Looking at Africa: The Wizard of the Crow by Ngugi wa Thiong'o

Ngugi wa Thiong'o is not a small name in African literature. He and Chinua Achebe famously debated whether it was possible to write in the language of the colonizer: can the formerly colonized (even that is debated, is colonialism every truly over?) write and express themselves in the language of the colonizer? Does that constitute a mental adherence or subjugation to a form of expression, a way of seeing the world, that belongs to the colonizer? Because of this, despite being in exile from his native Kenya, Ngugi wa Thiong'o has written in Gikuyu. He translates his novels himself into English.

My question, after reading the mammoth 776-page Wizard of the Crow, shares that same concern of retaining African voices and expression. Does the magical realism of Wizard detract from the seriousness of the other depictions in the book? If despotism, corruption, and bribery are as despicable as they seem, and so egregious as to endanger so many lives, does the magical realism of the Ruler's illness, of the magical and mysterious disguises of Kamiti and Nyawira, make the reader take the corruption less seriously too? Does that endanger our thinking about Africa, or strengthen it? Open it?

The story is a rich one, tracing the lives of several characters as they grow or diminish in power in the state of Aburiria. I appreciated the irony of Kamiti, who becomes (by accident, largely, but also by fate) the Wizard of the Crow, falling prey to an illness he himself divined in others. The Wizard was also Kamiti, Nyawira was herself also the Wizard, but also the Limping Witch, and assumed many disguises and characters in the book. I took this to be an interesting comment and depiction of the many faces we assume in our daily lives, manipulating others or being manipulated.

Thiong'o ends with an optimistic note: the discovery that Arigaigai Gathere (A.G.) had saved the Wizard's life in the fatal shootout scene towards the end of the novel. A.G., as a policeman, had throughout the story believed in the Wizard's power, but was an agent of the state. In the end, he seemed to be the only character who escaped a fate of either government agent (powerful at some times, and taken from power viciously by enemies at others) or citizen fighting the government. In the end, A.G. is the only one who wrote his own fate. Haki ya mungu.

I Dream (Read) of Africa, Part 2

My Africa book streak has continued, and I finally picked up Barbara Kingsolver's The Poisonwood Bible. I enjoyed her writing early this year in Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, but hadn't ventured into her fiction. Poisonwood is gripping, from start to finish; I eagerly devoured it. At first, I felt a little nervous about Kingsolver's ability to maintain 5 distinct voices and narrators throughout the the novel (after all, my version is 649 pages long). My fears were unfounded: the girls and Orleanna are all fully delineated, believable, consistent, lifelike...when the parrot Methusaleh is released and dies, I felt the weight of the book's prophecy and tone. The simple, perfect parable of caging an animal, raising it domesticated, and then releasing it into the wild portrays the evils of colonialism so perfectly. The deliberate, malicious thoughtlessness in this act, along with that inherent in colonialism, reminded me of the US' current situation in Iraq. US forces toppled Saddam, who didn't much take care of his own country anyway, ran the country into the ground while exploiting its resources and playing factions of the population off one another for our gain - and now we are just going to leave. We haven't learned our lessons as a nation. There are still naysayers, just as the Prices record Americans at home not understanding the CIA's role in Mobutu's reign. We are unwilling to believe our own complicity. There is no accountability for cleaning up one's own messes. There is no peace love and equality - just exploitation of other people.

Kingsolver's book resonated with me in other ways, aside from validating my master's classes on the horrors of colonialism and, well, neo-colonialism and imperialism. Leah speaks to marriage as well, speaking of hers to Anatole: "Our union has been difficult for both of us in the long run, but what union isn't? Marriage is one long fit of compromise, deep and wide. There is always one agenda swallowing another, one squeaky wheel crying out. But hasn't our life together meant more to the world than either of us could have meant alone?" I think this is a lovely summation of the goal of marriage, one I aspire to. It's not that I couldn't survive without Emile. But I am better for being with him.

I found the character of Adah so compelling, and I admit to being drawn to her over the other girls, even though I think others would place me closer to Leah. After everything, she admits,"The power is in the balance: we are our injuries, as much as we are our successes." Injuries - not failures - a much kinder way to frame our attempts and lives.

I Dream (Read) of Africa...

My inborn wanderlust has struck again. I realized recently that for the first time in 20 years, I have been on the same continent for 12 consecutive months. This fact makes me itchy. With no relief in sight, and no trips planned (other than the honeymoon that will happen after the impossible-to-time wedding), I have resorted to the NYPL and Nancy Pearl. I have dusted off my little-used library card, a vestige of a former, no-longer-up-to-date Manhattan address, and invested 30 minutes on the NYPL website requesting Nancy Pearl's Book Lust recommendations be sent to the Harlem branch for my rapid consumption. I read a lot. I always have; this is a leftover habit of a youth spent traveling the world in my mind before I started traveling it in my body. E is still amazed at how fast I can read.

I devoured Francesca Marciano's Rules of the Wild in three days of train rides. Her Italian narrator's quirks were eerily reminiscent of my own, and her search for a home and place to belong in the wild, unknowable, ever-changing Kenya parallel my own hunt for a room of my own (so to speak). Pearl describes this book as a love story set in 90s Africa, among wealthy and self-indulgent white society. I would add, it is a bleak, if honest, portrayal of white Nairobi society. But it really is a love story, set in an insider's world, and detailed with the set of a semi-nostalgic African lifestyle, but at its heart, is a story about love and the search for belonging. As someone who belongs nowhere, I found it dizzyingly real, and as I grew further engrossed with the story, it became difficult to separate fact from fiction. As with any good story, I was sad to let Esme go.

Continuing in the same geographic if not thematic vein, my next Pearl recommendation is The Ukimwi Road by Dervla Murphy. At sixty years old, Murphy decided to bike solo through Kenya, Uganda, and Zimbabwe. Her account is brutally honest, sharing the flies and smells and sour meals - and her daily counts of Tusker beers (now familiar because of Marciano); she does not romanticize Africa, or what it is to be a white woman traveling alone there. While she is critical of the white intervention in Africa, she does not question of the fraught side effects of Western medical superiority or probe assumptions of Western feminism as the ultimate liberation (so far). The work quickly becomes about AIDs, as Murphy cycles through AIDs-ravaged villages in the 90s as the epidemic was on the rise, and before drugs were widely available that mitigated the effects (even for white patients) of what her acquaintances call "the slim disease." It is depressing that even in recent years, with the time that has elapsed since the book's publishing, a cure has not been found and the disease continues to devour. Murphy recounts the continual pleas for help of people she comes across in her travels: they assume she is rich because she is not African and traveling there, because she has a bike, because she is white. They assume she can help, they offer her their children to take with her, ask for money, request drugs. Her contribution is publishing a book to an audience who knows little of living with this disease, a trifling offering to those she meets but an important one for those who have not seen this disease at work.

I am enjoying living vicariously through the irreverent, spicy Murphy, and plotting how to make some voyages of my own very soon. My next Pearl recommendation, waiting for me at the Harlem library, is an account of the founding of Australia...I seem to have a white postcolonial guilt thing going for places that are depicted as rugged, lawless, unconquerable...