Albert Camus - L'Etranger

It would make sense for me to post this rant in French but I will try to do the best I can in English. I first read Albert Camus' L'Etranger in 1986/7  as the set book for French Literature and therefore obligatory reading for Advanced level French.  Twenty years later in 2007, I was excited to purchase the book off a book store in Laval, France where I had visited a good friend of mine.  As my children were studying French, I also had them read my copy of the book as my view was that one can never really purport to have studied the French language if they had not read Camus.

It made sense for me to dust the book from its place on the Book shelf on 7th November 2013 as that marked the centenary of Albert Camus' birth and completed rereading it a month later on a trip from Luanda.  I wondered whether, were I to redo my exams, I would get better grades in the French Literature paper since I have had the experience of life and the lessons that come with living.


The Los Angeles Times, in marking Camus' 100th birthday, indicated that Albert Camus was timeless and that article led me to browsing many more that had been written to commemorate the life of a man known for absurdist literature.  The Guardian in discussing L'Etranger held that Mersault (the narrator and protagonist)  who tells this tale from his perspective wasn't as unconcerned about his mother's passing as the prosecutor later made him out to be. The article put the blame on the telegram sent from the old people's home - l'asile - announcing Mme Mersault's death indicating that it was vague & callous. 


Where I come from the messenger of death must use as much tact as possible in delivering a message of death. Often, one is told that someone is very sick when they have already expired.  More often than not the word death was not even in the vocabulary as the language used phrases such as "one had rested" or "one had slept".  As a matter of fact death presupposes a finality whereas in my culture it is simply a transition. One is gathered to his fathers (and mothers!) to continue the business of living in the after world.  In these days of social media, this 'tact' is not always possible and so it was on 6th December 2013 that I woke up to messages streaming off Twitter, Facebook and even one from my mother many miles away that the great Madiba had thrown in the towel. Mr Ole Tumbi, a Kenyan that I follow on twitter, had the audacity to unceremoniously tweet about this death before a formal announcement had been made by the South African powers. In the IsiXhosa culture, the death of a King was never announced publicly because after all the King hadn't really died but had been gathered to his fathers to rule in the after world.  For the past few months since Nelson Mandela was admitted in hospital the Southern Africans were therefore insulted by the bevy of journalists that camped outside the hospital like vultures all awaiting the passing on of a man revered by many as an icon...unfortunately the last of his kind in the continent that I have the fortune to call home.  However the angel of death had not come a-knocking to the extent that many people circulated conspiracies that perhaps the great Mandela had already left for the next world.

Much has been said about L'Etranger ever since it was published in 1942, the year of my mother's birth - translated into English as the Outsider, the Loner or the Stranger - that I cannot do it much justice in this rant. I would love to explore the theme of aloneness, however in the aftermath of Nelson Mandela's death, I wager that death is an opportune sub theme to explore. There is so much death as one reads through the paperback's 186 pages.  The first paragraph of the book starts with Mersault telling us "Aujourd'hui, Maman est morte" which loosely translates to "Today, Mama died".   The second half of the book focusses on the fact that Mersault has been condemned to die by hanging for killing an Arab youth.  As Mersault awaits his turn on death row, he ponders about the absurdity of life & death and shares his thoughts with us.   His point of view can be juxtaposed against the bible verse that says:- "It is appointed for man once to die..." so what the heck?  "C'était toujours moi qui mourrais, que ce soit maintenant ou dans vingt ans" - It is appointed for him to die, whether now or in twenty years.  This understanding of the institution of death allows him to accept his situation without much regret. As Americans are wont to quip, "Only two things are certain, death and taxes".  Mersault says that there are those who will die at thirty and others who will die at seventy but the business of life & living still continues. Thinking about it deeply, in essence, life and the pursuit thereof is truly vanity of vanities...a chasing after the wind. "Everything is meaningless" says the writer of Ecclesiastes, who further tells us that "There is a time to be born and a time to die".  Regarding the subject of death, I found a lot of similarity between the thoughts of Mersault and those of the writer of Ecclesiastes.

 

Given the events of this past week - I must quote Nelson Mandela..."Nobody knows when they are going to die. Even though I am an old man, I do not dwell on the possibility of death.  Death comes when it is ready".  Death is personified in that quote and a few others attributed to Mandela.  It also reminds me of a play by David Ruganda where we are often reminded in reference to mysterious disappearances in post colonial Uganda, "The call of the beckon, who one can resist it?"  For some - like the 33 passengers who died aboard the Mozambican Airways TM470 plane on 30th November 2013 - it comes unplanned & unforeseen, whilst, for others like Mandela it will come after a life well lived.   As Franco Modigliani & Merton Miller  theorized regarding the capital structure irrelevance principle - the difference is the same whichever way one looks at it.


