N.E.P.A

Growing up, many evenings and nights were spent in darkness. I did not mind too much when the power was cut off in the afternoon. Though the house became dim, there was still enough light to read and play Ludo and hopscotch. It was around 6pm when N.E.P.A had still not brought light that the absence of electricity became annoying. There were candles but reading by candle light had been embargoed by my mother for fear we would be partially blind before we reached our teenage years. So between 7pm when we ate and 9- 10pm when we slept, there was a lot of time to kill.

Sometimes we played with fire. This could take up a good half hour. We started by running our fingers through the candle flame. There was no winner in this game but the slower you passed your finger through the flame, the more of a pro you were. If you ran your finger through very quickly, you didn't feel anything and chicken that I was, I always took this option. Also, there was the two finger candle game where you tried to put out the flame by pinching it between your thumb and your index finger. I never attempted this round but some of the maids would show off  by putting out the flame in this fashion. Then of course there was the candle wax game, which entailed spilling the molten wax on your hands and then scraping it off when it cooled.

However, my personal favourite was the matches game. You took a match, held it to the flame and let it catch fire. You then held it for as long as you possibly could. The further down the match the flame burned, the more proficient you were at this game. One of my proudest moments was when I managed to burn the whole match stick, right from its sulfuric head to its wooden stump. Usually, I could only burn the match for a few seconds before the heat got too close to my fingers and I dropped it. Then one day, I realised that if I held the charred end, I could burn the whole match with ease. After I'd beaten the system, I grew tired of the match game.

I tell this story because over the weekend I went to a seafood restaurant which was mostly lit by candle light. And it wasn't any of those fancy scented candles but the thick, white wax ones that I grew up with it. Of course, we began playing with the flame. I would break off pieces of wax and liquidize them in the blue part of the flame. I would spill the melted wax down the side of the candle. My friend opposite me even ran her finger through, a feat I found I no longer had the liver for. I don't know how but at some point, I tipped the candle too far and the molten wax that builds up under the flame spilled onto the back of my hand. I flinched but to my surprise I was able to chest the pain and even enjoyed scraping the wax off when it hardened.

After we got tired of playing with the flames, we made shadow puppets. I wasn't very good at this, my fingers are quite clumsy, but my cousins could do some wonderful shapes. I never progressed past the perfunctory butterfly but others could act out complete dramas on the walls. When we tired off puppets, we moved to singing. I played the piano, my sister would drum on our much bruised dining table and we would all sing, soprano, alto and tenor. I can still play with my eyes closed because of this training in the half light of the candles.

Sometimes we would go to bed without them having brought light. Other times the light would come suddenly, mid-song. The electricity would startle us, our eyes would squint at the artificial brightness of it and the flame would suddenly lose its magic.  "Up NEPA!" we would shout but we didn't mean it entirely. We had been enjoying  the camaraderie of the candle. With electricity there was no excuse for sitting together and singing. To switch off all the lights and continue making shadow puppets would be foolish when work clothes had to be ironed. And why play with wax when you could watch TV. So we would disperse until the next time NEPA had not brought light by evening and there was not enough diesel to power the generator.

A few months ago I was in America during a storm and the power was cut off. In the evening, candles were lit all over the house that only a day before had consumed an entire village's supply of electricity. It was my favourite night of the trip. This is how things should be sometimes, I thought as I played my uncle's piano with my eyes closed. This is how it should be.

The First Time I Was Corrupt

It was in secondary school. I was thirteen. We were going for a state wide basketball competition. Ten girls and ten boys were chosen but each team would be made up of only five. Five would play, five would be subs. I wanted to play, badly. Every Tuesday and Thursday for the past month or so, I had woken up at 5am to jog round the school compound. I had run sprints and shot hoops in the half morning light. Every time I missed a shot, I complained about the poor light. I would have made it in the afternoon, I protested when the ball left my hand and bounced off the rim. I made the ten. I was on the bus, going for the tournament. But would I make the five?

We got to the venue: a large but shabby state school. The hoops were sparse metal rims. No netting hung down from them, like in the NBA. Our first match was scheduled. We went to our court. Our P.E teacher, Mrs O, read out five names. None were mine. She must have seen the fallen faces of the rejected five because she said to us,
"Don't worry. There are many matches today."

