Book review - Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight

Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight – an African Childhood, by Alexandra Fuller,  Random House, NY 2001. 

Although published first, I read this book after I read Cocktails under the Tree of Forgetfulness, a biography of her mother,  by the same author (reviewed in June 2012).  Accordingly the thrust of the story was already known to me. Nonetheless, this autobiography was entertaining and revealing in its own right.

The author, called Bobo as a child, was born in England, but grew up in Africa – in Zimbabwe, Malawi and Zambia.  Her family was quite self contained. Her parents had the bad luck to end up on every out-of- the- way run- down farm or plantation out there.  Bobo’s mother, Nicola, was an alcoholic whose problems were compounded by mental instability.  Depression at least partially attributed to the fact that she lost three babies resulted in Nicola often neglected her daughters - omissions that taught them self reliance. Throughout, Bobo and her older sister Vanessa coped.

Life was not easy on the Zimbabwe farm tucked up against the border of Mozambique during Zimbabwe’s civil war.  “Terrorists” as the African insurgents were called posed an ever present threat.  Bobo’s parents always had automatic weapons at their sides, even while they slept.   The house was full of dogs, who accompanied Bobo and her mother on their daily horse rides.  Bobo’s early memories are of this house, the servants, the problems, the travels and the adventures.  Independence came. The whites lost the war, so the situation for them changed dramatically; not just politically, but economically and socially.  For example, Bobo’s whites only school was inundated by African children.  Furthermore the racial superiority practiced by white settlers was no longer tolerated. Children like Bobo handled these changes better than adults.

Yet, the Fullers stayed on.  They adapted and survived. They moved successively to an abandoned ranch, then on to a tobacco plantation in Malawi and finally to a farm in Zambia. 

Bobo’s memoir is replete with candid anecdotes of daily life and familial interactions; often told via dialogue.  The author has a keen memory of how they spoke. She vividly constructs a picture of what her life was like.  Given the oddness of her upbringing and her eccentric parents, it is a bit amazing that she turned out normal.  But apparently, she did.

For those who want a glimpse of another time and place, this is an interesting memoir.

Review - Crossing the Heart of Africa

A review of Crossing the Heart of Africa, by Julian Smith, Harper Collins, NY, 2010

In this combination historical exposition and travelogue author Julian Smith recounts the life and trans-African journey of Ewart Grogan in 1899 while retracing the man’s footsteps a hundred or so years later.  Grogan was a British adventurer who fell in love with Gertrude, a New Zealand beauty. However, her stepfather believed that Grogan was unsuitable. In order to prove his mettle, Grogan proposed to walk the length of Africa along the Cape to Cairo corridor proposed by  Cecil Rhodes.  

Author Smith had obviously combed Grogan’s chronicles and books of the era. He summarized and used this information to excellent effect in this book.  Grogan was indeed a interesting character. A man of indomitable will, he persevered on this journey through amazing difficulty – tropical diseases, hostile natives, hunger, thirst, ferocious animals, lost supplies, isolation; all of which combined to wear him down. But Grogan like predecessors Livingstone and Stanley had an iron constitution and some spark in his inner core that would not bow to defeat.  Although not of the first generation of explorers, nonetheless Grogan was the first to map the Ruzizi valley and the eastern shore of Lake Kivu.  He plugged ahead and eventually succeeded.  Of course, Gertrude waited for him. They married and settled in Kenya where he became a stalwart of the community.

Smith’s journey was a bit less arduous. He took public transportation from Beria, Mozambique  through Malawi, on into Tanzania, by boat up Lake Tanganyika, onward through Burundi, Rwanda and Uganda.  He then flew to Juba, Sudan where he finished his travels.  As true with any budget traveler in Africa, Smith found buses and boats crowded, facilities poor, food execrable and his patience tried. He was beset by erstwhile companions who sought to play him for what he might be worth, but he was also offered hospitality by strangers in the best African tradition.  Apart from the gee-whiz factor of someone experiencing this for the first time, there was nothing remarkable in Smith’s observations. However, Smith too soldiered on motivated by his own true love, Laura.

While the juxtaposition of the parallel journeys and the parallel loves made for a nice hook upon which to hang the book, I found the ruminations of Smith’s relationship and courtship of Laura to be extraneous and a distraction from the history of Grogan’s trials and the modern day travelogue.    

