1 00:00:02,260 --> 00:00:13,140 A seminal paper of the time, and we're really delighted to have Professor and Yamanto with us from and from UC T from the University of Cape Town. 2 00:00:13,140 --> 00:00:17,590 He's going to be talking about about Chinua Achebe, so. 3 00:00:17,590 --> 00:00:19,860 So first of all, like if I could ask everyone, please, 4 00:00:19,860 --> 00:00:31,180 to turn off your cameras and to make sure that your caps that you keep yourselves muted and otherwise it gets problematic with a school of this size. 5 00:00:31,180 --> 00:00:41,640 And that would be wonderful. Thank you. We're going to have our paper and then we'll have then we'll have questions afterwards. 6 00:00:41,640 --> 00:00:47,970 So do you feel feel free to to either raise your hand when it comes to the to the 7 00:00:47,970 --> 00:00:56,160 questions asked of the seminar using the using the hand function of my teams? 8 00:00:56,160 --> 00:01:04,650 Okay, think or feel free to to appear on your camera and give me a wave and we can do it that way. 9 00:01:04,650 --> 00:01:06,750 So my name is Peter Brook. 10 00:01:06,750 --> 00:01:17,340 I'm a developmental lecturer here at Oxford in African history, and I lecture at the African Studies Centre and also at the history faculty. 11 00:01:17,340 --> 00:01:21,750 So, so today we're hosting Professor Newman Joe. 12 00:01:21,750 --> 00:01:26,190 He's professor of Social Anthropology at the University of Cape Town. 13 00:01:26,190 --> 00:01:35,190 He's taught sociology, anthropology and communication studies at universities not only in South Africa, but also in Cameroon and in Botswana. 14 00:01:35,190 --> 00:01:41,200 And he's researched and written extensively on Cameroon and Botswana amongst the lengthy publications list. 15 00:01:41,200 --> 00:01:47,730 Perhaps his most well-known book is his 2005 monograph Africa's Media, Democracy and the Politics of Belonging, 16 00:01:47,730 --> 00:01:55,110 which is a kind of handbook for anyone who works on social media in Africa, both historically and in the present. 17 00:01:55,110 --> 00:01:59,670 He's also written about a number of other subjects, including cannibalism, 18 00:01:59,670 --> 00:02:06,030 and recently in 2018 he was awarded The Fate and All of the Prise for Best Monograph by the African Studies 19 00:02:06,030 --> 00:02:13,440 Association of the UK for his book hashtag RhodesMustFall Nibbling at Brazilian Colonialism in South Africa. 20 00:02:13,440 --> 00:02:22,420 It may possibly be that we choose to talk briefly, at least about Cecil Rhodes appropriately for an Oxford seminar in our questions. 21 00:02:22,420 --> 00:02:28,080 And anyway, it's a great delight to to to welcome Professor Newman to, 22 00:02:28,080 --> 00:02:34,320 and I'll hand over now for a paper on being and becoming African as a permanent work in progress. 23 00:02:34,320 --> 00:02:51,510 Inspiration from Chinua Achebe is Proverbs. Thank you very much, Peter and Transport persuading me to be part of this important seminar series. 24 00:02:51,510 --> 00:03:01,760 It's an honour I always at any given time, if I can, one to be associated with Oxford. 25 00:03:01,760 --> 00:03:09,620 I have lots of friends there, and I'm happy to see some of them in attendance. 26 00:03:09,620 --> 00:03:25,440 I. I have pre circulated a paper, at least the highlight of the paper to through Peter, and I hope that you would read them, 27 00:03:25,440 --> 00:03:36,450 read it eventually to get the substance of what I would like to to to highlight in what I really 28 00:03:36,450 --> 00:03:45,210 want to make this seminar about a conversation on some of the issues I think are important, 29 00:03:45,210 --> 00:03:52,680 especially at this moment, and it's a moment when we are asking questions. 