Suppose a man, a Wolof man, were to write a novel. Not simply a novel about a Wolof man, you understand, but a novel written by its main character (the Wolof man) in Wolof, documenting a Wolof life. Suppose this man wrote, not for critical acclaim or a wide readership, but out of a sense of obligation to record the facts of his life for his grandson, who had traveled overseas and not yet returned. The man at the sunset of his life, certain he will not see his grandson again, this lending a certain urgent sadness to his prose. And yet every word weighed down by the many years of his life and what he has done (or failed to do) with them, and also a resignation that all was as it was predestined to be. Such is the central conceit of Boubacarr Boris Diop's Wolof novel Doomi Golo: Nettali.
Set in Dakar, Senegal, in the district of Nyaarela, it tells the story of one Ngiraan Fye, an old man waiting for his death, sending out this last communique to his absent grandson, a "hardworking and disciplined young man who the whole district still talk about with great respect". Ngiraan writes to tell him of all he has missed in his absence, but also to give an account of his own life, and his son's (the absent grandson's father). Divided into multiple books, each book dealing with one facet: the boy's mother, the boy's stepmother who came from France when his father died, the political state of the country (including a short exploration of Sheikh Anta Diop, as well as colonial occupation), and many more.
One could spend many years reading all the different levels in the novel, and finding interpretations for them. Wolof culture is permeated with Islamic values, and so a peculiar form of existentialism is manifested by Ngiraan. He believes in Allah, and that when he dies he will return to Him, and that He is the source and root of his life; and yet still he cannot stop wondering what his life was for, and what he did with it. These questions nag at him throughout the book, refusing to go away or be easily dealt with. In one section he is set upon finding out about his ancestor, who he has only memories of from childhood, but who he holds in great reverence. He goes on a journey which gets more and more allegorical as it proceeds, becoming a representation of the search for the soul and the ever receding self. In the end what he finds upends all his initial thoughts about this ancestor, who turns out to be an evil man reviled by all and not the hero he had thought. "The search for oneself", the narrator tells his grandchild (and the Reader), "is the most difficult and seldom ends in places we prefer or expect - one must be strong in order to attempt it". This continually happens in the novel, with Diop taking us to places we did not at all expect, and forcing us to revisit our original assumptions. Parallel to this,there runs through the novel a Borgesian fascination with mirrors, as a means of telling us what we are - a task they often fail at, partly because we put our own interpretations on even the things we see in mirrors, rendering them not as objective as we would like to believe. In one memorable scene a pair of gorillas which cause strife between the colonizing white men and the locals, and more than one death, by destroying the constructs created at sea for incoming ships, are finally trapped using mirrors. They end up tearing each other apart.
Ngiraan's search for identity is only the whole culture's search for identity writ small. Again and again we return to the question of who we really are, by way of Sheikh Anta Diop, by way of Lumumba, by way of the young people walking down the street dressed in the latest European fashions. But if this were only a recounting of African heroes and their achievements then it would not be anything out of the ordinary, and would tell us nothing new - that is well-covered ground after all (and tired ground, in the hands of the many dictators on the continent self-styled after these heroes, ready to namedrop them at the slightest shake of a microphone in their faces). Diop goes much deeper - Ngiraan's daughter-in-law returns from France to bring his son's corpse back, and from the moment she steps off the plane she distances herself from everyone around her, claiming she is white and does not belong amongst them. Immediately we begin to see the metaphoric possibilities.1 If Ngiraan is the part of us earnestly painstakingly attempting to build an identity that falls in line with our history and heritage, she is the part that has given in to the strong temptation to float away on the river of the new culture all around us, where every one else seems to be floating these days. ("This need to continually assert our pride in our culture and our belonging to it", Ngiraan asks, "does it not point to a deeper dislocation? Surely the one who is does not need to continually assert what he is. Why would he imitate himself?" - words, after all, cannot make us - they only describe what we are; no matter how fervently one hopes, one cannot become something by merely repeating over and over that one is not its opposite). She does not stop at merely telling people she is toubab, she goes to see a Marabout, who promises he can turn her into what she has always wanted to be. He does so, changing the color of her skin and giving her a grand name, but the price he asks is high (aren't the prices for these things always): that she will give one of her two children to him. She refuses, and he turns her into a spectacle every one in Dakar travels to see, almost causing a riot. Finally soldiers from the French embassy arrive to rescue her. She rushes out to greet them, tears in her eyes, thankful that her ordeal is over at last. They ask her to come with them but they will not let her bring the children, who "cannot possible be hers - look how dark they are, and how white you are". She hurls herself on the ground and asks for their mercy, but they will not budge, and in the end she is compelled by the soldiers to leave them, wailing where they stand in front of the house. The reader is left to reach their own conclusions.
All this - the play with internal and external representations, the characters' misadventures and how deeply they are engrossed in them - make for intriguing reading. But the highest accomplishment of the novel is its powerful presentation of the Wolof language (and by extension all the other local/native languages) as a language which is fully capable of holding one's model of the World in all its complexity, and able to navigate this complexity with ease. This statement may seem like a self-evident fact to people not familiar with the local languages and what happens when one begins to learn to assume a foreign culture. Not learn a new language: the process by which we the previously colonized bit players in the epic play of globalization come to adapt the language, customs and mores of our colonizers is much more involved than simply learning a new language. It runs much deeper than the level of mere word substitution (the words of our local languages for the words of the foreign tongue), instead coming to be a gradual substitution of large swathes of our World View for the foreign one. Yet all this happens so subtly and creeps up on us so gradually - one moment we're learning to read Peter and Jane in primary school, years later we're writing essays in English - we barely even notice it. But the consequences are far-reaching: by the time we have reached enough mastery in English to be able to go to college it is too late. Somehow, through a process of selection over the years, English has become not just the language we communicate in but the language of our thoughts. All forms of sophisticated thought - from science to literature - having been presented to us in this language, we come to equate it with sophistication and the higher forms of intellectual reasoning, far and above any local language we speak.
This is where Doomi Golo succeeds so well as a novel. There are novels in which the voice and the narratorial presence do not matter so much as the events that are narrated: one could conceive of these novels translated into other languages with ease, with not much being lost in the process, beyond the usual quibbles over what word or sentence structure best maps to the one in the original language. Doomi Golo falls squarely out of this category. It presents to us the possibility of a man who speaks only Wolof, yet has the same complicated thought processes we have come to associate, in our Anglicized minds, with people who can speak that language. The language used in Doomi Golo is constantly beautiful, sharp and spare in places, in others rising to grand heights of description. One gets a thrill every time one reads Ngiraan's many plays with words and ideas, at the freshness of his insight, at his wisdom. In one section he represents the days as men marching through time, each vying for more popularity than its fellows. He takes this idea and uses it to explore days in history on which significant events happened, changing the perspective - now instead of these events happening with the day being merely an unimportant background, instead the day comes forward as - if not the causer of the event - at least as important in its creation as the people involved. And while the people did it for their own reasons, the day did it so it would be remembered in history.
