Breastfeeding The Daughter means I'm mostly reading books that are not too heavy (as in weight, rather than subject matter), and that require little effort in keeping track of plots despite only bite-size reading portions. I mentioned RUNNING FOR THE HILLS by Horatio Clare a few posts ago, and this is beautifully written - who knew a childhood hill-farming in Wales could have so many similarities to a childhood on a rural mission station in KwaZulu?! Lots of echoes there. I also thoroughly enjoyed THE BRIGHT SIDE OF DISASTER by Katherine Center. Although the UK cover makes this look remarkably chick-litty, it happens to be a rather hilarious account of first-time (and single) parenting. I don't usually go for this sort of thing, but it was perfect as first-time-mum-reading. If you've ever wondered what actually having a baby and living with it full-time is like (only funnier), then this is the book for you.

I also tackled CINNAMON CITY: Falling for the Magical City of Marrakech by Miranda Innes. I mean this in a positive sense, but CINNAMON CITY is perfect plane/train/holiday reading. By this I mean books that carry you along most enjoyably without requiring too much effort on the part of the reader. If you enjoy books about people setting up house amongst lemon groves in Spain or olive groves in Italy, then you'll probably love this. Other types of books which complement it are Taschen's style and photography books like AFRICAN STYLE or AFRICAN INTERIORS: beautiful coffee table books, but not related in any way to average lifestyles in Africa. The comparison is drawn simply to say that Innes's book is an enjoyable and interesting account of renovating a house in a foreign country, with all the angst and excitement that entails, but it is not a book about Marrakech or its people in any real sense. The cover description only serves to highlight this:

"Want to escape to a place where the sun always shines? Where passionate music, magic potions and the drama of Africa are cooled by the genius of Arabic culture?"

Oh retch. Where do they find these blurb writers?!

A side effect of having a baby on the way is the sudden need to declutter and make space for a nursery. Our box room is over-run with books and I've been taking a long hard look at them - for instance, do I really need a copy of Aristotle's THE POLITICS from an undergraduate philosophy course sixteen years ago?! And so on...

This has also reminded me just how many books I still want to read that are lurking quietly on the shelves. I've just pulled out ten this morning that I'd like to prioritize over the next few months (all descriptions taken from dustjackets):

THE POLITICS OF MEMORY: TRUTH, HEALING & SOCIAL JUSTICE - edited by Ifi Amadiume & Abdullahi An-Na'im
"This book brings together a distinguished group of scholars, policy-makers, justice workers and social activists...in a creative engagement with issues of human rights in relation to truth, healing and social justice, they look at how people rebuild broken communities and the tensions between reconciliation and social justice in post-conflict situations."

MIMI AND TOUTOU GO FORTH - Giles Foden
"At the start of World War One, German warships controlled Lake Tanganyika in Central Africa. The British had no naval craft at all upon 'Tanganjikasee', as the Germans called it. This mattered: it was the longest lake in the world and of great strategic advantage. In June 1915, a force of 28 men was despatched from Britain on a vast journey. Their orders were to take control of the lake. To reach it, they had to haul two motorboats with the unlikely names of Mimi and Toutou through the wilds of the Congo..."

THE SOCCER WAR - Ryszard Kapuscinski
"In 1964, renowned reporter Ryszard Kapuscinski was appointed by the Polish Press Agency as its only foreign correspondent, and for the next ten years he was 'responsible' for fifty countries. He befriended Che Guevara in Bolivia, Salvador Allende in Chile and Patrice Lumumba in the Congo. He reported on the fighting that broke out between Honduras and El Salvador in 1969 after their matches to determine which one of them would qualify for the 1970 World Cup. By the time he returned to Poland he had witnessed twenty-seven revolutions and coups and been sentenced to death four times. The Soccer War is Kapuscinski's story, his eyewitness account of the emergence of the Third World."

FACING MT. KENYA - Jomo Kenyatta
"Jomo Kenyatta, the grandson of a Kikuyu medicine man, was among the foremost leaders of African nationalism and one of the great men of the modern world. In the 1930's he studied at the London School of Economics and took his degree in anthropology...one result of which is this now famous account of his own Kikuyu tribe."

HOUSE OF STONE - Christina Lamb
"One bright morning Nigel Hough, one of the few remaining white farmers in Mugabe’s Zimbabwe, received the news he was dreading – a crowd were at the gate demanding he surrender his home and land. To his horror, his family's much-loved nanny Aqui was at the head of the violent mob that then stole his homestead and imprisoned him in an outhouse..."

WEST WITH THE NIGHT - Beryl Markham

"Did you read Beryl Markham's book, West with the Night? I knew her fairly well in Africa and never would have suspected that she could and would put pen to paper except to write in her flyer's log book. As it is, she has written so well, and marvelously well, that I was completely ashamed of myself as a writer. I felt that I was simply a carpenter with words, picking up whatever was furnished on the job and nailing them together and sometimes making an okay pig pen. But [she] can write rings around all of us who consider ourselves writers. The only parts of it that I know about personally, on account of having been there at the time and heard the other people's stories, are absolutely true . . . I wish you would get it and read it because it is really a bloody wonderful book."--Ernest Hemingway

SERETSE & RUTH - Wilf & Trish Mbanga
"When the young Seretse Khama, heir to the kingdom of the Bamangwato, was sent by his uncles to read law at Oxford in 1945, no one could foresee that he would fall in love with an English woman - and plunge Bechuanaland (now Botswana) into deep crisis."

