Rant & Rave: A New Age Angelou

I thought I was done for the year until I came across this video. It’s so much fun; using a childhood game to bring to light adult issues of struggle, race and conflict amongst others. I hope you guys like it as much as I do and I promise, I'mreally done for the year after this.

Rant and Rave: Top 10 African Novels of the Year

The year has been riddled with many great literary works and African literature has no doubt had a great year; what with it being a rich tapestry of differing cultures and vibrant story telling. With great works calling out from every direction for the readers’ attention, narrowing down the decision to just 10 books has been a categorically tough task. I have however done it, here they are, the top 10 African novels of 2014.

      1.       We Need New Names – NoViolet Bulawayo
We Need New Names’ back cover reads ‘Then we are rushing, then we are running, then we are running, then we are laughing and laughing and laughing.’ This speaks volumes to the type of read this is, the reader gets the sense that there is a pursuit of sorts, a moving towards a particular thing. The story is told through a 10year old girl named Darling living in a colourful shanty town called Paradise whose residents attempt life through tumultuous settings. Her aspirations together with those of her friends are big, they dream of greater futures. Darling, actualises these desires as she relocates to America, this draws very closely to Bulawayo’s own reality. From this point onwards the story becomes a coming of age tale. A young woman trying to make sense of a foreign world.

There is a basicness to be found within the storyline, the beauty and poetry of the Bulawayo’s native language is contained, with obvious purpose, through the fibres of the narrative. It feels almost as though the words first existed in the writer’s natural tongue.

      2.       Americanah – Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Yes, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie features twice on this list and this is for multiple reasons; she has had a great year, she’s a great writer and she’s become what could be termed a figure of popular culture.
Firstly, this is a big book! That being said though, it is not a difficult read especially if you’ve read other works written by the author. The writing style and narrative flow to a point where it feels as though a friend was telling you of what had happened to another friend. The themes carried within Americanah are love and race and the former instantly comes to the fore as the protagonist, Ifemelu meets and falls in love with Obinze. Through the winding twists of fate Ifemelu finds her way to America whilst Obinze dares the undocumented immigrant life in London.
A prickling loneliness and dislocation is a constant throughout this novel, This book is of cause a love story, spanning through time and distance, but it is also a lot more than that, it brings to the fore matters of self-identification and volatile feelings of depression. It is a marvellously written work that opens up doors to exploration and so much more.
  

      3.       Radiance of tomorrow – Ishmael Beah
An impressively tender peak into post war Sierra Leone, this is what Ishmael Beah delivers in this novel. He first published a memoir ‘A Long Way Home’ in 2007 and was quickly heralded, making best sellers lists and garnering adornment from critics and fans alike. Radiance of Tomorrow is somewhat of a continuation of the story told in his first book. It speaks of the return home and the process of reconstruction, the attempts made at moving forward after the devastation.  
In the book, Beah Writes, Mama Kadie may yearn to ask, ”How are you, your children and grandchildren, your wife, their health?” but she knows better. “These days one must be careful to avoid awakening the pain of another.” Instead, Mama Kadie thinks, “We are here, and we must go on living.”  This is a central cognitive point for the narrative, the resilience of putting back together the broken pieces, the hope that the bad will soon fade into nonexistence and the continuous scuffle to make peace with thoughts of the past, the present as well as the future.

      4.       Every day is for the thief – Teju Cole

Every Day is for the Thief tells the story of a man returning home to Lagos, Nigeria after having been away for some fifteen. Upon his return he reconnects with old friends, an ex-girlfriend and family and he reconnects with his native land, the consistent thump, the constant shuffle and vivacity that is Nigeria. We later learn of the reasons for his departure – fallout with his mother and his father’s passing. He quickly realises that this city is no longer what he remembers and Cole tells so vividly the familiar yet strange, the forlorn yet beloved feelings of the protagonist towards this city. He removes all the romantic notions ever written about Africa and paints it in its truest form, describing places and people and occurrences so opulently the reader forms clear images in their mind.       

No one write like Cole, he is brilliant and gaudy.

      5.       All our names – Dinaw Megestu
A huge clash, a big bang calling you to take note. This is the simplest way to describe this book. Isaac is the novel’s chief character and is introduced to the reader as he moves from his home in Ethiopia to study in Uganda. As in many of the novels written by African writers, the notion of foreign lands offering greener pastures is almost always present and this book is no different. Isaac wants more – a greater life and reinvention - and considers the possibility of attaining this elsewhere. The interracial relationship between Isaac and Helen is the plot’s first agitator, bringing to the fore the book’s crucial areas. Isaac, newly arrived to America meets Helen, a white social worker who is responsible for his case. Their affair is instantaneous and bonds the two to further explore their identities as individuals.     
Timing is absolutely crucial to this story as two characters chronicle very separate yet interwoven tales and Megestu is great with this, writing skilfully all the while allowing enough room for the story to grow exclusively within the reader’s mind.