30 00:03:52,680 --> 00:04:02,040 In the past week, I attended a two seminar conferences, 31 00:04:02,040 --> 00:04:12,420 one organised by the University of Westminster and the other by source on decolonisation and collaboration in research, 32 00:04:12,420 --> 00:04:14,350 knowledge, knowledge production and so on. 33 00:04:14,350 --> 00:04:33,720 So these are topical issues, and I have a I have decided to talk on a Achebe because I think he has a thing or two to contribute to this conversation. 34 00:04:33,720 --> 00:04:45,270 And the first is a and that's a reason why I suggested this topic. 35 00:04:45,270 --> 00:04:52,740 I may as well have given a topic on roads and monuments and statues and all the like, but I thought this is important, 36 00:04:52,740 --> 00:05:04,770 which is being and becoming African as a permanent work in progress and how I Quebecers use use of Proverbs inspires 37 00:05:04,770 --> 00:05:24,360 us to to to appreciate African identities as dynamic as in a constantly enriching themselves in various ways. 38 00:05:24,360 --> 00:05:39,990 And the one thing that one immediately get from a champions embrace of Igbo value systems or ideas of the world 39 00:05:39,990 --> 00:05:57,810 and representations of the world is a the the say and practises around the idea that no condition is permanent. 40 00:05:57,810 --> 00:06:07,560 When when you speak with Igbo persons that you meet anywhere after two or three phrases, 41 00:06:07,560 --> 00:06:15,450 you are most likely to hear something that really amounts to no condition is permanent. 42 00:06:15,450 --> 00:06:32,460 And if you have the opportunity of visiting Igbo land and parts of Igbo, as I have had the opportunity to do because of my friends in the Cameroon, 43 00:06:32,460 --> 00:06:48,300 the Cameroon and northwest and southwest Cameroon area, you'll become very familiar with this sense of dynamism that they take dearly. 44 00:06:48,300 --> 00:07:00,540 And in in a chip is, uh, works this aspect of incompleteness. 45 00:07:00,540 --> 00:07:04,920 And and dynamism is constant. 46 00:07:04,920 --> 00:07:11,820 If no condition is permanent, it suggests that nothing is complete. 47 00:07:11,820 --> 00:07:22,710 Nothing can rest on its laurels. Nothing is ever as such that you can say it has attained to the pinnacle of perfection, 48 00:07:22,710 --> 00:07:27,510 and you can then rest assured that it wouldn't change any more. 49 00:07:27,510 --> 00:07:47,220 So change is a constant and a chip dump demonstrated is superbly well in in his borrowings and adaptation of the able problems. 50 00:07:47,220 --> 00:07:55,710 And if you see even the idea of change, the proverb is not immune to. 51 00:07:55,710 --> 00:08:15,450 The problem, and it is such that a can be used to his use in an indirect way and can be appropriated by different users in the same conversation, 52 00:08:15,450 --> 00:08:21,920 in fascinating ways. So add to to make different points in. 53 00:08:21,920 --> 00:08:28,440 And I think that aspect of incompleteness, I would suggest, 54 00:08:28,440 --> 00:08:41,640 is very important for us to take on board as we are looking for a white template of knowledge production 55 00:08:41,640 --> 00:08:50,490 representing an African epistemology is informed by African ontologies and so on and so forth, 56 00:08:50,490 --> 00:08:55,980 and how we can get it right in terms of knowledge production. 57 00:08:55,980 --> 00:09:07,500 I would suggest we take seriously this idea of incompleteness, which comes through repeatedly in a chambers, 58 00:09:07,500 --> 00:09:13,350 worked and I would suggest in many other works if I were given this talk on a much to Twala, 59 00:09:13,350 --> 00:09:19,080 it will be exactly the same and incompleteness at the core. 60 00:09:19,080 --> 00:09:29,430 But incompleteness, I would hesitant to say not as something we should be sure we should be or should be apologetic about, 61 00:09:29,430 --> 00:09:34,770 not as something that suggests that you fall short. 