A week in the heart of coldness

In a piece I wrote after my first visit to Oslo in September 2008 I observed: "To the eyes Oslo is not a very appealing city. To my mind parts of it were plain depressing. In my journal there is a note I made, as follows: ‘Norwegians think [Oslo] is an ugly city. I think so too.' But it is a city of proud inhabitants."

Returning a little over a year later for a week-long celebration of African literature organised by the Oslo House of Literature, I'm more forgiving. The city is not that ugly after all. But with a population of about half a million, it will always be a Tiny City in my estimation. Half a million people will be a housing estate in Lagos, I think.

There are no direct flights between Lagos and Oslo. A Lufthansa flight deposited me in the German city of Frankfurt, where I would catch a connecting flight to Oslo's modest airport. (The last time I was in Oslo I came by train, an endless journey from Gothenburg in neighbouring Sweden to Oslo's Central train station).

At Frankfurt I got the quizzing of my life from the (white) immigration officer. He wanted to see my invitation letter and my hotel reservation. He wanted to know what I was going to do in Oslo, and how much money I had on me. I emptied my pockets, so he could see my debit card and the modest cash I carried. Behind us lay a stagnant line of people. Beside us, the second queue flowed without hitch. One part of me pitied all the people on my queue, consigned to a frustrating wait simply because they stood behind a black boy holding a green passport.

I find flying into Scandinavian countries intriguing. For one, they exist in a world of their own, almost like they were another continent apart from Europe. Secondly, they are alike enough for you to mistake one for another (they will not be happy to hear me say this). But most interesting for me is glancing around the cabin while on a plane landing in any one of them, and trying to count the black people on board.

I think I may safely say you will never find more than two or three of us. And, going by my experience, the immigration folks will always take more than a passing interest. So there I am, alone in a room with a plainclothes officer (in Helsinki in 2008 they were uniformed and there was a dog) who is digging into the innermost crevices of my bags. And then, at the end of the search he asks, "Have you been stopped by immigration before?" Unenthusiastically, I tell him "All the time."

When I walk into the arrival lounge, and meet Andreas who's there to pick me up, I realise that the black woman I saw on the Frankfurt-Oslo flight, and later by the baggage carousel, is the Zimbabwean writer and filmmaker, Tsitsi Dangarembga. There's some bad news, her luggage did not show up. She is understandably distraught. Andreas tells her not to worry, he will call the travel agent and sort it out. And arrange for her to do some replacement shopping for essentials - clothes, toiletries, etc.

In the taxi on the way to the hotel, she jokes: "Oh my God, I won't be able to find any make-up here... all the make-up will be for blue-eyed blonde people." Andreas assures her that actually, immigrants make up twenty percent of Oslo's population. Later I will learn that that immigrant population includes female Nigerian prostitutes. I am a bit surprised; I knew about how well-known Nigerian prostitutes were in Belgium for example (you should read Chika Unigwe's On Black Sisters Street) but had no idea they had registered a presence in Scandinavia. During the course of the week, the Norwegian performing arts group Queendom (its members, all female, are Norwegians of African origin) performed a hilarious skit satirising the ‘Nigerian girls'.

The Oslo House of Literature gathered an impressive array of writers of African origin from across the world. From the other end of Norway (Stavanger, the "oil capital") came the exiled Zimbabwean novelist and poet, Chenjerai Hove, master storyteller and humorist. From Switzerland came Hove's compatriot, Petina Gappah. From the continent came Niq Mhlongo (South Africa), myself, Dangarembga and Muhtar Bakare, Adichie's Nigerian publisher. Binyavanga Wainaina (Kenya), Alain Mabanckou (Congo-Brazaville) and Chimamanda Adichie (Nigeria) and the grand old Ama Ata Aidoo (Ghana) flew in from the United States.

Over those five or six days we read from our work, debated (everything from choice of night club to the demerits of the British Empire), answered audience questions, laughed, met loads of interesting people, clubbed, and gorged on Norwegian food. Our hosts spoiled us, and one of the highlights of Oslo for me was going with Chika into Alexandros, the Greek restaurant opposite our hotel, in search of new delicacies to conquer.

Then there was the ‘Afrikansk Kyllinggryle' on the menu of the House of Literature's café. It was of course an instant hit with ‘the Africans'; for me it was perhaps the only item on the menu that my African stomach juices welcomed without equivocation. It was also in Oslo that I got introduced to "ice wine", intoxicating as it is sweet.

It was November, so the weather was cold and wet all the time, a world away from the September day of my 2008 visit, when the sun still managed to shine. The rain cut short the sightseeing trip that Andreas, Chika, Ama and I made to the Vigeland Sculpture Park, one of Oslo's most famous tourist attractions. We retired to the Park café for pastry and chocolate, and listened to Aidoo tell stories of her encounters with Christopher Okigbo and Chinua Achebe in the early 1960s.

Very quickly I made my own map of the city center, Karl Johans gate, the City's Main Street, along which Norway's most famous literary export, the 19th century playwright and poet Henrik Ibsen, regularly took a stroll. With Chika or on my own I made a series of window-shopping expeditions, getting lost in the winding streets of the shopping precincts. The night before I left I got a sketch made of myself by a street artist who told me he was originally from the old Soviet Union, and tried to guess where in Africa I was from. In his sketch he "dressed" me as an African warrior - with skirt and spear; the ‘heart of darkness' meeting the heart of Coldness.

I left the hotel at four o'clock the next morning. In the taxi on the way to the airport, I listened to Alain Mabanckou tell the most interesting stories (he translated Uzodinma Iweala's Beasts of No Nation into French), as the relentless Oslo rain drummed a goodbye rhythm on the roof.

Ogunlesi was in Oslo, Norway between the 15th and 22nd of November, 2009 for the African Literature Week organised by the Oslo House of Literature.