Creativity has been part of human life since the dawn of civilisation. Every human is born with. Yet for all the time we’ve spent on this blue planet, it remains a mystery to us. How does creativity work? Where do ideas come from? Is imagination even a thing? Not even science, with all its poking and probing, can explain how it works or why it is so necessary to human existence.
As we prepared to launch this magazine, the toughest question we had to face was whether it was worth it all. On one hand, there was the stark reality that African magazines do not last very long, primarily because there isn’t a readership large enough to keep them in business once initial funding runs out. On the other, the kind of product we’re bringing to the market (a literary magazine) was for the most part considered a luxury, even within the small community of readers that exists at all in Africa. Were we creating something relevant to our market? Was there a place for a magazine that asks critical questions about who we are and where we are going when 80% of Africans are grappling with existential dilemmas like finding the next meal and paying school fees or health bills?
To our minds, there was no doubt that the answer to these questions was yes. YES, Stories matter. YES, there is a need for content that asks critical questions about who we are and where are going. But was this a message our fellows on the continent would resonate with? Would they feel, as we do, that imagination is as vital to our individual and collective wellbeing as the pursuit of existential goals like education and a well-paying job?
Ibua Journal is a space dedicated to telling African stories well. But more importantly, it’s space for Africans to tell their stories from their own perspective.
For far too long Africa’s story has been told by voices that do not belong to us. The history we are taught in schools is the version sanctioned by our former colonial masters in Europe and America. The books and novels we read are for the past imported from Europe and America. The movies and entertainment we consume are for the most part set in Europe and America. And to make things worse, if an African writer or storyteller is to have any hopes of building a successful career with their talent, they have to move to Europe and America. Bit by bit, we Africans have surrendered the right and duty to tell our own story and the result is that we are producing generation after generation of Africans with the subconscious belief that they are inferior to Africans; and that their stories do not matter. At what point do we decide that it’s time to start breaking the cycle.
To get this conversation started, we determined that the theme for our first year would be “the role of imagination on society”. It would be the thread that ties together all the stories, essays, and memoirs we’d publish in the first volume of Ibua Journal, but the writing did not come together as neatly as we wanted, so what you are about to read is a collection of stories and essays written over the first six months and later repackaged to make this issue.
We come from the background of a poetry collective (the Lantern Meet of Poets) that has made a few impossible things possible in Uganda’s literary space. We thought it necessary to start this publication with a recollection of that collective’s journey as a reminder of what is possible when people from different backgrounds willingly rally behind a collective cause. But also to show how the act of writing itself can transform an individual life. The records you will be meet in this issue barely account for 10% of the Lantern Meet story, but they are enough to show that — YES, stories do matter in the African context. Our lives are bigger than the poverty porn that western media has sold to the world.
The other section, which contains the bulk of the content for this issue, is a collection of essays on the role of imagination in society. These essays are written from personal perspectives of what imagination means to the authors, but the one thing they have in common is the shared sentiment that imagination is as important to life as the pursuit of existential needs.
For us as a team, this choice of theme, and the contributions it has attracted, is a fitting way to launch a magazine that we are setting up to be a vanguard of Africa’s current and past imaginative heritage. We created this space to be an outlet for writers who were tired of banging at the doors of gatekeepers who never explain why they can’t be let into the pearly gates of publishing. We are as fastidious about quality as any publisher worth the name should be, but we are also writers who understand that writers need to have their work out there to grow. There are so many writers in Africa burning with manuscripts and book ideas and nowhere to take them. We want this to be a space where their ideas get a fair shot at seeing the light of day; but mostly, a space where they can learn from creatives working in the same environment as them, and who face the same hurdles and find a way to overcome them.
Enjoy your reading.