By the end of the book Ngiraan has gone into a delirious state2. The narration in the final section is (fittingly) picked up by a mad man, Aali Kebooy, who also lives in Nyarelaa. Aaali Kebooy has been murdered multiple times, and seems to have some form of magical power, as well as an incredibly long life. It is he who explains to the grandson about the death of his grandfather, and writes the postscript to the book. By the end of the book we are left with the impression that we have read a truly great work, and it is a pity that more people cannot read this book and understand what it is saying.
notes
1 yet, I hasten to add, these metaphors are not stilted, nor do they seem forced. The people represented are fully fleshed-out characters, with lives beyond the metaphors.
2 there is a whole section in which he is captured by monkeys and made their slave - there are strong indications this only happened in his mind
Showing posts with label reviews. Show all posts
Showing posts with label reviews. Show all posts
Monday, November 23, 2009
Monday, May 25, 2009
Review of "Borom Sarret" [Cart Driver] by Ousmane Sembene
Borom Sarret Review
I saw Borom Sarret by Ousmane Sembene last night. According to wikipedia it is considered "the first film ever made in Africa by a black African". It takes place in Dakar, Senegal, and is about a horse-and-cart driver trying to eke out a living. It is a short film, barely 20 minutes long, yet in that time it manages to pack in quite a lot of themes.
A black and white film, it opens with a stark view of a shining white mosque building, its profile cutting into the skyline (a beautiful, beautiful shot - and this is Ousmane pre-color). A prayer has just ended, and the cart driver of the film's title gets off his prayer mat, puts on his many jujus and hat, and leaves (his wife coming up first to wish him God's fortune, and give him another juju to wear)1 , leading his horse out onto the dirt road.
He goes off to a busy day at work, transporting an old woman and a pregnant one, an "idiot" who "goes into town every day looking for a job that is never there", mostly not being paid enough for his troubles (if paid at all). But he seems to have gotten used to it all - he speaks of the situation with a resigned air and no bitterness. The film itself is old (it was made in 1966) and while the lack of color subtracts from the full impact of the slums through which the cart driver move with his horse2 and cart, it also fills us with the same tiredness and ennui he must feel, the environment around him becoming part of the background of his thoughts, yet still there (even as the b&w environment comes to fade for us, not distracting but filled with a heavy presence).
Yet he still dreams, despite all this. After he has decided to forego lunch ("I will just eat these kola nuts") he meets a griot in the centre of town. With a crowd gathered about them the griot praises him, reminding him of his ancestors who "were Noble and Kings". The cart driver for a moment is caught up in this narrative, forgetting his hunger and his current station, forgetting the poverty all about him, breathlessly listening to the griot, a wide grin on his face. To keep the griot singing he must give him money - he ends up giving him all the money he has made that day. There is, here, some biting social commentary on how people, even when extremely poor, will spend beyond their means for ostentatious reasons - this is a much-discussed issue back home, but one which is also very prevalent. This cynical reading of the scene is only one interpretation however - what struck me was the commentary it also makes on dreams and the artists who create them (in this case the griot), and this second reading casts Ousmane as anything but cynical. Here we find a man who is so poor he cannot afford to buy food for lunch, yet he will pay money to be given access, if only for a brief time, to the dream world created by the artist. He thinks "look at me now, and what I am - yet how great my ancestors were", and this buoys him up. The griot sings a simple song, keeping to a basic rhythm, sometimes ascending into a high register, then descending into a low one. Much has been written and said about the low literacy rates in West Africa, and the lack of "a reading culture". Yet if books are taken to be a way of conjuring up a dreamspace for readers, there are also other media3 , including the griot oral traditions (which go back a long way) and which are perhaps even more effective.
After the griot scene a man approaches the cart driver with what looks like a dead baby wrapped in a bundle of white cloth, and asks to be taken to the cemetary (one wonders where the baby's mother is, and all the mourners - what is the story of this father who buries his baby alone and without any visible displays of grief?). The cart driver takes him without question. When they arrive at the cemetary they are not allowed inside - the father does not have the correct papers.4 He stands outside with his dead baby (which he placed on the ground when looking for his papers). The cart driver is torn - should he wait? But is it not really his problem now, is it? Should he leave? He is missing valuable custom, and has no money left since he met the griot. Then a man approaches him, and asks to be taken to the "Plateau", the rich part of the City, where cart drivers are not allowed. "I will pay much", the man says, offering a wad of cash. He eyes the cash, and finally agrees to take him, all the while calling on his saints and his God to watch over him.
Everything goes downhill after this - he meets a policeman (who treats him very badly), he loses his cart, the man runs off with his money (driving away in a new car). He walks home cursing his bad fortune, and yet still not able to stop himself from feeling amazement at the high rises in this part of town, the cleanliness, the beautiful paved streets he will never live on. "They are all criminals", he thinks bitterly, "they can read and all they use their reading for is to steal".
The film ends with the cart driver going home, penniless and with nothing to give to his wife. And here we see Ousmane's fascination with women as the silent backbones of West African societies which he is to explore in future films. When the cart driver sits down despondent and utterly defeated, it is his wife who comes to him. "Here, take the baby", she says, "hold it while I go out - for we shall eat today". And she leaves him sitting there wondering how she will pull this off, and the movie cuts to a black screen.
I saw Borom Sarret by Ousmane Sembene last night. According to wikipedia it is considered "the first film ever made in Africa by a black African". It takes place in Dakar, Senegal, and is about a horse-and-cart driver trying to eke out a living. It is a short film, barely 20 minutes long, yet in that time it manages to pack in quite a lot of themes.
A black and white film, it opens with a stark view of a shining white mosque building, its profile cutting into the skyline (a beautiful, beautiful shot - and this is Ousmane pre-color). A prayer has just ended, and the cart driver of the film's title gets off his prayer mat, puts on his many jujus and hat, and leaves (his wife coming up first to wish him God's fortune, and give him another juju to wear)1 , leading his horse out onto the dirt road.
He goes off to a busy day at work, transporting an old woman and a pregnant one, an "idiot" who "goes into town every day looking for a job that is never there", mostly not being paid enough for his troubles (if paid at all). But he seems to have gotten used to it all - he speaks of the situation with a resigned air and no bitterness. The film itself is old (it was made in 1966) and while the lack of color subtracts from the full impact of the slums through which the cart driver move with his horse2 and cart, it also fills us with the same tiredness and ennui he must feel, the environment around him becoming part of the background of his thoughts, yet still there (even as the b&w environment comes to fade for us, not distracting but filled with a heavy presence).
