Thoughts on our travels through Africa (Egypt to Namibia)

World Book Group Edinburgh, first UNESCO World City of Literature - AA - Egypt - "Beer in the Snooker Club" by Waguih Ghali (Score 6.4) On page 31 Ram will give up "that other business", hinting that, if caught, he'll be tortured. Is it political or illegal? (cf page 206). On page 32 Ram lets an unknown boy stay in his car to look after it. Who would dare do that here? "Watch your car, mister?" - protection money, with a scratch all down the side if you don't "employ" them. On page 53 there is discussion of "two types of Egyptian", implying that the rich people who spoke French in daily life were not really Egyptian. Think what this kind of attitude could lead to. On page 56 there is difficulty over obtaining passports. Is this merely unlucky, or is it widespread for the intelligentsia and the upper classes? On page 62 we read about the clippy's London accent. This is the first awareness that the book was written in English. About the middle of page 85, Steve Ward's unthinking racism and anti-semitism is very much of his time, and on page 95 it is clear that he does not even realise or consider that the terms he uses are unacceptable, even in the context of the story. On page 97 during the argument, Steve resorts to racist name calling - the last resort of the inarticulate faced with a situation he can't control - followed by violence. On page 150 there is another hint that Ram is involved with something subversive - the rich even have privileges in the concentration camps. In view of the last page is Ram really involved in collecting the photos. We see the hedonistic lifestyle of Ram's social group - the attitude that the fellahin have always been poor, so what can be done?  - BB - Libya - "The Bleeding of the Stone" by Ibrahim al-Koni (Score 8.0) The review of the rock art and its location in Libya and Algeria (Tassili) helped to develop the sense of place. The "chase" episode seems to be mythological, likening Asouf to some ancient hero (eg Enkidu, who also lived wild in the desert). Hanging over the precipice all night is even more heroic. He is saved by the monster with which he has battled. His mother's scattered body is like that of Osiris, torn apart by Set, his brother. On page 70, creation occurs by the sky meeting the earth - compare this with the Egyptian cosmology with Geb and Nut performing the same function. Asouf has become a shape changer, a "were-waddan". Is the story of the antelope a folk tale, a folk memory of the time when the Sahara was green, or is it a totemic explanation? Does the murder of Asouf lead to the redemption of Cain as well as the salvation of the land through the rain which it brings? - CC -Tunisia - "Wounding Words" by Evelynne Accad (Score 5.6) This book is didactic, hectoring and preachy. The dialogue is stilted and unnatural (possibly a result of the translation?), for example on page 21 we have "Several unreconcilable etc". People don't speak like that - they write an article, or give a lecture in that type of language. On page 49 the fight between Nayla and Hayate comes from nowhere, and seems very contrived. The exorcism from page 64 is fascinating, quite bacchanalian. In some societies, including some western fundamentalist Christian groups, "demons" are driven out in this way. On page 119 the scene with the landlord seems to be contrived just to bring in a stereotypical patriarchal chauvinist pig. All in all this is not a novel - it is a polemic. All of the women are beautiful, warm, talented, but there is no characterisation to help us distinguish one from the other. All seem to be avatars of the author. The tension which occurs between them seems strained into existence, purely for the politics of the feminist arguments. - DD - Algeria - "The Last Summer of Reason" by Tahar Djaout (Score 8.1) From this point on we began to find that there was a dearth of new books. Since the group was at that time being hosted by, and partly sponsored by, Ottakars we felt that it would not be appropriate to buy books from Amazon or similar for the full group. Some of us made the decision to buy the "missing" books for our own interest and for reading later while the whole group skipped that country and moved on to the next available one. This book comes under the "additional read" category. The importance of this book in the grand scheme of things is highlighted by the fact that the author was assassinated shortly after it was completed. It was claimed that the murder was carried out by a fundamentalist group. This book is worth reading in its own right, but even more so because of the incredible foreword by Wole Soyinka. Soyinka illuminates brilliantly the intolerance which lies behind much of the trouble, murder and war in today's world. He is particularly perceptive in regard to the effect of the cancer of political correctness in supporting such intolerance. In the book itself, the fear in which many people live in the society of which we read is immediately apparent - when what is being destroyed is beauty and creativity, how can the thinking