The match began. The rival team scored early. Mrs O began to grow agitated on the sidelines.
"Amaka shoot!"
"Deola pass the ball!"
"Shoot! Shoot!"
We were losing, time was passing. Mrs. O called a halftime.
"Deola come and sit down. Chibundu go on."

Me. I was going to play. Me!

The referee brought the sheet that had to be filled whenever a player stepped on the court. Standard questions, Name, School, Age.
Name. Mrs O wrote Chibundu Onuzo.
School. Mrs O wrote Atlantic Hall, Poka-Epe.
Age.
"How old are you?" Mrs O asked, her pen poised above the page, impatient to write. Time was going.
"Thirteen."
"Ah this tournament is for twelve and under."
"But I'm thirteen."
"It doesn't matter. I'll just put twelve."
"Wait," I said, my heart beginning to pound.

It's not that I hadn't lied before. Lies a plenty filled my past. Who drank my Fanta? Who wore my skirt? Who moved my cheese? All questions, I had lied to. But to lie on an official document. To lie about something as fundamental as my age. To tell such a lie, though sanctioned by my teachers, went against everything my parents had ever taught me.

"If I don't put twelve, you can't play."

And I'm afraid to say that sealed the deal for me. Not play, after waking up so many mornings. Not play, after driving two hours to reach this venue. Not play and let one of the other subs take my place. Tofia.

So with my heart pounding, I walked onto the field. Needless to say, I was rubbish. I missed the ball when it was thrown to me. When I caught it, I lost it immediately. I couldn't concentrate. My lie hung too heavily on me. I could hear Mrs. O screaming on the sidelines but it did nothing to spur me on. When a pass I intended for a team mate, ended up in the hands of an opponent who scored a few seconds later, Mrs O shouted, "Time out. Chibundu come and sit down. Deola, you're going back on."

I walked back to the side benches. The other subs made room for me as they offered their condolences.
"You did ok."
"You'll do better in the next match."
"Don't worry."
But I wasn't sad. I was relieved. For the rest of the day, I watched my mostly thirteen and fourteen year old team mates cruise to the silver medal position. When the medals came, even the subs got them. I wore mine proudly around school but secretly, inside, I was glad I had nothing to do with the winning of it.

It was my first taste of corruption and it left a funny feeling in my mouth, like the taste of fruity lip balm, sweet but toxic nonetheless. Hitherto, I had never been directly complicit in anything corrupt. True, bribes had been given on my behalf. I had sat in the car and watched the driver pass money to the low ranking officials whenever we were flagged down for no reason at a police checkpoint.
"Give us something," the bluntest of the police men would say as we pulled over. I was relieved when the drivers paid. I was afraid of the guns but every time money changed hands, I was also angry.
"When I'm older," I would say to the driver after we had driven off, "When I'm older and I have my own car, I won't give those people money."
"If you don't give them," the most pragmatic of the drivers once explained to me, "they will make your life hell for nothing. Better to just give them the twenty Naira and go your way."
I would be different, I thought. I would be the one who would stand by the roadside and refuse to compromise my integrity for the sake of my convenience. Yet, how easily my moral defenses had crumbled when I had to choose between them and something I wanted.

I imagine it is the same for many of our bloated politicians. It is true, some have always been thieves but enough were scrupulous enough in their private careers, for one to wonder how such volte faces took place. We have watched honest enough doctors become thieves. We have watched cabinet members who were highly ranked in the private sector and relatively honest there, become treasury robbers over night. We have watched speakers of the house come from abroad, where they never had criminal records, and begin to dream up the most inventive acts of fraud.

I had never had the opportunity to lie about my age and I had never had the motivation to do so. I imagine it is the same for many of our politicians. Opportunities to steal abound. Motivations to steal can always be found. School fees are due, new house is needed in the village, wife wants diamond earrings for anniversary and of course, chances of getting caught are slim. If I knew that someone would check my passport after Mrs. O wrote that I was twelve, I would have snatched that pen from her.

I want to live in Nigeria one day. And if this happens in the near future it is likely that the opportunities for corruption will still abound. I hope that I will not look for motivation and will dismiss the fact that the chances of my getting caught are slim. I want to be different. I pray I will be different.

P.S
It was my birthday yesterday. I'm now 21. We thank God.