Although Mersault indicates severally that he is an agnostic and has no particular need to see the Priest assigned to people who are about to meet their maker - he has, like Paul -  learnt in whatever situation he is in, thereby to be content. He does not to fuss too much about his situation.  Throughout the book - in response to many things - he says "Cela m'est égal" or as the Tunisians love saying "C'est Kif Kif" meaning that it doesn't matter one way or the other.


Society, however, does impose some standards upon Mersault and by extension upon us.  It legislates our actions & behaviours including what we must feel towards life, death and everything in between.  Mersault is judged & condemned to die, not so much for the killing of an Arab youth in colonial Algeria (an act that he does very callously) but more for the fact that he does not abide by the tenets that society has legislated.  The case for the prosecution rests strongly upon the fact that the day after his mother's death, he smokes a cigarette, drinks café au lait, declines to view the body, sleeps during the vigil, goes to the beach for a swim and, as if to add insult to injury, soon after starts a sexual relationship with Marie.  For those misdemeanours & inadvertently going against what is expected of him, Mersault must pay the ultimate price. The prosecutor  - like Herod's dancing daughter in the case of John the Baptist - asks for Mersault's head.  This is not a punishment for Mersault as he has accepted his fate but a lesson to others who, like him, might be tempted to go against the grain.  I shall avoid digressing to the pros and cons of capital punishment in considering this view...


I am left wondering whether - in the context of organisational theory & relationships to the environment in which I find myself  - the better option would be to conform to the group or stand out like a sore thumb.  Ofttimes I have found myself  take Mersault's position or like Scarlett O'Hara (Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell) simply say, Fiddle dee dee!

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie - Americanah

An opportune place for me to start this rant is to refer to an article Daily Nation seeking to explain why Kenya’s literary class has fallen behind Nigeria’s. This was in response to Adichie’s Half Of A Yellow Sun film, when it premiered at the BFI London Film Festival.

http://www.nation.co.ke/lifestyle/weekend/KAMENCU-Why-Nigerians-are-miles-ahead-of-our-writers/-/1220/2047220/-/format/xhtml/-/kuaikh/-/index.html

A previous article in the same daily was written when the film premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival. 

http://www.nation.co.ke/lifestyle/art-culture/Chimamanda-reflects-on-her-civil-war-novel-and-the-movie/-/1954194/2031320/-/format/xhtml/-/ay0k6h/-/index.html

Surprisingly for my countrymen, no comments were made to these two articles nor many others on matters literary.   This surprised me because Kenyans of all schools of thought always have something to say on a topic – no matter how mundane.

Americanah is indeed my fourth book by Adichie having read Purple Hibiscus, Half Of A Yellow Sun and This Thing Around My Neck (short stories).   I agree in toto on the danger of a one sided story and the necessity of the story of the hunt to be told from the perspective of the lions lest I only learn of the bravery of the hunters.  Since the good old days of the African Writers Series, I still seek out African writers and whine about the dearth of books by Africans.   As Kenya introduces “Nyumba Kumi” an initiative on knowing your neighbour a good place to start would be a book club where neighbours explore African Writers instead of concentrating only on the EPL or Politics.

Americanah brought so many memories to mind, some of which I would of course be too ashamed to pen down for all and sundry to gloat upon.

1.       If I were to summarise the thrust of Americanah, I would say it was about the life of Nigerians who have pursued a better life abroad mostly in the USA where Ifemelu and some others ended but also in the UK where Obinze and others experimented.  (It is of course more than that since it articulates many other themes interwoven around the stories of Obinze & Ifemelu). The challenges of applying for a VISA, of choicelessness, of illegal and legal immigration, of failure & success, of struggle & triumph in foreign lands, and ultimately the story of nostalgia. Americanah is the name given to those who return home from their sojourn with or without the accents to boot to participate in a modern Nigeria.  This surely is the story of Africans in general…Of Africanah! As I read this book, I could not help wishing for an Africa whose citizens did not feel the need to run away from. That Africans need not die as they traversed Oceans seeking a better life in other lands not because they were adventurous (like Vasco da Gama) but because they had no choice.  An Africa where Africans were proud to remain because they were hopeful.  An Africa whose citizens need not be discriminated against in foreign lands.  An Africa that did not lose her better brains to foreign lands when they were needed at home where they could thrive and develop.  When I thought of Ifemelu’s nostalgia,  I could not help wondering whether this was an agenda that the African Union should pursue.

