I won’t kill myself (or How to Run a Literary Venture Without Losing Your Mind)

“…to have and provide nourishment for sustained survival, and to create … political spaces that do not destroy fundamental rights to survival.” — Vandana Shiva, Staying Alive

In 2016, I decided that I was going to open a library centered on writings from Africa and the black world, and that this library was going to be located in Yopougon, because it is the biggest neighbourhood in Abidjan, because it is not the defined centre, because I have also never liked doing what is obvious. And perhaps because I was more interested in the other conversations that were not being muffled by the noise of the Africa Rising discourse.

Because while some were praising the continent, continent, which for some reason, was almost never referred to by its name, as the place to be, the future, the land of all opportunities, others were wondering why anybody was returning.

Why are you coming back when it is our dream to go beyond the waters?”

Frequenting cyber cafés – more cyber than cafés, I would observe as young men and women walked in to ask: “What country has +212 as country code?” The answer would elucidate a well-resounding tchroooouuuu sometimes followed by the comment:

L’homme cherche les bons, bons pays, vous venez emmerder les gens ici.

Which countries were the better kind of countries, and what placed +212 country on the list of countries whose people bothered people in search of better kind of countries?

No smear on +212, after all, it is thanks to them that we could pursue our AfCon dream. I’m only reporting on what I heard 😊

And natural hair not representing so much the state of the liberated mind as just a sign of an unkept person who had to be seen to pronto-pronto.

Still I sat with the desire, because it had not quite taken shape inside my mind, because I was thinking about how to give it shape without perpetuating the male-centered literature I was seeing all around me, and especially because I was getting perturbed by the narrative around the 1949 Women’s March in the colony that was then Côte d’Ivoire (when the story was actually known).

That basically 2,000 women marched on the prison in Grand Bassam to liberate their husbands whose number didn’t even reach 10.

I wondered if that was the whole story. If layers were not missing. These women were beaten, sprayed with water cannons plunged directly into the sea, trampled upon with horses, thrown into jail. Who were these magnificent men? Did they leave us grandchildren? Or great-grandchildren? I asked for a friend.

What would be the point of setting up a literary venture that nobody was seemingly needing if it were to peddle the same discourses? That question got answered during the first week of my Mandela Washington fellowship when during our country presentations, one of the participants, a gender activist working with teenage girls, took us through the great exploits undertaken by the great men of his country.

“Where are the women that would make the girls you work with say, ‘it is possible for us’?”, I asked.

Maybe he thought I was joking for he answered in jest, “the First Lady.”

And that was when I decided that this library I had been thinking about on and off for some three years now would be dedicated to the works of African and black women. Because this man replying to me today in jest, “the First Lady” will be the first to complain of femocracy when the First Lady starts playing the role he assigned to her. In the words of the song, On vous connait by Patience Dabany, we know how you operate.

That was in June 2019. I returned to Côte d’Ivoire in September 2019 and by March 2020, 1949 – for that was the only fitting name – opened its doors, and I was brutally confronted with the reality of turning a dream into reality, and maybe with my own naiveté.

Example 1: I announced on the platform that used to be known as Twitter on March 04^th, that I had been quiet because I was busy working on setting up a library, and ta-da, there it was.

(Looks like this is not the first time I have felt the need to take breaks, it would seem.)

Example 2: The next day, I got a couple of phone calls from journalists saying that they would have loved to come to the opening, but the president was making a big announcement in Yamoussoukro, and of course they couldn’t miss that, and for me to now be completely surprised because it would appear that not everyone took things literally the way I did. When I announced that 1949 would be opening its doors the following day, I meant it very literally; I didn’t mean that there would be any launch. And also, the photos were not lying; the spaces between the books had nothing to do with any aesthetics but everything to do with me opening the library with my own books.

The journalists came later, and great fun was had.

But that day, it was literally a case of opening the doors, posting a video on Facebook, putting a makeshift sign outside – because there remained no more money after all the light building work – and baking a cake. Some “mummies” in the neighbourhood and schoolgirls who were passing by saw the makeshift sign, and decided to pay us a visit, and we ate cakes and chatted, and we told them they could use the library as they saw fit.

That part wasn’t naiveté; I just chose not to rush into any programming because, well, how could there be any programming when I had never run a library before, nor the two other people I was working with then? So, we did storytelling when we had even just a child at the library, and from there, we had a storytelling club because that child brought friends, and parents paid subscription fees for their children, and a teenage book club got set up because the teenagers would stop by at the library even during recess or after classes, and then a feminist conversation club.

