The Second Coming
Last night, the great African writer Chinua Achebe passed away in Boston, Massachusetts, aged 82 years old. Up until his death, he was the David and Marianna Fisher University Professor and Professor of Africana Studies at Brown University in the United States.
Chinua Achebe
Chinua Achebe has a special place in Jamaicans’ hearts – largely because of his famous 1958 novel of colonialism, “Things Fall Apart,” which sold eight million copies globally and was translated into fifty languages. The book was prescribed reading in Jamaican high schools (I think it might still be on the book list) and so many are familiar with it.
A certain Jamaican radio talk show host, the late Wilmot “Mutty” Perkins, was also closely associated with this phrase. Mr. Perkins had a jaundiced view of Jamaican society and politics, and regularly indulged in gloomy and pessimistic monologues. He would often preface (or end) these by intoning the words, “Things fall apart…”
Some Jamaicans thought he was quoting Chinua Achebe. In fact, the great novelist took the line from a powerful poem by W.B. Yeats, written in 1919. World War I had just ended, leaving over nine million young men dead, and nations sunk into exhaustion and hopelessness at the futility of it all. Between the two world wars, there was a growing sense of foreboding, of dark clouds gathering. This feeling of dread permeates much of Europe’s literature during this period. JRR Tolkien, author of “The Lord of the Rings” and “The Hobbit,” actually fought in World War I (in the bloody Battle of the Somme, which claimed the lives of over 1,300,000 men. Yes, 1.3 million). This poem was written in the shadow of the horror that had just ended.
If “Mutty” had the time and inclination during his radio show, he would recite the poem in its chilling entirety. As for me, I have a vivid mental picture of that “rough beast.”
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: a waste of desert sand;
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Wind shadows of the indignant desert birds.The darkness drops again but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
Irish poet W.B. Yeats won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1923. He died, ironically and sadly, in the very year that saw the outbreak of World War II. This photograph was taken by George Charles Bereford in 1911.
Related articles:
I wrote about Chinua Achebe’s memoirs,There Was a Country: A Personal History of Biafra, published in October of last year. The book reopened some old wounds in Nigeria – the wounds of the Biafran civil war (1967-70). Nigerian novelist Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie wrote poignantly about Achebe in a fascinating article published in Nigeria’s Vanguard newspaper; both her and Achebe are from Biafra, the home of the mostly Igbo people. Here is the link from my blog: http://petchary.wordpress.com/2012/11/24/african-postman-we-remember-differently/ You can also read my review of one of Adichie’s novels on Biafra among my book reviews at the top of this page.
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/23/world/africa/chinua-achebe-nigerian-writer-dies-at-82.html?pagewanted=1&_r=0 Chinua Achebe, African literary titan, dies at 82: New York Times
http://petchary.wordpress.com/2012/11/11/african-postman-fifty-years-of-the-african-writers-series/ African Postman: Fifty Years of the African Writers Series: petchary.wordpress.com
The incorrigible Wilmot “Mutty” Perkins on the air. He died just over a year ago and I do miss him – both his gloom and doom, and his occasional infectious laughter.
African Postman: “We Remember Differently”
Following up on my recent post on the African Writers’ Series, I am still in literary vein. This very interesting article came up on in a tweet from Nigeria’s “Vanguard” newspaper, which I follow. There are several “African connections” for Jamaica here. The author of this article, Chimamanda Adichie, was born in Biafra (as it was called during the years of Nigeria’s tragic civil war). She was a special guest at Jamaica’s Calabash International Literary Festival in May of this year. And Chinua Achebe, a Nigerian writer from an older generation, is well known to Jamaicans; his novel “Things Fall Apart” was read in Jamaican schools for many years. Chinua Achebe turns 82 this week; in this article Chimamanda Adichie celebrates the renowned author (her “literary hero”) and adds her voice to the controversy in Nigeria over Achebe’s book, a memoir, ” There Was A Country: A Personal History of Biafra.” N.B. “Jisie ike,” which Mr. Achebe said to her before she went on stage, means “Be strong” in the dialect of Nigeria’s Anambra State.
Albert Chinụalụmọgụ Achebe, an Igbo like Adichie, was a supporter of Biafran independence and became an ambassador for the new nation in 1967.
I have met Chinua Achebe only three times. The first, at the National Arts Club in Manhattan, I joined the admiring circle around him. A gentle-faced man in a wheelchair.
“Good evening, sir. I’m Chimamanda Adichie,” I said, and he replied, mildly, “I thought you were running away from me.”
I mumbled, nervous, grateful for the crush of people around us. I had been running away from him. After my first novel was published, I received an email from his son. My dad has just read your novel and liked it very much. He wants you to call him at this number. I read it over and over, breathless with excitement. But I never called. A few years later, my editor sent Achebe a manuscript of my second novel. She did not tell me, because she wanted to shield me from the possibility of disappointment. One afternoon, she called. “Chimamanda, are you sitting down? I have wonderful news.” She read me the blurb Achebe had just sent her. We do not usually associate wisdom with beginners, but here is a new writer endowed with the gift of ancient storytellers. Adichie knows what is at stake, and what to do about it. She is fearless or she would not have taken on the intimidating horror of Nigeria’s civil war. Adichie came almost fully made. Afterwards, I held on to the phone and wept. I have memorized those words. In my mind, they glimmer still, the validation of a writer whose work had validated me.
I grew up writing imitative stories. Of characters eating food I had never seen and having conversations I had never heard. They might have been good or bad, those stories, but they were emotionally false, they were not mine. Then came a glorious awakening: Chinua Achebe’s fiction. Here were familiar characters who felt true; here was language that captured my two worlds; here was a writer writing not what he felt he should write but what he wanted to write. His work was free of anxiety, wore its own skin effortlessly. It emboldened me, not to find my voice, but to speak in the voice I already had. And so, when that e-mail came from his son, I knew, overly-thrilled as I was, that I would not call. His work had done more than enough. In an odd way, I was so awed, so grateful, that I did not want to meet him. I wanted some distance between my literary hero and me.
Chinua Achebe and I have never had a proper conversation. The second time I saw him, at a luncheon in his honor hosted by the British House of Lords, I sat across from him and avoided his eye. (“Chinua Achebe is the only person I have seen you shy with,” a friend said). The third, at a New York event celebrating fifty years of THINGS FALL APART, we crowded around him backstage, Edwidge Danticat and I, Ha Jin and Toni Morrison, Colum McCann and Chris Abani. We seemed, magically, bound together in a warm web, all of us affected by his work. Achebe looked pleased, but also vaguely puzzled by all the attention. He spoke softly, the volume of his entire being turned to ‘low.’ I wanted to tell him how much I admired his integrity, his speaking out about the disastrous leadership in my home state of Anambra, but I did not. Before I went on stage, he told me, “Jisie ike.” I wondered if he fully grasped, if indeed it was possible to, how much his work meant to so many.
History and civics, as school subjects, function not merely to teach facts but to transmit more subtle things, like pride and dignity. My Nigerian education taught me much, but left gaping holes. I had not been taught to imagine my pre-colonial past with any accuracy, or pride, or complexity. And so Achebe’s work, for me, transcended literature. It became personal. ARROW OF GOD, my favorite, was not just about the British government’s creation of warrant chiefs and the linked destinies of two men, it became the life my grandfather might have lived. THINGS FALL APART is the African novel most read – and arguably most loved – by Africans, a novel published when ‘African novel’ meant European accounts of ‘native’ life. Achebe was an unapologetic member of the generation of African writers who were ‘writing back,’ challenging the stock Western images of their homeland, but his work was not burdened by its intent. It is much-loved not because Achebe wrote back, but because he wrote back well. His work was wise, humorous, human. For many Africans, THINGS FALL APART remains a gesture of returned dignity, a literary and an emotional experience; Mandela called Achebe the writer in whose presence the prison walls came down.
Achebe’s latest work: There was a country
There Was a Country: A personal history of Biafra, by Chinua Achebe
Achebe’s most recent book, his long-awaited memoir of the Nigerian-Biafra war, is both sad and angry, a book by a writer looking back and mourning Nigeria’s failures. I wish THERE WAS A COUNTRY had been better edited and more rigorously detailed in its account of the war. But these flaws do not make it any less seminal: an account of the most important event in Nigeria’s history by Nigeria’s most important storyteller.
An excerpt from the book has ignited great controversy among Nigerians. In it, Achebe, indignant about the millions of people who starved to death in Biafra, holds Obafemi Awolowo, Nigerian Finance Minister during the war, responsible for the policy of blockading Biafra. He quote’s Awolowo’s own words on the blockade – ‘all is fair in war and starvation is one of the weapons of war. I don’t see why we should feed our enemies fat in order for them to fight harder’ and then argues that Awolowo’s support of the blockade was ‘driven by an overriding ambition for power for himself in particular and for the advancement of his Yoruba people in general.’
Chief Jeremiah Obafemi Awolowo (“Awo”) also called The Sage, was one of Nigeria’s founding fathers.
I have been startled and saddened by the responses to this excerpt. Many are blindingly ethnic, lacking in empathy and, most disturbing of all, lacking in knowledge. We can argue about how we interpret the facts of our shared history, but we cannot, surely, argue about the facts themselves. Awolowo, as de facto ‘number two man’ on the Nigerian side, was a central architect of the blockade on Biafra. During and after the war, Awolowo publicly defended the blockade. Without the blockade, the massive starvation in Biafra would not have occurred. These are the facts.
Some Nigerians, in responding to Achebe, have argued that the blockade was fair, as all is fair in war. The blockade was, in my opinion, inhumane and immoral. And it was unnecessary – Nigeria would have won anyway, it was the much-better-armed side in a war that Wole Soyinka called a shabby unequal conflict. The policy of starving a civilian population into surrender does not merely go against the Geneva conventions, but in this case, a war between siblings, people who were formerly fellow country men and women now suddenly on opposite sides, it seems more chilling. All is not fair in war. Especially not in a fratricidal war. But I do not believe the blockade was a calculated power grab by Awolowo for himself and his ethnic group; I think of it, instead, as one of the many dehumanizing acts that war, by its nature, brings about.
