!” He is quick to add that he still retains a soft spot for farming. Billy Bijouka comes around to crack a joke or two; other merry friends drop by and off again. It has been a pleasant, though tiring day. We haven’t all slept enough and some of us begin to nod in agreement with sleep as though drugged. It’s time to leave BlaBla for BlaSleep… Zzzzzzzzz…

Surprise SurPrize!

2009-11-11T16:02:00.000-08:00

Uche Okpa-Iroha, a Nigerian photographer and one of the 10 photographers of the Invisible Borders 2009 has won the Seydou Keita Award at the Bamako Photography biennale, in addition to a recent award from the Fondation Blachire! Thumbs up! This is only the beginning!

It’s midweek and we’ve not stopped since we got here. Partying, meeting and mingling, as well as catching up on a massive backlog of work. No end of hustle and bustle. We are all still sleep-deprived but all the strain is gone. We have bonded over drinks, over lots of work, over breakfast, lunch, dinner and over midnight snacks. We have bonded in each others rooms, in taxis whose drivers knew the way to our destination little more than we did, in auditoriums, and sometimes in private with our own room mates.

The constant grind of schedule and agenda has kept us in motion, and today things work up to a crescendo as we all prepare for tomorrow’s projection. Nobody leaves their hotel room. We are up early, begin work at the breakfast table, and work through, some of us without even having a shower. The mood is elevated; we have been able to shake off the tension that had built up on the road. We are looking forward now, gearing up to rise to the challenge of gratifying the interest in our trip that has built up following our arrival in Bamako. We have a 4pm meet at the Musee National to carry out our final edit for the audio-visual presentation on our road trip. Lucy and Chriss remain behind at the hotel, facing the prospect of doing an all-nighter tonight as they are also editing video and sound respectively.

The meet falls through as different people are doing different things in different places, we’ll just have to do it later. Meanwhile all the people gathered at the museum have begun to pack up to attend the award ceremony, and we leave Nike writing the chronicles in the meeting room. I am able to wangle a seat sitting among the dignitaries and ministers, and I settle down to strain my grey matter through a ceremony that is held mostly in French. Much clapping and snapping and we finally come to the grand prize.

Don’t ask me why, but it seems we were completely unprepared for what came next. Not one of the ten Invisible Borders photographers had a camera on them. Thank heavens for Emeka’s iPhone or we would not have had a photo to call our own of Uche Okpa Iroha receiving the Grand Prix Seydou Keita. Our very own Uche! With the Under Bridge Life images he’d made at Emeka’s Paris-Lagos 2008 Project under Third Mainland Bridge at Oko-Baba. From Lagos with Love.

We are taking the prize home! The most visible of the invisible borders – namely the huge body of work of all the participants who exhibited alongside Uche – has been shattered.

Sorry guys, I have to go now, we’re going to paint Bamako red….!

by Unoma Giese.

Writing The Journey : From Bamboi to Burkina by Nike Ojeikere

2009-11-11T03:53:00.000-08:00

Bamboi our first stop on the morning of Sunday, photo by Uche James Iroha

entry into Burkina Fasso, photo by Amaize Ojeikere

Sunday, 8^th November (Morning)

Sunday; and the sun in Bombai, breaks over our skyline and our heads in a brilliant shine. Bombai is little lay-by town in Ghana’s North. We revved ourselves up with body stretches, leg jigging and breakfast from an open-air roadside “restaurant”. The coffee is manned by a cheerful owner. Some of us are going broke already and cannot eat breakfast or buy water having run out of carry-on cash. We had submitted some of our travel money to corrupt customs officials earlier on in the journey to gain legal access across some Frenchified borders, so, rather than drink hot coffee; they have grudgingly elected to drink in the morning sunshine. Tempers are slithering quietly like vipers behind invisible borders…

photo by Amaize Ojeikere

We study our map.We are f-a-r from Burkina yet! We are taking the less known route which takes us uphill and upcountry from Bombai through Maluwe, to Signekura. Signekura calls to mind the beautiful Obudu Hills in Cross Rivers State Nigeria, with its low-lying, moisture-laden rolls of clouds grazing the green grassy hills. All through this trip, we see differences in language and attitudes of peoples, but we see much more similarities in flora and fauna between our country and the ones we pass through… they all could well have been one single country without bothering borders.