62 00:09:34,770 --> 00:09:50,730 Instead, it is a universal. It is a disposition that equips you to be able to reach out and enhance yourself through various 63 00:09:50,730 --> 00:09:59,370 forms of self activation through various forms of motion and mobility and interaction with others. 64 00:09:59,370 --> 00:10:06,930 So with the idea of incompleteness comes the idea of mobility. 65 00:10:06,930 --> 00:10:13,200 And again, when you listen and read Achebe, whether he's novels or his essays, 66 00:10:13,200 --> 00:10:23,070 this issue of mobility is played and replayed and replayed very effectively to demonstrate that. 67 00:10:23,070 --> 00:10:30,510 Without mobility, we will be lost and debt completely in our incompleteness. 68 00:10:30,510 --> 00:10:41,610 We will be frozen to the point of being eliminated, being completely incapable of lying. 69 00:10:41,610 --> 00:10:55,470 So comes to mobility. We are able to almost like, defrost or activate our incompleteness to be able to achieve, 70 00:10:55,470 --> 00:11:00,990 to be able to reach our day and fulfil ourselves to the extent possible. 71 00:11:00,990 --> 00:11:09,630 And that fulfilment due to the Ebo from which Achebe draws his wisdom already have 72 00:11:09,630 --> 00:11:17,430 a lot of lots of proverbs to the effect that that no condition is permanent. 73 00:11:17,430 --> 00:11:29,490 It also pre-empts and warns us against mistaking in our temporarily self fulfilment as the attainment of completeness. 74 00:11:29,490 --> 00:11:34,590 So even as he, he and world he draws on, 75 00:11:34,590 --> 00:11:42,720 pushes us to be mobile in order to enhance ourselves that the disabuse us almost 76 00:11:42,720 --> 00:11:51,480 immediately of any ambitions of permanence and in our in our sense of completeness. 77 00:11:51,480 --> 00:11:57,120 So basically, the tell all you are free to rise and excel to fulfil yourself, 78 00:11:57,120 --> 00:12:09,210 but do not delude yourself that the moment of of of enhancement that you have acquired amounts to completeness lest you become violent, 79 00:12:09,210 --> 00:12:15,930 and that by letting orders and the humanities. It is a very interesting lesson, 80 00:12:15,930 --> 00:12:29,160 given that Achebe and the Igbo society he was writing from have a long experience at people 81 00:12:29,160 --> 00:12:39,450 and other communities that use exactly this idea of mobility to come to to fulfil themselves, 82 00:12:39,450 --> 00:12:50,310 but by the deluding themselves that complete ness was possible and that complete death they have acquired at a at a terrible price of endangering. 83 00:12:50,310 --> 00:12:59,490 And did this this dispossessed in others in ways that we are all too familiar with. 84 00:12:59,490 --> 00:13:15,780 So this investment in in recognising that we are incomplete and rising to the point of celebrating our incompleteness and by looking for ways, 85 00:13:15,780 --> 00:13:23,730 creative, innovative ways of mobilising ourselves to fulfil ourselves in various ways through encounters with others, 86 00:13:23,730 --> 00:13:32,100 but always mindful of the fact that we must not get carried away to think that we begin to 87 00:13:32,100 --> 00:13:40,870 dictate to others and in terms of ambitions of conquest or superiority and so on and so on. 88 00:13:40,870 --> 00:13:43,930 There is a very good one. 89 00:13:43,930 --> 00:13:56,890 One of the proverbs that Achebe adopts and adopts from his Igbo community to this effect is the proverb around the dancing masquerade. 90 00:13:56,890 --> 00:14:03,570 And he he likens the world to a mask dancing. 91 00:14:03,570 --> 00:14:13,170 And says that if you really want to observe this mosque to the fullest and to be able to take in that dance, 92 00:14:13,170 --> 00:14:20,220 it would all the complexity and nuances of a nimble footed dancing masquerade. 