      6.       Foreign Gods, Inc – Okey Ndibe
Ndibe has created a beautiful body of work with a storyline so astounding and so engaging. Foreign Gods, Inc which is the tale of a man named Ike who returns home to Nigeria with the intention of stealing a statue of a once famous lord of war and selling it off upon his return to New York. A prominent feature in the novel is the smallness of Ike’s ambitions when the story begins; this in contrast to the big city within which he exists is mention worthy, particularly because this city cares very little for him. Beaten down and broken, he views the sale of the statue as his opportunity to attain the slice of American life he has for so long now wanted.
Ndibe writes with a great vibrancy, allowing the reader to feel, taste and smell the hardships of life, the desperation encapsulated within trying to fully exist in a foreign land and with a similar exuberance paints Nigerian culture and life with a swift realism. Throughout the narrative I found myself rooting for Ike to come out victorious, but I also humoured myself because even though Ndibe writes a serious, thought provoking story he does it in a strikingly funny way.    

      7.       Dust – Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor
Winner of the 2013 Caine Prize for her short story ‘Weight of Whispers’, Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor’s debut novel Dust is the epitome of human experience. The story kicks off steadfastly from word go. Odidi the narrative’s protagonist is fleeing for his life, gets gunned down and dies. The reader later learns that the circumstances pertaining to his death relate to corruption which forms the central part of the novel and its themes. Life, death, truth, deceit, and love offer support to this overall theme.
The plot is action packed and fast, ensuring that the reader is never left to feel a sense of deficiency. With the turn of every page there’s something new; beautifully written and a refreshingly original plot. Owuor delivers a greatly poetic prose that is not afraid of standing out and separating its self from the rest. 

      8.       Half a yellow sun – Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Bravely attempting to retell history, Adichie writes a beautifully woven tale that tells the story of the 1960s Nigerian civil war, the bond a young houseboy has with his employers and betrayal. Various sub-themes make up the back bone of this novel and this in turn encourages it to further appeal to the reading masses, love, race, class and ethnic loyalties  are a few of these. The novel’s characters, although varying, hold a few similarities; the glaringly evident uncertainty about the future, the feeling of displacement and the great need to belong.
First published in 2006, the novel claimed the Orange Prize for Fiction 2007 went on to garner major popularity in 2013, with a movie adaptation featuring formidable actors such as Hakeem Kae-Kazim, Thandie Newton as well as Chiwetel Ejiofor filmed in that year and released in 2014. The novel continues to gain momentum and has no doubt solidified Adichie as one to pay particular attention to for a long time to come.  

      9.       Peace and Conflict – Irene Sebatini

Peace and Conflict appears to be a heart-warming tale of family life told through the eyes of 10 year old Roberto, but is in fact so much more than that. Although the family structure is an important one throughout the narrative, the actual issues dealt with are of a political and socio-economic nature; theft, dictatorship, the British massacre of Kenya’s Mau Mau rebels, the poaching trade and intergenerational relations amongst others.
This is a beautifully written piece of literature that explores views on morality and justice through the eyes of a young boy growing up in a world not without its confusions. 

      10.   The Sculptors of Mapungubwe – Zakes Mda
This is Mda’s first novel since 2009 and though the wait may have been long and the novel’s start-up slow. I was not disappointed. This is a magical epic about two brothers in constant rivalry. The dynamics of the relationship between Chata and Rendani offers up the possibilities for a grand tale of family and love; and is this not what great fables primarily comprise of? It was also very refreshing to read about pre-colonial South Africa and Mda went back, not just in time, but also in art form. His writing and the story told reminded me of ‘Mhudi by Sol Plaatje’ very primitive and focused solely on story telling.
With Sculptors of Mapungubwe, Mda attempts to prove that he’s still got it and he comes out triumphant. 

Current Read: Eyebags & Dimples

If you know me, you know that I’ve always loved Bonnie Henna. I loved her on Technics Heart of the Beat, I loved her even more on Rhythm City and by the time Catch a Fire came out I was obsessed. I was however not sold on the idea of her penning an autobiography. Hesitant and afraid of disappointment I choose to pass on reading the book. Everybody who did read it ranted and raved about how great it was, they spoke of its deeply inspiring story line and effortless writing.

On Sunday, while chilling on a friends couch I noticed he owned a copy, I borrowed it and started reading it last night, for nothing but, to prove to myself that I had been right all along. I was proved gravely wrong. After the second chapter I felt a deep sense of nostalgia, reminiscing on my own childhood. I only read to chapter four, but I can honestly say I’m enjoying the book. The narrative is simple and straight forward, no attempts to impress or embellish. The story is familiar and relatable and beckons for you to keep reading. I can’t wait to get back home from work and continue reading.