"The Road is still far!" photo by Uche James-Iroha

From Singekura , it’s Sakpa, Seribe, then Bole and the charcoal territory of Gbiegdaa with its piles of charcoal-laden sacks awaiting the excitement of fire. Soon, we enter the Upper West Region: Gbogdaa, Sawla, Nakwabi and Kpangiri flash past our window and after a long while we reach the two- lettered city: Wa.

Wa is the Upper West region’s most important city. Solid structures, a university, and a line up of banks with functional ATM machines are a welcome sight after hours of bush travel. We refinance our dry pockets and fuel the Ford to continue.

We drive headlong till we reach Jirapa. Fried yams under a Jirapa tree in front of the Inland Revenue Service constitute a warm welcome for our hungry stomachs. We alight. I wander around and notice something like Garri in a shop. I move nearer. It is Garri! In the Northernmost part of Ghana. And it is called “Garri” here too! I buy some - just for the fun of it. The shop owner asks where I’m from. “Nigeria”, I say with pride. “Nigeria!, she exclaims; “He is from Nigeria”. She is pointing to her neighbour, a young man in yellow t-shirt. I introduce myself and ask his name. He is Chibuike from Enugu State; he followed his brother here to sell auto parts. His brother is Amaechina, Meche for short.

Meche is glad to see his us, brethren from Nigeria, in this literal end of the world. He receives us very warmly and treats us to ice soft cold soft drinks. We chill out, under the big shady tree in front of the Volta River Authority Revenue office, opposite the American Consulate - a wooden shop painted in American colours, in end-of-the-world, Jirapa.

Then, another sight for sore eyes: a young American? lady rides very leisurely past on a bike, and then, two others pop out of God-knows-where, on their bikes as well. As we ponder their mission in this back of beyond, Cap 67 expresses the suspicion that they could well be on espionage duty-whilst posing as AID workers!

photo by Amaize Ojeikere

At Jirapa, the road as we’ve known it ends and a dusty laterite road takes over.We run this quiet, almost desolate course for about 3 hours until we reach the Ghana-Ouagadougou border town of Hamile. Hamile@ Ghana border treats us to traditional warm Ghanaian hospitality while the Burkina end treats us to classical Frenchified show-me the-money “hospitality” .After the traditional time-wasting, but no-cash-dropping exercise, we remind them of the ECOWAS treaty and how Frenchified excesses, were standing against its laudable intentions. Almost grudgingly, we are permitted to enter Burkina. Donkeys ferry our luggage to the Bus station where we sit under the hot blue African skies and take pictures whilst awaiting the bus which we had been told “is caming” for over 2 hours…

Sunday 8th November (Night)

When the sun has drained us to our very marrows, and we have drank lots of water, and taken tons of pictures under the techni-colour sunlit spectacularity of this little known town, billowing dust announces the arrival of the “caming” bus. It’s a radical departure from the Blue Ford that brought us here. It is a well -battered, formerly white Urvan bus, decorated with rust at several points; its guard laden with dusty hefty luggage of all sizes and colours. No doubt, this bus has crossed several borders.

The nondescript building that serves as the bus station comes alive. Its only claim to bus-stationhood is a lovely painting of what looks like a “Bolekaja” bus on the wall. A broken wooden window, off one of its hinges dangles besides the painting. This is fine art- we click cameras.