THE KANGA & THE KANGAROO COURT: REFLECTIONS ON THE RAPE TRIAL OF JACOB ZUMA - Mmatshilo Motsei
"This book is inspired by the courage of a young woman, known variously as ‘Khwezi’ and ‘the complainant’, who took a principled decision to lay a charge of rape against Jacob Zuma, a man who was to her a father-figure, a family friend, a comrade, and the Deputy President of South Africa."

A MONTH AND A DAY: A DETENTION DIARY - Ken Saro-Wiwa
"Ken Saro-Wiwa was an outspoken critic of the Nigerian government - he accuses them of genocide - and of the international oil companies, notably Shell, which he holds responsible for the ecological destruction and terrible industrial pollution of his homelands. Yet, despite a brutal government campaign against the Ogoni, he always advocated peaceful and non-violent protest. Eventually Ken Saro-Wiwa was released as a result of intense international pressure, But in May 1994 he was arrested again and remained in prison until his death."

KINSHIP: A FAMILY'S JOURNEY IN AFRICA & AMERICA - Philippe Wamba
"As Wamba illustrates with poignant, sometimes amusing detail, American blacks and black Africans are on very different wavelengths, and their views of each other are often as romanticized, stereotyped, and culturally misapprehended as those on the better documented spectrum of white American and European perceptions of Africa."--Alex Shoumatoff

It should take me a while to read those in between the mounds of fiction, but I'm looking forward to them all. In the meantime, anyone like a copy of Aristotle's THE POLITICS?!

Now, where was I?! I was about to blog about my trip to the Africa Book Centre, and indeed here are the titles I rooted out while there:

HAPPY BIRTHDAY JAMELA! by Niki Daly
I have a genuine soft spot for Daly's work, and if you have a child under the age of 10 so should you. His illustrations are a delight. Jamela is now established as a real character with several books to her name. All stand alone, but try and read them in order if possible (she looks like she's grown ever so slightly since the first book!). Jamela's birthday looms and what she really wants is a pair of sparkly shoes to go with her party dress. Her shoes need to be serviceable for school use however, but she has an idea... The look on her face in Daly's illustration as she comes up with her crafty plan is priceless!

A WOMAN ALONE by Bessie Head
Heinemann has re-issued this title, edited and with a new introduction by Craig MacKenzie. It is one of the African Writers Series, but strangely they don't have it listed on their site, so just go straight to the Africa Book Centre if you want it. Bessie Head is a wonderful writer, one of the finest ever to have come from Southern Africa. If you have enjoyed Alexander McCall Smith's Mma Ramotswe series then try Bessie Head's WHEN RAIN CLOUDS GATHER as the grittier side of rural Botswanan life. It is captivating reading. From the cover blurb:

A Woman Alone is a collection of autobiographical writings, sketches and essays which covers the entire span of Bessie Head's creative life, up to her death in 1986 at the age of 49. It reveals a woman of great sensitivity and vitality, inspired through her knowledge of suffering in a 'reverence for ordinary people' and finding some healing for her own anguish in a quiet corner of Africa.

'I need a quiet backwater and a sense of living as though I am barely alive on the earth, treading a small, careful pathway through life.'

I am looking forward to reading this immensely, having also recently procured BESSIE HEAD: THUNDER BEHIND HER EARS by Gillian Stead Eilersen. I think I'm in for a Bessie Head reading fest of some description. You have been warned.

Lastly, BURMA BOY by Biyi Bandele
Bandele has an amazing range in his writing, and I am looking forward to this one, the subject matter a topic largely ignored; In June The Guardian ran an article on Bandele for The Family supplement:

Biyi Bandele's father fought in Burma, a forgotten soldier in a famous war. He came home in a straitjacket, a broken man. Years later his wife and children were still paying a heavy price...

...So I went to the Imperial War Museum. And there I found a treasure trove of memoirs by many of the British officers under whom my father and his comrades had served, detailing the considerable part they played. I discovered that there were 120,000 Africans - one in every six members of the 14th Army, the British Indian army that took on the Japanese in Burma. Japanese prisoners-of-war told their British interrogators that the Africans were the best jungle fighters the allies possessed...

This is the inspiration for Bandele's BURMA BOY. The jacket describes it as:

Taut and immediate, at once sombre and exhilarating, Burma Boy is the first novel to depict the experiences of black African soldiers in the Second World War. This is a story of real-life battles, of the men who made the legend of the Chindits, the unconventional, quick strike division of the British Army in India. Horrific and always brilliantly executed, this vividly realised account details the madness, the sacrifice and the dark humour of that war's most vicious battleground. It is also the moving story of a boy trying to live long enough to become a man.

Strangely topical, a memorial service has just taken place for the 649 black South Africans who sank with their ship, the SS Mendi, off the Isle of Wight 90 years ago. A different war, but forgotten heroes too - read more about their extraordinary story in The Independent.