2.       There was a recent “letter” by one Biko to diaspora Kenyans who – when then returned home – assumed that the world revolved around them. This letter upset many of my diaspora friends who responded with a lot of bile.  How I wish that Biko or those who rebutted may have turned this into a short story. In Americanah, Ifemelu joins a club of Nigerpolitans upon her return to her homeland who – although they love their homeland – suffer from the mentality of “things back home”.  I could not help musing what the reaction of my friends to the depiction of Ifemelu & her group of returnees would be.

3.       MF posted on FB that Naija men had raised the bar on what a woman expected from her man.  Her post & the comments of the women who responded were hilarious. The post was in response to the Emmy Kosgei nuptials. As if in tow, there was a Naija nite at Carnivore that was sure to be filled by many a Kenyan lass in search of a Naija man to fawn upon them.  Perhaps many of the lasses felt that Rev Kathy Kiuna is missing this important need in her sermons on marital bliss. This post could be fodder for a chapter in a book.

4.       I was regaled by Ifemelu’s tales of university life, exes and nicknames.  How similar to the same tales that one could spin about life in one of our many campuses & colleges. My phonebook is replete with nicknames – “VB”, “HB”, “S” etc.  A friend who recently browsed my phone was appalled by their nickname & wondered why this was necessary.  I quipped that it added fun to my otherwise dull existence.  Nicknames aren’t novel afterall since Ifemelu referred to Obinze as “Ceiling” whereas his friends referred to him as “The Zed”.  Perhaps I could spin a tale on some of those nicknames were I be tempted to write a book.

5.       Churches and those who attend them are similar irrespective of the country.  Some of the columns I read when bored are on The East African Standard’s Crazy Monday where I am bound to be regaled by an item concerning the goings on in one church or other. JM recently quipped that religion meant different things to different people and there was more than met the cursory glance.  On a recent visit to Kenya, she was appalled by the new church syndrome and wondered “what has happened to the church the way I knew it in this country? what is this I am seeing on TV called “Kubamba”?. Her post and the responses from her FB friends was something akin to the stories in Adichie’s Americanah.

6.       Nigerians have such beautiful names and are not ashamed to use them.  I write this from a conference in China and I realise that most Africans have adopted foreign names. I have always wondered what it was about Africans that made us think that our names are worse than those from foreign lands. What is it about Moira,  Jean,  Ted, Olivia, Maureen, Nancy, Hillary, Kenneth, Wendy, Richard & the myriad of names  that exist in my immediate family that make them more interesting that the names of our ancestors?  In protest, I used my African name in the name tag & had that translated into Chinese characters.

As these thoughts and many more flooded my mind, I figured that if Adichie could write about modern day Nigeria and the experience of Nigerians in foreign lands, so could we.  Well at least for now my countrymen & women can wax lyrical about Barack Obama who carries our genes and sits on the White House ‘throne’, Wangari Maathai of the Nobel Peace Prize, Lupita Nyong’o – she of the “12 years a slave”, Victor Wanyama who kicks the ball for Southampton and the men & women who win medals running for Kenya. 

As fate would have it…one cannot have it all and besides as BM says one in every four Africans is Nigerian. As for me, I am bound to be reading Adichie for years to come.

Anne Frank - The Diary Of A Young Girl

I am at a loss on where to begin this rant that can do justice to the gem of a book.   Let me begin by quoting Philip Roth (an American writer of Gaelic & Jewish descent):- "To read a novel requires a certain amount of concentration, focus, devotion to the reading".  It has taken me many days and weeks to get through Anne's diary - not because it did not grip my imagination but because I had too many distractions. In that regard, I lost some of my focus.

 

Let me start at the beginning. Many years ago, in my youth - when playing was all I cared for - my father waxed lyrical about Anne Frank.  I presuppose like me, he marvelled about how a girl so young could write a diary so poignant.  I read so many books from my father's library but I steered clear of The Diary Of A Young Girl because subconsciously, I was afraid that I would fall short of the traits that endeared Anne to my father.   I never thought of her until recently a friend of mine of the opposite gender was shocked that I too keep a diary/journal on and off where I jot my deepest thoughts.  He did not - for the life of him - understand why one would want to write anything down. This conversation led me to exorcise Anne Frank from the recesses of my mind and led me to buy her book in an attempt to understand why anyone would want to do this.

 

Anne's comment at the beginning of her diary helped me appreciate why anyone would want to keep a diary.  She begins "I hope I will be able to confide everything in you, as I have never been able to confide in anyone, and I hope you will be a great source of comfort and support".  Many years ago, I encouraged my kids - as my father had - to always keep a journal so that they would not forget their experiences.  Unlike Facebook, Blogs or Social Media, a diary is very private & intimate - it is a place where you write your things and hope that someone chancing upon your diary will have the decency to understand that a diary is not for public consumption. 