Soon we huddle into our bus. And we are on our way through the untarred stretch. Despite closed doors and windows, dust finds its way into the bus, so we stuff our noses with cotton wool. It’s a funny sight and we cannot help but laugh it off. When we alight to conduct departure formalities just 250metres later, we are all coated in dusty tee-shirts, lashes, beards, hair and all.

We cross to Hamile@Burkina.The officer- in-charge; a good-natured Burkinabe turns out to be a former classmate and friend to Ali Kabre -friend of Director of Espionage and Curly Curly! It’s a small world after all, literally.

We take pictures, and move on. Our destination is Bobo-Dioulasso, Burkina’s second major town after Ouagadougou. Darkness falls at 6.PM. We shoot through the blackhole of the road in a never-ending journey to Bobo. Most of us are at our tethers end, wondering when this journey will end.

The journey end s about 5 hours later. We have been travelling for 48 hours plus since we left Accra. We are fagged out, not to mention famished, or filthy, or broke. We stop by an ATM to get the much needed CFA and pray hard that it works; otherwise, no Bamako tomorrow. Bobo may be Burkina’s 2 IC town, but from the little we have seen of Bobo this tired night, it is a far cry from say, Kaduna or even Abeokuta. Street lights work at full blast but the houses bear none of the sophistication of a 2^nd in command town, as we would expect. But, the ATM works, mercifully, with ease. No network failure, no story. We are grateful!

Our host at Bobo-Dioulasso is the kind photographer, Paul Kabre- and his lovely wife. He is a good friend of Dreadlocked Kangool. The couple has rooms prepared and we eventually settle in about 2.00AM, after a late-night dinner or-is it early morning breakfast? We task them no doubt, but they remain warm and welcoming with smiles for everyone. We have crossed so many borders both internal and external; it is now time to take a well deserved rest. ZZzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz…

Writing The Journey: Accra Chronicles 2 by Nike Ojeikere

2009-11-11T03:13:00.000-08:00

Saturday 7th November

It’s a bright new day, and our third of trying to leave Accra. Dreadlocked Driver (poor chap) is off yet again to check on The Maria. We pray for Godspeed. At 3PM-ish, Maria is set free from the manacles of the mechanics with firm assurances that she’s good to go. We are happy! We take Maria home only for her to pass out at our gate. A mild sense of disappointment drips upon us. It’s looking like the public transport is the solution. It’s a clean and cheap means of crisscrossing Ghana and if you like, Burkina Faso.We decide to continue via public transport. Win. Lead. Succeed and Dreadlocked Kangool go in search of public inter-state transport.

While we wait, I engage De’de, Dreadlocked Driver’s uncle, and our pleasant host in a chat. (De’de is the Igbo word for “uncle.”) He has just packed bag, baggage, business equipments and his family barely two months ago and crossed borders to Ghana, to take up residence in Accra. I am intrigued by this bold move by a quite comfortable Nigerian family and wonder what motivated the migration. It is the same reasons as from when time began - the need for better security, a nurturing environment for his family and a breakaway from needless tension, violence, decadence and insurgency that is taking Port Harcourt hostage.“I asked myself: Is there anything in particular that I kept in Port Harcourt that was hindering me from moving away to a saner society?; yes, I do great business there and even now, I have some orders for furniture supply pending in PH; but when I arrived PH as a younger man, I didn’t have the business. It had come later; so, I reasoned that even that business wasn’t good enough a reason to stop me from leaving for a saner society” De’de said. His new home is certainly saner - he doesn’t need to lock up his gate all day long for fear of trespassers, even.

