 Good afternoon everyone, yes, call and response, thank you. Yes, good afternoon, good afternoon. My name is Marcel Matiqi Akita, I am the producer of Africa Rights Festival, which is brought to you by the Royal African Society, which happens to be celebrating its 120th anniversary this year. I know, long time. It is a joy to have you here with us this weekend, it really is. It's been a really challenging year putting this festival together, but seeing you here is just, yeah, it's just a joy. I just wanted to extend that to you. For its first biennial and ninth edition, the festival this year has run both online and physically since the 4th of October, as we adjust to this hybrid way of living. So with that said, I would like to extend a very special welcome to those of you who are joining us online. I don't know which camera to be looking at, but welcome, welcome, welcome. And today marks the first of our two-day in-person programming at the British Library, which concludes tomorrow with our headline conversation with Egyptian-American author and activist Mona El-Tahawi. I know, she is right here. I'm trying not to fangirl too much. OK, so please do, you'll see dotted around that there are some QR codes, so please do scan those to familiarise yourselves with the programme and also to share your feedback of how you've experienced the festival this year. We hope that you enjoy this session titled Sex Lives of African Women, a discussion with author Nana Daqwa Sikiyama, with poetry performed by Hebaq Osman, Lydia Luke, and one of the women interviewed in the poem, Cochenga will also share her thoughts of being interviewed in the collection. This discussion will be chaired by Desta Haile, Haile, sorry, who is the Royal African Society's Deputy Director. Before I hand over to Desta, yes, I am still talking, sorry. I have a couple more housekeeping points for you. So for our live audience, for those of you who are joining us in this space physically, do please turn your mobile phones off or at least put them on silent. The second thing is we are not expecting any fire alarms this afternoon. So if you hear one, please follow the emergency exit signs. And over to you, Desta and Nana Daqwa. I'll invite you both to the stage. Thank you. Can we please make some noise for myself and put an incredible, incredible festival together under, as you know, these very tricky situations we've had. And it's such a great honour to be here today with you and to be discussing the success of African Women. Nana, welcome. Thank you so much for being here. Thank you. I'm so, so, so excited to be here. It's my first in-person event in London since the book came out in July. So it feels really special to be here at Africa White. I loved the book. How many people have read the book already or listened to the book? Yeah, amazing, amazing, amazing. I had about 10,000 questions, but we're going to try and just get a few in at least. And then we'll have time as well for the audience, also for our online audience, more online than in the room. So send your questions through and I should be able to get them on this little iPod. So, after listening to the amazing book, it made me think of a quotation from Alice Walker. Sexuality is one of the ways we become enlightened actually because it leads us to self-knowledge. And one of the chapters of the collection is self-discovery. So I guess I wanted to start with one thing you learned about yourself, Nana, through the process of writing the book. Gosh, I think for me, writing is actually a way to try and understand myself. It's also a way for me to just try and figure out who I am. And part of what was really incredible about putting this book together was the fact that as part of my process, I was interviewing African and Afro-descendant women across the continent and the globe. So I feel like there was so much I was learning from each and every woman I interviewed. And actually, finishing the book makes me want to go deeper into exploring some of the themes of the book in my own life. What did I learn about myself? I think I learned that I am super committed to the idea of freedom and to the idea of staying free because I don't think it's easy to stay free as a woman. I think it's very easy for us to bend and mold ourselves and fit into boxes and come across as appropriate. And this book has challenged me to always try and figure out who I am. Am I being true to myself and am I staying true to myself? And that's part of what I learned from this process. Amazing. So for those of you who don't know about the book yet, it's the result of years of interviews of women from across the continent plunging into the entire spectrum of sexuality, relationships, freedom, and self-discovery through polygamy, queer communities, polyamory, religion, beyond. So it's an incredible discovery. Each chapter is an incredible discovery. And even listening to it, and then I read it, read it. And yeah, it's just incredible. So, and also why we are here officially before to introduce you. Nana Dacoa Setiama is a Ghanaian feminist activist and award-winning blogger, co-founder of the blog Adventures from the Bedrooms of African Women. Setiama is the director of communication at the Association for Women's Rights in Development. She has written for The Guardian. This is Africa and Open Democracy, and it's spoken at Rightivism Festival in Kampala, Uganda, and Aki Arts and Book Festival in Nigeria. And The Sex Lives of African Women was published by Dialogue in just July. Yeah, in July. Amazing. Okay, more questions. So, since freedom is such a central part of the book, what does freedom mean to you and who were some of your earliest role models or inspirations for freedom? It's a great question. I feel like this is something that I will continue to think about and my definition of the standard of freedom will continue to change and evolve as I hopefully grow. But freedom for me means the ability to be true to myself, to be who I am. At the same time, it means the freedom to change who I am and not to feel like I need to stick with a particular identity. So it's also about being able to continuously learn, being able to continuously grow, being able to continuously evolve and to have space and time and to be able to explore. I feel like the process of exploring, the process of discovering, the process of journey is really important to be free. I feel like it's a dynamic process. It's not the same and it changes. And what freedom might look for me today may not be what freedom looks like for me in two years' time. And in terms of my biggest inspirations of freedom, it's really black feminist writers. I feel like I started to understand myself when I started to read feminist theory, black feminist theory in particular and some of the earliest feminists that influenced me, people like Bell Hooks, people like Alice Walker, a Ghanaian writer Amadeu Dun, and in their work, I was like, oh my God, wow. Everything you're saying really resonates with me. And those are women who are not scared to push against the grain. They're not scared to be themselves, even if who they are is not popular or be loved by the majority of society. Yeah, I love that. With each story, there was a new definition of freedom, a new exploration. Always makes me think of that Nina Simone quote, freedom is no fear. That really resonates, yeah? Yeah, and I felt your book was just, all the stories is just really courageous. And sharing, putting this book out at a time where Ghana is trying to pass this completely homophobic bill as well. It's really brave and really important work that you're doing. Before we have a poem from Hibak Osman. Let me ask you one more question. There's so many questions I want to ask you. Just trying to. I'm here to answer all the questions. Okay. How did you, so you started your blog, Adventures from the Bedrooms of African Women in 2009. So was it just a natural result of you being open with your stories that you built that community around? How did you start to create that community? Because it's so engaging. You have so many different people guest writing on the blog as well. How did that come about? How did you build that community? My adventures are my best friend Malika Grant. When we started, I would challenge myself to do things like, I'm going to blog every day for the next two weeks. I would do things like, say I hooked up with somebody the following day I'd be writing about it. But that was because that's how I wanted to analyse the experience. At some point in time I thought, I blog about sex. If you're coming to hook up with me surely, you don't know what you're getting yourself into. But I think the fact that I was sharing my own personal stories really encouraged others to