Book 249: Somaliland (English) – The Orchard of Lost Souls (Nadifa MOHAMED)

On either side of the trees are the stray dogs, thieves and promenading ghosts of Hargeisa. The swish of cars crossing the bridge and the susurrations of secret policemen come to her through the darkness. The barrel in which she sleeps is cold, too cold. The scraps of cut-off fabric that usually line the bottom are floating in kerosene-rippled water, the emeralds and sapphires of a peacock’s tail flashing on its moonlit surface. She shivered with goose-pimpled skin for as long as she could bear it and then sought out the drunks and their fire in a moment of reckless desperation; she wonders what they will do for her to her. She wants to know if hyenas can only be hyenas when confronted with a lamb the heat of the men’s fire blows over her, its crackling and its colours warming her. They have built a bombastic blaze, full of their alcohol; it lurches at the dark, quivering trees before stumbling and falling back into the barrel. she breathes in the smell of damp smoke, the taste of fresh ash. 

 

The Republic of Somaliland is a northern part of Somalia, bordered by Djibouti, Ethiopia and the rest of Somalia which has declared itself independent in 1991. It covers the former territory of British Somaliland (the rest of Somalia was colonised by Italy), but united with the latter when it became independent in 1960. It was unhappy living under war-torn and impoverished Somalia, and as with so many other places, former colonial power seems to trump ethnicity and language when deciding borders… In any case Somaliland has been comparatively a haven of peace and democracy, even if it is still (as far as I know) recognised by any other country.

Nadifa Mohamed is from this area (she now lives in London), and the novel is set mainly in its capital Hargeisa, although a long time before Somaliland claimed independence, and it’s set under the long dictatorship of Siad Barre (1969-91). He started a war with Ethiopia to try to conquer its part of the Ogaden Desert (inhabited by Somalis), which ended up disastrously for Somalia.

The story follows three female victims (and occasionally perpetrators) of the chaos of the incipient 1987-8 civil war and famine. Deqo is a child who has escaped from a refugee camp. Feisty Kawsar is an older widow who becomes trapped in her house after being injured in a police beating. Filsan is a 30-year-old soldier who has been moved here from Mogadishu to fight the rebellion. (It might seem that it was advanced for the army to have female soldiers, but she still suffers greatly at the hands of male chauvinists). We start at an ego-fest ‘celebration’ for the dictator, in which Deqo is arrested and beaten for her poor dancing, Kawsar is jailed for standing up for her, being beaten up by Filsan (rebounding from a violent incident on herself) who later becomes disillusioned with the regime. At the beginning and in the end, the three lives come together (though I thought the writing of the ending was a little weak and too coincidental, like one of those 19th century novels).

Overall, it was a good read, and an enlightenment on this brutal and mostly forgotten time, despite a few unlikely plot twists.

 

Mohamed, Nadifa (1981 – ), The Orchard of Lost Souls, London [etc.], Simon & Schuster, 2013, ISBN 978-1-47111-530-1

Book 243: Mayotte (French) – Tropique de la violence = Tropic of Violence (Nathacha Appanah)

 

I hear a car stop on the gravel in front of the house, I hear the cry “It’s the cops!” and we run, climb up the metal fencing, jump into other gardens and we run on and on, the grass the asphalt the mud the earth the pebbles the cement under my feet, the barking the cries the horns the screeching of brakes the muezzin my own breathing in my ears, I am scratched knocked stunned beaten held pushed aside but I run and I distance myself from the house and I know that I’ll never come back.

 

Where on earth is Mayotte? When the Comoros Islands (between Madagascar and Africa) became independent in 1975, the island of Mayotte decided to stick with France (although it is still claimed by the former). So it is the 101st département of France. Did you know that there’s a part of France where they speak (a dialect of) Swahili? So there’s a little bit of the EU in the Mozambique Channel. It’s a beacon for illegal immigration from the independent Comoros and Madagascar, and increasingly from the African continent – perhaps it will become another Lampedusa since the small population is being rapidly overwhelmed by the influx. I don’t know if this is commonly known in France, but we hear nothing about this at all. Mayotte itself seems to be much poorer than, for example, Réunion, with the vast majority living in poverty. Half the population are under 20 (fr.wikipedia.org). No doubt we’ll hear a lot more from Mayotte in the future.

Marie is a French nurse who marries her colleague Chamsiddin, who is from Mayotte, and they move there, after which their marriage falls apart. She adopts Moïse, son of an illegal immigrant who abandoned him. (Like the Biblical Moses, I guess Moïse is a ‘boat person’). He has different coloured eyes (perhaps a symbol of his two totally different lives?), which leads the locals to believe that he’s a djinn and bad luck. Certainly his life is only unlucky and mis-lead. When Marie dies (he is 15) he goes and hangs out with a slum gang led by alpha male Bruce. (It is a great portrait of a thuggish slum gang leader). The gang life in the slum (Gaza) is all law of the jungle and no more than an animal existence. Bruce tries to kidnap Moïse, but Moïse kills Bruce in the woods. Thereafter the chapters continue with a voice for each character, including the dead ones. Other characters include Olivier who is a flic (cop), Mahmad ‘La Teigne’ who is a clandestine, and Moussa who is a muzungu (‘white person’) and friend of Moise, but who doesn’t want a ‘white’ life.

