dar 2 lagos 155picting so-called traditional culture), and this must be one of the reasons
why he chose a film with a village setting for his experiment. Not only does
Omereme conta i n a couple of occ u lt scenes to da zz le v iewers, it a lso ha s t he
potential to become a didactic piece about the hazards of polygamy. The
introduction to the first episode of the photo novel reads: “Polygamous life
is difficult and full of problems. A beautiful film, loved by many viewers,
[it shows that] polygamy breeds horrible actions including witchcraft and
other malicious deeds. Have a look at this life in the Swahili translation.”
Space is for a photo novel what time is for film, which means that this
particular medium needs space for a story to progress. Given the spatial
limitation of one page per issue, Tamba had to choose the images care-
fully and adjust them to suit the new medium. Medium and close-up shots
proved more suitable than long shots (lest the reader require a magnifying
glass). Each episode contains up to twelve rectangular images, arranged in
three rows. Panel size is critical in photo novels and graphic novels alike.
Size can signify the length of an action depicted in a panel, and panel
frames are important for creating the gutter—the empty space between
panels. This space leaves room for the reader’s imagination. The reader is
more active in completing the story as it proceeds from panel to panel than
film viewers watching a movie (McCloud 1994). For the Omereme adap-
tation, this means the reader is liberated from the confines of the video
medium (with its constant flow of images) and space is literally opened up
for the imaginative transfer of the Nigerian story to the Tanzanian reader’s
own social and cultural experience. The reader draws on this experience
to fill in the space between the panels and complete the story.
Of course, readers are also guided by the texts accompanying the im-
ages, and without which the panels would not constitute a story. Three
types of voices appear in writing: a narrator’s (usually at the top of the
panel in a rectangular insert), and either the characters’ speech (in the first
episode inside bubbles, later in rectangles) or their thoughts (marked by
small bubbles leading to the text). A textual comparison of original and
copy makes it obvious that Tamba creates his own story. W hat he does is
a twofold adaptation of the template. First, he adapts it to the format of
the transcribing medium. He does this by adding a narrator’s voice, which
comments on and contextualizes the images. And he invents characters’
thoughts (though there are almost no inner voices in the film) to give
insight into their inner feelings. Second, he de-localizes the content to