Kudos for the Serpent

A review of The Serpent of the Nile from the Foreign Service Journal, November 2021.

 This taut thriller opens with Paul Simmons, a former Peace Corps volunteer who is now a Nairobi-based freelance journalist, being freed from captivity in South Sudan. Surprise: Someone doesn’t appreciate his dogged pursuit of stories of corruption, arms smuggling and human trafficking in that wartorn nation, the newest in Africa. But who? And who, or what, is the novel’s titular snake?

As Simmons gets caught up in the violence and intrigue that plague one of the world’s most desperate nations, Robert Gribbin introduces us to a kaleidoscopic cast that includes figures from the notorious Lord’s Resistance Army and some of their local victims, as well as government employees, British and American expatriates, missionaries and (fictional!) Embassy Juba personnel.

Set against the grim reality and history of the region, and drawing on the author’s decades of diplomacy in Africa, this novel accurately portrays the despair, hope and aspirations of South Sudan’s beleaguered people.

Ambassador (ret.) Robert Gribbin spent 35 years in East and Central Africa, first as a Peace Corps volunteer and then as a Foreign Service officer. He was posted to 15 African countries and served on delegations to the United Nations General Assembly and U.N. Human Rights Commission. He served as U.S. ambassador to Rwanda (1996-1999) and to the Central African Republic and occasionally takes on short-term assignments for the Department of State. He is the author of In the Aftermath of Genocide: The U.S. Role in Rwanda (2005), and novels: State of Decay (2003), Murder in Mombasa (2013) and The Last Rhino (2020).

Justice for Deborah

 

A review of American Taboo – A murder in the Peace Corps by Philip Weiss, Harper Collins, 2004.

 Following up my read of Every Hill a Burial Ground about a Peace Corps murder in Tanzania, a friend sent me this book about a Peace Corps murder in Tonga.

Indeed, there was a murder in Tonga, a very small Pacific Island nation, in 1975. Deborah Gardner, a Peace Corps teacher was murdered by a fellow volunteer, Dennis Priven. He even confessed. The saga, of course, was complicated. Deborah was a vivacious young lady, who enchanted all she met. Priven became smitten with her; enthusiasms she did not fully reciprocate. That seems to have been the underlying theme of the crime. She had other romantic entanglements but refused Priven.

The author painted a complicated scene of Peace Corps life in Tonga. It was a small place with many volunteers. They all knew each other and socialized together frequently.  Tonga is portrayed as a place where there were two types of volunteers – those who engaged in Tongan culture and those who disdained it, preferring the company of other expatriates.  The latter group and certainly some of the former often apparently engaged in drunken revelries and revolving relationships. It is not a pretty picture of Americans abroad. There is some, but not much revelation of what volunteers actually did or what contributions they made. Politically, however, the American presence was important to Tonga and vice versa. The Peace Corps was the tangible expression of America’s interest in the island nation. As it turned out, neither side wanted to lose that connection on account of a murder.

Everyone was, of course, shocked by the murder and the violence of it. Priven was quickly fingered and hunted around the island prior to his turning himself in. He confessed but said nothing further. The evidence was clear and incriminating: eyewitnesses placed him at the scene, his knife was the murder weapon and Deborah’s dying statement was that Dennis did it.

Tongan Peace Corps officials, with the backing of Peace Corps Washington, soon turned to facilitating, mounting and financing a defense of Priven, claiming that he was mentally impaired at the time. Truly, he was a troubled soul but was he crazy?  This defense took lots of maneuvering especially with psychological interventions at the trial but was ultimately successful.

All in all, American Taboo is a sordid tale where power and manipulation on the part of official Americans offset the delivery of justice under Tongan law. Tonga too was guilty of not wanting to hang an ugly American if the cost – justice for Deborah – was too high in terms of eliminating the Peace Corps presence and souring ties with the United States.  

Author Weiss did an astonishing amount of research for this book. Literally chasing down and interviewing dozens of folks who had little desire to relive these sordid events.  The book contains lots of details from overlapping and conflicting memories, after-the-fact justifications, and regrets. Sometimes it is too much. If, however, a reader wades through it all, the result remains disquieting; justice was not served.

Good review of new novel

 

Robert Gribbin, The Serpent of the Nile: A Novel of South Sudan.  A review by Alan G. Johnston.  Note:  both Robert Gribbin and Alan Johnston were in the Peace Corps group that arrived in Kenya in October 1968.  They both spent many years in Africa.