It’s interesting to see the local language; muzungu is obviously the same as mzungu in standard Swahili, and I was amused to see that Swahili karibu (‘welcome’) comes out as caribou!

The story is depressing and impactful, and a great portrayal of a situation most of us know nothing about. I loved the way the narration speeds up and transitions to stream of consciousness during the thrilling episodes.

The story has been recently made into a film.

 

Appanah, Natacha (1973 – ), Tropique de la violence, Folio (Gallimard), 2018, ISBN 9782072764578

 

Book 214: Seychelles (French) – Coco sec = Dry Coconut (Antoine ABEL)

At this time of the year, the sea loses patience. It was gentle and generous, now it it has become a stepmother, vindictive, implacable. So the fishermen only risk going out on the nearest banks. Despite the risks of fishing, they go out each morning to cajole the little fish into their nets… and as there are relatively few mouths to feed, they still bring back enough for all.

 

[my translation]

 

Working-class Créole Céline Marchepied marries according to the will of her parents, and against her own inclination, but happily. But eventually she makes the ‘mistake’ of asking Julien where he has been, and he leaves her to go off adventuring, never to return, marries someone else and has lots of children, makes a pile of money but ends up committing suicide.

Céline remains poor (how could she not, with a surname like “Goes on foot”?) and goes into service in a middle class family, becomes the concubine of a sailor but loses him in a storm. She raises her own children, who end up going their own ways – her daughter also ends up badly. Céline finally ends up in a retirement home, where Gaétan, a young man she had raised, comes to rescue and look after her, repaying her in some way.

The book has an extensive glossary, from which I learned that a “dry coconut” (as in the title) is a coconut which falls from the tree, and to “eat dry coconut” is to lead a miserable life.

Not the most exciting story I’ve read, but short and readable.

Antoine Abel is considered the father of Seychelles literature.

 

Abel, Antoine (1934 – 2004), Coco sec, Paris, Pierre Jean Oswald, 1977, ISBN 2-7172-0808-9

Book 203: São Tomé and Príncipe (Portuguese) – Crónica de uma guerra inventada (Sum MARKY)

Nobre de Carvalho was 36 years old when he was taken prisoner in his house, in the State cottage 42, in the Dr. Marcelo Caetano District, on that night of the 10th of February 1953. He was wearing pyjamas and was preparing to go to bed, when they pounded, thunderously, on the door of his house. He had been expecting to be taken prisoner at any moment, but never at such a late hour. The city was boiling with frightening rumours about the native revolt. He was sure that they were false, but the fear remained, insidious. So, when they opened the door and he faced Carlos Silva, his heart seemed to leap out of his chest. “You can consider yourself a prisoner!” he said, in a harsh voice. “Get dressed and come with us!”

[my translation]

With its smallest country, we have to bid a fond farewell to Africa. So many amazing books I’ve now read from there! It’s also sad that, as far as I know, no novels have been published in English from this little country in the gulf. This rather classic novel in Portuguese is based on true history.

While Salazar is running his dictatorship in mainland Portugal, in the then Portuguese colony of São Tomé & Príncipe the local governor Colonel Gorgulho seems to be running an even more ugly and paranoid regime with his own personal dictatorship with control over the life and death of the people. And the way he keeps control and persecutes his opponents (real and imagined) is to invent, not so much a war as in the title, as a rebellion. This revolt never existed. To ‘prove’ that it did, his henchmen torture ordinary innocent people to concoct and ‘confirm’ the details and the ‘participants’ in this putative plot. There are the usual sick tortures, with a few imaginative local variants. All of the ‘Blacks’ and many of the ‘Whites’ in the country are terrorised. Into this hell-hole (set in what look like paradisaical beautiful islands in the Gulf of Guinea) comes a saviour.

In summary, what happened from 3rd February 1953 was:

1. The Government of the Island tried to prove at any cost that there existed an uprising of the natives, which it had named “The War of Batepá”;

2. It tried to implicate as chief of the “revolt” Engineer Graça and as accomplices most of the native public servants;

3. To obtain, by whatever methods, including torture and death, the proofs necessary to prove the existence of this “war”.

A very brave and moral lawyer, Dr João Carlos, comes from mainland Portugal to investigate and to defend the prisoners. To Dr Carlos’ embarrassment, the hopeless prisoners see him as a prophet sent by God to save them and their country. When he arrives, he is obviously expected; all the hotels had been told to say they were full (at some personal risk, a Dr Simões lets him use one of his rooms).

Perhaps the most memorable character in the novel is the curandero (traditional healer, or witch doctor) Sum Clé-Clé, who saves the life of the administrator and turns out to be the one who had instigated the lawyer’s arrival.

I felt that Dr Carlos’ and his assistant Aida’s final speeches sounded unnatural and staged.

Despite the depressing theme, the novel is often funny (for example, the wife who abandons her husband who does nothing – in bed!)