Yet he still dreams, despite all this. After he has decided to forego lunch ("I will just eat these kola nuts") he meets a griot in the centre of town. With a crowd gathered about them the griot praises him, reminding him of his ancestors who "were Noble and Kings". The cart driver for a moment is caught up in this narrative, forgetting his hunger and his current station, forgetting the poverty all about him, breathlessly listening to the griot, a wide grin on his face. To keep the griot singing he must give him money - he ends up giving him all the money he has made that day. There is, here, some biting social commentary on how people, even when extremely poor, will spend beyond their means for ostentatious reasons - this is a much-discussed issue back home, but one which is also very prevalent. This cynical reading of the scene is only one interpretation however - what struck me was the commentary it also makes on dreams and the artists who create them (in this case the griot), and this second reading casts Ousmane as anything but cynical. Here we find a man who is so poor he cannot afford to buy food for lunch, yet he will pay money to be given access, if only for a brief time, to the dream world created by the artist. He thinks "look at me now, and what I am - yet how great my ancestors were", and this buoys him up. The griot sings a simple song, keeping to a basic rhythm, sometimes ascending into a high register, then descending into a low one. Much has been written and said about the low literacy rates in West Africa, and the lack of "a reading culture". Yet if books are taken to be a way of conjuring up a dreamspace for readers, there are also other media3 , including the griot oral traditions (which go back a long way) and which are perhaps even more effective.
After the griot scene a man approaches the cart driver with what looks like a dead baby wrapped in a bundle of white cloth, and asks to be taken to the cemetary (one wonders where the baby's mother is, and all the mourners - what is the story of this father who buries his baby alone and without any visible displays of grief?). The cart driver takes him without question. When they arrive at the cemetary they are not allowed inside - the father does not have the correct papers.4 He stands outside with his dead baby (which he placed on the ground when looking for his papers). The cart driver is torn - should he wait? But is it not really his problem now, is it? Should he leave? He is missing valuable custom, and has no money left since he met the griot. Then a man approaches him, and asks to be taken to the "Plateau", the rich part of the City, where cart drivers are not allowed. "I will pay much", the man says, offering a wad of cash. He eyes the cash, and finally agrees to take him, all the while calling on his saints and his God to watch over him.
Everything goes downhill after this - he meets a policeman (who treats him very badly), he loses his cart, the man runs off with his money (driving away in a new car). He walks home cursing his bad fortune, and yet still not able to stop himself from feeling amazement at the high rises in this part of town, the cleanliness, the beautiful paved streets he will never live on. "They are all criminals", he thinks bitterly, "they can read and all they use their reading for is to steal".
The film ends with the cart driver going home, penniless and with nothing to give to his wife. And here we see Ousmane's fascination with women as the silent backbones of West African societies which he is to explore in future films. When the cart driver sits down despondent and utterly defeated, it is his wife who comes to him. "Here, take the baby", she says, "hold it while I go out - for we shall eat today". And she leaves him sitting there wondering how she will pull this off, and the movie cuts to a black screen.
- "God be with you", she tells him, "Remember we have nothing ill to speak of".
- which, incidentally, is the only living thing in the whole film refered to by name (the rather grand "Al Burah").
- One reason Sembene reportedly chose film at the beginning of his career was because he believed it could reach a much wider audience in his homeland.
- the sometimes-ridiculous beaureucratic systems that are left over from colonial days have always been a theme in Ousmane's work. See also: the identity paper problems faced by the protagonist in Mandaabi.
Friday, November 21, 2008
Mandabi by Ousman Sembene Review
Ousman Sembene, the Senegalese film director, has quite the International reputation - his death in 2007 received a lot of media coverage both offline and on-. The wikipedia article on him tells us he was considered the "Father of African Cinema". In addition he also wrote novels which won him great critical acclaim.
I saw a copy of Mandabi, an earlier movie, in our campus library last week and grabbed it with high expectations. Mandabi was made in 1968 (much earlier than Moolade), and was based on one of Sembene's novels. The plot itself is simple: a man living in Senegal receives a money order (a "Mandaa", the equivalent of "Western Union" these days) from his nephew in France. The nephew has gone there to try and make his way in the world, and the money is from his savings working odd jobs. He sends a letter along with the money order, explaining his intentions. It is testament to the amount of detail that is put into Sembene's movies, and well-roundedness of his characters, that the content of this letter alone would have filled up a whole movie. In it the nephew explains that he left Senegal because there were no jobs, and he too wishes to make money and marry a wife and start a family. He tells his Uncle to forget all the fears he may have about him losing his way, out in the wild western world. "Those who come here and lose their way", he says, "do so only by their own choosing". He says not a drop of alcohol has never passed down his throat, and assures his Uncle that he prays regularly, when he gets home from work, and spends the rest of his time going to school. The last part of the letter then explains what is to be done with the money: the greater part of it is to be saved away for him for his return, a smaller fraction is to be divided between his Mother and his Uncle.
The film then follows the developments leading from this, from the Uncle's perspective. His wives (he has two) have somehow managed (by their suggestive behavior including "borrowing" rice from the shop and even buying such luxuries as new bras, on the strength of the Mandaa) to let the whole village know about the money order, and as soon as the news is out all the men in the village begin to make their way to the Uncle's house, to "share in the fortune".
All the members of the village are very poor, as is the Uncle. In Senegambian society a structure has been built over many centuries to support this level of poverty, which many people suffer from. This structure involves sharing with your neighbors and helping them out in tight spots, in return for which they will help you when you need it (which is often, on both sides). This system works great when everyone participating in it is at the same level of poverty (a friend of mine once told me his theory that this is the reason the Gambia has not had any of the poor people's revolts in other countries: this system makes it just bearable, all the time, and ensures that no one becomes so poor they become desperate). However it has the disadvantage that once one person makes an attempt to rise above this they will be pulled back down, because no matter how much money they make, e.g., once they have spread it around helping all their neighbors then it becomes spread too thin, so that whilst the aggregate poverty level has been decreased a little, it is only by a negligible amount. In the movie one of the Uncle's wives puts it aptly - when she is sent to give some of their almost-finished rice to one of the neighbors, she complains to the other wife "If you have 9 beggars and you want to help them all, all you will become is the 10th beggar". Layer on top of this structure the system of manners that have been built over time, and which make it very rude to say a plain "No!" (e.g. back in the Gambia when a beggar asks you for money and you cannot give them any, what you say is "Forgive me until next time") and you will understand just how difficult it is for the Uncle to send people away and tell them he cannot help them. There is also the matter of the Uncle's pride and his need to be socially accepted - the person who shares their fortune is called a good person, and flattered and greeted with smiles everywhere he goes. He becomes very popular. The person who does not becomes as good as an outcast - people call him cruel and selfish. In the course of the film the Uncle in fact gradually makes his way from one of these poles to the other - when he begins to tell people that the money is not his and he cannot give them any they immediately turn against him.
The film would no doubt have come to a hasty conclusion if he had been able to receive the money immediately - he would help those he could help and spend the rest on himself, and becoming poor as they were once more they would leave him alone. But the problems begin the moment he goes to the post office to pick up the money. He does not have any form of valid ID, and the clerk informs him stiffly that he must get one. Thus begins a long and tedious (and ultimately fruitless) journey through the City, during which he gets cheated at every turn, and at one point even beaten up badly. He cannot speak French, does not know the ways of this new and bureaucratic world which is so different from the one he is used to. He must depend on the kindness of strangers, and the services of educated men to do everything for him: from translate his nephew's letter to take photos for an ID card. The people he meets in the government offices he goes to treat him contemptuously - in their fine suits (set against his waramba) he is everything that they have been taught is bad about themselves and have been trying to escape.