Cap Nike, Director of Espionage and Dreadlocked Driver rediscover the joys of football; Blackbraids takes a rest, while Curly Curly takes a walk .I “gist” with 8 year-old Ifeanyi, Uncle Dede’s daughter. Later we bounce her ball around. She asks permission to take her first ever snapshot of anyone or anything. I oblige and give her a chance. She makes photos of her Dad, Mum and house-help with excitement. It was a joy to have helped her cross that border.

photo by Adenike Ojeikere

At 4.00 PM our bus-hunting party drives in seated in a sleek blue, air-conditioned Ford F350 van with Joseph - the good driver, and Ajulu, a good friend of the group, in tow. Ajulu, himself a Ghana émigré, had phoned Nigeria and was told that we are in Ghana; so he sought us out. We move our stuff into the Ford and continue our abridged journey. We drive through the evening into night. The Accra -Kumasi road is very rough and tumbly at the Accra end where it is being curreently dualised. Where the dualisation ends, the road tapers into single lanes. Smooth and sturdy as an airport tarmac, and well-marked too, for road security, it makes night travel a pleasure, not a pain. It is single-lane road, but doesn’t give the heart-plucking fear that one feels night-driving through similar roads elsewhere. It’s inevitable: the constant comparison of Ghana with other countries, which haven’t been able to rise to their expected stature…

We are 3 days behind schedule so we elect to continue on the journey rather than sleep over in the Ashantihene’s territory, lost time. After a short rest at Unity Fuel Station, we and our Ford feel its way through the uncertainty of the night…

Friday 6th Nov 2009

Our raven black van - The Maria- some call it the Black Maria tongue in cheek, continues to be ill. Martin and his Mechanic Mafiosi cannot decipher its ailment – the kick didn’t kick, so they said its problem was “airflow meter!” but even after fixing that, No show.

We stay indoors all day, surf; do some “environmental scan” fish out new haunts, discover a “washie” spot, eat the rice n’ beans concoction (glory, glory!) laced with heavy fried fish ‘ponmo’ (tender cooked cow hide), fried plantains and hot, hot peppers.

It’s the day of the dreadlocks- Dreadlocked Driver and Dreadlocked Kangool conduct oversight duties over the mechanics while we wait hopefully, then, somewhat hopelessly when all our calls to them and the length of time they spend indicate that Kumasi won’t be sighted today- yet again!

We wait and wait with the overhanging apprehension, the return of The Maria. We become quieter. Some begin to brood, receding into themselves. Too worried to write, we become inert. We lounge. We loiter. We sleep off…. Later. We sense the arrival of the oversighters through the haze of sleep about midnight. No crossing into Kumasi tonight, most assuredly.

Time - The Ultimate Invisible Border by Unoma Giese

2009-11-10T08:42:00.000-08:00

photo by Charles Okereke

Friday 6^th November

Day four and we hit the ultimate invisible border. Time. A thing that only moves forward when right now we actually needed it to move backwards. There is no arguing with the laws of nature, it was moving forward, with or without us. The breakdown was going to get expensive. Not in monetary terms. Everything that was central to our coming and going at this point hinged on time, or a lack thereof. Time was of the essence.

Physically, we found ourselves in a time warp of sorts. Ghana is a country that moves at a laid back pace that we have not know in our own country for three decades. It is part of its charm if you have all the time in the world.. We didn’t. We lived for two lost days in a family home on Cactus Road that was of 1970’s architecture with old school louvre windows, no air conditioners (though none were needed) and latticed false ceilings. Meanwhile, modern technology, invented to save time, was letting us down. Hindered by the inability of the mechanic to manage our machine, we were unable to physically move forward. We might have done better with a donkey or camel. And while we struggled to salvage the situation, it became a race against time, the minutes turning into hours into days. The festival in Bamako would open without us, and still we were stationary.

photo by Ray Daniels Okeugo

We had got together on Monday to begin this journey and now it was Friday. With all the lack of progress and routine, we had begun to lose all sense of time. There was a constant calculation as to whether we were working on Nigerian time which we had left behind us or on GMT in which we now resided, albeit only transitional. The majority of us had not yet adjusted the time on our phones and watches. We were hanging in limbo while we awaited the good news that our vehicle was road-worthy again. Time after time, the news was not good.

photo by Charles Okereke

There was a strong feeling of time loss. We should by now have been in Bamako. Who knows why we had been delayed here. It seemed there was a hidden force majeure keeping us in Accra. Each time the van broke down, it only ever did so once it had got us within metres of the address we were driving to. And then no matter what we did, it wouldn’t budge beyond some invisible border. What could this hinderance be? What could it mean? And why had it led us to Friday’s major hidden border – the loss of the one commodity we did not have to spare – time? Time alone would tell.