share. So people started to reach out to me, started to tell me their experiences and I was like, do you want to contribute to the blog? Over time there were some people and up to now, we just gave them their own usernames and passwords. Women I had never met before, I mean for all I knew they could have just crashed my site. But I was like, there were so many people wanting to share their stories and obviously it's time consuming to upload everything. And it sort of came to me, this is called Adventures from the Bedrooms of African Women. It's not Adventures from Nanada Akma's bedroom or Malika's bedroom. Like this has to be a space for all African women. And so yes, let me entrust people and give them access to the blog. And I think we got very rich stories that way because obviously different people have different sexual identities, sexual experiences come from different backgrounds. And we then managed to sort of gather stories that actually reflected the whole range of African women's experiences. And that trust you gave I think is very clear in the book because they returned that trust fully with the way they opened up with such intimate details and struggles and fears. So the trust you gave. Yeah, but actually it's funny because there's a connection but there isn't a connection, right? A woman who I interviewed for the book, yes, some of them had read Adventures, but they were not people who were writing for Adventures, you know. So I basically did call-outs, I approached strangers, people I was having dinner with for the first time who seemed funky and I'm like, I'm writing a book about sex, can I interview you? I was on a trip in South Tome and I was like, I want to interview someone from South Tome, especially as an African, like Luzofon, speaking in Africa seems so disconnected, so I knew I really wanted to interview someone from South Tome. And the tall guy was a nice friendly guy, so I was like, do you know any South Tomean woman who might want to chat to me about the experiences of sex? And he was like, yeah, I'll ask my friend, you know. And then he was a translator for that conversation. Yes, but I think part of how the blog helped was, I think for some people because they knew me from the blog, they trusted me, and I think they also just had given me lots of experience of speaking to women about a subject that's often considered personal, you know, and something that people don't talk about, so I think I had the language to be able to speak to women and to be able to encourage women to open up and share their experiences with me. Thank you. Maybe this would be a good time to have Hibak Osman's pre-recorded poem reading. Good afternoon, everyone. My name is Hibak Osman. I'm a poet. And today I'll be sharing with you a few poems. I'm firstly starting with two pieces from my debut poetry collection, and this one is titled Cravings. I said I love you like a scythe, full of regretful hope. Full of, can't you see me here, dying to love you? This world too small, these words too short, an encyclopedia of loving you falls from my lips into a hole in my torso where I swear to never release it. Really, I love you like a vulture, taking entire chunks of you into my mouth and padding my throat with your flesh until you say enough. You have had your fill, leave some for tomorrow, but future is not currency here. I have no stakes in what may come. I say I love you like, please a little more as if I cannot hear your pulse between my teeth. Thank you. Following on from that one, I will be reading a piece titled Creaming in Parables. The mountains between us, now a new white sheet. You were a mirage, last slow burn of sun. On the days losing is all we've got. I have emptied my heart beneath your laughter, thought of open plains and the regrowth we are chasing. Don't spare me love. Don't spare my love. Ignore the age creeping around our eyes. Swear I could feel you smile from cities over. When you say you want me, what does that look like? Find your limit like I find mine. Every sip of you, a testament to my strength. Thank you. Finally, I'll be reading an entirely new piece actually, so I'm very happy and honoured to be sharing it as a part of Africa rights festival in honour of this amazing book, Life's Eyes of African Women, and it's a pleasure to read to you. I hope you enjoy it. It is titled Chosen. In these bodies, we have chased away the notion of forever, of binding, of an eclipse, to stay a little closer, to feel winds of breath across our tongues. We have chosen now, this evening, filled with languid arms, legs, laziness we are proud of. Know each other's terrain better than we know our own. Every curve and dip of skin, light slow enough to create amazing. We have collected joy, sweat, the soft of lips on each pulse point. We say yes to slink slow days, turning into moonlight chased evenings, a rapture of our own, taunting the sun to claim two brown bodies bruised with want, sacrificial lambs to desire. We have chosen ourselves countless times over. We have perfectly sharpened ears on our skin. Our teeth, edges formed out of broken promises. Let it be known that whatever we owe each other in day, we owe also at sunset. So turn to me and collect. Thank you so much. It's been a pleasure reading to you. My name has been Hibach Osmond. Beautiful. So before I invite you to read now, just another question. A lot of the women you interviewed were from multiple places, multiple countries, multiple homes, and you speak about freedom as a safe home you can return to again and again. I guess I was really interested from your cultural studies and from all the countries you mentioned how you think that may have influenced the stories that they shared being from so many places. Yes, no. I mean, for me, that breadth was really important and it was interesting to see the kind of commonalities that existed but it was also really interesting to see how people's specific context had shaped not just who they were but their experiences of sexuality. And now I can remember the question. You mentioned how a lot of the women came from many different countries. So that kind of multiple identities and nationalities, how that affected the stories they shared or the perspective. No, because people's backgrounds also influenced how they felt about sex. There was someone called Chantal who was from Haiti and when I interviewed her, actually interviewed her in the States where she was living in Canada and part of how she understands her sexuality is as she understands her sexuality is earthy, right? Because when she grew up, her experience was of people who were literally close to the land, who were very physical, who would have their hands in the earth. And so for her, that's how she thought of sexuality and the fact that she would do as a national religion in Haiti and that there's a goddess of sexuality and part of what she said was part of what is celebrated and Haiti is just the rawness of sex and that's part of her sexuality and that's part of her identity. For me, that was really beautiful to be able to see the connections between people's cultures, people's contexts and how they understood their sexuality. I loved it. Cameroon, Kenya, Grenada, Costa Rica, South Omer, Egypt, Marrakech, Nigeria, New York, North Carolina, Brussels, everywhere. And I have to say, obviously that's deliberate and for me also as somebody who is a pan-Africanist, that's a political choice, right? Africa, we have the continent and we also have many Africans who are not on the continent for reasons of slavery, colonisation, migration and for me the diaspora is part of the continent and so it's really important to show that breath. Until a few years ago I hadn't realised that there were people of African descent in Latin America. So for me interviewing somebody from Costa Rica was really, really important and somebody who understood themselves to be an Afro-descendant. Absolutely. The chapter that you brought up with Chantal, I loved how she describes people working the earth or in the rivers because there's a lot that's online. You talk about dating apps and internet website app, love things. It's just really interesting because we have the whole tech side all the time. So to have this story where it just came back to her associating sex with nature and where she grew up in the land and the earthiness of it, she said I thought that was really interesting. You were kind of using digital spaces for your work way before we were forced to this year and creating this incredible community. Before I ask you any more of these 10,000 questions maybe I could invite you to read a chapter. Absolutely. I'm actually going to read a chapter that will speak a little bit to the tech and the apps. So for people who want to follow