Why I'm Not Afraid of Flying Anymore

When I was younger, I loved flying. In fact, I loved the journey more than the destination. Neither London now could live up to the joys I experienced getting there. I am perhaps the only person I know, who loved the steamed mushiness of plane food, the dry air, the glamorous hostesses. Once, we got a surprise up grade to business class on the Belgian airline Sabena. It was perhaps one of the most beautiful memories of my childhood. Then, individual television screens had not reached economy, so to have a personal entertainment system, where you could rewind, pause, and fast forward at will, with a choice of over 50 films, with seats that reclined almost horizontally, with air hostesses offering you extra without you having to ask! It was the life.

As time progressed, flying began to lose its lustre for me. It must have been a gradual deglamorisation but looking back, the change seems stark. One flight, I was wishing England was more than a paltry six hours away, the next, I was counting down the seconds to landing. One flight, the air hostesses were the most sophisticated men and women who had ever been born, the next I was noticing varicose veins and the layers of make up that cracked in the dry air of the plane. Yet, the most pointed marker that my attitude towards flying had changed was that I began to take note of this thing called turbulence.

Thinking logically, there must have been turbulence when I flew as a child. It cannot be that the air has suddenly gotten rougher in the past six years or so. However, I have no recollection of any plane I entered before c 17 shuddering in the air. Then suddenly, one day, I was sitting in my seat, the plane gave a small heave to the left and my heart was beating at a frequency that was abnormal. Half an hour later, the plane dipped a little and again my heart was beating wildly. I was afraid. In a plane, one of my favourite places to be, I was afraid.

Why this sudden change? The truth is simple. I, Imachibundu Onuzo had discovered that I was going to die. You might say that it took me a rather long time to come to this conclusion so let me explain myself before your jump to derision. At about 5 or 6, I found out that everybody was going to die. This did not concern me to much. At about 10/11, I realised that my parents were going to die. Death had become a little more personal. The thought filled me with terror. I calculated how many years my parents could possibly live. I generously gave them I think 90 years but still that meant I would only be about 50 when they left. My mother came home one day to find me sitting on a bed, very still.

"What's the matter?" she asked.

"You're going to die," I said, bursting into tears.

"But I'm not ill," she said, perhaps a little alarmed.

"Not now. But you're going to die one day."

She started laughing. "Is that why you're crying? Everyone is going to die one day."

Everyone is going to die one day, the universal truth I had known since I was six but now at c. 11, it was hitting home that everyone included my parents, daddy, mummy. Then finally the penny dropped. Everyone included me. True, it took about six years for this final penny to drop. In the interim, I got pimples, lost some, made friends, lost some, made more, did my first weavon and then suddenly one day, I realised that I, Chibundu Onuzo was going to die. The thought terrified me and it made things that had hitherto been easy, very difficult. I was afraid of entering the tube because I was scared I would be in the same carriage as a terrorist and he would blow himself up and I would die. I was scared of passing between two buses because the driver of one might not see me and he would crush me and I would die. And of course, I was scared of flying because the pilot might fall asleep, the wind might break the plane, the plane engine might explode, so many things could go wrong, then the plane would crash and I would die.

I was a Christian when I was having these crippling fears and after they had eaten up all of my mental peace and quiet, I prayed. Very simply, I wanted to stop being afraid of death. God answered. Very simply I had to start believing in eternal life. Not in the half hearted, lip service, there's a heaven way, but in a very real, practical, heaven is where God is. If you believe the claims of Jesus and follow His teachings, then you have a taste of heaven inside you. When you die, you get the full experience. Shikenna.

Sometime c 18/19 years of age, I started believing this completely again. It's made life a lot easier. I can get on the tube without having palpitations. I can enter a plane. I can eat spicy food. The way I see it, when death comes, however it comes, my spirit will be unzipped from its body suit and fly back to God.

P.S

I went to Houston and Atlanta while I was in America. Now I am back in the motherland. More on that later.

February

On February 1 last year, I signed my contract with my publisher. I remember the day was very cold and it was already dim by the time I got to my agent's building even though it was only three o'clock. I was coming from a lecture, a boring, one and the juxtaposition was too much for me to feel excited in an obvious way. I saw my classmate on the platform and so we sat next to each other on the tube.