Awolowo was undoubtedly a great political leader. He was also – rare for Nigerian leaders – a great intellectual. No Nigerian leader has, arguably, articulated a political vision as people-centered as Awolowo’s. For Nigerians from the west, he was the architect of free primary education, of progressive ideas. But for Nigerians from the east, he was a different man. I grew up hearing, from adults, versions of Achebe’s words about Awolowo. He was the man who prevented an Igbo man from leading the Western House of Assembly in the famous ‘carpet crossing’ incident of 1952. He was the man who betrayed Igbo people when he failed on his alleged promise to follow Biafra’s lead and pull the Western region out of Nigeria. He was the man who, in the words of my uncle, “made Igbo people poor because he never liked us.”
At the end of the war, every Igbo person who had a bank account in Nigeria was given twenty pounds, no matter how much they had in their accounts before the war. I have always thought this a livid injustice. I know a man who worked in a multinational company in 1965. He was, like Achebe, one of the many Igbo who just could not believe that their lives were in danger in Lagos and so he fled in a hurry, at the last minute, leaving thousands of pounds in his account. After the war, his account had twenty pounds. To many Igbo, this policy was uncommonly punitive, and went against the idea of ‘no victor, no vanquished.’ Then came the indigenization decree, which moved industrial and corporate power from foreign to Nigerian hands. It made many Nigerians wealthy; much of the great wealth in Nigeria today has its roots in this decree. But the Igbo could not participate; they were broke.
I do not agree, as Achebe writes, that one of the main reasons for Nigeria’s present backwardness is the failure to fully reintegrate the Igbo. I think Nigeria would be just as backward even if the Igbo had been fully integrated – institutional and leadership failures run across all ethnic lines. But the larger point Achebe makes is true, which is that the Igbo presence in Nigerian positions of power has been much reduced since the war. Before the war, many of Nigeria’s positions of power were occupied by Igbo people, in the military, politics, academia, business. Perhaps because the Igbo were very receptive to Western education, often at the expense of their own traditions, and had both a striving individualism and a communal ethic. This led to what, in history books, is often called a ‘fear of Igbo domination’ in the rest of Nigeria. The Igbo themselves were insensitive to this resentment, the bombast and brashness that is part of Igbo culture only exacerbated it. And so leading Igbo families entered the war as Nigeria’s privileged elite but emerged from it penniless, stripped and bitter.
Today, ‘marginalization’ is a popular word in Igboland. Many Igbo feel marginalized in Nigeria, a feeling based partly on experience and partly on the psychology of a defeated people. (Another consequence of this psychology, perhaps, is the loss of the communal ethic of the Igbo, much resented sixty years ago. It is almost non-existent today, or as my cousin eloquently put it: Igbo people don’t even send each other.)
Map of Nigeria showing linguistic groups: the “Ibo” to the south is Achebe’s and Adichie’s homeland.
Some responses to Achebe have had a ‘blame the victim’ undertone, suggesting that Biafrians started the war and therefore deserved what they got. But Biafrians did not ‘start the war.’ Nobody with a basic knowledge of the facts can make that case.
Biafran secession was inevitable, after the federal government’s failure to implement the agreements reached at Aburi, itself prompted by the massacre of Igbo in the North. The cause of the massacres was arguably the first coup of 1966. Many believed it to be an ‘Igbo’ coup, which was not an unreasonable belief, Nigeria was already mired in ethnic resentments, the premiers of the West and North were murdered while the Eastern premier was not, and the coup plotters were Igbo. Except for Adewale Ademoyega, a Yoruba, who has argued that it was not an ethnic coup. I don’t believe it was. It seems, from most accounts, to have been an idealistic and poorly-planned nationalist exercise aimed at ridding Nigeria of a corrupt government. It was, also, horrendously, inexcusably violent. I wish the coup had never happened. I wish the premiers and other casualties had been arrested and imprisoned, rather than murdered. But the truth that glares above all else is that the thousands of Igbo people murdered in their homes and in the streets had nothing to do with the coup.
Some have blamed the Biafran starvation on Ojukwu, Biafra’s leader, because he rejected an offer from the Nigerian government to bring in food through a land corridor. It was an ungenerous offer, one easy to refuse. A land corridor could also mean advancement of Nigerian troops. Ojukwu preferred airlifts, they were tactically safer, more strategic, and he could bring in much-needed arms as well. Ojukwu should have accepted the land offer, shabby as it was. Innocent lives would have been saved. I wish he had not insisted on a ceasefire, a condition which the Nigerian side would never have agreed to. But it is disingenuous to claim that Ojukwu’s rejection of this offer caused the starvation. Many Biafrians had already starved to death. And, more crucially, the Nigerian government had shown little regard for Biafra’s civilian population; it had, for a while, banned international relief agencies from importing food. Nigerian planes bombed markets and targeted hospitals in Biafra, and had even shot down an International Red Cross plane.
Ordinary Biafrians were steeped in distrust of the Nigerian side. They felt safe eating food flown in from Sao Tome, but many believed that food brought from Nigeria would be poisoned, just as they believed that, if the war ended in defeat, there would be mass killings of Igbo people. The Biafrian propaganda machine further drummed this in. But, before the propaganda, something else had sown the seed of hateful fear: the 1966 mass murders of Igbo in the North. The scars left were deep and abiding. Had the federal government not been unwilling or incapable of protecting their lives and property, Igbo people would not have so massively supported secession and intellectuals, like Achebe, would not have joined in the war effort.
I have always admired Ojukwu, especially for his early idealism, the choices he made as a young man to escape the shadow of his father’s great wealth, to serve his country. In Biafra, he was a flawed leader, his paranoia and inability to trust those close to him clouded his judgments about the execution of the war, but he was also a man of principle who spoke up forcefully about the preservation of the lives of Igbo people when the federal government seemed indifferent. He was, for many Igbo, a Churchillian figure, a hero who inspired them, whose oratory moved them to action and made them feel valued, especially in the early months of the war.
General Odumegwu Ojukwu, President of Biafra, in 1968. Educated at Oxford University, he returned to Nigeria in 1956. He died in London on November 26, 2011 and is buried in Nnewi, Anambra, in Nigeria. (Photo: Washington Post)
Other responses to Achebe have dismissed the war as something that happened ‘long ago.’ But some of the people who played major roles are alive today. We must confront our history, if only to begin to understand how we came to be where we are today. The Americans are still hashing out details of their civil war that ended in 1865; the Spanish have only just started, seventy years after theirs ended. Of course, discussing a history as contested and contentious as the Nigeria-Biafra war will not always be pleasant. But it is necessary. An Igbo saying goes: If a child does not ask what killed his father, that same thing will kill him.
What many of the responses to Achebe make clear, above all else, is that we remember differently. For some, Biafra is history, a series of events in a book, fodder for argument and analysis. For others, it is a loved one killed in a market bombing, it is hunger as a near-constant companion, it is the death of certainty. The war was fought on Biafrian soil. There are buildings in my hometown with bullet holes; as a child, playing outside, I would sometimes come across bits of rusty ammunition left behind from the war. My generation was born after 1970, but we know of property lost, of relatives who never ‘returned’ from the North, of shadows that hung heavily over family stories. We inherited memory. And we have the privilege of distance that Achebe does not have.
Achebe is a war survivor. He was a member of the generation of Nigerians who were supposed to lead a new nation, inchoate but full of optimism. It shocked him, how quickly Nigerian fell apart. In THERE WAS A COUNTRY he sounds unbelieving, still, about the federal government’s indifference while Igbo people were being massacred in Northern Nigeria in 1966. But shock-worthy events did not only happen in the North. Achebe himself was forced to leave Lagos, a place he had called home for many years, because his life was no longer safe. His crime was being Igbo. A Yoruba acquaintance once told me a story of how he was nearly lynched in Lagos at the height of the tensions before the war; he was light-skinned, and a small mob in a market assumed him to be ‘Igbo Yellow’ and attacked him. The Vice-Chancellor of the University of Lagos was forced to leave. So was the Vice-Chancellor of the University of Ibadan. Because they were Igbo. For Achebe, all this was deeply personal, deeply painful. His house was bombed, his office was destroyed. He escaped death a few times. His best friend died in battle. To expect a dispassionate account from him is a remarkable failure of empathy. I wish more of the responses had acknowledged, a real acknowledgement and not merely a dismissive preface, the deep scars that experiences like Achebe’s must have left behind.
Ethnicity has become, in Nigeria, more political than cultural, less about philosophy and customs and values and more about which bank is a Yoruba or Hausa or Igbo bank, which political office is held by which ethnicity, which revered leader must be turned into a flawless saint. We cannot deny ethnicity. It matters. But our ethnic and national identities should not be spoken of as though they were mutually exclusive; I am as much Igbo as I am Nigerian. I have hope in the future of Nigeria, mostly because we have not yet made a real, conscious effort to begin creating a nation (We could start, for example, by not merely teaching Maths and English in primary schools, but also teaching idealism and citizenship.)
For some non-Igbo, confronting facts of the war is uncomfortable, even inconvenient. But we must hear one another’s stories. It is even more imperative for a subject like Biafra which, because of our different experiences, we remember differently. Biafrian minorities were distrusted by the Igbo majority, and some were unfairly attacked, blamed for being saboteurs. Nigerian minorities, particularly in the midwest, suffered at the hands of both Biafrian and Nigerian soldiers. ‘Abandoned property’ cases remain unresolved today in Port Harcourt, a city whose Igbo names were changed after the war, creating “Rumu” from “Umu.” Nigerian soldiers carried out a horrendous massacre in Asaba, murdering the males in a town which is today still alive with painful memories. Some Igbo families are still waiting, half-hoping, that a lost son, a lost daughter, will come home. All of these stories can sit alongside one another. The Nigerian stage is big enough. Chinua Achebe has told his story. This week, he turns 82. Long may he live.”