This is the longest book I’ve ever read in Portuguese (426 pages) and frankly I felt it was too long. The horrors inflicted on each victim begin to sound repetitive and there is a fair amount of repetition. It could have been substantially cut without losing any impact, on the contrary. But it is a great novel and I’m glad I read it. Hopefully one day it will be translated into English. (Since ‘sum’ seems to mean ‘Mr’ in the local Creole, I assume that Sum Marky is a pseudonym. The author himself was imprisoned by the regime.)

Sum Marky (1921 -2003 ), Crónica De Uma Guerra Inventada, Lisbon, Vega, 1999, ISBN 972-699-627-9

Book 193: Western Sahara (Spanish) – Toda la muerte para dormir = You Can Sleep When You’re Dead (Jorge MOLINERO HUGET)

 

But I said that I had had a bad premonition, which ended up proving itself correct when, a few hours later – maybe at 8 in the morning – the radio broadcast seemed to suddenly shake itself awake to begin to broadcast a plethora of nervous and irregular news items. A multitude of alarms, an infinity of bells. Voices at first hissing and then hoarse, always choked with emotion, that emerged spasmodically from the speakers, as if stuttering. Out of step responses which generated staggered conversations that, in turn, remained tangled in an atmosphere of growing confusion. Messages that barely managed to percolate through the pores of the headphones. Poor-quality sounds dripping, viscous, like diarrhea of cholera. Pleas that transmitted fear, anxiety, and that pronounced words like planes, boys, horrible, bombs, horrific, girls, help, phosphorus, target, dead, many, dead, help, frightening, please, women, gas, napalm, deaths, old people, mortars, deaths, men, shrapnel, deaths, animals, deaths, help, please.

 

[my translation]  

 

This stillborn nation was once Spanish Sahara but was occupied by Morocco in 1975 and would seem to have little chance of ever gaining freedom since Trump recently recognised the takover, merely the latest in a long line of betrayals that are catalogued in this novel. The people suffered atrocities from both Spanish and French colonial armies, as well as later from Morocco. When Spain was on the verge of abandoning its colony in 1975, Morocco revived its longstanding claim to the territory (as did Mauritania, briefly), and King Hassan II organised a massive “Green March” of civilians who occupied the land to prevent it from achieving independence. Morocco, Mauritania and Spain all betrayed the Saharawi people. Continued Moroccan colonisation was supported by tax breaks. But troops were needed to fight continuing separatism. Huge numbers of Saharawis fled to Algeria, where they continue to live in refugee camps to this day. There was a ceasefire in the resource-rich land in 1991, but in a familiar scenario (we’ve been to Kashmir and West Papua for example), the promise of a referendum for the Saharawis to choose between independence or Morocco has so far been broken. The West needs Morocco as a friend and the world needs its phosphate, so the future for the Saharawis looks bleak.

This novel follows the life of a man who goes on to lead the independence struggle. He goes to study in Marrakesh in Morocco, where his best friend is sodomised by a teacher, then in Rabat. He watches Equatorial Guinea gain independence from Spain, as does almost all of Africa. Of course he wants the same for his own country. He becomes a Marxist (we are never told what his parents think of this or his subsequent activities – he never tries to imagine a non-socialist future) and revolutionary. I couldn’t help seeing some inconsistencies in some of his thought, even within the same paragraphs. “I know very well that there is no more damaging thing for any spirit than the lack of criticism and endless praise, but at the same time I have to admit that all that flattery and adulation brought exactly what my personality needed at that time: limitless confidence in my own capabilities.” “You get independence by revolution, and there is no revolution without bloodshed. Our people’s liberty will come by no other way but by that which the rest of the African nations have shown us.” [But most of them had gained independence peacefully.] As a leader of the revolutionary struggle, he admires Qaddafi’s Libya and meets him, but says nothing about the meeting. He doesn’t seem aware of his ulterior motives and lukewarm support. He never seems to think abut following Gandhi’s path of using non-violence. (Morocco’s “Green March” could be considered ostensibly a non-violent way of occupying another country…literally just march in.) The Saharawis commit the usual revolutionary acts, and suffer the usual tortures from the Moroccans. The assertion that stealing can be OK under Shari’a law if not committed by a “mere bandit” must be controversial…

He swears that his country will never again be subjugated by imperialist and reactionary “Nassaranis” (Christians), but it is his Muslim “brothers” from Morocco which have deprived them of their freedom.

Sadly, the narrator (and author) don’t try to assess why their independence movement failed, unlike almost all the other ones in Africa. Maybe part of the problem is that it takes so long to say the name of their revolutionary organisations – Organización avanzada para la Liberación de la Saguia el Hamra y Río de Oro, Movimiento Embrionario por la Liberación de la Saguia el Hamra y Río de Oro, Frente Popular de Liberación de la Saguia el Hamra y Río de Oro… (the latter became Polisario for short).

They do, however, see elements of their traditional society that hold them back and need reform – especially the system of slavery (slaves are called ‘negras’ which underlines the racist element from the Bedouins). Slavery and tribes must be abolished.

The novel has no dialogue, and comes across as quite abstract. Sometimes exaggeration is overused (everyone…, everything…) Despite its issues, it was a fascinating insight into a country that I will sadly probably never see.