 

The Diary Of A Young Girl is written over a two year period  amidst the daily grind of hiding in an annexe together with other families. It nonetheless, is written with lots of whit and humour. For me, it is by & large the story of growing up because it is during our adolescence that we make leaps from being children to being young adults. It is a story of hope because Anne always wrote as though she would survive the events of the time and publish her diary.   She never really despaired that perchance she would not live to adulthood.   The diary is also the story of comfort & friendship - albeit intimacy with an inanimate object like a diary - because Anne knew that come what may, she always had her diary to go back to. 

 

I have highlighted so many passages in The Diary Of A Young Girl. I would have liked Anne because despite the fact that we are born so many years apart we 'suffer' the same emotional insecurities. Anne had to live under the shadow of her older sister Margot whom she loved, who she was bench marked against but to whose standards she felt she could never really measure. Anne suffered an identity crisis...She wanted to be herself and to be loved for who she was just as she was.

 

Oh Anne. I smiled when I read:-  "I argued that talking is a female trait and that I would do my best to keep it under control, but that I would never be able to cure myself of the habit, since my mother talked as much as I did, if not more, and that there's not much you can do about inherited traits".   When my school teachers wrote that I was a 'noise maker' in my school reports, my mother told me not to worry about it because she too had suffered the same comment from Mrs Bruce - her headmistress.  My saving grace was that my mother understood that I could not do much about my chatting...well as long this was accompanied by good grades.

 

Amazingly Anne had a good appreciation about the world around her. I guess any child would if they lived through a war. Instead of skipping, playing dodge the ball or with dolls she analysed the situation around her in a way that many people in this day & age would not.

 

I would have loved Anne...She says to her diary that she has a lot of self knowledge. She understands her strengths & weaknesses and thinks about them objectively. She does not suffer from delusions of grandeur. But I wonder whether she was too serious about life even for a girl living in an annexe with & other people day in day out.

 

The Diary Of A Young Girl finishes rather abruptly as the people in the annexe are discovered by the Nazis and taken to concentration camps.  The post scriptum is a sad one because everyone perishes except Anne's dad who lives to publish Anne's diary.

 

I should have read The Diary Of A Young Girl when I was younger.  My father should have insisted on it. But then I am sure he was fighting his own demons and did not have the energy to force me into reading.  I believe that I might have become the better for it.

 

JMAW - A Tribute to Dad Hon Dr Elon Willis Wameyo

My father inculcated in me a love for reading both by nature & by nurture.  Even though he was a Doctor, he was also a man of letters.   On many days & nights, I read and re read the set of 12 red encyclopaedias that decorated our home.  One of my best passages was "The Song of Hiawatha" by Henry Wardsworth Longfellow.  

 

I was fascinated very early on  by the Newspapers that were delivered every day without fail at our doorstep - I browsed through the Kenya Times, Standard, Nation Newspapers during an époque when journalists wrote extremely inspiring articles.   This was before google, social media & instant reporting. The political Weekly Review was a weekly staple and how I wish that Hillary Ng'weno had ploughed on.

 

Dad waxed lyrical about Anne Frank's Diary and wanting us to be like the legendary Anne Frank who kept a diary at a very young age.  At that time of our lives, all we could think about was playing with our siblings & friends and he must have been exasperated by our lack of enthusiasm for the lessons he wanted to teach us.  Although my brother confessed that he understood BODMAS - and never forgot it - through the old man.

 

I read my father's copies of the Godfather,  the Thorn Birds,  Papillon, (which my sister reminded me, had a butterfly on the cover page), Escape from Alcatraz and many other classics before I eventually came of age and started purchasing my own copies.  Somehow, I always knew that - when push came to shove - the inheritance that I would have wanted from him was his set of books so well covered and preserved. Like any other child and teenager, in between, I went through the phase of Fairy Tales, The Brothers Grimm, Secret Seven, Famous Five, Hardy Boys, Nancy Drew, African Writers Series  & courtesy to my big brother, very many comics.

 

People remember my Dad for various things.  Recently, I stumbled on an article in the Standard on the "Allure of the Local Dance" that credits the likes of my father for the Local Dance in Western Kenya; My younger brother stumbled upon a dentist in Mombasa named for my father because the Doc delivered his mother of him;  Another brother went to school with a mate who is into my dad because Dad was his mother's gynaecologist & also delivered her of him. Some of his constituents remember him for the Sugar Cane wars, fighting for the farmer in Mumias Constituency during the four terms he was MP.  Like everyone else, he must have had detractors who could not abide him.  For me, I remember, "We once had a father who had a passion for books...".  Each time I read a book, I will remember that I do not need a DNA test to prove that "I am my father's daughter"!!!

