On turning the gaze inwards

Ngozi Cole: "We need to see each other, support each other, and validate our work on the continent."

This week’s interview is with Ngozi Cole, founder and editor of Poda-Poda Sierra Leone. We talked about the change afoot in the international development sector, feminist references, how editing can make you a better writer, and not looking for validation elsewhere and creating your own table.

Photo credit: Ngozi Cole.

Could you talk a bit about your background? Where did you grow up, and how did your childhood or growing up interact with your feminist identity?

I guess I became a feminist in college, actually. I had questions about a lot of things, and then it was in college that I found my feminist identity. I was born and raised in Freetown and our society is very patriarchal, so I just had these questions about gender roles that were answered in college.

Is there anyone that you met in college or any classes that you took or any professors that you had that were really influential or new friends?

I took philosophy classes and political science classes that focused on gender. I was also selected for an African women’s fellowship in Ghana in 2013, where I met other young fierce feminists. And all of that influenced my identity.

Were you also studying African feminists in university - did they put African feminists on any syllabi?

Not really. In college, it was mostly Western feminists that I was introduced to.

That’s somewhat unsurprising, but still sad to hear [about the lack of African feminists on your college syllabi]. And what did you want to work on initially out of college or like what did you want to do with your life then?

Initially, I wanted to work in international development and I'm actually working in that space now. I’ve just kind of found my niche in communications, so I’m working for Comms for Dev. It's really needed actually, and more Black women are becoming a part of this area.

Between when you graduated and now with all of your work experience, what do you think has changed in your understanding of international development?

I didn’t know, actually. My perception wasn’t what I'm experiencing now. It’s really important to work for a couple of years in a field you’re interested in, just to be sure that’s where you want to be. It’s really important for people on the ground to work in this sector rather than a top-down approach like in the government space. I’ve been working for 4 years now, so I’ve come to realize that.

Do you think that international development can actually embody like social justice in a way or be feminist?

I think it should. I think now, there are new organizations who are trying to make it that way. There’s been a huge shift in terms of ownership and perception [in international development]. On the outside, it seems like there’s a social justice kind of outlook, but once you get inside, you’ll see it’s not really like that. Now, you’ll see people working in the sector, especially from the Global South, who really want to see that shift, so I think in ten years time it's bound to happen.

How do you survive in a sector where those complicated dynamics are happening? And how do you find support or develop your professional opportunities? Is your organization supportive or do they give you opportunities to advance, or do you have specific friends in this sector that you know are politically aligned with you that you can lean on?

One thing that has helped is networks, and networking with people who have resources. There are available networks on LinkedIn, the platform Popworks by Stephanie Kimou - I think she also started the hashtag #BlackWomenInDev - and reaching out to women who are in similar situations, looking for resources online, just having a network of like-minded professionals helps.

Well, let's go back to writing a little bit actually because that's how I met you. When did you start writing and publishing a bit more publicly?

I started publishing and sharing my stuff in college. I had a blog called Sepia Dahlia. I published a few things on the campus newspaper, and then right after college, I just started pitching and sharing stuff to other publications.

How was that process for you - was it hard to pitch or was it easy for you to get a lot of stuff published? And how did you feel about them [the articles]? What was your experience with these editors?

Of course blogging is easier than pitching because you can just publish it immediately. With pitching, there’s a certain - if you’re pitching to certain news platforms, they want to hear a certain narrative. I found it was easier to pitch those narratives and get them accepted. But if I wanted to publish something related to food journalism for example, it wouldn’t gain that much attention. That’s been the challenge. It’s just easier to publish certain things that publications want to hear about your country.

Isn't that super problematic though? That all of these publications only care about catastrophes or scandals or like they just want to feed into the stereotypes of certain countries?

Definitely. I think that’s why there are homegrown publications coming up now and interest for them. So I started a platform about a year ago called Poda-Poda stories. It’s a platform for literature, about books and authors, and everyday stories about life in Sierra Leone. It’s also important to look inwards and create our own platforms.

Yeah I really identify with that. I would also love to read what you have to write about food in Sierra Leone. I do think that I do think that people ought to read that story. Publications that decide that they don't want to publish that story because it's not a sexy media angle about Sierra Leone, they're wrong. Congratulations on starting Poda-Poda, I follow a little bit and I was like so excited to see it . What is something that really excited you that was published?

Well, some authors like - one of them is Ishmael Beah, a Sierra Leonean author who now lives in the US. He was also saying the same thing, he was tired of being the only token Sierra Leonean on The Washington Post or New York Times. It’s so important to have more stories than that and to create our own platforms. It’s been really good to interview other Sierra Leonean storytellers, and share what they’re thinking .

What have you learned from like being an editor? Or actually were you an editor before this as well?

Not really, no! I just learned on the go. I did some online classes and just kind of built everything from scratch. It’s really made me conscious, not just as an editor, but also as a writer. I feel like I have a more critical eye, which might be good or bad, but I think about everything twice. I reflect on my own writing. And it’s given me more creative license - I feel more confident in my ideas. It’s given me a lot more creative confidence in general.

Has anybody else been involved in Poda-Poda with you, have you worked with other editors or did you work with someone to set it up?

My friend who is a filmmaker - we did the initial brainstorming. He can’t be full time but we always bounce ideas off each other. We also share content across sites, things like that. I think Sierra Leone has a really nice ecosystem of creatives supporting each other.

What podcasts are you listening to?

There's one called Y Square Pod , run by two Sierra Leonean women who interview Sierra Leonean professionals and creatives. I also love Tea and Pepper Soup by Moiyattu Banya, Ctrl Alt Delete by Emma Gannon, and Hello Seven by Rachel Rodgers.