 

Molinero Huget, Jorge (1972 – ), Toda la muerte para dormir, Barcelona, Carena, 2018, ISBN 978-84-16843-99-2

Book 192: Réunion (French) – Le Bleu des vitraux = The Blue of the Stained-Glass Windows (Jean LODS)

As for Anne-Sylvie’s dream… it is her life itself which is a dream, and at the same time, who knows from what clouds it is made? This house on the hill where she lives today seems to be for her only a waiting room, in a station where no train will come by again, because the tracks are disused and the train she should have taken left long ago, taking her with it and leaving only her ghost on the platform.

[my translation]

I have to admit that I found my novel for this exciting French Indian Ocean island to be rather boring. This description of the relationship between a son (Yann) and his mother (Anne-Sylvie) and father (René) was hard going. It is so numbingly slow that I was begging for something to happen, and the description is dense and interminable. (The description of a laugh goes on for a few pages). The sentences are full of clauses and sub-clauses.

Thirty years later, Yann tries to reconstruct what was, or might have been, but how much of this has he made up? His childhood self is a lot more different from his adult self than might be usually the case. He comes to visit and try to come to terms with his dead mother, who had abandoned him and his father.

I couldn’t identify with any of the major characters, all three of whom were glacial (despite outside appearances); both the parents were lazy and couldn’t care less about anything. In the dream of Anne-Sylvie’s life, there is no place for Yann, as if he’s not hers.

In all, it was a bit of a struggle to get through and to like this one. There is some very nice writing however.

Lods, Jean (1938 – ), Le bleu des vitraux, Saint-Amande, Gallimard, 1987, ISBN 2-07-070781-1, 2006

Book 188: Cape Verde (English) – Chiquinho: a novel of Cabo Verde (Baltazar LOPES)

I started seeing my island as a vast laboratory of human experience. People who refuse to be crushed by despair, who possess a crucial will to resist, regardless of the outcome of their efforts. Above all of this, there was the constant presence of escapism into the spaces of dream, distance, unknown destinations always offered up by the restless blue curve of the ocean. Moral resistance. What other name could describe the faith of my people, always planting seed, and replanting again, endlessly? The struggle against the Lunário’s forecasts, against earthworms that ruin the corn, against the absence of rain every October, against the harmattan and all bad weather. The sailor Chico Zepa’s struggle against the destiny that prevented him from taking a boat to São Vicente and from there escaping on any convenient steamer to those distant lands that would steal him away for good from the hoe. Nhô João Joana’s tattooed arms. On his right arm, a long-haired woman with a warm, seductive gaze, offering him the delights of never-ending love. And my grandfather, who died so young aboard the whaling ship that was taking him back to Cabo Verde. Mamãe-Velha must have loved him very much, this grandfather with his sparkling eyes, his dark skin, and his black, silky hair that now only a mermaid could caress in endless hours of almost unnerving love. How much he would have liked to come above the waters, back to the deck of his ship, to hunt whales, fight against the treacherous Sargasso seaweed, and defeat, with the force of his youthful courage, storms, cyclones, and uncontrollable winds! 

 

Well, we’re getting towards the pointy end of this project! Mostly, all we have left to cover are the European micro-states, and several island nations in the Caribbean and Pacific – and two (former Portuguese colonies) in Africa. Today, we’re in Cabo Verde.

For us in Australia, this group of islands off the west coast of Africa is almost totally unknown. I knew little myself, apart from the haunting morna “Sodade” (”Longing”) sung by Cesária Évora. It is much better known by Europeans, who have flocked to its beaches in recent years. So for me, this is just the kind of novel that fits my current project perfectly. I learned so much about life and history in the Cape Verde Islands. In following the career of the eponymous hero before he (like so many of his compatriots) is forced to emigrate, Young Chiquinho is torn between his longing for adventure and his ‘sodade’ for his homeland, especially the island of Sao Nicolau made famous by the above-mentioned song. He becomes a writer and gets involved in politics in the early stirrings of the movement for independence from Portugal, establishing a Grémio (Society) influenced by South Africa’s ANC.

I was fascinated by the apparently close relationship of the locals with mythology and folklore, and history – Charlemagne is not forgotten here, nor the Paraguayan war, nor the Chanson de Roland epic. The many shipwrecked sailors can look forward to meeting mermaids. Life in the beautiful islands seems incredibly tough, both for the sailors and the disregarded farmers, even between the recurrent severe droughts and locust plagues. It was heartbreaking when as a teacher Chiquinho sees his students dying one by one. It is hard to blame them for leaving for the supposed paradise of the US where the islands’ intelligentsia ends up buried in mind-numbing factories.

I would have liked to learn more about the close relationship between the independence movements of Cape Verde and Guinea-Bissau, and what happened between them after they gained freedom in 1975 but this is outside the timescale of the book. There were also a lot of names to remember – too many for me. But apart from that minor quibble, I found this a really enjoyable and enlightening novel.