Related articles and websites:
http://petchary.wordpress.com/2012/07/27/3537/ (Inspirational Woman of the Day: Chimamanda Adichie/re-blogged)
http://petchary.wordpress.com/2012/11/11/african-postman-fifty-years-of-the-african-writers-series/ (African Postman: Fifty Years of the African Writers Series: petchary.wordpress.com)
http://brown.edu/Departments/Africana_Studies/people/achebe_chinua.html (Chinua Achebe’s website: Brown University)
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/oct/05/chinua-achebe-there-was-a-country-review (There Was a Country: Review/Guardian UK)
The trouble with Achebe (vanguardngr.com)
Chinua Achebe reflects on Biafra, but for whom? (africasacountry.com)
Chinua Achebe’s Memoir ‘There Was a Country’ Bookends His Long Literary Career (atlantablackstar.com)
The Defeated Write History: Chinua Achebe’s There Was a Country (themillions.com)
Remembering Biafra (nytimes.com)
Achebe Administers a Sacrament For Biafra (A Review of There Was A Country) By Rudolf Ogoo Okonkwo (igbokwenuradio.wordpress.com)
Achebe publishes Biafran memoir (bbc.co.uk)
Adichie Ngozi Chimamanda reads at Calabash International Literary Festival in Jamaica, May 2012. (Photo: Andre Bagoo)
African Postman: Fifty Years of the African Writers Series
Ugandan Independence Ceremony, 9th October, 1962 (Photo: Lambeth Palace Library)
An ambitious group gathered in that pivotal year, 1962, for the African Writers Conference at Makerere University in Uganda. Among the attendees were Chinua Achebe and Wole Soyinka of Nigeria, as well as Ngugi wa Thiong’o of Kenya (then James Ngugi) and Rajat Neogy, a Kampala native who would soon launch Transition Magazine. Langston Hughes, who had a particular interest in anthologizing African writers for publication in the US, made the trip from America. The young and thoughtful group discussed the formidable legacy of colonialism for African writers. How do you cultivate emerging literatures? Is it inauthentic for African writers to write in colonial languages like English and French, rather than indigenous languages? Are there certain kinds of stories that are more or less ‘African’?
Makerere University, Uganda
These questions are hardly settled today, but the literary experiments attempting to resolve them reached a global audience thanks to the unprecedented African Writers Series. The series published authors like Achebe, who advised the project for its first 10 years. Indeed, the first title published was Things Fall Apart, a new issuing of the book that first appeared in 1958, just shy of Nigeria’s independence. Shortly after the AWS launch, Things Fall Apart became required reading by the Cambridge School Certificate Examinations for overseas students in the United Kingdom. This singular move led to Heinemann immediately selling 20,000 copies.
The fiftieth anniversary edition of “Things Fall Apart” by Chinua Achebe. Still relevant today…
AWS published fiction, poetry, plays, and nonfiction, including reprints and original work, from a list headlined by authors like Ngugi, Ama Ata Aidoo of Ghana, Tayeb Salih of Sudan, Bessie Head of Botswana, Dennis Brutus of South Africa, Ayi Kwei Armah of Ghana, and Nuruddin Farah of Somalia. While many titles were written in English, others were translated from French, Arabic, Portuguese, Swahili, Achioli, and Yoruba. While the series brought international attention to the diversity of literature in Africa, Heinemann paperbacks were primarily designed in affordable editions for African students. Achebe, in his collection of essays Home & Exile, writes:
The launching of Heinemann’s African Writers Series was like the umpire’s signal for which African writers had been waiting on the starting line. In one short generation an immense library of new writing had sprung into being from all over the continent and, for the first time in history, Africa’s future generations of readers and writers — youngsters in schools and colleges — began to read not only David Copperfield and other English classics that I and my generation had read but also works by their own writers about their own people. The excitement generated by this […] was very great indeed and continues to delight many people to this day, in Africa and beyond. The British poet and broadcaster Edward Blishen said of the African Writers Series, “I saw a whole new potentially great world literature come into being.”
Nobel Laureate Wole Soyinka at the Calabash International Literary Festival in Jamaica in May 2010.
The taste and scrutiny of the editors is evident in the number of authors who went on to win the Nobel Prize in Literature: every African Nobel laureate in literature, save one — J.M. Coetzee — is an AWS author. (As well, AWS published one of the earliest books by Peace Prize-winner Nelson Mandela.) Wole Soyinka became the first African writer — in fact, the first black writer — to win the Nobel Prize in literature in 1986. Two years later, Egypt’s Naguib Mahfouz won, a first for a writer in Arabic. South Africa’s Nadine Gordimer took the prize in 1991, and Doris Lessing in 2007. While Lessing is now a British citizen, her roots are in Zimbabwe. The series published her novel, The Grass is Singing, in 1972. Lessing’s Nobel lecture discussed the dream deferred for writers raised with a dearth of literary resources. She spoke of a Zimbabwe library she visits, where the only books on the shelves are “tomes from American universities, hard even to lift, rejects from white libraries, or novels with titles like Weekend in Paris and Felicity Finds Love.” In such a context, Lessing said, there are bound to be “books never written […] Voices unheard. It is not possible to estimate this great waste of talent, of potential.”
Nobel Laureate Doris Lessing was born in Iran, lived in Zimbabwe and fled to the UK as a result of her anti-apartheid views.
The last of about 350 AWS titles published by Heinemann came in 2000. By then, books were appearing sporadically under quick-shifting ownership. But after more than a decade of silence, and now in its 50th anniversary year, the African Writers Series was revived this June by Penguin Classics, with the release of two early novels by Ngugi wa Thiong’o: Weep Not, Child and A Grain of Wheat. There is nice symmetry in Penguin picking up the mantle of the legendary series. As James Currey writes in Africa Writes Back, a history of the Heinemann project:
The Series was to become to Africans in its first quarter century what Penguin had been to British readers in its first 25 years. It provided good serious reading in paperbacks at accessible prices for the rapidly emerging professional classes, as the countries became independent.
Kenyan writer Ngugi wa Thiong’o is Distinguished Professor of the Departments of Comparative Literature and English at the University of California, Irvine.
The original AWS paperbacks visually gave a nod to Penguin by borrowing its distinctive orange color for the covers.
For its part, Penguin (which shares a parent company with Heinemann) publishes Ngugi’s novel Petals of Blood, which John Siciliano, series editor, told me is a “steady seller.” It seemed natural to relaunch AWS with two additional Ngugi titles. As they get the Penguin Classics treatment, AWS titles will appear with introductions (unlike the Heinemann books) from prominent writers. The cover design gives no indication that AWS titles are distinct from traditional black-spined Classics, but their first page features a “Message from Chinua Achebe,” in which the series’ former curator gives his endorsement to Penguin’s project: “Through the series, the creative exploration of those issues and experiences that are unique to the African consciousness will be given a platform, not only throughout Africa, but also to the world beyond its shores.”
The new AWS will be ongoing, rather than finite. Siciliano “aims to make the series as diverse as possible” while ensuring that selections are driven by editorial quality. He’s also interested in titles in translation and, if necessary, would consider commissioning new translations that would put the novels “in the best possible light.”
“This is not a passive thing,” Siciliano said about launching AWS with Penguin. “This is something I pursued […] This is about enlarging the canon.”
¤
It’s impossible to talk about Ngugi’s fiction without talking about politics. Though Weep Not, Child and A Grain of Wheat were published before Ngugi changed his name, before he was imprisoned for his writing, before his exile to the United States, and before his pivotal Decolonising the Mind cued his shift to writing in Gikuyu (he translates his own work into English), both novels proclaim Ngugi’s interest in how politics push against the ordinary habits of students, lovers, families, and workers. Weep Not, Child, which takes its title from a Walt Whitman poem, was published in 1964, and may be the first novel published by an East African. In it, we meet two Kikuyu brothers growing up in rural Kenya just as the Mau Mau uprising is beginning to challenge the British government. Njoroge is thrilled that he’s designated by his family to attend school. Kamau apprentices in carpentry. But while Njoroge sees education as the gold-plated path to progress, Kamau is drawn to the forthright methods of Mau Mau. When loyalties to family, country, and self conflict, Njoroge struggles to find a vision he can hold onto.
“Weep Not, Child” – the first UK edition published in 1964. It was the first novel by an East African author to be published in English.
In a neat 149 pages, Ngugi fits an epic sweep: this is an omniscient story, spanning a decade, hemmed in by the long dark shadow of World War II. Kenyans were conscripted to fight for the British; upon return, they found that British soldiers were rewarded with land and loans that they did not receive for the same service. Some Kenyans had farms taken from them to benefit the very British men they had fought alongside. In Weep Not, Child, the lingering chill of wartime trauma meets the looming specter of Kenya’s war of independence.
The novel carries common tics of an early go at longform fiction. Particularly after the publication of Ngugi’s childhood memoir, Dreams in a Time of War, it is apparent how richly Weep Not, Child is informed by the author’s own biography. The story is also heavy with exposition: the narrator explaining why each person says each thing slows dialogue. As a reader, I feel that the author doesn’t quite trust me to extrapolate and understand.
It is tempting to read Weep Not, Child as an allegory because of its spare style, peopled by characters that verge on emblems: The Father, The Overseer, The Loyal Friend. But Ngugi gently resists this. The story invites our expectations of how, for example, Njoroge will reconcile his personal dreams with his dreams for his country, but it sidesteps them at the last moment. The novel is also empathetic. Ngugi is attentive to the conflicts inherent in British characters who have not lived in England in decades, or perhaps ever. They know Kenya as home. But while their love for the land may be authentic, it is mutated by their grasping entitlement. Ngugi also draws out the worthiness of the Mau Mau’s fight for freedom, even as he underscores how their grand purpose could sometimes be netted by ignoble motivations: revenge, and the sheer adrenaline of brutality. In short, Ngugi writes a book that has moral purpose, but leaves just enough room for the complexity that comes with it.
