Oath, Boast, Toast 2025

 

Raising my drinking horn for the annual Oath, Boast and Toast. Let me know yours: what are you going to do this year? What are you proud of having done last year? Who, or what, would you like to raise a toast to?

Ren - Eden

YouTube have age restricted this, but go watch,
it's very well done.

Mysterious Idjwi Rock

A few weeks back I did a video about a trip I took to Idjwi Island with my friend Maia. Whilst going through the photos, I discovered one I'd taken of a strange rock. I thought it might be some sort of carving, so sent it to the Trust for African Rock Art. It appears it might be Batwa hieroglyphs. The chair of TARA sent back some photos of Batwa rock art in Gabon, and the similarity with Knowth in Ireland really got me thinking. 

Vamp it Up

Turns out I'm not the only one who's been into Vampires this week - and Carmilla. One of my favourite author/YouTubers,  Caitlin Doughty, just covered it above. I also found a couple of interesting TED animations. One covers How Dracula Became the World's Most Famous Vampire and the other looks at the folklore of vampires and other, less sexy, interpretations.

Dragging My Feet

 

Ugh.

I'm at 390 pages of about 450 pages edited and I haven't done any in days.

Too much. Too many pages. Too many words. 

Make it short now please, yes, thank you.

I have also fallen down the rabbit hole of YouTube recently. Instead of editing the novel that I need to get finished, I have been making YouTube videos about Rwandan KFC and avocado chocolate mousse... Why? I have no idea.

I just can't decide whether I like YouTube or not. It makes me very uncomfortable, but I can't seem to stop doing it. First off, I hate the way I look on camera. It's dreadful. People say that about the way their voices sound when recording, but I've always quite liked my voice, and I find it easy to manipulate, to make it low and sexy or curt and direct. But you can't really do much about the way you look, and YouTube is full of beautiful people. Trevor Noah did an interesting piece on how constantly being online is affecting women's self-confidence: "humans didn't evolve to see their own faces all the time."  It's hard to feel comfortable, but I think I'm getting over it.

It also totally blows the mystique for any writer, and the viewing figures show that. It's been shown in previous studies that people fall in love with books rather than authors, and authors giving opinions and being actual people can put readers off pretty fast. So, there's a big risk in authors doing YouTube. It's like that whole photos on CVs thing. When people read a book, they have often never seen the author, and they imagine the best version of that person. When they do see a picture, or an interview, or hear the author's voice, it rarely lives up to the illusion.

Finally, the reason authors love writing is that it gives you time to consider what you want to say and to find the perfect words to do so. Whereas, videos are way more immediate. Yes, you can edit, but only to a certain extent. Fixing videos in post is way harder than fixing text in post. Writing, you can completely rewrite, whereas video takes a lot more effort to refilm. It also takes people more effort to quote from text than to copy and repost video clips. So, you feel a lot more social anxiety about it.

I just don't know if I like it or not. I swing wildly between 'make more videos!' and 'delete everything!' I don't know if I'll keep doing it or not, but, for the time being, it's interesting and there aren't that many people doing it in Rwanda.

I'm a bit annoyed as I have another channel with over 220 subscribers, and I have no idea how I got them. One of my videos about intore dancing racked up more than 30,000 views. But there's no way to transfer people over to my new channel, and that only has 45 subscribers, even though I feel the content is more interesting. It's irksome that the videos where I don't appear and don't talk get huge likes, but the ones where I do barely get any. 

I've been watching a lot of YouTubers talking about the social anxiety that goes with content creation, and the importance of not taking it too seriously - and the issues surrounding YouTube rewarding clickbait rather than quality content (because it's all about advertising revenue). So, I think, so long as it's just a side hobby, there's no harm in it. However, it is distracting me from writing a lot. I probably would have finished editing Sargon by now if I hadn't started making videos (and watching a shit ton of them). 

So... I don't know.

I'm having focus issues right now.

I'd love to hear from other writers with YouTube channels - what their feelings are about it and whether it's a constructive use of time or not? Is creating video content fundamentally at odds with the writer's psyche?

My First Audible Return

 

Last week, I made my first ever Audible return. 

It's something I never thought I'd do. I'm usually happy to give anything a go, from classical literature, to horror, to fantasy and edgy contemporary. It's rare that I give a really bad review, I try to find something constructive to say. I'm also very aware of how much work goes into the writing of a book, the narration of a book, and the editing. Which is why I've decided not to name this one.

The decision was pretty quick, within the first twenty minutes. Made all the more surprising because it's a popular title, having just landed a streaming deal.

So, why did I do it? Well, maybe a build-up of things. I'd just come out of a run of fairly heavy books, including American Psycho, What Dreams May Come, and The Savage Detectives, plus I'm in the middle of The Untamed State, which isn't a laugh a minute (and no, I didn't pick it up because I thought it said The Untamed! - though I would definitely get right on that if they ever Audibled it in English).

After all of that, I was in the mood for some high fantasy. Something divorced from reality and a little bit fun. But I do like my high fantasy with a touch of believability. I like characters to be quirky, but also have a little depth to them. I really haven't been having much luck with that lately. 

I didn't realise until I stopped it and hit the 'information' tab that it was YA fantasy. This in itself isn't always a problem, there's some really great YA fantasy out there, but it reminded me of the way I wrote when I was a teenager. It just didn't feel developed. There was a bit of word repetition going on, but the main female character, having just been pulled out of a labour camp after years of back-breaking servitude, only seems able to comment on how handsome (or not) the male characters are that she comes into contact with. There doesn't seem to be any acknowledgement of everything that's happened to her. It was all a bit shallow. I know there must be a specific word for this style of fantasy? It's got to be a genre style because there's a lot of it. I felt it with The Redemption of Althalus - just that really jaunty, oh-nothing-really-matters sort of vibe. And I love a good assassin, too. I can get behind a down-and-dirty thief or ne'er-do-well, but they can't just be invincible from the outset. 