But of course, I couldn’t run all of these activities and maintain a somewhat active social media page – I later learned that 1949’s social media pages were not active at all, so I could do with dropping the ‘somewhat’. More on that later – and maintain my work as a literary translator, writer and feminist researcher – and maintain my family life. And also, I have always operated from my strengths – I’m not a storyteller; the other things I could do, but not if I wanted the venture to be sustainable. I also didn’t want a situation where we lost the playfulness of the storytelling club, nor have the feminist conversation club and the book club turn into, “Let’s educate these people.” I certainly also didn’t want the vocable of feminist talk peppering the different conversations taking place at the library. What does feminism look like in practice? How do we maintain our stance of deliberately positioning ourselves at the margins?

And here we talk about money.

I was investing 20% of the money I was earning from my work as writer, literary translator and feminist researcher into the venture – and that is because I’m in a privileged position of having parents who never hesitated in giving me the house to pursue “what I love”, in their words – but everything else was adding up:

- The salary of a cleaner

- Cleaning products

- Toilet papers!!!!

- The salaries of the assistants

- The various subscription fees: Canva, baby 😊

- The fees of the storyteller, and of the various moderators for the conversations, even if it were just transport fees

- Colouring pencils, printing costs

- Books – we are a library after all

- Electricity bill

- Water bill

- Internet

I could go on. In the beginning, I naively thought that maybe after a year, I would be in a position to pay myself. What on earth was I drinking at that time? Because after a year, the thinking changed and turned to: Let’s be going! At least, with the little food kiosk we had operating and the subscription fees and some of the wonderful people supporting us with funds to run the clubs, I was now only investing 15% of my own funds into 1949. It was only in October 2024 that I had no personal funds going into 1949.

It doesn’t mean that 1949 is swimming in money; after all, if we reached the stage where operationally, the library could support itself, it meant deciding that some things were more important than others, that sometimes one needs to recenter on one’s mission, and most importantly to forget any notion of getting paid. But just because I cannot get paid from running 1949 doesn’t mean that I need to kill myself in the process, and not killing myself in the process meant maintaining my non-negotiable 8 hour-sleep, bringing depth when we did any engagement on social media or in the community, and putting on activities that we could comfortably sustain. Our guiding principle always being: we are not killing ourselves.

We also decided to ignore some well-meaning advice, advice such as needing to post at least 3 times a week so that the algorithm keeps us on top.

a) What bad thing is going to happen if the algorithm doesn’t keep us on top? As a very good friend always asks, “In which way is this going to help Africa?” That became my question too. It still is.

b) We couldn’t sustainably keep such rhythm up lest we fell into posting platitude. And as I have always said, nobody forced me to set up 1949.

And there was the advice that if we needed to reach more people, well, we had to boost the posts on social media and go around the community, and share flyers, and speak at schools.

Before we even get into the issue of money – because nobody has ever designed and printed flyers and boosted posts on goodwill – of course, we went into the community, and into schools, but let’s keep in mind the fact that some of the first things to go when the structural adjustment measures hit many African countries in the 80s were libraries, among other so-called non necessary things. As such, 1949 wasn’t going to bring to life a library culture that had laid dormant, so as not to say, been non-existent for some 40 years. We are great but not that great. And then, another example of my naiveté (there are many!).

Because of the success of the storytelling clubs – that is the only reason I can come up with – we had some self-appointed community leaders approaching us with the suggestion that they could bring us even more children, but, what would they be gaining from it?

“What do you want to gain from it?”

“How much will you give us?”

And that’s when I explained that the visit to each child at the storytelling clubs and at the library on the days we didn’t have the clubs running equated to 20 CFA Francs per visit. Out of those 20 CFA Francs, how much did they want? Since I had no response, well, that was that.

There is no pot of money somewhere. For instance, up to today, we do not have the complete agreement, the legal paperwork which would make it easier for us to compete for grants; we are only operating with the récépissé de dépôt, a document that confirms that you have submitted the paperwork needed to set up an association, a document that you cannot open a bank account with. As for obtaining the full agreement, well, as we say here in Côte d’Ivoire, il faut avoir le cardio, hein, for it is an endurance matter. Some associations/NGOs have been waiting for 3, 4, 5 years.

Others, to help you, have advised on funds that might be at the Ministry. But are you supposed to just get up and go to the Ministry of Culture on some rumours that funds might be circulating? And how much funds? And the time all that will take. And what happens to my work, of running the library, of being as writer, a literary translator, a feminist researcher? Work that is not relying on rumours.