 

LOPES, Baltazar (1907 – 1989), Chiquinho: a novel of Cabo Verde, translated from Portuguese by Isabel P.B. Fêo Rodrigues and Carlos A. Almeida with Anna M. Klobucka, Dartmouth, Mass., Tagus, 2019, ISBN 978-1-933227-85-6

(originally published in Portuguese 1947)

Book179: Comoros (French) – Le Kafir du Karthala = The Kaffir of Karthala (Mohamed TOIHIRI)

The beach was full. The Blacks were almost all in swimming costumes. The Whites, having kept their clothing on, looked rather perplexed. They were visibly wondering when they were going to awake from this nightmare. The blacks, unrestrained, yelling, laughing, provoking, bathed with a sort of artificial pleasure. It seemed as if they were much more intent on displaying their presence than in deriving any pleasure from bathing. In fact they forced themselves to enjoy it.

[my translation]

A kaffir is an ‘infidel’ in Arabic, in the Comoros context it means a ‘marginal’, and in apartheid-era South Africa it was an ugly epithet for a ‘Black’. The ‘marginal’ of the story is Dr. Idi wa Mazamba, who finds himself at odds with many of the traditions of his homeland. Mazamba finds that he is dying of cancer in less than two months, and tells no one, but this gives him courage to live his life as he thinks proper, regardless of norms that he rejects. He falls in love with Aubéri, a Jewish French literature teacher. This is the story of their struggles against the prejudices they find everywhere. (Karthala is a volcano – perhaps a symbol of Mazamba’s new volatility?)

Each of the Comoros islands turns out to be biased against the others, as well as against outsiders, which seems comically petty. Likewise, the Europeans are racist against the Comorans, and amongst themselves.

Of the local traditions, the most prominent seems to be the ‘grand marriage’ (’anda’), which Mazamba despises, yet he can’t boycott it himself. Basically, everyone is expected by society to have a huge, ruinously expensive wedding once in their life (the fact that they may already be married to someone else, via a more modest ceremony, doesn’t exempt them). The expense causes endemic corruption and theft. (Mazamba gives a hilarious pompous wedding speech in French, using as many words as possible ending in -ique, including many which don’t exist! He makes a seditious speech that goes over everyone’s head.) The hajj to Mecca (the Comoros Islands are Muslim) is another very expensive expectation.

There are still many French living here since independence in 1975 (except for the island of Mayotte which opted to stay with France), and they have a better life and their own prejudices, which doesn’t stop them taking ‘black’ Comoran wives. The opposite (as here with Idi and Aubéri) is hypocritically seen as scandalous.

Sometimes it is quite funny (”In France… not even my concierge would be afraid of me.”) Still, I couldn’t help feeling that sometimes Toihiri was using situations that were a bit over the top. Would a mixed-race couple really choose to travel to apartheid-era South Africa – were they naïve, ignorant or just asking for trouble? I also felt that the sex in church scene was labouring his point a bit too much. It could have been made a bit more subtly. Also the villains were a bit too comic-book. But it was a very enjoyable story which covered some very serious issues leavened with humour, and taught me a lot about these almost unknown islands, and a definite recommendation.

Toihiri, Mohamed (1955 – ), Le Kafir du Karthala, Paris, L’Harmattan, 1992, ISBN 2-7384-1501-6

Book 176: Djibouti (English) – In the United States of Africa = Aux États-Unis d’Afrique (Abdourahman A. WABERI)

 

He’s there, exhausted. Silent. The wavering glow of a candle barely lights the carpenter’s bedroom in this shelter for immigrant workers. This ethnically Swiss Caucasian speaks a Germanic dialect, and in this age of the jet and the Internet, claims he has fled violence and famine. Yet he still has all of the aura that fascinated our nurses and aid workers.

Let’s call him Yacuba, first to protect his identity and second because he has an impossible family name. He was born outside Zurich in an unhealthy favela, where infant mortality and the rate of infection by the AIDS virus remain the highest in the world today. The figures are drawn from studies of the World Health Organization (WHO) based in our country in the fine, peaceful city of Banjul, as everyone knows… The cream of international diplomacy also meets in Banjul; they are supposedly settling the fate of millions of Caucasian refugees of various ethnic groups (Austrian, Canadian, American, Norwegian, Belgian, Bulgarian, Hungarian, British, Icelandic, Swedish, Portuguese…) not to mention the skeletal boat people from the northern Mediterranean, at the end of their rope from dodging all the mortar shells and missiles that darken the unfortunate lands of Euramerica.

If you are from one of the wealthier countries in the world, this is a mirror. In this novel, the world is turned on its head – federated Africa is the envied, richest continent and the world superpower, America and Europe are the ‘Third World’, poverty-stricken and sending waves of refugees and prostitutes towards Africa. But Euramerica is actually much worse. Even geography is reversed – Namibia (one of the driest countries, currently suffering from a water shortage), here has rice paddies; while Canada suffers from tropical diseases. (Not everything about the US of Africa is positive; like Americans nowadays, relatively few of them own passports.) It has colonised Europe. Its capital is Asmara (nowadays the capital of Eritrea). Tadjoura is its Hollywood. I would have liked to have known how the US of Africa works, and how it came to be, but unfortunately Waberi doesn’t help. Not everything is different – like today’s Horn of Africa countries and Yemen, many are addicted to and debilitated by qat (khat).

Malaïka, an artist, is the daughter of an African doctor who was on a humanitarian mission to France. She travels back there in search of her roots and her mother. She is uniquely sensitive to other cultures – African intellectuals here seem to be only sarcastic and bitter towards others.