And to Bonnie, I’m sorry I doubted your abilities.   

Rant and Rave: 30 Books to read by 30

Trolling through the interweb I found this delightful gem of an article on ‘I Have A Degree For This’. Some of the books on this list I’ve already read, some I’ve heard of and have intended on reading, some are classics and the rest (most of them) are completely foreign to me. 30 is not that far off so, I guess I should knuckle down and get on with it.

1. The Illiad and The Odyssey - Homer. A hard pair, had to read them as course work. Greatly fantastical.

2. The Secret History - Donna Tartt.

3. Jesus’ Son - Denis Johnson. I have been intending on reading this. Maybe it should be my next read.

4. The Complete Stories - Flannery O’Connor. 

5. Much Ado About Nothing - William Shakespeare. I’m sooo not a Shakespeare girl.

6. The Sun Also Rises - Ernest Hemingway. 

7. The Road - Cormac McCarthy.

8. Maus - Art Spiegelman.

9. Ender’s Game - Orson Scott Card.

10. Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen. 

11. Middlesex - Jeffrey Eugenides.

12. Ghost World - Daniel Clowes. 

13. On the Road - Jack Kerouac.

14. Their Eyes Were Watching God - Zora Neale Hurston.  This is another definite must read for me.

15. Cat’s Cradle - Kurt Vonnegut. 

16. Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov.  Yes, Please and Thank you very much!

17. The Lord of the Rings - J.R.R. Tolkien. 

18. 1984 - George Orwell.  I absolutely have to read this book

19. The Catcher in the Rye - J.D. Salinger. 

20. The Great Gatsby - F. Scott Fitzgerald.  A personal favourite.

21. Beloved - Toni Morrison. Beautifully written, a beautifully haunting story.

22. Infinite Jest - David Foster Wallace. 

23. Lord of the Flies - William Golding.

24. Don Quixote - Miguel De Cervantes. 

25. The Trial - Franz Kafka. Anything Kafka!

26. To the Lighthouse - Virginia Woolf.  I love Virginia! I however haven’t read this particular book

27. Fahrenheit 451 - Ray Bradbury.

28. Invisible Man - Ralph Ellison.

29. To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee. Loved it!

30. Treasure Island - Robert Louis Stevenson. 

I suppose as time goes, many adjustments will be made to this list. I think Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Americanah and James Frey’s A Million Little Pieces (Obviously) should be added.

How many have you read?

Hughes Corner: Still Here

There's always someone somewhere trying to make the experience of life so much harder for the next person. There's always someone attempting to deter you from your dreams. Sometimes that person is outside of your life and other times that person is yourself. If you live to see another day tell the naysayers that no matter how hard they may try, you are still here.   

My hopes the wind done scattered.
Snow has friz me,
Sun has baked me,

Looks like between ‘em they done
Tried to make me

Stop laughin’, stop lovin’, stop livin’
But I don’t care

I’m still here! Still here!

Rant and Rave: Doris Lessing on not winning the Nobel Prize

I know this speech is long (given the fact that we exist in a society that isn't interested in reading anyway), but I swear it’s a great one. Please take the time, I promise you will not regret it.

Written by Doris Lessing and delivered on December 7^th 2007 by Lessing’s publisher.

I am standing in a doorway looking through clouds of blowing dust to where I am told there is still uncut forest. Yesterday I drove through miles of stumps, and charred remains of fires where, in '56, there was the most wonderful forest I have ever seen, all now destroyed. People have to eat. They have to get fuel for fires.

This is north-west Zimbabwe in the early eighties, and I am visiting a friend who was a teacher in a school in London. He is here "to help Africa," as we put it. He is a gently idealistic soul and what he found in this school shocked him into a depression, from which it was hard to recover. This school is like every other built after Independence. It consists of four large brick rooms side by side, put straight into the dust, one two three four, with a half room at one end, which is the library. In these classrooms are blackboards, but my friend keeps the chalks in his pocket, as otherwise they would be stolen. There is no atlas or globe in the school, no textbooks, no exercise books, or biros. In the library there are no books of the kind the pupils would like to read, but only tomes from American universities, hard even to lift, rejects from white libraries, or novels with titles like Weekend in Paris and Felicity Finds Love.

There is a goat trying to find sustenance in some aged grass. The headmaster has embezzled the school funds and is suspended, arousing the question familiar to all of us but usually in more august contexts: How is it these people behave like this when they must know everyone is watching them?

My friend doesn't have any money because everyone, pupils and teachers, borrow from him when he is paid and will probably never pay him back. The pupils range from six to twenty-six, because some who did not get schooling as children are here to make it up. Some pupils walk many miles every morning, rain or shine and across rivers. They cannot do homework because there is no electricity in the villages, and you can't study easily by the light of a burning log. The girls have to fetch water and cook before they set off for school and when they get back.

