OBOC - Congo (Republic)

“Broken Glass” was unlike anyother novel that I read from Africa as part of OBOC. It had to be one of the lightest reads with the exception of Mongo Beti’s Mission Accomplished. Still I had a bit of difficulty plodding through the novel and I will explain why in a bit, but I should say it was only when I completed it and spent some time thinking about it I started to see the merits of the novel.

It is obvious that Alain Mabanckou is in love with words and literature so much so that he didn’t want punctuations to distract us from the letters. Sentences flowed in one continuous stream with no periods or any other marks besides commas, reminding me of Cormac McCarthy’s style of writing (although Alain uses quotation marks). Along the way Alain also pays tribute to many of the leading writers across the globe from Borges to Tagore and to some of the best loved comic characters like Asterix to Tintin and Snowy. The book is also like a puzzle or a treasure hunt with hidden references to many other works some of which were lost on me (unfamiliarity with French literature and History).  It is certainly a fresh, young voice in African Literature.

The story in a nutshell is about Broken Glass - a has-been teacher, who aspired to be a literary figure when young. He is now a 64 year old alcoholic, suspended from his job for inappropriate behavior, abandoned by his dad when young, orphaned by his mom who drowned herself, and left to his own by his wife Angelica (aka Diabolica). His only solace is the bar Credit Gone West which has managed to stand despite being attacked by local thugs and corrupt officials with “iron bars from Zanzibar, clubs and cudgels from Medieval Christendom, poisoned spears from the time of Chaka Zulu, sickles and hammers from the Communist Block, Molotov Cocktails from May’68, machetes left over from the killing spree in Rwanda”. (One of my favorite sentences in the book BTW, one sentence that captures the history of Africa).

The bar owner Stubborn Snail, enlists Broken Glass to chronicle the history of the bar and its patrons a motley crew of desperate souls. In a country of oral tradition, Stubborn Snail doesn’t want Credit Gone West erased from the memory of future generations. So he trusts only the written word to preserve the memory (“didn’t want Credit Gone West just to vanish one day, and added that people in this country have no sense of the importance of memory, that the days when grandmothers reminisced from their deathbeds was gone now, this is the age of the written word, that’s all that’s left”)

Through the potpourri of patrons we get a glimpse of life at the very bottom rung of the social ladder in Trois Cents. Whether it is the “Pampers Guy” who was violated in prison or the “Printer” whose life in Paris was shattered by the appearance of his illegitimate son, or Mouyeke a con artist cum sorcerer, or Robinette the prostitute who can “outpiss” any drunk, you will realize these are not characters that are going to create legendary fiction with larger than life heroes. Some of these stories were outright gawdy, gross and gruesome making it a difficult read for me especially with all the discussion on scat. But that precisely is the point of Alain, he is giving voice to the voiceless and he manages to do it through the ramblings of one of them.

I can’t say I enjoyed the book completely, but I can certainly see myself re-reading certain sections just for the delight offered by Mabanckou’s words and to try and solve some of the literary puzzles. I guess like the title “Broken Glass” the image offered by the book is in bits and pieces which challenges the reader to put together the pieces by themselves.

OBOC - Congo (DRC)

This is going to be a long review. After all the book was 540 pages, and the political history of the Congo goes back many centuries. In fact what is amazing is how Barbara Kingsolver did what she did in a mere 540 pages!

Until a year ago I could barely get the two Congos correct and had to constantly refer to them by their Colonizers - Belgian Congo for the DRC and the French Congo for the Republic, and unfortunately I know i am not alone. And if you are into literature you know that in your subconscious "Darkness" and "Congo" went together thanks to Joseph Conrad. Then about a year back, my little one and I were boxing and shipping books to the DRC as part of the Congo Books Project initiated by Keith Harmon Snow, and as she looked up the DRC on a map, I started to read a bit more about its history.  One thing led to the other and I ended up supporting Friends of the Congo and I saw the Poisonwood Bible as one of their recommended reading.

