The Poisonwood Bible

I read this fabulous book called "The Poisonwood Bible" set against the backdrop of Belgian Congo during its turbulent times in the mid 20th Century. The decades that followed as it fought for independence from Belgian rule, the assassination of Patrice Lumumba, its first elected prime minister, and its slow and painful path towards reconstruction. If you haven't read the book, please find it and read it, especially if you are of African descent. It is written by Barbara Kingsolver.

In the book, a Baptist minister takes his family of five - wife and four daughters - to the Congo to, according to him, bring the pagan and lost souls of the Congo people to Baptism and Jesus, and thus teach them and save them in the process. Well, it turns out that the trip isn't at all what they expected. Their supplies and even their bible didn't save them from the transformation that they underwent and the experiences they witnessed. It is a very moving story. It is amazing how the entire experience plays out through their eyes and through the eyes of the simple but profound people of Kilanga among whom they lived for about 18 months. None of them left there the same. And none of them were ever able to shake the Congo off their backs again...it is almost as if they didn't have the option. The story is written through the eyes of the children, each one telling her story as their lives in Central Africa unfurled before their eyes each day. The children said that the whiteman came to impose on Africa, but they soon found out that they had failed, because just like its jungles that grow wild and have a life of their own, Africa too has a life of its own and all you can do is get swept into the tide and hold on the best you can.

One of the children who ended up staying in Africa much longer than the others was quick to notice that there is a world of difference between the games they, as American children, played and the games a Congolese child of 9 or 10 played. While an American child will play "Hide and Seek", "Mother, May I", and other games like that, a Congolese child will play real life games like "Find Firewood", "Recognize Poisonwood", "Build a House", and such. Life was real and full of responsibilities for a child even at that age.

More and more, I am realizing that the books I enjoy the most are books that dwell on real-life experiences or based on real life, and especially those that deal with Africans and their association with the West and Europe. It always gives me something to reflect on. The book: "Do They Hear You When You Cry" is another one of those.

By the way, when I returned "The Poisonwood Bible" to its owner, John Tolleson, and told him how much I enjoyed it and that I planned to buy my own copy, he gave me his copy as a gift. I was very grateful. He is a very nice person.

Post Script:
So much of this story relates to my life while growing up in Cameroon, West Africa. As a child, you learned quickly to be responsible. If you grew up in the city, it might be a little easier for you, but whenever you went to visit grandparents or relatives in the village, you were quickly brought down to earth again. I remember the days when we'd visit my father's village, Bafut. It is situated in a beautiful, lush green, hilly part of the NorthWest Province. I still picture us fetching water from streams at the bottom of treacherous hills. I would struggle with the weight of my modest-sized kettle of water, while children who had lived in the village all their lives and were half my age carried pots almost bigger than themselves as we labored back up the hills. There was always enough to eat though.... Cameroon is one of those countries in Africa blessed with abundant food and good soil. But preparing the food...aha, now that was another story!! It often entailed fetching the food from the farms, fixing it for cooking (cleaning the yams or plantains, skinning the meat, shedding the corn, etc), making the wood fire in the smoke kitchen house, and then sitting in the kitchen around the fire while the food cooked and smoke swirled all around you. Bathing was also an experience; usually this was in the stone bathroom or by the river in a certain, particular area, so as not to contaminate the drinking water portion of the river. The latrines too were another story...a scary one. Usually, my sister, my brother and I will stall until we could no longer hold it in our bodies, then we had to go. The latrines were basically several plantain stalks lined up in straight lines with holes bored after every three or so stalks. So several of us could use it at the same time...although that was a part that my siblings and I never got used to. It was an interesting experience. Short of making any reader hang their mouth in awe, I won't go on to describe the almost indescribable feeling as you heard your s**t join the others at the bottom of the not-too-deep pit.

Anyway, enough of that. But life in the village was nothing but memorable, in a very fond way most of the time. People help each other, whether it is with cultivating the land or erecting a house; they share freely; they call on each other and stay all night long when a loved one dies; they celebrate every joy and sorrow together, usually births, deaths, or even a good harvest; their hearts are wide open...to give and to receive...as you can imagine; they completely trust each other you hardly hear of a neighbor stealing from another. Life is really very simple, if you think about it. A family gets up on a typical morning, and knows exactly what the day would be like from the first crow of the rooster till the sun sets behind the distant hills. Sweep around the yard, go tie the goats, let out the chicken, start the morning fire for some late morning left-overs. The children then go fetch wood and water, playing and teasing each other on the way, and picking fruits and nuts. The men go clear the fields while the women go to their farms, fetch food and return to start their fires for the afternoon meal....and so on until the animals are led back in at dusk and the pot is again set on the fire for the evening meal. Of course, there are fun dances and festivals in the village square every now and then. These are so fun. Everyone is there and there is much food and dancing and drumming. The town crier or the talking drum usually informs people of upcoming events. Church and village meetings are on Sundays. Life there is really not complicated at all. Now, after all these years, I realize how much we took that sincere, down-to-earth way of life for granted, and I remember those days now...sometimes with nostalgia.