As in any Sembene movie (and as in real life) everything is not as clear-cut as the preceding paragraph perhaps gave the impression of. There are many layers here: even whilst the educated office workers he comes into contact with cheat and abuse him there are some who jump to his defence. On the street he gives out charity to a woman who asks - at home he is domineering and treats his wives like children, shouting and threatening to beat them when they step out of line. You begin to feel pity for him, and how unfair it is that "the system" does not treat him equally because he is uneducated, you begin to feel a bitterness against "the system" (a bitterness he himself never shows signs of feeling, interestingly enough - he seems to have accepted that this is the way it is for people like him."People like us", the Imam says when he comes to ask him for money, "should help each other out"). You feel all these things until his older sister (the money-sender's mother) comes visiting from the village. She hits him over the head and calls him foolish. "How could you live here all your life", she asks with scorn, "and not get your papers in order? When I return you better have my money!".
The older sister is atypical of the other women in the film. She pushes him around and treats him like a child, she is sharp-tongued all will brook no nonsense. His wives, on the other hand, run around and do everything they can to satisfy his every whim. But even they are cast as merely people subjugated by a system far more powerful than them (similar to the relationship between their husband and the educated bureaucratic world) - they are accepting of this system, but are portrayed despite this fully as people, with their own dreams. They pick up their husband when he falls, they fight on his behalf when he is outnumbered. When he has descended so far into debt he finds it hard to haul himself out again one of them gives him her only gold necklace to pawn. "Are you sure?", he asks, the only time in the movie he defers completely to her and is gentle, almost submissive. She nods. "But it is yours...", he says, still not taking it, looking sadly at it. "Take it", she replies, "material objects are to cure shame - for they cannot cure death". [The use of language here, as elsewhere is quite elegant and packed with old proverbs, something that will be lost when you cannot speak Wolof and have to use the subtitles].
But as the title suggests, in the end after all it all comes back down to the money order. By the end of the movie it has created a mini economic system of its own - on the promise of its receipt items have been borrowed and lent, and there is a big debt attached to it. In order not to give away the ending I will not discuss how the situation is resolved (or failed to be).
One thing that kept nagging at me as I watched the film was whether someone from outside the cultures it is set in would truly get it - why were all these people asking him for money? Why was he giving it to them, when he did not have enough for himself and it was not even really his? Whilst the concerns it raises are universal, the film itself is set very deeply in the societies it treats and is completely unapologetic about this. This makes sense - any attempt at making some of the scenes easier to comprehend to an outsider would have detracted from the story. One way to deal with this is to attempt to look beneath the scenes themselves - this is the kind of film which bears close watching. The language of the film is Wolof (with some French) - the version I got had English subtitles.
In the end, like any great work of art, the film raises more questions than it answers, and stays in your mind long afterward. I highly recommend it.
His movies are not very readily available back home (as with all other works of art created by African artists - it is unfortunate how much easier it is to lay my hands on Dan Brown's latest than a novel written by a Gambian author, in the Gambia.) After much searching, I was finally able to get myself a copy of Moolade, his last movie, using the Internets. It was hands down the best African movie I had seen until then. By the end of the movie I was certain his reputation was deserved - the camera work alone would have been enough to make it a masterpiece, even had he not had an engaging plot. It is set in a village, and it is one of the most faithful representations of a village on camera that I have ever seen. You are almost there - it captures the mood and the atmosphere and the lighting perfectly. Again and again the camera takes wide-angle shots over the roof-tops that are almost ethereal, making out of the collection of huts and animals running around a place, replacing the image you always had of a village in your head with something concrete you could actually live in. There are incidental scenes containing so much life they make you wonder whether they were really in the script or were part of footage the director gathered and inserted into the movie. (There is a scene, e.g., with a goat skipping over a rope set in the doorway of one of the village compounds and running off, all shot in absolute silence. Words don't do this scene justice - you must see it for yourself). There is a wordless quality to life in moments like this which are only ever successfully captured in the best films, and this one came as close as any, even given its sparse setting. I liked it so much I saw it again, this time with a couple of friends, and recommended it to everyone I knew. [Note: though the wikipedia article gives a summary of the plot of the film it does not do a very good job - you can find a list of other reviews here.]
I saw a copy of Mandabi, an earlier movie, in our campus library last week and grabbed it with high expectations. Mandabi was made in 1968 (much earlier than Moolade), and was based on one of Sembene's novels. The plot itself is simple: a man living in Senegal receives a money order (a "Mandaa", the equivalent of "Western Union" these days) from his nephew in France. The nephew has gone there to try and make his way in the world, and the money is from his savings working odd jobs. He sends a letter along with the money order, explaining his intentions. It is testament to the amount of detail that is put into Sembene's movies, and well-roundedness of his characters, that the content of this letter alone would have filled up a whole movie. In it the nephew explains that he left Senegal because there were no jobs, and he too wishes to make money and marry a wife and start a family. He tells his Uncle to forget all the fears he may have about him losing his way, out in the wild western world. "Those who come here and lose their way", he says, "do so only by their own choosing". He says not a drop of alcohol has never passed down his throat, and assures his Uncle that he prays regularly, when he gets home from work, and spends the rest of his time going to school. The last part of the letter then explains what is to be done with the money: the greater part of it is to be saved away for him for his return, a smaller fraction is to be divided between his Mother and his Uncle.
The film then follows the developments leading from this, from the Uncle's perspective. His wives (he has two) have somehow managed (by their suggestive behavior including "borrowing" rice from the shop and even buying such luxuries as new bras, on the strength of the Mandaa) to let the whole village know about the money order, and as soon as the news is out all the men in the village begin to make their way to the Uncle's house, to "share in the fortune".
All the members of the village are very poor, as is the Uncle. In Senegambian society a structure has been built over many centuries to support this level of poverty, which many people suffer from. This structure involves sharing with your neighbors and helping them out in tight spots, in return for which they will help you when you need it (which is often, on both sides). This system works great when everyone participating in it is at the same level of poverty (a friend of mine once told me his theory that this is the reason the Gambia has not had any of the poor people's revolts in other countries: this system makes it just bearable, all the time, and ensures that no one becomes so poor they become desperate). However it has the disadvantage that once one person makes an attempt to rise above this they will be pulled back down, because no matter how much money they make, e.g., once they have spread it around helping all their neighbors then it becomes spread too thin, so that whilst the aggregate poverty level has been decreased a little, it is only by a negligible amount. In the movie one of the Uncle's wives puts it aptly - when she is sent to give some of their almost-finished rice to one of the neighbors, she complains to the other wife "If you have 9 beggars and you want to help them all, all you will become is the 10th beggar". Layer on top of this structure the system of manners that have been built over time, and which make it very rude to say a plain "No!" (e.g. back in the Gambia when a beggar asks you for money and you cannot give them any, what you say is "Forgive me until next time") and you will understand just how difficult it is for the Uncle to send people away and tell them he cannot help them. There is also the matter of the Uncle's pride and his need to be socially accepted - the person who shares their fortune is called a good person, and flattered and greeted with smiles everywhere he goes. He becomes very popular. The person who does not becomes as good as an outcast - people call him cruel and selfish. In the course of the film the Uncle in fact gradually makes his way from one of these poles to the other - when he begins to tell people that the money is not his and he cannot give them any they immediately turn against him.
