Gate crashing a graduation party: Come Chop!

So yesterday, Opeyemi convinced me to accompany her and her young male cousin Tobi, to this graduation party in Thamesmead (London's answer to the Bronx, no kidding). It was her cousin's party, and from experience I know that there will always be in high drama in turning up at events that people hadn't invited you to. So I was initially slightly embarassed that we'd arrived too early, and were the first ones to get there, plus we'd all arrived hungry, with watering mouths. But alas someone, the 'graduand's' (very naija word) uncle, dropped the bombshell, of no show, no food. i.e. we had to wait for all the other obviously-naija-guests-who-have-a-habit-of-stylishly-arriving-late-to-everything to even smell the food. Na wa o! Plus the uncle's music was so old-school, that it only made my hunger more pronounced, and not even the small sausages and scotch eggs could pacify. Alternatively I could have drunk myself silly (with diet coke), but that would have defeated the point as I needed space in churning tummy for proper food. Fact was, there was a program to follow, plus opening prayer, and 'keynote' address, before we arrived at number 3 on the list DINNER!! But then, alas, I had to leave for rehearsals, and it didn't seem like we would ever get to the food. Even when we did, Opeyemi, silly girl, was rationning my take away portions, despite hinting that she should put more. I was sooooo upset, now I would have to eat cold food, mini-size, in a bumpy car ride on the way back to Vauxhall, plus the other guests and hosts would think I had only come to the 'graduand's' party to chop. Anyway sha, never again. Gate crashing doesn't always pay, and I am not quite sure how Opo managed to convince me. It's that stupid, baby look and baby voice she puts on when she's trying to be convincing or persuasive. Let's just hope that same look and voice it lands her a good guy.........as on the way to her house earlier on in the day, she kept, saying that I should interceede on her behalf for a decent guy.

Sahel Diaries III: Journey for Bobo to capital, Ouagadougou

27 April, 2008 – (4 hours approximately)
This time we set off from the Auberge hotel with Will Chen in the back seat. Wall was the Canadian-Chinese young missionary I had met, along with his 22yr-old pilot missionary friend, Caleb Ng, at the Auberge hotel in Bobo. Will slept through most the journey. There were scores of little villages, dotted along the tarred road between Bobo and Ouaga. The European Union (EU) had made sure to clearly advertised itself as the donor of the tarred road, which served both man and beast, car and bicycle. At times it did feel like we were the only ones travelling on the road, though we often came across the occasional broke down lorry or passenger bus. Some of the villages and towns we passed included Sabou, Bomboro, Ouezindougou, to name a few, most seemed to end with ‘ou’!!! Anyway our arrival into Ouaga was quite unspectacular. Further in, the city turned out be quite lovely, well planned and easy to navigate, and yet again in the middle of Jazz in Ouaga festival. How lucky could I get. It meant a week of music, music and more music!!

Pictures: Ouaga's answer to the Eiffel Tower, artistes on stage at the Jazz in Ouaga festival, local musicians at the Musée de la Musique in Ouaga.

Sahel Diaries II: Journey from Segou to Bobo Dioulasso

26 April 2008: Again, all of the road from Segou (Mali) to the Burkinabé town of Bobo on our journey was paved. During this stretch of the journey, there were quite a few road blocks. Whilst private vehicles like ours were let through, commercial ones had to pay their way through. We drove over an interesting little bridge known as Bani, again over the River Niger, though this portion of the River was thin on water, clearly frying up in the scorching heat. Although this part of Mali isn’t that far up north, you could already see that it was the transition to the Sahel, due to the extremely dry and scorched brown earth and withering trees. Even the cattle, donkeys, and goats seemed to suffer under the weight of the Sahelian sun and most looked starved, barely able to walk. We came close to hitting animals on the road quite a few times, they didn’t seem to jump or budge at the sight or sound of vehicles.

About an hour and a half into our journey, we reached the border town of Koutiala, and then Kouri, where we came to a police border post. I got my passport stamped by a nice, unassuming border police man. The driver, Keita, said we also had to stop at the next post about 100 metres up, the gendarmerie – the driver had earlier warned me, perhaps quite unfairly that ‘les Burkinabés peuvent etre un peu compliqués’ (Burkinabés can be a bit complicated), and that if any demands for money came up, I should let him do the negotiations. Hugh the cheek, like I was incapable, no seriously, guess he was right, as I wouldn't have known where to start. Luckily it was a smooth passage, relatively. We had to pay CFA5,000 at the customs post another 500metres or so up the road, and about 30mins afterwards, yippee, we came across a Celtel billboard, saying ‘Bienvenue a Burkina Faso'.