Except if you're the Witcher. For some reason, you can get away with that. There's something about the way Andrzej Sapkowski writes - he's just got a free pass on that one.

But this just didn't feel like it had depth in either the characters or the language. Maybe that's it. You can put up with a bad story if the language is beautiful, and you can put up with shonky language if the story is gripping, but if you're not feeling either of those two things, then it's a no from me. 

Due to my guilt over how much work goes into books and audiobooks, I've sat through a few that really didn't enthrall me in the past, and I think I've just come to a point now where I can't do it, because there are so many great books out there, and the time you spend on something you're not enjoying could be spent on something you really do.

Still, it was a tough decision to return it. I know there's a huge amount of controversy about Audible returns, and whether they should be allowed. If you go to your purchase history, you'll see that next to every audiobook you buy, there's a 'return' button. Honestly, I don't think there's anything wrong with that in the first couple of chapters. However, I do find it weird that I have the option to return (and get a refund for) books that I have finished listening to. Apparently, you can return any book within a year of purchasing it, even if you've listened to it. That doesn't sit right with me. Surely you know by midway if you're not enjoying it? Although, there does appear to be a two-books-per-year return cap. 

What makes me sad is that I saw a post recently on Twitter where an indie author said she'd just received her first Audible return. I don't think I could bring myself to do that to a self-published author. It seems a little harsh that Audible would actually tell her that, though maybe it's required for accounting purposes. I didn't feel so bad about returning this one because it's clearly sold a lot of copies and has enough good reviews on Amazon that they've probably stopped counting. 

Anyway. It was an experience.

Akkad at 115k

Art by Castagnas

 

With all the quaky-shakies going on recently, I haven't done a lot of writing. Poor sleep has led to a state of being too knackered to imagine much. Yesterday, I hit the 115k mark with Akkad and there's still a way to go. Another 5,000 words and it'll be the longest novel I've ever written. Currently immersed on the battlefield, which I must admit, isn't my favourite place to be. I'm not great at military tactics and keeping track of everyone can prove challenging. I can already feel that this novel is going to require more fixing in edit than anything that's gone before, but I'm soldiering on.

I'm still discovering interesting things along the way, including the Babylonian Map of the World, which came much later in history than Akkad, but is still pretty fascinating. I was going to write about this, but I've been spending a lot more time on YouTube recently, so I'll probably just make a video of it soon-ish. It's my new favourite writing distraction after Words With Friends. I must admit, I'm surprised and nervous that I've taken to it. I've always preferred being behind the camera - hence, writer - but I'm getting used to it. Hoping to do an interview with my friend Firmin soon, about his publishing business in Rwanda. More and more lately, I've been thinking I should shift the focus of my consultancy towards something I'm really interested in, and publishing is one of those things.

So, plodding along. 

You'll be glad to know the earthquakes seem to have stopped. We had a little wobble late yesterday evening, but the past couple of days have been really calm.

Here's one of those videos. It's the stuff I was saying previously about the weird similarity between Mesopotamian art and Rwandan imigongo, only in video form. 

Another Short Nyiragongo Update

 

 

Another brief update on the Nyiragongo situation. There is now a mass evacuation going on in Goma. The tremors have really died down since this morning and everything is calm in Kigali. 

Nyiragongo Update

 

I posted this last night as an update to what's been going on with Nyiragongo and Lake Kivu. Pleased to report that the last 24 hours have been really calm. There was one final, large shudder after I posted the above, but since then only a couple of very gentle wobbles. It looks like the worst is hopefully over, though there's still a lot of destruction and infrastructure damage in Rubavu and Goma.

Nyiragongo Erupts

 

 

Yesterday, Nyiragongo erupted. It's about six miles from the northern border of Rwanda, in Goma, DRC. It is an utterly magnificent and amazing natural landmark, but it's also ferociously dangerous for the people living in its shadow. The above was my reaction to the news of the eruption, plus a little information about the volcano and the last time it erupted in 2002. We've been experiencing a few tremors down here in Kigali today.

Seismic activity in the past 24-hours.

Akkad at 110k - The Great Flood

Art by Annamieka Hopps Davidson

 

Took Akkad over the 110k mark a few days back.

Thought I'd share a couple of research points that I've found really interesting. 

The last part of this book is an epic tale of war and conquest. I was having a tough time waging war against Sumer because Akkad needed more of an army than it had, and I wanted to move some men from Ebla, in the north, to assist. Only, that's at least three weeks' hard ride away. In order for the armies to arrive in time, they needed to start moving ahead of the showdown. The only way I could think to do this was to send a message by bird. However, paper hadn't been invented and a pigeon couldn't exactly carry a slab of clay in its beak. They might have painted messages on cloth, but I didn't want to get too creative about that. I didn't even know if the Akkadians had homing pigeons. When I looked it up, I was fairly surprised to discover they did:

In 2350 B.C.E. King Sargon of Akkadia—the present Iraq—ordered each messenger to carry a homing pigeon. If the messenger was about to be captured, he released the pigeon, which flew back to the palace. Its arrival meant another messenger should be sent. - Sarah Woodbury

That certainly made things a lot easier. Though, I assume the pigeon had an identifying leg tag or something to explain who it belonged to. A man about to be captured might have had trouble writing down what happened in time to send the bird. 

Still, the Akkadians appear to have invented empires, kick-ass bows, and the world's first ever automated bounce message.

The second thing I want to talk about is the flood myth. 