As I sit with my friend in his room, people drop in shyly, and everyone begs for books. "Please send us books when you get back to London," one man says. "They taught us to read but we have no books." Everybody I met, everyone, begged for books.

I was there some days. The dust blew. The pumps had broken and the women were having to fetch water from the river. Another idealistic teacher from England was rather ill after seeing what this "school" was like.

On the last day they slaughtered the goat. They cut it into bits and cooked it in a great tin. This was the much anticipated end-of-term feast: boiled goat and porridge. I drove away while it was still going on, back through the charred remains and stumps of the forest.

I do not think many of the pupils of this school will get prizes.

The next day I am to give a talk at a school in North London, a very good school, whose name we all know. It is a school for boys, with beautiful buildings and gardens.

These children here have a visit from some well known person every week, and it is in the nature of things that these may be fathers, relatives, even mothers of the pupils. A visit from a celebrity is not unusual for them.

As I talk to them, the school in the blowing dust of north-west Zimbabwe is in my mind, and I look at the mildly expectant English faces in front of me and try to tell them about what I have seen in the last week. Classrooms without books, without textbooks, or an atlas, or even a map pinned to a wall. A school where the teachers beg to be sent books to tell them how to teach, they being only eighteen or nineteen themselves. I tell these English boys how everybody begs for books: "Please send us books." I am sure that anyone who has ever given a speech will know that moment when the faces you are looking at are blank. Your listeners cannot hear what you are saying, there are no images in their minds to match what you are telling them – in this case the story of a school standing in dust clouds, where water is short, and where the end of term treat is a just-killed goat cooked in a great pot.

Is it really so impossible for these privileged students to imagine such bare poverty?

I do my best. They are polite.

I'm sure that some of them will one day win prizes.

Then, the talk is over. Afterwards I ask the teachers how the library is, and if the pupils read. In this privileged school, I hear what I always hear when I go to such schools and even universities.

"You know how it is," one of the teacher's says. "A lot of the boys have never read at all, and the library is only half used."

Yes, indeed we do know how it is. All of us.

We are in a fragmenting culture, where our certainties of even a few decades ago are questioned and where it is common for young men and women, who have had years of education, to know nothing of the world, to have read nothing, knowing only some speciality or other, for instance, computers.

What has happened to us is an amazing invention -- computers and the internet and TV. It is a revolution. This is not the first revolution the human race has dealt with. The printing revolution, which did not take place in a matter of a few decades, but took much longer, transformed our minds and ways of thinking. A foolhardy lot, we accepted it all, as we always do, never asked, What is going to happen to us now, with this invention of print? In the same way, we never thought to ask, How will our lives, our way of thinking, be changed by this internet, which has seduced a whole generation with its inanities so that even quite reasonable people will confess that once they are hooked, it is hard to cut free, and they may find a whole day has passed in blogging etc.

Very recently, anyone even mildly educated would respect learning, education, and our great store of literature. Of course, we all know that when this happy state was with us, people would pretend to read, would pretend respect for learning. But it is on record that working men and women longed for books, and this is evidenced by the founding of working men's libraries and institutes, the colleges of the 18th and 19th centuries.

Reading, books, used to be part of a general education.

Older people, talking to young ones, must understand just how much of an education reading was, because the young ones know so much less. And if children cannot read, it is because they have not read.

We all know this sad story.

But we do not know the end of it.

We think of the old adage, "Reading maketh a full man" - and forgetting about jokes to do with over-eating - reading makes a woman and a man full of information, of history, of all kinds of knowledge.

But we in the West are not the only people in the world. Not long ago a friend who had been in Zimbabwe told me about a village where people had not eaten for three days, but they were still talking about books and how to get them, about education.

I belong to an organisation which started out with the intention of getting books into the villages. There was a group of people who in another connection had travelled Zimbabwe at its grass roots. They told me that the villages, unlike what is reported, are full of intelligent people, teachers retired, teachers on leave, children on holidays, old people. I myself paid for a little survey to discover what people in Zimbabwe want to read, and found the results were the same as those of a Swedish survey I had not known about. People want to read the same kinds of books that we in Europe want to read - novels of all kinds, science fiction, poetry, detective stories, plays, and do-it-yourself books, like how to open a bank account. All of Shakespeare too. A problem with finding books for villagers is that they don't know what is available, so a set book, like the Mayor ofCasterbridge, becomes popular simply because it just happens to be there. Animal Farm, for obvious reasons, is the most popular of all novels.