The terrain and trees had already started turning noticeable greener and lusher, once we've crossed over into Burkina Faso and we came across a very green field (not greenfield as in mining/geological terminology), rice field, apparently, which could have fit right into the English country side.

When we entered Bobo, it wasn’t spectacular, actually a lot less exciting than I had expected (thanks to the frequent exxagerations of Lonely Planet (West Africa)). Anwyay we wandered around aimelessly -Keita didn't know how exactly to get to the hotel - for about 30mins before locating the Auberge, which wasn’t spectacular either, but seemed to be about the best hotel in town frankly. I was just glad to have a place to lie and put my head. At least I was in Africa.

Places to go: Musée Provencale, Bobo D, shown in my picture above

Journey time: 4.5hours

In the heat in Dubai

Too much gloss and glamour, too little character sums up my impression of Dubai during my short 2 -day business trip to the United Arab Emirates (UAE) at the end of June. Everything was flash, the cars, buildings, the houses! But I couldn't help wondering what was behind all that. I'm always keen to find out the true life and real character of a city, town or country when I vist, business or pleasure, but I couldn't help wondering whether that was all there was to the much touted Dubai. Granted, it's good for shopping. Infact you don't even have to wander far from Dubai international airport to purchase enough clothes, food and jewellry for a year, but I was just waiting for some presenter to come and pull back the curtains on the canvas of high rise concrete and space-touching buildings to reveal the Dubai we never see. However, the truth is, it seems there's no such thing as the Dubai you never see! It's all there, what you see is what you get....I admit 2 days isn't exactly the longest period to gather as much knowledge and local-feel on a city, but that was the other problem, there was no local-feel. Of course there were indigenous Emiratis, who along the Western expat community formed much of the middle-class, but the next tier down was the hundreds of South Asian and Oriental workers on construction sites and in the service industries (hotels, restaurants etc.). Didn't see a single black soul outside of Dubai Airport - which incidentally must have single most diverse airport transit section - any race, nationality etc that you could possibly think of on this earth - in the entire world was there. Seriously.

Dubai wasn't really my cup of tea, but I will take my lovely mum's advice to go back and stay in one of the beach hotels and do the desert ride, oh and there's the indoor ski slope in a shopping mall or the gold souk, or.......... (yawn...)

Sahel Diaries: Between Bamako and Segou (April 25 2008)

We left Bamako at about 10.30am in the morning on Friday April 25, via the sortie de Bamako, in around 40 degrees heat. We passed the famous cite des mangues – the name speaks for itself! The road incredibly is tarred all the way to Ségou. We reached the border between Koulikoro region and Segou region about 11.30 or 12pm. I wasn’t studiously monitoring the time, though, as the heat was causing me to drift in and out of sleep.

Ségou is a tranquil place, having been the country's old colonial capital, and Mali’s second largest city. The Auberge where I stayed runs along the River Niger, which isn’t a bad location for watchin theg sunset. Unsuprisingly life in Ségou appears to revolve around the Niger – be it women doing their domestic chores, children playing around in the water, fishermen casting out their nets, and wannabe be tour guides with ‘pirgoues’ waiting to take the few tourists who venture there at this very hot time of the year across to the Island on the other side. arlier, coming into Ségou, we drove past the Office du Niger, which began an irrigation scheme a while ago. However the building didn’t seem to be open to the public, guess Friday is a bit of a lazy day here in Mali. In any casee we'd already seen hundreds of muslim faithfuls stream outside the grand mosque when we arrived in Segou. Tranquil pleasant city. Not much going on though, apart from the River Niger. A worthy stop nonetheless!

Pictures: Sunset over the pirogues by the River Niger, Donkeys on the road to Segou and me at the Musée Nationale, Bamako

Journey time: 3 hours

48 hours in New York

The Air India flight wasn't soooo bad, quite empty too. All I could think about about was the interview and what form it would take. It'd been ages since my last interview, and I knew what panels felt like, but I had never anticipated that stepping into the room, there'd be at least 8 people sitting round the table and another two on the phone line, probing and asking! I think I amy have stumbled when the issue of advocacy and advocacy strategies came up, after sounding like a broken record when I asked for a couple of minutes to look at my CV and think about what, if any, advocacy work I had done in the past, I was lost for words, quite literally. I managed to come up with a small contribution I had made on Somaliland during my stint as an intern at the International Crisis Group in Brussels and Dakar, but I knew from the looks on their faces, that they weren't completely satisfied.