I will read from page 66 I'm reading Elizabeth's story and just to give a bit of background she's a 44-year-old heterosexual woman of Nigerian and Scottish heritage. I'm going to read from page 66. With all the men I've dated I've always been their first girlfriend who is a wheelchair user. For some of them they may have had a girlfriend who broke her leg and had to use a crutch or chair for a few months but they've never been with anyone who was disabled. I remember one of my exes had dated someone who was deaf but that was an exception. All the men I have been with have never been with anyone who has a physical disability. So for the men in my life being with me is a new experience. Sometimes it can be awkward they are not sure what to do. They wonder how much movement I have. They're not sure whether they can move me around and I'm always like do your then, take control, be assertive move me how you want to move me tell me what you want me to do don't have any hand-ups or assume I'm going to feel uncomfortable in any scenario. I really can't stand passive men who wait for me to make the first move I just think oh please this is not going to work. I have a strong personality and so I need someone who can match that strength. We can still have that back and forth I can take control and be the dominant one but I'll get bored if I always have to be the lead. With some men it's fine the attitude is screw it. I'm just going to do what I normally do I'm going to be dominant and possessive I'm not going to treat her any differently to other women. That kind of confidence is a turn on for me and then with other men they are like I'm not sure is this okay are you alright with this in my head I'm thinking please just stop talking you're breaking the flow just do it I do a lot of online dating and so I make sure to tell people before we meet that I'm in a wheelchair I get different reactions some people say this is not for me and that's the last I'll hear from them with those that keep on chatting they'll very often ask so can you have sex why is that even a question do men think people with disabilities are asexual that they have no sexual feelings or desires if someone wants to have sex regardless of their disability they will find a way if desire is there and someone is willing there is always a way to have sex I always jokingly tell men the only thing I can do is stand up and have sex besides when is the last time I have sex standing up what positions do you usually have sex in most people have sex on a bed or on some sort of surface I'm fine just so long as you don't expect me to stand up against the wall if you can hold me against the wall which I've also experienced then that totally works too on the flip side I've also met some men via dating apps who are really turned on by the idea of being with a woman in a wheelchair there was one guy I had been chatting to we were already really attracted to each other and then I told him I was in a chair he then became even more intense and said now I really need to have you that felt creepy it was like I had become some kind of fetish for him with some other guy sleeping with a woman in a chair it's like taking a box I've slept with a blonde I've slept with a black woman then there are those folks I meet in real life maybe we meet at an event we get chatting and then they say something along these lines I'm so intrigued by you I want to know what it's like to have sex with you part of that is because I'm in a wheelchair they are not interested in getting to know me as a person if an element of their attraction is about the chair and I'm just an object of curiosity to them it's really off-putting if a guy is drawn to me and wants to have sex with me that's fine but I'm not some kind of circus freak what happens once we've had sex and you've satisfied your curiosity the worst are those men who have some sort of God complex those who think they have a healing dick had men tell me that if I have sex with you you'll be able to walk what's happened twice now? one of those experiences was when I was much younger I think this is a good place to stop actually I was wondering how much you edited when you got the stories because the stories made me crack up some really made me sad they're so different they're all ages but there's a unifying thread so I was wondering how much you edited the stories that were shared with you so basically I had a conversation with people and some people we had multiple conversations and some people we had one really long conversation and I would obviously have to transcribe everything and I would look back on our conversation and think what is the story here so I would pick what I wanted to focus and what I felt was most interesting what was most compelling and then I would present that story in a way that I think would be interesting and enjoyable for you to all read or listen to so I didn't just sort of share what people told me in the way they told me but everybody's story is true so I also didn't put words in people's mouth but because I already knew in a sense that where in which I wanted to tell the story because I knew I wanted to be able to tell the story creatively I would ask lots of really intimate questions how did that feel what happened what could you see, what did you feel because I knew that I wanted to be able to almost embody everybody as I wrote their story and I wanted to write their story in the first person so in a sense it's my story based on their experiences and you've included Elizabeth's story and she speaks to her disability you've included the amazing Fatou who's 60 and rocking it so I'm curious as to what feedback you've had so far because ageism's real and the women you feature just pay no attention to it so wondering what those more marginalised audiences have fed back to you since the books come out I mean the feedback I've had so far has been extremely positive I think people have been wanting a book like this for a while a book that speaks to the breath of African women's experiences around sex and sexuality obviously some people have been shocked a good friend of mine bought the book and her dad saw it and her dad read it before her and apparently told his wife we shouldn't let her read the book and part of what I've loved is people are buying the books for their mums so their aunties which I didn't think necessarily of people buying the book for their mums and aunties I expected them to buy it for their sisters and friends but that's also been really nice so far feedback has been positive it's brilliant it will only grow and grow let me see healing is another one of the sections of the book and you mentioned how healing how writing the book was healing and speaking to it but was there anything else you discovered that was healing during the time you were writing I think I discovered that healing looks different for everybody what one person finds healing is not so there was a woman who spoke about how literally having sex was part of how she got out and managed to live with depression and there was also a woman who went to celebrate for a long time as a way to also heal for a thousand days yes, I know right I was like that can never be me so I know that's not going to be my form of healing so healing just really really looks very different I think the main takeaway is about trying to create space and time to heal and being intentional about it that was definitely a lesson I know for myself I don't feel like I have been intentional about healing and it's something that is inspiring me to want to create space and time in my life to do well it's going to be healing for so many people reading it or listening to it it's just hearing the stories shared like that it just opens doors to questions or understanding or it made me think of during the whole me too movement so many friends that I had known for years and years and I thought I knew so well were opening up about things that they'd never felt able to share until they started hearing other women's stories so your book is definitely going to be healing to thousands, millions let me see, let me see, let me see maybe this would be a good time for us to invite Cochenga to share her yes, love it great hello my name is Cochenga and I'm a writer and a journalist and I first met Nana via Charmaine Lovegrove the premier British publisher in the UK and I was so honoured to be involved in the sex lives of African women and the conversation was one of my highlights of 2020 and I feel reflecting on it it was one of my biggest commitments to shirk off the shackles of respectability and to contribute in deepening the complexity with which we regard black women's lives so thank you so much for the involvement Nana, I really appreciate it