While Weep Not, Child is a sturdy story with clean, bright lines, A Grain of Wheat is sensual, mysterious, devastating; a multi-threaded novel that builds tension by refusing to resolve its stubborn ambivalence. It is remarkable that the two were published a mere three years apart. In A Grain of Wheat, Ngugi makes a great leap forward in terms of emotional resonance and sheer fictional verve. Ngugi takes on an ensemble cast and plays much more confidently with suspense and revelation in A Grain of Wheat. The story unfolds over the four days before Kenya celebrated independence from Britain in 1963, but it spends much time in flashback. Again, we are immersed in the life of a rural community, where politics are at once immediate and detached. As villagers are consumed in plans for the uhuru ceremony, we learn that all is not well. The violence experienced by those held captive by the British is still fresh; the betrayals among spouses and neighbors are not forgiven; and those marked as heroes have long, troubled memories.
Gikonyo is a carpenter who was held in the British “concentration camps — named detention camps for the world outside Kenya,” for six years of the Emergency. This was the period from 1952-1960 when the colonial government permitted itself extreme measures in a bid to keep control: it is particularly horrifying given how soon after the Holocaust this system was built. To keep himself sane, Gikonyo holds tight to the memory of his lovely and brave wife, Mumbi. But when he returns home, he finds Mumbi with an infant child that is not his — and a friend of Gikonyo’s, with whom he took the Mau Mau oath, now works as a district chief in collaboration with the British.
Mugo, meanwhile, was also in detention camps. His quiet countenance invites others to see in him what they want to see — and their vision does not include his haunting secret. While Mugo tries to rebuild his life separately from the others, he is continually lured into public spaces, where the dissonance between the demons of his past and what his neighbors want from him are violently juxtaposed.
A Grain of Wheat stokes the fires of mythology. It draws richly from Christianity — an import from the British, of course, that Kenyans in the novel adapt, use, and re-use. The title references John 12:24: “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.” We are told explicitly that “the revivalist movement was the only organization allowed to flourish in Kenya by the government during the Emergency.” Sections in the novel open with lines from Exodus that, we are told, were underlined in red in the personal Bible of Kihika, one of the story’s young martyrs. And it does not feel like a coincidence that Gikonyo chooses carpentry, the trade of Jesus, as his life’s work. Set in this Christian context, acts of betrayal, martyrdom, and confession take on elevated meaning.
Religion and politics merge when, as in Weep Not, Child, Jomo Kenyatta’s presence looms large as “Black Moses.” His imprisonment and trial were a significant rallying point for Kenyans, who would make him their first president. Meanwhile, the stories of Gandhi’s movement in India are passed from character to character like creation lore. And the narrative style A Grain of Wheat evokes the voice of myth. While the reader follows the intimate perspectives of Mugo, Mumbi, Gikonyo, and others, first-person asides are tucked through the pages. The narration is omniscient, but personal; first-person, but dislocated.
Jomo Kenyatta (1894 – 1978), the first leader of independent Kenya. Jomo means “Burning Spear.”
The novel bears serious weak spots. Ngugi’s female characters are not well developed; they are never seen speaking or thinking about anything other than the men in their lives: fathers, brothers, sons, husbands, lovers. He also sometimes over-romanticizes peasant life (he revised the novel after publication to push the Marxist point further), and he continues to rely on exposition more than he needs to: particularly in this novel, characters are so richly drawn that they are better left to their own devices. But altogether, Ngugi allows himself to luxuriate in description, to more bluntly piece together the discomfiting parts of life, and to explore the crisis that comes when our delusions and visions appear with the same force. This is an extraordinary book.
¤
Penguin South Africa first debuted its version of the revived African Writers Series three years ago, with Weep Not, Child on the inaugural slate. But it got some public pushback. In The Guardian, Akin Ajayi accused the series of being “locked in the past” with its focus on publishing novels between 15 and 50 years old. In contrast, the Heinemann Series focused largely on contemporary titles. Writes Ajayi:
I don’t have anything against the selection [of titles] itself, it’s just that it’s hard to see what the selection can tell the curious reader about lives lived across Africa today. These books can’t say much about the challenges of globalisation, migration, or the struggle by the citizens of Africa’s 53 countries to form an authentic identity, because these books are not of the moment. Classics, yes; contemporary, no. And in this sense at least, the new [Series] disappoints.
Billy Kahora dismisses the argument. Kahora is an accomplished Kenyan author and managing editor at Kwani, which publishes print books as well as Africa’s most prestigious literary journal.Ajayi cites Kwani as evidence of the contemporary literary talent that AWS might tap, but he minimizes the organization, referring to it as “a website.” (Disclosure: I worked at Kwani last year.)
Kahora said, Penguin is “doing a great service to the continent” by re-issuing classic titles. “Have you ever heard anyone in the West complaining about the republishing of Dickens, Mann, Tolstoy, Balzac?” Kahora added.
Kahora also suggested that critics who call the classic books dated “almost always” think that certain parts of life are a “contemporary phenomenon, and that these older [AWS] books have nothing to say to our contemporary condition.” To that, he points to B. KojoLaing’s Search Sweet Country (1986), which he said, “already prophesied what our contemporary urban spaces would become.” Kahora said, “I am yet to read anything contemporary that captures the nervous condition of the African returning from the West as well as Achebe’s No Longer At Ease or Hamidou Kane’s Ambiguous Adventure.” “And so,” he added, “it must be understood that the books from before and those from now are in perpetual conversation.”
That is the excitement of a living canon. But that doesn’t make it easy.
¤
The Caine Prize for African Writing is often nicknamed the “African Booker” — a frustrating comparison given that they are very distinct prizes: one for a novel, the other for a short story. But the moniker is meant to convey that extraordinary fiction can be found among the award winners and finalists. First awarded in 2000, the Caine Prize has in some ways served like the mid-century version of the African Writers Series: it brings global attention and opportunity to outstanding fiction writers from Africa. This includes Leila Aboulela, a Sudanese writer who quickly went on to publish several critically-acclaimed novels and a story collection. Helon Habila of Nigeria has written or edited five books since winning the Caine Prize. Kenya’s Binyavanga Wainana used his winnings in the Caine Prize to create Kwani.
Leila Aboulela, Sudanese writer and the first winner of the Caine Prize for African Writing in 2000. (Photo: Vaida V. Nairn)
This year’s Caine Prize winner, Rotimi Babatunde, was named on July 2nd and received a £10,000 prize. Unfortunately, though, he emerged from a set of finalists that were selected from a mere 122 nominations and only 14 African countries. (The continent is home to 54 countries). Bernadine Evaristo, chair of the prize, said she is frustrated with some of what she saw:
I’d rather a story is provocative and unsettling rather than familiar, safe and perfectly accomplished. Yet risk-takers are rare. Among the submissions I’ve encountered a lot of uninspired prose that feels so dated, so Middle England circa 1950s, even though it might have been written in Central Africa in 2012. Luckily there are a few adventurers too. But we need more experimentation and daring, stunning image-makers and linguistic explorers who might, for example, infuse English with an African language or syntax. Not necessarily pidgin, but perhaps something else, something new — the English language (and forms) adapted, mutated, re-invented to suit African perspectives and cultures.
Binyavanga Wainana, who now directs the Chinua Achebe Center for African Writers and Artists at Bard College, echoed these thoughts in a posting on Facebook:
So MANY boring African artists. It has to be said. The Colonial school system in Anglophone Africa was designed to create dutiful (dull) and Safe Subjects. 50 years later, much of (young) African writing in English is safe […] they have also learned what they think “is being looked for” BY PRIZES, FOREIGN PUBLISHERS and foreign NGOS. Nobody invests in Boring. Their imaginations are tame and limited. They do not provide a vision of what is possible. […] At the Achebe Center I look for talent that has bold new things to say to Africa and the world. Innovators take risks and do not behave as prescribed by the ‘Theme makers’. Artists make their own insurgencies.
How do you cultivate emerging literatures? The questions confronted by the independence generation of writers still reverberate today, not only for writers, but also readers, publishers, literary critics, translators, technologists, and booksellers. The literary experiments continue.
Ngugi now teaches at the University of California-Irvine and was a headliner at the most recent Kwani LitFest in Nairobi, which had a theme inter-generational literary conversation. Ngugi, who led the 1970s campaign to transform the University of Nairobi’s Department of English to the Department of Literature, spoke of artistic purpose in both content and language.
Writers must continue to be advocates for the expansion of the democratic space. For there cannot be democracy for writers where there is no democracy for all. And this reality, my friends, is not specific in any generation or any one country or region. Imprisonment, exile, and even death has been part of the occupation hazard in the history of ideas. [...] We must ensure that Africa does not remain a beggar at the gates of European languages, and ensure that all of the arts are surely to excite and expand the imagination. Surely we in Africa must dare to imagine a different future, of an Africa that has peace for itself, but is able to engage with the world on the basis of self-belief and confidence.
Elsewhere in Nairobi, Riva Jalipa manages AMKA, a monthly gathering designed to promote women’s literary writing and women’s voices in Kenya’s public discourse. It is another kind of literary experiment, one that unfolds quietly but persistently. Men and women attend the Saturday meetings downtown, and the crowd includes both emerging and established writers, as well as “just people passionate about literature,” Jalipa said. “Over the last two years, [AMKA] has become more and more engaging, becoming a platform not just for literary critique, but socio-cultural and political commentary.”