I wasn't sure whether I would enjoy working on the 34th floor of a building in New York, and the Empire State building for that matter!!! But thoughts of 9/11 were far gone, when I realised that a lot was at stake for this job. It was with HRW, whom I had applied to for an internship fresh out of university - I was rejected, and was sorely and bitterly dissapointed. But the years passed, and I did many an internship at various 'prestigious' NGOs only to find myself just over two years ago in the private sector, analysing political risk in Africa - West Africa specifically!!!

There's no doubt that my current job is stressful, long, un-recognised hours, often bordering on slavery. Pressure from all sides and various departments, without the will power to lambast... about how I felt about this whole fiasco. Yeah they can raise your salary as much as they like, but what about the stress levels on the job? Somes aspects I enjoy like talking to clients, and showing off knowledge and expertise, presenting on Africa or smiling in front of a TV camera through a disucssion on Yaradua's controversial election as President!! However the more mundance aspects of the job still leave much to be desired.

As I sit here typing, anxiously wondering when HRW will call to say yes or no, I can't help thinking that I should have stayed in the NGO sector all along, perhaps the advocacy question would been a lot easier for me to answer. Who knows? I'm calling HRW tomorrow, friday, as it's been exactly a week now since my interview, or should I say, GRILLING!!!!!!

Mile High Blues

So I finally set foot at home in the UK just before 4pm today, after more than 12hrs of travel chaos. This is how it all started; my flight from Dakar to Paris should have left Leopold Senghor airport in Dakar at 11.50, but after sitting on the plane for close to 30mins after that time, it was clear that it would be a long night. The captain eventually said the ground engineering crew were trying to fix the emergency lighting in the cabins - Aviation regulations, or at least Air France's, dictate that flights only go ahead if all the saftety checklists are successfully conducted. Emergency cabin lighting is considered to be one of those saftey core fundamentals. No lights, No flight, No action, at least for the next four hours. We eventually all got back on the plane after 3am in the morning, and made our way to Paris. All were exhausted and the lack of interest in the in-flight entertainment testified to that. There was no way I was going to catch my connecting flight from Paris to London. So a very tired and knackered Rolake arrives at CDG and gets put on a 1pm flight to London, with assurances from the Air France client services guy that my luggage would be transferred unto the right plane accordingly. Ah!!! As if!! I got to LHR alright, but my luggage didn't. During the week I had been boasting to acquaintances in Dakar, that I had never had to endure the hassle of losing baggage on any of my travels. Guess everyone has their time.

Wednesday in Dakar

The Blind Couple from Mali - Amadou and Mariam certainly wowed the crowd on Wednesday night. There's no point in me given a long-winded critique of the show. Despite being at the very back, having the last row of seats meant we could actually stand on our chairs and watch le spectacle without getting on any one's nerves. The crowd were really swinging to the Afro-Blues beats coming from the band, and Amadou's electric - or should I say rock - guitar riffs were north meets south, country meets blues, kora meets gospel organ - sensational. I think I really enjoyed the songs in their native Bambara, though the songs in French like Je Pense a toi certainly got the crowd going. My next buy is their Dimanche a Bamako (Sunday in Bamako) CD, an apparently sensational collaboration with Manu Chao!!

Golden Celebrations in the Gold Coast

This post should ideally have gone up in March 2007, shortly after I returned from Accra. But it's never too late to tell good news. Read on......

Africa's Biggest Street Party in 2007

Take a stroll down 'Oxford Street' in the bustling Osu district of Ghana's capital Accra, and you'd be forgiven for thinking that the colours red, yellow and green were Ghanaian. Well actually many other African countries' flags feature these colours in numerous combinations, but what sets the Ghanaian drape apart is the black star at the centre. My research trip to West Africa's, and indeed Africa's, rising 'Black Star' could not have been more timely because it fell during the country's 50th independence anniversary celebration. Ghana has much to celebrate, and part of my mission on this research trip was to find out why, though the sheer hospitality of Ghanaians meant I occasionally forgot I was on a business trip!