93 00:14:20,220 --> 00:14:24,870 You really have to keep pace with it. You move with it. 94 00:14:24,870 --> 00:14:30,840 And if you move with it and you are not stubborn and fixated in one spot on one spot, 95 00:14:30,840 --> 00:14:39,050 you will tick in the fullness of that dance and a dancing masquerade and fills it. 96 00:14:39,050 --> 00:14:45,750 Relax. The idea is never to stop, always going and so on and so forth. 97 00:14:45,750 --> 00:14:56,850 So this sense of never sitting at one point where you say I've achieved a pin up at the pinnacle of whatever ambitions I said for myself, 98 00:14:56,850 --> 00:15:04,530 and therefore I can rest, is it considered something that one must not do? 99 00:15:04,530 --> 00:15:10,500 And so you have that sense, which I think can be very useful already. 100 00:15:10,500 --> 00:15:21,990 Just yet, this idea of incompleteness, the idea of mobility and the idea of encounters with others, 101 00:15:21,990 --> 00:15:26,790 because when the masquerade dances, it moved from one place to another. 102 00:15:26,790 --> 00:15:36,480 And that movement does not live it on, on, on, on, on. 103 00:15:36,480 --> 00:15:50,170 It is unaffected by those places, it's been to the site, it sees the world is able to take it all becomes part of it, 104 00:15:50,170 --> 00:16:01,880 be it all get into the mass correct and helps in in reaching all that masquerade is. 105 00:16:01,880 --> 00:16:12,800 And in many ways, you could take a Chinua Achebe as an exemplar of what he writes about this dance in correct, 106 00:16:12,800 --> 00:16:24,640 his life in many ways was like the dancing masquerade disc, taking yourself into various places with your dance. 107 00:16:24,640 --> 00:16:34,340 And at the same time, bringing word that you have encountered through that process that you elaborate back, would you? 108 00:16:34,340 --> 00:16:42,800 Blending it into you and becoming something more than what you started with originally. 109 00:16:42,800 --> 00:16:48,870 So this open ended ness is a very useful way of seeing ambitions, 110 00:16:48,870 --> 00:17:02,240 even as you talk in terms of essences were the essences are not one is not determined by those essences or confined to them. 111 00:17:02,240 --> 00:17:14,540 But there's always opening out to enrich oneself through one's mobility, one's encounters with others and always a sense of humility in that regard. 112 00:17:14,540 --> 00:17:20,780 So while a chip may recognise the importance of encounters and all of the like, 113 00:17:20,780 --> 00:17:33,430 he also equally tried to emphasise the idea of humility and to disabuse us of winner takes all. 114 00:17:33,430 --> 00:17:39,790 If you're not, is his criticism of colonialism and imperialism of all the orders? 115 00:17:39,790 --> 00:17:48,910 It wasn't so much of that in the dance of incompleteness, as you cannot learn from the order to enrich yourselves. 116 00:17:48,910 --> 00:17:56,380 It was more that in that dance you came across people who were so embittered, 117 00:17:56,380 --> 00:18:05,260 so intoxicated would ambitions of dominance that they reduced a dance that would 118 00:18:05,260 --> 00:18:16,720 otherwise have been very productive and mutually enriching to a one dimensional, 119 00:18:16,720 --> 00:18:33,940 conquest driven exploit. And he felt terribly insulted by that sort of thing because he, like many other writers of his generation. 120 00:18:33,940 --> 00:18:46,990 It was almost as if those animated by these ambitions of dominance were determined to ignore the fact that they became who dare were. 121 00:18:46,990 --> 00:18:57,130 Thanks to the relationships that they had with others, for example, relationships of subordination, relationships of disposition, 122 00:18:57,130 --> 00:19:05,380 relationships of infantilized nation and so on and so forth made you tall in in those encounters 123 00:19:05,380 --> 00:19:13,830 and you could leave them would serve delusion that you were self-made and so on and so forth. 124 00:19:13,830 --> 00:19:29,700 So both him and someone like a must to to allow in whom I am equally interested emphasise the idea of the importance of debt and indebtedness. 