In the twenty-first century, a new balance must be struck between developing brave and interesting contemporary literature while keeping in conversation with classics. “There are too many good books that have been relegated to the dustbin of history and they should be re-issued and popularized as much as possible,” Kahora said. While Heinemann’s African Writers Series struck new ground, there is now an established legacy to draw from, to reject, to inspire. Penguin’s revival of the series, then, facilitates the great conversation. It will be a joy to see where this goes.
Related articles
- Patchwork: Another likely award winner… (daily-mail.co.zm)
- The crazy things academics do for money (nation.co.ke)
- iRead: Nigerian Literature, what’s sex got to do with it? (ireaddadabooks.wordpress.com)
- Publishing Books from Routledge (routledge.com)
- CFP: African Literature Today: writing Africa in the short story (africainwords.com)
- The importance of Language (theafricanwriter.wordpress.com)
- The Use of Language in Things Fall Apart (theafricanwriter.wordpress.com)
- Achebe returns with long-awaited “Biafra” memoir (vanguardngr.com)
- Ngugi wa Thiong’o's Memoir – In the House of the Interpreter (Book Acquired, 10.24.2012) (biblioklept.org)
- http://collections.chadwyck.co.uk/marketing/home_aws.jsp (African Writers Series: Online Edition)
- http://www.ngugiwathiongo.com (Ngugi wa Thiong’o homepage)
- http://www.kwani.org (Kwani LitFest, Nairobi)
- http://www.leila-aboulela.com (Leila Aboulela homepage)
- http://www.caineprize.com (Caine Prize homepage)
- http://achebecenter.bard.edu (Chinua Achebe Center for African Writers and Artists, Bard College)
- http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/booksblog/2010/feb/16/africa-writers-series-penguin-heinemann (African Writers Series: a review in the UK Guardian)
Jamaica 50 Special: Monday, August 6, 2012
Today, Jamaica is half a century old. Music throbs from the National Stadium as the evening grey grows deeper. The remnants of Tropical Storm Ernesto rustle in the trees, and the White-Chinned Thrush in our yard starts his persistent, piercing whistle. On television, the military bands in scarlet, white and black march at the Grand Gala. Choirs will sing, dancers will dance, flags will be waved, drummers will drum. The announcer will speak in her best Queen’s English Jamaican voice. There has been Indian Bollywood dancing, Chinese dragons and of course African drums, illustrating the Jamaican motto “Out of Many One People” – and then, time to wheel out the church people. The obligatory prayers (yes, we are a Christian country. Out of many one people, but let’s not worry too much about the Jews, Hindus, Muslims, atheists and others tonight) – followed by gospel music. As one Twitter friend just commented, “Forgive my naïveté but I interpret ‘Out of many, one people’ to include many races, many cultures AND many religions.”
Must get me a pair of those Jamaica 50 sunglasses…A scene from Grand Gala.
A helicopter descends into the National Stadium during the Grand Gala celebrations for Jamaica 50. No, neither James Bond nor the Queen jumped out.
Sigh. Well as you can see my weekly review is well overdue. It has been overwhelmed with Olympic runners and swimmers and shooters and fencers and rowers and fighters, and now the celebrations of Jamaica’s fiftieth year of Independence. Putting all of that aside (which is a lot), what is left?
Talking about the preservation of our culture (last Monday, August 1, was our Emancipation Day and we are greatly focused on this topic at present), Professor Emeritus of English at the University of the West Indies Edward Baugh (who’s also a marvelous poet) spoke out recently on Jamaica’s lack of interest in actually preserving the physical aspects of our heritage. As we know, some of our finest examples of colonial architecture are now in ruins – except for a few that have been miraculously revived in the name of tourism. And there are many examples of our oral and written history that just can’t be found. How careless we are.
All the more reason to congratulate the venerable Gleaner Company - the oldest company in Jamaica by far – for its new website, diG Jamaica (www.digjamaica.com) – an ambitious project that seeks to pull together a great deal of information on Jamaica, including historical data and up-to-date vital statistics. This is a fiftieth birthday gift to Jamaica from the Gleaner, and it’s looking good. We need this kind of serious and detailed record. Kudos to Gleaner Managing Director Christopher Barnes and consultant Deika Morrison. This is the way to go!
Well, there were at least a couple of interesting developments last week. Firstly, the Supreme Court ruled that the license issued by the then minister of mining and energy in 2001 to the Jamaica Public Service Company (JPSCo) was invalid and not, in fact, an exclusive monopoly. The legal details are too complex to get into, but this is a remarkable development, following a rare class action suit filed by a group of Jamaican citizens calling themselves Citizens United to Reduce Electricity (CURE) and represented by a high-profile and somewhat controversial lawyer. Well, it’s not quite a “cure” yet, but this paves the way for more competition. What next? JPSCo will appeal the ruling. There’s a long way to go before we manage to reduce the insanely high cost of electricity. Jamaica’s rates are the highest in the Caribbean and among the highest globally – a huge deterrent to business and investment, large and small, domestic and overseas. My favorite government minister, Energy Minister Phillip Paulwell, seems quietly pleased with the ruling.
Justin Felice, head of the Financial Investigations Division.
Secondly, the British policeman who has been heading the Jamaica Constabulary Force‘s anti-corruption unit – with considerable success – for the past few years, has been appointed head of the Financial Investigations Division, which operates from the Ministry of Finance. Mr. Justin Felice says he will tackle corruption, financial crimes and money laundering “very, very robustly” (note emphasis) and more power to him! We would like to see some of the “big boys” under manners (a Jamaican expression meaning “on their best behavior,” for my non-Jamaican readers!)
Talking of law enforcement, the head of the Lottery Scam Task Force has been transferred to the newly-formed Major Organised Crime and Anti-Corruption Task Force (MOCA – another nice acronym), and the Deputy Mayor of Montego Bay was released from prison. You may recall the high drama at the orange house on the hill, the DM’s residence, with an early morning raid involving the seizure of large quantities of cash and “high-end vehicles,” etc. Well, gun and ammunition charges brought against the DM were dismissed in court last week. His son pleaded guilty. So the matter was swiftly dealt with; the DM was hauled on the shoulders of jubilant supporters – quite well-built ladies – on exiting the court; and he will no doubt return to taking up his duties in the St. James Parish Council. There are no charges remaining against him, including no charges connected with the hateful scam, either. That’s that.
The Deputy Mayor of Montego Bay is hoisted on the shoulders of his supporters after being freed of gun and ammunition charges. Oh, joy!
Apart from these events, there was a huge wave of reflections and all kinds of analysis from columnists and anyone with an opinion on the state of Island Jamaica at fifty. We were regaled with the views of our former prime minister, P.J. Patterson, who believes that “we have achieved” much in the last fifty years. A strong advocate of the Caribbean Court of Justice, Mr. Patterson (sorry, the Most Honorable P.J. Patterson etc) thinks politicians should come together in the Jamaica 50 “spirit of unity” and “do what is necessary” - that is, pass legislation to make the Court Jamaica’s final court of appeal, without of course consulting the Jamaican people on the matter. A battle is to follow… I don’t need a crystal ball to foresee politicians on both sides showing a remarkable lack of Jamaica 50 unity on the matter – perhaps involving much braying, shouting and walking out of the chamber.
And talking of unity – it has become a real buzzword, lately – the Gleaner continued to air the views of the privileged and successful on the topic on its front page. Even business leaders – the head of our local cigarette company included – are pontificating on the matter. I would like them to go down and talk to the men, women and young people of this country and ask them what they think about unity; especially perhaps in the “garrison” communities of our inner-cities (funny there has been very little talk about them, lately) where one side of a street is feuding with the other side, and small communities have names like “Vietnam” and “Dunkirk.” Even the Prime Minister’s garrison constituency. I wonder what they would have to say.
Raw sewage flows in the inappropriately-named Majesty Gardens in Kingston this week. One of the many signs of progress as Jamaica reaches the age of fifty?
There were, of course, endless speeches in Parliament, and numerous recorded messages from the Prime Minister, Governor General and Leader of the Opposition, on Emancipation Day and again for Jamaica 50. If you are really interested in reading them, the links are below. Our Prime Minister also gave an interview to Time magazine, talking about everything from homophobia (no, Jamaica, we are not really homophobic, and no, I am not going to do anything about changing the laws on buggery); to Usain Bolt, etc. The full interview is in the magazine and excerpts are in a link below.
There was an additional speech in Parliament late last week, by President of Nigeria Goodluck Jonathan. The hardly-ever-smiling President was warmly received, wore his usual felt hat both indoors and outdoors, and urged Jamaica to join his country in fighting poverty. Again, that old buzzword “Unity” or variations thereof continually punctuated his speech. In fact, he asked a very pertinent question: “Is the Black man really free today?” and continued, “Today the destiny of the Black person is in the hands of the Black people.” Well, Marcus Garvey told us that years ago.
President Jonathan had very little to smile about, on his own account. An Associated Press report printed in the Sunday Observer, a day or two after his visit, was headlined “Nigeria in turmoil.” Gloom and doom.
Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan looks less than happy at a Jamaica 50 celebration last Thursday. At right is Prime Minister Portia Simpson Miller; at left are the President’s wife and extreme left Culture Minister Lisa Hanna.
Others shared their views on Jamaica 50. A letter writer observed, “Isn’t it interesting that with all the festivities surrounding our Emancipation and Independence the only things that we can boast about are our music and our athletes? Are you telling me that almost 180 years after Emancipation and 50 years since Independence the only thing that we can brag about is entertainment?” Oh dear me. Financial analyst Dennis Chung, in his usual clear-headed manner, asked another question: “After the party, what?” Read his sensible and balanced article in the Observer’s Caribbean Business Report below.
And you may well have missed some interesting comments by economist Dr. Damien King of the University of the West Indies. “We are poor because we have not had the courage to expand opportunity. It is now time to choose inspired leadership that can create equality of opportunities instead of pandering to the poor,” Dr. King said recently. I could not agree more. But are our leaders listening? Well, for the past fifty years they have not been. And as we all know, our current Prime Minister loves the poor.