 

In August 2003, our father walked into the sunset and never came back.  We cannot do justice to the man he was.  Although we have consistently fallen short of his ideals,  he left an indelible mark on us.  We see him in our eyes, laughter, habits & in the faces of our siblings.  We also see him in the faces of our children and in the way we rear them.  In his memory...

 

A Tribute to Dad Hon Dr Elon Willis Wameyo

Jodi Picoult - Handle With Care

When I first posted that I had completed a book on "wrongful birth",  the first two questions were something akin to: "Pray, what is wrongful birth?"  Prior to reading "Handle With Care", I was unaware that there was such a concept as "wrongful birth".  Our learned friends in developed countries have coined the term to refer to  "A medical malpractice claim brought by the parents of a child born with birth defects. It alleges that negligent treatment or advice (or lack thereof) deprived them of the opportunity to avoid conception or interrupt a pregancy." More often than not, it is brought against the OB but it is the Malpractice Insurer that defends the case and pays for any damages awarded.  I googled "Wrongful Birth" and was amazed at the cases that have been brought against Obs and Gyns in developing countries. I wondered what my Dad (God Bless His Soul), My Uncle and my Brother would reposit from a professional standpoint because the plaintiff's case lies on the premise that the OB did not do their job.

 

After I read the book, someone posted that a child had been born in Kitale - a  town in Kenya - with 4 heads and female genitalia on one head and male genitalia on a leg.   With my newly founded knowledge on "wrongful birth", my response was that the patient should have been aware - through ultrasounds and scanning - that there was something wrong with her pregancy.  She should not realise that she has  unfully developed foetuses after birth.  Someone reminded me that this position is fraught with many challenges. In Kitale, such services are not available and some patients may not even realize they were pregnant in good time or that certain medicines should not be taken during a pregnancy  Ignorance and lack of access to proper health facilities are Kenya's bane. As our country waxes lyrical about free maternity health care - and others take this as the licence to breed - medical practitioners should dialogue with policy makers to ensure that the free maternity services include sonograms and high quality ultrasound scans. Otherwise in this case, the "Wrongful Birth" claim should be taken against the government.

 

Back to the story.  I found some comments by medical practioners to my post quite insightful and interesting if Kenya is to achieve Vision 2030.

 

"On a serious note, Obstetricians should tell us how accurate tests to detect congenital anomalies are.  A search on the internet will show several cases where an antenatal test suggested an abnormality in a fetus but mother refused to terminate and went on to have a perfectly normal child.  How accurate are those scans and genetic testing even when done at the right time?"

 

"Our Obstetrics practice is a bit rudimentary. I will say with confidence that we do not do any genetic testing at required time of 14 to 18 weeks and we rarely do obstetrics scans recommended at 18 weeks to check for fetal malformations. However, I find the case above rather interesting because in Type III OI, the neonate maybe born normal but bones deteriorate as child grows. With high resolution scans, one can easily pick out fetal anomalies quite accurately but requires well trained sonographers who are equally knowledgeable in anatomy."

 

"What we lack is a national prenatal screening program and its unfortunate that anomaly scan is not even part of focused prenatal care. Genetics is only a fraction of it. Good prenatal diagnosis is mainly dependent on the ultrasound. Its a pity that a woman can carry conjoined twins incompatible with life to term and only come to learn of it after hours of labour and eventual cs. Although Obstetrics has always been a 'high risk' profession, this can be minimised if we learn to work as a team and not make individual decisions. Osteogenesis Imperfecta can easily be diagnosed by ultrasound and the woman given options. In an organised healthcare system this can be achieved"

 

"This case highlights again the changing face of medical practice. Central to this is communication skills. Listening and clearly documenting the patient's ideas, beliefs and expectations is now the norm. Litigation is part and parcel of our profession. Unfortunately comm skills not taught in med school. I and my colleagues trained abroad have had to re-learn the hard way incorporating defensive medicine into our practice. I also see it as inevitable outcome in Kenya particularly with increased access following 'free services'"

 

In conclusion, I found it difficult to agree with the jury who found for the plaintiff a case of "wrongful birth" and awarded her USD 8 million in damages.  I agree however that "although the decision to interrupt a pregancy  is the patient's, she should have good quality prenatal information".  The issue is that the patient should be given information to enable her make an informed decision about what is best for her. This book would make an interesting study for an Obs and Gyn Class.

