At the risk of mouthing off and making myself sound like an authority on matters pertaining to literary festivals in Africa, I will start by saying that three or four years back, I had no idea that there were such things as literary festivals. No, I don’t live in the forest like some writers we know, I didn’t acknowledge the existence of such phenomenon like a literary festival until recently. Don’t get me wrong; I have had my fair share of travelling from country to country in search of that golden inspiration that most writers are usually fond of searching for; looking for adventures, misadventures and stories to tell. My travels have taken me to places in Akwa-Ibom, Port Harcourt, Damaturu, Accra, and recently the capital city of Nigeria, Abuja where I basked in the company of like-minded folks as we engaged in lengthy discussions about literature and the arts in Africa.
Yes, I have been lucky to move around a bit even though I would love to have moved around a bit more. In those journeys, I have had the privilege of making friends that share my fervidness for all things literature.
My genesis as a writer began in 2010, after I sent in an entry for a place at a writing workshop that was organised by the Future Nigeria group. Facilitators included Cassava Republic’s Jeremy Weate, author of Nights of a Creaking Bed Toni Kan, Tunde Aladese who was then editor of True Love Magazine, just to mention a few. I struggled during that workshop. Not only was I poorly equipped to attend—I didn’t know what or what not to expect—but I was also overwhelmed by the presence of other folks who seemed to have read wider and knew better than me.
I was also intimidated by the sort of exercises we were given to work on—to describe, to show-not-tell. I remember meeting Ayobami Adebayo, one of the fiction editors of Saraba Magazine and how without saying so much as a word to her because I was crushing on her, I shadowed her and adapted to the workshop from merely watching her. As the workshop progressed, every Saturday per week for three months, I became better equipped and better informed. And after that period, I developed an unending thirst for honing my craft than doing anything else; and for this reason, learning about literary festivals didn’t seem like an important thing to me. Besides I Writivism Workshop in 2013 at the Shehu Musa was living in a town where—despite its supposed literary heritage due to the calibre of writers that it had produced—nothing happened.
A fond thing about that period was the fact that I got to leave Abeokuta once a week, something that I really appreciated, given the sleepy nature of the town. It was also a chance for me to explore Lagos on my own. Until that workshop period, the only things I knew about Lagos were things I learnt from hearsay and television shows, so it was an educational package of sorts for me. Moving through Lagos and finding out firsthand about the anyhow-ness that I had read so much about, walking in a crowd of hundreds of people rushing to get to a destination only known to them, boarding a molue between the stinks of unwashed gutters and foul lingering smells exuding from other commuters, and jumping off the molue while it was still in motion in order not to miss my stop were cherished moments for me.
It was on the note of continued fervency to become a better writer that led to my discovery of the Ake Arts and Books Festival—also known as the Ake Festival—in 2013. It was one of those hot November Tuesday nights in Abeokuta when PHCN—the Nigerian power company—had done the usual and taken off electricity. I was squinting my eyes under the candle light, to read an excerpt of an Achebe book—There was a Country—that a friend just sent to me. I noticed my blackberry device was beeping continuously; it was a friend informing me that he was on his way into my town and he was crashing at my place. Naturally, I was excited to hear from him. I had not seen him since we left secondary school, where he was the president of the Literary and Debating team and I was the secretary. He lived in Lagos. When he arrived, he asked me to accompany him somewhere the next morning, refusing to give me full information about the place. Yes, my friend was always like that, even back then in school. He always kept people in suspense. However, the proposition of hanging out with him was so good that I couldn’t resist, he took me to the venue of the first edition of the Ake Festival at the June 12 Cultural Centre and that was my first encounter with a literary festival—an encounter that I never recovered from.
On arrival at the venue of the festival, the first things that caught my attention were the availability of countless books at the book fair, and that there was still a chance to register for a place in one of the master classes available. Because I was the sort that wouldn’t miss a chance at an education in whatever form, I enrolled for the masterclass. I chose the masterclass in short fiction because that was where I needed more tutoring and coaching. The short story form had always fascinated me more than all else. It was facilitated by Lisa Teasley and Doreen Baingana, two writers whose books I had had the privilege of reading.
This time I was ready for business. The classes were exciting and engaging. At the end of the two day masterclass, our facilitators encouraged us to join the rest of the activities of the festival. At the time, I assumed that the festival was only about masterclasses and book fairs but I was wrong because when I got to the main venue of the festival, I found things that beat my imagination. I saw writers, poets and lovers of literature in little clusters having discussions.
That was my first time being in the midst of so many writers all at once, and it seemed as though the pictures at the back of so many of the novels that I owned all became animated at the same time. I remember walking up to Teju Cole, Binyavanga Wainana and Tolu Ogunlesi—all top writers in Africa—and striking up random conversations and at the end posing for a selfie with them. They were all as down to earth as you could possibly imagine. I also got to see the programmes for the festival which included panel sessions, film-shows, dance, drama, cocktails, buffet, and poetry recitals just to mention a few. I probably would have died with excitement if the first event of the festival that I attended had not begun. I hung out mostly with some of the other participants at the master class and for once I was grateful that I was a local boy because I was able to talk about the town and its history to whoever cared to listen.
That same year, I also found out that Nigeria had a robust festival tradition because there were such festivals scattered all over the country. Asides the Ake Festival, there was also the Port Harcourt Book Festival, and the Lagos Books and Arts Festival. I also found out about a literary festival in faraway Uganda, the Writivism Festival which I wanted to attend given the fact that I was one of the participants of the Nigerian edition of the Writivism Creative Writing Workshop that had been held in Abuja and facilitated by Ukamaka Olisakwe and Abubakar Adam Ibrahim. But luck pitched its tent against me as I was not given a permission to travel from my work place; however thanks to social media I was lucky enough to follow events online.
Something that binds most of these festivals together is a need to improve the literacy of the African continent. The Storymoja Hay Festival in Kenya for instance has a motto that says ‘Get a book in every hand’ which also means that they are out to ensure the availability of books to every individual in and around Kenya. Perhaps this is why there is an avalanche of books being made available by writers and publishers alike at these festivals. Most of the books that make up the bulk of my library, for instance, were gotten during the Ake Festival and several other literary events that I have had the privilege of attending. Getting these books are always unproblematic for me.
Asides these events, you would not get quality books from any bookshop around. Besides the books are comparably cheaper because they are bought directly from the publishers. Asides the book fairs, the master classes, the movies and the likes, there are also visits to Secondary and Primary schools where the festival guests teach English literature classes.
Late last year during the second edition of the Ake Festival quality intellectual, while we were having several of the off-programme conversations conversations, someone asked a question: what was the role of these festivals in improving the level of literacy in Africa? The person went further in stating that despite the best efforts of these festivals, do they even move as much as a stone? I answered simply that, the festivals do not need to affect everybody because they were not designed with everybody in mind; they were designed for a specific group of people who are expected to channel whatever they have learnt through their experiences at these festivals to everyone else. These people then take up the responsibility of affecting those around them by hopefully getting them books, and infecting them with the literature fever. As for me, I will always grab any opportunity to attend a literary festival because that’s the only place where one can find quality intellectual conversations flowing freely without limits or restrictions.
What stayed with me mostly during the Ake Festival last year had to be the extent of cultural exchange that occurs. The atmosphere is made ready for this generosity. The organizers of the Festival also made sure that local dishes that were friendly to the stomach of the guests were available. I remember an Ake Festival guest Philip Barnaby’s face of satisfaction after a meal of what I assumed to be a local dish. The ability of these festivals to put smiles on the faces of their guests in different scopes would go a long way in also changing the stereotypical narratives about Africa in the West.