First stop Mali: An African Journey with Jonathan Dimbebly

Suffice it to say that the first tranche of Dimbebly's African Journey documentary on BBC 2 on Sunday 30 May was satisfactory, at times delightful. No controversial or patronising talk about Africans. People talked, Mr Dimbleby listened. There didn’t seem to any presumptions, assumptions or suppositions. And thankfully there was just enough contrast and diversity in the choice of stories and themes covering Mali, Ghana, Nigeria. And that had been my hope all along; that the continent would be portrayed as a diverse and complex (in a positive way) place. The opening scenes began in Bamako, Mali’s capital, and a city I love and respect very much. (See my posts from 2008 for more about my travels in Mali). Mopeds are a way of life for ordinary Malians in the city. JD bravely hitched a ride on one such taxi Moped, and was the true professional trying to talk into the camera, maintain poise and journalistic composure, knowing full well that ride could well be his last! The fond realisation that the purchase of a Moped by an ambitious young had elevated his status amongst his kith and kin was further testament to how so little can go a long way in Africa. Next is the Moped spare part, assembly and repair shop. Magician mechanics work repairs in no more than 15mins, a feat that would make a UK repair garage here blush. And these Mopeds are completely affordable. Why? You ask. Well you guessed it; they are Chinese imports and cost a third of the price of Japanese and Western models. The anti-China in Africa bandwagon can grind to a halt now.

At a Bamako wedding he’s been invited to, JD becomes the centre of female attention. Malian women are strong and are not modest about their make up and hair dos. Some of it can seem over the top, but for some reason, theirs are much easier on the eye than made-up faces I’ve seen else where in the sub-region, not least including my very own Nigeria. A well known local musician is singing and wooing the slightly embarrassed JD, who according to local custom has to ‘spray’ (very African term denoting the giving of money to a praise singer) the singer. The scene had all the recipes of a cringe moment, but JD wasn’t that rhythmically challenge, and I was quite relieved that the documentary quickly moved on the next scene in Segou, which is around 150km north-east of Bamako. Segou is a mesmerising place. Not for any fancy architecture, but for the mystic River Niger. The 4,180 km-long River Niger begins in the highlands of Guinea, and passes through Mali, Niger, and northern Benin before finally ending in Nigeria. It is the lifeblood and source of livelihood for many West Africans - pastoralists, nomadic herders, farmers, fishermen and pirogue makers (pirogues are slim fishing boats). Segou (see one of my previous blogs from 2008 for more about Segou) is a great spot for seeing how the River Niger really comes through life. The Niger is on the edge of the city. JD gets on a pirogue on the Niger to see the tasking work done by Segou’s Sand Diggers. These men essentially bring sand up from the River bed. Up to 20 metres below the water’s surface. There’s no breeding apparatus, goggles or swimming gear. It’s all shear grit, there’s no glamour in this, only about £0.50 a day for the sand digger who has to work up to 7 hours everyday in the scorching heat.

A few hundred kilometres up north, JD’s in Djenne, and fairly ancient and picturesque city, at least in the Sahelian, rather than Florentine sense. Djenne’s main centre piece here is the Djenne mosque with its Sudano-Sahelian style. The first structure was built in the 13th century and the most recent building we see dates back to 1907. The wonder of this building is that it’s made entirely of mud brick, like many other structures in Djenne. And its local architects are fiercely proud of this heritage. So much so that its considered an exclusive privilege to build and refurbish such ancient mud brick (aka adobe ) buildings. Those guardians of this ancient practice are extremely weary of new more modern concrete buildings springing up in the city, which they see as threatening to erode tradition. Mali is so vast, I wished Mr Dimblebly had carried on his expedition. One such unexplored place, and quite popular with Western tourists is the ancient and famous city of Timbuktu, as well Gao, both in the land of the ethnic and stunningly beautiful Tuaregs (who can also be found in parts in northern Niger, and parts of north-eastern Burkina Faso). Still, this 20min glimpse of Mali had enough passion and realism, without being overly sentimental.