125 00:19:29,700 --> 00:19:36,580 And you see if if you start your life as an incomplete being like we all are, 126 00:19:36,580 --> 00:19:46,320 the incomplete ness is universal and through your mobility, you and countless others who are equally incomplete but incomplete. 127 00:19:46,320 --> 00:19:54,640 Incompleteness is not uniform and standardise and routinised they enhance your would their incompleteness just as you enhance them? 128 00:19:54,640 --> 00:20:08,370 Would yours? Then you should. Instead of cancelling, are the other acknowledge your debt and indebtedness to one another. 129 00:20:08,370 --> 00:20:17,790 And that acknowledgement means that everyone is a winner and no one is a loser. 130 00:20:17,790 --> 00:20:26,740 It also means that power is not permanently would the person who has a temporary victory. 131 00:20:26,740 --> 00:20:40,600 It makes it much more interesting in being able to to account for the story of the encounter in a way 132 00:20:40,600 --> 00:20:50,380 that captures the various facets I talked about in nuanced complexities of the dance in masquerade. 133 00:20:50,380 --> 00:20:59,980 So this again, is what I should be emphasised, and I would suggest that if you take a very quick look just at his life, 134 00:20:59,980 --> 00:21:12,320 he lived this particular metaphor or this particular proverb of a dance in masquerade first from his infanti years. 135 00:21:12,320 --> 00:21:32,060 He his father was a missionary. One of the well in the old A Post Apostolic Church, where he moved around for almost 34 four years or so, 136 00:21:32,060 --> 00:21:39,770 converting various and preaching the word of God in various parts of Ebola. 137 00:21:39,770 --> 00:21:48,750 And his son was born with an Igbo name, took on the name of Albert, 138 00:21:48,750 --> 00:21:55,500 which was considered to be a very important them to somebody close to royalty at the time. 139 00:21:55,500 --> 00:22:05,430 And he then followed in the same trajectory to go to school and so on and so forth. 140 00:22:05,430 --> 00:22:18,720 And he he he he at the same time drew a lot about what it meant to be Igbo from an uncle of his who was very steeped in traditions. 141 00:22:18,720 --> 00:22:29,640 So this is someone who did not make arbitrary choices of who he was and and a way 142 00:22:29,640 --> 00:22:36,330 to eliminate every other possible influence in his incompleteness and mobility. 143 00:22:36,330 --> 00:22:42,740 He allowed different forces and different encounters to ship him. 144 00:22:42,740 --> 00:22:55,490 And the he acquired and mastered the English language, but he felt that however useful to him, 145 00:22:55,490 --> 00:23:12,290 the English language was he couldn't use it to tell the stories of these IBO world and Ebola experiences without any way seeking to domesticate it, 146 00:23:12,290 --> 00:23:27,080 to take it in and bring it into conversation would be colourful proverb metaphor written by rich Igbo way of speaking and such. 147 00:23:27,080 --> 00:23:33,290 And it wasn't just as if taking English and feeding it with Igbo, even the Igbo. 148 00:23:33,290 --> 00:23:40,640 If you noticed one of the contributors to the book that we we have written on, 149 00:23:40,640 --> 00:23:56,400 Proverbs with this title is a professor at the in abakaliki who has painstakingly documented the lives of a proverb hunter. 150 00:23:56,400 --> 00:24:12,960 A female proverb, hunter, one who felt that these Igbo rich people provide much needed to be harnessed, harvested and preserved for future use. 151 00:24:12,960 --> 00:24:21,870 And one thing that comes across is that what how did the proverb read in in Igbo when you see, 152 00:24:21,870 --> 00:24:28,980 for example, a is a translation into English, it is a very creative work. 153 00:24:28,980 --> 00:24:32,730 It's not just a literal translation and so on. 154 00:24:32,730 --> 00:24:39,000 So in a way, he he gets the Igbo proverb it's important to tell the story. 