With no van, and living from minute to minute in the hope that the repairs would soon be done and we would hit the road again, we did not dare venture far from base. So we found ourselves not even able to optimise the time we were spending in Accra by making images of the city. Another aspect was cruelly imposed upon us consequently was this waste of time which continued for three days until the loss of time began to erode away at the threshold of our tolerance for everything and anything. Tensions rose, and time, our invisible border, created for us multiple new invisible borders. Ten creatives living in two rooms, all on a mission, all spending time together, losing time and watching time. Mental exhaustion and a feeling of despondency crept in to fortify the invisible border that time had become for us, even as Time ushered us across it’s own border from Friday into the weekend.

photo by Charles Okereke

We also took the time to focus on what our new situation meant in terms of regrouping and rearranging priorities. The main outcome of this exercise was to let go of the eleventh member of our team, Maria. We needed to get to Bamako. By any means necessary. And since Maria, our van - the only means we had - was not getting us to Bamako, not even to Kumasi, we decided to look for a new means. The only way we could buy back the time was to take public transport. We are certain, that in due time, Maria will find it within herself to forgive us for leaving her behind like that.

Writing the Journey: Accra Chronicles 5th November 09

2009-11-10T08:14:00.000-08:00

Kumasi beckoned…but we couldn’t go. Our van is in dire need of a doctor. Oil seal and kick starter issues, they’d said. The van spends its entire day at the mechanics waiting for Martin the Mechanic to apply some ounce of verve, however tiny, into his Ghanaian easy-does-it world view. The oil seal is resealed at 9.00AM, but with none of us playing headmaster over Martin at the workshop, Martin marks time and the kick-starter neither starts nor kicks. We have our sights trained on Kumasi, but our van is nowhere near that horizon.

So we seize the chance to eat our first decent breakfast - sausages, eggs, oats, fresh fruit, tea, coffee; rest, take pictures, and explore the area. We remain positive. A cheerful energy sizzles around the group.

Dreadlocked Driver goes to get some money - from our Naija GTBank - thank you! We note the spread of Nigerian Banks across Ghana with pride. Right across the road from the workshop, a Zenith Bank Branch stands in authoritative majesty. And we’ve spotted UBA, and Intercontinental banks elsewhere. The banking sector was the first to note the invisibility of banking borders across West Africa, and cross them. They dot the skyline of most West African cities.

Lead Win Succeed, Dreadlocked Kangool, Chicken Feathers and Sports Causal re-enter cyber-borders, to see where the whole wide world is going; Blackbraids sleeps, Curly Curly is in scribble-mode, sipping Twinnings; Cap 67 watches the sports channel, Cap Nike potters around doing this and that emitting what Curly Curly terms a “nervous energy”; Resource Control edits his images, and plays his harmonica...

Fried yams and roast plantains laced with shinto sauce surface from the search engine of Lead. Win. Succeed. It’s a welcome development! We swoop upon the finger-foods like butterflies to nectar. We smack our lips with glee at the vitality of the chilli. Outside, the sun in Accra is in a contest of “Who Blinks First” with itself. It wins.

Our ravine-black bus returns and we all become more upbeat: we shall cross to Kumasi today! We test-drive the van, and discover that it still has unfinished business at the mechanic’s. Martin says it’s too late to reach the automobile market today, tomorrow’s another day. We troop there and painstakingly explain to Martin that we are Bamako-bound and are already behind schedule. He must double-up; get the repairs done tonite! The mechanics laugh quietly - and inform us very calmly that the auto market has closed since 5PM. We are nonplussed: “Are you saying there is nothing called “emergency” in this city; that we cannot find a single alternative to getting to the auto-market- tomorrow!? I’m not being boastful, but if this happened in Lagos, even at 2.AM, there would be mechanics and auto-parts sellers that would be willing to serve us - even at 2.AM!”,Dreadlocked Driver declares to the entire mechanic population at the garage on Spintex Road.