Dr. Damien King
OK, now the good and bad (and we are all beautiful, not ugly):
Bad first: A letter to the Editor from a pastor last week declared, “Flexi-work is slavery.” Oh, come on. Can the church please get worked up about some actually relevant issues? The debate about flexi-time has actually been going on for eighteen years, now, with the church vehemently opposed. Eighteen years. That’s progress for you.
The University Hospital of the West Indies and the Kingston Public Hospital have malfunctioning or non-functioning CT scan machines. These are two crucial, large and busy Kingston hospitals. They, and their patients, often have to resort to seeking assistance from private institutions – and the patients have to pay.
As radio talk show host Barbara Gloudon has regularly remarked, with Jamaica at fifty years old, the historic Ward Theatre in downtown Kingston is literally crumbling. Chunks of it will soon start falling on people’s heads.
The good stuff, finally:
I don’t usually gush over beauty queens – and Jamaicans do love their beauty queens – but have to congratulate the Miss Jamaica Festival Queen 2012, Ms. Kemesha Kelly. She is not just a pretty face (although her smile is dazzling). She is a youth advocate – intelligent and articulate, with a strong vision for Jamaica. One of those many young people we should be proud of. Big ups to Kemesha! You will go far.
Ms. Kemesha Kelly, pretty in pink and smart as a button.
And now, congratulations to a Jamaican overseas, and a former work colleague of mine in Jamaica, Luke Williams. The lanky Luke has lived in London for ten years now and he is a tremendous teacher, a writer, a great actor. He is also a correspondent for Radio Jamaica, so I hear his warm voice reporting from London on a regular basis. And Luke recently carried the Olympic torch! From Ilford High Road to Redbridge Town Hall. His school nominated him for the honor. Marvelous stuff. And a lovely article by Jamaica Observer writer Janice Budd, by the way.
Montego Bay’s own Luke Williams (right) lights the Olympic torch.
Our Jamaican Fulbright Scholars always do us proud, and six post-graduates were recently selected for courses in the United States ranging from public policy to tourism and the environment to finance and pest management. Congratulations to them all.
Six Fulbright Scholars celebrate with U.S. Ambassador to Jamaica Pamela E. Bridgewater (center) at the U.S. Embassy recently.
And once again, the American Friends of Jamaica came up trumps. They donated a forty-foot container full of very important equipment and supplies to the Cornwall Regional Hospital in Montego Bay, which serves a wide area with a population of almost a million people. I have no idea why this news was tucked away in the Gleaner’s social pages…
The American Friends of Jamaica’s Caron Chung with the 40-foot container all packed and ready for Cornwall Regional Hospital in Montego Bay.
Last but not least, an organization called Halls of Learning has done a great job with a special summer camp for young people in the often-volatile Mountain View area of Kingston. Its young and enterprising founder, Marvin Hall, has a unique approach to learning which includes technology (robotics) and stimulating the child’s natural creativity. Great stuff.
Children get creative at the inner-city summer camp in Mountain View organized by Halls of Learning.
To end, sadly blood was still shed on our island during its weeklong celebrations. My sincere condolences to the families, friends and all those affected by the sad deaths of the following Jamaicans.
And so we march on, into our next fifty years! Have a great remainder of the week.
Killed by police:
Joseph Williams, 29. Llandilo, Westmoreland
Randy Allwood, 21, Alma, Westmoreland
Other murders:
Kadena Jarrett, 24, Frome, Westmoreland
Robert Williams, 24, Dover, St. Mary
Dudley Gordon, Rose End, St. Mary
Sasheka McBean, 25, Spring Mount, St. James
Oneil Lee, Spring Mount, St. James
Jerome Allen, Spring Mount, St. James
Therese Marie Cole, 26, St. James
Davian Robinson, Port Antonio, Portland
Oneil Brown, 30, Cassava Piece, St. Andrew
Uleces Johns, 51, Slipe, St. Elizabeth
Stacy-Ann Smith, 17, Wynters Pen, St. Catherine
http://www.jis.gov.jm/special_sections/Independence/symbols.html (Independence symbols)
http://jamaica-gleaner.com/gleaner/20120731/lead/lead6.html (JPS licence invalid, rules Supreme Court)
http://www.jamaicaobserver.com/news/UWI-professor-bemoans-Ja-s-poor-record-keeping-practices_12086060 (UWI professor bemoans Jamaica’s poor record-keeping practices)
http://jamaica-gleaner.com/gleaner/20120730/lead/lead8.html (Can you diG it? Jamaica Gleaner)
http://jamaica-gleaner.com/gleaner/20120803/lead/lead8.html (Felice to tighten noose on financial crimes)
http://www.jamaicaobserver.com/news/New-FID-boss-Justin-Felice-vows-to-tackle-corruption_12152121 (New FID boss Justin Felice vows to tackle corruption)
http://jamaica-gleaner.com/gleaner/20120608/news/news6.htmlRelated articles (Anti-corruption body to work with new task force)
http://jamaica-gleaner.com/gleaner/20120801/lead/lead1.html (Troupe set free)
Jamaica 50 – The Celebration Continues (prweb.com)
50-50 Reflections (petchary.wordpress.com)
Who Is Jamaica? (nytimes.com)
Jamaica celebrates 50th anniversary to mixed reviews (lfpress.com)
VIDEO: Memories of Jamaican independence (bbc.co.uk)
http://www.jamaicaobserver.com/news/Raw-sewage-flowing-in-Majesty-Gardens-streets (Raw sewage flowing in Majesty Gardens streets)
http://www.jamaicaobserver.com/news/PJ-wants-politicians-to-show-maturity_12098630 (PJ wants politicians to show maturity)
http://repeatingislands.com/2012/08/05/jamaica-at-50-island-nations-p-m-talks-about-the-queen-the-caribbean-and-usain-bolt/ (Jamaica at 50: Island Nation’s PM talks – Time Magazine)
http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1834406,00.html (Can Jamaica’s sprinters fight crime? – Time Magazine)
http://www.nigeriavillagesquare.com/newsflash/president-jonathan-speech-at-jamaicas-50th-annivesary-celebrations.html (President Jonathan Speech at Jamaica’s 50th Anniversary Celebrations)
http://www.jamaicaobserver.com/letters/What-are-we-celebrating-_12142507 (What are we celebrating?)
http://www.jamaicaobserver.com/business/Jamaica-2012–A-time-for-reflection (A Time for Reflection: Dennis Chung column)
http://www.jamaicaobserver.com/news/Redistributive-policies-have-not-helped-the-poor–says-Damien-King_12098736 (Redistributive policies have not helped the poor, says Damien King)
http://jamaica-gleaner.com/gleaner/20120802/news/news3.html (Hospital emergency)
http://www.jamaicaobserver.com/magazines/career/Fulbright-scholars-feted_11990181 (Fulbright scholars feted)
http://www.jamaicaobserver.com/news/Luke-Williams–moment-to-shine_12035947 (Luke Williams’ moment to shine)
http://jamaica-gleaner.com/gleaner/20120802/lead/lead5.html (Huge support for Mountain View special summer camp)
http://jamaica-gleaner.com/gleaner/20120803/social/social4.html (American Friends of Jamaica gives Cornwall Regional medical supplies)
http://jamaica-gleaner.com/gleaner/20061127/flair/flair1.html (Marvin Hall’s Robotics Stimul-i)
Inspirational Woman Of The Day: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (born 15 September 1977) is a Nigerian writer.
She is Igbo. She has been called "the most prominent" of a "procession of critically acclaimed young anglophone authors is succeeding in attracting a new generation of readers to African literature".
Born in the town of Enugu, she grew up in the university town of Nsukka in southeastern Nigeria, where the University of Nigeria is situated.
Related articles
- chimamanda ngozi adichie (v) (blkcowrie.wordpress.com)
- Nigeria, 1966/World Refugee Day, 20 June 2012 (cathannabel.wordpress.com)
- Hay Festival 2012: What they dream about in Africa (telegraph.co.uk)
- Half of a Yellow Sun (shelflove.wordpress.com)
- Book Review: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's "Purple Hibiscus" (theycallmekeeks.com)
African Postman: The Dangerous Mix of Politics and Religion
I thought I would share with you an interesting article by Wole Soyinka, the Nigerian Nobel Prize-winning writer, who has been a good friend of Jamaica. He is currently the first African to be honored as the President’s Marymount Institute Professor in Residence at Loyola Marymount University in Maryland. Professor Soyinka has been politically active inside Nigeria and has continued to speak out on political and social issues in his own country, in Africa and globally. Professor Soyinka’s Nobel acceptance speech in 1986, “This Past Must Address Its Present,” was dedicated to Nelson Mandela. A link to the lecture is below.
Nigerian writer Wole Soyinka at Calabash International Literary Festival in Treasure Beach, Jamaica in 2010.
Here is an article by Professor Soyinka from allAfrica.com, in which he expresses his long-held concern over religious fundamentalism – in this case expressing his views on the Nigerian Islamist group Boko Haram (its name means “Western education is a sin”). Today (June 18), Boko Haram claimed responsibility for the bombing of three churches in Nigeria’s northern state of Kaduna over the weekend. The attacks, and subsequent reprisal killings, left at least 75 dead and 120 wounded.
The aftermath of a church bombing by the Boko Haram militant group.
Boko Haram is completely political. But with the toxic element of religion infused into it, it gives them the leg to ally with international terrorist bodies based on religion, who are only too happy to be of assistance.
Let me begin by reminding everyone that Boko Haram has a very long history, whether you describe Boko Haram as an army of the discontent, or even as some people grotesquely try to suggest, “revolutionaries,” or you describe them as, legitimately, this time, as marginalized or feeling marginalized.
