OBOC - Gabon

Daniel Mengara's Mema is a tribute to his mother, a woman of extraordinary courage who is ready to wield the machete and take on her entire community to hold onto her son. At the same time, Mema is also the story of a culture in transition, one that is face to face with the new world where "people no longer knew their own wisdoms, because the wisdoms of the white man had prevailed".

Notorious for her big mouth and her fiery temper, she was both "admired and loathed, respected and feared" by her own people. Mocked for her barrenness, she was also accused of witchcraft as she managed to subdue her husband completely. After many a struggle she finally manages to bear children, but then calamity strikes her. When her husband's health takes a turn for the worse, she decides to take him to the mimbiri medicine men much against the wishes of her husband's family and other members of the community. The plan backfires as her husband doesn't return from his trip to the world of the dead. Adding to her misery she loses two daughters on the day following the death of her husband.

So her son Daniel is forcefully taken out of her home by her husband's nephew Zula who was an important figure from Beyok as he was trained in the white man's ways. Mother and son are separated for 5 years during which Daniel is educated in Beyok, after which Mema rises once again and takes back her son. Guided by the fable of Osuga Zame and its wisdom "Ntol osu, ntol n'vouss" (Elder ahead, elder behind), Mema fully understands that the child who saves the family is not necessarily the oldest. Sometimes the youngest has to take over the role of the elder.

Mema strives and saves money to ensure that Daniel can learn and "become someone in the white man's world". As the white man's wisdom becomes inevitable, Mema extracts a promise from her Osuga Zame to never forget his people and his wisdom.

This book is proof that Daniel Mengara has not forgotten, for her, he remembers, just as he had promised.

OBOC - France

With such a rich literary tradition picking a writer from France was extremely difficult. In fact my love for historical fiction was largely due to Dumas. So while I could've gone Dumas, Proust or Hugo, I went with the little known (to me), Noble Prize winner J.M.G. Le Clezio and the book "Desert" which introduced him to the English speaking audience. This decision was largely based on one interview with Le Clezio that I heard on BBC.

Strongly repulsed by colonialism and its effect on Africa, Le Clezio's empathy lies completely with the colonized nomads. In Desert he uses two stories set in completely different times to describe the impact of colonialism. One is set in the early 1900s and is the story of Nour and his forced migration with the rest of his Tuareg tribe - the Blue Men. Directed by their spiritual leader "Water of the eyes" to head further North, the tribe is driven by thirst, hunger and the longing to find a land that will shelter and protect them. The other story is that of Lalla set in the 1970s. Lalla lives in the Project - somewhere in Morocco and is a descendant of the same tribe as Nour. Orphaned, brought up by her aunt, Lalla is drawn to the desert and resists everything that is thrown her way including a forced marriage. Escaping to Marseilles, she joins the ranks of the shadow of immigrants who flood France from her ex-colonies and ekes out a living as a cleaner. Discovered by a photographer she finds glory and fame as the model Hawa, but the wealth and fame mean nothing to her. Drawn back to the desert she returns to give birth to her child. Two other main characters in the novel are Hartani - the mute shepherd who is Lalla's only friend and lover and Naman the fisherman who is a fascinating story teller.

Desert is a slow moving novel and often it feels like reading poetry. The novel is extremely visual as Le Clezio paints a picture of the desert landscape, its people, the relation between land and the creatures that live off the land. Although intuitively Blue is the last color one associates with the Desert, that was the color that flashed in my mind's eye as I read the novel - be it the Blue Men, the Blue Sky, or the distant Blue Ocean.

The novel would have been a very hard read if I had not listened to Le Clezio's interview in the BBC world book club. That gave me a great perspective of where he is coming from. His compassion for the Third World, the disenfranchised, the nomads of the desert or the immigrants in France is deep rooted. Even as a child he had been impacted by the effect of colonialism on the locals in Nigeria.  Unlike Lalla or the Hartani who clearly know that their home is in the desert, Le Clezio himself is of mixed nationality  - born in France to parents with Mauritius origins, living in New Mexico, with a love for Sweden, he is in some sense an exile himself finding his home in the French language.

This book is not for everyone. It is by no means an easy read, and Lalla at first glance can be a hard character to identify with. Personally the book struck a chord with me because this is in some sense a book that deals with migrations, separations and finding one's place in a globalized world.