and today I will be reading from my contribution going to therapy in my late 20s and finally getting sober gave me the confidence to finally live as myself that was when I read Janet mox redefining realness and found black trans women like cat black and groups like the teen time network that gave me the language that enabled me to name myself and a vision for my own life I had never wanted that much for myself my self-esteem was so low my expectations for my life were even lower as time went on I started to learn more about how the stories of trans people have been suppressed through the ages understanding that history helped me understand my own person my youthful wildness although I still face transphobia now at least I have confidence within myself I have hustled a career for myself as a freelance journalist I have bylines in the likes of Harper's Bazaar and Vogue I have literally pulled myself up by my bootstraps but I also have a lot of class privilege even though my own background is lower middle class my mum worked in local government and my dad was a secondary school teacher who came to the UK from Zimbabwe I went to university and I am hella boogey though through my education experiences I have had a lot of access to straight white men and the men I have been in my relationships with have paid for my writing courses, my rent they have paid for me to go to rehab took me on holidays and brought me food all that has been materially beneficial to my life and helped me get to where I am now at the same time I don't want to say to another black trans girl girl you need to do this there's nothing progressive in saying you just need to suck the right dick or you just need to find the right white man it's not reparations if you have to put in the labour of sex boost their ego and perform emotional labour that's not reparations that's really difficult work I am fatigued so I know how much work it is the admin, the promotion the reputation management the need to constantly schmooze and network it's a lot for a long time I tried to keep the sex work I did a secret I tried so hard to find a job that I thought was worthy of me I have a French degree I have worked in education and hospitality I would have loved to have worked at one of the major galleries publishers, charities or retailers I have applied for those jobs I have applied for hundreds of jobs I have applied for jobs where the pay is £10 an hour and jobs where the pay is £35,000 a year those white liberal folks are simply not interested in hiring me they do not want me a black trans woman even in those circumstances where I have been given an interview I could see the disdain written on their faces I moved from London to Portsmouth to Brighton and my experiences were the same the truth is the life of being a writer slash activist was not paying the bills I was constantly borrowing £20 from my sister I will do anything to continue to focus on my passion which is to write document and archive thank you did anything surprise you during the process of writing the book I think what surprised me was how many women had experienced child sexual abuse I don't think I really expected that so when I first started interviewing people I would ask a particular question and it took me a while to realise in a sense that question was triggering people's memories of child sexual abuse and the question was what is your earliest sexual memory and so at some point I stopped asking that question because it was a lot it was a lot that surprised me something I wanted to ask you as well was I felt the language was really malleable really flexible you have people excuse me inventing their own titles and there's a there's a freedom and flexibility with today's generation that there hasn't always been so how that affected your writing as well yeah so I would always start off by asking people how they identified in terms of their gender and in terms of their sexual orientation you know so each story starts with a little preamble which says how the person identified for me that was really important because I think that's also part of freedom the ability to self-identify and to define who we are for ourselves and so yes I refer to people how they identified and so sometimes you find like the different types of terms and terminologies you know that's deliberate because I wanted to reflect the reality of we identify ourselves in different ways yeah so some people describe themselves as the same gender-loving person somebody also say I'm a lesbian somebody say I'm queer somebody say I'm vicarious it's really vital because as you mentioned you know in your motivations for writing it there's limited access to comprehensive sex education so how can how can we help your book play a role in changing that besides telling our local libraries you need to have this book because your book is so impactful and can really it is an education in itself so how can readers help boost that it's a great question it's a great question I feel like readers are so powerful just the mere fact that you've read the book you tell your friends about the book if you're connected to academic institutions you ask them to maybe even include the book in the curriculum I can imagine this being a perfect fit for gender studies and women's studies and African studies departments and yeah just please share definitely definitely will share feel free to send in your questions too online so that we can we can include them for Nana in a few minutes pleasure is political and and you create space for this I think in terms of adding to education you also add to activism and activist work because you create this really empowering space where people are safe to share their stories and to share these journeys so how do you feel that the sex lives of African women has helped support these activist groups across the continent because you mentioned people doing amazing work in Ghana I know this incredible house of Gwremaile supporting in Ethiopia so how do you feel the book has linked activists or been inspired by activists yes I mean I consider myself as a feminist activist it's like probably my primary most important identity and I wouldn't do this book if I wasn't an activist in a sense it's part of my contribution to African feminist I guess knowledge production African feminists have been producing knowledge around sex and sexuality it's just that unfortunately we don't always get access to mainstream publishing platforms so my four mothers include Dr Sylvia Tamale for example Hakim Abbas and Sikari Akeen so I think of this as just a contribution to that body of knowledge and was there a second part to your question no that's perfect I remember you actually you've given so many great resources as well books you've read the queer African reader yes the queer African readers by Hakim Abbas and Sikari Akeen and Dr Sylvia Tamale the African sexuality reader is a whole compilation another book that I also really loved which is published by Cassava Republic Press as she called me a woman which is edited by Rafiat, Chitra, Nazina and also lots of online platforms Hola Africa The Spread which is a podcast in Kenya by Cass Tiffany Mugu has a great book The Quirky Quick Guide to Sex Dr T has an incredible book which is about sexuality and reproductive health like African feminists we've been doing this work and you share a lot about the works I've inspired you the women I've inspired you in the process so besides being an incredible book and a blog before that there are big big plans around so can you tell us a bit more about I'm really curious to learn about the festival which is happening now November if you could tell us a bit more about transformational adventures 2021 sex power magic festival how can we get involved how can people join no thanks for mentioning that so adventures very much started as an online space and three years ago we thought we wanted to create a regular space for people to actually meet face to face and discuss the same issues and themes we discussed in the festival so in 2019 we held our first in person event in Aquagana we did the same last year and this year really because of increased homophobia in Ghana we've decided to hold our festival only virtually whereas last year for example it was hybrid very much like this festival so sex power magic is the theme for this year's festival everything is virtual we've had some conversations already so people can visit our youtube page and check out some of those incredible sessions but on the 6th and 7th we have like our I guess our headline events as well next weekend two weeks okay and it's been really incredible to be able to have these conversations in online spaces as well as in a mixture in a mixture of spaces and a film, a