The film would no doubt have come to a hasty conclusion if he had been able to receive the money immediately - he would help those he could help and spend the rest on himself, and becoming poor as they were once more they would leave him alone. But the problems begin the moment he goes to the post office to pick up the money. He does not have any form of valid ID, and the clerk informs him stiffly that he must get one. Thus begins a long and tedious (and ultimately fruitless) journey through the City, during which he gets cheated at every turn, and at one point even beaten up badly. He cannot speak French, does not know the ways of this new and bureaucratic world which is so different from the one he is used to. He must depend on the kindness of strangers, and the services of educated men to do everything for him: from translate his nephew's letter to take photos for an ID card. The people he meets in the government offices he goes to treat him contemptuously - in their fine suits (set against his waramba) he is everything that they have been taught is bad about themselves and have been trying to escape.
As in any Sembene movie (and as in real life) everything is not as clear-cut as the preceding paragraph perhaps gave the impression of. There are many layers here: even whilst the educated office workers he comes into contact with cheat and abuse him there are some who jump to his defence. On the street he gives out charity to a woman who asks - at home he is domineering and treats his wives like children, shouting and threatening to beat them when they step out of line. You begin to feel pity for him, and how unfair it is that "the system" does not treat him equally because he is uneducated, you begin to feel a bitterness against "the system" (a bitterness he himself never shows signs of feeling, interestingly enough - he seems to have accepted that this is the way it is for people like him."People like us", the Imam says when he comes to ask him for money, "should help each other out"). You feel all these things until his older sister (the money-sender's mother) comes visiting from the village. She hits him over the head and calls him foolish. "How could you live here all your life", she asks with scorn, "and not get your papers in order? When I return you better have my money!".
The older sister is atypical of the other women in the film. She pushes him around and treats him like a child, she is sharp-tongued all will brook no nonsense. His wives, on the other hand, run around and do everything they can to satisfy his every whim. But even they are cast as merely people subjugated by a system far more powerful than them (similar to the relationship between their husband and the educated bureaucratic world) - they are accepting of this system, but are portrayed despite this fully as people, with their own dreams. They pick up their husband when he falls, they fight on his behalf when he is outnumbered. When he has descended so far into debt he finds it hard to haul himself out again one of them gives him her only gold necklace to pawn. "Are you sure?", he asks, the only time in the movie he defers completely to her and is gentle, almost submissive. She nods. "But it is yours...", he says, still not taking it, looking sadly at it. "Take it", she replies, "material objects are to cure shame - for they cannot cure death". [The use of language here, as elsewhere is quite elegant and packed with old proverbs, something that will be lost when you cannot speak Wolof and have to use the subtitles].
But as the title suggests, in the end after all it all comes back down to the money order. By the end of the movie it has created a mini economic system of its own - on the promise of its receipt items have been borrowed and lent, and there is a big debt attached to it. In order not to give away the ending I will not discuss how the situation is resolved (or failed to be).
One thing that kept nagging at me as I watched the film was whether someone from outside the cultures it is set in would truly get it - why were all these people asking him for money? Why was he giving it to them, when he did not have enough for himself and it was not even really his? Whilst the concerns it raises are universal, the film itself is set very deeply in the societies it treats and is completely unapologetic about this. This makes sense - any attempt at making some of the scenes easier to comprehend to an outsider would have detracted from the story. One way to deal with this is to attempt to look beneath the scenes themselves - this is the kind of film which bears close watching. The language of the film is Wolof (with some French) - the version I got had English subtitles.
In the end, like any great work of art, the film raises more questions than it answers, and stays in your mind long afterward. I highly recommend it.
Thursday, June 12, 2008
Our Collective Amnesia: Review of "A Living Mirror - The Life of Deyda Hydara"
Books and newspapers are very important in a society. They act as our collective memory, the things we can always go back to to take another look at events, to recognize repeating patterns in them, and to understand them. Whilst newspapers are of necessity published in a rush (there is a deadline, and it must be met - the paper must be out on the streets by so-and-so time), books have the luxury of being more meditated-upon, and are often better thought-out as a result. Authors can take years writing a single book - no one complains. This gives the authors of books a great advantage over newspaper writers and editors - the advantage of time, the ability to look at the bigger picture instead of just immediate events, and to allow events to reach their full maturity before commenting on them.
"A Living Mirror: The Life of Deyda Hydara" is one such book, written by Aloa Ahmed Alota and Demba Ali Jawo. It is a biography of Deyda Hydara, the Point editor who was killed in a drive-by shooting in 2004.
The book begins with Deyda as a young man, playing football on the streets of Banjul. We follow him as he is signed up, almost accidentally, for the French school, where he performs so well he is allowed to go to Dakar to complete his studies. These studies are cut short (though not before here, too, he has demonstrated his intelligence by already beginning to read philosophers such as Sartre. "Your verb conjugation is excellent", his teacher remarks on his first test) after his guardian becomes unable to afford the school fees any longer. He returns home and gets a job at Radio Syd, and the book follows his activites as he falls in love, gets married,and quits the Radio job to start a newspaper. We see, at the beginning, Deyda the man.
The middle part of the book is devoted to a series of Socratic-type dialogues Deyda had with one of his editors, during which they speak on various issues raised in articles Deyda wrote for the Point, ranging from the power of government to the rights of women. In them Deyda is presented as a learned man with very strong views on issues, and the editor as humble student asking just the right questions to keep the debate flowing, pausing only to read out relevant sections from articles as he is ordered to by Deyda. This part would perhaps have been a bit more interesting if the editor had acted as devil's advocate, arguing against some of the points Deyda made, making the discussion more lively. As it is, though, we do manage to hear of some of Deyda's opinions, and the ways in which he justified them.
Right at the end, we are told about the Point newspaper's 13th anniversary party - the speeches given that night, the dancing, the visit from the new US ambassador. And as the evening progresses, and we learn about the two female co-workers Deyda was planning to give lifts to their houses that night, we suddenly begin to realize what this entails. (There were two women in the car, when the shootings happened). The prose really flows here - you can feel the authors' emotions, as well as the emotions of the people who must have told them the tale. And then, after the unmarked Benz draws up to Deyda's car, and he is shot, after the assassins have escaped, we follow the ones left behind, their reactions recorded as they each get the news - some fainting, some in denial and going to check for themselves, some unable to accept that this was really happening. Not surprisingly, this part of the book was the most well-written.