I've been aware for many years that the Noah's Ark story in the Bible is based on a Mesopotamian flood myth, but I had no idea just how closely they'd copied that one. There's a few versions, but the one from The Epic of Gilgamesh is the closest to Noah's Ark, predating it by around 2,000 years. That's as far before the crucifixion of Christ as we are after it today. A long time in terms of human lifespan. You can find a full translation here, with the flood story starting on P.43. Utnapishtim is the Noah of that story. There are a couple of earlier versions, namely that of Ziusudra, but Utnapishtim is the closest to the bible story. You can find a fascinating breakdown, including full texts, here.

So, some of the things that you'd expect to end in a publishing lawsuit today:

The most striking similarity is the near-identical deck areas of the three arks: 14,400 cubits2, 14,400 cubits2, and 15,000 cubits2 for Atrahasis, Utnapishtim, and Noah, only 4% different. - Wiki

The end of the flood and finding land:

A raven was released and apparently never returned... Noah sends out the dove one more time: “Then he waited another seven days and sent forth the dove, and she did not return to him anymore.” The dove had no need to return to the ark, since it had found a home on land... The raven served as a first attempt to discover dry land, and the dove became Noah’s way of determining when to leave the ark.

- Got Questions 

When a seventh day arrived

I sent forth a dove and released it.

The dove went off, but came back to me;

no perch was visible so it circled back to me.

I sent forth a swallow and released it.

The swallow went off, but came back to me;

no perch was visible so it circled back to me.

I sent forth a raven and released it.

The raven went off, and saw the waters slither back.

- Epic of Gilgamesh

So, the raven went first and the dove found land for Noah, but in the original, the dove went first and the raven found land. 

Now for a few key differences.

In the original, they talk about the boat coming to rest on Mount Nimush. Mount Nimush is known today as Pir Omar Gudrun in Southern Kurdistan. 

Around the 11th century, Christians decided that the mountain was Mount Ararat in present-day Turkey. However:

Many historians and Bible scholars agree that "Ararat" is the Hebrew name of Urartu, the geographical predecessor of Armenia; they argue that the word referred to the wider region at the time and not specifically to Mount Ararat. - Wiki

Since when has geography ever stood in the way of a good story? Plus, as I discovered on my own trip to Armenia, it was the first country ever to become Christian in 301 AD. There is even an Ararat Distillery, where Churchill and Stalin both ordered their cognac from.

Moving on. After the flood, Noah was said to live to the age of 950. That's twenty years on the first man, Adam, who made it to 930, but a few years shy of the eldest member of the cast, Methuselah, at the slightly chucklesome age of 969.

Mind you, none of them holds a light to half the kings in the Sumerian King List, such as Alulim, who reportedly reigned for 28,800 years, or En-men-lu-ana, who reigned for 43,200 years. You can imagine the conversation between the scribes:

"Man, nobody's gonna believe a king can live that long. We need to revise down to something believable in the next bestseller..."

"Yeah, you're right. How about nine-hundred years?"

"Sure, that sounds feasible."

As you've probably guessed, at least in the King List, it was a translation error. Years weren't being recorded in units of one, but in units of sars (3,600), ners (600), and sosses (60).

Xisuthros was listed as a king, the son of one Ardates, and to have reigned 18 saroi. One saros (shar in Akkadian) stands for 3600 and hence 18 saroi was translated as 64,800 years. A saroi or saros is an astrologolical term defined as 222 lunar months of 29.5 days or 18.5 lunar years equal to 17.93 solar years. - Wiki

Some apologists explain these extreme ages as ancient mistranslations that converted the word "month" to "year", mistaking lunar cycles for solar ones: this would turn an age of 969 years into a more reasonable 969 lunar months, or about 78.3 solar years. - Wiki

Whilst these guys were haggling over numbers, all the heroes of the original flood myth were granted eternal life for their hard work. Both Utnapishtim and his wife attained godhood. In the bible, Noah just gets three sons for saving the human race... weigh up that one: immortality v. three sons. There's a lot to be said for the old ways. 

If anyone was wondering - Bahrain. That's where the world came into being. Bahrain is an island in the Persian Gulf, formerly known as Dilmun. Seat of the gods and all worldly power. Paradise on earth and possibly the original Garden of Eden. Once international travel returns, you can probably get a package tour.

Whilst Noah was entirely focused on saving animals and his own family, Utnapishtim also rounded up as many craftspeople as he could, knowing that the new world would need things like carpenters, brickmakers and artists. 

One thing the EoG does clarify though, is something I always wondered about: whilst floating about on that ark, what on earth did they eat?

Well, the epic deals with logistics. The sun god Shamash took care of that: 

In the morning he let loaves of bread shower down,

and in the evening a rain of wheat

So, they all ate very well. Except the carnivores, who probably ate each other.

It's been really interesting reading through all of this and the above are just the highlights. It ties in quite closely with my theories on the origins of imigongo. Something cropped up in the above story that lends strength to the early migration theory from Sumer to Central Africa, but I'll devote another post to that.

Meanwhile, time to get back to that novel.

The Strong and the Dead

 

Rita Willaert  

This post is a continuation of my earlier post Origins of Imigongo, which explores whether there's a connection between the above art in Burkina Faso, imigongo art in Rwanda, and the cone temple at ancient Uruk. You can follow that post link to catch up.

 

 

Last night, my friend, poet Audrey Haney, sent me a link to this article: Photographers Gain Entry into Traditional African Village Where Every House Is a Work of Art

Some incredible pictures, and the striking thing is that the colour scheme of red, white and black matches that of both Uruk and Rwanda. 

