Hi everybody and welcome to my Commonwealth Writers blog. I’m truly excited to be in South Africa and my first impressions are, it sure aint LL (Lagos or London). Beyond the rush hour trek from the airport, the reading at Xarra bookshop and the discussion at the Roka Lounge, I haven’t yet seen much of Johannesburg and I’m not sure I’m going to be able to. What I have seen, has been through sleep deprived eyes, so I can’t comment yet. But so far it has been a wonderful experience, I’m just glad to be here. It’s so weird, it’s 3 in the morning and as I sit here tapping away I’m trying to think of words to describe how I’m feeling right now and the only way I can describe it, is that I feel like an Oscar nominee. Every year when I watch the Oscars, every nominee says, to be nominated is an honour. Now I know what they mean, it’s the validation every artist craves, whether it’s through a gong, ticket sales or in the case of a writer, lots of books flying off store shelves. Don’t get me wrong I’d love to win the overall prize, but I have to admit that being a regional winner is just as good. It has opened doors that six months ago were firmly closed and has raised my profile in a way I didn’t think would ever happen, especially with Imagine This being self-published.

So first day in Johannesburg and there was a reading, I’m not sure how everyone else felt, but I was terrified. First on, I stood there hands and voice shaking and just willed myself through the whole experience. It’s not even as if it was my very first reading, so I knew what to expect, but still the nerves kicked in and panic took over. It didn’t exactly help that I only picked the passage five minutes before I went up to the mic. Before I even go on to talk about Roka lounge, I have to say I’m so cold. I thought to myself, I’m going to South Africa and only packed shorts and sleeveless tops thinking they had the same climate as Nigeria. Shame on me really, I remonstrate with people who lump the whole of the continent together and what do I do? There is always a silver lining, tomorrow I’m going shopping with my flexible friend, Not that I’ll have space for anything I buy, my luggage is already over the 23kg weight limit. I really do need to learn how to pack light.

Roka Lounge was interesting. I was on a panel discussion on History, Politics, Gender and Identity: The state of African Literature in the 21st Century. When I got the email, I remember thinking to myself, what is African Literature and am I qualified to talk about it. In true Sade fashion, yours truly hadn’t prepared anything before hand (my middle name is lastminute.com), there must be a gene that makes me do it. Every time I say to myself, I’m going to prepare and make sure I get stuff done well in advance, lets just say, it’s never happened. Anyway, I digress. So I had three brilliant speakers go before me, two professors and another writer and they were eloquent and succinct and they made sense. Then came my turn, I’d been scribbling notes to try and focus my thoughts. I’m not a speaker, so while I was giving a rambling comment all the time I was wishing for the ground to swallow me up whole. But I got through it and breathed a sigh of relief. My hope now is that I can only get better at the speaking in public, I dread it with a passion but figure it’s what I have to do to create an awareness of Imagine This. Sx

I’ve tried to add pictures to this post, but unfortunately my internet connection is letting me down. It will have to wait till I get back to London