series in the works so for adventures there's a filmmaker called Nosa Garec who wants to produce a series inspired by the blog so that is that is super exciting that's going to be a project I'm just like this you know but it's really exciting amazing well you've already created all these incredible digital spaces before this year but have you noticed a change in I guess more people are willing to join online festivals in a way that they might not have been in 2019 but have you noticed any kind of difference in communication or through network or community over the pandemic I know you mentioned that in terms of safety keeping activists safe online was the best option but yeah have you you've reached more people have started sharing in a different way it's a really great it's a really great question I feel like the reverse has happened right and I feel like people are thirsty for in-person events and I feel like people are tired from being online and it's exhausting I personally feel like the audience online was larger in the past than it is now okay well that's interesting and especially in terms of sex being confined and separated what has become more popular articles that talk about how to have sex in the covid era okay a poet who will be reading for us later Lillian Luke has a great poem called Loving Covid 2019 no but find it online because it's great and it's about sex think of 19 I love that poem thank you so much let me see one of the so many so many beautiful parts of the book that really made me stop and think because it's all about sex but sex and spirituality sex and self-discovery sex and freedom sex and creating a life that empowers ourselves and others made me think of it's an orgy lor quote erotic as the deepest life force a force which moves us toward living in a fundamental way and when I say living I mean it as a force moves us toward what will accomplish real positive change and I really felt that's kind of a pulse throughout the stories that you've gathered so and Ebony says something that she asks herself every day she asks herself am I happy today and if the answers no I make a change so how has this book changed your life or your work so far oh wow how has this book changed my life and my work so far I guess it's affirming to me that this is something I want to continue doing you know I've been writing about sex since 2009 I'm not tired of writing about sex there's so much more I want to write about sex I think it's super important like you mentioned I think it's political if it wasn't political we wouldn't have states trying to legislate who we can love and how we can love I feel like if we can free ourselves in our personal lives we can free ourselves in our public lives and in every area of life you know sex is interconnected to all the aspects you know of our lives yeah so I guess how this book has has changed my life it's given me more of a public platform a larger public platform than I already had and it's affirmed to me that this is something that's valuable to do this is something that people are thirsty for and this is something that's worthwhile continuing to do absolutely were there any stories because you must have had so many to choose from were there any stories that when people did anybody hesitate did anybody reach out afterwards and say like oh I'm not sure or can you edit this or so I didn't give people the chance to do that I really didn't I was very deliberate about it I thought about it okay when I write people's stories should I send it to them and I made a deliberate decision not to because I think because I explained the process of writing the book and sometimes when you tell people a story they see something that you don't quite see you know and I think that's sometimes the most interesting thing and we're human beings we like to all show ourselves the best light I didn't want people to put an Instagram filter and so I didn't give them the chance some people ask me will I get to see it and I'm like no and so for me this period of this book being out in the world it's also been I was most nervous about how are the women who I interviewed going to find the stories and so it's been really interesting hearing their feedback and people have said to me oh my god I was like why did I tell Nana all of this somebody was like oh my god why did I remain anonymous but they've also been very happy with it and they're happy they told me their story and I'm happy they did and they trusted me yeah the trust is you feel it listening to it I guess I was I'd like to know how I mean you had conversations it was very natural but whether there was anything in particular you did helped set up that safe space for them to share their whole lives with you like that because I'm sure some of them you hadn't known for long or they were strangers sometimes it's easier to talk to strangers but how did you ensure that they felt confident and comfortable to share those stories with you I think my process changed you know at the beginning because this was very new to me the very first person I interviewed for this book and the first time she had slid into my DMs to ask me a couple of questions because she was confused about her sexuality and I was trying to reassure her and then I was like oh can I interview you I'm going to write a book and she was like yeah because we lived in the same country she came to my house and we just drank a bottle of wine and just got to know each other and we didn't actually chat about the book and then she came again and then we drank more wine so this was an interview in hand and then we did a bad interview but by the end we'll just be zoomed hi my name is Anadakwa I'm working on this book and then we'll just get straight to the point so I felt like it was more about me getting comfortable and I think once I was comfortable it was also easier for people to just open up to me so you interviewed people all over the world and journeying travel is a big theme culture is a big theme culture is during the time that you were writing whether there was a specific journey that you took either actually physically or metaphorically that really shaped you during the time you were working on the book yeah that's a great question so after I after dialogue bought the book I was just like oh my god now I have to finish the book and I think we saw the book Robert to say hi Robert I think Robert saw the book in October 2019 and then it was December and December was such a fun time in Ghana I was partying so hard and I was like oh my gosh I need to get back into the book so I reached out to my friend her book is actually out and you can buy it in the book shop out and I was like I need to get back into my book so I went to her she lives in Senegal in a town called Pupenguin and I went there and she gave me a home I had a little apartment in her house and I wrote there I did some of my interviews there and that was really helpful that was a really good way to get back into the book it's also nice to reflect on your own life when you're in a different space yeah you thank a mutual friend at the end you mentioned Mina Salami and I remember asking Mina once how do you know when it's done how do you know when it's ready and she was just like you just know so how did you know when it was ready because you could have no doubt included a thousand more stories it's really helpful to have a deadline by which your publisher wants the book the agent there like mama it's time exactly yeah but yes when I first started I thought I would give you 54 women to represent the 54 countries on the continent and then I think we got more countries and I was just like what you know but yeah I think once I hit 30 I thought this is a good enough number there's enough breath here and there's enough depth here and I could have continued I can even now still think of more stories that I want to include but I had to stop at some point in time we're already waiting for the sex lives of African women too so we'll be here waiting we'll go to the festival and keep going to the festivals and reading the blogs until the second one comes out but no it was really incredible and I'm on my second way through it and you just learn more and just the range the depths the humor, the pain it's incredible the way you've carved out this space for the people sharing their stories but also for the readers and the listeners and I want to encourage people to consume this book in the various forms because it also exists as an audiobook and I really enjoyed listening to the audio I was a bit nervous I'm like will they pronounce the names right they did a pretty good job and it was really a different experience yeah it was like a conversation or listening in on your conversation with them it