Last month in Rochester's Backroom Bookshop (43 High Street, ME1 1LN; Tel: 01634 308035; no website) I discovered the rather startling TELL ME, JOSEPHINE edited by Barbara Hall. Published originally by Andre Deutsch in 1964, and in paperback by Pan Books in 1967, it is a collection of agony aunt letters to Josephine (Barbara Hall) of the Zambia Mail. It even has a foreword by Kenneth Kaunda, the then Prime Minister of Zambia. Here's a taster:

'On the train from Bulawayo I met a girl. She gave me her address and I sent a missive concerning great love. She replied saying, "You are too young to love a big girl like me."

'What can I say to that?"

Tell her you are growing older every day.

I'll entertain you with a few more as I read on...

A highlight for me of the Hay Festival 2007 was hearing Wangari Maathai, winner of the Nobel Peace Prize 2004. What an extraordinary and inspirational individual. I had expected her intelligence and forthrightness to shine through, but she also turned out to be really funny!

On the occasion of her winning the Nobel, the BBC (full article here) noted:

Her former husband, whom she divorced in the 1980s, was said to have remarked that she was "too educated, too strong, too successful, too stubborn and too hard to control".

Read intelligent, articulate, successful, confident and independent instead, and you'd have that about right.

Maathai had a few strong things to say about authoritarian governments in Africa, and about exploitation of Africa by western countries. She argued that unfortunately what often happens when a new government comes to power is that ministers take being in government as an opportunity to accrue power, and become the same as whoever they have replaced. Getting into office often means that MPs get disconnected; she urged, "remember that you are a servant of the people, and not the master."

She feels strongly that we "haven't found a way for human beings to control the urge to control resources at the expense of others," and this is the same no matter where you are in the world. In the Q&A she declared "I really don't think we have a choice" - industrialized countries must reduce emissions for the sake of the entire planet.

I won't repeat all of her many achievements in detail here (read all the links for a better summary than I can manage). Suffice to say that her work for The Green Belt Movement is what has brought her the most notice in recent years. She related a story of how she was doing research on tick bite fever affecting cattle, when she noticed that the rural area she had grown up in had changed beyond all recognition from her childhood experience. Deforestation and erosion were drastically eating away at the Kenya she knew. So she discarded the research on ticks and forged ahead with a mission to encourage women to plant trees, as it was the women who commented on their need for firewood, among other uses for wood. Women took to the idea like ducks to water. Men took a lot longer to come around, and only did so once they realized how much money they could make in a decade or two once the trees had grown (or that's her version of events anyway!)

Happily for all of us the African Union has decided it is time to strengthen civil society structures across the African continent and Maathai announced they have asked her to head this endeavour. Good luck to her, it is such a key element to development when state structures are failing so badly in many parts of the world.

The Green Belt Movement have blogged themselves about her appearance at Hay, and you can read their own version which is pretty accurate at capturing the feeling on the day, if not the content of her speech.

Suggested further reading by Wangari Maathai:
THE GREEN BELT MOVEMENT: SHARING THE APPROACH AND THE EXPERIENCE and her recently published memoir UNBOWED: ONE WOMAN'S STORY.

Wangari Maathari is an exceptional and courageous person. It was an honour to hear her speak.

There appears to be no Hay Festival podcast available for this event, which is a shame - well worth checking back on their site in the future in case it does become available.

The Front Room at London's Queen Elizabeth Hall is not exactly a room, but a roped off section of the foyer. The concept behind this may have been that those sharing the space standing at the bar or sitting at the surrounding tables might share in whatever event is on, by default, as it were. In practise, most people just carried on at “bar volume.” This was a real shame as Soyinka’s reading was superb, despite the background roaring hum, an extract from his escape from Nigeria:

The insides of my thighs ached. These were muscles that had never been subjected to an endurance test, and I marvelled yet again how the body so easily takes for granted every strand of muscle or ligament that makes it function, forgetting that some simply never come up for use in years, or decades. Even if I had been a chronic jogger, it would never have occurred to me to prepare the inner thighs for a ten-hour journey on a motor-cycle pillion. Three times I was compelled to ask my pilot to stop while I walked up and down, improvised exercises to regain circulation and loosen up the muscles as they were repeatedly assailed by severe cramps. They ached so badly that I began to fear that I might have done permanent damage to myself, some calamity such as uncontrollable muscle spasms in the future. As a hapless passenger, with nothing to do except stay glued to the seat of the motorcycle, the night passage was fertile ground for the direst imagining. In addition to three stops, I was thankful when we came to streams that had to be forded, or when we stopped to refuel the tank from the spare jerry-cans with which we were amply supplied. I was even thankful for spills in sudden marshes or loose soil. As we rode deeper into the forest, my face was steadily lashed by branches. My driver did his best to sound a warning as a branch loomed up round a corner and he ducked but, it was mostly pointless. I took vicious slashes, began to wonder if the branches were exacting vengeance for the nocturnal disturbance of the peace of the forest. I could hardly complain; my companion took far more whipping than I did.

Occasionally, we ran into night caravans of smugglers, strung out in a line, loads of every kind of merchandise on their heads...

Soyinka is a tall, striking man with a beautifully modulated voice. It really was a pleasure to hear him read. He will be appearing at both the Hay Festival later this month and the London Literature Festival in July.