There are a few little problems with the book, ones which can certainly be excused for having happened to first-time authors [both writers have worked for major Gambian newspapers in the past, but had not published a book before this one, as far as I know]. One of these problems is the excessive use of cliched expressions, especially in the first half of the book. Take, for example, this passage from page 57:
Deyda rocks on "a springy step", especially when he is "bowled over"? There are more passages like this which add to a certain sense of unneeded clutter in the narrative, sometimes getting in the way of the story. [Deyda's uncannily prescient declaration that he would be shot, for example is referred to as a "hoary old chestnut" amongst his staff, a metaphor which just does not sound right given both the context and the expected readership].
Right from the beginning the authors admit to having "adopted a fiction style" for presenting the life story they had before them, in order to make it more engaging to the reader. This is rarely a problem - it actually does help the book flow - though sometimes it leaves you wondering what really happened, and what the authors made up to fill in the gaps. On page 85, there is an encounter between Deyda and the Gambia Press Union lawyer selected to represent the GPU in court:
As biography, the book does not work as well as would be expected. The subject as presented is too flat. At meetings and press conferences he is always mowing the opponents down with his superior words, and they in their turn always clapping and cheering at his every utterance. He is always cheerful and happy and optimistic (almost superhumanly so), he is never afraid, he never has doubts.
It is instead as chronicle of media repression in this country that the book does a marvellous job, covering everything from the advent of Radio Syd to the debates in the National Assembly about the creation of a National Media Commission, and the subsequent attempts at parley by the Minister of Communications at the time. None of this is covered in any history curricula in the country, and most of it is information that could have been acquired only by talking directly to the persons involved, so bad has our societal amnesia become. Alota and Jawo have done us an invaluable service in putting this important part of the history of our democracy between two covers, adding to the store of collective memory in place for future generations.
After the main story itself, the book contains a series of photos of Deyda, and two appendices. The first appendix is made up of tributes written by his peers, all condemning the murder, all putting in words the horror and outrage felt by the whole country. The second one is a selection of articles, mainly from his "Good Morning Mr President" column in the Point newspaper. As we read these, and get closer and closer to his fatal hour, we cannot help but be struck by how brave he was, how he dared say the things which other people did or would not, in always clear and sometimes brilliant prose, never condescending, always taking the time to argue out his case, presenting the facts as he saw them. And it is the articles in this appendix which in the end convince us of the point the main story was trying to make all along: what we can see in these writings is the reflection of a man who until the last stuck to his beliefs - and died rather than relinquish them. If "patriot" wasn't such an overused, meaningless term these days in the country, I'd even call him a true patriot. The country is sorely in need of men like him once more.
You can find out more about the book by visiting deydahydara.com
"A Living Mirror: The Life of Deyda Hydara" is one such book, written by Aloa Ahmed Alota and Demba Ali Jawo. It is a biography of Deyda Hydara, the Point editor who was killed in a drive-by shooting in 2004.
The book begins with Deyda as a young man, playing football on the streets of Banjul. We follow him as he is signed up, almost accidentally, for the French school, where he performs so well he is allowed to go to Dakar to complete his studies. These studies are cut short (though not before here, too, he has demonstrated his intelligence by already beginning to read philosophers such as Sartre. "Your verb conjugation is excellent", his teacher remarks on his first test) after his guardian becomes unable to afford the school fees any longer. He returns home and gets a job at Radio Syd, and the book follows his activites as he falls in love, gets married,and quits the Radio job to start a newspaper. We see, at the beginning, Deyda the man.
The middle part of the book is devoted to a series of Socratic-type dialogues Deyda had with one of his editors, during which they speak on various issues raised in articles Deyda wrote for the Point, ranging from the power of government to the rights of women. In them Deyda is presented as a learned man with very strong views on issues, and the editor as humble student asking just the right questions to keep the debate flowing, pausing only to read out relevant sections from articles as he is ordered to by Deyda. This part would perhaps have been a bit more interesting if the editor had acted as devil's advocate, arguing against some of the points Deyda made, making the discussion more lively. As it is, though, we do manage to hear of some of Deyda's opinions, and the ways in which he justified them.
Right at the end, we are told about the Point newspaper's 13th anniversary party - the speeches given that night, the dancing, the visit from the new US ambassador. And as the evening progresses, and we learn about the two female co-workers Deyda was planning to give lifts to their houses that night, we suddenly begin to realize what this entails. (There were two women in the car, when the shootings happened). The prose really flows here - you can feel the authors' emotions, as well as the emotions of the people who must have told them the tale. And then, after the unmarked Benz draws up to Deyda's car, and he is shot, after the assassins have escaped, we follow the ones left behind, their reactions recorded as they each get the news - some fainting, some in denial and going to check for themselves, some unable to accept that this was really happening. Not surprisingly, this part of the book was the most well-written.
There are a few little problems with the book, ones which can certainly be excused for having happened to first-time authors [both writers have worked for major Gambian newspapers in the past, but had not published a book before this one, as far as I know]. One of these problems is the excessive use of cliched expressions, especially in the first half of the book. Take, for example, this passage from page 57:
By now the lanky, sunken-cheeked adoscelent Deyda had developed into a beefy-faced, well-rounded adult with a bulky frame. He rocked on a springy step, especially when a journalistic scoop or a well-written story bowled him over.
Deyda rocks on "a springy step", especially when he is "bowled over"? There are more passages like this which add to a certain sense of unneeded clutter in the narrative, sometimes getting in the way of the story. [Deyda's uncannily prescient declaration that he would be shot, for example is referred to as a "hoary old chestnut" amongst his staff, a metaphor which just does not sound right given both the context and the expected readership].
Right from the beginning the authors admit to having "adopted a fiction style" for presenting the life story they had before them, in order to make it more engaging to the reader. This is rarely a problem - it actually does help the book flow - though sometimes it leaves you wondering what really happened, and what the authors made up to fill in the gaps. On page 85, there is an encounter between Deyda and the Gambia Press Union lawyer selected to represent the GPU in court:
Deyda stared at [the lawyer] and asked her for the umpteenth time, "Are you sure you'd like to represent us in court?"
[She] smiled and waved her hands in the air. "I've told you again and again that I can and will take up the case".
Deyda beamed. "You mean you can stop the National Media Commission from emasculating the independent media?"
"I'll fight it out in court."
"And I'll use my newspaper to enlighten the public on the ominous danger the NMC Act posed to freedom of expression in this country."
They both laughed.
This sounds more like actors reading from a script than an actual conversation between two people. This kind of set up happens a few more times in the book, but is a small price to pay to have the rest of it flow the way it does.[She] smiled and waved her hands in the air. "I've told you again and again that I can and will take up the case".
Deyda beamed. "You mean you can stop the National Media Commission from emasculating the independent media?"
"I'll fight it out in court."
