Death and Despair in the Congo

 

A review of All Things Must Fight to Live – Stories of War and Deliverance in Congo by Bryan Mealer, Bloomsbury, NY 2007.

    Journalist Mealer spent several years off and on in the Congo in the early 2000s. He went as a freelancer to cover the tribal wars in Ituri Province in the east. Extreme violence erupted there as ethnic tensions inflamed by the 1994 genocide in Rwanda spilled over into Congo.  Long simmering ethnic hatred, herders versus farmers, access to gold and coltan, interference by both Uganda and Rwanda, flared into ugly massacres and attacks.   Everything was compounded by the lack of central government authority, functioning institutions and especially the pervading corruption that characterized the Congo. Warlords and tribal leaders armed thousands of youths and turned them into savage killers and cannibals.  It was a horrific scene that a UN Peacekeeping presence barely affected.  

    So, the first third of this book is an ever-expanding recitation of gruesome atrocities that occurred in Ituri at that time. Mealer waded right in. He interviewed victims, leaders and reported on the crisis. His on-site reporting is compelling witness to the conflict and tragedy inflicted upon the people. However, the violence was in a far corner of the world, and nobody seemed to care. 

    After Ituri Mealer pitched up in Kinshasa from which he detailed the sad situation of the capital city in the months leading up to the 2005 presidential elections. Kinshasa was corrupt, venal, poverty stricken, and violent. Expatriate journalists banded together drank, laughed, bemoaned the situation, and defied the danger.

    The latter parts of the book are two travelogues. First upriver from Kinshasa on one of the last functioning riverboats. Mealer tells of the chaos of life on board – breakdowns and repairs, thousands of passengers, the daily carnival of life, the tropical heat and bugs, and mostly the exasperation, yet acceptance by the citizenry of the near total collapse of transportation infrastructure.  Mealer concludes this segment by biking the last 200 miles through the equatorial jungle. How crazy can you get?

    The final travelogue involved catching a barely functioning train from Lubumbashi in the south and taking it across the vast nation to Kalemie on Lake Tanganyika. The rail line is a remnant of a colonial era transportation network that bound the country together, but which has been neglected and in disrepair since independence. The author cataloged the journey, the people and problems – breakdowns, delays, derailments, etc. that he encountered along the way.

    Mealer paints a vivid portrait of the Congo, its peoples and its problems.  He found that most folks just accepted fate. They were worn out by life, tragedy, war, corruption, a collapsed economy, incompetent government, and left with little incentive, or ability, to change their circumstances. They just tried to survive.      

New Book Available!

My latest book is out! It is available on Amazon. I will write more about it later. Meanwhile, here is a blurb:    In My African Anthology retired ambassador Robert Gribbin draws upon almost sixty years of contact with Africa to spin tales, recount anecdotes, and air opinions.  Themes in this wonderful collection include trafficking in girls, a long missing treasure, Gacaca justice, fleeing from Ebola, searching for a legendary beast, the U.S. military presence, the emperor’s gold, captured by rebels, a Rwandan update, election sagas, and much more – dogs, golf, spirits and black magic.  In total the collection of pieces – both fiction and non-fiction, humorous and serious - paint a realistic portrait of Africa, its peoples and its issues as seen and experienced by an astute observer. The collection provides just the right mix of history and modernity, with deep insights into Africa.

President Moi's Personal Physician

 

My review of Heartbeat – An American Cardiologist in Kenya by David Silverstein, available from Amazon, 2023.

 David Silverstein was, as the title confirms, a cardiologist who pitched up in Kenya in the early seventies.  This book is his memoir starting with his childhood, education, medical school, a stint in Vietnam and then Kenya. He practiced in Nairobi and as the only heart specialist in the nation at the time attracted the rich and powerful who needed his services.

The book opens in the hospital emergency wards following the bombing of the U.S. embassy in 1998. That sets the tone for the story to come. The memoir is replete with brief case studies of individuals who required his medical services and a narrative of how more broadly viewed medical services in Kenya improved during the course of the past forty years.  (In fact, there was more medical recitation than I enjoyed, but those who are well versed in medicine will undoubtedly appreciate these sections.)

I did value Silverstein’s observations about Kenya’s political scene and its political elite. Many folks are mentioned but the two most prominent are President Daniel arap Moi and Attorney General Charles Njonjo.  Silverstein became doctor to both of them.  He saw them regularly and became friends with each. Since he was not involved with Kenyan politics, they had no agenda with him and his with them was medical, personal and supportive. Silverstein’s observations about the human side of the men rings true.