Of course, I only met him briefly as he signed YOU MUST SET FORTH AT DAWN, but he was charming. The American edition came out a year ago. This UK edition is published in collaboration with Bookcraft, Nigeria, and is about double the thickness of the US edition. Other than added appendices and index, I’m not sure if the text is any different.

The rest of the evening was spent with old friends and new - some lovely, lovely writerly people.

PITY FOR POOR AFRICANS
I own I am shock'd by the purchase of slaves,
And fear those who buy them and sell them are knaves;
What I hear of their hardships, their tortures and groans,
Is almost enough to draw pity from stones.
I pity them greatly, but I must be mum,
For how could we do without sugar and rum?
William Cowper, 1788
quoted in The National Trust Magazine, Spring 2007

In my March 25th blogpost, when last we encountered Equiano, he had been recently kidnapped and separated from his sister. Over the next six months he is sold on to several different masters and traders, eventually travelling by river until he reaches the sea:

The first object which saluted my eyes when I arrived on the coast was the sea, and a slave ship which was then riding at anchor and waiting for its cargo. These filled me with astonishment, which was soon converted into terror when I was carried on board. I was immediately handled and tossed up to see if I were sound by some of the crew, and I was now persuaded that I had gotten into a world of bad spirits and that they were going to kill me...when I looked around the ship too and saw a large furnace or copper boiling and a multitude of black people of every description chained together, every one of their countenances expressing dejection and sorrow, I no longer doubted of my fate; and quite overpowered with horror and anguish, I fell motionless on the deck and fainted (p.22).

Equiano is just eleven years old! Realizing the scope of the terrible situation he now finds himself in, Equiano is overcome with grief and refuses to eat, resulting in his flogging. As the ship leaves shore, all the "cargo" are forced below deck:

The closeness of the place and the heat of the climate, added to the number in the ship, which was so crowded that each had scarcely room to turn himself, almost suffocated us. This produced copious perspirations, so that the air soon became unfit for respiration from a variety of loathsome smells, and brought on a sickness among the slaves, of which many died, thus falling victims to the improvident avarice, as I may call it, of their purchasers.This wretched situation was again aggravated by the galling of the chains, now become insupportable, and the filth of the necessary tubs, into which the children often fell and were almost suffocated.The shrieks of the women and the groans of the dying rendered the whole a scene of horror almost inconceivable (p.25).

This shocking experience soon causes Equiano to fall ill, and because he is so young he is allowed on deck unchained. It is hardly better - here he witnesses people throwing themselves overboard. After months at sea, the ship finally reaches Barbados. My next installment from Equiano's extraordinary life will pick up the trail here in Bridgetown. All extracts from Paul Edwards (Ed.) EQUIANO'S TRAVELS: The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano or Gustavas Vassa the African.

A very happy new year to you all!

I am feeling saint-like for shopping for three consecutive days last week with a gaggle of teenagers. First I should explain that I am NOT a good shopper, and specifically not a good clothes shopper. My worst nightmare is dragging around shop after shop, filled with hordes of people - mostly not looking where they're going - and trying on clothes. I buy clothes when I need them, or not at all (the exception to the rule is sari shopping in India, who can resist those gorgeous silks?! The best thing about sari shopping too is that since there's no need to try anything on, the decisions are simply about colour and fabric). Here in England the post-Christmas sales were on of course and so clothes shopping was what the young 'uns wanted to do (age range 13-23 and a mixed gender group too; oh, the complications!). To be fair, because I wasn't trying anything on, it was fairly painless; I am a very good coat and bag rack, I discovered. And I give free fashion consultations. Quite useful to have around really.

I promptly blew the whole "I am not a shopper" theory by raiding the Chaucer Bookshop, the Hospice charity shop and the Oxfam bookshop on the way home afterwards, emerging with a bagload of books. We just like different things, but I certainly can shop! My latest haul:

THE MOON OF GOMRATH - Alan Garner (20p, 1965 edition in pristine condition; My favourite of his is THE WEIRDSTONE OF BRISINGAMEN which includes just about the most claustrophobic description ever of squeezing out of tight places deep underground)

SWALLOW, THE STAR - K.M. Peyton (20p; I've never read this, but as a teenager loved her Flambards series; some of Peyton's out of print back catalogue is being reprinted by Fidra Books, so this seems highly appropriate to get up to speed).

Three of the now out of print Mantlemass books by Barbara Willard: THE LARK AND THE LAUREL, THE SPRIG OF BROOM, THE IRON LILY (79p each, pristine copies from the 1970s; I haven't read them since I was a child, but snaffled them up as I loved them then and have rarely seen them since, so am looking forward to the re-read. I'll have to keep a lookout for the missing ones in the series). Also Willard's THE MILLER'S BOY, which I've never read.

WHITE MUGHALS - William Dalrymple (£1, in pristine condition).

THE BLACK INTERPRETERS - Nadine Gordimer (£3.99, hard to come by, printed in 1973)

THE LITERATURE AND THOUGHT OF MODERN AFRICA - Claude Wauthier (£5, 1966. Looks interesting; originally written in French and the focus is mostly Francophone African writers, which I don't know an awful lot about as I don't speak/read French, so I am looking forward to this).