person possibly survive? Boualem, while a humble bookseller, is subject to this fear. On page 36 we have to imagine living in a world in which a book costs half of a labourer’s monthly wage. Where would the lad o' pairts have gained his education. The masters in the society described clearly do not want education. After all, an education teaches people to think for themselves and which masters want that? We then see Boualem as a child in the Koranic school, learning to read and having the texts beaten into him. This seems to be where his love of books comes from, despite the constrained feeling he has, and his desire to be able to go out to play and explore. He loves the calligraphy which he is learning. We see a loving family torn apart by the extremes of fundamentalist religion, leaving only the father who has not succumbed to it. The ironic thing about this situation is that these people, the masters, were elected in the hope that they would improve matters for the ordinary people. On page 113 we see that someone, knowing that their unreasoning argument can win over Boualem, a reasonable man, have decided not to try. In the place of discussion and reason they simply resort to death threats to convince the reasonable man of the error of his ways. The claustrophobic world of the fundamentalist society described here must surely tempt the thinking man just to go with the flow of the masses, for both safety and security, keeping his head below the parapet. I have used the word "man" deliberately because in the society described the fate of women is much worse, and their opportunity to resist is much less. Read this book, please, be very afraid, and think what you can do to stop the insidious loss of liberty in your own society. - EE - Morocco - "Welcome to Paradise" by Mahi Binebine (Score 7.5) This is a wonderful book, bright with the hopes of a range of vividly portrayed characters seeking to flee abject poverty. It brings out the sheer brutality, hopelessness and boredom of village life for the poor - a life which must have been the fate of the vast majority of humanity for thousands of years. The individual stories of the lives of the members of the party, their hopes and ambitions are well told and seem real. I felt I had got to know them as friends - even the trafficker. The sadness I felt when Aziz and Reda failed to get on the boat was overwhelming. Strangely though, this did not turn to relief when I discovered that they have missed the disaster and have not suffered the fate of drowning which happened to the others. I only felt more sadness. - FF - Senegal - "God's Bits of Wood" by Sembene Ousmane (Score 7.5) This is another book which I enjoyed very much. The first page is beautifully descriptive. The searchlight effect of the ray of the sun on the Governor’s residence makes you wonder what role this building is to play in the story. The following pages, with the grandmother Niakoro, set the scene beautifully and illustrate yet again the loss of the old ways caused by the corroding influence of colonialism and rule by others who won't even learn to speak the local language. Contrast this with the eventual loss of their French language by the Norman invaders throughout Europe. Did the original peoples practise dumb resistance by refusing to learn French? Was the difference that the Normans moved in primarily as settlers rather than as plunderers? Starving the strikers into submission is horrific. My mother came from a mining family and she tells stories of hunger in her village during the General strike. N'deye's experiences on page 58 show how colonialist education removes the people from their culture. Does this always happen when there is a dominant group in a society? On page 63 Beaugosse and N'deye speak French to each other rather than their own language. On page 92 "The trial of Diara" is a new concept, that they can take this power (it is better than the random beatings of the blacklegs - who are probably only trying to put food in the mouths of their families) but they are equally shocked by the idea that women can take part and have a voice in society. Fa Keita's speech may have stopped the murder of Diara, or his flogging, but it revealed Tiemoko's thoughts as being "we must win, even if we are not right!" On page 97 I enjoyed the pestle and mortar interaction between the neighbours. I see the drying up and cracking of the implements through non-use as being a metaphor for the loss of local customs through non-use and the stultifying influence of the occupation. On page 102 the taking of Fa Keita and the brutality of the militia towards the old woman and her grand-daughter show the colonialist divide-and-rule policy, by using native policemen to do the arrest. Is the racialism of the French colonists at the top of page 184 truly representative of the time, or is it exaggerated for dramatic effect? Compare this with the unconscious racialism exhibited by Steve, the brother in "Beer in the Snooker Club"? On page 200 the heat stroke episode shows how close our most primitive fears are to the surface when we are