Author Noo Saro-Wiwa’s Personal Journey Writing ‘Looking for Transwonderland’

Noo Saro-Wiwa is the daughter of slain Nigerian writer and environmental activist Ken Saro-Wiwa.

She tells host Marco Werman about her difficult journey to bury her father’s bones in his homeland, a trip that inspired her new book, “Looking for Transwonderland: Travels in Nigeria.”

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Marco Werman: Nigeria in West Africa has long faced periodic instability over the years. Take the mid 1990s when the government put down a revolt of activists in the Niger Delta. Noo Saro-Wiwa was just a teenage r when military leaders in Nigeria executed her father. He was writer, television producer, and environmental activist Ken Saro-Wiwa. The Saro-Wiwa family is from Nigeria’s vast oil producing Niger Delta home of the Ogoni people. Ken Saro-Wiwa’s demands for the Ogonis to receive a great share of oil revenues angered Nigeria’s government. He was arrested and after a show trial was hanged in 1995. His daughter Na though born in Nigeria was raised in England. Ten years after her father’s death, after Nigeria’s government had finally returned his remains to his family, Na went to his ancestral village Bane Ne to bury him. She describes the journey in her new book Looking for Transwonderland Travels in Nigeria.

Noo Saro-Wiwa: In 2005 my brother Genal, sister Zena, half sister Zental, Uncle Owens and I prepared the remains for burial. As Genal brought out the large bag containing our father’s dissembled skeleton Zena cried out loud on the far edge of the room. Zental watched silently through her tears. I decided that the situation was only as macabre as my mind would allow so I forced myself to lift out a large bone wrapped in newspaper. Uncle Owens a medical doctor helped us to identify and arrange each femur, fibula, metacarpal and rib settling our minds into a more industrious mood as we assembled the skeleton. Before long everyone was helping out. It was hard to conceive that these coarse brown objects we held in our hands were our father. A once energetic man with dark stalky flesh. In vain I searched for his face in the skull now resting at one end of the coffin. The two front teeth were missing. How and why I did not know. But when Genal placed a pipe between the upper and lower jaws his teeth metamorphosed into that familiar smile.

Werman: That is just so surreal.

Saro-Wiwa: Yeah it’s not something you ever expect. You know you just never imagine you’ll ever see the skeleton of people in your family.

Werman: There in Bonne in the village of your father you write that you feel really connected to Nigeria more connected than perhaps any other place in the world. What does it mean to you Na to be an Ogoni a minority ethnic group from Nigeria?

Saro-Wiwa: You know when you’re in Lagos the biggest city or you’re up in the north you’re surrounded by people who are different ethnic group from you and normally that doesn’t matter. When you’re in London were all Nigerians, but once you’ve been in Nigeria for a few months you start to feel the sort of ethnic differences a lot more. So coming back to Ogoni land is really nice because you’re in the one place in the world where people can actually pronounce your name properly. And it’s all around you. You go to the internet cafes and the market and everyone’s speaking Cana, that’s the dialect.

Werman: Right

Saro-Wiwa: And so yeah I felt a much stronger sense of being Ogoni as opposed to being Nigerian on this trip.

Werman: I can’t imagine your father when he was alive took you to Transwonderland the place in the title of your book.

Saro-Wiwa: No he didn’t.

Werman: He wasn’t a big amusement park person

Saro-Wiwa: No, no he wasn’t.

Werman: Transwonderland, the place in the title, is actually an amusement park in the city of Ebiden. Tell us about it.

Saro-Wiwa: It was very decrepit and it had been built by a previous dictator twenty years ago. And basically it looked like it was deserted like none of the rides seem to be operating. But then a man came a long he was the manager and said that I could just go on any ride I wanted. Just point to it and he would switch on the button. So I found myself sitting alone on a ferris wheel with a small crowd of people just watching me and feeling very foolish. But the amusement park was really a symbol of the Nigeria that I wanted to experience. You know the Nigeria that was separate from the murder and the dictatorships and all of that kind of stuff. So the title of the book Looking for Transwonderland is about looking for that side of Nigeria but it is also a metaphor in the sense that it was decrepit it had fallen into decline and you could say the same about Nigeria since independence.

Werman: You conclude that you couldn’t really live back in Nigeria. As you write beneath it all lurked the belief in witchcraft, the oil dependency, the politician’s constant acceptance of low standards and you say you could never get used to that. Is it coincidental that oil dependency and politician’s low standards was what you were fighting against?

Saro-Wiwa: The oil has made Nigerian politicians very complacent. To this day oil still accounts for 90% of our foreign earnings. And so you know over the fifty sixty years since independence our economy hasn’t diversified the way it should have done. So our manufacturing is very low and a succession of corrupt leaders who have sort of milked the oil industry and made themselves very rich and impoverished the nation as a whole and so you know oil breathes this sort of corruption and complacency.

Werman: Noo Saro-Wiwa is the author of Looking For Transwonderland Travels in Nigeria, thank you so much.

Saro-Wiwa: Thank you very much.

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