FEATHER WOMAN OF THE JUNGLE - Amos Tutuola (£12, but well worth it - absolute gold dust: hardback first edition 1962 in pristine condition, SO exciting! The cover blurb says "Four years...is a long time to wait for a new book by the inimitable Amos Tutuola, whose reputation is now almost worldwide..." Isn't that interesting? Published by Faber & Faber at the time, my guess is that he has passed out of the awareness of the general reading public now.

Retail therapy!

May your year ahead be full of wonderful reading.

All the presidents of the world have died and gone to Hell. As they sit roasting in the flames, they ask the Devil if they can call home. 'OK,' says the Devil, 'but it'll cost you.' First Bush calls his family in Washington, and they chat away. 'That will be $200,' says the Devil. Then Chirac calls Paris. 'That will be 100 euros,' says the Devil. Finally, it's Isaias' turn [Afewerki, President of Eritrea]. 'That will be 5 nakfa,' says the Devil. 'How come he gets to pay so little?' wail the others. 'Oh,' says the Devil. 'It's only a local call.' Eritrean joke doing the rounds in 2004.

Extract from Michela Wrong, I DIDN'T DO IT FOR YOU: How the world betrayed a small african nation. Please note the paperback is titled I DIDN'T DO IT FOR YOU: How the world used and abused a small african nation.

Read this book. I guarantee that you will be captivated. If you read largely fiction, this will still roll comfortably past like a thriller. If you read no other non-fiction this year, read this.

Eritrea's story is a fascinating one, and Michela Wrong writes in a strong, unfussy manner. She peppers little-known facts - outside the country at any rate - ("The colony baptized 'Eritrea' after Erythraeum Mare - Latin for Red Sea...") through the wider story which creates a layered effect: you could skim for these, or savour the full dark tale.

Wrong covers the Italian colonization of Eritrea (left a legacy of some of the most spectacular art deco architecture preserved today); the Keren Battlefield (who knew that one of the decisive battles of the Second World War was fought here, as the British marched on the Italians down through Sudan and on into Eritrea?

Popular legend has it that a British captain leading his weary men on the march from Keren into Asmara was met on the road by an old Eritrean woman, wrapped in the ghostly white shroud of the highlands. She was ululating in traditional greeting, celebrating her country's liberation from Italian Fascist rule and the start of a new era of hoped-for prosperity. Perhaps that high-pitched shrilling irritated the captain, extenuated by a campaign he thought he might not survive. In any case, he is said to have stopped her in mid-flow with one throwaway line designed to crush any illusions about why he and his men were fighting in Eritrea. 'I didn't do it for you, nigger, ' he said, before striding on to Asmara. (p. 99)

The British administration did not deal any more kindly with the country than the Italians, although the story of Sylvia Pankhurst, daughter of Emmeline the suffragette, and her contribution to the region makes for some positive relief. This is chronicled against the backdrop of the great stories of neighbouring Ethiopia: the legend of the Queen of Sheba, Ras Tafari, Haile Selassie.

The Cold War brought new complications. America set up a listening post, Kagnew Station:

By the 1960s, $69.5m in investment...it held 4,200 men, not counting family dependants...nineteen operational sites...185 buildings, nearly 700 antennae...3,400 acres of land. The biggest dish, 150ft wide, weighing 6,000 tons and worth $600,000, was estimated at the time to be the largest movable object ever built. It was visible from 30 miles away. (p. 218)

Russia retaliated by furiously arming the power-hungry and ruthless Mengistu in Ethiopia. The civil war between Ethiopia and Eritrea raged for decades, largely ignored by the outside world. Wrong describes life in the trenches and the profound impact the war (and the earlier colonial power shenanigans) had on the development of the Eritrean nation state.

Part of what makes Wrong's account of the development of Eritrea so compelling is that she succeeds at making history readable and approachable; people are strongly present, and the brooding presence of the harsh landscape is well-described. Scandalous and muckraking tales weave in between the historical and political account and this makes for gripping reading.

Saturday's Guardian Review carried an interesting piece by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (author of Orange Prize shortlisted Purple Hibiscus and the new Half of a Yellow Sun). In it she examines historical validation of/accuracy in fiction (specifically war fiction), and looks at some of the books which, despite themselves, taught her about a time and place while keeping her engrossed in the fictive story and characters. Adichie writes:

The novels I love, the ones I remember, the ones I re-read, have an empathetic human quality, or "emotional truth". This quality is difficult to fully define, but I always recognise it when I see it: it is different from honesty and more resilient than fact, something that exists not in the kind of fiction that explains but in the kind that shows.

She relates this to Shimmer Chinodya's excellent Harvest of Thorns:

What struck me most...was that I emerged from it with a complex portrait of Zimbabwe's war of independence from - at last - the point of view of black people without ever feeling as if I had been lectured.

This feeling of not being lectured I also agree is an important part of really good fiction. Pedantic, hectoring, lecturing fiction (particularly about issues, subjects or parts of the world I am not familiar with) is boring, and will definitely lead me to give up on a book. But a writer who manages to convey a richly textured background as part of the story, through descriptions of the landscape - both geographic and political - and also through the complexity of characters, now that makes for a great kind of fiction. Of course, can I think of brilliant examples right now off the top of my head?! I'll have a think, and let you know later.