It’s worth remembering that once many Africans really were rich – most famously the Mali emperor Mansa Musa, whose free spending in Cairo (on the way to a pilgrimage to Mecca) depressed the local currency for a dozen years. And horrible as the European/American slave trade was, it is perhaps unfair to forget the part played by the Arabs – and other Africans.

I know it’s only a satire, but it left me rather sad if Africans running the world would be no better…

Most of the narration is the author addressing Malaïka directly. It felt like Waberi had lots of great ideas but didn’t get around to fleshing them out and sewing them together into a narrative with a proper plot in a longer novel (this one is quite short). It jumps all over the place, endlessly name-dropping. Still, it is such a thought-provoking idea that I would say it’s still well worth reading.

WABERI, Abdourahman A. (1965 – ), In the United States of Africa, translated from French by David & Nicole Ball,

French Voices, Lincoln, University of Nebraska, 2009, ISBN 978-0-8032-2262-5

First published in French 2006

WABERI, Abdourahman A. (1965 – ), In the United States of Africa, translated from French by David & Nicole Ball,

French Voices, Lincoln, University of Nebraska, 2009, ISBN 978-0-8032-2262-5

First published in French 2006

Book 175: eSwatini (English) – The Giraffe Stepped over the Fence (Storm JAMES)

Inconceivable as it seemed, this towering, glowering hulk of manhood must really love her. Within twenty-four hours of meeting her, he had declared his intentions, openly, without hesitation or doubt, yet she had disbelieved him. She had believed that, especially for men, love grew over time and it was sexual attraction that came first and occasionally developed into love. In actual fact, it was she who had concentrated on the sexual attraction, she who had feared losing him if she didn’t fulfil his sexual desires. Lacking love for herself, she had been unable to comprehend his love for her. Despite all her efforts, her perspective had been warped by her upbringing.

Firstly, an admission and an apology – romance isn’t my favourite genre. This one by Storm James, who was born and now lives in South Africa but grew up in Swaziland, recently re-named eSwatini, is set in those two countries in the 1970s. Forward farm girl Shanna, who had been abused by her awful father, falls in love with a handsome (of course) Frenchman who gets stranded on her farm. She is cynical about men but not TOO cynical (after all, this is a romance…) There is a mystery to solve and a lot of adventure.

No doubt kids grow up much faster on farms, but I felt that Shanna was much too mature for her age. Do 17-year-olds really talk like this?

            ”Your ethical stance is based on human constructs you were born into. But I do not have suitable role models, so I have sought my truths and standards from various cultures, from reading and observing life as it really is – not as some culture, philosophy or religion dictates life should be. I cannot believe or simply accept human constructs, just because they exist.”

Nor does Marco Bonheur (’Happiness’) talk like a believable Frenchman, despite peppering his English with unnecessary tidbits of French, like Poirot: “Un mille pardons, mademoiselle!” [sic.] At p.289 he is still using the ‘vous’ form to his sweetheart. There are other minor mistakes, such as the ‘Alpha’ that Shanna drives (presumably an Alfa Romeo), and King Sobhuza I died in 1836, not 1936. On the whole though, it isn’t too bad for a self-published book.

A lot of Swazi history is peppered through the story, though it wasn’t sewn into the story very well. At one point they are in the middle of a dance when a father feels the need to start expounding some Swazi history to his son… Often the history interludes are launched into without any prelude. But it was quite interesting, for me at least. The author’s love for this country is obvious.

Although the title is explained, as the direct approach being the best way to get your girl, it seems to be rather contradicted by the factoid given that most giraffes are homosexual…

This romance was much better than I expected (mainly because I learned so much about eSwatini), though I felt it was too long (at 480 pages) and perhaps too laden with adjectives; still, don’t let this put you off if this is your type of story.

The book was billed as Book 1 of the “Romantic Africa Series”, but as far as I can tell the second volume (subtly entitled The Lion Breached the Barrier) has not been published yet.

JAMES, Storm, The Giraffe Stepped Over the Fence, Book 1 of the Romantic Africa series, Smashwords, 2012, ISBN 978-0-620-53156-8

Book 173: Equatorial Guinea (English) – By Night the Mountain Burns = Arde el monte de noche (Juan Tomás ÁVILA LAUREL)

 

No matter who the woman was, once she’d been discovered bathing on the beach she was judged to be connected to the Devil and became someone you had to avoid. She could no longer share anything with anyone, absolutely nothing at all. Of course it was possible some women were visited by that mysterious being at night and nobody ever found out. But it would have been unusual. It was more common for traces of the terrible heats to show up on their bodies. What’s more, it was common knowledge that after being visited by the being, the woman acquired powers she didn’t have before. And because the powers were connected to the Devil, they were powers she would use to evil ends. That’s why she was feared, and that’s why the governors ordered her confinement.

 

Like Hunger (Norway), By Night the Mountain Burns is the story of a country beset by the most grinding poverty (which has also now become extremely rich – in both cases due to the discovery of oil). It is set on isolated island in the Atlantic very like the one the author grew up on.

Equatorial Guinea is unique in Africa as being the only Spanish-speaking nation, and I would have read this one in Spanish if I hadn’t collected an English copy on my African book-buying foray in a Cape Town bookshop.

