We returned to our places, these kingdoms,
But no longer at ease, here in an old dispensation,
With an alien people clutching their gods,
I should be glad of another death.
T. S Elliot, The Journey of the Magi
For this quarter Ibua journal has run its issues under the overarching theme The Role of Imagination in Society. We close the year with this issue, themed The Creative process. Initially, I had related this to just artists until our interview with Teesa Bahana at 32˚ East│Uganda Arts Trust. Named for Kampala’s longitude 32˚ East was started by two artists Nicole Elphinstone and Rocca Holly-Nambi, a commercial artist and sculptor respectively at the time. It is a center for the exploration and creation of contemporary art in Uganda providing artists with a space to figure out their process, access to research materials and a community to learn with and from. During our conversation on the Trust’s philosophy of learning, I could not help but think of Obi Okonkwo.
Obi Okonkwo is the spineless grandson of The Okonkwo. Okonkwo was quite The African Man, a protector of African traditions and values if you recall. Coming from nothing to great success, never a man of words but preferring fists, hangs himself rather than submit to white law. Before this final act, his young son Nwoye converts to Christianity embarrassingly so as one of the first converts in the village. Banished by The Great Okonkwo that boy becomes Obi’s father. Now called Isaac, a man of the cloth he chooses to raise his son in a sanitized environment. A rather intelligent boy, Obi, gets sent to England to study Law via a scholarship toiled for by his village association; The Umofia Progressive Union. He studies English and returns to Nigeria to fulfill the theoretical destiny of the educated Nigerian, one that denounces the corrupt ways of the colonizers and ushers in a new and improved Nigeria. He also intends to marry Clara an osu thus simultaneously denouncing the tired superstitions of his forefathers. After all, tradition should mean nothing to this civil boy nor should corruption seduce him.
Achebe is seemingly unsympathetic to Obi deeming these convictions as illusions once Obi fails to act on them. For while Okonkwo was ready to die for what he believed in, “Obi is, in contrast, a man of nothing but words, whose downfall is precipitated by his inability to act; paralyzed by his thoughts, he destroys himself through inaction.”
What went wrong for Obi Okonkwo? Achebe frames the story with an extract from T.S Elliot’s poem The Journey of the Magi. The poem is about T.S Elliot’s spiritual rebirth, a celebration of it, in fact, that feeling of being reborn in a new faith, so much so that “you should be glad of another death.”
With subtle genius, Achebe takes Obi on what is supposed to have been his enlightening journey, receiving a Western education. Achebe shows us however that for all his intelligence, it surmounts to nothing when confronted with the challenges of Nigeria’s reality. We tell ourselves that our children will survive the hostilities they encounter in life to somehow find their true calling like up-standing cranes. As Julia Cameron writes; “It takes nurturing to become an artist. In a twisted version of Darwinian determinism, we tell ourselves that real artists can survive the most hostile environment and find their true calling like homing pigeons” [1] Obi returns an alien in his kingdom which paralyzes him into inaction. A feeling I think many artists are more aware of. The paralysis you feel when tasked with bringing an idea to life. It is the conclusion that many artists are terrified to face.
What was the problem with education then? I think it’s not controversial to say here that similarly, our education system does not prepare us adequately for the realities of Uganda. Spire says, “More than ever before, today’s world is best suited for dynamic people who are quick to think through challenges and innovate solutions. As such, the best that education can do for learners is to teach them how to think critically, not to take things for granted, and to always study societal trends to know how best to position themselves.”[2] Our education system, however, is wanting in encouraging this kind of imaginative interaction with the realities of our country as Spire further shows, “…graduates from institutions of higher learning in Uganda experience both a high rate of unemployment and underemployment due to programs and courses that are not relevant to the job market…”[3] “Many debates in our mainstream media and social media platforms mirror how there is little independent thinking, beyond imitation and jest that goes on in our society.”[4] There should be no shame in admitting that many of us do not end up using the prestigious degrees that we all took in higher learning. The nature of those jobs dictates that for them to continue to be prestigious high-earning jobs, there will be a cap on the number of people that can attain them. If we continue to be honest with ourselves, not all of us are passionate about those paths anyway. Spire goes on in his essay to call for vocational training. I agree. In addition to this, we should also insist on thinking together again.
What did 32˚ East do that we can borrow and implement in our systems of learning? It took some time for Nicki and Rocca to set up this space. They began by talking, “…knowing about residences and particularly what residences can do for an artists’ process just in terms of providing the time and space to be able to figure things out or even the opportunity to question everything that you had to figure out, but not necessarily that you have to deliver for an exhibition. So really; they thought of residences as being spaces for process. They noticed that those weren’t in Uganda. Going to Makerere, talking to lecturers, looking at what galleries around were doing, talking to students and just seeing what was needed. What do people feel is lacking, what do they wish that they had, had they the resources to accomplish it? That is how they ended up developing 32˚ East. So you know, they had the ideas but it took a long time to talk to people and see what was relevant.” [5]
What fascinated me further about 32˚ East was that they are an informal learning institution with no intent in their philosophy to be right or wrong, or even on having a product at the end of residency, “I think we are really aboutexperimentation and that there are no right answers, and trying to encourage artists to feel that way, because art is almost not a thinking thing, it is the way that you end up feeling and it is a freeing thing. I think particularly looking at our education system. I grew up in Zambia so even there the education system is very much There-Is-A-Right-Answer, going through school, and being told that you are smart if you have a good memory.”