Silverstien portrayed Moi as a carefully spoken man who thought matters through before acting. Indeed, his observations of Moi add a dimension to the understanding of this complex leader.  Especially poignant was Silverstein’s care for Moi after he retired from the presidency and on into his last years.

 Anecdotes abound, for example, as part of the presidential entourage, Silverstien accompanied Moi on foreign trips. One such foray was into Iran, where Silverstein’s American citizenship and Jewish ethnicity, almost proved disastrous but instead turned into a good story.

Throughout the book, as is true with all memoirs, we learn about the author – what makes him tic, family issues, including two different sets of sons, and finally a wife to sustain him.  All in all, Heartbeat is an entertaining read, especially for those who knew Kenya from the seventies forward.

 

Castigation of the Raj

 

A review of Burma Sahib by Paul Theroux, Mariner Books, NYC, 2024

 

Theroux jumps back in time to take the actual sojourn of Eric Blair, later known by his pen name of George Orwell, in Burma in the 1920s and turn it into a novel.  Blair was a policeman for Britian, the imperial power of the country.  Theroux grafts onto the facts of Blair’s five years there to create a novel. Perhaps some of the internal machinations - places, people, and introspection - of the sojourn are drawn from records of the era.  But to his credit, Theroux exercises literary license in compiling a gripping and insightful novel.

Let there be no mistake this book is an indictment of the British Raj, of British rule in Asia.  Blair is a willing pawn in the oppressive imperial rule. Yet throughout, in his mind he questions most everything about his and his government’s presence in the Asian backwater.  The book tracks Blair’s thinking, his reactions, his rejections, his muses, his lusts, and his memories as the story progresses. Needless to say, Blair is a bundle of contradictions.  As with all of Theroux’s characters in his many books, no one is pure. All characters are complicated, and many are venal. That is certainly true in this story.  Theroux never seems to find many redeeming features in the people he creates.  This harsh criticism of people lends veracity to the story, but makes a reader wonder if the world is really that bleak?

There is no real plot to this book. It just tracks the five years that Blair spent in Burma. The reader wonders if the man will ever adjust or quit, but that is about it for suspense. 

Above criticism notwithstanding, I enjoyed the book. It is a well written page turner. It elucidates in fictional form a period in George Orwell’s life that helped shape his antiauthoritarian views that surfaced years later in Animal Farm and 1984.  More than that it cast a realistic perspective on British classism, racism and imperialism. We all need to learn from the past.

Terrific history of Kenya's Coast

 

A review of Kenya’s Swahili Coast – From the Roman Empire to 1888 by Judy Aldrick, Old Africa books, 2024.

This book provides a general overview of centuries of the politics and culture of Africa’s east coast. It is quite readable. Various sections cover key events, rulers, wars, squabbles, invaders, explorers, missionaries, and personalities. The sum is a good appreciation of what happened on the coast and how it evolved, prospered, and declined, until the end of the 19^th century. 

The east African coast was known to the outside world – Romans and Chinese – thousands of years ago. However, it became a more active trading destination during the spread of Islam. Various independent city states peopled by a polyglot of persons from Arabia, India, and Africa, who became known as the Swahili people, traded slaves, ivory, grain, mangrove poles and other products to and from Arabia and the Indian sub-continent via the annual change in the monsoon winds of the Indian Ocean.  The Swahili towns were trading entrepôts, they did not control the hinterland.  Little written has descended from this era, but ruins and oral stories indicate well-developed self-contained societies.

All that changed with the arrival of the Portuguese beginning with Vasco Da Gama in 1488. Better ships and weaponry enabled the European invaders to assert control of the coast. Stark evidence of Portuguese power is Fort Jesus in Mombasa. Completed in 1593 this bastion still dominates Mombasa’s old harbor.  Portuguese fortunes all along the coast waxed and waned as its garrisons struggled to govern the various towns and control trade with the east.

As Portuguese sea power gave way to Dutch and English prominence, its political control of the coast passed to Arab potentates from Oman and Zanzibar. In turn, the succession of Sultans often resorted to indirect rule, relying on local families to govern coastal entities.  The Mazrui family of Mombasa, for example, produced 10 successive liwalis (governors) who effectively controlled the key city for a hundred years.