"And I'll use my newspaper to enlighten the public on the ominous danger the NMC Act posed to freedom of expression in this country."
They both laughed.
As biography, the book does not work as well as would be expected. The subject as presented is too flat. At meetings and press conferences he is always mowing the opponents down with his superior words, and they in their turn always clapping and cheering at his every utterance. He is always cheerful and happy and optimistic (almost superhumanly so), he is never afraid, he never has doubts.
It is instead as chronicle of media repression in this country that the book does a marvellous job, covering everything from the advent of Radio Syd to the debates in the National Assembly about the creation of a National Media Commission, and the subsequent attempts at parley by the Minister of Communications at the time. None of this is covered in any history curricula in the country, and most of it is information that could have been acquired only by talking directly to the persons involved, so bad has our societal amnesia become. Alota and Jawo have done us an invaluable service in putting this important part of the history of our democracy between two covers, adding to the store of collective memory in place for future generations.
After the main story itself, the book contains a series of photos of Deyda, and two appendices. The first appendix is made up of tributes written by his peers, all condemning the murder, all putting in words the horror and outrage felt by the whole country. The second one is a selection of articles, mainly from his "Good Morning Mr President" column in the Point newspaper. As we read these, and get closer and closer to his fatal hour, we cannot help but be struck by how brave he was, how he dared say the things which other people did or would not, in always clear and sometimes brilliant prose, never condescending, always taking the time to argue out his case, presenting the facts as he saw them. And it is the articles in this appendix which in the end convince us of the point the main story was trying to make all along: what we can see in these writings is the reflection of a man who until the last stuck to his beliefs - and died rather than relinquish them. If "patriot" wasn't such an overused, meaningless term these days in the country, I'd even call him a true patriot. The country is sorely in need of men like him once more.
You can find out more about the book by visiting deydahydara.com
Thursday, October 18, 2007
"Proverbs of the Senegambia" Review
I got a copy of "Proverbs of the Sene-Gambia", by Bamba and Mariama Khan, this morning. It's a beautiful little orange book, very well laid out, with a nice illustration of a xalam player on the cover. Inside is a brief introduction by the authors, then the proverbs start, numbered from 1 through 275, with about five on every page. The small size of the book is a great thing, making it easy to carry around and the whimsical font-face adds to the laid-back tone, letting you flip through at random, on a lazy Sunday afternoon.
The main problem I had with the book was the lack of attribution. In the preface the authors allude to certain resource persons they used for the different languages, which gives you the impression that they did their research well, and built up a database of proverbs before they started. My impression is that they collected these proverbs in their local language forms, then translated them into English for the book, which is certainly a laudable enterprise. However I felt it would have worked out better if they had also included the original proverbs in the local languages. They did this for one proverb only - the one on the front cover of the book - for the rest they went only with the English translations. This leaves me, as a speaker of Wolof, mentally trying to translate each proverb I read back to its original Wolof. Most proverbs have quite a bit of local color in them, and translating into English left this color behind in the local language, only carrying across a sense of the meaning (or what the authors thought were the meaning). Also, as the proverbs came from a variety of local languages, it would have been nice to know which tribe originated which proverb, allowing people to place them in context. I think this is something the authors should definitely look into, in a second edition.
Apart from that, it's a fantastic book. There are some beautiful sayings in here, which work in any language, such as:
"Walking barefeet for ages will in the end be like walking in shoes"
"The stranger does not know it when you cook for him the reserved coos that was stacked on top of the thatch"
"The person who is yet to cross the river must not laugh at the one who is about to drown"
You can pick up a copy of this book at Timbooktoo.
The main problem I had with the book was the lack of attribution. In the preface the authors allude to certain resource persons they used for the different languages, which gives you the impression that they did their research well, and built up a database of proverbs before they started. My impression is that they collected these proverbs in their local language forms, then translated them into English for the book, which is certainly a laudable enterprise. However I felt it would have worked out better if they had also included the original proverbs in the local languages. They did this for one proverb only - the one on the front cover of the book - for the rest they went only with the English translations. This leaves me, as a speaker of Wolof, mentally trying to translate each proverb I read back to its original Wolof. Most proverbs have quite a bit of local color in them, and translating into English left this color behind in the local language, only carrying across a sense of the meaning (or what the authors thought were the meaning). Also, as the proverbs came from a variety of local languages, it would have been nice to know which tribe originated which proverb, allowing people to place them in context. I think this is something the authors should definitely look into, in a second edition.
Apart from that, it's a fantastic book. There are some beautiful sayings in here, which work in any language, such as:
"Walking barefeet for ages will in the end be like walking in shoes"
"The stranger does not know it when you cook for him the reserved coos that was stacked on top of the thatch"
"The person who is yet to cross the river must not laugh at the one who is about to drown"
You can pick up a copy of this book at Timbooktoo.
Monday, September 3, 2007
Reading the Ceiling - A Review
In the slit between my bedroom curtains I see a triangle of sky more grey than blue. [...] I plan to be loose today. But who with?
Ayodele is a young Aku girl growing up in The Gambia. The book starts when, at 18, she has to make a monumental decision: who to lose her virginity to. But it's more than just who she loses it to that is important, it's that she is losing it, rebelling against the strict moral system of her mother's generation where a woman only lost her virginity on her wedding night, to her husband. This sense of rebellion against the rigid structures binding women in place in Gambian society is something that underlies the whole book, always subtly in place, always at the base of all the choices Ayodele makes (or fails to make).
Ayodele has a short-list of possible candidates, and at the beginning of the book we find her running through them in her mind, weighing them against each other. (And the largest mango in my pile? The biggest bonga on my stall?, she asks at one point during the descriptions). It is at this point that the book splits into three, the three possible paths Ayodele's life could take, depending on which choice she makes.
Given the plot of the book, it would have been very easy for it to become nothing more than a cheap gimmick, swamped in righteous sentimentality and a bias for certain choices over others on the author's part. Not so in this case - all the choices Ayodele makes are as valid as any other: there is no preaching, no overbearing moral tone. It is told in the first person, and the storytelling is watertight, and very convincing - the author never gets in the way of her characters, or interferes with them. There is a discipline in the storytelling, and it pays off: Ayodele is ready to step out of the page at any moment, and during her moments of sorrow - and this book, like real life, does not shy away from those - you feel great sympathy for her.
We often think of the choices we make as linked together in a long line, from start to finish, one choice leading to another, which leads to another, and so on until we expire. This view is overly simplistic, and not very realistic. Our choices are more like a web, each choice linked to a hundred other choices, which are linked to a hundred others, the linkages running backward and forward and letting you arrive at different parts of the web via different paths. Dayo, rather than taking the simplistic view here, takes the more complex one: things in one choice-line are echoed in a second one, certain things are repeated in all three lines, even though different choices were made by Ayodele. You find yourself wondering whether this complex interaction between the many choices we (and others) make, are not what we glorify and call Fate (with a capital F).