I found two errors in the narrative that a good editor should have caught.  Early on Grogan’s route was described from Cape Horn to Cairo.  Of course, Cape Horn is in South America. The Cape of Good Hope is the African landmark.  Secondly, Smith noted that Grogan’s travelling partner Sharpe gave up the trip in western Uganda and headed for Kampala where he could  “get a train to the coast.”  The railroad did not reach Kampala until 1931, some thirty years later.  

Although this book has shortcomings, it is worthwhile and provides the service of recounting Ewart Grogan’s riveting tale of exploration.

A Kenyan Memoir

In the House of the Interpreter – a memoir by Ngugi wa Thiongo, Pantheon Book, NY, 2012

This is the second installment of a memoir by the noted Kenyan author Ngugi wa Thiongo.  In the first book Dreams in a Time of War (reviewed on this site in May 2010) Ngugi recounted his childhood in Limuru as first WWII then the Mau Mau insurgency swept down upon his family.  In the House of the Interpreter picks up where that memoir left off. Now we find Ngugi on his way to the renown Alliance High School.  At the time the only, and perhaps still today, the most prestigious secondary school for Africans.   He explains the origins of Alliance in the 1920s as a vocational school organized by a consortium of missionary organizations designed to educate and create an elite group of African males.

By the 1950s when Ngugi enrolled, Alliance was indeed doing that. A knowledgeable reader will recognize names,  which Ngugi drops often, as those of men who went on to prominence in Kenyan society.  But to his credit Ngugi does not remark upon what these boys became, rather he elucidates what they were then – how they impressed or not – their colleagues and teachers.

For village boys like Ngugi, Alliance was another world. He was unfamiliar with European accoutrements such as eating utensils, flush toilets, hot showers, and a bed of his own.  Nonetheless, he and his fellows quickly adjusted.  Under the strict tutelage of headmaster Cary Francis, the school ran like clock work. Academics were foremost and the day was devoted to learning.  Not unsurprisingly,  Ngugi excelled. He was always near the top of his class.  The odd title of the book comes from the fact that for Kenyan youngsters (a handful of girls were enrolled), Alliance High School was the place where western knowledge – science, literature, manners and mores were interpreted for them.

Yet Alliance was more than a school, especially for the Kikuyu kids, it was a refuge from the Mau Mau nastiness going on around them in the late 1950s.  An Alliance uniform drew great respect from most Africans and indeed recognition from Europeans. It provided a sort of cloak of immunity from the harassment that was a regular part of life.  For example, on his first visit home, Ngugi found that his family home, indeed his whole village had been razed by colonial authorities.  Soon passes and passbooks were needed for all movement. Ngugi feared he would be denied these because his brother was a Mau Mau fighter.  Culminating this reign of terror,  in spite of his Alliance association Ngugi was on one occasion arbitrarily arrested and imprisoned.

Such incidents give heft to the memoir as Ngugi recalls his formative and coming of age years.  Alliance truly opened the door to a bigger world for him and for all of his cohorts.  His description of it all is a worthy read.

 

Lost Loves in Kenya and Zanzibar

Following is a review of Desertion, a novel by Abdulrazak Gurnah, Anchor Books, NY, 2005.

This intriguing novel by a Zanzibari author relates several interconnected stories that link three generations of families.  The author provides great insight into the mores and motivations of the Swahili society of the first part of the 20^th century, about what was proper, what was not and what was scandalous.   Obviously tension in the novel relates to where events and actions fell along that scale. 

 The first installment takes place in a never named town that is obviously Malindi in the early years of British colonialism.  Pearce, an exhausted European stumbles out of the bush and collapses. He is rescued by a Swahili shopkeeper and nurtured by his sister Rehena before he is taken in by the imperious British district officer.  The latter assumed that Pearce was victimized by the villagers, so treats them harshly.  Peace, however, wants to thank them for their hospitality.  Their fate unfolds gently with great insight into conflicting values. The fact that Pearce and Rehena ultimately become lovers scandalizes all communities. 

The story picks up in Zanzibar in the next generation as a family of two brothers and a sister ply their way through growing up.  Rashid, the narrator of the novel, emerges as himself, a studious, introspective intellectual. His brother Amin is a more typical youth focused on sports and friends.  Sister Farida too was self contained and ultimately became a businesswoman.  The parents were schoolteachers. They and their offspring wanted nothing more than the modest success that they might achieve in the restricted colonial system and the conservative Swahili society.   Scandal in this installment revolves around the love affair between Amin and Jamila, a widow and the illegitimate daughter of Pearce and Rehena.  Meanwhile colonialism comes to an end and with the subsequent revolution Zanzibar is thrown into chaos as are the lives of all concerned.  Rashid, ignorant in the ways of the world, goes off to London to university. 

