Is the West's reckless lifestyle killing our poorer neighbors?

[Africa, with Tanzania highlighted]

I spent all day Monday in an outpatient clinic (I'm fine; thanks for asking). I met a lot of nurses, and every one of them was excellent.

When Velda came to take away the remains of my lunch, I offered her my untouched can of ginger ale.

"I don't drink soft drinks," she replied. Since I rarely do either, we started chatting.

Velda grew up in Tanzania, moved to Belgium, spent several years in London, and finally came to the United States. She returns to Tanzania regularly, and she is not happy with what she sees.

"I grew up eating lots of vegetables," she told me. "We might have had ice cream once every three years. But now people are eating American-style junk food. They don't know it's not good for them."

Tanzania's cigarette industry is big. In spite of national bans on most forms of advertising, Velda vividly recalls a huge billboard for Sportsman - one of Tanzania's most popular cigarette brands - right across from a school entrance where children can't help seeing it every day. And the children are smoking - she's seen them.

Supposedly regulated drugs are easy to buy without a prescription. Velda's 18-year-old nephew, once an honor student, is now a prescription-drug addict and a drop-out.

"The thing is," Velda said, "there's no way to get treatment for most diseases. It's not like here. If people want to be healthy, they have to take care of themselves. When they get sick because of junk food or smoking or drugs, they just die."

I checked the statistics. Tanzania's per capita income is $1700 in U.S. dollars. There is one physician for every 125,000 people (compare America's ratio of one physician for every 375 people; or Cuba's of one for every 156). Tanzanians live, on average, to age 53. Velda's twin sister died at age 23.

Velda, who is a kind and gentle nurse, gets angry when she thinks about what's happening to her people. "Why?" she kept saying. Why are international companies so aggressively promoting foods and cigarettes and drugs that will shorten people's lives and even kill them? Why is nobody stopping them? Why?

RESCUING REGINA by Josephe Marie Flynn

Here's a book you may not run across in your local bookstore (if you're lucky enough to still have one: my town has shut down Toad Hall, Barnes & Noble, and - now - Borders). My excellent public library does not yet have a copy.

Anis Shivani of the Huffington Post, however, listed Rescuing Regina among "The 20 Most Anticipated Books of Summer 2011." It is, of course, available at Amazon, where it is #5 of books about emigration and immigration and #10 of books about Central Africa. All five of its editorial reviewers loved it, as did all five of its citizen reviewers. One suggested it should be a movie.

That was my suggestion, too, in the review I've just written for Christian Century, and to which I will link once it is published and becomes available online. But that will not happen for several months, and you might want to know more about this book now.

Regina is a young woman from the Democratic Republic of the Congo who is gang raped and jailed because she has been speaking in favor of democracy. After she makes a harrowing nighttime escape to America, her husband (who has remained in the Congo) is jailed and tortured - also for being involved in a pro-democracy group. He too manages to escape to America. And here, in the form of America's grossly dysfunctional immigration system, the two of them face further trials. Stripped of the constitutional rights available to any U.S. citizen, Regina is once again imprisoned - and this time, death seems inevitable.

Note: Rescuing Regina is a true story.  The author, Sister Josephe Marie Flynn, is a Milwaukee nun who became the reluctant leader of a community effort to free Regina and send her home to her husband and two young children. You can read more about Sister Josephe, Regina, and the book here.

Note also: Rescuing Regina is not about political ideology. The story is about human rights, not politics. Sister Josephe is an old-school liberal, but many of the people who worked with her on Regina's behalf are right-wing Republicans. Regina's plight was followed by Fox News and by NPR.

Final note: Rescuing Regina is a suspense-filled adventure tale and courtroom drama. Summer is only half over, and you may not be in the mood to read a white paper on immigration reform. This is not that, thank goodness. Rather, it's an inspirational, heart-warming story about what individual heroism and community solidarity can accomplish, even against apparently insurmountable odds.

THE SATURDAY BIG TENT WEDDING PARTY by Alexander McCall Smith

I'm hopelessly in love with anything Alexander McCall Smith writes, so of course I enjoyed every minute of The Saturday Big Tent Wedding Party, his 12th book about Mma Ramotswe, the detective from Botswana.

It's not the book to start with. You don't necessarily have to read the series in strict order, but you should definitely begin with The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency  (the link will take you to a boxed set of the first five books, because you can't stop with just one). If you're like me, you'll fall in love with the characters, and you'll love the way McCall Smith gets into their minds, and you'll appreciate books that feature really good people who are not the least bit sappy.

In this latest installment, Mma Ramotswe investigates a feud between neighboring cattle ranchers (who killed the cows? and why?); Mma Makutsi prepares for her wedding to Phuti Radiphuti (what shoes will she wear? and why is Phuti so bashful about kissing her?); and Charlie, Mr J.L.B. Matekoni's apprentice, panics when he learns a former girlfriend has had twins.