Our organisation was helped from the very start by Norway, and then by Sweden. Without this kind of support our supplies of books would have dried up. We got books from wherever we could. Remember, a good paperback from England costs a month's wages in Zimbabwe: that was before Mugabe's reign of terror. Now with inflation, it would cost several years' wages. But having taken a box of books out to a village - and remember there is a terrible shortage of petrol - I can tell you that the box was greeted with tears. The library may be a plank on bricks under a tree. And within a week there will be literacy classes - people who can read teaching those who can't, citizenship classes - and in one remote village, since there were no novels written in the language Tonga, a couple of lads sat down to write novels in Tonga. There are six or so main languages in Zimbabwe and there are novels in all of them: violent, incestuous, full of crime and murder.

It is said that a people gets the government it deserves, but I do not think it is true of Zimbabwe. And we must remember that this respect and hunger for books comes, not from Mugabe's regime, but from the one before it, the whites. It is an astonishing phenomenon, this hunger for books, and it can be seen everywhere from Kenya down to the Cape of Good Hope.

This links improbably with a fact: I was brought up in what was virtually a mud hut, thatched. This kind of house has been built always, everywhere there are reeds or grass, suitable mud, poles for walls. Saxon England for example. The one I was brought up in had four rooms, one beside another, and it was full of books. Not only did my parents take books from England to Africa, but my mother ordered books by post from England for her children. Books arrived in great brown paper parcels, and they were the joy of my young life. A mud hut, but full of books.

Even today I get letters from people living in a village that might not have electricity or running water, just like our family in our elongated mud hut. "I shall be a writer too," they say, "because I've the same kind of house you lived in."

But here is the difficulty, no?

Writing, writers, do not come out of houses without books.

There is the gap. There is the difficulty.

I have been looking at the speeches by some of your recent prizewinners. Take the magnificent Pamuk. He said his father had 500 books. His talent did not come out of the air, he was connected with the great tradition.

Take V.S. Naipaul. He mentions that the Indian Vedas were close behind the memory of his family. His father encouraged him to write, and when he got to England he would visit the British Library. So he was close to the great tradition.

Let us take John Coetzee. He was not only close to the great tradition, he was the tradition: he taught literature in Cape Town. And how sorry I am that I was never in one of his classes, taught by that wonderfully brave, bold mind.

In order to write, in order to make literature, there must be a close connection with libraries, books, with the Tradition.

I have a friend from Zimbabwe, a Black writer. He taught himself to read from the labels on jam jars, the labels on preserved fruit cans. He was brought up in an area I have driven through, an area for rural blacks. The earth is grit and gravel, there are low sparse bushes. The huts are poor, nothing like the well cared-for huts of the better off. A school - but like one I have described. He found a discarded children's encyclopaedia on a rubbish heap and taught himself from that.

On Independence in 1980 there was a group of good writers in Zimbabwe, truly a nest of singing birds. They were bred in old Southern Rhodesia, under the whites - the mission schools, the better schools. Writers are not made in Zimbabwe. Not easily, not under Mugabe.

All the writers travelled a difficult road to literacy, let alone to becoming writers. I would say learning to read from the printed labels on jam jars and discarded encyclopaedias was not uncommon. And we are talking about people hungering for standards of education beyond them, living in huts with many children - an overworked mother, a fight for food and clothing.

Yet despite these difficulties, writers came into being. And we should also remember that this was Zimbabwe, conquered less than a hundred years before. The grandparents of these people might have been storytellers working in the oral tradition. In one or two generations there was the transition from stories remembered and passed on, to print, to books. What an achievement.

Books, literally wrested from rubbish heaps and the detritus of the white man's world. But a sheaf of paper is one thing, a published book quite another. I have had several accounts sent to me of the publishing scene in Africa. Even in more privileged places like North Africa, with its different tradition, to talk of a publishing scene is a dream of possibilities.

Here I am talking about books never written, writers that could not make it because the publishers are not there. Voices unheard. It is not possible to estimate this great waste of talent, of potential. But even before that stage of a book's creation which demands a publisher, an advance, encouragement, there is something else lacking.

Writers are often asked, How do you write? With a wordprocessor? an electric typewriter? a quill? longhand? But the essential question is, "Have you found a space, that empty space, which should surround you when you write?" Into that space, which is like a form of listening, of attention, will come the words, the words your characters will speak, ideas - inspiration.

If a writer cannot find this space, then poems and stories may be stillborn.

When writers talk to each other, what they discuss is always to do with this imaginative space, this other time. "Have you found it? Are you holding it fast?"

Let us now jump to an apparently very different scene. We are in London, one of the big cities. There is a new writer. We cynically enquire, Is she good-looking? If this is a man, charismatic? Handsome? We joke but it is not a joke.

This new find is acclaimed, possibly given a lot of money. The buzzing of paparazzi begins in their poor ears. They are feted, lauded, whisked about the world. Us old ones, who have seen it all, are sorry for this neophyte, who has no idea of what is really happening.

He, she, is flattered, pleased.

But ask in a year's time what he or she is thinking – I've heard them: "This is the worst thing that could have happened to me," they say.