Fun is, I never for once wondered how my Persian sisters and brothers who stayed there with us for a while really faired. I knew it wasn't easy, but now I realize that I never understood just how difficult it was for them. Not having their mindset, I took it for granted that it was just a process and they'll soon adapt. But to what extent different people are affected by such experiences, I didn't stop to think because the life was so normal to me.

But, much like the Price children put it, in the novel I was telling you about, you can't just dismiss the experiences you have in Africa. It stays with you and it affects your perception of things one way or the other. My American and Persian friends too have told me as much.

Poor...or Not -- a Matter of Context

I am currently reading a book by Sidney Poitier titled "The Measure of a Man". If you've watched "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner", you'll know who I'm talking about. This book is essentially a story of Poitier's life, his thoughts and feelings as he grew up. It is a very interesting book - each part holds its own fascinations...his life growing on Cat Island in the Bahamas, when he moved to Nassau, and his life in the U.S. when he moved there and struggled to make a career in the movie business, the challenges he faced being a black man in the 50's and 60's in that country.

Well, back to what I wanted to write about. Poitier mentions that growing up on Cat Island, life was simple, preindustrial...they had no plumbing or electricity and...in a word, they were poor. But poverty, he said, is very different from poverty in the industrial world where everything is tangible and characterized by concrete. He said that poverty on Cat Island didn't preclude gorgeous beaches with hundreds of coconut trees, a climate like heaven, cocoa plum trees, cassavas, sea grapes, many other fruit, and bananas growing wild. Unlike in the West, you didn't grow up bombarded by lots of things you couldn't understand but were expected to make sense of, thousands of contravening images on TV, ads all trying to make you think you needed things and sell them to you when you didn't even have a job yet, radios, thousands of mechanical gadgets, telephone, etc. No, he didn't grow up with any of that stuff. But see, the interesting thing is that, that didn't translate to poverty in his vocabulary. He grew up to just the stimulus that he needed for survival; he wasn't bombarded. He said: "what's coming at you is the sound of the sea and the smell of the wind and your mama's voice and the voice of your dad and the craziness of your brothers and sisters --and that's it." You watched the behavior of your parents and your siblings and gradually their voices and actions started teaching you something. As to what was safe and what was not, you pretty much learned that by interaction. When you wanted to eat fruit, say off the sapodila tree, you soon found out that there were wasps' nests in that tree. If you weren't careful, they will come out and sting you and that hurt. Of course, your mum would fuss over you when you came back home crying, but she'll put on some herbal medicine and give you some bitter aloe vera to eat, and soon you'll be just fine. And after being stung like that a couple of times, you soon learnt that if you climbed high up in the tree and shook the branches so that the ripe fruit fell to the ground, and then climbed down to eat your belly-full, instead of crawling under the limbs of the tree to pluck the fruit, you could avoid the wasps finding you and stinging you. But that is how you learnt, from natural stimuli, to keep away from what was dangerous. You went fishing, you learnt how to swim, you learned how to fetch water from the streams in the same way....observation and exposure to these stimuli was all you needed. That way, each day you knew generally what was going to happen. Say Sunday: church, then home. Your mom cooks rice and chicken, then you play with your friends, then you all sit out on the front porch and your mom and sister fix the vegetables....and so on until bedtime.

A lot of what I have said above is from Poitier's book, but it reflects exactly what we have back home in Cameroon. Are we justified in saying that we are poor? Granted, resources aren't always put to the best use, corruption upsets the balance of things,... but at the core of the matter, if we have what we need, can we really say we are poor? I personally don't think so. A culture such as ours: rich in family values of respect, love, devotion to family members, a culture where people will say hello to their neighbors as they go by their homes, and run out with a stick if their neighbour cried "thief" in the middle of the night. A country where there is an abundance of food, everyone has a place to put their heads down at night, and most have a piece of land to farm or build on, rivers and springs to get water from, lush vegetation. A place where people always find time to visit with one another, broke a kola nut together, share a cup of water, and where the people come together to figure out the solution to a neighbour's problem .

