Happy New Year …..

I hope your year has started well. This is a rather belated ‘happy new year’ wish – but better late than never. Let me be upfront – this is not my usual evidence-based health research piece of work. This is how I am getting through this rather trying time….. proceed if you love books.

I have been a member of a book club for a couple of years since being resident in the UK. The thing with a book club is that it gets you reading stuff you never even thought about. One of the first books that someone selected when I joined the book club was ‘All the light we cannot see’ by Andrew Doerr. A moving book about a blind girl in the days of the war in Paris. If you like beautiful writing – this is a must read.

The women in my book club have introduced me to many more books since then and I have selected an African writer when my time comes round. Sometimes we dig into a book during the meetings, often we chat about life and our community and I do look forward to our once every 2 months meetings.

Then came lockdown – and the worst thing of all was that we could not as a family travel home. I have not seen my brothers and their families, my lovely nephews and nieces. My mother. My friends – old colleagues from work and college. I have not set eyes on Kenya since August 2019. It is deeply painful.

But I thought to myself, this is a time to read – but I just could not get myself to enthuse about the books on offer any more. The idea of spending my whole day at the computer and then putting myself through a zoom book club felt miserable. I just could not enthuse about fiction and I thought to myself it was just a side effect of the pandemic. That reality had become so much stranger than fiction that I had given up on books. And then a friend decided to post a book from home.

This is a fresh voice from Kenya, writing a a story around the clashes following the contested election of 2007. I reverted to my greedy way of reading. Swallowing huge chunks. This family of a wealthy corrupt politician torn apart by the civil unrest and a young woman caught up in it all – is engaging. I could picture in my head, the events around the tale. Despite the story being unhappy, I could taste and smell it and see it – it was familiar. So thanks Editta, for sending me this book.

I decided that this is what I had been missing, that I just needed to read about home. So I started with my shelf – what books from home had I not read?

DUST: Like Wanjiru’s book, it’s making sense of the many bits of the history of Kenya that we prefer not to think too much about. The canvas set for the story being some dry outlands – in my mind – I pictured Turkana, places I visited during a short project with AMREF. A strange setting for a sad, moving tale by a brilliant writer.

I can’t believe how much dust I had allowed to accumulate on top of this book over the years. Yvonne writes beautifully. I turned to Amazon and ordered 3 copies of the book to post to my beloved reading friends….. I loved it that much!

Then I found this treat….

A collection of short stories by a Zimbabwean writer that has also been sitting in my book shelf for a while. I enjoyed the use of the local languages without much explanation and what surprised me was finding full sentences that I understood…. small pleasures. the stories left some undying images in my mind. The ‘mad’ lady giving birth and dying in the slums and how the baby was taken away. The young man who drains his family’s wealth abroad and returns unceremoniously in an urn.

Seeing these books bringing me such joy – my husband got me a whole bunch of African writers and for Christmas day in lockdown, I gobbled up another excellent writer from Zimbabwe.

I actually thought this book was written by a woman as it captures rather well what I imagine of the politics of hair salons. Not the ‘Ashley’ type ones but the more downtown variety. Owned by the mama who hangs about – keeping on eye on the hairdressers who compete for clients – wanting to be the one people ask for when they come to the salon to get their hair done. With a slight tinge of jealousy, I read as I am yet to find a hairdresser I like in Cambridge – ah well…

Vimbai, the central character in that story, a victim of abuse – feels believable, someone I expect to brush into should I stroll into a saloon in Harare one day. A place where she remains ‘queen’.

Then off to South Africa…

For this one I got a piece of paper to write out the names of the characters and just as well , because those minor characters from the Fourie family play a rather big part in this murder mystery. I did not see the end coming. It’s a treat of a novel for those who enjoy a murder investigation. If you enjoyed ‘Nairobi heat’ by Mukoma wa Thiong’o you will like this too.

Golakai writes an easy book to read, highly enjoyable.

Sierra Leone is a country I associate with much suffering and Aminata Forna writes out this pain using two love triangles.

Aminata herself is half Sierra Leonean and half Scottish, her Sierra Leonean father was executed as a result of his activism. So her book carries a certain weight. The two men entangled with women who are in love with another man, one dead and one living with the demons of the civil war experience – are tragic. The dying man who seeks cleansing by re-writing his past and the other who does not want to look into it. Aminata makes you feel for both men – rooting for the younger man, unsure about what to think of the dying one. Superbly written.

I have to admit that I have not read any fiction from Ethiopia. When I was interviewing one of Ethiopia’s finest scientist, the Director General and CEO of icipe, Dr Segenet Kelemu, she mentioned the chaos that followed the removal of Emperor Haile Selassie in the early 1970’s and how she and her colleagues in the university lived through it. It made me curious about our neighbours to the north so I was looking forward to this book.

The story of a man who is a stickler to the rules but with two sons, one like him and one unwilling to accept the status quo. The story gives a good sense of the suffering our neighbours endured in those early days of the revolution. Despite the body count – literally – the books has a satisfying ending

I had google with me for this – when one of the son’s describes dancing with his mother – those shoulders! And i listened to Washint flute music too…..

Then now to embarrass myself. I have heard about Mariama Ba’s book – So Long a letter – often enough. But yes – imagine – I had never read it……yes Mia culpa!

If book size puts you off – this is a great one for you. Exactly 95 small pages long. It’s my first time to read a book to the end and start it all over again. Every time I have heard someone say that about a book – I have rolled my eyes right to the back of my head – how do you re-read a book just after completing it? But this one is small – so not hard to do but also a heart-felt book. After all Mariama (book author) divorced her husband and raised her 9 children on her own – it is not hard to imagine that her husband likely got himself a new wife and she could not see herself as part of a polygamous union. The likely reason why this story is such a great read. Ramatoulaye – the central character of the book – choose to stay in a polygamous union as the unwanted spouse writing ‘So long a letter’ to her friend Aissatou, who rejected that arrangement.

So in December and January – as I wait to start a new job – waking up to grey skies, fog, mist and night that descends before 4pm. Temperatures so cold, I need to psyche up to go for my daily walk. Making it through in the past few years has been easier when I had just spend time at home and I could look forward to the summer again. But with the relentless Covid19 deaths ….. going home in 2021 is looking unlikely – its’ these books – full of the smell of sweat, burning hair, dust from the continent – that have kept me going.

So a big thank you to all the African writers who have kept at it – its such a tough trade – so thank you!