 

The last place that you want to end up is in a prison cell in some remote part of Africa, whether that cell is controlled by a rebel group, an opposition warlord, or a government.  Especially if you happen to be a journalist. Bad things happen in those cells. Yet that is exactly where we meet up with the protagonist of Robert Gribbin’s new novel, The Serpent of the Nile.  As he always does, Gribbin has used his lengthy experience in many parts of Africa, including South Sudan, to provide an authentic context for this tale of insurrection and intrigue in this unstable part of Africa.  By the time you have finished this short novel, much of which consists of a concise briefing on the history, culture and politics of South Sudan, you may feel ready to take up a diplomatic post in that country, but you will probably not want to do much investigative journalism there.

As it turns out, our as yet un-named journalist is soon let loose by his captor and led to the border by the captor’s son, Owino, so that the journalist can return to his base in Kenya to recover from this close call.  All the characters in this novel seem quite plausible, and Gribbin reviews a comprehensive list of foreign aid organizations, UN agencies, NGOs, and diplomats from across the globe that have assembled in Juba to somehow help build a new country.  The name Owino reminded me of my many Luo friends from Kenya who were serving in Juba as consultants and advisors; they even jokingly referred to Juba as “Little Kisumu.”  But after a short respite our free-lance journalist friend, Paul, who happens to be a Black American who served in the Peace Corps in Kenya and who can pass as a Kenyan when it serves his purposes, is back in Juba searching for a lead on some illegal Chinese dealings, a story that he can sell to the international press.

The main problem that I have with this novel is that it is too short.  It establishes a realistic context for the events of the novel, but three-quarters of the way through the book Paul is still not yet in the serious trouble that we know is coming.  A more elaborate rendition of the story would get us more invested in the characters and leave us even more astounded by the outcome.

It is quite possible to spend significant amounts of time in Africa and not realize the extent to which sorcery and various spirits have such a major influence for both good and evil.  Gribbin does not make that mistake.  The novel’s namesake Serpent of the Nile raises its head and has a practical impact at several key junctures in the story.  In fact, for many of the South Sudanese who we meet in these pages, their glimmer of hope for the future, in this otherwise forlorn country, rests in their eventual salvation by this very serpent.

A Peace Corps Death in Tanzania

 

A review of Every Hill a Burial Place – The Peace Corps Murder Trial in East Africa by Peter H. Reid, University Press of Kentucky, 2020.

On March 27, 1966, Peace Corps Volunteer teacher Peppy Kinsey died. She and her husband Bill went on a picnic to a rock outcropping near their home. They climbed the rock. Bill said he did not hear her fall, but realizing she was gone rushed to find her bleeding below, soon to die. Witnesses reported a struggle.  Police concluded the husband Bill Kinsey murdered his wife and not even from the top of the rock. Thus begins the saga of who said what, who saw what, what was the evidence, was there motive, and so forth. Most of the book is devoted to the case itself and how it unrolled in rural Africa where local police and prosecutors ended up facing off against sophisticated well financed experts – both in law and medicine. There is much redundancy. Author Reid goes over who said and saw what every time a different party provided input. It gets boring, especially the repetition of the medical evidence, but finally differences arising from that evidence proved crucial at the trial.  The author drew extensively from his own memories of the event, official transcripts, and notes of those who were engaged in the process. If nothing else the reader will learn a lot about East African jurisprudence.

A second part of the story relates how the Peace Corps as an institution reacted to the event. Was its responsibility to ensure justice for the dead woman and/or did Peace Corps have an obligation to support her volunteer husband against the charge of murder?  What to say publicly? What to communicate to PCVs in-country?  Initially the Peace Corps tried to walk a neutral line. Nonetheless, its staff both from Tanzania and Washington, were deeply involved in the case.  Peace Corps officials assumed that the very presence of Peace Corps in Tanzania was at stake. A murder conviction would besmirch and jeopardize the whole program.  They surmised that an extremely overt defense of Bill would antagonize the government of Tanzania as it would appear that the might of the U.S. government was being arrayed against an underdeveloped third world nation.  Washington officials also feared that a conviction and hanging would undermine the Peace Corps globally.

Part of the problem for the Peace Corps was that it did not have a policy for such an event. Although it scrabbled together a suitable response to this specific case, apparently, it never codified policies so would have to reinvent them in the years afterwards whenever PCVs got in similar predicaments.  A useful part of the long-after-the-fact analysis is a discussion of how Peace Corps responsibilities towards women volunteers – their health and safety – has evolved.

I won’t divulge the outcome of the trial. It indeed had some interesting twists. Readers who stick with the narrative will find this an engaging book. Based on the evidence, you get to arrive at your own judgement of what really happened.

As an aside, I wrote a book in novel form based on the murder of a woman in Mombasa, Kenya where an American sailor was accused and stood trial.  Ergo, I understood much of the arcana of East African jurisprudence and the tensions that arose when an American confronted a different judicial system and when political issues were also at play.  Murder in Mombasa (www.smashwords.com)     

Mystery and Mayhem in South Sudan

The Serpent of the Nile, available in paperback or ebook on Amazon.