Some much publicised new writers haven't written again, or haven't written what they wanted to, meant to.

And we, the old ones, want to whisper into those innocent ears. "Have you still got your space? Your soul, your own and necessary place where your own voices may speak to you, you alone, where you may dream. Oh, hold onto it, don't let it go."

My mind is full of splendid memories of Africa which I can revive and look at whenever I want. How about those sunsets, gold and purple and orange, spreading across the sky at evening. How about butterflies and moths and bees on the aromatic bushes of the Kalahari? Or, sitting on the pale grassy banks of the Zambesi, the water dark and glossy, with all the birds of Africa darting about. Yes, elephants, giraffes, lions and the rest, there were plenty of those, but how about the sky at night, still unpolluted, black and wonderful, full of restless stars.

There are other memories too. A young African man, eighteen perhaps, in tears, standing in what he hopes will be his "library." A visiting American seeing that his library had no books, had sent a crate of them. The young man had taken each one out, reverently, and wrapped them in plastic. "But," we say, "these books were sent to be read, surely?" "No," he replies, "they will get dirty, and where will I get any more?"

This young man wants us to send him books from England to use as teaching guides.

"I only did four years in senior school," he says, "but they never taught me to teach."

I have seen a teacher in a school where there were no textbooks, not even a chalk for the blackboard. He taught his class of six to eighteen year olds by moving stones in the dust, chanting "Two times two is ..." and so on. I have seen a girl, perhaps not more than twenty, also lacking textbooks, exercise books, biros, seen her teach the A B C by scratching the letters in the dirt with a stick, while the sun beat down and the dust swirled.

We are witnessing here that great hunger for education in Africa, anywhere in the Third World, or whatever we call parts of the world where parents long to get an education for their children which will take them out of poverty.

I would like you to imagine yourselves somewhere in Southern Africa, standing in an Indian store, in a poor area, in a time of bad drought. There is a line of people, mostly women, with every kind of container for water. This store gets a bowser of precious water every afternoon from the town, and here the people wait.

The Indian is standing with the heels of his hands pressed down on the counter, and he is watching a black woman, who is bending over a wadge of paper that looks as if it has been torn from a book. She is reading Anna Karenin.

She is reading slowly, mouthing the words. It looks a difficult book. This is a young woman with two little children clutching at her legs. She is pregnant. The Indian is distressed, because the young woman's headscarf, which should be white, is yellow with dust. Dust lies between her breasts and on her arms. This man is distressed because of the lines of people, all thirsty. He doesn't have enough water for them. He is angry because he knows there are people dying out there, beyond the dust clouds. His older brother had been here holding the fort, but he had said he needed a break, had gone into town, really rather ill, because of the drought.

This man is curious. He says to the young woman, "What are you reading?"

"It is about Russia," says the girl.

"Do you know where Russia is?" He hardly knows himself.

The young woman looks straight at him, full of dignity, though her eyes are red from dust, "I was best in the class. My teacher said I was best."

The young woman resumes her reading. She wants to get to the end of the paragraph.

The Indian looks at the two little children and reaches for some Fanta, but the mother says, "Fanta makes them thirstier."

The Indian knows he shouldn't do this but he reaches down to a great plastic container beside him, behind the counter, and pours out two mugs of water, which he hands to the children. He watches while the girl looks at her children drinking, her mouth moving. He gives her a mug of water. It hurts him to see her drinking it, so painfully thirsty is she.

Now she hands him her own plastic water container, which he fills. The young woman and the children watch him closely so that he doesn't spill any.

She is bending again over the book. She reads slowly. The paragraph fascinates her and she reads it again.

"Varenka, with her white kerchief over her black hair, surrounded by the children and gaily and good-humouredly busy with them, and at the same visibly excited at the possibility of an offer of marriage from a man she cared for, looked very attractive. Koznyshev walked by her side and kept casting admiring glances at her. Looking at her, he recalled all the delightful things he had heard from her lips, all the good he knew about her, and became more and more conscious that the feeling he had for her was something rare, something he had felt but once before, long, long ago, in his early youth. The joy of being near her increased step by step, and at last reached such a point that, as he put a huge birch mushroom with a slender stalk and up-curling top into her basket, he looked into her eyes and, noting the flush of glad and frightened agitation that suffused her face, he was confused himself, and in silence gave her a smile that said too much."

This lump of print is lying on the counter, together with some old copies of magazines, some pages of newspapers with pictures of girls in bikinis.

It is time for the woman to leave the haven of the Indian store, and set off back along the four miles to her village. Outside, the lines of waiting women clamour and complain. But still the Indian lingers. He knows what it will cost this girl - going back home, with the two clinging children. He would give her the piece of prose that so fascinates her, but he cannot really believe this splinter of a girl with her great belly can really understand it.