under extreme stress. On page 206 the behaviour of the religious leaders is unforgiveable. It is one thing to support the colonial power (Why? What do they get out of it?) but quite another to tell brazen lies from the pulpit. On page 230 we see guards from other countries who do not even speak the local language (and therefore cannot interact with the locals). We see this approach in colonial powers from Persia onwards, through Rome and up to modern times in the British Empire. On page 239 we contrast the quiet dignity of Fa Keita with the extreme racism and brutality of the Corsican commandant. - GG - The Gambia - Chaff on the wind – Ebou Dibba (Score 7.6) The story opens on the day when Dingding, a young man from an unnamed village in The Gambia, is leaving for the also unnamed big town to make his way in the world. He is going to live with his Uncle Jebel and his family. Abdou, Dingding’s youngest brother, goes to the river wharf to wait for him and see him off. We learn that the boat he is to take is a cargo vessel from the UK, the colonial power. Dingding meets Pateh, a few years older than him, and worldly wise, from the inland of the country and of a different tribe, the Fulani. Dingding is Mandinka. They seem to get on, though Pateh appears to have a completely different personality from Dingding. The time is 1937, just before the Second World War. The big town is a total culture shock to Dingding. We constantly read that he is completely amazed by the many new things which he sees, but does not yet fully understand.. and by the behaviour of the people he meets, especially Pateh. Dingding gets a letter written by one of the local scribes whom we discover later is called Charles, of mixed ancestry. We begin to hear more about him and his family so he is probably not destined to be a bit player in the story. Pateh seems to be getting into bad habits, He is sniffing petrol and later is violently sick as a result.. He is also getting involved in smuggling, but seems not to be as confident about this as he is about other things. In fact, I would say he is scared. Dingding, on the other hand, is engaging in legitimate business, buying and selling, with the idea of running a shop. For once in our trip we seem to have come across an apparently benevolent colonial occupation. Is it because The Gambia is bereft of oil, gold, diamonds or other mineral wealth? Was it, on the other hand, because the officials involved were, for once, honest and caring people? However, see below. We attend a local wedding ceremony. Dingding and Pateh are talking about the European war, and how it has spread throughout the world. Abdou has been rounded up with other locals by “the soldiers of the King of England [sic]. The troops (recruits – unwilling as they may be) are apparently being sent to Burma since, it seems to be believed by the masters that “black people [sic] will be able to fight in the jungle better than white people”. Dingding and Pateh have a good laugh at the stupidity of the masters since, neither they, nor Abdou, nor anyone from any of the clans has been near a jungle in their lives. This is surely racial, and racialist, stereotyping by the “soldiers of the King of England”. The book end with an appropriate demonstration of the saying “Be sure your sins will find you out”. I scored this book at 8.0. - HH -Guinea - "The Radiance of the King" by Camara Laye (Score 7.6) Clarence's unthinking expectation of his own superiority as a white man is challenged immediately when, to his surprise, the crowd does not automatically part before him to allow him to pass unhindered. On page 19 we see his first tentative questioning of his own preconceptions - but why "despite the pitch black night of his skin"? Leading up to, and on, page 42 the beggar seems to be respected by the caravanserai keeper - who is he? I am reminded of "The guid man of Balangeich". From page 72 onward the trial and the escape become ever more surreal and dreamlike with every page. This is very picaresque and reminds me of Roderick Random. On page 94 we read of "the odour of the south". This reminds me of Sicily, where the smell of the bougainvillea is pervasive. On page 153 the rhythm of the pestle and mortar puts on a repeat performance (compare this with "God's Bits of Wood"). There is a play on western fantasies of the harem, as expressed in 19th century art and literature. Do we see the requirement of isolated communities for fresh genetic input to avoid inbreeding? From page 217 on we see, floating down the river the "women". Is this a total hallucination, or is it perhaps dugongs? On page 234 we see a very human reaction. Clarence enjoys eating snails, but thinks that grasshoppers are strange. Did Clarence die, or did he have an epiphany (compare with Bernini's great statue of St Catherine in St Peters). - II -  Sierra Leone - "Sunset in Sierra Leone" by Michael Nicolas Wundah - (Score 3.2) Right from the start I formed the opinion that this author may not have had much experience in writing taut fiction, especially on such a serious topic. It reads like a first attempt