 As reader of this blog might know I spent many years in East and Central Africa as a US diplomat, including a short tour in Juba.  This is my fourth novel all of which are set in Africa. A short summary of the book follows: 

Paul, a former Peace Corps Volunteer teacher in Kenya, is a Nairobi based free-lance journalist. He covered conflict in Somalia, Darfur, and the Congo, but with visions of a Pulitzer Prize he seeks to write a story of corruption and arms smuggling in South Sudan. Visiting that war-torn nation Paul finds that civil strife is real, and that violence has been endemic in the region for years. He gets schooled in the tortured history of the region and caught up in the senselessness of it. Villains abound. Yet there are those who seek to make their world a better place – outlier politicians, elders, reformers, feminists, entrepreneurs, and even a soldier.  Paul finds that a mysterious force for good based on an ancient legend is enthralling the people of Equatoria Province and threatening their Juba based political masters. Investigating this Paul links up with United Nations peacekeepers to visit the far-flung districts of South Sudan.  However, his very America/Kenyan presence causes him to become suspect in the eyes of the secret police, which leads to misfortune, threats to him and embassy personnel.  

Set against the grim reality and history of South Sudan, this novel accurately portrays the despair, hope and aspiration of the nation’s beleaguered people.  

 

Grogan's Epic Walk

 

A review of Crossing the Heart of Africa – An Odyssey of Love and Adventure by Julian Smith, Harper Collins, NY, 2010

 

Readers, if any, of this blog will recognize that I enjoy books about travel in Africa. This is an interesting one. Author Smith’s gimmick is that he retraces the epic 1898 journey of Ewart Grogan, who walked from Cape to Cairo in order to secure the hand of the woman he loved. Smith too parallels Grogan’s quest, not only the route up the spine of Africa but with reflections on his relationship with the woman he is soon to marry.  I was not smitten with Smith’s romantic musings, but I did enjoy the alternating segments of what Grogan endured (and wrote about) and what Smith encountered. Obviously much had changed, especially in terms of transportation – Grogan walked while Smith used public conveyances – bikes, buses, boats, planes, which were much, much faster.  Smith’s journey is fleshed out by sporadic conversations with Africans that shed light on topics of the day whereas Grogan’s encounters with locals were often threatening, dangerous, and ultimately resolved through violence.

After Grogan succeeded in his quest (Smith stopped short), he did marry his beloved Gertrude (Smith married his love too). The Grogans moved to Kenya where the two became notable personages in the settler community. Grogan was a thorn in the government’s side, but a successful entrepreneur both in business and agriculture.  Among his efforts were vast sisal plantations in the area around Taveta on the Kenyan/Tanzanian border.  There he built an imposing house, dubbed Grogan’s castle, on a barren hilltop.  I was stationed in Mombasa from 1981-84 and visited the abandoned and dilapidating “castle” on several occasions.  It was indeed testimony to a vanished era and a monument to a remarkable man.

A sordid past of racism and paternalism

 

A review of Empires in the Sun by Lawrence James,Pegasus Books, NY, 2017 

This is an interesting history of Africa told from the perspective of the colonial powers. Even though events on the continent are clearly the focus of the record, author James relates how European nations viewed and constructed their empires, and then saw them dissolved.  Much of their considerations for empire were justified by “mission civilsatrice” but the underlying reasons were purely political and economic arising from inter European competition, not just for global standing but also for validation of their respective national cultures. For most of the several hundred years covered by the book Africans were depicted as sub-human, ignorant, pliable, savage, etc. Yet throughout James cites how Africans were progressing in defiance of such stereotyping.  And stereotyping it was. I was intrigued by the accounts of how popular media – newspapers, personal accounts, novels, films, comic books, expositions, etc.- shaped European popular views of backward Africans and how such media supported and endorsed governmental aspirations and policies to subjugate the continent.  It is an astonishing portrait of racism.

The history begins in the fifteenth century and progresses into the independence era. It deals with discovery, partition, colonialism, the awaking of independence consciousness, the impact of two world wars, the cold war, wars of independence and finally the end of apartheid.

I found several small errors of fact, but was dismayed by the cover map which neglects to depict the nation of South Sudan. In 2017, the date of publication, South Sudan had been independent for over five years.

This chronicle is detailed, sometimes too much so. The narrative jumps around from place to place in Africa and from year to year. Certainly, a reader needs already to have a solid background in African history to appreciate such convolutions.  That being said, I found the book readable and provocative because it does indeed elaborate on a long missing perspective on the history of the continent.