Yet, as this book reports, never was everything peaceful and happy.  Squabbles, intrigue, fighting, ruling family dynamics, competition between the Swahili towns, loyalty to contesting overlords or protecting powers, economic fortunes – especially the devastating impact of the elimination of slavery – all combined to render the scene changing and complex.  Author Aldrick delves into this morass of confusion and provides a coherent compendium of key events and personages.

Comment: I lived in Mombasa for three years and got to know the author, and the modern city, and some of the past, but this book has many revelations. I enjoyed the vignettes about individuals.  I had not realized there were so many quasi-independent Swahili towns with their own liwalis.  Similarly, I learned that many neglected settlements like those on Pate Island were once important players.

This book is a must read for those interested in Kenya’s history. It provides a long-needed layman’s look at the storied past of the coast. 

   

 

Loss, Pain and Mystery in Uganda

 

A review of The Atlas of Forgotten Places by Jenny D. Williams, St. Martin’s Press, NY, 2017

 

This intriguing novel revolves around the Lord’s Resistance Army, the movement led by rebel warlord/messianic leader Joseph Kony that terrorized northern Uganda for decades beginning in the 1980s.  The author set her story and her characters accurately in the context of wariness and suspicion that typified the Acholi homeland in 2006, just after the fighting migrated to Sudan and the Congo. The Acholi people were traumatized by conflict. All were victims of one sort or another. Especially vulnerable were returnees, those who had escaped from the LRA.  Back home, they lived with the stigma of mistrust.  Rose, the best drawn character in this story, is one of those folks. She harbors memories, fears and secrets, which leak out slowly as the plot progresses.

The basic plot, however, involves the disappearance of Lily, a young American woman. Her aunt Sabine comes to Uganda to find her.  Has Lily simply disappeared or been taken against her will?  Sabine has lots of baggage from her earlier work in Africa, even in Uganda. Sabine investigates, perseveres, enlists others to help, and along the way confronts her own demons.  After-the-fact, the plot seems contrived, but it does push the tale along. There are several nice, unexpected twists as the story comes to fruition.

Author Williams’ strengths are in her descriptions of Acholi life and the introspections of her characters as they confront the obstacles before them.  

Readers will undoubtedly come away with improved knowledge of the trauma that Ugandans experienced. The personalization of that trauma via the characters of this story adds immeasurably to the impact of such understanding.

Disclaimer: As readers of this blog know I too am an author. Two of my books, The Last Rhino and Finding Kony, also deal with the predations of the Lord’s Resistance Army in the region. I commend Ms. Williams for getting it right in penning a significant contribution for outside comprehension of the terrible – and continuing - pains that afflict the Acholi people.

  

Opinion, Criticism and Satire

 

A review of How to Write About Africa – Collected Works by Binyavanga Wainaina, One World, New York, 2022.

 

Kenyan writer Wainaina is a puzzle. Outspoken, even outrageous, his métier is criticism and sarcasm. This is shown both in his fiction and his essays, which share this tome.  Wainaina spares no quarter in portraying excess human foibles, including greed or misplaced humanitarianism.  His satire bites deep and certainly reflects an obsession with pointing out erroneous western perceptions about Africa and Africans.  The title of the book comes from an early essay to that effect. Yet, Wainaina is an equal opportunity critic in that he also diatribes against the motivations of fellow Africans in playing to western stereotypes or in their relations with each other.  He delights in showing warts and all.  His characters are very human.

The fiction pieces allow the author to develop realistic but purposely overdrawn characters. I liked Ships in High Transit about tourists at the coast being bamboozled by folks pretending to be Maasai. Real truths about both sides emerge.  Equally entertaining is An Affair to Disremember. It is sort of a sad story about lives and expectations gone awry. 

Most telling of the essays is Beyond River Yei which is a report of a sojourn in South Sudan as part of an effort to eradicate sleeping sickness. In that piece Wainaina demonstrates legitimate chops as a feature writer.

Readers won’t want to miss key satires of How to Be a Dictator and the title piece How to Write about Africa.

Throughout the collection there is plenty for a reader to think about, muddle over, agree with, reject, or object to. That, in fact, is the author’s goal.  And, it is well accomplished.  

Coda: Nakuru born son of a Kikuyu father and a Ugandan Tutsi mother, after secondary school Binyavanga fled to South Africa where he began his writing career, and came out. Subsequently, he returned to Kenya to rattle cages there via Kiwani?, a magazine he published. Sadly, Wainaina died young in 2019.