I know that when one looks at the country now, poor leadership and poor management of resources has led to an outer appeareace of destitution and desperation. But at the core of its peoples lies a richness, one that the sophistications of colonialism and industrialization need not complicate....Yes, I believe that its pure nature holds far more appeal.

There is a family friend of ours, actually the father of my dear friend, Sahar, his name is Kamran. Uncle Kamran has all kinds of fond names in Cameroon having lived there for close to 30 years now. In my area, he is fondly called Pa Ngwa. He once said to me, in relation to something else, that when we are too close to something, we fail to see its majesty. He said that when you live at the foot of a mountain for instance, you don't see how mighty it is, but if you were to move away several kilometers, you will be able to appreciate the full range of the mountain in all its majesty. I see that pattern in my life today and that of many other Cameroonians. Most of us who have left our country to seek out better education and job experiences in the West, we never cease to talk about the rich aspects of our culture. We miss it. It didn't mean much when we were still in Cameroon because it was so ordinary, and now when we are thousands of miles away, we are often reminded of those wonderful things about our people, our culture that we can't find here.

Now this is not a story about the perfections of my country and the inperfections of other countries, because that is not the case. Every place holds its own appeals and has its own problems... every place has its own comparative advantage. I mean, that's why I am in the U.S. right now. But this account is just to remind myself that I came out of something rich, and I should not forget it.

Why are we here?

This morning, I was reading the daily news from "The Chronicle of Higher Education". I receive the news everyday at work and usually would browse over the headlines and read the details of the more catching ones.

Today I was reading about an investigative panel that was analyzing Virginia Tech's response to all the signs that led up to the mass shooting on April 16,.....but that's not the part I want to talk about. A related link from that page took me to a page that had all the profiles of the 32 victims of the shootings. I opened and browsed every one of them. I must say that, although I had listened to snatches of stories on the news about some of these victims, this was the first time I was actually reading each story in such detail. [http://chronicle.com/indepth/vatech/]

I was struck by what a big loss we, as a generation, not just Virginia Tech or the families of these victims, had suffered. These people were all bright individuals, intelligent, career-oriented, warm, driven, compassionate. Some of them had big dreams, big plans...you name it. And I thought, in a twinkling of an eye, all this was taken away.

First, it brought such a big wave of fresh sorrow that I had to pause and say a prayer for the souls of these dear people. And then I got to thinking quite a bit. I thought to myself how I often take my life for granted. How I live each day...go to work, return, and maybe exercise, read a few lines, talk on the phone, watch some TV and then go to bed. I don't really have a plan to follow. Do I really know what I want to accomplish? Am I gearing my actions towards accomplishing some goal? Am I using my time in the most rewarding manner? Or am I just going through the motions and living one day at a time?

Seriously, I want that good things should be remembered about me whenever I leave this earthly life. I want to have made a mark, a positive one, made someone's life better, and not just live my life. That cannot be why I am here on earth, just to live my life!!! As a Baha'i, I am taught different. [www.bahai.org]. We are here to help establish the kingdom of God on earth. To make this world like heaven...fill it with love and laughter and good deeds. The Baha'i teachings also say that we must develop spiritual qualities in this life in order to prepare our souls for progress in the next world when we pass from this world, much like a baby develops physical and mental faculties while in the world of the womb in preparation for this world.

I believe that I want to start this by having a few principles to go by. Everyday...I want to be and sound happy, so that that countenance will make someone else's life better. A smile is a free gift; it costs nothing. Then I want to be more positive about life's challenges, and not take them slumping. And the other one is, I need to be more proactive and not just react to what comes along. On this last part, I have to set a few guidelines..... Let me go think about it.

My return...with a cute little story

My blog just reminded me that my last post was in October of 2006!!!

Gosh, almost a year. Well, I hope to make a change...

Let me start with this beautiful little story that has a simple but profound ending.... My good friend, Vicki Anderson, shared this with me.

That there are 4 things you cannot recover...just a few amongst many in this life. Read and find out for yourself!

A Great Little Story

Beginner

My wonderful friend, Sahar, inspired me. So I said to myself, what will it be like to create a blog? It's free, so at least I get to have some fun. So! Here I am. Haven't even figured out what I'll do with it.

The idea of a spot, or my own personal space, to wonder, to explore my thoughts and to be myself,...I must say,... is appealing!

So, Jacky, one step at a time, n'est-ce pas?