 

 Burkina Faso

Uruk (The MET)

Rwanda (AFAR)

All of the patterns at the cone temple are found, fairly identically, in Rwanda, though there are more patterns in Rwanda than appear in the pictures of Uruk. There is also a greater difference between Rwanda and Burkina Faso, both in the types of pattern and the exactness of their appearance. Rwanda and Uruk are both extremely exact in their symmetry, whereas the patterns found in Burkina appear more freehand. They have more of a feel of Ubaid art about them, which comes from a much earlier period in Mesopotamian history. The cone temple was built over an existing Ubaid temple, and a torch left burning there for the previous gods.

 

Ubaid Pottery

 

I thought this maybe backed up the idea of an earlier Ubaid art migration over the lip of Egypt to West Africa. Meanwhile, in Uruk, the Sumerians maybe developed those patterns into something more exact which migrated across the shorter Yemeni route to Ethiopia, along with the Semitic language variant, and down to Rwanda. 

The article says that the photographed village, Tiébélé, was settled in the 1400s by the Kassena people. 

Falling down that rabbit hole on Wiki:

The Kassena people are part of the greater Gurunsi group and were separated from the Gurunsi ethnic group at the beginning of the 20th century...

And, when you look up Gurunsi, you discover:

The Gurunsi, or Grunshi, are a set of related ethnic groups inhabiting northern Ghana and south and central Burkina Faso... Oral traditions of the Gurunsi hold that they originated from the western Sudan passing through the Sahel. While it is unknown when the migration occurred, it is believed that the Gurunsi were present in their current location by 1100 AD. 

If you Google Image 'Gurunsi people,' you find lots more of this type of art.

So, if we cling to the migration theory, perhaps an earlier migration of art out of Uruk, heading west through Sudan to West Africa, and a later one down through Ethiopia to Rwanda?

That seems a likely link.

However, as I mentioned in the last post, Uruk was completely abandoned, and the temple most likely destroyed or buried, by 700 AD. If the similarities between Burkina Faso and Ubaid art are true, then that first migration may have been as far back as 3,800 BC or earlier, as the Ubaid period lasted from around 6,500-3,800 BC.

The cone temple, that more closely resembled imigongo, was built over the Ubaid temple around 3800–3400 BC, which is when the second migration may have occurred.  

I mentioned before that it would help to find more evidence of this style of art along those two routes, but tribal migration was very fluid in Africa even as recently as 200 years ago, and many of those countries, such as Sudan and Chad, have undergone massive upheaval and instability over the years, so it's likely that nothing much would remain of a tribe that was passing through.

I still strongly believe that the comparison between Uruk, imigongo and Kassena/Gurunsi art is just too close to be coincidence, and there's plenty of migratory potential there to connect them. 

It's just really interesting.

And I'll leave you with another mind-bender.

In the article about Tiébélé, there's a line:

Stavrakis recounts their experience, explaining how before they arrived they were even given a dress code: “We were told in advance that we must not wear anything red and we may not carry an umbrella. Only the chiefly noble family is permitted that privilege and to do so would constitute a great affront to our hosts.”

On the very first page of my notebook whilst researching Akkad, I copied down an ancient Mesopotamian saying that I stumbled across:

When walking with the strong or the dead, do not wear clothes of purple or red.

Considering that Tiébélé is a city of kings and mausoleums, that seems hauntingly reminiscent of the ancient past.

 

Oath, Boast, Toast 2021

 

First off, is everyone alive? Everyone doing okay out there?

What the hell was that?

I'm sorry everyone, I think that might have been my fault. I jinxed it by raising a toast to 'a better year than the one before.' I apologise to everyone. Back then, I thought splitting up with my fella was bad (okay, that and the month-long bout of malaria, the kidney infection, and losing my cat).

I had no idea. 

I was planning to jet off round the world and get drunk with friends. 

How was I to know we'd all be stuck at home getting drunk with Netflix?

How were any of us supposed to know? (Shush Bill Gates, any of us except you).

Just, seriously...

Still, I've been a lot better off than many people.

Last year, I included a few downers in my annual oath, boast and toast. I'd never done that and was at a particularly low point. This year I'm going back to the traditional format of only focusing on the positive. 

What were the highlights?

• Secure the Shadow is out in the world. I'd been writing that for a while, and I was never too sure about it, so it was wonderful to finally let go of it and to see it get such a positive reception. Even made somebody's 'Best books of 2020' list. You can catch up on the interviews here. I'm now head-first into a new book that I've wanted to write for a while, all about the Akkadian Empire. It was originally only going to focus on Enheduanna, but, to get to her, I've had to write the Legend of Sargon as well. Looks likely this will be two books. So, I'm entering the New Year with a writing project I absolutely love. 
• One of my other works, The Children of Lir, inspired a lovely piece of art by Irish artist Jonathan McFerran.
  
• Also on the writing front, a strange quirk of fate. I lost my job thanks to the disappearance of DFID. Twenty-five percent of my organisation's income disappeared overnight, and my salary was a casualty of those cutbacks. Thanks Borris! However, I ended up being brought on as head of the Writing & Communication course for a prominent university instead. I've spent the past six months designing and then delivering their foundation curriculum, training 36 first-year medical students in English grammar, technical writing and clear communication. As such, I've now been retained for a second semester, where I get to teach full-on creative writing. Try and inspire students to enjoy writing. It's rather a shift in pace from development work to academia, but I'm very much enjoying it. So far, everything's been taught online, but, restrictions allowing, I'll get to see the campus soon. It's really been quite an amazing ride so far.
  
