Talking Location With Blessing Musariri – Africa as inspiration

#TalkingLocationWith… Blessing Musariri, author of Afrofuturish debut novel: Only This Once Are You Immaculate, inspired by AFRICA

What makes a journey long is the expectation of arrival. When I was in Kampala, my friend and I asked for directions to the biggest craft market in the area. Our first mistake was asking if it was within walking distance. Naturally, the answer was yes. We asked how long it might take us and they said, oh it’s not a very long, walk some fifteen minutes or so and you will reach it. What that translated to in reality was that every fifteen minutes or so we stopped to confirm our directions only to be told that we were only fifteen minutes away. We remained fifteen minutes away for two hours, but the truth of the matter was that we were always only one step away and if we had focused on that instead of where we expected to be after every fifteen minute we would have gotten there sooner. So it is with the travellers in Only This Once Are You Immaculate, who cover vast distances on foot, not only in physical spaces but right into, through and out of the metaphysical — “We walk the way we have always known to walk, one step at a time …”. I had similar experiences in Dar es Salaam, Maputo and Nairobi where I walked the cities for hours on end looking towards a particular destination but encountering entire lives in between. I have since learnt never to ask if anything is within walking distance — this is entirely relative and the truth is that everywhere is walking distance, it just depends on when you expect to reach your destination. So it is with journeys.

Dar City

I set my story in and along the eastern part of Africa, borrowing from countries I had visited and the influences that had made themselves a part of my own personal narrative.

There was a steady and peaceful flow in Dar and in Zanzibar (particularly Stone Town), a sense of old world things and far away lands. Old forts and dreamy dhows ready to transport one beyond the sun, behind the horizon to another time and place. People were calm, welcoming, helpful and I sometimes felt like I was drifting in and out of a dreamscape because even though Dar and Stone Town were bustling and busy, there was a prevalent sense of peacefulness. This, I feel, comes through in the poetic rise and fall of the language in the book.

I liked the topography of the areas around and within the Horn of Africa — the mountains of Ethiopia, the sweeping aridness of spaces in the interior, the coastline, the oases, the sea, and melding of cultures and influences from neighbouring countries. I even borrowed characters from South Africa and Zimbabwe and concentrated them all in the “Territories” simply because people are migratory and in the metaphysical, there are no borders.

Dar City

Ethiopia has a particular fascination for me because my maternal grandfather told me that his great grandparents migrated from there. They were elephant hunters, who followed the southward migration of the herds and eventually settled in Zimbabwe, inter-marrying with people from South Africa. And of course, this was a journey made on foot, walking one step at a time.  When I imagined that there was a time when journeys across entire continents were made, on step after the other — barefoot, no less, I was captivated by the notion of being that connected to the earth and being an intimate part of nature. While I was only ever briefly in Addis Ababa, the frenetic scenes and sounds from the city resonated and replicate in my story when my travellers encounter their first port city after leaving the peace and natural envelopment of their valley.

When I think of the buildings in the port cities in the book, particularly Osao, I think of Beira in Mozambique, where nearest the docks, the buildings are weathered by the sea and people are stacked on top of each other in them tenement style. The port of Osao was a more distressed version of this, paired with the pace and vibe of Addis. I have an enduring memory of being parked in the street, in Beira, looking up at a weather worn building and finding myself being equally regarded by people hanging onto bars in the windows, looking out. Every window seemed to have someone or groups of someones standing at it looking out.  When my friend came back from his errand at the bank, I asked him why all the people were just standing in the windows looking out (sometimes calling out to passers-by) and he said, “Oh, those are inmates. That’s a prison.”

Dar

Dar Harbour

The one time I travelled to Gabarone (Botswana) with my younger brother, I remarked on his habit of being up early in the morning and going for a walk. He said to me, the best way to know a place and learn its rhythms, is to walk it. Walk as far as you can each time, take a different route back, keep your eyes open and listen. In this way I have learnt that it’s not the location or the place so much that takes precedence in the setting and telling of stories, but in what you find of yourself within them and what stays with you long after you are gone from them.

Blessing Musariri

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