"Where are you going?"
"I'm going to buy some trainers."
"Cool," I said wanting him to return my question but not quite.
"So where are you going?"
I am usually quite secretive about good news. I don't know, maybe it's the way I was brought up but I've always felt that telling people about the good things that have happened to you is a little like boasting. But it was a direct question.
"I'm going to my agent to sign the contract for my book."
"Wow that's amazing. Congratulations."

There was nothing else he could say really but hearing the words that one always says when good things happen, made my good thing feel like an anti climax, and I was a little embarrassed that I had told him.
"So what's it about?"
The question that always froze me. "Well--" I hmmed and haaad until it was time for him to get off and go and look for his sneakers.

When I got to my agent's, the contract specialist placed a wad of paper in front of me. I looked over it, skimming through the pages, asking questions when I came across a clause that was unclear but to be honest, I didn't read it in detail. I trust my agent. They've been reading contracts for years and as I say to those who are aghast that I don't know the clause by clause detail of my contract: the agency is not a charity. 15% of everything I earn goes to them so if anyone cheats me, they cheat them as well.

After I signed, I called my parents. I was very subdued by it all. I had just turned 19 and I remember speaking to them very quietly while I tried to summarise what I had just signed. When I finished, my mother said, "We thank God."
"Yes. We thank God."

After all who else could I thank for this inexplicable thing that had happened to me in a manner that was almost like a movie, like film trick.

"So what are you going to do now?" they asked.
"I'm going home. I have readings to do for tomorrow."


P.S
To celebrate my one year anniversary with Faber, I'm going to dedicate February to answering any questions that you guys may have about publishing and the publishing industry. Anything from how to find an agent, to what your editor does for you, to the revision process. You can email me at authorsoundsbetterthanwriter@gmail.com I look forward to hearing from you.

20 Today!

The teenage years are over and I really thank God for bringing me this far. I wouldn't be alive without Him, or sane, or happy, or writing, or singing, or going to school, or saved. My testimonies are many, more than I can write in one post or ten thousand. So I'll let Sammy sing it for me.



P.S
This decade is for God. Not for fame, or fortune or marriage. But if those come along sha, I won't say no ;)

Big Boned

Nowadays, there is an ideal body type for women: skinny. If you are not skinny, you are fat and if you are neither skinny nor fat, then you are this curious hybrid thing between carrot and chocolate, anorexic and sybarite, desirable and undesired, big boned.

Big boned. I have been called that by well meaning relatives defending me in the face of criticism . "No she's not fat. She's just-- You know it's her body type-- She's um--You know that thing-- Big boned."

Big boned is not just a physical description, like tall or brunette or blue-eyed. Big boned is a description with connotations like gangly, or pimply or black. Attached to gangly is the impression of awkwardness, attached to pimply is ugliness and with the juxtaposition of big and boned, a sense of lack is conveyed. Not loss, like when you are called fat, no hope for you but lack, not quite there. Your cells were too calcium efficient, over producing this vital mineral until your bones stretched and widened you into something that was neither fat nor skinny, chocolate nor carrot. And the worst thing about being in this limbo land was it could only get worse. As a relative of mine once kindly informed me when in a flurry of insecurity and self consciousness I decided to go on a diet, "Your body type is not made to be skinny. You can get to like a size 8 but don't try for a six. It won't be normal."

I am certain it was a woman that coined the phrase big-boned. Seeing that there were not enough ways to put down her sex, ugly was not enough, fat was not enough, big boned had to be born. Perhaps it is because humans are socialised to always be physically in competition with one other, men want bigger biceps, girls want smaller thighs.

In the past I've been on a few 'diets.' Me and a friend, another 'big boned' individual who incidentally was never more than a size ten, made a pact to eat only apples, carrots, cucumbers and soy sauce for a week in order to 'detox.' Another time, I was a gymaholic, every night for an hour pounding away on the cross trainer, doing sit ups and swinging weights in my hands. Thankfully, these phases didn't last long. My laziness/elastic confidence/other things I cannot articulate always meant that I was back to reading on the couch and eating normally [N.B my foray into anorexia lasted two days.]

It could easily have swung the other way. After all I saw the reaction the smaller boned relatives and friends had when I shaved a a little flesh off my large bones, took a step towards joining their private party, they were happy that some of that flesh was gone even when they knew I was 'detoxing.'