I just don’t have the time, nor the brain space. As for the fact that that is how things are, well, I need to keep pockets of time to write curatorial statements, to rest, to read. At one time, I instituted a rule at the library that nobody should bother me before 11am for instance.

“Even if it is the President, tell him that Edwige is reading. I must read otherwise there won’t be any 1949.”

And most importantly, keeping the pockets of time to do my work as a literary and feminist translator and researcher, and chase invoices (yes o!) and answer emails and spend time with friends and family. Even if some friends have felt that I do not spend enough time with them.

Hum! There is a saying in Côte d’Ivoire that says, “Not everything can be said.”

And most importantly sleep 8 hours. Because there’s a lot that lies behind running a literary venture. I’m the accountant, the content creator, the vision-holder, and sometimes the cleaner, the gardener, the person that gets called for everything: visits to the library, issues with the plumbing, issues with the writers in residence, etc.

And because not every mention of funds is preceded with “might”, I’m also the grant writer, and that means translating the vision of what I’m doing into tangible stuff, into how many people I’ll be reaching with that my knowledge production I’m doing. Because donors love shiny, measurable, neatly reportable projects, and most of them are certainly not here to fund operational costs. At least not those ones I have come across.

Then there is the double-edged visibility of feminism itself. It is a blessing that feminist discourse has made a resurgence into the public sphere, but eish, may the ancestors themselves help us. From those who pretend that they need an education into feminism, to those who regurgitate what they have heard through the sexist and misogynistic grapevines, to those who think that feminism is a trend and let’s jump on the trend and do some performative, convenient, box-ticking activities, to the defenders of “our mothers” who’ve never spoken to their mothers or to any mothers for that matter – you do know that the portrayal of Daman in The Black Child by Camara Laye is just that, a portrayal and not a fleshed-out three dimensional person, right?

As Mariama Bâ said, “nostalgic songs dedicated to the African mother are no longer enough for us.”

Every March, the invitations would roll in. Panels, keynotes, “conversations”, interviews, where while you’re not outrightly asked to provide soundbites, well, that is what you are asked to provide. Where feminism is equated to being a “strong” African woman, where the whole thing, if you stay long enough, descends into “I’m what I’m because my father raised me with no gender bias” performative talks. Basically, my father is not like the other savage (African) men keeping their daughters in bondage. Or “We would be a lot better off if half of all countries and companies were run by women and half of all homes were run by men and we shouldn’t be satisfied until we reach that goal.”

Those panels are not places where you go and speak about anti-capitalism feminism, Feminism for the 99 percent, or the destruction of the earth through neoliberalist practices. And because you still live in a capitalistic world, you think thus: “If at least I was getting paid to spout this bullshit, I could justify it, (and buy a book or two with the dirty proceeds).” But that is not the case – it is couched in language that spouting the bullshit is beneficial to YOU! After all, we are making you visible. And you wonder how invisible you really were if they could find you?

So, I stepped away. Not dramatically—just quietly. I logged off to breathe, to read, to think. Because the guiding principle of not killing myself remains. And as the roadworks still go on, although not as deafening as before but still very much present, we’ve decided to keep the doors closed a bit longer, and keep on reading, and work on our different projects. We’ll keep you posted, because stepping away doesn’t mean being idle.

The most interesting thing was last week when I posted here that I was back online, I was immediately contacted by two people for an interview. But I have nothing to say, so, I declined. And returning in a way that nourishes me, like turning my phone off at 6 p.m. and not switching it on until 9 a.m. the next day. I’m not an emergency doctor to say that because I’m saving this patient who is the world, I always need to be on the go, and on call. The world will survive, and if it doesn’t survive too, then, well.

Recently, I have been reading up on agroecology, stewardship of the commons, etc. I have started with Staying Alive: Women, Ecology, and Development by Vandana Shiva, and so many ideas are resonating with me. I’m learning that staying alive—creatively, spiritually, politically—isn’t about constant production. It’s about creating conditions for nourishment. Building quietly. Protecting the work that matters. Refusing extraction disguised as opportunity.

And finally, as we say here, if everything has to be said, we won’t leave here today, and all things must come to an end. So, I leave you here.

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This essay was written to the sounds of On vous connait by Patience Dabany, Kalgbeu by Luckson Padaud, Hommage à Guéi Robert by Candine Ancien, Bôlè by Mamadou Djoman.