We all don’t understand it: this constant gentility in the face of urgent situations; this flaccid, follow-the-procedure attitude. It’s absolutely not “our way.”

Our van sleeps in the garage after assurances that it would be fixed first thing tomorrow.We find the beach near Teshie Nunga where we are swindled of 5 Cedis by a bunch of loiterers posing as “beach officials.” These are the irregular Ghanaians.

The beach is a rolling blackness tinged with a milky froth. Dark. Powerful and Alluring. The beach bar, by contrast, is dry, dusty and drab. A huddle of U17 Fifa World Cup Football TV viewers and bar tenders is too besotted to notice our arrival. We are starved. The bar doesn’t serve proper food. We take our leave and head for our “regular” haunt at Daniels. We refill, reenergise and ponder the laidback, and calm gentility of Ghanaian ways. Someone made a statement that “Ghanaians are so polite, they can take permission to greet you: Please, Good morning Sir!” Laughter rolls on the floor from our tables, laughing.

By Nike Ojeikere

Writing the Journey : Lome to Accra... Day 2, 4th of November

2009-11-05T05:01:00.000-08:00

photo: Uche James-Iroha

November 4, 2009.

Borders are places of transition. They could be places of decision. Of leaving the old and embracing the new. Or discarding the new and choosing the old, the good, or the bad. Otherwise, they could be places of flux- where the old and the new, the good, the bad, intermingle constantly in comings and goings….

After a night of needed rest at the GHIS Palace, Lomé where we had our stress washed away, we set off today. The morning sun streams unto the coastal waters, palm trees and into our bus. The sun is a harbinger of hope… Accra, here we come!

We reach Aflao. No particularly polished roads or stately buildings announce its presence. There is an earth road-regular red laterite grounds. It calls to mind Malu Road in Apapa, Lagos with those trailers off loading the ingredients of commerce. The more things change, the more they remain the same?

But a few hapless touts hoping to make the quick cefa are running like around the van like sly foxes, literally ordering Dreadlocked Driver to hand them our documents! No way! We shout back in several tones and timbre- the nasty sting at Benin-Togo border still so close to memory.

“And who are you to be demanding for our passports? asked Dreadlocked Driver with a frown, ending the question with fiercely spoken words in his mother tongue. Laughter flows from the rest of us. Other queries follow: Where’s your ID cards? Why are you not wearing uniforms? Are you customs officials? The questions spurt from our van in torrents. The group is decided: not the minutest cefa is leaving our pockets today for unofficial officials at any border.

The touts are stunned by our response, then, as though realizing our resolve, they begin one and all, to look perplexed; then annoyed. ‘You go spend time well well for there! You go see”, they threaten.

We don’t mind! Go away! Are you government officials? Go away. Not a dime to you guys today, hisses Curly Curly. Derisive laughter erupts from our van and the touts finally slink away to seek new prey. No borders of bribery will be by us crossed again.

Aflao@ Ghana is a flavour of many pleasures… courtesy, gentleness, timeliness, orderliness, friendliness, brother& sisterliness, pride, smiles, laughter, and love. We wait a while, but it is like the waiting of the mouth for its favorite food: the unharried waiting for anticipated certain-to-happen pleasure. We are so impressed the goodness of Ghana, we commend the Ghanaian Border officials with waves and smiles and God-bless yous.

photo by Uche James Iroha

Whilst,Dreadlocked Kangol, Sports Casual aka Director of Espionage, and Dreadlocked Driver, sort out immigration formalities, and Win. Lead. Succeed, assisted by Cap Nike, set about retrieving the unjustifiable 32 Cedis that a con-artist forex dealer has fleeced from him during the By-the-Border transaction, an irony plays itself out. We had been advised by a veteran of the road, Cap 67’s wifey, to conduct all forex dealing here because the people were more honest than elsewhere. The con-artist money changer flies in the face of that, but another forex dealer at the same border gives some of us the best bargain ever. It’s a reminder for why we must never cross into the borders of stereotyping.