It's funny, the other day, a relative of mine said to me, "You're so slim." To which I burst out laughing. Me! Big-boned me! Slim!

It seems like many things, this big boned/fat/gangly/ugly/beautiful/skinny thing is relative and as long as you're happy with where your standing, don't ever let anyone tell you different.

P.S
Pardon the erratic blogging behaviour. End of term deadlines loomed.

The Editor

My first editor was M. Before her, the people that read my work, (mostly family members) had been cheerleaders. It wasn't that they never criticised me but their criticism of my writing was mild, like soy sauce.

"It's really good. The writing is wonderful. Best thing since sliced bread but I don't like the end."

The thing was the criticism came so late that all I remembered in my head was praise. I never once gave a piece of writing to a family member and went away feeling bad. I always left them feeling like the Nobel was just around the corner; after JSSCEs and summer vacation.

Cue M.

She wasn't the first friend I'd shown my work to. The first was F. We were in primary 5 together; I was eleven; a little older than her; a little bigger than her and I was class Captain, with the force of law behind me. Maybe that's why when I showed her the opening pages of a novel I had scribbled in a chequered exercise book meant for Maths, she smiled widely and said "I really like it."
"Do you think I should continue?" I asked, probing for more praise.
"Yes, yes," she said, "It's really good."

M was not like F.

I showed her the first few pages of the book I was writing at the time. I had written twenty three, slow, painstaking twenty three pages and I expected her to read them all. When I asked, "Will you read the first few pages and tell me what you think?" I meant will your read all of it because you will like it so much that you will finish it and ask for more, more, more.

M stood up after page 5.

"The writing is really nice but nothing is happening."
"What do you mean?" I asked, wondering how she would turn this into a compliment.
"It's boring."

Point blank. No drenching in praise that made me forget the criticism tacked on at the end; no running over the sections that she liked and brushing lightly over the gaping holes. Point blank.

"But what's boring about it?"
"Nothing is happening. It's well written but there is nothing happening."

And that was all M would say.

I stopped writing that book because of M. She was right. There was no plot. The characters meandered around in painstakingly described settings, they thought interesting thoughts, they saw interesting things but they did absolutely nada. There was no point to that novel and my prose wasn't strong enough to carry this wandering aimlessness and so I gave this book the axe.

Of course you can't just allow anyone to be your editor. You can't just delete a book everytime somebody says it is boring. After all writing is a subjective thing. What's good for Peter can never be good for Paul but it's good to have a yardstick. Someone whose judgement you will trust, sometimes even at the expense of your own.

Funny enough, M doesn't read much, neither does she read novels for the purpose of criticism But out of the 3 books she reads in a year, all of them are quality and though she does not critique in the language of criticism, she cuts to the chase. In short, M is an intelligent reader. She didn't have to say there was no pacing or plot structure. Boring did it. She knew what she read and she knew how to express her opinions succinctly and directly.

Everybody needs an editor like M. An intelligent reader who not so much disregards your feelings but cares about your writing more.

About a two and a half years later, M read the first thirty pages of the draft of The Spider King's Daughter that I sent to my agent. She didn't stop after page 5. She read right up to where I would allow her to and then she breathed in deeply and said,

"Yaaaaaaah Chibs, this is very good."
"Why do you say so?"
"It the way you... Mmmm and in that bit where you... Ahhhhhh and that part where you almost... Ohhh I don't know how to say it."
Unfortunately when it came to compliments, M's usual succinctness deserted her.

Of course, you can only take being told your manuscript is boring so many times - my ideal ratio is about a thousand cheerleaders to one editor. However, you must, must, must have at least one person whose eye is on the book and not your feelings. You might not like it that the time but it will serve you well in the end. Trust me.

My Life is Readable?

Chimamanda Adichie often speaks (most famously in this Ted Talk) about how reading Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart, gave her permission to tell her own stories. Hitherto she had written about white children playing in white snow and drinking tan ginger beer but after reading Achebe, she realised that Africans were worthy of their own fiction and so set off on her journey to becoming the writer we all know today.

My story is somewhat different.I too was prone to writing the characters that I read in popular Western fiction. Thus all my books were set in America, in a landscape gleaned from my brief summer holidays there. My characters were white middle class, then African American middle class, then because my mother once told me to 'write what I know,' I bowed to her wisdom and made the father of this African American family of Nigerian extract. Like Chimamanda, I didn't think African people should be in books but not because I felt this was somehow taboo but because I just didn't think they could be fictionalised in an interesting way.