Why is perhaps a third of Anna Karenin here on this counter in a remote Indian store? It is like this.

A certain high official, from the United Nations as it happens, bought a copy of this novel in a bookshop before he set out on his journey to cross several oceans and seas. On the plane, settled in his business class seat, he tore the book into three parts. He looked around his fellow passengers as he did this, knowing he would see looks of shock, curiosity, but some of amusement. When he was settled, his seat belt tight, he said aloud to whomever could hear, "I always do this when I've a long trip. You don't want to have to hold up some heavy great book." The novel was a paperback, but, true, it is a long book. This man is well used to people listening when he spoke. "I always do this, travelling," he confided. "Travelling at all these days, is hard enough." And as soon as people were settling down, he opened his part of Anna Karenin, and read. When people looked his way, curiously or not, he confided in them. "No, it really is the only way to travel." He knew the novel, liked it, and this original mode of reading did add spice to what was after all a well known book.

When he reached the end of a section of the book, he called the air hostess, and sent the chapters back to his secretary, travelling in the cheaper seats. This caused much interest, condemnation, certainly curiosity, every time a section of the great Russian novel arrived, mutilated but readable, in the back part of the plane. Altogether, this clever way of reading Anna Karenin makes an impression, and probably no one there would forget it.

Meanwhile, in the Indian store, the young woman is holding on to the counter, her little children clinging to her skirts. She wears jeans, since she is a modern woman, but over them she has put on the heavy woollen skirt, part of the traditional dress of her people: her children can easily cling onto its thick folds.

She sends a thankful look to the Indian, whom she knew liked her and was sorry for her, and she steps out into the blowing clouds.

The children are past crying, and their throats are full of dust.

This was hard, oh yes, it was hard, this stepping, one foot after another, through the dust that lay in soft deceiving mounds under her feet. Hard, but she was used to hardship, was she not? Her mind was on the story she had been reading. She was thinking, She is just like me, in her white headscarf, and she is looking after children, too. I could be her, that Russian girl. And the man there, he loves her and will ask her to marry him. She had not finished more than that one paragraph. Yes, she thinks, a man will come for me, and take me away from all this, take me and the children, yes, he will love me and look after me.

She steps on. The can of water is heavy on her shoulders. On she goes. The children can hear the water slopping about. Half way she stops, sets down the can.

Her children are whimpering and touching it. She thinks that she cannot open it, because dust would blow in. There is no way she can open the can until she gets home.

"Wait," she tells her children, "wait."

She has to pull herself together and go on.

She thinks, My teacher said there is a library, bigger than the supermarket, a big building and it is full of books. The young woman is smiling as she moves on, the dust blowing in her face. I am clever, she thinks. Teacher said I am clever. The cleverest in the school - she said I was. My children will be clever, like me. I will take them to the library, the place full of books, and they will go to school, and they will be teachers - my teacher told me I could be a teacher. My children will live far from here, earning money. They will live near the big library and enjoy a good life.

You may ask how that piece of the Russian novel ever ended up on that counter in the Indian store?

It would make a pretty story. Perhaps someone will tell it.

On goes that poor girl, held upright by thoughts of the water she will give her children once home, and drink a little of herself. On she goes, through the dreaded dusts of an African drought.

We are a jaded lot, we in our threatened world. We are good for irony and even cynicism. Some words and ideas we hardly use, so worn out have they become. But we may want to restore some words that have lost their potency.

We have a treasure-house of literature, going back to the Egyptians, the Greeks, the Romans. It is all there, this wealth of literature, to be discovered again and again by whoever is lucky enough to come upon it. A treasure. Suppose it did not exist. How impoverished, how empty we would be.

We own a legacy of languages, poems, histories, and it is not one that will ever be exhausted. It is there, always.

We have a bequest of stories, tales from the old storytellers, some of whose names we know, but some not. The storytellers go back and back, to a clearing in the forest where a great fire burns, and the old shamans dance and sing, for our heritage of stories began in fire, magic, the spirit world. And that is where it is held, today.

Ask any modern storyteller and they will say there is always a moment when they are touched with fire, with what we like to call inspiration, and this goes back and back to the beginning of our race, to the great winds that shaped us and our world.

The storyteller is deep inside every one of us. The story-maker is always with us. Let us suppose our world is ravaged by war, by the horrors that we all of us easily imagine. Let us suppose floods wash through our cities, the seas rise. But the storyteller will be there, for it is our imaginations which shape us, keep us, create us - for good and for ill. It is our stories that will recreate us, when we are torn, hurt, even destroyed. It is the storyteller, the dream-maker, the myth-maker, that is our phoenix, that represents us at our best, and at our most creative.

That poor girl trudging through the dust, dreaming of an education for her children, do we think that we are better than she is - we, stuffed full of food, our cupboards full of clothes, stifling in our superfluities?