An additional issue Adichie raises which has nothing to do with writing itself, except in passing as a common theme across African fiction and with an everyday emotional resonance across the continent, is this:

The wonderfully restrained sense of deep disappointment underlying Chinodya's narrative reminded me of how similar the histories of many African countries are, how passionately people believed in ideas that would disappoint them, in people that would betray them, in futures that would elude them.

In recent weeks, Archbishop Desmond Tutu (most recent book published is GOD HAS A DREAM: A VISION OF HOPE FOR OUR TIME) has frequently appeared in the British and South African press. I suspect this is in the run-up to the nobel laureate's birthday next month. In a recent article in the South African Mail & Guardian, Tutu echoes some of the disappointment Adichie describes:

"In the struggle, people overwhelmingly were altruistic. They were clear they were striving not to subjugate anybody but to throw off the shackles of oppression and injustice, to usher in a new age of freedom for everyone.

"I naively believed that come liberation these ideals and attitudes would automatically be transferred to how you operated in the new dispensation. And there's no question at all, it is a very disillusioning moment when you discover that we jettisoned very, very quickly those high ideals and this sense that you were there for the sake of a struggle and not for your own aggrandisement. The most devastating thing is discovering that we are ordinary, we are so human. We have succumbed to the same kind of temptations. We are not a special breed. We have feet of clay."

Weary and vexed as he is over such issues as corruption, crime and Aids, Tutu still raises a ringingly optimistic view of his nation's future.

"We are regarded with awe and admiration for showing the world that it is possible for those who had been involved in bloody conflict to evolve into comrades; to undergo the metamorphosis of the repulsive caterpillar into the gorgeous butterfly by opting for the path of forgiveness and reconciliation instead of retaliation, retribution and revenge. Let us become what we are, the rainbow people of the God, proud of our diversity, celebrating our differences that make not for separation and alienation but for a gloriously rich unity." - Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2006

While dismay and disappointment at the antics of our politicians and leaders lies thick on the ground across the continent, I have found it is a mutual feeling in the west too, if less likely to cost you your life. South Africa, thankfully, in recent years is a country where opposing the incumbent government does not result in torture and death (which certainly cannot be said of the previous Nationalist government). But it is the strong, unwavering voices of people like Desmond Tutu that keep it that way. Long may he reign as the "nation's conscience"!

I wrote my final MA exam with a sense of growing irritation. Monitors and professors kept tiptoeing in, whispering conversations and stalking out again. Rather than a handful of people seeing us through the exam from beginning to end, staff kept changing over. It was annoying and disruptive. I remember thinking I wished that they would all just shut up and go away. Once the papers were finally collected, a senior professor announced that something very important had happened and we should all immediately go to the student bar below and watch the news (it had a large screen tv). As we gathered our belongings, he came to me and said it was imperative I do this immediately as the incident involved New York and he knew how many American friends I had there. I remember thinking 'What are you going on about?' and looking at him as though he had grown an extra head. We slouched downstairs, somewhat tired and disgruntled, as one does after a three hour exam and discovered the news. It was September 11th, 2001. For quite a few minutes I remember thinking it was a really well put together roleplay (the MA was in International Conflict Analysis - the irony) and how had they managed to get all the newsreaders I knew so well from my time in America to agree to do a roleplay for a British university department? One does think strange thoughts! Gradually comprehension dawned, and with it horror. My first phonecall was to the giri to ask if he'd seen the news; my next to our friend who worked in one of the World Trade Centre towers. No answer; and calling again and again and again throughout the night trying to get through to New York.

I suspect we can all remember where we were on September 11th, 2001, when our tv screens showed us extraordinary, unbelievable footage. The sadness for me, is the lack of application of the lessons we should have learnt from that experience. America, ironically and unnecessarily, has grown ever more isolated instead of capitalizing on the immense worldwide support which initially flooded in. For the US administration and many Americans, '9/11' became an American tragedy, instead of a tragedy touching us all; as if only Americans died or were affected. They (temporarily I hope) lost recognition of the interconnectedness of all humanity and in came the us vs. them, 'if you're not with us you're against us' mentality. I could go on, but (happily for you) I won't.

This morning I started Michela Wrong's I DIDN'T DO IT FOR YOU: HOW THE WORLD BETRAYED A SMALL AFRICAN NATION. As I read her foreword, it all seemed to click into place with what I was thinking about today's anniversary:

History is written - or, more accurately, written out - by the conquerors. If Eritrea has been lost in the milky haze of amnesia, it surely cannot be unconnected to the fact that so many former masters and intervening powers - from Italy to Britain, the US to the Soviet Union, Israel and the United Nations, not forgetting, of course, Ethiopia, the most formidable occupier of them all - behaved so very badly there. Better to forget than dwell on episodes which reveal the victors at their most racist and small-minded, cold-bloodedly manipulative or simply brutal beyond belief. To act so ruthlessly, yet emerge with so little to show for all the grim opportunism; well, which nation really wants to remember that.