Spire echoes a similar sentiment. “Many lecturers at universities today will attest to the fact that we are not only increasingly getting more entrants that can hardly write a sensible essay but also more that cannot critically think on their own. You have to spend the first year if at all you do, rehabilitating the damage done by secondary schools ─which train crammers looking out for particular answers to particular questions. The pamphlet culture in secondary schools, plus the examination-oriented system, are wasting brains of leaners. In many of our universities, we add to the damage by dictating notes in class, ‘handouts’, and setting exams that only engage memory! Hence producing more graduates that can hardly innovate for the country.”
Teesa continued “that is what it comes down to. Our philosophy on learning is unlearning and trying new things, stretching and growing, making yourself comfortable that is what we think is learning.”
We like to focus on having learned a skill or on having made a piece of artwork. This attention to the final form ignores the fact that creativity lies not in the done but the doing…in a sense, no creative act is finished. You can’t learn to act because there is always more to learn… focused on the product, the same creative life can feel foolish or barren. As Julia Cameron says, “At the heart of the anorexia of the artistic avoidance is the denial of process.” We inherit the obsession with the product and the idea that art produces a finished product from our consumer-oriented society. We are more accepting of our validation when it comes to art. It comes easier to say I do not like that song, or I like that song. In this regard, more trusting of ourselves and our capabilities. To function in the language of art, we must learn to live in it comfortably. The language of art is an image, symbol or wordless language even when our art is to chase it with words. The artists’ language is a sensual one and of felt experience. When we work at our art, we dip into the well of our experience scooping out images but do we learn to put images back. How do we fill the well?” How does one experiment effectively?
Like artists are akin to doing, I think we rely on the community. 32˚ East expounds on that “with” community. At 32˚ East, “I think that one of the things that we try to help within a residency for example, even with the labs is that you have access to your peers quite a lot, so you are often getting feedback. Usually, people will pick up on you being lost and like maybe give certain points, ways to re-look at things so that you do not get too overwhelmed or frustrated. But also acknowledge that it is okay too. I think that it is hard to determine when you are too lost but yeah, a lot of it is hearing from your peers and also taking a break from things sometimes. In the residency we will usually have a person who checks in on the artists so when we notice something like that, we can be like how about you don’t do work for a while, how about you go and visit the other community and re-look at that.” [6]
Julia Cameron says, “It is my belief and my experience as a teacher that all of us are healthy enough to practice creativity. It is not a dangerous endeavor requiring trained facilitators. It is our human birthright and something we can go to gently and collectively. Creativity is like breathing ─pointers may help─ but we process ourselves. Creative clusters, when we gather as peers to develop our strength, are best regarded as tribal gatherings, where creative beings raise, celebrate and actualize the creative power that runs through us all.”[7]
Further still, while 32˚ East has an international ecosystem the Trust insists on the importance of the artists’ surroundings to the artists. One of the ways is through the public arts festival making art accessible to the everyday person, bringing the artists in contact with this audience, “We go to where people are, so that is the audience. With the public arts festival, we are not saying here we are, you come to us, we are like; where are the people? In some instances, it has been in the market on boda-bodas, so it is everywhere.”
In the higher levels of education, peer review and experimentation is nothing new really, what would be different then is the communal aspect in contrast to the elitism of these institutions. Well even at the grassroots level, Ugandans we already do this, we think together, but we somehow on average keep the impact of that thinking at the same level as the Umofia progressive Union level who were quite a force, with a commendable intent. Achebe through littering their interactions with proverbs and ways hints at their undeniable pride in their traditions. In actuality, however, their traditions are more ceremonial and symbolic in comparison to the changing reality of their lives, thus stuck in the past, stagnant. So if the Umofians insist on tradition despite the realities of modern Nigeria that demand her people negotiate and compromise somewhere, their culture must be something entirely different. However, do they ever collectively confront those negotiations, or do they remain a shameful/taboo way of life, as one stumbles on when they are in crises such as Obi’s?
What could Obi have done differently? What does 32˚ East do differently and what can we take from that to implement into our lives?
“You know as you said, it’s not real life. Everything that we do from being unleashed into the world is like: This is how things go! This is an exam! But then you go out into the world and you are like, ha! What are the rules? There are no rules. What is this! And it’s cool that it’s a special place to get to do that, but this should be, this should be ALL of it! This shouldn’t be special, it should be okay that you can just process things and do things and not worry about producing. So I think art can also be this thing that helps you imagine things differently, can help you see society differently…”[8]
[1] Cameron, Julia. The Artist’s Way: A Spiritual Path To Higher Creativity. New York: J.P. Tarcher/Putnam, 2002. Print.
[2] Spire Ssentongo
[3] Challenges and Solutions of Higher Education ins Uganda https://www.academia.edu/6719989/CHALLENGES_AND_SOLUTIONS_OF_HIGHER_EDUCATION_IN_UGANDA
[4] Dr. Jimmy Spire Ssentongo “Things to Do When Museveni Leaves” OBSERVER UG: https://observer.ug/viewpoint/62898-things-to-do-when-mr-museveni-leaves-part-5
[5] Teesa Bahana (see the full interview in this publication)
[6] Teesa Bahana
[7] Julia Cameron, The Artists Way
[8] Teesa Bahana