I think it is that girl, and the women who were talking about books and an education when they had not eaten for three days, that may yet define us.

Rant and Rave: Maya Angelou – A teacher, a friend and an inspiration

 Love is a condition so powerful; it may be that which pulls the stars in the firmament. It may be that which pushes and urges the blood in the veins. Courage: you have to have courage to love somebody because you risk everything – everything.” 

Maya Angelou 

The sadness that filled my heart yesterday when I found out about Dr. Maya Angelou’s passing, I cried so hard my colleagues thought I was going to have a panic attack. I’m at a loss for words, I feel as though I have lost a mother, a teacher, a confidant, a source of inspiration and a whole lot more.
Mama Maya’s words saw me through some crippling moments of confusion, embarrassment and self-doubt, but they also propelled me forth into self-love, passion and the pursuit of happiness.

This is my word of thanks to God, for her life and her work. I may not have known her personally, but I am glad to have lived in the same time as her and I am glad I got to experience her sparkle.

Rest in Peace Mama Maya, I still hope that one day our souls will collide. 

 

Current Read: Beloved

Poetic Text: Always, Everyday Pt 2

So it took longer than I promised it would, but here it is, the second bit of Always, Everyday.

I wonder
Always, Everyday
about tomorrow
when the new is old and cracked and creaks a little bit
musty and frail
limping slowly, depending solidly on the memories for sustenance
When, where once
you used to stare me up and down
lick your lips and smile
saying, let’s hit the sheets
now exists the mundane…
Always, Everyday

Do your desires even aspire to walk that long
to the always, everyday middle of the road?

Not feeling well
I decided to take the day off yesterday
between my TV watching marathon,
doing some school work and napping
I did a little soul searching
I realised that the tears won’t stop till I tell them to
and that the healing of my heart doesn't rest on you

You see, I thought I was falling
Always, Everyday
I thought I was loving
the restitution I found beneath your palms, I confused
The warmth that rested with a confident firmness inside your kisses had me bare mused
But now I think,
Always, Everyday
About me

Poetic Text: Always, everyday Pt 1

I haven’t really written anything in the past while and I don’t know if maybe that’s the reason I’ve been feeling so devastated by the state of my life right now or visa versa. I did however sit at home, sick, on Tuesday and pulled out a pencil and a note pad, the results were something long and I’m not even sure what to call it.
In attempts to keep the two loyal readers of this blog, I am going to put up in about 4 sections once a week (trying not to overwhelm anyone with the random ramblings of a partially delusional woman) the scribblings from Tuesday.
Here’s the first bit.  I’ve called it “Always, Everyday” and for the purposes of this blog I shall call it a poem.  Hope you like it.

Your absence is cruel and unusual punishment
As though God were upset with me for having forgotten to say my morning prayers
I die…
Always, everyday
I don’t see you
I cry…
Always, everyday
I don’t feel you think of me

I’m falling
Always, everyday
with every sound you make
Step you take
the smell of your breath
The feel of your face
The slightly awkward obsession you have with Kwaito music
Always, everyday
I’m giddy, goofy and giggly
It’s the bite
the little bits of you that fall off
sit easy amongst my many me’s
and build a fire to keep the both of us warm 

Hughes Corner: To Artina

In the spirit of valentine's day, a sweet love poem. 

I will take you heart.

I will take your soul out of your body

As though I were God.

I will not be satisfied

With the touch of your hand

Nor the sweet of your lips alone.

I will take your heart for mine.

I will take your soul.

I will be God when it comes to you.

Fave Five: Slamming It!

Nothing soothes the spirit quite like a good love poem, regardless of the type of poem or any other such evaluation criteria. When you hear or read it, be it with a happy or sad ending, you can never ignore the likeness of emotion, the feeling of knowing, or rather identifying, there is a melody acquired from well-constructed metaphors and similes. The captive pleasure contained within a broken heart and the dancing clatters of a new romance.
A beautiful word has always resonated within me, what more of a bunch of beautiful words strung together to illustrate meaning and familiar emotional stances.

I’ve been watching a lot of American slam poetry on YouTube of late and on this post I list my fave five poets and poems, here goes:

5.            Dear Ex-lover by Jasmine Mans

4.            A lot Like You by Rudy Francisco

3.            40 Love Letters by Jeanann Verlee

2.            I Will Wait For You by Janette Ikz

1.            Before Bed by Zora Howard

Current Read: Half a Yellow Sun

In 2014 I vow to read more books written by or telling authentic African stories and it starts here.

I read and finished Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s collection of short stories titled ‘The Thing Around Your Neck’ and loved it. I am very happy to have discovered this author and her work and I’m equally thrilled about delving into this novel as well. Published in 2006 and has since gone on to receive awards including the Orange Prize for Fiction award in 2007, this is an award given out annually to a female author of a full length English novel.