Ghana is conspicuous in a region haunted by instability and conflict. With a post-independence history as turbulent as many of its neighbours, President John Kufuor's government has managed to re-ignite international business interest in the country through a rigorous programme of reform. The numbers of African American visitors (some in search of their ancestral roots) for instance testify to Ghana's appeal to the unexposed tourist. Ghana may not be the Maldives, but it certainly offers its fair share of relaxation and leisure in the Cape Coast and beyond. The continued boom in real estate, and array of construction works dotted all around Accra city speak of a vibrant economy and untapped potential. Traffic lights that work and are obeyed, clean streets and miles of paved roads can often be taken for granted here in the West, but you only need to catch a one-hour (and a bit) flight west of Ghana, over Togo and Benin to sub-Saharan Africa's most populous city (you do the guess work) and you'll understand why people like myself appreciate Accra a lot!!!

William, the driver of the car hire company I 'patronised' (African talk), was my one reliable source of non-stop political and social commentary on Ghana. His lament on the enormous amounts of money - an estimated US$20m - spent on the Golden Jubilee celebrations, as we drove past queues of workers waiting to board public transport or 'tro tros' home snapped me back to the reality of everyday life for ordinary Africans. In a sense Kwame Nkrumah's struggle for Ghana's independence, which eventually bore fruit in 1957 and paved the way for the rest of the continent, continues to be replicated in a struggle for economic emancipation among those on the fringes of society in Ghana today. In fact, there's a running joke that in his independence speech Nkrumah delivered his punch line as 'Ghana is free to suffer' rather than 'Ghana is free forever'. Granted, Ghana is not where it should be, particularly when compared with the likes of Asian economies such as Malaysia, which had a comparable GDP to Ghana back in the 1960s. However, Ghana is not where it used to be. Almost 40 years or so ago, food shortages, high inflation rates, a rapidly depreciating cedi (local currency) and political uncertainty threatened to wreak havoc on the fragile economy.

Throughout my ten days in the country, I spoke to entrepreneurs, journalists, students, and politicians in a bid to gauge the tide of opinion on Ghana@50. Politicians on the government side were naturally optimistic. However, having a power cut in the middle of my 'investment environment' conversation (Analysts, I am sure you know those ones) with one of them, in the foyer of Parliament House for that matter, made me feel slightly embarrassed on his behalf and didn't help his investment pitch. The energy crisis was perhaps the loudest undercurrent in conversations I had for the entire duration of my trip. The government did almost make true its promise of uninterrupted electricity in the lead up to and shortly after the 6 March anniversary celebrations. From what I heard the blackouts had been much worse recently. However, despite these shortcomings, many Ghanaians remain proud of their country, and the air of patriotism and flag-flying about the place make the flying of St George's cross or the Union Jack in England during a World Cup look like a garden party in comparison.

As a West African I felt completely at home in Accra, that is until I came across a passer-by with a T-shirt that read '4-1'. I was later told the shirt depicted Ghana's scorching defeat of the Nigerian football team in an international friendly that broke a 15-year jinx of Ghanaian losses to Nigeria. So much for Nkrumah's Pan-Africanist vision!!! Anyway, I accept defeat gracefully, and will gladly say that the Black Star of Africa is fast rising. With plans for an offshore financial services sector in the making, the construction of West Africa's largest shopping mall by SA investors, and the planned redenomination of the cedi (so you don't have to hire a truck to carry around the local equivalent of £100!!!!), I can only hope that the momentum of change in the country continues once the celebrations are over.

Orchestra Baobab

Cuban meets Wolof Griot meets Son meets Mandinga musical traditions. It's hard to describe what exactly Orchestra Baobab (OB) is. But hey you don't really need to, 'cause the music and rhythms move you. I had been due to see this eccentric band with colleagues in London at the end of November as part of several attractions at the London Jazz Festival, but let's just say I got lucky in Dakar. They were playing at Just4U, one of the coolest hangout spots in Dakar on Avenue Cheikh Anta Diop. Clearly I had been away from Dakar too long, after a very desperate taxi man convinced me to pay CFA3,000 for the ride from Sofitel Teranga to Just4U, and I was in no mood for haggling. At least I saw OB for free. Well those who know me, know I like music in almost any form it comes, and my one criteria for good music is if I can dance to it. I certainly could to the OB set, but in this case, I preferred to sit back and watch the crowd - average age there was about 35 I suppose - dance the night away. Funny I managed to pay CFA1,500 on the way back to the Teranga (meaning 'hospitality' in Wolof). Truly Made in Dakar.



Made in Dakar, is, by the way, the name of the October 2007 album release by OB on World Circuit Records.