 

Mario Puzo -OMERTA

My brother paid tribute to my Dad for introducing him to the Mafia Genre.  I remember my Dad's library in his surgery with the very many books he had collected over the years.  One of the first books I read from that Library when I as old enough was "The Godfather".  Over the years, I have read and reread the Godfather and watched the movie as well. It is by far one of my best books and a hard copied version occupies an important space on my very own bookshelf.

So, I was of course drawn to OMERTA when I paid some old friends a visit.  It was among the many books on their bookshelf .  I was sure to be intrigued by it and finished reading it during the short space of time I had - in between catching up on old times, babysitting their kids and bonding with my daughter.  My son has suggested that I read the Sicilian and my brother has proposed the Valachi papers. So I may just be reading Mafia books which continue to grip my imagination and marvel at the Cosa Nostra - Our Thing. Were they really worse than others or was it bad press they received?

OMERTA is the Sicilian Code of Silence which was the cornerstone of the Mafia's anti-snitching (in modern parlance) sense of honour for centuries.  Who likes snitches anyway?  During the Mafia days you snitch at your own risk and that of your loved ones.  From the book, it appears that another code of honour was the family..."Eshienyu ne Shienyu"  as my people, the Luhyas would say.

OMERTA is interesting...Not as gripping as the GODFATHER but exciting nonetheless. It rotates around the Raymonde Aprile family.  However it really is the story of Astorre Zeno who was brought up in the Aprile family as a cousin. He himself was a child of a Mafia Don who died when Astorre was an infant.

What did I learn?  

(a) Each time I pass via a Bank I will definitely ask myself whether it had Mafia links. After all many of the Mafia families - when the going went tough - laundered their activities and joined the mainstream. It is said in the book that humans would forget the bad things of 30 years and provide accolades for the 'rehabilitated' businesses.  

(b) Politics & Church have also been strange bedfellows. The Mafia were deeply religious and many of them ensured there was a place in heaven for them, their kith and kin...all their evil acts notwithstanding. After all money can buy anything even the favour of the church.  Don Zeno said "I commend myself to God. He will forgive my sins, for I have tried every day to be just". Who are we to judge God...He is beyond understanding as narrated in the book of Job...Did He not forgive the thief on the cross?

(c) Human beings are treacherous by nature. Any good acts done for people in the past will quickly be forgotten. Do not count on the gratitude of people for actions done in the past as most people conveniently forget. This is a broad and very cynical generalization of the human race.  I have friends from decades past who I am certain have continued to be like Astorre Zeno and stand for me through thick and thin. Of course we have all experienced others who sell there souls to the highest bidder. 

As for America...The books ends by describing it as the land of vengeance, mercy and magnificent possibility.   

Barbara Mutch - The Housemaid's Daughter

I had never heard of Barbara Mutch before and I picked the book off a bookshelf to kill boredom that comes with travelling.  The book took me longer than normal to read because the subject matter was complex and I had just discovered facebook. I nonetheless eventually completed reading the book which gave an account of times just before and during apartheid.

It is interesting that I finished reading this book at a time when Trevor Manual was  quoted as infamously telling reporters at the government leadership summit in Pretoria that "We [government] should no longer say it's apartheid's fault." Whereas Trevor undoubtedly had a valid point that people needed to "move on", he nonetheless cause a storm  by presupposing that the legacy of apartheid could just be wished away.  I digress, but opine that Trevor would still have articulated his views without distracting from the fact that the evils of apartheid - like those of slavery and the holocaust - cannot just be wished away.

Barbara Mutch's story is the story of a family that fell apart. It is principally the story of Cathleen who leaves Ireland to marry her sweetheart in the Karoo. Cathleen - though white -  is a very lovable character married with two children. She is the matriarch of the home. She loses her son to a war (and its demons), her daughter to the worries of this world, and her husband who, though present, is absent.  In the big scheme of things her marriage and family life is one of convenience but she is stuck in it for better or for worse. She befriends her house girl and the house girl's daughter even though they are from a different race. The house girl's daughter is named after Cathleen's sister in Ireland. Although facebook has not been invented yet, Cathleen finds solace in her diary where she rants and the letters that she sends to her family in Ireland.

As fate would have it, Ada (her housemaid' daughter) gives birth to a mixed race child whose father is Cathleen's husband. This happens at the time when the laws against mixing of races have reached the Karoo. The child - a daughter - belongs  neither to the whites nor to the blacks Not only is Cathleen a 'laughing stock' amongst her white friends but it also puts her husband  the risk of arrest  because this copulation across the races is against the law. 

What is also "fascinating" is that Ada is ostracised by her own people for betraying them. The problem is not that she had a child out of wedlock but that she had a child with a white man.  The tragedy is that she cannot explain that her master took advantage of her. The betrayal her people feel, runs deep.  If Ada must have a child, she could go ahead and do so but not with a white man. That was unforgivable.