was beautiful so many questions but let me open up the floor to you if you're online I think there's a link under the video where you can type your question in and it should pop up on this iPad but otherwise I think we have a microphone yes it's so amazing to see people and be doing something in public maybe if we could give the microphone to the lady there hi Nana data seems to show that previous generations have more sex than this generation so I just wanted to know is this something that was reflected in the interviews that you had and if yes, why do you think so? do you want me to answer each question or like answer maybe answer each question because my memory is like no that's actually really interesting that I had no idea that this is what data shows but one of the older women I interviewed I loved that she was just like I have no idea how many people I've slept with I've slept with like so many people I feel like older African women have a sort of free-ness around sex that contemporary African women don't have I guess in a sense my sort of first all-all history project was with my grand-aunt and I interviewed her about her life and when she died she was like a hundred or a hundred and one and I didn't know until I interviewed her that she had three husbands it was just like a casual matter of fact then meanwhile imagine if I tried to marry three men so I think there's definitely a sort of free-ness especially those women who were like in the pre-colonial times had you know that we don't have a Kenyan friend of mine sent me a really funny video it's like four minutes long and it's I don't know if they know what they're going to be asked I don't think they do but the interviewer is like how many people have you slept with and you just see the reactions some people are like oh 100 or whatever some people are like oh well if you it's funny what people feel comfortable sharing next question please thank you very much for organizing this just from what I've I haven't read the book yet and from what I've had I think it's going to be absolutely amazing so my question is a bit cheeky but easy nothing to do with sex I'm sorry so basically I set up a small book club with just five of us myself and four of my friends and I've already recommended the book for our next read in December so I've got all the copies here my question is would you because we review it at the end of the month in December would you join be able to join us for an hour to talk about it absolutely I would yes pleasure cool I'll give you my email before I leave yes she's got a question over here hi Nana hello so I'm I think 80 something pages through the book and one of the I guess people that spoke to me the most was of course Elizabeth the wheelchair user but one that really touched me the most I feel was the Kenyan sex worker towards the beginning with her son that wanted to be a pasta and like for me it really well first of all it made me cry because like you know learning about her story and then the fact that she was able to raise just this beautiful son who's so open and welcoming and loving of everybody like was there a particular page or particular persons example that actually had you tearing up or was it that one so yeah no that's a great question yeah fill us the story I think is one that like sticks with you you know and definitely was one of those stories that really moved me emotionally and but for me also personally Titi's story Titi from you probably haven't gotten there yet so she's from Zimbabwe she's a woman live it with HIV you know part of what is really nice is you know she found love got married had a child who's free of HIV but then learning how you know she fell ill was like tough yeah and how it affected her for a long time and so she found the strength to like you know yeah she found the strength to sort of move on with her life yeah thank you and I'm looking forward to ask Chathin afterwards yes that's a beautiful I think through theme how each one found strength or found support like with fill us the sex workers alliance the different groups that were formed to support each other and that's that comes back a lot it's beautiful more questions don't know about this thank you hello thank you so much and you just seem like such a fantastic and hilarious lyricist so I'm really looking forward to reading the book my question was like related to the fact that you interviewed both women on the continent and women in the diaspora and was there a difference and was there sort of patterns or parallels that you could see and I'm just thinking of my own experiences as an African woman who has been raised though in the UK and how much racial politics comes into play in a way that it doesn't for my mother or it didn't for you know people before me and is there anything that you can help these women learn from each other no that's an excellent question I feel like there's some stories that people had they could have only experienced in the diaspora so there's a story by a woman called Maureen for example who grew up in France and she was speaking to basically how she felt invisible as a black woman right and how for years she'd only dated white men and it took her a while to realise that that was also internalised racism and how black women are never shown as you know women who deserve to be partnered and I think we still see this in French film today right what's that popular show that a lot of us look at it exactly it's like exactly you know so yeah exactly and I feel like that's an experience that people will only have in the diaspora but at the same time to even between Africans in the diaspora on the continent you could see so many commonalities in terms of how like respectability politics right and don't disgrace the family and all of that that was like a common theme across with the people in the diaspora or on the continent yeah I think race made a difference outside basically yeah Hi Nana I'm Anna I'm one of the pleasure proper fellows with Annie so she says hi Hi my first question is I'm a Filipina so Asian women are also hyper sexualised in the same way that black women are how did you when the women that you interviewed how did they process this kind of stereotype that kind of looms over us of being hyper sexualised how did they deal with that and secondly how did they define pleasure those are excellent questions I mean I think different people define pleasure in different ways and a lot of women were in a sense on a journey of self discovery to figure out what pleasure meant for them in terms of how people dealt with being hyper sexualised the person that comes to mind again is Maureen that I was mentioning you know because she realised that for a lot of the white men who were dating her they were dating her because she was black because they had a particular perception of black women and you know some people were saying oh when I was a child I used to watch lots of videos on MTV and see black women shaking their asses and so you know and I think it's hard because people want to be seen as human beings and as individuals and not be fetishised or exoticised yeah question over there thank you Nana my name is Dami religion plays quite a huge role in the African context both on the continent and in the diaspora how do you feel African women relate to their sexuality comparing our traditional African religions to the more Ibrahamic religions that now have more popularity on the continent I love that question because that was again I guess one of the themes that kind of surprised me spirituality came across really really really strongly and you know there's one particular woman her story is the one that starts the book and she said for herself there's a mix of spirituality where like two sides of the same coin which I think is like interesting and what I observed at least from those that I interviewed I can't see if that's true for real life but just based on the stories I felt like for a lot of people a lot of women Islam actually sort of opened up avenues for their sexuality and for a lot of Christians their Christianity and actually repressed their sexuality right and it was like hard for them to come into their sexuality because of what they've been told about sex usually don't have it or wait until you're married and then it's like marriage is not happening and you know I'm supposed to be holding on for my husband but that was a really common thread and part of what was really nice about Chantal's story and speaking about voodoo it was like there was permission of voodoo to be vulgar to be loud and to be sexual you know I don't think I interviewed anybody who I think Fatou does who in a sense practised African traditional religion I think probably Fatou but we didn't really