• Randomly, I've taken up boxing. With the pools closed and an ever-expanding waistline, I decided to try to fight the paunch, quite literally. My friend introduced me to her boxing trainer, Mike, and I've discovered I really like punching things. Turns out, I'm not too bad at it, either. I had no idea I'd actually enjoy this sport and wish I'd done it years ago.  
• In the sheer boredom of lockdown, I turned to Duolingo. I'm useless at languages, but I've now got further with French than I ever have before. Part of this was that I wanted to understand my students better. Many of them have been taught English vocabulary but French word order, grammar and sentence construction, so I wanted to understand specifically why they were phrasing things in certain ways. It's also partly in solidarity. They work so hard in English, that I thought I should remind myself how hard it is to learn another language, just to stay humble. I've bought a copy of Les Medicines Redicules: En coulisse avec Moliére by Laura Bazire, which is a story for eleven-year-olds. Maybe by next year I'll be able to read it. I also took a little look at Korean after falling in love with Korean soaps during lockdown. I love their phonetic system, but - one language at a time.

For me, this year actually hasn't been as tough as last year. Certainly not on a personal level. I'm a very happy recluse and can spend days on my own without seeing anyone. I've been lucky enough to keep an income and my family are all well and safe. I'm very much looking forward to seeing them again one day, but I'm able to wait a while longer. Had to do dad's 70th virtually, and probably the same for my 40th, but we'll save it up for a proper reunion. Bit pissed off about Britain voting for Brexit and possibly requiring a visa to visit friends in Europe once we're free to do so.

So, last year I swore to take a holiday to go visit friends. Yeah... can safely assume that one didn't happen. I boasted about the two novels I'd published. And I toasted to a better year ahead. Again - sorry! Won't ever do that again.

This year...

Oath

I'm going to enter one writing competition a month via Almond Press for the next twelve months. Doesn't matter how big or small - just to keep my hand in and force me to write different things.

*drink*

 

Boast

I have a strong left hook! (according to my boxing trainer)

*drink*

 

Toast

To my friend Jean, who underwent a kidney transplant this year, and his girlfriend, Marie, who gave him that kidney. May they continue to be happy and well.

*drink*

Natives

 

Just finished this. Such a good book:

From the first time he was stopped and searched as a child, to the day he realised his mum was white, to his first encounters with racist teachers - race and class have shaped Akala's life and outlook. In this unique book he takes his own experiences and widens them out to look at the social, historical and political factors that have left us where we are today.

Covering everything from the police, education and identity to politics, sexual objectification and the far right, Natives speaks directly to British denial and squeamishness when it comes to confronting issues of race and class that are at the heart of the legacy of Britain's racialised empire.

Though it took me a moment to get into because he started out by mentioning his sister is Ms. Dynamite, so I had to work through that earworm first.

This is going to be a waffle-out-loud sort of post, as race is a fascinating subject. I had quite an interesting upbringing, spending my early years in Leicester, which has the largest Diwali celebration outside India. My school was fairly evenly split between Caucasian and Indian British, predominantly Gujarati. At that time, I believe public schools were all obliged by law to deliver a Christian assembly once a week, but although we did the Nativity play each Christmas, we also celebrated Diwali just as much, making little diva lamps and colourful mandala patterns. There was a huge fireworks display in the park, with sweets, jewellery and saris everywhere. So, I grew up with a really positive experience of mixed cultures.

I later moved to a little village in the Midlands, with a CofE primary school. It was a lot less colourful in every sense. Then I went to an upper school of around 1,000 students, but only remember one black student, who, like Akala, had a white mother. Years later, when I came back from Africa for a visit, I remember stopping in my tracks when I saw a Rasta with dreadlocks walking across the village green. We ended up drinking down the pub later on and laughing about why I'd been so surprised. I mean, it really is a very white village. 

Though, with the Black Lives Matter movement, I have to say, as white as our school was, I do need to give a shout out to one particular teacher, Mr. Ditchburn. He was our humanities teacher and it's only now that I've come to realise how different he was. I was surprised, during BLM, how many people were saying they'd never learnt about slavery in school. I was puzzled by this, because I thought the national curriculum was universal across Britain and that other people must have had the same lessons as I had. But, when I talked to my friend Jo, she confirmed that she had never learnt about slavery in school. Whereas, I had. I very clearly remember Mr. Ditchburn rolling in the TV so that we could all watch Roots, and devoting a lesson to slavery, in which he unrolled large diagrams of the inside of a slave ship to show how close together everyone was packed and how uncomfortable it would have been. I was really surprised when I found out that my friends from other schools hadn't been taught this.

Growing up, I remember my dad taking me to Trafalgar Square to see Nelson Mandela appear on the balcony of South Africa House. I must have been about fifteen, and didn't really understand the significance at the time, but really glad to say I was there now. It was a very historic moment. My dad later went on to visit Robben Island and Khayelitsha.

I also remember a very awkward meal, where a friend of the family, for some reason still unknown to me today, decided to go on a paternalistic rant that went something like, 'What would your dad do if you ever came home with a black man, eh? You'd be out on your ear.' I was only about thirteen, and mortified to talk about sex in front of adults in any context, but he really didn't know my parents. They wouldn't care what colour or gender my partner was, so long as I was happy. But I couldn't understand at the time why my dad didn't stand up and tell him that. Later on, my dad explained that he didn't want to spoil the meal because the guy was a close friend of the host, whose birthday it was. Then he told me about the guy's life and it hadn't been a happy one. So, although I never warmed to the guy after those comments, I guess I understood not wanting to add to his unhappiness and picking the right time for a battle.

This book was also excellent at giving a history of racism and immigration in the UK, and dispelling myths such as  William Wilberforce and the British Empire ceasing slavery for purely altruistic, humanitarian reasons. There was a lot in there I didn't know.

Over the past several years, living in Rwanda, I've had some interesting experiences related to colour. Things, as a white person, I wouldn't have experienced in the UK, but I'm glad to have done because it's given me more perspective and opportunity to discuss race.