Back in the van, Resource Control, Blackbraids Chicken Feathers engage in an interesting conversation about marriage and things marital. The pros the cons, the lowest common denominators. Curly Curly Blackbraids and Resource Control buy blue-black harmonicas. Music making then commences with Resource Control punctuating every conversation, expressed opinion, point of view, and idea, with bursts of approval or disapproval from his blue-black harmonica. It’s all so funny; deep-belly laughter follows his bursts of play.

Our van chooses not to play ball today. After zipping from cruising from Lagos to Aflao, past Anloga, Keta, Woe, Scrogbe, Salo and Dabala, it coughs to a stop at the checkpoint in Lolita. But no worries; Providence is at work. We make brilliant photos. And new friends. The Policemen are friendly concerned and helpful. They facilitate the intervention of a mechanic and soon we proceed again. At Alisekpe our van suffers another cough-to-a-stop, but we proceed again past Sigakope, and Adidome. We cross the big ocean at Sokpoe. Sports Casual buys fried turkey bottoms as Chicken Feathers announces that eating poultry is a border she cannot cross.

Kumasi was our pre-chosen rest point, but circumstances conspire to choose Accra. We take it all in our stride. It’s the adventure in the journey. The intermingling of the expected and unexpected across invisible borders. We call up friends and family in Accra who have no clue about our coming. Still, they rally round us with zest and passion, help ferret out inexpensive rest places where we refresh ourselves, and call up mechanics to fix our ailing van. They make our Accra stop-over with the good milk of human kindness. We are thankful to the Creator for multiple mercies. It’s a new day tomorrow…. Kumasi, full blast ahead!

by Nike Ojeikere

Writing The Journey : From Lagos to Lome by Nike Ojeikere

2009-11-03T12:41:00.000-08:00

And so today, Tuesday , November 3, 2009, we set out from Lagos. All ten of us -Dreadlocked Driver, Lead. Win. Succeed, Blackbraids, Cap67, Cap Nike, Chicken Feathers, Resource Control, Dreadlocked Kangol, Sports Casual and Curly Curly. Hope rises… We gun down the road unstopped by the invisible internal borders of Lagos- traffic jam! Dreadlocked Kangol keeps warning Cap Nike to go easy on his recordings because he fears that the battery will run out pretty soon. “You think you are going to Aba?” In the background, Yvonne Chaka Chaka belts “Im Burning Up” in robust contralto.

The chaos of Lagos recedes. Palm trees sprout on the roads suddenly and there’s a burst of mellow greens. We come upon relatively unspoiled territory. Fresh air hits our face from the Atlantic. It dawns by intuition that we are in Badagry! The town whose flavour is peppered with coconuts, vast beaches, “the Ahonu Menu Toyi" and the first storey building ever built in Nigeria.

We speed along the coastal road trying to capture the plain and picturesque, plus landmarks and directional signs -symbols of transition from one place to the next. “Slowdown a little’” we admonish Dreadlocked Driver. But Dreadlocked Driver can’t hear a thing we say. He’s coasting merrily on the wings of excitement… z-oooo-ming to Bamako

Gullies suddenly begin to erode the road. Camera’s keep clicking quickly - or trying to. We are all determined to do justice to the iconic hallmarks of the project. Soon shanties erupt along the road like heat rash on the skin. Buses, people, trade and noise takes over - “Lagos” appears to be happening to us again.