speak about that so I don't know what connections people would have in terms of African traditional religion but yeah especially for Christians their religion and their upbringing had been part of what had limited their sexuality and didn't Fatou say that she felt marriage was there to just trick women into she did yeah I love Fatou Hi Nana, thank you you said you were surprised at the number of African women who were abused as children did you find any difference between how they experienced sex women who were abused as children how they experienced sex in African women who were not because sex is a big taboo across Africa so I just want to ask you no it's a great question I mean the thing is because I didn't want to at some point in time hear about child sexual abuse anymore I stopped asking the question that would trigger people so I don't think I can make a correlation right part of what was really nice for me lots of the women who had experienced child sexual abuse had gone on to have really really incredible sex lives one woman comes to mind her name is Juarez she experienced FGM as a child part of what was refreshing for me was she expressed she said FGM is child sexual abuse and honestly I had never thought about it as that but that's what it is I think we sensationalized it in the west but it is basically child sexual abuse child sexual abuse happens everywhere and then later on she was telling me about this incredible vagus nerve orgasm she had and I was just like wow because in my mind even me as somebody who has been writing about sex and sexuality I hadn't really thought that women who had experienced FGM or cotton could experience that kind of sexual pleasure so for me and myself there was a lot of re-education other questions oh iPad iPad ok ooh this is high tech ok alright ok Rami ok so his name is Rami he's French he lives in the UK works at the University of Cambridge and he asks do you think sex shapes our states of mind your self value do you think sex can help us can help free us more in our spirit I hope I make sense and I apologize for my English don't apologize Rami you're doing great yes so no I absolutely think sex can free us especially when it is sometimes what imprisons us right we're told don't do it you can really do it under certain conditions so I think doing it under the conditions where you want to do it can be an act of freedom and it's also a practice so I think that continuous practice is also a way to free yourself I mean I know for myself sharing a personal story I married the first guy I had sex with and then when that marriage ended I wanted to sleep with so many people and I did I had my whole face and was super free and I recommend everybody to have the whole face Rami is back already so how to break the barrier that exists with talking about sex for example if I want to open the mind of my mother or my cousins who are from Djibouti but there's a huge cultural taboo about talking about it how do I start to do that well that's tough that's tough I feel like go gently ask easy questions maybe ask easy questions about what it was like for them growing up and how did they feel when they met say you're talking to your mother how did they feel when they met your father if there's a father in the picture I feel like just ask easy soft questions and I think sometimes parents will surprise you if you just ask them like we didn't just appear here by magic or maybe if you're a student you can make it seem like you're doing research and say maybe I want to know how our ancestors did this or give them this book and ask them to read it and ask them what they think I think those surprises often come when you don't ask if you ask them I feel sometimes it's like you get evaded you'll be in the middle of dinner minding your business and then they'll say oh I remember when I dated you what those kind of come out of the blue okay we have one more here but are there any other questions from the audience over there please I just wanted to say thank you for writing the book it actually inspired me to write my dissertation so thank you so much so based on that I just have two more methodological questions I firstly wanted to ask how you dealt with the risk of losing something in translation you said you had an interview that was conducted in Portuguese for the late from south of me no that's a great question you know the interesting thing about you can tell when they haven't said what you said so when this guy was translating before we started I said just say exactly what I said don't try and explain it just say it and there's so many times I would be like no say what I said because you're trying to explain I'm like no no no just say what I said and so I think that's how I dealt with it but obviously if you have a trusted translator somebody you know ideally somebody who's politics aligns to yours especially if language is important I think it would be good to work with somebody you know thank you and the second question was why did you decide not to do a more traditional anthropological analysis with the stories you got why did you decide to just leave their voices as they were what would a more anthropological analysis look like just like sort of analysing because you had at the start of each section you had like a brief two or three pages about the themes but I was just wondering why you decided not to draw connections between the two all of them explicitly oh yeah I think I wanted people to like make up their minds for themselves and come up to their own conclusions and I didn't want to be overly academic which was like to try and make the book hopefully more accessible thank you you're welcome question over here hi I just wondered about mothers I was thinking about my own mother and the total lack of discussions about sex going up any of the women or was there a theme around the lack of discussion with mothers or the word discussion that was a question on my mind oh yes absolutely I think there was just one person who like her mother knew about her sex life it was like you can have sex at home there's no need to go and have sex in the corners in the bushes or anything but it was very common it was very very common for people to feel that they never got told about sex or they never had a conversation about sex and I mean any basic conversation let alone comprehensive sex education but you know and sort of like maybe in defence of some mothers I feel like sometimes I think they told you many years ago I was on BBC and my mum was listening and I said I didn't have any sex education and she texted me that's a lie so I guess maybe she felt she educated me but that's not the kind of education I wanted something that was more direct and more explicit and I think like for me that's really encouraging because actually everybody says they wanted their parents to talk to them about sex like they wanted an open conversation about sex an honest conversation about sex anyone to have to try and figure out for themselves and for me as a young mother that's encouraging and you dedicate the book to your daughter as well I do I love this book I'm going to read it somewhere more questions Hi, I'm Nicky and I want to ask a question that we can't unfortunately talk about sex lives of women and African women without also centring trauma and you did a lot of sitting down with people to talk about their experiences and some of this have been you listening to stories that would have been heartbreaking and you talk about stopping a particular question because of this I want to know how do your journey of talking about sex over the last decade or plus how you've managed to still centre joy without absorbing a lot of this traumatic narratives when talking to other people but also in your own experiences of sex Thank you, that's a wonderful question I think for me like joy is also important and political and I feel like you have to actually consciously create space for joy and joy is also part of the way we get over trauma and difficult experiences and so yes in my writing about sex I have chosen to centre joy I also feel like as African woman, as black woman you know the world often looks to learn about our trauma and know about our experiences of joy and pleasure and so for me it's also like a conscious political choice to talk about pleasure and to encourage us to have more pleasurable lives and to make space and time to like have fun and explore and be happy and joyful in the world Your book does that with so much grace and even the way it's set up even when it is a heartbreaking story there's hope in each story I feel the way you've sculpted it as well and as much as there are tears there's also moments that just crack me up in the book as well so you capture all of