Nigeria was not exotic. It wasn't interesting. You could, if you wanted to, write novels with scenes of the traffic I sat in everyday, and the rice and stew I ate everyday and the mosquitoes that bit me in the night but Eze Goes To School would never be as sweet as Malory Towers and The Bottled Leopard only a dark flimsy retelling of Tom Brown's School Days.

It was only after I'd travelled four thousand miles and eaten apples everyday, and seen the lacrosse that Enid Blyton was always talking about, and tasted the famous fish and chips (fat and oil), that I realised that if English writers could fictionalize Sunday Roast in a way that made me want to taste it, then I could try and write about Ijebu garri, sugar and water in way that would make a Chinese man want to drink it. The longer I stayed away, the more interesting, and exotic, and readable my country became. After all Nigeria is a nation of hyperbole that even the wildest fiction cannot dream up. It is a place of police men arresting goats and women begging in traffic with borrowed babies and of politicians cross dressing to cross borders. If writers block should ever knack, then all one had to do was look outside their window.

So 4,ooo miles away, sitting in my cold room in school, I began to type away at the nucleus for what would eventually become my novel. For the first time, it would be set in Nigeria, with Nigerian characters, with Nigerian accents. For the first time the hero would be Nigerian, the villain Nigerian, the clown Nigerian, the battered, bruised, humoured, abused, loved, hated, laughed at, all would be Nigerian. It took me four thousand miles to believe that my country was interesting and complex enough to be read about at home, talk less of on a world stage. It was a while but I am glad I made it in the end. Some are still travelling.

Writing A Novel is Like....

Constipation.

I suffered from severe bouts of constipation when I was a child. My mother blamed it on the lack of fibre in my diet; she blamed it on the fact I hated drinking water; she blamed it on my stubborn nature. Whatever reason, every two or three months, I found myself straining on the porcelain throne, then leaving my position to suck balefully on an orange, then resuming duty, then leaving to down a glass of water, then going in again, then coming out for some garri and water, then in again, then out again and back and forth, and back and forth.

Now anyone who has ever had serious constipation will know that you don't expel very much on your first few tries and this is very similar to the first stage of a novel. You have a great idea, a large, chunky piece of novel that is shoved inside you, waiting to come out. So you pick up a note pad, a typewriter, a laptop and you sit down, pen in hand, fingers poised and nothing comes out. Hopefully, not literally nothing but just very tiny, minute shavings of the great mass that is inside you that might as well be nothing.

I started the Spider Kings Daughter, two years and a few months ago. I remember the day clearly. It was the last day of my AS Level exams and I was relieved, a little stark eyed from cramming the functions of T-cells and lymphocytes into my head but I had promised myself that I would start writing this novel that had a title and a vague plot, the very day I finished my last paper so I turned on my lap top.

I sat down to write at around 4 o'clock and didn't get up for about five, six hours, and when I was done, I had a page long prologue that was about 600 words in length. I don't know if that sounds good to you, but six hundred words in 6 hours seemed frustratingly ridiculous. I mean I was happy with my six hundred words and very excited that I had started but when you did the Math, that was a hundred words an hour, fifty words every half hour, 25 words in 15 minutes and just over one word a minute which included words like but and 'and.' It only got worse. Two weeks later, I had five pages, three months later only 30, as you can see, this was an exponential decrease in pace.

What I'm trying to say is that just as in the first few days of constipation (my worst bouts lasted that long) very little comes out, in the first few months of writing a novel, very little might come out, painfully little, painfully little that is painful to push out.

However, take heart ladies and gentlemen because the one thing I learnt from my childhood years of constipation is that eventually, it has to come out. There comes a point where your body cannot endure any more. It has to make space for the next batch, your mind has to make room for new ideas and products, and so you go back in, you turn on your computer, and you shake, and you shudder, and you lose sleep, until you can say honestly, that it is all out and you can sleep properly now.

It took me a while to reach this point. I was about two thirds through when something just clicked, my mind had, had enough and literally the rest of the book just shuddered out of me. I was up every night till around 3am, writing in days, volumes that would have taken me weeks and before I knew it, it was The End. I wasn't finished. There was still editing and polishing and garnishing to do, but the novel was out; I could rest properly... until the next one.