I was twenty-six when I first arrived and worried that people might hate me because of slavery, without fully comprehending that Rwanda remained an independent kingdom during that part of history. There wasn't a legacy of western slave traders here. People were much more concerned about western participation in the genocide. Someone once stopped a bus to move seats away from my friend when they realised she was French. If you don't understand that one, Google 'Turquoise Zone'. I was once asked, by a guy with a megaphone, whether  I was German, after Germany detained Rose Kabuye, and I was also once asked to stand up at a community meeting to explain 'my' government's actions after the UK very undiplomatically detained Emmanuel Karake, head of the Rwandan secret service. Obviously, there wasn't much I could say except, 'yeah, it doesn't make sense.' But those were much more specific, and justifiable, political gripes rather than racial ones.  

I do remember the first time I ever stepped out onto a busy street in Kigali and realised I was the only white person there. It was a strange feeling. I'd never experienced that before.

Back then, you used to get mzungu shouted a lot. It means 'foreigner' or 'white person'. People sometimes reached out to touch you or pinch you, and you often attracted a crowd of onlookers. You hardly ever hear mzungu in Kigali anymore, as it's a very cosmopolitan city now, but you still do in remote and rural areas. Sometimes it's just a statement, but sometimes you can tell by the way someone says it that it isn't meant kindly.  

Years ago, I was trying to catch a moto outside a club, very late at night, when a young Rwandan man, who was very drunk, leaned back on his moto and shouted, 'muzungu, go back where you came from.' His much more sober friend looked round in panic and apologised, but I laughed. It was such a strange experience, and one I think every white person should have at some point in their life - being the racial minority in another country. I was able to laugh it off because he was drunk and mouthing off. I think I would have been more offended if he'd shouted something misogynistic or homophobic, whereas it was just a weird experience for me to receive a racial slur like that, one used by white people towards black people so often. I strangely appreciated having had that experience. I often wonder what his own life experience had been that he said that to me, a complete stranger he didn't even know.

There's another interesting part in the book that talks about the sexualisation of African people by white people. Malcolm X also talks about it in his biography. Especially in terms of white women having sexual expectations of black men. Whereas, in Africa, there's a monitisation of white people, especially of black men towards white women. Though, that might be because more unmarried white women than men arrive as teachers and volunteers. It isn't uncommon to be sitting at a bus stop and have a guy ask you to find him a 'white wife.' The laugh is, many African men who think they want a white wife, soon find themselves woefully unprepared for a lippy British or American woman who speaks her mind openly, takes charge of the family finances and often a dominant role in decision-making. The point where dream and reality meet often collide with unpleasant consequences.

After over a decade of watching relationships, a huge number have broken down when it became apparent that the man had unrealistic financial expectations of the woman, based on skin colour. And, whereas it's true that poor white people in Africa are almost always financially better off than poor black people in Africa, it was the level of financial expectation that became problematic. See further down, where I mention Henri's book. He explains that unrealistic expectation brilliantly in My African Dream. Seriously, if you want a decent introduction to the race and culture gap between East Africa and America, check that out.

But be it sexual expectation, money, or both, a relationship founded on these stereotypes always tends to lead to a catastrophic breakdown in trust and self-confidence for at least one party. 

Which was another part of the book that I liked, it really looked at class systems and how race and class are so strongly intertwined. How the poor in any community, regardless of colour, have more in common with each other than the poor have with the elite. It's all horribly complex, and why there's never been a straightforward solution to ending either poverty or racism. It's a very long, ongoing conversation that many people still feel too insecure in their personal or national identities to engage in.

I've had some really interesting discussions about race with friends. I mentioned Henri, who wrote about his experiences first as a Rwandan refugee in Burundi, then spending seventeen years in the US, and having no clue what the KKK was, or that there even was racial tension in America, before arriving in Stone Mountain, Georgia. Like Akala's grandfather, it was a shock to him to discover that poor white people existed. He wrote an excellent book about it. 

There was a really interesting passage in Natives about the difference between African American and African identity:

While the physical legacies of white supremacy in Africa are clear enough, from the skin bleaching, to the colonial borders, to the languages of government, or from the segregation that is still so apparent in the former settler colonies, the state of spiritual and cultural crisis that [Richard] Pryor denotes with the appellation 'nigger' simply does not seem to exist in the same way for Africans... It's a quality that cannot be explained unless you have experienced both states. People who have experienced niggarisation, or lifelong racism, often walk as if they are apologising for their existence. It was only when I saw black people that did not walk that way that this became clear to me. To a degree, I also feel this same unquantifiable phenomenon in the Caribbean. There is a cultural and spiritual freedom that people have growing up in a place that they feel belongs to them and they belong to, however severe the material challenges in that place may be.

That's something I noticed immediately on arrival in Africa - the music. There used to be a club called Cadillac, and in my first week in-country I went dancing with friends. It struck me that there was Ugandan pop, Congolese rumba and plenty of Reggae being played, but not a single American rap song. I didn't hear the word 'nigger' once. Which gives some idea of what I associated with modern black music in the UK. Of course, there's blues and jazz, and plenty of reggae: Bob Marley, Eddy Grant and Macka B, but also a whole lot of rap, where women are bitches and hos and everyone sounds angry all of the time. But nothing in any club I've been to in either East or West Africa has ever been angry. Not like so much of the American rap music. 

There was another interesting bit in the book where Akala mentioned that heavy metal is huge in India, but almost unheard of among British Indian diaspora. The idea being that diaspora often cling to more traditional music and culture than those back home. I used to date a guy from Assam and he was a huge Metallica fan. We met at Rwanda's first rock night. I remember being surprised when he showed me photos of him and his friends at a Metallica concert in India and told me how big metal is over there. I don't recall any Indian friends in the UK having mentioned a love of metal before or seeing an Indian presence at the rock clubs I used to go to.