It’s not Lagos. We are at the Communede Seme, Togo. “Bienvenue" greets a blue and white friendly sign post. Hardly the different from the Lagos heartland. Only now, there’s disorderly order. And a different buzz of noise”.

“No clicking of cameras here” the more experienced amongst us whisper. The border Officials are averse to it! One of us proceeds to click surreptitiously. It is Sports Casual. Our Director of Espionage. He surreptitiously records the sound of transition- the Invisible Borders of the voice and thought and perception that cameras may not adequately capture.

And so we wait at the border. We wait. And wait. And wait. And wait. We wait. We, passport - holding members of the CEDAO. The Economic Community of West African States. We wait. We wait. We wait… for Godot. At the border.

We drink coffee. We eat French bread for breakfast. We wonder at the delay. We stress. We laugh. We critique and criticize. Some threaten active rebellion. We argue. We wait. And then, we play ball and pay heftily for our passage. We pay official and unofficial taxes at the border. We arrived Seme Border at 10.00Am. We are permitted entry to Seme at 12.05 PM.

Unbeknownst to us… waiting would be the constant feature at all borders up to Lomé- from where this blog is being written. And paying- for both legal and illegal taxes to gain legal passage through…

Corruption is quite clearly an invisible border that stands in the way of free passage of ECOWAS peoples. A monster of division and disillusion.

Sitting here this lovely night, in the serene ambience of the Hotel GHIS PLACE, amongst kindred spirits, it becomes quite clear, that at the end of the thunderstorm comes a silver lining.

We have had a hectic journey, our vehicle has suffered mistaken identity- the attendant mistakenly pumped diesel into our petrol powered van and that set bus back by two hours, so that we couldn’t reach Aflao today. But no matter. We are happily ensconced in the comforts our brotherhood, and sisterhood, and the night.

Will we wait yet again at Aflao tomorrow? And pay? Perhaps. Perhaps not. Whatever happens, our spirits will not break. We will continue to click merry cameras, make great images, cross invisible borders and write the journey…

Invisible Borders 2009 (Lagos Bamako Trip)

2009-11-01T09:50:00.000-08:00

Inspired by the 8^th edition of the Bamako Photography Encounters 2009, 10 Nigerians made up of photographers and writers decided to make a road trip to Bamako from Lagos: in a black Volks Wagen Mini bus rented from Photo Garage in Lagos. This project arose as a result of an urgent need to address the notion of dividing borders between countries in the African continent. It might sound paradoxical that while travelling by air might seem a lot faster and much more stress-free, it indeed suggests a feeling of immense “distance” between places, given that one might call the singular borders suggested by the airport terminals as “virtual”, not tangible, providing a rather fictitious notion of displacement in real time; more so due to the absence of land scapes and other elements which serves as visual testimony to distance covered. Therefore this project is an attempt to acquire a much realistic sense of the similarities and difference between peoples suggested by cultural and geographical lines.

The project has been termed “Invisible Borders”: a reference to the non-geographical demarcation, but rather that which could be easily missed especially if looking at the lines in the map, or flying over by air.

The most essential aspect of the project is not the final destination, but the journey; therefore the participating photographers will produce works in form of photography and video while on the go which will be exhibited during the main events of the Festival in Bamako.

Participants include:

Uche James Iroha, Lucy Azubuike, Emeka Okereke, Amaize Ojeikere, Uche Okpa Iroha, Ray Daniels Okeugo, Unoma Giese, Chriss Nwobu, Nike Ojeikere, Charles Okereke.

Dates scheduled for Travel are as followed:

3^rd of November: Participants leave Lagos,

6^th of November: Participant arrive in Bamako

15^th of November: Participants leave Bamako

18^th of November: Participants arrive in Lagos.

Borders Involved:

Nigeria/Benin (Seme), Benin/Togo (Grand Popo), Togo/Ghana (Aflao), Ghana /Burkina fasso (Paga), Burkina Fasso/ Mali.