A Baptist Missionary Nathan Price uproots his family which comprises of his wife (Orleanna) and 4 daughters (Rachel, the twins Leah and Adah and Ruth May) from Georgia and drops them in the Congo in 1960. "Sashaying into the jungle aiming to change it all over to the Christian style" the family finds that the Jungle has its own way of "changing you right back". How do the 2 civilizations clash and change each other is the crux of the story told by the women over a period of 30 years as each find their own paths to the future. During these 30 years the political turmoil faced by the Congo as it changes hands from Belgium to Patrice Lumumba to Mobuto with the Western powers behind the curtain as puppet masters forms the backdrop of the novel.

At the risk of sounding like a book report, I have to write this review in blocks of themes that fell out for me.

1) Political Allegory: Going in uninvited, trying to save the Native by offering salvation without making the smallest attempt to understand them, Nathan Price is the embodiment of all the meddling done by the Western poltical powers in Africa. "Tata Jesus is Bangala" he exclaims without bothering to learn the right enunciation that Jesus became the poisonwood who promised great itches instead of being the "most precious" who could deliver salvation! His marriage to Orleanna started as a passionate affair but ended up with him exerting complete domination over her until she after enduring great tragedy decided to not let him conquer her anymore! Now that is a great allegorical reference to the Western powers' passion for Africa and how Africa responds back. Rachel Price observes if it (conquering and controlling Africa) was as easy as they thought it would be then wouldn't Africa look just like America with more palm trees?

2) The plight of Africa: Kingsolver's empathy lies firmly with Africa and she delivers an astounding lesson for the Western world which is extremely relevant till date.The West is rightly accused of walking out of Africa as a "husband quits his wife leaving her with her naked body curled around the emptied-out mine of her womb". Now wasn't that exactly how Belgium quit Congo in the the 1960 after decades of exploiting the country.   The whole continent has endured according the Adah a "bizzare combination of foreign thievery and foreign good will" and the world today deals with the "Africa problem" by hollow promises of foreign aid. From diamonds to coltan our blessings are becoming the Congo's curse. What is our role? Are we "co-conspirators" without our own knowledge? These are some hard hitting questions that the book raised and made me think hard.

3) Gardening and the Land: The land figures prominently in the book, just like i guess it does in the Bible. Nathan Price carries seeds from his hometown and goes about clearing the land for a kitchen garden completely ignoring the demands of the local ecosystem and refusing to heed to local wisdom. But Nature ultimately triumphs over everything and in the Congo time and again proves it cannot be conquered or controlled. Be it through droughts, downpours or armies of ants it has its way of winning against all odds. This again seemed like a warning by Kingsolver to modern agro-science and to the powers that be that try to impose temperate agricultural practices onto tropical lands.

4) The effect of Africa: When tragedy strikes the Price family, Orleanna leads her remaining children out of the Congo by simply standing up and walking in silence through the rain, mud and dirt. But over the years the family discovers that they've got their "heart buried six feet in African dirt" and each deals with this in their own way. Orleanna turns to the land, while her daughters have a "lock, stock and barrel" approach. Rachel the vain locks herself into an equatorial paradise, Adah takes stock of everything as she researches infectious diseases, and Leah barrels her way into setting things right finding that under the equatorial sun and with time her whiteness can slowly but surely be erased.  In the macroscopic world the west discovers that by "saving Africa's babies and extracting its mineral soul" it has shown the path to its own door for infectious diseases.

These are not the only themes in the book - gender inequality, religious themes ("there are christians and there are christians"), the political systems and the economic systems clashing - each is present and can be elaborated. Then there is the strain of guilt and self doubt that runs through the book - guilt that is propagated through religion, war and familial ties to the guilt of abandonment .

If all this appears excessively bleak, Kingsolver through the words of the "eyes in the trees" urges us to forgive ourselves and "slide the weight from your shoulders and move forwards. ...Move on. Walk forward into the light" are the last words of wisdom the novel has to offer. As I put it down I realized that this was just one of those novels that despite its heart wrenching themes left me sadder when it ended.

What i haven't mentioned are the technical merits of the book - writing in 5 different voices (interesting to note that the patriarch who dominated the lives of everyone is rendered voiceless), character development etc as I am not qualified to do that :)

I am now looking forward to the BBC World Book Club discussion with Kingsolver about this book in October.