155 00:24:39,000 --> 00:24:43,140 He adapts it in his English translation, 156 00:24:43,140 --> 00:24:53,430 and he gives us an opportunity for people who do not speak Igbo like myself to have a sense of what this the promise 157 00:24:53,430 --> 00:25:04,830 of this problem and big because proverbs condense words of wisdom that document the experience of a given context. 158 00:25:04,830 --> 00:25:11,430 It is all too easy for us to imagine that they are frozen in their meaning and so on and so forth. 159 00:25:11,430 --> 00:25:16,440 But I, somebody who has fallen in love with nature based proverbs, 160 00:25:16,440 --> 00:25:29,130 can take it and employ it in other ways that to to that brings out new dimensions of it and a new sense of meaning. 161 00:25:29,130 --> 00:25:39,480 Hence, the idea of using a must to buy sorry you didn't achieve is a proverbs to talk about being and becoming 162 00:25:39,480 --> 00:25:50,790 African as a permanent work in progress in one of the papers that I did recently on a decolonising academy. 163 00:25:50,790 --> 00:25:56,400 I use the proverb of the word is like a dancing masquerade. 164 00:25:56,400 --> 00:26:07,290 If you want to see it where you have to keep pace with it by simply substituting with the word, Africa is like a dancing masquerade. 165 00:26:07,290 --> 00:26:11,760 If you want to see it where you have to keep pace with it. 166 00:26:11,760 --> 00:26:24,420 If Africa is in history produced of by encounters mobilities of various kinds into the continent and out of the continent by various Africans, 167 00:26:24,420 --> 00:26:35,460 you cannot do justice to African ness of being by reducing it to a particular geography only or a particular point in history. 168 00:26:35,460 --> 00:26:43,470 You have to keep pace with the dynamism of the continent, with the fact that Africans are both on the continent and out of it. 169 00:26:43,470 --> 00:26:52,500 And the African ness does not expire simply because they have migrated to North Carolina or to Oxford or to wherever you might find them. 170 00:26:52,500 --> 00:27:06,060 So this brings me to another point in that both are cheap and they prove up uses an idea of being and becoming African. 171 00:27:06,060 --> 00:27:22,860 Can, as a result of mobility and encounters with others, leads me to see these things more in terms of composite ness of be that we. 172 00:27:22,860 --> 00:27:30,870 If you ask any individual or any cultural community that was at documenting its sociology, 173 00:27:30,870 --> 00:27:39,990 it's it's it's an everyday messiness of of everyday life to describe themselves. 174 00:27:39,990 --> 00:27:50,850 They would not give you a sense of identity that is neatly packaged and the linear a unified and singular it will always be. 175 00:27:50,850 --> 00:28:05,750 If you had a conversation, you see snippets of various influences that have gone into making them who they are as an open ended composite being. 176 00:28:05,750 --> 00:28:17,870 And this composite ness is exciting to me in coming if we are looking for innovative ways of decolonisation, 177 00:28:17,870 --> 00:28:29,750 of knowledge production that do not simply imply unravelling like this call in a mosque to $2 palm wine drink. 178 00:28:29,750 --> 00:28:37,340 When you unravel, you unravel to the point of the incomplete they discard, 179 00:28:37,340 --> 00:28:45,500 or a type of incompleteness that is is not productive because it's not incomplete, not emotion. 180 00:28:45,500 --> 00:28:50,390 Any incompleteness emotion is incomplete, and that leads to encounters. 181 00:28:50,390 --> 00:28:59,960 Both encounters affect you just as Europe often, and it makes a composite being of you. 182 00:28:59,960 --> 00:29:13,880 So I think that we we should see why these a proverbs are useful for us thinking Africa in such flexible terms. 