When I say that the phenomenon has a very long history, I am talking about a movement that relies on religion as a fuel for their operation, as a fuel for mobilisation, as the impetus, an augmentation of any other legitimate or illegitimate grievance that they might have against society. Because of that fuel, that irrational, very combustible fuel of religion of a particular strain, of a particular irredentist strain; because of the nature of that religious adherence, which involves the very lethal dimension of brain-washing from childhood, all a man needs to be told is that this is a religious cause. All they need to be told is that this is an enemy of religion and they are ready to kill. No matter the motivations, no matter the extra-motivations of those who send them out, they need only one motivation: that they are fighting the cause of that religion.
People wonder, sometimes, if they are fighting the cause of religion, why are they also killing fellow religionists? It is very important for us to understand that they have a very narrow view of even their faith. Anyone outside that narrow confine, narrow definition (in this case, we are talking about Islam), is already an infidel, an unbeliever, a hypocrite, an enemy of God (they use all these multifarious descriptions) and therefore is fit for elimination. If they believe that this environment contains any non-believer in their very narrow strain of Islam, that person or that very area is due for sanitation. And if there are those who also believe, who are confined within the very narrow limit of their arbitrary religion, any chance that there are such people, they consider them matyrs, who will be received in the bosom of Allah, with double credits as having been killed accidentally.
What I am saying is not any theorising; it is not any speculation. Examine this particular strain of Islam from Afghanistan, through Iran to Somalia to Mauritania. We are speaking in fact of a deviant arm of Islam, whose first line of enemies, in fact, are those who I call the orthodox Muslims with whom we move, interact, inter-marry, professional colleagues and so on. They don’t consider them true Muslims.
So the seeming paradox is explained in that. And this mind is bred right from infancy. We are talking about the madrasas, we are talking about the almajiris. They have only one line of command: their Mullah. If the Mullah says go, they go; come, they come; kill, they kill; beg, they beg. They don’t believe in leaving their narrow religion, which teaches them that they have to be catered for either by their immediate superior as an authority or by the community or sometimes an extension of that by the town. When they go out to beg, they believe that this mission of begging is divinely ordered and it is the responsibility of the person from whom they are begging to give them alms.
They sit before their Mullah or their Emir or their chief or whatever and memorize the Qu’ran. Their entire circumscription or mental formation is to be able to recite the Qu’ran from the beginning to the end. Outside of that, there is no educational horizon. So, I want us to distinguish very carefully. If you don’t distinguish, if you don’t narrow these things down to the specifics, we are likely to be misunderstood, as people like me have been misunderstood, because I have been against fundamentalism all my life, of any religion, whether it’s Christianity, Orisha worship, Buddhism, Hinduism or whatever. Any kind of extreme in faith that makes you feel that you are divinely authorised to be the executioner of your deity or that there is only one view of the world, or that only one view exists, for me, is pernicious and it is anti-human. That is why I am making this preliminary explanation.
The second elaboration I want to make is that I have never liked the expression, “the core North”. We are talking about North because the North is very much identified with Islam. And for one reason, there is no core South. I don’t know about the core East, I don’t know about the core West. So why that expression? For me it is too general, too loose and it confuses the dramatis personae of our political life.
I, however, identify hard-core northerners, as in hardcore pornography. There exist hardcore northerners. They may be in the minority, but they believe that they are divinely endowed to run any society.
They are hardcore Northerners, whether you are talking about Sheikh Gumi and others. For a character like Sheikh Gumi, politics fuses with religion. A man who said Christianity is nothing, who said a Christian would rule this nation over his dead body. So, we have hardcore northerners, hardcore northern Islamists like the late Sheik Gumi. Among those that I describe as the hardcore northerners, (note I didn’t say Islamists), are people like Sani Ahmed Yerima, the former Zamfara State governor, who is now a legislator. There are hardcore northern Islamists. Why do I use Yerima? Because in him, you also encounter the fusion of a credo in Northernism and at the same time in Islamism. So you can see somebody like him as an opportunist. And I say this, you know, because he himself admitted to some of our people in NALICON during the immediate post-Abacha era, when he was asked why he decided to turn Zamfara into a theocratic state in a secular dispensation. He said, and I dare him to deny it, that it was the only weapon he had to snatch power. He said the PDP machinery was so strong that he needed something which would appeal to raw emotions, to mobilise and get the governorship.
If, periodically, I refer to this individual, it is because he represents to me, the opportunistic face of Islamism. And, of course, he had to deliver after he became governor. He is not the only one. I distinguish between him and Gumi because Gumi never sought political power. He was just a raw believer in raw Northernism and Islam. The two tributaries fuse in a personality like that.
In the case of Mr. Yerima and a number of others, Islam is just an instrument. I don’t consider them genuine Muslims. For them, however, they are willing to go the full length of Islam because it pays them politically. Having said that, I do not say for a moment that he is responsible for Boko Haram or that he has any hand in it. But I say that his school of thought and his school of opportunism is responsible for the birth of a movement like Boko Haram.
Map of Nigeria showing the largely Islamic states of the North.
Related articles and websites:
http://www.informationnigeria.org/2012/02/wole-soyinka-on-boko-harams-hit-list.html: Wole Soyinka on Boko Haram’s Hit List
http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/1986/soyinka-bio.html: Biography of Wole Soyinka on Nobelprize.org
http://tribune.com.ng/index.php/opinion/42731-now-that-boko-haram-has-shunned-dialogue: Now that Boko Haram has shunned dialogue (Nigerian Tribune)
http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Africa/2012/0112/What-is-Nigeria-s-Boko-Haram-5-things-to-know/Who-are-they: What is Nigeria’s Boko Haram: Five Things to Know (CS Monitor)
http://jamaica-gleaner.com/gleaner/20100603/ent/ent3.html: Wole Soyinka: A Special Gift for Calabash (Jamaica Gleaner)
http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/1986/soyinka-lecture.html: Wole Soyinka’s Nobel Prize speech
U.S., Nigeria At Odds Over Designation of Boko Haram As Terrorist Organization (ibtimes.com)
Blasts hit northern Nigerian city (bbc.co.uk)
Boko Haram Wants All Christians To Convert To Islam (adeyemiolalemi.wordpress.com)
African Postman: Niger and the Challenge of Water
Water is a crucial issue in developing and developed countries. World Water Day becomes, every year, a more important day on our calendars. In this article from the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, the important message for Niger, for Africa and for the world is: “We have to change our behavior, and use and manage water responsibly.”
Let us think about ways in which we, in Jamaica, can conserve water and use it more carefully. Newsrooms like to call it “the precious commodity,” and we like to repeat the mantra, “Water is Life.” But we’d better believe it’s true.
Men bathe in the Niger River, Niamey.
Meanwhile in Denham Town, Kingston, a broken water main has caused many residents to have no water in their pipes for several weeks. Instead, the water has dug a huge hole in the road, from which residents gather water for washing. WASTE, WASTE, WASTE!
JOHANNESBURG, 30 May 2012 (IRIN) – Right now, people in Niger, Mali and Nigeria could be sipping 50,000-year-old water from a two-aquifer system buried below their feet. But some of it may be contaminated.
A combination of soaring temperatures, declining rainfall and a booming population is putting a squeeze on the amount of surface water available for people living in one of the hottest parts of the world, so more and more boreholes are being drilled to tap the precious groundwater beneath the three countries.
But few realize that the water in the Iullemeden Aquifer System, which they see as their salvation, is connected to the surface water and under just as much pressure.
“Countries and people do not realize that groundwater and the surface water are all interconnected, and that there is a precarious balance between the two and we have to look at both in relation to each other,” said Abdel Kader Dodo, the manager of a project by Sahara and Sahel Observatory (OSS), a regional intergovernmental body, to help Niger, Mali and Nigeria share the Iullemeden water carefully.
The Niger River and its tributary, the Rima, feed as well as draw water from Iullemeden, which comprises two major aquifers – the Intercalary Continental (IC) at the bottom, and the Terminal Continental (TC) at the top. Part of the TC is recharged by surface water, while the deep waters of the IC are not easily recharged, and are also being threatened by pollution caused by extensive mining in the region.
The OSS discovered that the Niger River receives 125 million cubic metres of water from the aquifer system every year, while the Rima provides it with 20 million cubic metres of water annually, and draws 12 million cubic metres from it.
The amount of water drawn from the Iullemeden has more than doubled over three decades, from 50 million cubic metres in 1970 to 180 million cubic metres in 2004, while the population that depends on water from the aquifer has shot up from six million in 1970 to 15 million in 2000. This might double by 2025, says the research team at OSS. The number of boreholes and wells drawing water has increased from a few hundred points in the 1940s to more than 17,000 in 2007.
Dodo of the OSS said the impression that the aquifer is under-exploited is not accurate. The government of Niger has said that just 20 percent of the country’s renewable water resources are being tapped, and almost none of the non-renewable sources.
The warning has serious implications. In 1995, during a period when temperatures soared in Niger, the withdrawal of water exceeded the Iullemeden system’s recharge rate. The OSS research team projects that there could be a drawdown of 10 metres of the deep waters of the IC by 2025.
Men draw water from a deep well in Zinder, Niger (Photo: Anne Isabelle Leclercq/IRIN)
But the moment people dip into these deep waters, the risk of being exposed to water with a high concentration of minerals increases. “There has been a surge in the number of children crippled by skeletal and dental fluorosis [a bone disease caused by too-high fluoride content in water, which often affects people in areas with deep boreholes],” said Dodo.
Uranium mines like this pollute the water in Niger. (Photo: Photograph: Yann Arthus-Bertrand/ Yann Arthus-Bertrand/CORBIS)
One of the best-known high fluoride belts extends along the East African Rift from Eritrea to Malawi, according tothe World Health Organization (WHO). Studies in early 2000 discovered high prevalence rates of the disease in parts of Niger and Nigeria. WHO reported that since then people in some of these areas have been provided with alternative water.