Desertion is an apt title because  - perhaps like in life - no story  comes to a happy ending.  Someone always leaves. The constraints of society and reality prevail, yet the characters are real and they struggle even as their passion disrupts families around them.

I enjoyed this book. The writing has a lyrical quality to it that aptly evokes the time and place.  The narrator muses about the characters that he well depicts, but does not always understand. 

Africa Unveiled

Following is my review of Paul Theroux's latest book.  Theroux has a dark and cynical side that certainly comes through in this novel. 

The Lower River

By Paul Theroux

If ever you were a Peace Corps Volunteer and reminisce on your time and place of service as a golden era in your life and one that you wish to revisit, this may not be the novel for you.  Then again, you may really need to read it in order to reset your perspective.  Either way, return is the plot of The Lower River, Theroux’s latest and one of his most compelling novels set in Africa, Malawi specifically.

The tale revolves around Ellis Hock, a man in his sixties who returned from a PCV teaching stint in a small village in the backwaters of Malawi some forty years earlier.  Hock’s current life in Massachusetts falls apart, his marriage dissolves, his daughter rejects him, and his business fails.  Throughout he remembers Malawi and his time in Malabo, a small village on the lower river. There he was respected, even revered.  Life was fascinating and hopeful; the village’s prospects encouraging.  Hock’s memories also include a lost love.   Thus, with his current life in shambles, Hock decides to go back.  Certainly he knows that times have changed, but he hopes to reclaim some of that earlier magic.

The Malawi that Hock finds has indeed changed. It is busier, dirtier, filled with cynical aggressive people.   Yet Hock is sure that Malabo will be different, but of course, it is not.   The older gentler generation that Hock remembered is gone.  Hock’s school lies in ruins, the clinic abandoned, the priest no longer visits. The vestiges of courtesy and respect for elders and outsiders are a sham.  Hospitality and generosity are gratuitous, reluctantly granted in expectation of reimbursement.  Instead of welcoming him as a long lost friend, Hock is viewed as a resource, a cash cow that must be conserved and carefully milked until she runs dry.

Manyenga , the grandson of the chief Hock previously knew, presides over the village and ingratiates himself to Hock. He provides a young woman, Zizi, to look after Hock’s needs, even as he wheedles money from his ostensible guest.  Hock is struck down by malaria, lassitude and despair but soon comes to realize that he is not an honored guest but a hostage.   His efforts to come to grips with the situation and to escape constitute the plot of the novel.

Although the plot proceeds with unexpected twists and turns, the story really is about Hock, how things change,  how we think about and react to them, and how we come to see truth.  The setting is immaculate. The village is real and grungy; its inhabitants believable and their actions – for the most part – plausible.   Theroux’s dark side, however, comes through. For example, he seizes the opportunity to mock external relief efforts. He portrays characters at their worse – feral children, aggressive thugs, greedy and conniving chiefs, and defeated idealists.  He posits that on account of poverty and  hunger villagers are devoid of positive human qualities. These sorts of people may inhabit the real world and maybe even present day Malawi, but Theroux’s portrait of them is disturbing.

Nonetheless, the story is well told.  The writing is lucid, even elegant. The setting is impeccable. The interspersion of local language adds credibility. Readers who know Africa, especially returned Peace Corps Volunteers, will find this a gripping tale of a search for redemption and inner peace. 

Bridging Cultural Gaps

Following is my review of :

The Outsider(s)

By Caroline Adhiambo Jakob, Author House, Bloomington, IN, 2012
 

This fascinating first novel by a Kenyan author is based on cultural clashes, perceptions and misperceptions as experienced by several women.  Indeed the story provides some keen insight  - often amusing, but occasionally sad  - into how folks on different sides of the culture divide react.

Structurally the novel chiefly follows two women, one starting as an impoverished Kenyan living hand-to-mouth in a Nairobi slum and the other a sophisticated German who succeeded in business by cut- throat back-stabbing practices.  To add to her woes the German also comes from a dysfunctional family where the mother intimidates and castigates her daughters.   The initial descriptions of hard life in Nairobi for Philister ring true and one can understand her desperation.  Soon she escapes to Germany only to find life there almost equally austere, but complicated by her illegal status, lack of German language, and racism.  Even as Philister’s story unfolds, Irmtraut’s is also underway.  An unhappy bitter woman, she opts for a sideways promotion and gets sent to Nairobi.   Thus, the two women are both outsiders in cultures that neither understands or appreciates (hence the title).