The book does not seek out to justify anything (it isn't even an anti - apartheid system book) but simply to tell a story of a time and place. Surprisingly, my best character is Cathleen. One cannot help but admire her strength and fortitude in the midst of a life that is so tough. She finds solace in the cards that God - in his wisdom - has dealt her.

Jodi Picoult - The Storyteller

So much has been written about the holocaust and a faithful rendering of the events from the perspective of the sufferers (and their descendants) or the perpetrators (and their descendants) will always be subject to controversy. Many people ask why folks cannot just move on.  There are those who say - as the student in the book - that the 'Holocaust did not happen and is just a figment of people's imagination'. There are those who have justified slavery by saying that it happened because Africans themselves perpetuated the trade. I was amazed in reading "The Storyteller" that certain Jews as the chairman were as much to blame as the German perpetrators. In my view, the involvement of Jews as cogs in the system do not make the events of the holocaust any less shocking.

 

I picked this book from Centurion Mall in Pretoria as I searched for something to help me kill the boredom.  Having read Jodi before, I was certain that she would not disappoint even in such a difficult subject. Having completed the book, I am non the wiser about the reasons that led the Germans to 'invent' the holocaust and its concentration camps.  I have never been able to explain other crimes against humanity such as slavery, genocide, apartheid, segregation or post election violence.  The politics behind those events are too great for my mind to grasp.  I have highlighted very many passages in this book...In practically every chapter there was something that spoke loudly and clearly to me. My first highlighted phrase was "...Be a good listener. Do not judge, and don't put boundaries on someone else's grief." This is the "motto" in the grief therapy group in which everybody has lost something different.

 

Midway through the book, I checked twitter and the story of Roman Blumm who survived the holocaust popped up. It is said that he died intestate at the age of 97 with a fortune of over $40 million. Someone wondered why if he did not have an heir, he did not donate his wealth to a Jewish temple. I would have wanted to talk to Roman Blumm to understand his relationship with the creator. It is said that most folks who have survived the difficult situations have a complicated relationship with God. In the crises of our lives, there are those who are drawn towards the creator and there are those who stagger backwards never quite understanding why it happened to them. The misfortune could be anything...a genocide, death, sickness or any other misfortune...but the question is often "why me?".

 

I read an article in the FT Weekend for May4/5 2013 about Horst von Hachter who attempts to sanitise the role played by his father Otto von Wachter (a war criminal implicated in the deaths of tens of thousands of Jews). What hit me was a bolded passage that said "I know that the system was criminal and that my father was part of it but I do not think he was criminal". It is in thinking about this that I tried to assemble Sage's feelings towards Franz Hartmann in the novel.  Was Franz Hartmann simply a cog in a killing machine that he had no option against or was he just as culpable as his brother Reiner Hartmann?
 

What makes Jodi's book interesting is that it ultimately is more a book about family.  Intertwined in the book are stories of families from both sides of the divide and how they fared during this difficult period. There are also stories of families in this day and age with the sibling rivalry, betrayal, love, concern, loss and all that goes with being a family.

 

Most of the book is set in the current period when Sage, a grandchild of holocaust survivors, meets and befriends 'Josef Weber' at a grief group.  Josef Weber, among other things feels that his punishment is that 'he must live forever' and is looking for a way to end his existence. Sage's grandmother who survived the holocaust does not want to talk about it because she feels her descendants must not be bogged down with issues of a time past.   'Josef' is not his real name because many folks changed their names as part of the sanitisation process. (What I have never really understood is why others continued to work for the post war German governments and were never punished. What high level deals made this possible?).

 

So we now have Kenya's post election violence. Did it really happen or is it too, a figment of someone's imagination? A colleague asked me...around the time I was reading this novel, what it felt for Kenyans to have elected someone who has been indicted for crimes against humanity as our country's president. My answer - having read the book - is that there are so many crimes perpetuated against mankind in one form or other that are not dealt with.

However, I am encouraged Franz Weiner a.k.a Josef Weber's analysis of  his situation.  If there is an all knowing God then everyone faces their own demons and their own punishments...In this life. Very interestingly, today (6th May) there was an article on BBC News about A 93-year-old alleged former guard at the Auschwitz extermination camp has been arrested in southern Germany. In his defence, Mr Lipschis acknowledges he served with the Waffen SS at the camp in occupied Poland, but claims he was only a cook. He is accused of participating in the mass murder and persecution of innocent civilians, primarily Jews, at Auschwitz between October 1941 and 1945.  The comments from readers were "interesting" with some wondering whether this was justice too late. (I will be impossible for me to see a 90+ year old German and not wonder what their role was during this period.)