Mining and the use of chemicals is another common cause of water pollution in these areas.
What can be done?
“Mitigation measures and alternative sources of water can only work to a certain extent – we have to change our behaviour, and use and manage water responsibly,” Dodo said. “The Iullemeden Aquifer System is located in one of the earth’s regions most vulnerable to climate change, desertification and drought – two phenomena that threaten, among other things, the recharge of aquifers.”
In 2008 the OSS project helped map the aquifer and develop an information base on it, such as the flow, discharge and recharge rates. These tools can help the countries concerned to set up a transboundary mechanism to manage Iullemeden, but not much has been done. “In 2009, Mali, Niger and Nigeria adopted an Agreement with road map (not yet signed) in order to establish this consultation mechanism for managing transboundary groundwater resources,” said Dodo.
Until the government develops and implements a plan to manage the surface water, a lot of money and effort is being wasted on providing water in Niger, where people are dealing with yet another drought. Aquadev, a small Belgian NGO, has struck water four in out of 15 attempts in six years. Each attempt cost at least US$20,000. “There is a lack of knowledge and skills to this kind of work at the local level,” said Stephanie van Steenberghe of Aquadev.
Dodo said the local authorities need good maps that show the aquifer at the village level. “The maps we have now produced should be downscaled, and the people involved in this job need a good understanding of the hydrology and the geology of the area.”
Using Isotopes
Help could be at hand. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) uses isotopes (variants of a chemical element) for water analysis and has helped Chad, Egypt, Libya and Sudan tap into the Nubian aquifer.
The IAEA has used isotopes to test the quality of water for decades. It is a cheaper method, as it only takes a few samples to show what the quality of water is for hundreds of kilometres.
First, the age of the aquifer is determined by using the naturally occurring radioactive isotope, carbon-14, in the same way it is used to test ancient artefacts. The water in the Iullemeden’s IC aquifer is more than 50,000 years old. The IAEA can also determine how much water remains the aquifer, and how long it could last. The IAEA in a collaborative project with other UN agencies discovered that the water in the Nubian aquifer would last several centuries, putting any concerns about possible conflicts in the future at rest.
Dodo said that if countries know how much water is available, and until when, the potential risk for conflict over water can be deflated. “When it is all transparent and out in the open, they should be able to manage it properly.”
Related articles and links:
http://www.irinnews.org/Report/95536/NIGER-In-deep-water
http://petchary.wordpress.com/2011/07/08/a-watery-tale-2/
http://www.jamaicaobserver.com/news/Broken-pipe-causes-discomfort-for-Denham-Town-residents
Greece can do without the ‘sympathy’ the IMF has shown Niger | Nick Dearden (guardian.co.uk)
The Libyan aftermath: Mali and Niger in crisis (cafod.org.uk)
Scientists Say Africa Sits on Huge Reservoir of Water (voanews.com)
Groundwater in Africa (earth-pages.co.uk)
Oxfam: Hunger Crisis in Niger Turning into a Catastrophe (voanews.com)
Niger is new MIGA member (ghanabusinessnews.com)
The Tenere Desert, Niger. (photo: Alessandro Vanucci)
A traditional home in Zinder, Niger.
Feed Your Head
Today (or tomorrow, depending on where you are) is Blog Action Day 2011. As it is World Food Day, the theme is, inevitably, Food. And the Petchary is participating, along with (hopefully) thousands of other bloggers across the globe.
I was thinking that like Water, Food never used to be a “hot” issue. But that’s not really true. As a child, I remember growing up with the image of Biafran children (Biafra was a break-away state in Nigeria, which lasted on its own for just about three years until it was re-absorbed in 1970). The haunting images of children with swollen heads, distended bellies and hopeless eyes have been commonplace on our television screens ever since. The bitter Nigerian civil war brought famine, and many thousands of Igbo men, women and children died.
This photograph speaks for itself.
And, at the same time, I was hearing about a “wine lake” and a “butter mountain” in Europe, which was producing more food than it could possibly consume. I believe all the surplus wine from grapes grown mainly in France is still turned into industrial alcohol. And that big old butter mountain, created by Europe’s agricultural subsidies, once again reared up on the horizon just a couple of years ago. 30,000 tons of butter were bought up, at taxpayers’ expense, in 2009. The global economic slowdown has made matters worse – demand has dropped, prices for such commodities as butter and milk dropped. And then there is still a small range of grain mountains, too.
One of the original butter mountains... and these people seem to find it quite amusing, indeed.
I used to naively wonder why all this excess couldn’t be simply transferred where it is needed, to the starving in Africa, Asia, and anywhere else where there was real need. Just kind of “spread the love.” But of course, we all know it isn’t as simple as that.
Where does that leave Jamaica, an island of close to three million – struggling as it is in a monstrous web of enormous debt, high unemployment, low productivity and environmental stress? No, we are not a happy little island where the natives sit underneath coconut trees all day – we have to “get a food” like everyone else (money/employment means, simply, food on the table). We have an amazing culinary tradition, going right back to the Tainos who created the extraordinarily wonderful jerk barbecue (chicken, pork etc). Then there’s ackee and saltfish; curry goat; mannish water (soup made of unmentionable parts of the goat) and a range of other soups that put hair on your chest; steamed callaloo; escoveitch fish and festival; and so many other spicy, heart-warming delights.
A bowl of typically murky mannish water, consumed in large quantities at Jamaican funerals.
I think the problem for many Jamaicans on the lower end of the social scale is under-nourishment and very poor nutrition. Teachers in schools across the island, especially in inner-city and rural areas, will tell you that children come to school simply hungry. They may only have had a cup of tea for breakfast. There is a school feeding program, but is it enough and is the food nourishing? Jamaicans on the poverty line eat chicken back (the boniest part of the bird) which many of their wealthier fellow-countrymen and women feed to their dogs. Children on the street suck “bag juice” (basically sugar and water). With food prices soaring, it is a mystery to the Petchary how some poor Jamaicans manage to buy any food at all. For a developing country, the cost of food is extremely high.
A girl keeping a firm grip on her bag juice in inner city Tivoli Gardens, west Kingston.
What is the answer for Jamaica? The Agriculture Minister is urging us to grow food in our backyard, and more of this could be done. And yet there remain major deficiencies in our diet; and despite the plenty of the land and the supermarket shelves groaning with a tremendous range of imported foods and local produce, people still knock on our gate almost daily with the refrain, “Mi hungry.” We regularly find ourselves in the kitchen making a sandwich for some poor soul.
When people beg money, it’s one thing; when a young woman tells you she is hungry and you see her sit down on the sidewalk and devour the sandwich you just made, it is a very disturbing matter.
Yes, food is an issue here in Jamaica. Although some may not wish to believe so.
Lunch.
Related articles
- World Food Day is October 16: How will you participate? (wagnerfpa.wordpress.com)
- World Food Day: Feeding Bangladesh – Caritas Internationalis (cafod.org.uk)
- EU’s butter mountain is back (New York Times)
- The Learning Network Blog: World Food Day: Addressing Hunger Around the Globe (learning.blogs.nytimes.com)
- Do You Really Know All About Jamaican FOOD??? (caribbeanrecipekits.wordpress.com)
- The Nigerian Civil War Photography of Hakan Gottberg (africaunchained.blogspot.com)
Summer Reading
I have updated my Book Reviews pages. There are eight titles (seven novels, one non-fiction) that the Petchary would highly recommend — from Australia, Libya, Nigeria, Wyoming, Bangla Desh, Appalachia, Dominican Republic and Uruguay. You might find something here for summer reading. More reviews to follow in the next few weeks (and the Petchary would welcome your feedback, of course).
Happy reading!
A woman's read on the beach
More goodbyes
It was time to say goodbye, again, in Bloemfontein and Durban and Polokwane.
Firstly, to the Super Eagles of Nigeria. I thought their wings were stronger, and would have carried them further. Kalu Uche scored his second goal of the competition. Young Uche was born in Aba, a bustling sea port in the south, surrounded by oil wells; and his acrobatic celebrations are legendary. Here’s one.
Uche in full flight
Secondly, to the unhappy French. Their stay in South Africa has been a men-only soap opera. Tantrums, threats and insults flew. The French sports minister reportedly gave them a ”dressing down” in their dressing room before their South Africa match (and hopefully they were dressed, the minister being a woman). She used phrases like “moral disaster” and reduced the grown men to tears. The sulky and unsmiling Anelka seems to have started it.
Some might say it was restitution for the horrible handball by the (still lithe and wonderful) Thierry Henry in the game against Ireland that qualified France for the World Cup. Anyway, home they all go, with their tails between their legs. The Petchary would not like to be in their shoes/boots.
French captain Patrice Evra's defeated look
And then the home team…well, stayed at home. But they did not go out with a whimper, but with a roar of trumpets and two nice goals over the hapless French. The tall defender Bongani Khumalo soared above a French defender to put in a header; and Katlego Mphela, FIFA’s Man of the Match, was a delight with the second goal. Mphela plays for a team with the wonderful name, Mamelodi Sundowns. And although the sun set on South Africa’s hopes, its pride and dignity was restored. This only seemed just and fitting.
Mphela's emphatic goal
And finally, the Greeks. They perhaps unwisely decided to put up a barrier of defensive players against the darting, lively and positive Argentines. It worked for most of the game, but in the end gaps opened up, the once sturdy defenders slowed, and Messi’s scampering runs began to tire them. Meanwhile, their lone striker, the doe-eyed Georgios Samaras, tried valiantly to play his lonely game. The commentator called Samaras “The Greek island.”
A beautiful Greek island
So tomorrow, more separating of the wheat from the chaff, the men from the boys. All the Petchary knows is that the Argentines’ wheat field is bright and waving in the summer breeze – tended carefully by the ever-hugging, ever-kissing Diego Maradona.
The hugs specialist
Love and peace, man.
