things worth pondering

Stories have also appeared in the local papers highlighting passengers’ fears that the helmets could be used by motorcyclists to cast spells on their clients, making it easy for them to be robbed.

“Some people can put juju inside the helmets and when they are worn the victim can either lose consciousness or be struck dumb,” passenger Kolawole Aremu told the Daily Trust newspaper.

Nigerian offials have cracked down on improvised helmets used by motorcycle taxis, most namely the calabash variety. Read the the story via BBC Africa.

Chinua Achebe’s new collection of essays

Anyone following the current trends in literature will really enjoy this bit about Achebe.

The Nigeria novelist, poet and essayist, Chinua Achebe, has completed a new book to be published later this year (2008),  an event his agents excitedly report “wonderfully coincides with the fiftieth anniversary of the publication of his first book-Things Fall Apart, and the world wide re-issue of his African trilogy.”

Tony Mochama with The Standard interviews Achebe here

“Achebe takes the reader on an autobiographical intellectual journey through the thickets of history, race, religion, ethnicity, war and politics. He provides an update of his classic treatise ‘The trouble with Nigeria’ in an essay devoted to Nigeria’s recent sociopolitical history.

Things Fall Apart (1958), considered Achebe’s magnum opus, unveiled the archetypal modern African novel to Western audiences.  Chinua Achebe discusses Things Fall Apart with BBC correspondents.