I feel like I do when I stand on the wet sand on the beach [...] and try to guess which of the waves will reach my toes before their weight pulls them back. [...] It's not the obvious ones, not necessarily the big ones that ride by themselves. More often than not, these waves never touch my toes.
Dayo Forster is a great stylist of prose, and you get the feeling much work went into crafting every word on these pages. The sentences are beautiful, and there are turns of phrase which demand that you re-read them, their lyricism almost poetic in its effect. Yet Ayodele never takes herself too seriously - all through the book there is a thin film of humor lain over everything that happens, and matters are dealt with with a great subtlety, and a very, very fine hand. Take, for example, this description of... well, just read it:
[He] can drive. I direct him all the way. Will you take me home? Why don't you stop here for a bit? Shall we move to the back seat? I have the good sense to take out the condom in my disco bag.
The book is set in The Gambia, and the descriptions and dialogue are very authentic. When Ayodele and her classmates travel up-country to celebrate their graduation with a picnic, you are there with them: the mud and the mosquitoes and the river with the canoes on it. There are many layers to this book, and many excursions into subjects which intrude into the life of every Gambian, despite your best efforts to guard against them: from the large (politics, religion, polygamy) to the small (how many mburu to buy for breakfast). But everything is always viewed from the perspective of Ayodele, and how it affects her life - there are no lengthy excursions into topics which have nothing to do with the plot, but which the author thought were pertinent in a Gambian novel anyway.
All this adds up to create a really good novel, one which transports you breathless from the almost-childish musings of a teenager lying on her bed making plans for the rest of her life, to the end, when Aodele has grown - in more ways than one - and is left, not bitter, not even regretful, but settled into her life, time and experience wrapping her up in a heavy old shawl and sitting her down in an armchair to await.... whatever comes next. Ayodele is a very sad character: one of the themse of the book is how she searches for love in her life continuously, yet never truly finds it (except in one instance when she has it cruelly wrested away from her). The work hovers on the edge of being existentialist - Ayodele is not very religous at the best of times, and outright atheistic at others, yet she always seems to be searching, for herself, for others, for meaning, most of the time without even knowing what she looks for - and you are left with a sense of the futility of all the choices we make, ultimately. By the end of the book, Ayodele has done everything, and done nothing and, as we know (having caught glimpses of her other possible futures) this is the only way it could end. 'I wish I could go back and... and change things", a thousand bad movie actors have said. Maybe someone should get them a copy of this novel, so they'll stop being deluded.
Reading the Ceiling is Dayo Forster's first novel. You can get it on the publisher's website here.
Ayodele is a young Aku girl growing up in The Gambia. The book starts when, at 18, she has to make a monumental decision: who to lose her virginity to. But it's more than just who she loses it to that is important, it's that she is losing it, rebelling against the strict moral system of her mother's generation where a woman only lost her virginity on her wedding night, to her husband. This sense of rebellion against the rigid structures binding women in place in Gambian society is something that underlies the whole book, always subtly in place, always at the base of all the choices Ayodele makes (or fails to make).
Ayodele has a short-list of possible candidates, and at the beginning of the book we find her running through them in her mind, weighing them against each other. (And the largest mango in my pile? The biggest bonga on my stall?, she asks at one point during the descriptions). It is at this point that the book splits into three, the three possible paths Ayodele's life could take, depending on which choice she makes.
Given the plot of the book, it would have been very easy for it to become nothing more than a cheap gimmick, swamped in righteous sentimentality and a bias for certain choices over others on the author's part. Not so in this case - all the choices Ayodele makes are as valid as any other: there is no preaching, no overbearing moral tone. It is told in the first person, and the storytelling is watertight, and very convincing - the author never gets in the way of her characters, or interferes with them. There is a discipline in the storytelling, and it pays off: Ayodele is ready to step out of the page at any moment, and during her moments of sorrow - and this book, like real life, does not shy away from those - you feel great sympathy for her.
We often think of the choices we make as linked together in a long line, from start to finish, one choice leading to another, which leads to another, and so on until we expire. This view is overly simplistic, and not very realistic. Our choices are more like a web, each choice linked to a hundred other choices, which are linked to a hundred others, the linkages running backward and forward and letting you arrive at different parts of the web via different paths. Dayo, rather than taking the simplistic view here, takes the more complex one: things in one choice-line are echoed in a second one, certain things are repeated in all three lines, even though different choices were made by Ayodele. You find yourself wondering whether this complex interaction between the many choices we (and others) make, are not what we glorify and call Fate (with a capital F).
I feel like I do when I stand on the wet sand on the beach [...] and try to guess which of the waves will reach my toes before their weight pulls them back. [...] It's not the obvious ones, not necessarily the big ones that ride by themselves. More often than not, these waves never touch my toes.
Dayo Forster is a great stylist of prose, and you get the feeling much work went into crafting every word on these pages. The sentences are beautiful, and there are turns of phrase which demand that you re-read them, their lyricism almost poetic in its effect. Yet Ayodele never takes herself too seriously - all through the book there is a thin film of humor lain over everything that happens, and matters are dealt with with a great subtlety, and a very, very fine hand. Take, for example, this description of... well, just read it:
[He] can drive. I direct him all the way. Will you take me home? Why don't you stop here for a bit? Shall we move to the back seat? I have the good sense to take out the condom in my disco bag.
The book is set in The Gambia, and the descriptions and dialogue are very authentic. When Ayodele and her classmates travel up-country to celebrate their graduation with a picnic, you are there with them: the mud and the mosquitoes and the river with the canoes on it. There are many layers to this book, and many excursions into subjects which intrude into the life of every Gambian, despite your best efforts to guard against them: from the large (politics, religion, polygamy) to the small (how many mburu to buy for breakfast). But everything is always viewed from the perspective of Ayodele, and how it affects her life - there are no lengthy excursions into topics which have nothing to do with the plot, but which the author thought were pertinent in a Gambian novel anyway.
All this adds up to create a really good novel, one which transports you breathless from the almost-childish musings of a teenager lying on her bed making plans for the rest of her life, to the end, when Aodele has grown - in more ways than one - and is left, not bitter, not even regretful, but settled into her life, time and experience wrapping her up in a heavy old shawl and sitting her down in an armchair to await.... whatever comes next. Ayodele is a very sad character: one of the themse of the book is how she searches for love in her life continuously, yet never truly finds it (except in one instance when she has it cruelly wrested away from her). The work hovers on the edge of being existentialist - Ayodele is not very religous at the best of times, and outright atheistic at others, yet she always seems to be searching, for herself, for others, for meaning, most of the time without even knowing what she looks for - and you are left with a sense of the futility of all the choices we make, ultimately. By the end of the book, Ayodele has done everything, and done nothing and, as we know (having caught glimpses of her other possible futures) this is the only way it could end. 'I wish I could go back and... and change things", a thousand bad movie actors have said. Maybe someone should get them a copy of this novel, so they'll stop being deluded.
Reading the Ceiling is Dayo Forster's first novel. You can get it on the publisher's website here.
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