So take heart ladies and gentlemen if any of you are in the process of writing a novel or knows someone writing a novel. It will come out ;)

P.S
Onyeka Nwelue the author of Abyssinian Boy was kind enough to mention me in a list of influential Nigerians under 20. Here's the link.

Tribe

I don't really understand what people mean when they ask what tribe are you from? I mean of course I know what they literally mean. Are you Igbo? Or Hausa? Or Yoruba? Or Ijaw? Or Ibibio? Or Itsekiri? Or Nupe? Or one of those lines along which Nigeria is divided. But I don't know what they mean in concrete terms. It's all very well and good to label me Igbo because my father is Igbo or mixed tribe, because my mother is Yoruba, but what does this actually mean?

"It's your blood," a relative of mine once said to me when I denied that I was Igbo. "How can you deny your blood?"

This relative of mine is generally quite lucid so I knew he didn't mean if you spilled my blood on the ground it would start singing the theme tune to Things Fall Apart.

"What do you mean?" I asked and he replied something along the lines of, "There are certain things that will show up in your character that will make people know you are Igbo."

"So even if I don't speak Igbo and I don't understand the symbols in a traditional wedding, I'm still Igbo."

"All those things are superficial."

"What do you mean?" I asked.
"I'm talking about the Igbo character."

"And what is that?"

"Like," he paused to gather his thoughts. "Like... like, Igbo people are naturally sharp."

And then he went on to list a few of the other general 'characteristics' of Igbo people. Money savvy, smooth talkers. The traits he gave were positive but there are the more negative ones. Stingy, bourgeois, grabbing, tacky.

"And what about Yoruba people?" I asked. "What are their characteristics?"

"They always know where things are happening. "

"And Hausas?"

"They are gentle."

And the more he talked and the more you listen to many Nigerians talk, the more apparent it becomes that what we call tribe is actually stereotype and has very little to do with culture. Of course there are cultural differences between an Itsekiri man and an Igbo man. Language, food and dress are a few of these but the fact of the matter is that most people speak English in addition to their native language, most people eat rice, few people turn up to work in their full traditional regalia. The more urbanised we become and the faster we move into the 21st century (willingly or unwillingly) the more desperately we try to cling to what we see as our 'tribal identity'. We can no longer identify our ethnic group by markings on our faces or secret hand shakes and so we run behind these stereotypes. Yoruba men are this, Nupe women are that.

And this thing of classifying people along stereotypes just to preserve our identity and sense of apartness, is very dangerous. It led to the Holocaust; it led to genocide in Rwanda and it has led in more recent times to this idiotic thing that the PDP call 'zoning.' As if there is any difference between an Igbo thief and a Hausa one.

I am Nigerian first. Any day and everyday, Nigerian first. Then Lagosian (not Yoruba). I make the distinction because Lagos is a cosmopolitan city that time and time again defies tribe. Then I suppose if I had to fill a form that didn't allow me to explain my lengthy views on tribe, I would tick Igbo and Yoruba.

P.S

This is the last post in Nigeria month. It is not the last time I will blog about Nigeria but perhaps I will retire from this topic for a while. Hope you enjoyed.

All Is Revealed

My name is Chibundu Onuzo. It's actually Imachibundu but everyone calls me Chibundu. Imachibundu is never used, not even when I am with trouble with my parents.

I'm the youngest of four. My parents are doctors, my oldest sister is a barrister, my oldest and only brother is a financier, my sister is an engineering student and I'm a History student at Kings College London.

I'm a Christian. I believe in God; I believe in John 3:16. I also believe that belief without actions is dead.

I sing. I play the piano. I write a blog in my spare time.

I'm 19 though not for long. A few months ago, the thought that this was my last teenage year filled me with dread. Now, I find it absurd that society has grouped thirteen year olds and nineteen year olds into the same category. I mean really. ;)

My novel, The Spider King's Daughter, is coming out Summer 2011, by God's grace. It will be published by Faber and Faber. I am agented by a very nice lady called Georgina Capel and my wonderful editor is Sarah Savitt.

So there. You now know everything.

Check out my announcement on The Bookseller if you want to.

N.B Photo courtesy Jonathan Ring.