that beautifully Thank you Any more questions from the audience here or online? Oh, Rami says, thank you for your answers I'll definitely share the book Someone's asked if there's any chance of the sex lives of African men No Well, that's your answer there Any questions from us here before we have up? I haven't read the book but thank you so much for sharing that My question is regarding language since you're encouraging us to share the book with our mothers speaking about my own mother she doesn't read English or speak English that well so how do you how do we give it to African mothers when the language is used when the language is soft it's a massive barrier It's such a wonderful, wonderful question but I also think part of what is really nice about Africans, especially those of us colonised by the British is how we've taken over the English language so if you read this book there are so many expressions from different parts of the continent and I kept that in the deliberately because I wanted people to recognise and even the way that English is written if you're reading a story by somebody from Nigeria, like Vivi's story it's Nigerian English so I think I want to claim English as an African language but I agree I think it's extremely political and extremely important to have language in different stories I would love for people to translate accepts of the books into their own language and share with their mothers I give you permission to do that Any other questions from Mona Hi Nana, you know how much I love you I love you too Mona We can have a love fest all day but I wanted to ask you something that I often come across in my own work Did you ever feel protective about the women that you interviewed especially from the white gaze because it's really important to tell our stories as African women but we also know how the white gaze will intervene and disrupt and our people will often say oh my god you're giving all this ammunition to white people to laugh or criticise or whatever so how did you deal with that Now that's an excellent question and definitely I feel very protective of the women who have so graciously shared their stories with me and I think for me this is why it was really important to tell a full story I think I myself had to get over some of my own hesitation because when I started I really wanted to tell a book that was just about pleasure because I'm like oh the media is always portraying women as African women as victims of FGM as people who are living with HIV and AIDS and so at the beginning it wasn't in my mind that I was going to interview African women who had FGM or has HIV and AIDS but as I was doing these interviews I realised actually what's important is that whole story and actually for each person you really need to show the breath of their life and not just one narrow aspect which is what I think the western media does and so when I got over myself and I had those conversations with people it was like oh this woman who's experienced FGM gosh the orgasms that she has I wish I could have them this woman who has HIV she's living a full life she's found a partner she's living with a partner who's negative who laughs her, she has a child who doesn't have HIV and those are the stories you don't hear in the media and so that's what allowed me to do that and not to be scared to deal with subjects that I feel like I have very much portrayed in stereotypical ways in western media Thank you You give these stories you give these voices an outlet you know we see we're always bombarded by negative stories by depressing statistics especially in this past year how abuse cases of transgender murders just increased so much over the past year in London there's been terrible cases of murders and attacks in the past year but your book doesn't shy away from any of the negative aspects but it gives it gives a platform for these voices to be heard and these personal human stories to be heard and names whether they're chosen or not but it's just incredible what you've done Thank you so much for your book and not just the book but the festival and the podcast to come there's a whole universe around around the sex lives of African women Thanks to you Thank you Thank you Thank you I have about 500 more questions but I would really like to invite Lydia Luke to share a poem She is a black woman poet playwright and facilitator based in Epsom Her work has been published by Lungs Project Amber Gallery, Guts Publishing and more She was in the 2020-2021 Hi Hi Court of the Royal Court in charge of playwriting She co-facilitates prison a writers group for black women and is artistic manager of Colford Company Lydia Luke Hi We have five minutes I'll see how it goes Hi, I'm Lydia Nice to meet you all, this has been fab Thank you so much I used to work in a bookstore in Brixton and we sold your book and it used to just fly off so it's exciting listening to you talk about it and thank you Desta for inviting me to talk about sex and I don't get to talk about these poems so this is the perfect place This first one is called First Kings Can you hear me? First Kings His eyes are zealous a destabilising man drenched at the altar permeating my thoughts red acrylics trace his lip shape they welcome and sing to me hands grabbing my hips rain after drought like newts called by Elijah teeth grazing my neck bold as a king's tongue give me my daily bread I live with others but right now I could care less Ravens carry me within the ether no longer noticing I'm in foreign abandon declared so by God deep in magenta slow heat like the Sahara please don't refuse me a tsunami of yes's is all you need to say in a still small voice fuck me wild and weepy thrown from the cliff in mid air I'm surrendered swing low travel sweet rejoice in the Lord so much more times and again and again and again thank you two more it was really interesting hearing people talk about struggles with repression and spirituality because I definitely dealt with that and still kind of deal with that and this is a poem that I wrote a few years ago that I haven't read in a while and feels really girlish but it's honest and I think it's relevant and it's called Modesty Verses this sexting feels esoteric belonging to a few not for girls like me who sprouted perched in pews when the Bible says you cannot you repress and grip to your teeth else demons go come and get you drag you underneath roasting like groundnut legs crossed like a saint mourning at my coronation as the empress of restraint my body feels malnourished dormant out of sight like darkness broke into my house and sucked out all the light my mind's at constant war with the desires of its host maybe then turns into no yes's to almost boundaries built like Jericho self-control starched like a gown who will march my city seven times tear this fortress down my body's supposedly a temple but worshipped it is not the divine and her power I seem to have forgot is it due to high standards or I deep down feel ashamed has fear laid me crippled forced me meek and chained is it the cross that chokes me when hands reach round my neck or specters who lay in waiting to merc me at mention of flesh I'm told I'm a better woman for it but I believe that to be true now loving takes me among the gods I do not writhe in mourning due however it's what I have been a thing I haven't changed to do what feels to do what's perceived as meaningless feels dirty and feels strange waiting has been no good time but it's what I've always done a scissor says and I sing along I bust it open for the right one how much time do I have? ok I'll see how it goes after this so this one's called inaugural ritual to myself first time was in the dark conjuring a satin mist I oscillated in legato the room a steady velvet blue oia through a lightning bolt into the sky rich semitones arose in me swelling with volume I am oranges drizzled in nutmeg and honey a drippy pigment from the throat I knew nothing of what lay where I was going but as with all good things I gave way and fell with thunder then rain thank you for having me thank you everyone online here thank you Nana, thank you so much I just have a little message please yes ok so the inherited all our names event is included in your day pass so if you come back at 5.30 there'll be a performance of storytelling poetry and short films and again I would just like to thank Marcel and the whole Africa rights team for making today and this weekend and this whole month of online amazing events and people possible so thank you so much and thank you for being here and if you haven't got the book already go and get this book tell people outside to sign their books as well ok and you can even get it signed if you grab it today Nana, that's it for me thank you so much