Hargeisa selected as one of the 14th World Cup “pilgrams”

[Jacaylbaro]

The Institute for Practical Research and Training (IPRT) is pleased that the Chinua Achebe Center and Chimurenga have chosen Somaliland’s capital city, Hargeisa, as one of 14 “pilgrimage” cities to be explored by African writers while the FIFA World Cup tournament is being held in South Africa.

 

IPRT is honored to host multiple award-winning author Doreen Baingana in her “pilgrimage to Hargeisa”. Doreen Baingana is a Ugandan writer of international acclaim. In 2003, she won the Associated Writing Programs Award for Short Edition. She was also awarded the 2004 Washington Independent Writers Fiction Prize. She was twice a finalist for the Caine Prize for African Writing. Her most recent work Tropical Fish: Stories out of Entebbe earned the Commonwealth Writers Best First Book Award in the African region. Doreen Baingana trained as a lawyer at Makerere University in Uganda, and later received a Masters Degree in Fine Arts in Creative Writing from the University of Maryland in the United States.

 

“Pilgrimages,” a new project of the Chinua Achebe Center for African Writers and Artists at Bard College and Chimurenga, will send 14 African writers to 13 African cities, and one city in Brazil, for two weeks to explore the complexities of disparate urban landscapes. The writers will create 13 nonfiction travel-writing books about their trips that will capture each city as South Africa hosts Africa’s first World Cup. At the same time the continent will be on display, to itself and to the world, to a greater degree than at any time since independence. The 13 collected books are intended to prompt a shift in the focus of African reportage and will comprise the “Pilgrimages” book series, to be published simultaneously in Lagos, Nairobi, and Cape Town during the 2012 African Cup of Nations football tournament.

 

Together, the “Pilgrimages” book series and a website will be the most significant single addition to the continent’s archive of literary knowledge since the launch of the Heinemann African Writers Series in 1962.

 

“These talented writers are about to embark on 14 wholly different and fascinating itineraries, from exploring ancient scrolls in Timbuktu, to the Anglican Church in Uganda, to Somaliland’s elections, to name a few,” says Tom Burke, the Achebe Center program manager. “It is a landmark project, and our partners—large and small—across the continent have lent enthusiasm and support. It’s an exciting time to watch these pilgrimages unfold, and it will be quite something to read these books once their pages are written.”

 

The 13 writers that will participate in the “Pilgrimages” project and the cities they will visit are: Chris Abani (Johannesburg, South Africa); Doreen Baingana (Hargeisa, Somaliland); Uzodinma Iweala (Timbuktu, Mali); Funmi Iyanda (Durban, South Africa); Billy Kahora (Luanda, Angola); Kojo Laing (Cape Town, South Africa); Victor LaValle (Kampala, Uganda); Alain Mabanckou (Lagos, Nigeria); Nimo Mahamud Hassan (Khartoum, Sudan); Akenji Ndumu (Abidjan, Ivory Coast); Yvonne Owuor (Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo); Nicole Turner (Nairobi, Kenya);; Abdourahman A. Waberi (Salvador, Brazil); and Binyavanga Wainaina (Touba, Senegal).

 

“We are pleased that the Chinua Achebe Center has included Hargeisa in the “pilgrimages” project. Doreen Baingana will be in Somaliland at a time our attention is focused on our second presidential election and World Cup football being played in Africa for the first time; a very interesting time indeed”, said Dr. Ahmed Hussein Esa, Director of IPRT.

 

During her stay in Somaliland, Doreen Baingana will visit Somaliland writers, poets, playwrights and artists. She will also hold question and answer sessions with student and reader clubs and tour heritage sites.

[Jacaylbaro]

Doreen Baingana

[Blessed]

Good luck to her, meeshu way isku yara yaacsantahay baryahan.

 

Well done to Chinua. I love that woman! :cool: