Charlotte Bett -The Apothecary's Daughter

This was the first time I read Charlotte Bett. It gave me an interest in the bubonic plague and the fire of London.  I have only really had a cursory interest in that plague that destroyed London or perhaps even cleansed it. The book was set in 1665 and 1666. Like most books, I try to learn about the history around the time in which they are set. Makes it more palatable than a text book.

Reading the book...especially the plague...reminded me of the health problems Africa faces. It was amazing that there was no cure for the bubonic plague and the desperation during those times is similar to what we have in present day Africa. When people died in a house...they were picked by a cart for mass burial and the rest of the occupants were quarantined in the house....One had to pay bribes once in a while to escape or to even see their loved ones.  Now the plagues are different. When people talk about the pandemic that is HIV you would think that the world never suffered any other plague before.

My best character is Mistress Fygge.  She is described somewhere as 'a formidable woman; I would be nominate her for the best supporting role as in the Oscars.  She is one of those people that appears 'harsh' but is compassionate, generous and helpful. Of course she speaks her mind and is not always politically correct...but I would rather she was my friend. Susannah is toooo perfect for my liking...to the point of naivete.

When people wax lyrical about gender equality,  one would think that the world was always very gender conscious. So I was quite entertained by the phrase 'It is against God's will to have female apothecaries'. It was considered blasphemy to think otherwise.

Although the novel is apparently  a tale of love, sometimes unrequited, for me it was really a tale about how civilisations came to be. About how, if it comes to the basics, we really are all the same OR have suffered the same indignities and prejudices. The girl child - Like Dick Wittington - has come far....irrespective of the civilisation. London was once an unplanned city, full of disease and murk, but it has come through the fire and plague....Almost sounds religious. As for the tale of love and races....it is quite an interesting one. In part of Africa, its about tribes, in other parts its about religion and still in other parts of the world it is about races and castes. Surely, as the Americans say....aren't all men (and women) created equal and have some inalienable rights including the right to love whosoever they will?

I guess in life there is always an inflection point and for London perhaps it was the great fire that allowed it to be rebuilt into the beautiful city that I love to visit.

The other interesting character is Christopher Leyton...Really, enough is said about the madness between a man and a woman. This madness can cause a man to give up his own children at the expense of pleasure which is sometimes fleeting This also happens over generations and across races....

The challenge about the book is that it had so many characters and I would have to read it again in order to engrave it into my memory as a formidable book. Nonetheless I read it into the wee hours of the morning.

 

South African Airways - Sawubona

One of my passions is In flight Magazines.  They tell you so much about a people as expressed in their flag carrier. Anyway, I was on South African Airways during my trips down south and my best article was about Tshaka. I have always marvelled about Tshaka the King of the amaZulus ever since I learnt about him in history and then watched his famous movie.

This post is as much about the February 2012 Sawubona as it is about the cab driver who dropped me at the airport.  The short article was titled Many Things To Many People...King Shaka of the Zulus. I was surprised that he ruled only for 12 years...much less than his brothers, Dingane and Mpande.  He was such an enigma that I had previously thought he had ruled for many more years. He even has an international airport named for him in Durban and full size statues of him abound. I wonder whether he marvels from where he is beyond the sea....

My cab driver although Xhosa, entertained me with stories about Tshaka. He said that the power behing Tshaka's throne was his general...who could turn battle fields into mists and hence defeat the enemy.  Eventually, the General Mzilikazi fled with the Ndebele to present day Zimbabwe because Tshaka would have killed him. He then explained that Tshaka was like a Lion...who fed on his cubs. Apparently lions eat their male cubs to reduce the competition and Tshaka killed his sons or children for the same reason.

I guess there was so much treachery in the Royal Kraal as there is among the prides of lions....As Tshaka said....never leave a foe standing....or perhaps even a friend.  He most probably was conversant with the Ides of March.  Et tu Brutes? Julius Caesar quipped too late.

I do confess having an admiration for Tshaka kaSenzagakhona kaJama because he beat the odds.

Arundhati Roy - The God of Small Things

I bought this book after being referred to it by someone who was reading it for her book club.  I find that it helps to talk about books one has read....it sort of breaks the ice. Akin to the British talking about the weather. I read it once in  2007 and decided to carry it along with me a fortnight ago to some long journey down south.  It would be my companion during long waits at airports or lonely nights away from home and all that was familiar.

I was not disappointed by Roy. Although I have struggled to tie the title to the book, I nonetheless loved the story line...though quite tragic. Why do things have to be tragic...to fall apart.

The book has so many threads and themes...the untouchables, politics, family shenanigans, loving and not being loved in return, broken dreams and most of all...the laws that lay down who should be loved and how they should be loved.

I guess that life is tragic in more ways than one.....and as I post this....I get so emotional to think that Whitney Houston died so young. My 19 year old son remembers that I used to play her CD's over and over again as we drove to school and back. Her best line for me was ...."I decided long ago never to live in any one's shadow..."

Do we have to abide by the laws that have been set for us by other mortals? And why do authors always write books about tragedy....Perhaps the triumphant entry is a figment of the gospel's imagination and real  life is all about broken dreams.

Barbara Kingsolver - Poisonwood Bible

This was another one of those book club books.  The title was interesting but I couldn't quite imagine what the book could be about and despite two intense readings I am still puzzled about what Kingsolver really wanted us to take from the book. (A writer must have a nice title if they want their book to attract readers and buyers).   Was the message about the family (white evangelist, wife and four daughters) or was it about the Congo? The many themes have been so neatly intertwined and interwoven that they left me both laughing and crying at the same time.  The writing style was excellent...the same issues told from different perspectives by each of the characters.  I would have loved to explore the themes further. To ask why she wrote this book and what it was really about.  My considered view is that the tale finished rather abruptly and uncompleted...needing a sequel.

Why did the fellow (and his wife) just bear daughters? Why not at least one son?  I felt compassionate for the patriarch....and his broken dreams.  Was the sacrifice worth it?  Why did he not understand that his dreams were his alone and that his family  didn't fully buy into them.  For all his passion, he unknowingly dragged his family to the precipice...like sheep to the slaughter Where was God to come to his aid? After all, he relocated deep into the Congo with the sole purpose of converting the  Africans...treading where even angels feared to tread. 

One resultant factor was that I suffered an unintended crisis of faith from reading this book.  The other result was that I became an 'expert on the Congo'.  For days on end, I kept hustling friends about information on the Congo and recalled from the recesses of my mind the Patrice Lumumba saga that I briefly learnt in French History class.  When I was younger, I thought Patrick Lumumba was a name from Kenya...so many people were named for Patrice...after the assassination. The book taught me so much history.  I even learnt some botany....about the Poisonwood tree.

I am at the verge of becoming a political scientist. A sage in the book mused in passing about the impact of the political changes brought about by colonialism. How can one be a winner just because they win by some few extra votes? Voila!! That question opened my eyes to some of the crisis' experienced in Africa subsequent to each election. Perhaps Africa was not ready for the aftermath of colonialism . That political framework, that was imposed after colonialism, wasn't really our way of life.  Why must one winner take it all even when they have won by a few percentage points.

And the Congo? oh! The Congo. I have been to the Congo once - to Kinshasa. Back in 1994. Like many of my people, I love Congolese music ...How they love to sing!!. I wonder whether I developed a better understanding of these people and their country just by reading the Poisonwood Bible...written as it was from someone not Congolese.

I haven't been to the rain forest...the Congo Basin...or sailed on the river Congo.  Perhaps I should for I hear it is 'bewitching' and quite enchanting.

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie - Purple Hibiscus

I belonged to a book club once where this book was suggested by one of the ladies as a good read. It set me to explore the newer batch of upcoming African writers. A lot has been said about Adichie who won the Orange Broadband Fiction in 2007. Some people have even billed her as the next Chinua Achebe. Upon reading Purple Hibiscus, I read 'Half a Yellow Sun' and 'This Thing Around my Neck'.

I was not disappointed by "Purple Hibiscus" as it explored what for me what were difficult subjects and left me with more philosophical questions than answers. How does one reconcile Baba's Christianity to the cruelty exhibited towards his family? Was he two different people?  Before judging him too harshly, we must remember that we all are human - to err is human - and we perhaps need a being greater than ourselves to help us manage some of our frailties.

How can one so meek and mousy be pushed to the edge of the precipice into poisoning one's spouse? Such scenarios abound in African lore  but even the stories I have heard whispered in life did not prepare me for the tears I freely shed reading the book. What drove the father to such cruelty - what pushed him to the edge? Why did mama poison her husband? Why couldn't she just walk away when she had the opportunity? Do all of us have a breaking point....where we can take no more?  I imagine there is always that last straw that breaks the camel's back. 

My hero is Jaja, the son who decided, without any prompting, to pay the price for his mother's action.  Sort of like Jesus taking our sins upon himself .

The setting is so far away in Nsukka Nigeria but reading it around the time I read the Poisonwood Bible, I wondered why I was being drawn to such tragic books. Or is life just that...simply tragic.

Buchi Emecheta - Joys of Motherhood

I gave a male friend this book, after I had read it. People in the elevator were puzzled at a man carrying a book with so ominous a title but I do recall a commentator musing that every son should spare some time to read  Echemeta's  'Joys of Motherhood'.   The book is better read by the children so that they might understand the sacrifices that their mothers go through to ensure that they have a better living.  The title reminded me of the famous African saying 'things are not what they seem' - Satire and Irony are its hallmark.

I stumbled upon Echemeta quite by chance as I googled for African writers. I was regaled by her writing style and was particularly impressed to read her book twice. As a daughter of a mother and a mother of children, I cannot help but be saddened by the tales in the book.

As my mum approaches her 70th birthday this February 2012, I cannot help wondering whether she, like the protagonist in Echemeta's book, has experienced the true joys of motherhood. Not like the stories in Echemeta's book but true fulfilment from having me and my siblings as her children. Brigadier John Profumo's wife is quoted to have famously said that 'Joy is not measured just by lovely things...'.  Incase you might need reminding on who John Profumo was, I permit myself the pleasure of digressing to explain that it is oft said of the 5th Baron Profumo, that he was instrumental  in bringing down the government of the day through a costly error of judgement.  It is not so much the brigadier's story that intrigued me but more his wife's pragmatic reaction to it.

Mothers nurture their children and bear a lot for them and as the Bible quips...'can a mother abandon her child?'  This indeed is a loaded question and though there might be some mothers who might be forced by unfortunate circumstances to abandon their young, the scenario would be the exception rather than the rule. It is said of Lions - the male to be precise - that they eat their younger cubs to ensure less competition in the pride should the cubs come of age.  But most mothers in the animal kingdom are very protective of their young and  there must be a reason for it.


So I do hope that one truth that can be held to be self evident is that there is some penultimate joy in the act of motherhood.


Femme Noire! Femme Africaine! Et Toi Ma Mère - Camara Layé.

VS Naipaul - A House for Mr Biswas

I don't know what led me to buy this book in my adult days. Perhaps, I wanted to remember the good old days in 'A' Level Sixth form literature class when we couldn't understand why the  examiners had chosen this unreadable book. Were they simply being sadistic and setting us up for failure?

Reading it again, without the pressure of an exam in store, was wonderful and I understood better why Naipaul was a winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature. (My own street in Mombasa where I grew up reminded my siblings and I so much of Miguel Street - Another of Naipual's books. As the street didn't have a name like many streets in Mombasa - one that we were aware of - my siblings and I eventually named Miguel Street.) But I digress.

Why is Naipaul so fatalistic. I loved Mr Biswas (the man) despite his idiosyncrasies. And I loved the summary on the paper back that ponders about the dishonour of one having to ....live and die as one had been born, unnecessary and unaccommodated.

I too have tried to dabble in the business of building a house and sometimes no matter how much effort one takes into account to ensure perfection, one realises at the end that the windows don't close, the doors don't fit...or perhaps, that one has been conned. What a life.

I wish I could take that exam again....after reading the book and experiencing some of the issues in life, I may be better poised to answer the gruelling questions.  I might also consider myself a scholar having read a few of Naipaul's books that I have enjoyed debating with D about V.S. Naipaul and his writing style.