Ghana and Nigeria were his next destination. Watch this space for my blogging commments on Dimbebly's Kumasi, Accra and Lagos travels

The BBC's Africa Obsession

Thank goodness for Freeview. Otherwise, I would never have realised the extent of BBC Africa coverage. BBC 3 and BBC 4 are probably the main culprits. From the Lost Kingdoms of Africa, shown on BBC4, to BBC 3's coverage of the African Cup of Nations, you'd be forgiven for thinking it was the colonial era. But the jury's still out on whether balance and objectivity have triumphed over condescension and neo-colonialism. The BBC has some brilliant and truly gifted journalists and documentary makers who, over the years, have managed to make some very complex and highly emotive African issues more accessible to the mainstream UK audience; young and old. You only need to see the manner in which the much-talked about Welcome to Lagos program was produced - modern (and at times hilariously quirky) music juxtaposed against African shanty town-smoky slum - to realise how the very best documentaries are increasingly unconventional. And perhaps they sometimes have to be controversial to pull an otherwise apathetic audience. This post is not intended to pass judgement or critique the content of the BBC's Africa documentaries. Instead it seeks to shed light on why the BBC 'Africa Obsession' (that's what I call it), however controversial, is still better viewing than the revolting Murdoch empire. I'm not sure many Sky News journalists can locate Africa on a world map. Ok that may be exaggeration. But the point remains. So long as we Africans ourselves have not figured out the most effective and far-reaching means to tell our own stories (good and bad), others will do it for us. And when they do, and do it well, we will applaud and emphasise the fact that it was the Africans being potrayed that made the story good, not the producers. When the producers do it badly, we will also be quick to take snipes at their patronising and 'empiristic' state of mind (Sorry Jay-Z and Alicia Keys, I had to!). So I wait with baited breathe for the first episode of 'An African Journey with Jonathan Dimbleby', airing on BBC2 on 30 May at 9pm. Those who criticised the potrayal of Lagos in Welcome to Lagos will be hypocrites if they believe that Mr Dimbebly's sojourn with Aliko Dangote, Nigeria's wealthiest business mogul and his private jet, is a more accurate reflection of the country. The point is both documentaries will only ever be half-truths, however seemingly accurate in their own right. The truth is, there are fewer Nigerians who are Aliko Dangotes than there are Nigerians who leave in slums like the Vocal Slenders of this world, in Welcome to Lagos. My interest in BBC Africa docu coverage is not whether I think the content is always right or not. Africa is so diverse and colourful that any documentary, however hard it may try, will almost always be slightly skewed in its accuracy. The real BBC obsession with Africa is an obsession of balance. Sometimes documentaries try too hard.

PS: The irony of the Welcome to Lagos documentary controversy is that Vocal Slender has now become a household name in Nigeria's music industry. It's fair to say that if his story of struggle against all the odds hadn't been aired on the BBC we probably wouldn't have heard of him today. Yet another brilliant instance of when the intended impact of a situation or condition results in an accidental, almost 'Divinic', outcome.

Watch this space for my commentary on Dimbebly's Africa travel series.

Debut II: A Rainy August Week in the Niger delta

A day on Brass Island in Nigeria's oil-producing Niger delta:

So it finally happened. Me, physically in the Niger delta. The last three years of theorising, opinions, perspectives, analysis and forecasting had finally come to fruition. I was given a week-long opportunity and perhaps long-overdue priviledge to get a feel (by no means exhaustive) of what everyday life was like for the inhabitants of Nigeria's swampy, creeky, marshy, rainy yet beautiful, and highly impoverished oil rich region. To say I came away, mesmerised, humbled and disturbed would be understating the extent of my experience in the Niger delta and Brass Island; a tiny and roughly 100,000 strong Island of 3 Nembe-speaking communities in Bayelsa state. The Nembe are a  sub-group of the ethnic Ijaw ( or Ijo), the largest group in the Niger delta and number around 10million. The helicopter flight to Brass from Port Harcourt (Nigeria's main oil city in adjacent Rivers state) was awesome, you could see miles and miles of swamp, the random odd fisherman's canoe and smoke-spewing huts on stilts. Lifestyles so immersed in the terrain and landscape, that it seemed like they were created together, and at once. Suddenly from out of the blue, I spot a single flare – a gas flare to our west, and the reality of life here dawns on me. Nigeria burns more gas from oil exploration than it flares. It's a terrible waste of resources, and a serious health and environmental hazard. Despite efforts to regulate this act and get companies to convert associated gas for commercial use rather than burn them into the air, enforcement has been poor, and the practice continues. On the 40 minute helicopter flight, I was joined by 5 expatriate ('expat' henceforth) and local oil workers, in orange 'jumpsuits' and boots. Hard, gritty men, who seemed like they'd been working the pipelines and oil platforms for most of their lives. One of the expat passengers, who sounded like he was Dutch, I noticed, had lost an arm, and I wondered how that happened. I could only imagine that he'd been on the frontlines of a war, somewhere had been sent back home, only to find himself plunged into the deep dark world of oil exploration. Perhaps his home government thought it'd compensate his sacrifice in military service by rewarding him with an oil job. Still the expats and locals sat unmoved throughout the bumpy flight. I for one, was extremely nervous. I was trying to take in the sights below, and rein in my fear of heights. Worse still, we were flying through a terrible storm, and I thought my introduction to the delta was part of a sick baptism of fire, intended to prepare me for a more sordid reality upon landing. My fellow passengers chukled at the way I winced when the helicopter bounced up and down with the rain, wind and clouds. When we eventually landed on Brass, someone later told us that the helicopter pilots had actually momentarily lost his bearings during the flight but hadn't wanted to scare us by telling us.