The problem, as the news headlines remind us every day, is that while the victims of colonial and Cold War blunders do not pen the story that ends up becoming the world's collective memory, they also don't share the conquerors' lazy capacity for forgetfulness. Any regular Western visitor to the developing world will be familiar with that awkward moment when a local resident raises, with a passion and level of forensic detail that reveals this is still an open wound, some injustice perpetrated long ago by the colonial master. Baffled, the traveller registers that the forgotten massacre or broken treaty, which he has only just discovered, is the keystone on which an entire community's identity has been built. 'Gosh, why are they still harping on about that?' he thinks. 'Why can't they just move on? We have.' It is a version of the 'Why do they hate us so much?' question a shocked America asked in the wake of September 11. Eritrea's story provides part of the answer to that query. It is very easy to be generous with your forgiving and forgetting, when you are the one in need of forgiveness. A sense of wounded righteousness keeps the memory sharp. Societies that know they have suffered a great wrong have a disconcerting habit of nursing their grievances, keeping them keen through the decades.
(p. xii)

Perspective. Identity. Grievance. Acknowledgement. Humanity. So much food for thought...

Oh joy! The latest SLIGHTLY FOXED has come out. My local independent bookshop, The Albion, is tucked away down a side street leading to the main gates of the Cathedral. I adore the shop because it has creaky stairs, quite a good children's selection, and an eclectic assortment of books - you never know quite what you will find there - and of course (I can't resist) it is not part of a national chain. Anyway, as it happens The Albion stocks SLIGHTLY FOXED. I have a sneaky suspicion that I'm the only customer who buys it, but never mind (sigh).

This edition looks set to unearth some more delights - I've had a quick flick through and was transported back to my childhood with a piece on Peter O'Donnell's Modesty Blaise books. My grandfather had a set which I read with relish - Modesty was an impressive heroine, quite unlike Nancy Drew, and I was awestruck. James Bond hadn't a patch on Modesty. I believe the series is currently being reissued in the UK by Souvenir Press and I will look forward to re-reading them and seeing what my adult perspective is. I suspect they are ideal for reading in the bath!

A piece by Julia Keay is also worth noting here. The book discussed is THE SPIRIT CATCHES YOU AND YOU FALL DOWN by Anne Fadiman. I had read Fadiman's EX LIBRIS with great enjoyment, a super present for someone who loves books. THE SPIRIT CATCHES... however, is in a league of its own. A truly superbly written and wrenching book, it describes a small Hmong child in America who is cared for deeply by both her family and the medical team looking after her, but nevertheless trapped by cultural misapprehension. The doctors diagnose epilepsy and want to medicate, while the family believe her soul has been frightened and trapped by a spirit (hence the book title). I am ashamed to say that I had never heard of the Hmong people before reading this, but since seem to see frequent references including the horrifying photo features the Sunday Times magazine has twice published in the past year of Hmong in Laos. Fadiman writes the history of the Hmong in an accessible and interesting fashion, so that the larger story of their devastating communal experience is intertwined with the riveting tale of little Lia. She deserves every award.

Our African fiction reading group meets next on Wednesday 20th September discussing Djiboutian Abdourahman Waberi's THE LAND WITHOUT SHADOWS, newly translated into english. A week later the non-fiction group meets on Wednesday 27th discussing Michela Wrong's I DIDN'T DO IT FOR YOU: HOW THE WORLD BETRAYED A SMALL AFRICAN NATION, her recent book on Eritrea. So, lots of reading to do! Any of you London-based lot who'd like to join us, the meetings are free and gather at 6:30pm in Oxfam's fairtrade coffee shop Progreso in Covent Garden. We'll be looking at what to read next so come along and have a say!

Surprisingly, one of yahoo.com's breaking news headlines on their homepage today is "Outsiders Criticized for Roles in Chad War." I have a very beautiful map of the African continent about to be hung in my new study - a satisfying 120cm x 100cm, with mountain ranges incorporated into the political colouring of each country, and flags for each along the bottom. Most useful for dreaming and reference. See www.craenen.com for my version, or just a comprehensive worldwide map selection in general. It is also available from Africa Book Centre, listed under maps as AFRICA: 1: 8 000 000 MAP. On this map I am struck by the absence of roads shown for Chad - Nigeria to the west has quite a network, even Libya to the North has a few, but Chad shows only a handful and most are Southern in the area of the capital, Ndjamena. In the North of the country there are shown a smattering of what are marked as "seasonal roads" - I am intrigued.

A little research tells me Chad's oilfields are in the South of the country. Chad has only recently (2003) begun to export oil - decades of civil war put paid to this idea previously. As it is landlocked, the oil is transported 1 000km away to the Cameroonian coast for export. Not much is written in English about Chad, but last year two reports came out from Amnesty International and the Nordic Africa Institute respectively. They will date rapidly, but are worth a look if you are interested in the region.

The war in neighbouring Sudan's Darfur region is impacting Chad dramatically as refugees cross the border for safety. The best book on the civil war in Sudan is The Root Causes of Sudan's Civil War by Douglas Johnson, but this covers the civil war across the entire country. The conflict in Darfur specifically, which did receive some newstime last year from the BBC, has less written about it. Christopher Hurst & Co. Publishers in London recently began a "Crises in World Politics" series. The first title in the series is on Darfur: DARFUR:THE AMBIGUOUS GENOCIDE. The author is Gerard Prunier, the French academic currently living and working in Ethiopia - married to someone from either the Sudan or Ethiopia, I don't remember which.