It is also true that talking about race in Africa is different to talking about it in the UK. Trevor Noah puts it really well: 

 

I've had so many open conversations here over a beer, that it would be hard to imagine having in the UK. It's usually a much more relaxed and often very intellectual and retrospective discussion about history and world politics. As Trevor Noah says, it's more about figuring out how we all got here and where we're all going. 

Often, when you get a group of expats together, they'll take the piss out of each other's cultures and countries, but it's a way of breaking the ice, and beneath that you do find a lot of respect for each person's individual background. When you're travelling around the world you implicitly understand that a person is not their country, or their political system, or personally responsible for their national history. So, conversations are easier to start and people are a lot less quick to take offense at an honest question. There's an objectivity that comes to a lot of people when they're a few thousand miles from their native country.

Not everybody, obviously, but a lot of them.

On a random note, something that surprised me a couple of years ago. A white American lady was staying with me and she wanted to get her hair braided, which is something many women do here. She liked the way it looked and her Rwandan colleagues wanted to do it for her before she went back to the States, but she said no because her brother-in-law was African American and she knew that he wouldn't approve of her having her hair braided in the African style, because he'd see it as cultural appropriation. This made me kind of sad. I could see how he might think of it that way, but at the same time, her friends wanted to do that for her, because it didn't even cross their minds that there would be a problem with this. So, she didn't get her hair done, and her friends didn't get to share that experience with her, because of a perception of racism that existed in America but not here.

I really enjoyed the book, The Silk Roads. I don't think it's ever really stopped, this flow of people, ideas, art, culture, languages and religions. It just makes me sad to see the introversion of places like the UK at the moment, closing down its borders and curtailing freedom of movement, when East Africa is doing the opposite and opening up free trade and movement. The UK is going to back itself into a very lonely corner. 

Never mind that Britain has a German royal family, a Norman ruling elite, a Greek patron saint, a Roman Middle-eastern religion, Indian food is its national cuisine, an Arabic-Indian numeral system, a Latin alphabet, and an identity predicated on a multi-ethnic, global-spanning empire. Fuck the bloody foreigners. 

I had a lovely moment the other day. I teach at a university, with a group of young Rwandan medical students. We were doing an introduction to critical thinking, in which - I am sorry to say - I did inflict the Rule Britania! debate on them and Piers Morgan. Thankfully, they survived. But we were having a debate about colonialism and racism, and one of our students started her point by saying:

"I've never experienced racism..."

What a lovely thing to hear. And you might think, why would she experience racism as an African woman living in Africa, but Rwanda has had its share of division in the past. So, it was just a really encouraging thing to hear this student say, and I wondered, after reading this book, how many black British students could say the same?

Anyway, I've waffled on. This was just a really good book. I would say that it should be compulsory reading in British schools, only I know there's no quicker way to put kids off reading something than to make it compulsory. Still, definitely should be on there.

Origins of Imigongo

I have managed to do so little writing lately. Each time I sat down to start, another assignment landed on my desk, but somehow I've managed to push the manuscript over 40k. 

I've just reached the part where my main character enters the ancient Sumerian city of Uruk, on the banks of the Euphrates. Whenever I start to write about a new place, I pause to do a bit of reading. It was late last night when I kicked back with a glass of wine and set Wiki on text-to-speech. I closed my eyes whilst I listened, trying to imagine what the place must have looked like.

Partway through, it started talking about 'cone temples' and 'cone mosaics.' I had no idea what these were, so pulled up Google Image to take a look.

My jaw hit the floor.

 

Here in Rwanda, we have a traditional form of art called imigongo. It's made from cow dung, and when I overlay the pictures of imigongo with the patterns at Uruk, you'll see why I was so stunned.

 

 

The similarity is just startling.

Wiki says imigongo was traditionally used to decorate 'magical huts,' so places of healing and shamanism, perhaps. Nowadays, you see it everywhere: the national stadium, Kigali Cultural Village, hotels in town, craft markets - it's all over the place.

 

 Hotel in Rusizi

Nowadays, imigongo is almost exclusively black and white, but the article said that traditionally it was red, white and black. Here's a colour photo from Uruk.

 

 

From video on the construction of Uruk

 Modern Imigongo

 

One of the most popular imigongo patterns is this one, on my wall.

 

The swirly spiral is said to represent the elephant's trunk. Though, it's always strongly reminded me of the Australian Aboriginal symbol for a watering hole.

 

There's something quite intuitive about swirls and curves representing water. Though, intuition is obviously culturally subjective. However, the cone temple at Uruk, where the mosaics are, might possibly have been 'the earliest water cult in Mesopotamia.' Although, I've yet to see a picture of a swirly pattern there. They seem to have gone for straight-line geometric shapes. So, that link doesn't really mean anything. It's just me thinking out loud.

Obviously, geometric patterns are nothing unusual in cultures all over the world, from the Azteks to the Celts. The Normans also had a strong affinity with the zig-zag pattern, as you can see from this church in the English village of Quenington. 

 

Everyone was clearly into psychedelics back then.

So, yes, geometric shapes are absolutely nothing new. But the similarities between the cone temple at Uruk and imigongo just seem so intriguing, it's hard not to wonder whether there's a link.

I started to think about it hard, and I've come up with a couple of theories. Some, or all of it, might be complete codswallop, but have a read and see what you think. 

 

Migration I

The first theory was naturally migration of some sort. It's a difficult topic to discuss in Rwanda because of the history of ethnic division. Nowadays, everyone is Rwandan, but during the Genocide Against the Tutsi in 1994, there were strong divisions between Hutu and Tutsi. Many Tutsi bodies were thrown into the Nyabarongo River in the mistaken belief they would 'go back to Ethiopia.' Therefore, you don't really talk about migration because it stirs up very unpleasant memories.