What do you think really needs to happen in the media to give space to like African women, Black women around the world to be published more?

I think for my context, we need to look inwards and create. Build our own spaces and support each other. Sometimes we tend to crave validation from Western media, like if it’s not published on the New York Times or The Washington Post, we don’t value the content. But we need to value what's at home because that’s how we turn the gaze inwards as well. We need to see each other and support each other and validate our work on the continent. Not begging for anything but just creating a new order.

I agree with that so much. Are there any like feminist Sierra Leonean writers or journalists that you would recommend?

Fatou Wurie, Vickie Remoe and Yasmine Ibrahim. Their blogs often cover issues about women and gender in Sierra Leone

Are there any young radical writers that you would also recommend?

She’s not young, but Mona Eltahawy. I really like her politics.

I have to tell you that she subscribed to my newsletter and I was like oh my god. She's definitely not young but of course we love her politics.

That’s great. And Roxane Gay. I follow her on Twitter. She’s so unapologetic. I’ve read some of her books and I really admire the work that she’s doing. There’s a lot more.

What do you think young feminist media would ideally be, for you?

I think our work would be valued with funding and grants. Even now, there isn’t a lot of funding for homegrown content, or to sustain those platforms. We really need more grants and funding. We’re producing a lot already, but there’s not too much monetary value attached to that. Either we’re doing the work for free, or we’re not being paid as much as we should.

Would it be financially impossible to sustain yourself with the media work, without the international development work?

I think it would be possible, but I don’t think I would have the creative freedom. I’d be getting paid for what the organization [paying] wants me to do.

I completely see what you mean. The biggest struggle is having that creative freedom and being valued for it. Those are all of the questions that I had! Thank you so much, Ngozi.

Here are some more recommendations from Ngozi Cole:

• Books: I just finished reading This Mournable Body by the amazing Zimbabwean writer, Tsitsi Dangarembga, and it is such a beautiful book, I love it! It was recently nominated for the Booker Prize, and it deserves all the accolades!

• Twitter Faves: Kenyan writer Nanjala Nyabola's ( Nanjala1) and Ghanaian academic and journalist Wunpini F. Mohamed's ( wunpini_fm) twitter accounts are my FAVES! Follow these women for sharp intellectual discourse , witty takes, and education.

• Insta Fave: I love Rachel Cargle's unapologetic approach to teaching about blackness, feminism, and being comfortable in our bodies and identities. She's definitely worth a follow @Rachel.Cargle

What I’m reading:

• Raji Manjari Pokhrel wrote this very necessary guide for journalists on how to write about queer issues and people. “Reporters: whatever your editors tell you, do not “learn on the job.” With little time to study complicated issues, and little informed supervision, you rely on the people and communities you are covering to teach you. And yet, when communities do the unpaid and difficult work of teaching you, you often lack the critical skills to contextualise that information, and end up presenting distorted, half digested, or plain stereotypical and wrong views of these communities. You revert to defaults, and filter what you hear through dominant narratives. In the case of Junu, such reporting strengthened life-threatening stereotypes about the LGBTIQA+ community, and in particular, transgender communities.”

• I read this review of Glitch Feminism (but not the book yet), which is a cyberfeminism that centers queer, trans, and nonbinary people of color, and describes our particular experience of the internet. Grounded in the Black feminist tradition, it responds to Web 2.0, wherein the radical liberatory potential of the early-’90s internet has been replaced by a corporatized space structured by the same capitalist, hetero-patriarchal dynamics that organize society at large.

• Forcing employees to sign NDAs in exchange for baseline humane treatment (i.e. compensation, promotion, health care, etc) is abusive HR behavior. ReproJobs has been doing god’s work of highlighting in their statement on anti-Blackness and oppression that NDAs are used within the non-profit industrial complex to mask how systems of oppression are at work within the non-profit bureaucracy. You can support their work of advocating against NDAs by anonymously submitting your NDA for their review.

• Resilient Realities is a youth-led report, which explores how young people between the age of 18 to 30 are organising during the COVID-19 global pandemic. 12 youth activists from 12 different communities around the world to help us understand how young people between the age of 18 to 30 are organising and responding to the global COVID-19 pandemic. I participated in a similar youth-led research report with Restless Development many years ago, and this kind of youth-led knowledge generation and movement archival work is so necessary. Read all of the 12 researchers’ mini-reports; I especially loved Ting Zhang’s on the three factors that strengthened informal networks and organizing in China, and Daniel Calarco’s piece about how young people did the heavy lifting in organizing in favela communities in Rio de Janeiro during the pandemic.

• I finished The Vegetarian by Han Kang, which was disturbing and really reminded me of Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982 (although the friend who lent me this book liked this one and NOT Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982, so I thought that was interesting), Girl, Woman, Other by Bernardine Evaristo, and How Much of These Hills Are Gold by C Pam Zhang. I’m currently reading Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia.

Music wise:

• If you know me (or are getting to know me), then you might already know that I am anti-Spotify as a platform that has utterly devalued musicians and I try my best to buy all of my music on Bandcamp, which practices a profit-share model with musicians and allots them 85% of sales. They’ve been doing 100% profit shares on every first Friday of every month during this pandemic, and I know artists who have been paying their rent because of this. So please buy some music THIS Friday, October 2nd. It’s actually somewhat hard to browse Bandcamp; ironically, their music algorithms are not great. The best way to buy music is to follow people who buy the same music that you do. You can browse their collections - like here you can browse mine. Happy Bandcamp Friday!

• Friday at 12 pm EST / 11 am BRT / 6 pm CET / 12 am HKT, my new monthly radio show PARALLEL WORLDS will be up on The Lot Radio, a completely independent online radio station in a shipping container in NYC. You can tune in online to listen.

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