Darfur...is big, with a surface of nearly half a million square kilometres (150,000 square miles) and it is generally dry without being desert. It was long an independent sultanate (from approximately the fourteenth century till 1916), later becoming a province of the Anglo-Egyptian Condominium (1898-1956) and then a state of the Republic of the Sudan on its independence. (Prunier p.2)

The instinctively editing part of my brain winced at the number of grammatical and spelling mistakes, but I suspect this is because the book was rushed out when Darfur hit the news. I understand Prunier is notoriously difficult to cajole into handing in manuscripts on time, so no doubt this played a part too. I found the book very interesting as I know little about Darfur, so it filled lots of gaps in my education. Prunier includes an interesting discussion on genocide - is Darfur really a genocide? does it matter? He points out that to those in Darfur, any success at remaining in the international eye is contingent on convincing the international community that it is. Either way, he argues, something must be done to pressure the Sudanese government into controlling the militias and reducing violence in the region.

Strange how some things intersect. I was reading Petrona this morning: in particular a piece she has written about the books most commonly held by libraries around the world. Naturally, this raises issues about stock libraries keep because they think they should, rather than because the books are necessarily read (a very good thing, because tastes do change; and holdings should also be about access). What made me perk up was the fact that two Twains are on the list - The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn in the top 10, and The Adventures of Tom Sawyer in the top 20.

Twain has reappeared on my radar screen recently because of our current non-fiction reading group title, KING LEOPOLD'S GHOST: A STORY OF GREED, TERROR AND HEROISM IN COLONIAL AFRICA by Adam Hochschild. I think it would not be an understatement to say that most people nowadays (including many Africans living on the continent) know very little about the Congo, and I include myself in this category. Appalling really given current direct foreign involvement there. A recent Human Rights Watch report on the DRC, THE CURSE OF GOLD, reports that 2003 saw in excess of 60 000 civilians dead in the gold mining areas of Mongbwalu and Durba, with more people raped and injured, and tainted gold worth an estimated USD$60 million smuggled out to the West. Blood diamonds from the region also appear on the market and are funding military action there. This all sounds horribly familiar when you open Hochschild's book and read about the millions of Congolese people sucked into the slave trade.

Hochschild first encounters the DRC in 1961:

In a Leopoldville apartment, I heard a CIA man, who had had too much to drink, describe with satisfaction exactly how and where the newly independent country's first prime minister, Patrice Lumumba, had been killed a few months earlier. He assumed that any American, even a visiting student like me, would share his relief at the assassination of a man the United States government considered a dangerous leftist troublemaker.

He describes how he came to write the book years later:

I knew almost nothing about the history of the Congo until a few years ago, when I noticed a footnote in a book I happened to be reading. Often when you come across something particularly striking, you remember where you were when you read it. On this occasion I was sitting, stiff and tired, late at night, in one of the far rear seats of an airliner crossing the United States from east to west.
The footnote was to a quotation by Mark Twain, written, the note said, when he was part of the worldwide movement against slave labor in the Congo, a practice that had taken five to eight million lives. Worldwide movement? Five to eight million lives? I was startled.
Statistics about mass murder are often hard to prove. But if this number turned out to be even half as high, I thought, the Congo would have been one of the major killing grounds of modern times. (Hochschild p.3)

The book is moving, engaging and (sadly) extremely topical. Where we now pursue expanding markets and source fuel, then empires were brutally expanded and slaves became the fuel which ran economies. Hochschild writes fluidly, and although non-fiction, the book has the ebb and flow of good novels which demand compulsive reading. His latest book (recently out in paperback is BURY THE CHAINS: THE BRITISH STRUGGLE TO ABOLISH SLAVERY. On the strength of KING LEOPOLD'S GHOST, I shall have to read it very soon.

And, oh yes, Mark Twain's anti-slavery writing? You can still buy his KING LEOPOLD'S SOLILOQUY, written for the Congo Reform Association and published in 1904. The Africa Book Centre sells a reprinted 1961 edition. Strange connections...

Monday night took the train up to London for our non-fiction reading group. The fiction group has been meeting for over a year now, but this was the first meeting of the non-fiction group - just three of us showed up. But hey, small is beautiful, right?! Excellent folks. Book chosen was very inspiring, if practical: THE GREEN BELT MOVEMENT: Sharing the Approach & the Experience by Wangari Maathai, winner of the 2004 Nobel Peace Prize. Definitely an awe-inspiring lady - her achievements are legend. Made me want to go out and plant another tree. Since we have cherry and apricot trees arriving next month to join the apple trees in our garden, I won't have that long to wait!


OK, now I feel terrible. The latest headline reads "Man Shot by Cheney Suffers Heart Attack"! This is not what I wish for my writer (even though his manuscript is mind-numbingly boring). Given the large number of people who are keen to have books published, how does this sort of stuff get accepted?! Big words do not equal intelligence. And I can't stand writers who make their arguments so convoluted that you need an hour to decipher a sentence. Frankly, it makes me suspicious that he doesn't actually know what he is talking about. Oh for simplicity.

Woe is me - I am stuck home with the flu. Blocked nose. Clogged head. Gunky eyes. Blech.