Yet, the population of Africa has been surprisingly fluid in many areas as recently as 200 years ago, as I discovered when I became interested in Congolese masks. DNA and cultural studies do seem to suggest that there might have been a southerly migration of people from the Gibe region of Ethiopia. However, this happened so long ago - suggestions fall around the 15th century (over 600 years ago) - that Rwandans as a population share far more of their DNA with each other than anyone still does with Gibe. It's sort of like British people and their genetic links to central Europe and Scandinavia.  

Anyway, if, for the sake of a theory, we did accept that there might have been migration from Ethiopia, that gets us very close to Egypt. Now, there's some evidence that, before the Egyptians started building their own brand of pyramid, they tried out a few Sumerian step pyramids first. That puts the Sumerians in Africa.

The artwork could have potentially migrated up from Uruk, over the lip of the Red Sea into Egypt, then from there down through Ethiopia to Rwanda.

Map from this video on the rise of Sumer

 

The earliest ziggurats in Egypt date to around 2600 BC, so over 4,500 years ago.

It's a nice idea that art was carried by people from Sumer to central Africa, where it has remained, but it's highly unlikely. The reason I say that is that you would sort of expect to find imigongo in some of the other countries it passed through, like Ethiopia, Eritrea and Sudan, but it doesn't seem to be there. 

There's something similar in West Africa. This is a picture of the Bwa people from Burkina Faso. 

 

Picture from this article

The X shape is the same, but they use a lot of other patterns, such as the straight, rather than diagonal, chequered pattern, that you don't tend to see in imigongo. It's not quite such an exact match with Uruk. Though the crescent moon shape is interesting, as one of the main temples at Uruk was dedicated to Inanna/Ishtar, who is very much associated with the moon. But, then, the moon is a completely universal symbol as everyone in the world can look up at it. It's often associated with cow horns, especially on the equator, because here, the moon waxes down to up, rather than left to right. It really does look like cow horns.

 

 National Geographic

Anyway. There just doesn't seem to be a trail of that particular art going up the side of Africa in that direction.

Of course, if a route existed, art could have gone in either direction. There's no reason it couldn't have been transported using basic materials of clay and dung to Sumer, where it was then transformed into mosaic work. It wouldn't be the first time Rwanda exported something magical. There is a regional goddess here called Nyabinghi, who sits on top of Mount Karisimbi, sipping tea from giant snail shells. She took a little trip to the Caribbean a while back and wound up in Jamaica as a central figure in Rastafari. Things work in mysterious ways.

But, still, if evidence did exist for such a migration of art, it doesn't seem to anymore.

So, I like the idea, but I doubt it's correct.

 

 Migration II

There is a more direct migration route later on between Sumer and Africa that can be traced through language. Around 2000 BC, Sumer was taken over by the Akkadians, becoming the Akkadian Empire. They spoke a Semitic language.

There was quite a bit of trade going on at the bottom of the Red Sea even before then. Between what is today Yemen and Djibouti. The Semitic language crossed over into Africa, becoming Ethiopic and part of the Ethio-Semitic language group, of which modern Amharic is one. These flowed into Ethiopia, Eritrea and Sudan. You can watch the expansion of languages here. 

That would have made the trade rout look something like this - a lot less effort.

Again, there isn't much evidence of the imigongo style in countries between Sumer and Rwanda, but it's a shorter distance, so statistically less chance it would have survived over such a long period of time. 

It's tenuous, but definitely more probable than the first migration theory.

 

German Occupation

After considering the idea that art and culture might have gone on tour, I tried to think whether there could be any other explanation for the similarity.

Unfortunately, I came up with one that was rather less attractive but also plausible.

Rwanda was colonised by Germany between 1884 until 1916, when Belgium invaded during the First World War.

The cone temple at Uruk was discovered and excavated by Germans between 1912-1913. The cone temple of the water cult was built on top of by the Sumerians, but they kept an eternal flame burning for the previous temple. Probably so as not to offend the previous gods who lived there. This eternal flame burns in a building named The Riemchen Building. 

Given Uruk's close proximity to German East Africa, the easy shipping route, and archaeologists' natural propensity to explore, it's not inconceivable that someone came from Uruk with pictures and drawings of the mosaics, and somehow that blended into existing Rwandan crafts. 

It would perhaps be the most direct way of explaining how the two places ended up with such similar patterns and colouring. 

However, there's a fairly strong counter argument to this theory...

 

Random Chance

The official story of how imigongo came into being is fairly universally agreed, though not exactly when.

Kimenyi, the King of Gisaka, had a son called Kakira. Prince Kakira lived in Kibungo Province. It is said that he was the first to mix ash and clay for colour and to paint the inside of his house with imigongo patterns.

The problem is that some sources say this happened in the 18th century and others say the 19th century. It might be a translation issue whereby 1800s got confused with 18th century (1700s), making 19th century correct. There appear to have been several King Kimenyis of Gisaka, with stories dating back to the 1500s. I'd need to find someone with far better historical knowledge to place him in history. 

Anyway, Uruk was completely abandoned by 700 AD. I'm not sure of the exact dates they excavated the cone temple, but if it was any time after 1912, it was far later than the first time Prince Kakira picked up a brush and started creating imigongo. Therefore, he couldn't have been influenced by the temple of Uruk, because it hadn't been discovered.

There is the very real possibility that both Sumer and Rwanda spontaneously developed the same style of art, using the same patterns and colour system, several thousand years and several thousand miles apart. After all, many things have been discovered by more than one person independently, including the Big Bang theory, the Möbius strip, and the telephone, which was discovered independently by both Elisha Gray and Alexander Bell, who filed patents on the exact same day.

So, those seem the most likely options. What do you think?

It would be interesting to know if the same patterns and colour schemes do exist in other parts of the world. 

[February 2021 - UPDATE: migration theory revised based on new information.]