The story is set on a poor, isolated, traditional and unnamed island in the Atlantic (such as the one where the author grew up). It has few resources or supplies, and even fewer men (who have to work on the mainland, or were lost to fishing?) It is told in a quite convincing conversational style, with a unique voice, almost like an oral history project. The narrator is recording his childhood and seeing it through his childlike eyes. He grows up with his mysterious, uncommunicative, antisocial grandfather. The novel is replete with repetition of words and incidents – each time repeated with more details. Strangely, the first name doesn’t appear until halfway through the book – there are only three names, and lists of the dead.

Two sisters make a fire to fell a tree and end up burning the mountain of the title. There is also a devastating cholera epidemic. There must be ‘reasons’ for these disasters and they are sought and found in the occult. Life here is dominated by superstitions (or at least so we would consider them) and black magic. Despite their numerical superiority, the women suffer horribly because of them, especially those fingered as ‘she-devils’ (the menopausal aged).  One woman is horrifically beaten to death because she is supposedly a ‘she-devil’, accused of causing a man to fall from a tree. Everyone scared of the dark, but moonlight is even worse. Peeing not at the beach is considered suspicious. ‘Ministrants’ are considered even more powerful than the she-devils.

Considering how much of the local language and culture can’t be translated into Spanish, the book must have lost even more when translated into English, though the translation reads beautifully. I would love to see other books by this author, are they all this good?

 

ÁVILA LAUREL, Juan Tomás (1966 – ), By Night the Mountain Burns, translated by Jethro Soutar, London, And Other Stories, 2014, ISBN 978-1-908276-40-7

 

Book 172: Mauritius (French) – Paul et Virginie = Paul and Virginia (Bernadin de SAINT-PIERRE)

 

Every day was for these families a day of happiness and of peace. Neither envy nor ambition tormented them. They lacked nothing but the vain reputation that intrigue gives, and slander removes. It was sufficient for them to be their own witnesses and their own judges. On this island, where, as in all the European colonies, people are not curious except about malignant anecdotes, their virtues and even their names were unknown. Only when some passer-by asked some planter of the plain for the way to Pamplemousses: “Who lives up there in those “little houses”? they replied, without knowing them: “They’re good people.” In the same way violets, under spiny shrubs, send their soft perfumes far off, though they stay unseen.

[my translation]

Here I am discovering yet another of the world’s great forgotten classics. As I read, it reminded me of the movie Blue Lagoon in its portrayal of naive young love – and I didn’t realise until after finishing it that it actually was the film’s inspiration, but is much better. Bernadin was friends with Rousseau and obviously deeply in sympathy with the latter’s concept of the “noble savage”. It was published on the eve of the French Revolution and influenced a whole generation of writers – George Sand, Lamartine, Balzac and Flaubert. 

Paul’s and Virgine’s respective mothers have both taken refuge on Mauritius (then called Île de France), and the boy and girl grow up as children of nature. Their carefree youth is sunny, optimistic and unintellectual. They grow up in nature without any corrupting outside influences, in an ambiguous relationship of brother/sister, boyfriend/girlfriend, and eventually husband/wife. They consider Europe ‘barbarous’ because of the treatment their mothers had received (it is obvious throughout that Bernadin is preaching to the Europeans). Their life is described with many classical references; it may sometimes be a bit saccharine for some modern tastes, but of course it is a story of its time. (Along with other aspects, the owner-slave relationships seemed especially idealised.)

Sadly, both unspoiled children come to unhappy ends, victims of society. Their tragic ends are very moving. ‘Wise words’ lead to a logical conclusion but to sad consequences. Virgine ends up being killed by her modesty.

But perhaps the greatest tragedy is that this lovely story hardly seems to be read any more.

Bernadin de ST PIERRE (1737-1814), Paul et Virginie, Paris, Le Livre de Poche, 1999, 2017 (first published 1788), ISBN 978-2-253-00729-6

Book 166: Guinea-Bissau (Portuguese) – A última tragédia = The Ultimate Tragedy (Abdulai SILA)

 

Where exactly was this hope?

Those who knew her earlier would easily understand, it wouldn’t take many words. For the others, it would take patience to explain. She said that it went with her everywhere, ever. Sometimes, it even appeared in dreams, when she was about to fall asleep. It filled her heart with happiness and her head with ideas. New ideas and dreams, and others recussitated, that had been born in her adolescence and had died at some uncertain date in her youth. It was everywhere, even in Obem’s smile, which was also one of her [or: its] fruits. Hope was in everything she did, by day or by night, standing up or lying down. Anyone who didn’t want to believe it must be completely blind or very jealous. Or else someone who had never lost hope…

 

[my translation]

 

As Guinea-Bissau heads towards independence from Portugal, village girl Ndani nervously heads to Bissau to work for a Portuguese family as a maid. She is unlucky and seems not very intelligent; she starts with no knowledge of the world of the ‘brancos’ (’Whites’).

Like so many colonies, Guinea-Bissau ended up with colonists who were mostly poor fishers or peasants back home, and who hope the locals won’t know (the housemistress Linda can barely read).

Linda discovers religion and makes Ndani go to church. But her husband rapes house-girls.

