Afrofuturism 419

November 2, 2016 4:37 PM

Dear Mr. Sir: I am Dr. Bakare Tunde, the cousin of Nigerian Astronaut, Air Force Major Abacha Tunde. He was the first African in space when he made a secret flight to the Salyut 6 space station in 1979. He was on a later Soviet spaceflight, Soyuz T-16Z to the secret Soviet military space station Salyut 8T in 1989. He was stranded there in 1990 when the Soviet Union was dissolved. He is in good humor, but wants to come home. In the 14 years since he has been on the station, he has accumulated flight pay and interest amounting to almost $15,000,000 American dollars. This is held in a trust at the Lagos National Savings and Trust Association.
posted by ChuraChura (5 comments total)

Nnedi Okorafor is awesome.
posted by ursus_comiter at 4:53 PM on November 2, 2016 [3 favorites]

This is very cool. As an aside, how do you pronounce an initial double N? Googling brings up no immediate answers.
posted by Joakim Ziegler at 5:09 PM on November 2, 2016

Charles Tan: Thanks for giving me the opportunity to conduct an interview. First off, this is embarrassing for me but how do you pronounce your name?

Nnedi Okorafor: No worries. I keep the phonetic spelling of my name on file in my computer for just this question (which I get all the time J): Neh-dee (Nnedi) Oh-core-ra-for (Okorafor) Mm-bah-chew (Mbachu).
posted by ChuraChura at 5:38 PM on November 2, 2016 [5 favorites]

...2016 has been so freaking wild that until I clicked the link I wasn't completely sure this was fiction.

An excellent and thought-provoking piece
posted by a power-tie-wearing she-capitalist at 5:53 PM on November 2, 2016 [3 favorites]

As an aside, how do you pronounce an initial double N?

Just stretch it out a bit, just as you already do with a double N inside a word (see e.g. nnọọ in this video). Seems Nnedi just uses a short N, though. Apparently quite common, to make life easier for English speakers.
posted by effbot at 6:44 PM on November 2, 2016