183 00:29:13,880 --> 00:29:30,620 The idea of composite image is also useful in seeing how the meaning of those proverbs keeps being enrich or what would new encounters, 184 00:29:30,620 --> 00:29:37,250 and that unlike a text that is frozen in meaning. 185 00:29:37,250 --> 00:29:51,770 However, much an author would wish that a proverb is always becoming, as well as those societies that it shaped and seeks to speak for. 186 00:29:51,770 --> 00:30:08,230 And I think with that, I didn't suggest that if we were to draw on a must to $2 a gap, I must accept this idea of of of of. 187 00:30:08,230 --> 00:30:17,360 And you said, I'm flexible, you said of Proverbs. We could end up with an idea of being African and knowledge production in 188 00:30:17,360 --> 00:30:26,060 Africa that is best described as convivial and and conviviality in this case. 189 00:30:26,060 --> 00:30:38,090 And in this particular, you usage must be predicated or on or presupposed by the idea of incompleteness. 190 00:30:38,090 --> 00:30:48,710 So I will stop there and hope that I have put enough on the table for a conversation in the form of comments and questions. 191 00:30:48,710 --> 00:30:55,310 Thank you. Thank you so much. It was the most interesting paper. 192 00:30:55,310 --> 00:31:05,180 Well, people are gathering their thoughts. I'd like to just kick off with a question about chip time in and in broadcasting. 193 00:31:05,180 --> 00:31:12,580 So if I understand correctly, you spent several years at the Nigerian Broadcasting Corporation in the mid 1960s and 194 00:31:12,580 --> 00:31:17,660 you're talking about the dancing masquerade got me thinking about his relationship, 195 00:31:17,660 --> 00:31:24,590 difficult relationship. I think with with the corporation and as a director of external broadcasting, 196 00:31:24,590 --> 00:31:31,220 I wonder whether his involvement with with with with radio and perhaps media more broadly. 197 00:31:31,220 --> 00:31:43,520 State media in particular has has a role in shaping his interest in in Proverbs and perhaps more broadly and in in non literary, 198 00:31:43,520 --> 00:31:52,010 sorry non and non written forms of literature in a radio as literature or oral traditions. 199 00:31:52,010 --> 00:31:54,590 And whether that whether that played a significant role, 200 00:31:54,590 --> 00:32:03,140 do you feel in his informing his feelings about about proverbs and about literature more broadly? 201 00:32:03,140 --> 00:32:05,180 Yeah, I would say so, yes, 202 00:32:05,180 --> 00:32:25,370 because quite a lot of what I've learnt about his use of proverbs and ease have come not not so much from the in the novels themselves, 203 00:32:25,370 --> 00:32:40,320 but from his essays and what he sought to achieve by doing that and the insistence always that, for example, 204 00:32:40,320 --> 00:32:55,340 in the Ebola on where he grew up and the language he mastered, speaking and speaking your mouth as they say everybody had to to have their say. 205 00:32:55,340 --> 00:33:05,070 It was important to articulate yourselves a would addiction or language and would because of. 206 00:33:05,070 --> 00:33:11,340 That better communicated what you had to say. 207 00:33:11,340 --> 00:33:20,160 So speaking in speech was taken very seriously and is an allusion to the fact that a 208 00:33:20,160 --> 00:33:29,280 proverbs the palm oil with which were eaten basically if you go to southeastern Nigeria, 209 00:33:29,280 --> 00:33:42,870 the Igbo area had almost every house has its own palmed palm trees as it were, and palm oil comes in even the poorest of the poor. 210 00:33:42,870 --> 00:33:48,360 I expected to to to to afford palm oil when they cook. 211 00:33:48,360 --> 00:34:00,900 So this idea of where lubricated expression is important and his working in radio would just have enhanced it. 212 00:34:00,900 --> 00:34:08,640 Thank you very much. So we've got a few few questions here, just a reminder that if you have a question, you can you can raise your hand on the.