and, indeed, there is no indication anywhere in the book of other works. (Note – I had a look on Amazon and there is a later book). It is very purple. The young man we meet at the start gets bad news, that he has been unsuccessful in his application (to college?) because he is not qualified. He locks himself in his room, throws himself on his bed, gets up and paces around, throws himself on his bed again, gets up and paces around again. He stays in his room for three days and nights. After all that he bursts into tears. His classmate knocks on the door. He ignores him and, eventually, after knocking on the door for half an hour the classmate gives up and leaves. Come on!! This kind of writing permeates the book. This doesn’t seem to me to be really a novel. It is a summary (names changed to protect the guilty) of the machinations of an autocratic communist regime in Sierra Leone as it seeks to tighten its grip on the country. The regime wins. After all, for evil to win it is only necessary for good men to do nothing. I always think that is easy to say that when not faced with a regime which will have no hesitation in massacring people to get their way. (I scored this book at zero). JJ - Liberia - "The Village Son" by Dwaboyea E S Kandakai Yet another wait. Sorry. - KK - Ivory Coast - "Waiting for the Wild Beasts to Vote" by Ahmadou Kourouma (Score 6.0) On page 18, Kayoga is taken to school. This seems to be yet another example of the stultifying effect of education forced into the colonial mould so as to make French people out of the locals. On page 26 the discussion of the giving of blood and the doppelganger is very interesting. On page 30 we again have an example of troops from one part of the colonial empire being used to subjugate or kill people of another part. Compare this with the Roman use of troops from Eastern Europe to kill Picts in Scotland, and the use by the British Empire of Scots to kill people in North America and India. On page 40 we see an example of marriage by capture. This may, like the rape of the Sabine women, be an attempt to add new blood into the gene pool to reduce the amount of inbreeding. On page 86 we see de Gaulle's fake independence strategy. The proverbs scattered throughout the book are interesting. It would be good to know if the were genuine. Many seem impenetrable, and may depend on cultural references which I do not understand. Others seem more universal, for example the second one on page 358. No matter how much good you do for someone, they only remember the time you let them down. - LL - Burkina Faso - "The Parachute Drop" by Norbert Zongo. This book opens with a graphic description of the incredibly wealthy population who live separately, but, mixed, with the incredibly poor people who try to eke out a living by begging. The country is The Democratic Republic of Watinbow.The president is Gouama, who arrived by courtesy of a DCC. He brought “Independence”. However corruption by the “President” is obvious from the word go. Out of interest the author was killed in a car crash after having survived a number of attempts on his life.The book certainly shows the self-seeking behaviour of “President” Gouama, fictitious, but based on a real person who was willing to have people killed for disagreeing with him. A village s emptied of all beggars and other poor people to make the place look more prosperous than it really is. They are driven to a site about seventy miles away, but with no provision for returning except by Shank’s Pony. A coup is brewing against Gouama. There is a take-over by a group who claim to be better than the deposed ex-President Gouama We follow him and his few companions as they flee towards a border where they hope, by crossing it, the leaders there will help them. Gouama suffers dreadfully until he meets a small group of peasants who feed him and look after him as far as the border. He offers them huge sums of money to thank them for saving him. To his surprise they refuse him. They tell him that they were a group of students who were sentenced to death by him, but escaped.There is a real twist in the story, which you will not learn unless you read the book. The last page confirms it.- MM - Ghana - "The Beautyful Ones are not yet Born" by Ayi Kwei Armah (Score 6.21) Yes, the spelling is correct. That is the way it is in the book title. We meet the man. He has fallen asleep on a bus, been wakened by an abusive bus conductor, has been almost knocked down by a taxi and is walking towards the town through an area filled with small businesses. There is some unusual writing. For example, where is the true simile in “From the office floor the light came dully, like a ball whose bounce has died completely”? This is on page 14. The man is the day controller for the railway. We still don’t know his name. He is an anonymous person stuck at the bottom of Ghana’s social ladder. In fact, such a ladder may not exist for the ordinary people. There is an incredible feeling of ennui mixed with despair as the man walks the railway track during his brief lunch break. When he gets back to the office