Nevertheless, we were told we couldn't stay overnight on Brass, and would have to make daily trips to the Island, because it was too unsafe for expats. Me? An expat? No kidding. As black and as Nigerian I was, I was still an expat! Anyway, my first task was to conduct interviews with several villagers. A women's group, a youth group and environmental action group. It seemed like an adventure for me, but for the people I would be speaking to, this was no joke. I had my first taste of delta swamp life, when we had to hold one of the women's meetings in total darkness. No lights. Parts of the delta are still not connected to Nigeria's national grid even in the 21^st century. The oil companies, and only a handful of them are doing their best, but the hard fact is there's a stark absence of government. One of my escorts told me that the Brass Island local government chairman doesn't even reside on Brass Island, but in Port Harcourt. The chairman only turns up once a month to receive and 'distribute' the monthly allocation of central government revenue to the lower tiers of government. It's a persistently sore point with Brass Island residents. And for the improverished Islanders, all they see are oil and gas companies, who become pseudo-public service providers, and who unfortunately can't keep up with community expectations. But perhaps the most revealing aspect of my interview-round, was finding myself in the house of one of the community leaders. It was fair to say the environment surrounding the house was a run-down melting pot of corrugated iron shacks, pot-holed roads, and grimy alleyways of poor communities and pot-bellied children. My heart sank at these sights, which were right on the door step of mega-oil and gas exploration. But alas, all that was to change when I was taken into the house or should I say, decked-out-pad, of one of the youth leaders of these communities. By the way, 'youth' in Nigeria, and the delta in particular can mean anywhere from 18-45 years of age. So the fact that many of the men sitting in the parlour of this house looked like they could be my dad, was a secondary issue. In the throes of conversation with the youth leader (who I will call 'Papi' for anonymity's sake), my eyes darted around the room to the furnishings; flat screen TV, looked almost 50-inch, leather sofas, air-conditioners, and sleak looking sound-system. Papi thanked me for coming, and politely but firmly asked my escort to leave the room so he could talk “frankly” as he put it, about how the oil industry was “stealing” their resources. In any case, his major gripe was that his boys, some of whom were standing around him, weren't getting jobs. ('boys' in this context, refers to anyone who indirectly or directly benefits from your patronage). Papi wanted to regain control of allocation oil and gas jobs to members of his own community, and he wasn't happy that there were not enough jobs to go round. So I listened, and took notes, nodding in apparent sympathy, but still slightly confused that a youth leader who claimed to represent the interests of Brass' poor and marginalised communities, could live in such luxury. As you can imagine, I wasn't convinced by his story, since the proof is always in the pudding. Papi and his boys had a lot of complaints, and at one point when they raised their voices in anger at the oil companies' alleged neglect, my escort knocked on the door to ask me if I was okay, and I responded with a quick yes, so the men in the room wouldn't think I was uncomfortable. I wrote down as much as I could, and left, saying a polite thank you. But yet I didn't let it blur my view on the general plight of the ordinary delta who does really live on less than a dollar a day. I later left Brass Island feeling drained and overwhelming. On the way back to the helicopter station, we passed a polluted river flow. An oil spill had languished there for several weeks, and there was still no clean-up exercise. I came back to Brass Island the next day and the day after, and it was pretty much the same story of accusation and counter-accusation between oil companies, security forces, and communities. The entire experience was perplexing. So who's really telling the truth. Then it dawned on me that the utter complexity and depth of the delta's challenges would take years to unravel and solve. So as I finally flew over this, at once rich and deprived, melée of mangrove swamps and creeks, I realised that my life was much better than I ever thought. So many people have written about oil and the Niger delta that I wondered whether it was possibly that burden of unending global attention and media interest, and the resulting influx of researchers, academics, environmental and human rights activists, development consultants and random adventurers that was part of the problem.

The Debut

So the CNN debut finally aired, but it's short! After a gruelling 15mins interview, all that's included in the report is a 20 second clip of moi.....Jim...Jim Boulden, nice try. Anyway, Rome wasn't built in a day. I'll get my full and unedited air time eventually :-)

Happy viewing. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8uhJx7pDkSc I'm at 1:03 mins for about 15 seconds or so.

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!!!!!!