Ndani is expelled and returns to her village; the chief force-marries her (his sixth wife), and builds a big house for her, but he abandons her when he finds she’s no longer a virgin. Régulo is also not very intelligent but does get good advice. The chief thinks about thinking all the time (the brancos’ secret) but he doesn’t really think.

She finally finds love with the school teacher and has a child with him. But all is not destined to end well, as he gets unwillingly caught up in the rivalry between Régulo and the colonial Administrator.

I learnt a lot about local attitudes, for example that ‘White’ medicine is thought to work on ‘Blacks’ but not vice versa… Another very enjoyable African novel.

This Portuguese language edition has a vocabulary full of great words (which the English translation apparently doesn’t have).

 

Sila, Abdulai (1958 – ), A última tragédia, Rio de Janeiro, Pallas, 2011, ISBN 978-85-347-0398-7

(First published in Guinea-Bissau 1995)

Translated as: The Ultimate Tragedy by Jethro Soutar, Sawtry, Dedalus, 2017

 

 

Book 165: Gabon (English) – Mema (Daniel MENGARA)

 

 

And my mother would start to talk. She would talk for hours, for days and for months. She would spit words out like bombs, burning the village with their atrocious fire. Her words would rush out like troops on the assault and invade the village, taking no prisoners. They would tornado over the village like a hurricane, blowing off thatch rooftops. She would drown the village in the mortal lake of her words, hammering them like a carpenter his nails, leaving of her victims only lifeless ant-gnawed carcasses that told of her memorable passage. Tired of listening to this indomitable woman, the mediator would simply walk out, vanquished and swearing never again, in the future, to accept a mediation involving this woman.

 

This is a small novel but has lots packed into it! The style of storytelling obviously comes from the oral tradition, with its sound effects, repetition, and refrain (“Mema. Mother. My Mother.”)

It is told from the perspective of a village boy. He has a pacifist father (Pepa) and a much stronger mother (Mema) – she apparently used witchcraft on him to make her husband pliable, and continually gourds him. These suspicions and her loud mouth eventually get her ostracised by the village. She is a skillful but hated speaker – most men and women fear her. She often took over the sermons in church – she criticises catechist for his Biblical inaccuracies – and everyone else – but herself uses witchcraft to try to save her husband. When people don’t react to her she gets angrier. She is a lioness.

That isn’t to say that other households weren’t effectively ruled by the wives as well – just that they were more subtle about it. They ruled at home, rather than the men, in some sort of constitutional monarchy. (A woman is able to flee an abusive husband – she just has to wait for the right time, politically. And in the war of the sexes, they are able to successfully carry out a Lysistrata-like strike). But Mema was not content to exercise control behind the scenes like this, which meant she was “both admired and loathed, respected and feared.” After she loses her husband and two daughters she goes quiet (the village tries to take her remaining children), but she walks quietly and carries big machete. The women of the village war against her under her aunt (who is similar to her or even more so).

There is less than usual comment on the encroachment of the modern world. It is true that the young get respect from living in the city being educated. But the place we are in is still mostly traditional.

I learnt a lot about the fascinating local beliefs and culture from this one, and really enjoyed it.

 

MENGARA, Daniel (1967 – ), Mema, Oxford…, Heinemann (African writers Series), 2003, ISBN 0 435 90923 1

 

Book 163: Gambia (English) – The African (William CONTON)

It is perhaps a pity that the British, with their traditional reserve, were the most successful of African imperial powers. For reserve shown toward a once-subject people is at once interpreted as prejudice. Two pairs of eyes meet across a ship’s lounge or smoking room: a copy of The Times is promptly interposed across the line of vision by the Briton, and the African sucks his teeth and curses him in his heart. In fact, of course, the Briton would have made exactly the same gesture if his eyes had met almost any other strange ones. And so gestures create attitudes, and attitudes in turn give colour to gestures, and the waters are soon poisoned almost beyond cleansing.

In the fictional country of Songhai (the name of a famous medieval West African state which, unlike Ghana and Mali, wasn’t claimed by a modern one), Kisimi goes to school, becoming teacher Miss Schwartz’s live-in servant.

He then wins a scholarship to study in England. On a walking tour of Lakes District, he meets an Afrikaner girl from South Africa, Greta (who is engaged to the racist Frederik). Their relationship does not end well and he returns home, becoming a leader fighting for its independence. But he hasn’t forgotten Greta and ends up going to South Africa, planning revenge on Frederik for what happened to her.

Kisimi himself does not always come across as perfect, but who is? His marriage is arranged and happy, yet he immediately wants a second wife. His conversion to Islam comes across as strategic, and he makes other compromises for political purposes. As leader, he evades his own police to cross border (twice). He didn’t particularly grab me.

There are some mistakes, or at least modifications of facts – South Africa here speaks a language called ‘Bantu’, and its legislative capital is ‘Johnstown’.

This is a readable although perhaps dated novel, I would think particularly interesting for students of African literature at the time the countries were gaining independence.

Conton, William (1925 – 2003), The African, African Writers Series, London/Ibadan/Nairobi/Lusaka, Heinemann, 1960, 1978, ISBN 0 435 90012 9