one of the men is reading a cartoon strip in a newspaper. It is “Garth”. That rang a bell with me from reading it in a local paper when I was a young teenager in the early 60s. A visitor to the office (Amankwa) comes in after all the other workers have gone home for the night. He is looking for someone to tell him why his timber has not been picked up for shipment. He cannot understand why the man cannot help him (it’s not part of his work or knowledge) and why he will not take his bribe. It seems clear that this is a country where bribery is the usual way to get anything done. Unfortunately sizeable chunks of this book are just so much verbal rubbish, none of which moves the story forward or helps us to understand the relationships between the characters. Skim reading the verbosity there is a mention of a politician called Koomon who promised the people fishing boats, presumably to vote for him. Koomon went to school with the man, who was not impressed by his lack of intelligence at the time. Chapter six discusses (with the authorial eye rather than with the eye of the nameless protagonist) the dreadful effects on Ghana and its people of their men having been taken away to fight in Europe’s war. This seems to have been even worse than the effects of the same thing on families in the United Kingdom. We also see evidence of the cruelty of colonialism when a docker loses his leg in an accident caused by the whiplash of a broken crane cable. His European operator blames him for being in the wrong place by not working hard enough. This is a cover-up because the UK operators would be responsible for satisfying themselves that the cable was sound, and that the load was within limits. After all, a broken cable, even without such an injury, would delay production considerably. There is also a whipping, by Ghanaian servants of three boys caught stealing ripe mangos because they were hungry, which the white maters wouldn’t eat anyway. We see through the man’s eyes the beginning of the change from rule by the United Kingdom to rule by people from Ghana, those who rise to the top, like the scum on top of a pot of stew. The man, again, is not impressed. Every so often the text breaks from impenetrable to fairly normal which can be read comfortably. Some of this is, unfortunately, entirely much too graphic. For example, we really do not need the full details of the man’s visit to the toilet. At the end the man lives up to the good impression I formed of him, and of his honest personality, by his helping his old classmate Koomon to escape from the country. I could only score this book at 5.0.-NN - Togo - "Neyla" by Kossi Komla-Ebri We were going through a bit of a desert as far as in print copies of books from some countries was concerned. You will just have to wait till I catch up. - OO -_Benin "The King of Ketu" by Antonio Olinto Still in the desert. - PP -Nigeria - "Anthills of the Savannah" by Chinua Achebe (Score 8.3) As you might expect from Achebe, an excellent and well written book. "First Witness" takes us right into the fear and sycophancy of those who serve, and are in intimate contact with, the dictator. On page 22 there is an excellent example of something known to Scots as "I kent his faither" (I knew his father). This is the refusal of people to accept that another person can get on in the world and be more successful than them, and can leave their background behind. The reason for this is that you they have known the person intimately for years. They themselves are nothing special and they couldn't possibly know someone who is special. Therefore, by definition that person is not special and must either have been helped by someone to better themselves, or to have done it by illicit means. Either way they are a traitor to their origins. In "Second Witness" the use of dialect was helpful in setting the story clearly in another country. I think I got the gist, but it was like reading a foreign language when I don't know all the words. The last paragraph of page 35 reminds me of Tony Blair and the terrorist "threat" and the "weapons of mass destruction". On page 37, it is a very good person who never looks down on someone else less fortunate, or different. The argument on pages 117 and 118 is beautiful. The book finishes on a note of hope for the future. Chinua Achebe won the second Man Booker International prize in 2007. - QQ - Cameroon - "Houseboy" by Ferdinand Oyono (Score 6.5) On page 4 the drums said that a Frenchman was dying. I expected it to be a colonist. While I am aware that the French "considered" their colonies to be departements of France, I wonder if the locals really considered themselves to be Frenchmen and women. On page 9 we see the amusement of the villagers when the catholic priest inadvertently uses obscene language because of his poor pronunciation of the local language. But, at least he was trying, unlike most of the colonial overlords we have read about. Was it a tonal language, I wonder? On page 53 we see the subtle comments about the commandant's wife. I could imagine that this went on a lot in the countries