Insight into the Lagoon

Read the Prologue and Chapters 1 & 2 here

Some readers have told me that though they enjoyed LAGOON, they felt they were missing some things on the cultural/political/societal side. Understandable. Fair enough.

I admit (and don't apologize for) the fact that my flavor of scifi is evenly Naijamerican (note: “Naija” is slang for Nigeria or Nigerian). Read more about what I mean by this in a recent interview I did with Ventures Africa. Thus, I’m going to explain a few things.

I’m not going to totally give the plot away by contextualizing everything I say below. Read the novel for that, :-). I will say that LAGOON is about three Africans, a Nigerian marine biologist, a Nigerian soldier and a famous Ghanaian rapper, who are tasked with being at the forefront of an alien invasion in the city of Lagos, Nigeria in 2010. The shape-shifting aliens first land in the waters of the Bight of Biafra. When the aliens come, they don’t just meet the human citizens of Nigeria, they meet other animals, plants, and some who are beyond the physical world.

Ok, so here’s some…help.

What’s 419?

In LAGOON, there are 419-scammers working out of cyber cafes. The number "419" is the name given to the “Nigerian scam”….you know, when Nigerian Prince So-and-So sends you an email claiming he’s got billions sitting in the bank but he needs “you” (a total complete gullible greedy stranger) to send him a minimal feee to get it out of the bank and, gosh, when he does, he’ll send “you” a nice cut for helping. The number 419 is a reference to the section of Nigerian law that the scam violates.

If you want to know more about this practice from an objective perspective (as opposed to one that solely sides with the victim), I highly recommend Alan Dean Foster's nonfiction book, The Phisher. He wrote this book after responding to a 419-scammer's email and actually striking up a conversation with the guy who was indeed in Nigeria (no, I do not recommend trying this for yourself. Just delete the email).

Note: Don't joke to me about Nigerian scammers and princes. This happens to me on Twitter far too often and people think they're being clever. It's terribly irritating. If all you know about one of Africa's most powerful and innovative nations is that there is an abundance of 419-scammers from there, that's on you, not me.

Does “Witch Slapping” really exist?

There's a "witch-slapping" scene in LAGOON (again, read the novel to experience it. It's really quite funny, heehee). Are there self-proclaimed holy men slapping the so-called witchcraft out of women? Yes. See for yourself.

Witch-slapping is just one symptom of the strong strain of Christian fundamentalism running through Nigeria's veins. Such things can be found all over the world, you say? True. However, what worries me about the particular strain that’s been running through Nigeria in recent years is not that it’s teaching people extreme and bizarre forms of Christianity. It is that it’s teaching Nigerians to hate their own indigenous traditions, spiritualities, and religions. It’s one thing to move past what was there before, it happens. People evolve, change, move on (and sometimes they return to the old ways or create hybrid new ones). However, it’s another thing entirely to move past what was before because of a nasty form of hatred of one’s self in the guise of religion, brought or imported by outsiders and foisted upon people who are simply looking for God. Ijs.

Food for thought:

Why First Contact with a swordfish instead of a human?

Because 1. If aliens came and were interested in earthlings, earth has many citizens (human and non-human) who'd be of interest to them. 2. I felt these environmentalist swordfish deserved to be immortalized and empowered for their efforts. Here's a brief news story about them: "Swordfish attack Angolan oil pipeline"

What’s up with the Road Monster?

The roads of Nigeria are unsafe, often scary, and in poor shape in far too many parts of the country. They’re monstrous and they’ve swallowed many lives. I’m not going to lie, I have seen terrible things on Nigeria’s roads. I’ve seen death there multiple times.

*Pause to remember the dead on the road.*

More specifically to LAGOON, there was a super graphic photo circulating the Internet back in 2010 of a horrific accident on the Lagos-Benin expressway (if you really must see it, it’s here. But I warn you, it’s quite awful). There were several explanations that explained the photo; most of them were inaccurate, but all of them very possible. The incident caught my writer’s eye and it made it into LAGOON.

What the hell are they saying?

There’s a lot of Nigerian pidgin English in LAGOON. Really, more people should have been speaking it in the novel. However, I knew I wanted to go 100% when the characters spoke it, so I limited the pidgin to certain characters. Nollywood director Tchidi Chikere (see the latest video he directed here and my favorite of his movies here) and self-proclaimed Pidgin English expert Taofik Yusuf worked closely with me to get it as accurate as possible.

Thus, in LAGOON, you’ll get dialogue like this:

“Eyyy!”Moziz exclaimed as he watched Ayodele change again. He laughed hard. “Look at Father Oke! De man wey dey do gragra before see as he dey shake like waterleaf! He don nearly shit for him pant!” Philo smiled. She’d bagged an educated man and he spoke like a man of the streets. “Baby, dis ting na real? Abi na film tricks?”he asked. “I say I take my two naked eyes see de thing as e happen, just like two hours ago,”she assured him.

-Lagoon, page 28

To those with no background in any kind of African or Caribbean (even knowing African American English should provide you with the necessary tools for hearing pidgin English) pidgin English, my advice is to just relax your mental ear, chill, and remind yourself that there’s English in there. Some of it will start coming through.

Also, there’s a glossary at the end of the book. Here are a few words from it that may help with the passage above:

Na (Pidgin English)—it is

Dey (Pidgin English)—this means “is”or “are” . . . most of the time. Other times, it means something else

Gragra (Pidgin English)—a show of bravado (often false)

Hope this helps.

-Nnedi

LAGOON is available where books are sold, including:

Afriware Books

A Room of One's Own Bookstore

Anderson's Bookshops

Waterstones (UK)

Amazon.com

Insight into the Lagoon

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