 

 

 

Chinua Achebe - Things Fall Apart

I must appropriately start my rant by paying tribute to Chinua Achebe who has died at the ripe age of 82 in Boston, USA.  It was the announcement of his death that nudged me to reach once more to his book "Things Fall Apart" which I read at school as a set book for literature alongside other African writers like Elechi Amadi (Concubine), Ngugi wa Thiong'o (A Grain of Wheat), John Ruganda (The Burdens, The Floods) and Meja Mwangi (Carcase for Hounds) interspersed were other African and Kenyan writers Grace Ogot (Land Without Thunder, The Promised Land), Barbara Kimenye (Moses Series) under the African Writers Series. We carried  the books into church in between hymn books and bibles to keep us awake in between long sermons.

Achebe said that storytelling "is something we have to do, so that the story of the hunt will also reflect the agony, the travail—the bravery, even, of the lions."   Achebe tells his stories so that we might avoid the 'danger of the one sided story'...the story that depicts Africans as lazy, primitive, without gods & religion, traditions, devoid of culture, poetry and music...a war mongering & primitive race. It was inorder to avoid this that I bought the book for my children - of the Harry Potter generation - and forced them to enjoy the novels that I too enjoyed in my youth.  Like them my early years were spent reading Aesop's Fables,  the Brothers Grimm, Enid Blyton's Famous Five & Secret Seven series, I fell in love with my brother's Hardy Boys & Nancy Drew characters...stories replete with blue eyed boys and blonde girls. I wished I were the Sleeping Beauty, the Princess & the Pea, Rapunzel plus many other heroines in those novels. I discovered African Writers belatedly in my teenage years and was enthralled that there was another story with kinky haired girls.,..with names like Ezinma & Eneka that were there before Stacy & Stephanie.  Before spaghetti carbonara...there was foofoo, egusi leaves & dried fish plus other delicacies to water our pallets. I feel nostalgic as I read Achebe's 'Things fall apart'  which fills the gap created by the misfortune that I did not grow up with grandmothers reciting fables around the fire.  I am grateful that I can compare and contrast Hardy & Shakespeare with Ngugi wa Thiong'o & Chinualogu Achebe.

It is difficult for me to say what moves me most about "Things Fall Apart".  Not sure whether it is the storyline or the manner in which the tale is told.  I enjoy reading Achebe even as he spews out the names of his characters.  I am slightly pleased that Okoli dies after killing the python...afterall the gods were still able to fight there own battles...This reminds me of Romans 12:9 'Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord'   Things Fall Apart is tragic but I feel proud that the African is depicted as hardworking, full of fun, resilient, orderly, proud etc.  I find it difficult to reconcile this depiction of the African race to the current one of hunger, famine, war mongering and illegal immigration. The reader cannot but be drawn to Okonkwo despite his weaknesses and feel for his misfortunes. At the end of it, the despondency he felt was so great when his center could not hold. Okonkwo though strong was weak and it is a pity that one cannot find firm answers in "Things Fall Apart". On the one hand the sages tell us that "when a man says yes, his chi also says yes" yet on the other they also remind us "that a man cannot rise beyond the destiny of his chi".  Must we then accept fate as it comes or fight against it to the death like the musketeers of yore?

I have read the trilogy of "Things Fall Apart", "No Longer at Ease" and "Arrow of God" and I must say that Chinua Achebe and his peers are for me what Kwame Nkrumah & Julius Nyerere were for panafricanists. I must digress to think about my Nigerian colleague who always started  his interventions with..."my people say.......".  He exasperated me once and I quipped that "we, too, have people".  However, as I re-read Achebe in my adulthood, I marvelled at the ease in which "proverbs" and "wise sayings" were part of any conversation...I must remember to use the tongue in cheek saying that 'Since men have learnt to shoot without missing, Eneke the bird has learnt to fly without perching' .  Today when someone said on a facebook  conversation that ...'a mother of twins must have impartial breasts'...I couldn't help but smile.  Afterall proverbs are the palm wine with which words are eaten,

The beginning of the book is a poem by W.B. Yeats from which the title derives.

Turning and turning in the widening gyre,

The falcon cannot hear the falconer,

Things fall apart; the center cannot hold;

Mere anarchy is losed upon the world.

The question that behoves an answer is whether the finale is when things fall apart or is the end when anarchy is then losed upon the earth as a result of the things that fell apart when the center could not hold?

This ending of the book is apt as the Commissioner muses about the title of the his upcoming book:- 'The Pacification of the the Primitive Tribes of the Lower Niger'. I wonder whether the tribes have been truly pacified...or whether those tribe were truly primitive.