occupied by Europeans since I suspect that few of them, unlike the priest, would have made any attempt to learn the local language. - RR - Gabon - "Mema" by Daniel Mengara (Score 5.5) We have come across inter-tribal wife kidnap earlier. This reduces the risk of close inbreeding. Mema and Pepa are the same as Mama and Papa, as in many unrelated languages. They are among the first sounds which any baby makes. On page 33 we see the universal constant - wives run things, but the best ones let the husbands think that they run things. On page 42 it seems that Mema's own name means "destroyer of villages" - surely a strange name for any woman. On page 44 - this is the same woman who went back to her people because her husband beat her!! This book is full of mythology and folk tales, recognisable from similar European stories, which means that they may be universal truths. For example there is the village of the boar people who forget the adventure in the land of the dead (or ghosts) which reminds me of the story of Thomas the Rhymer who lived for years in the fairy mound and thought he had only been there for a few days. There is also the youngest son succeeding at a difficult task when his older brothers have failed. - Congo - SS - "A Bend in the River" by V S Naipal Wait for it! Zaire – Frederick Yamusangie – “Full Circle” (Score 5.5) This book seems to me to be aimed at children or, at most, younger teenagers. The protagonist, Dada, is still at primary school. The book is short; at 83 pages it is about one third of the length of an average adult paperback. The sentences are invariably short, with few subordinate clauses. Chapters are generally between three and six pages long. Dada arrives in the small town of Bulungu from his home in Kinshasa. His visit is intended to leach him how ordinary people live. We see his total culture shock when he arrives. He has only ever visited cities in Europe before. Life in Bulungu seems to be harmonious, but there are hints that all is not as it seems. Dada is ten. His parents have told him they are going to America where his father is to be ambassador. When Dada starts at the school he is required to tell something about himself. He makes the mistake, because he can’t think of anything else, of telling them about his father. The other children think he is lying, and set about him on the way home after school. He gets a bloody nose. Dada makes friends with Bony, one of the children who attacked him. We find there is a religious divide among the children, and many of the adults still follow the old shamanistic beliefs. Things happen, which I will leave the reader to find for him or herself as I don’t want to give too much away. Suffice it to say that Dada gets mixed up in the shamanism, there ar some deaths attributed to witchcraft, and things hot up. The ending, which I won’t describe, is unusual. I scored this book at six on the basis of it being a children’s book, and what it says to children. If I were convinced it was intended to be an adult book, I would give it three. - TT - Angola - "The Return of the Water Spirit" by Pepetela (Score 6.5) This story is more humorous than most of our selections have been. That said, we have the eternal playing of war in computer games when a devastating real war is being fought all around Luanda. On page 45 no-one believes this Cassandra either. Buildings falling down like a house of cards - the "building under construction" must even look like a house of cards since it has no walls. Shortly after reading this book I watched the film "The Interpreter". That really struck a chord with the books we have been reading since we moved on into Africa. Power corrupting the basically good is a frequent theme of these books. - UU - Namibia - "The Purple Violet of Oshaantu" by Neshani Andreas (Score 6.5) This book is written in a very matter-of-fact style, just to tell a story. It illustrates well from peoples' actions that people are just the same everywhere, the petty jealousies, the little kindnesses, "I'm better than you", "You're no better than you should be". This is well illustrated by Shange's relations who complained that the teacher had not broadcast their names when he reported Shange's death, even though he had never met them and could not possibly have known their names. Then there is the hint about the accusations of witchcraft. The changes of the narrative from past to present and back again helps to keep up the flow of the story. I feel that it would have been better if the blurb had not mentioned the witchcraft. The brutality, and possibly the cowardice, of Shange contrasts with the anger of Mukwankala when she takes him to task for beating up Kauna. On pages 97 to 101 we see the sheer greed of the family. This is frightening. Is it common to leave the widow destitute? Even worse, is it tradition? We see from page 103 on that this is tradition. I have to ask "Do the family really believe the decision that it was witchcraft, or do they merely seize on this as an excuse for what they have done?". From page 115 on the communal ploughing is hugely successful.