The strength of the novel is based on how the two women struggle and adapt to their new surroundings.  Philister is struck by bleakness of European life where common courtesies, hospitality and friendships are absent.  Yet she struggles on eventually staying for some twenty years all the while coping with racism and a profound sense of not belonging.   As an ironic twist, even some of the Africans she meets along the way have adopted European selfishness and disdain.   Irmtraut too is a fish out of water in Kenya. Since her approach to life is diametrically opposite, she cannot understand why people are friendly and accommodating without ulterior motives.

Of course, eventually the two women’s lives become intertwined as they cope with life’s issues and become more attuned to their surroundings. 

There are certainly some caricatures in this novel – I thought the Germans were a bit overblown -   and the plot requires some considerable leaps in order to come to a satisfactory ending. Nonetheless, all the characters are interesting and the setting is excellent.  Readers who have lived in both worlds will nod knowingly each time someone gets frustrated or puzzled either by European or African peculiarities.

The author Caroline Adhiambo Jakob, a Kenyan national married to a German, has a foot in each camp and she writes convincingly about each. The Outsider(s) is an entertaining and enjoyable read.

Serpentine Diplomacy

Serpentine Diplomacy

By Robert Gribbin

Following is a piece that I wrote which was published in the September 2012 edition of the Foreign Service Journal.  I spent most of my diplomatic career in Africa, including two tours in the Central African Republic - first as a junior officer (1874-76) and later as ambassador (1992-95). I wrote an adventure novel set in the CAR entitled State of Decay - An Oubangui Chronicle. It is available from on line bookstores and the publisher www.infinitypress.com.

In 1993 while I was ambassador in the Central African Republic, the citizens participated in the nation’s first (and so far only) free and fair election.   Four of the fifteen candidates, including the incumbent, Andre Kolingba, led the pack.  

 The French and German ambassadors, the EU delegate, the UN resident representative and I formed a donor committee that coordinated our collective financial input and strove to preach the virtues of democracy.  The United States brought only a little money to the table, but our influence as a bulwark of democracy was impressive nonetheless.

 The campaign grew hot with slings and arrows from all camps. Much of the politicking broke out along tribal lines, and rallies, broadsides and sound trucks sought to win over voters.

 At one time or another each candidate sat on my couch and asked for America’s blessing.  I applauded their patriotism, willingness to engage and reiterated the U.S. commitment to an open process, but promised nothing concrete.  Nonetheless, when each spoke to the press upon exiting the embassy, he implied a warm endorsement.

The campaign was a festive experience, not in the least because the citizenry finally awoke to the fact that they had a say. Only late in the process did the president’s inner circle realize that he was not very popular and would probably lose.  So they began to plot disruptions.

As was my habit in this season,  I took breakfast on the terrace of the residence one day during the last phase of electioneering.  The morning was fresh, bright and clear, but held the promise of another hot and humid day. 

Looking up into the large sweet smelling frangi pangi tree that overhung part of the terrace, I spied a big, long black snake intertwined among the blossoms.  I grabbed my croissant and coffee and quickly retreated behind the sliding glass door into the house. 

When I summoned the house staff, they chattered excitedly and went to inform the gardeners.  I had to go to the chancery so left the issue in their hands. 

I arrived home for lunch to find that the staff, including the day guards, had laid out on the terrace for my inspection an eight foot long black mamba – one of Africa’s most aggressive and deadliest snakes.  I heard recitations of the battle with the beast and the bravado of the victors.

I congratulated them profusely for their bravery and prowess in keeping us safe.  Indeed, no one could have rested easy unless the snake was dealt with in this fashion.    

By late afternoon a story was circulating widely in the city to the effect that President Kolingba, angry with the U.S. ambassador’s advocacy of free elections and seeing his own impending exit, had used his black magic to send a mamba to kill the ambassador.  The snake had snuck into the garden that morning and had laid in wait to strike.

 However, the ambassador’s magic proved to be stronger. He had sensed the evil presence and had defeated the snake. Thus, as a consequence, the elections would go forward as planned and President Kolingba would lose.

One week later, that’s exactly what happened.