I don't read these books for the plot, however. I love them for their gentle humor, as in this paragraph about the delightfully obsessive Mma Makutsi:

She set off a few minutes after Mma Ramotswe, locking the office door behind her and leaving a notice pinned to it saying, Temporarily closed for investigations. She had been rather proud of this notice, which informed any prospective client that the detectives were somewhere else on unspecified but important-sounding investigate work. But as she pinned the sign into position, it suddenly occurred to her that a quite different impression might be created, namely that the No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency was itself under investigation, and consequently had been closed down by the authorities. That would never do, so she reopened the office and carefully typed out a new sign. The wording this time was far better, and, she hoped, quite unambiguous: Temporarily closed while detective personnel are engaged elsewhere. That was much better ... or was it?  Could it be read as suggesting that the entire staff of the No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency was, in fact, working for some other concern? That was certainly not the message she wished to convey, so she inserted a third sheet of paper into the typewriter and typed: Back soon. There was no room for misunderstanding there, although there might be some people who demanded, "And what does 'soon' mean, may we ask? How soon is that?" Such people, however, would never be satisfied with whatever one said, and would always be picking holes in even the simplest notice. No, you did not need to worry about people like that.

I also love these books for their insights into good relationships, as in this conversation between Mma Ramotswe and her husband:

"What would you do if I did something that you thought was a very bad idea, but that I really wanted to do? What if that thing was a thing that made me very happy, but looked ridiculous to you?'

He frowned. "Something your heart was set on?"

"Yes," she said. "Something that my heart said I just had to do."

"In that case, I would say to myself: It is an odd thing that Mma Ramotswe has done, but if that is what makes her happy, then I am happy too."

She looked at him fondly; that he had been sent to her, when there were so many other, lesser men who might have been sent, was a source of constant gratitude. That we have the people we have in this life, rather than others, is miraculous, she thought: a miraculous gift.

And I love them for their philosophizing (which is also one reason I love McCall Smith's Isabel Dalhousie series, whose protagonist philosophizes a good deal more than Mma Ramotswe does):

She did not think that people now were any worse than they used to be, but it was very clear to her that they had less time. In the old days Botswana people were rarely in a rush to get somewhere else - why should they be? Nowadays, people were always thinking of getting somewhere - they travelled around far more, rushing from here to there and then back again. She would never let her life go that way; she would always take the time to drink tea, to look at the sky, and to talk. What else was there to do? Make money? Why? Did money bring any greater happiness than that furnished by a well-made cup of red bush tea and a moment or two with a good friend? She thought not.

Add to her list: Does money bring any greater happiness than a couple of hours reading the latest Alexander McCall Smith novel? I think not.
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To read more of my reviews of books by Alexander McCall Smith, scroll up, click on "Fiction/Poetry," and click on the links.

THE BATTLE OF ALGIERS (DVD)

Terrorism and torture - they're all over this week's (and most week's) headlines: "Germany tightens airport security over attacks threat." "Palestinian forces arrest Hamas cell in West Bank planning to attack Israelis." "Britain to pay ex-detainees in torture case."

Saturated with such stories since the bombings of 2001, we may think that terrorism and torture are 21st-century inventions, or at least that their incidence has greatly increased during the last decade. We need correctives like Patrick Smith's article in Slate last week: "News flash: Deadly terrorism existed before 9/11." Indeed it did - Smith lists example after example from the late 1980s. And torture, a typical response to terrorist attacks, is as old as recorded history.

Here is another corrective - a film you need to see, though not for date night. Little kids shouldn't watch it either. The Battle of Algiers is a fictionalized account of urban guerilla warfare during Algeria's bloody war of independence from France (1954-62). Winning a heap of prizes shortly after its release in 1966, it was immediately banned in France and essentially went underground for 37 years.

And then in 2003 the U.S. Pentagon showed the film to about 40 officers and civilian experts. From the flier announcing the screening:

How to win a battle against terrorism and lose the war of ideas. Children shoot soldiers at point-blank range. Women plant bombs in cafes. Soon the entire Arab population builds to a mad fervor. Sound familiar? The French have a plan. It succeeds tactically, but fails strategically. To understand why, come to a rare showing of this film.

The Pentagon showing led to renewed interest in the film, which was restored and then released in the U.K., the U.S., and France in late 2003 and 2004. The DVD version followed in October 2004. You can rent it from Blockbuster online or from Netflix.

Why should you see this film? Partly because it's so very well done. From Ali La Pointe, a disaffected Arab teenager who becomes a leader in the National Liberation Front, to Colonel Mathieu, an unbending French military man who plays by the rules, each character first draws you in and then appalls you as terrorism and torture alternate in a deadly dance. In a mesmerizing sequence, a trio of Arab women don Western garb and charm their way past French guards into the European quarter - with disastrous results. Should you laugh? Cheer? Weep? You may find yourself doing all three. The one thing you won't be able to do is look away from the screen.

Another reason to see the film is to stimulate thinking and provoke discussion about current conflicts. In The Battle of Algiers,as in the news, terrorists kill civilians. Counter-terrorists move in and do the same. Torture is used to gain information. Tortured terrorists become martyrs and incite renewed terrorist activity. Violence explodes on all sides. It sounds so very contemporary.

And yet, whatever your opinions about Iraq or Afghanistan or Guantánamo, it's hard to take sides when the film takes you into the Casbah or the European quarter or the military headquarters. You find yourself sympathizing with the Arab child who grabs the officer's microphone and tells his people to resist, with the frightened women who hide insurgents in a well or behind a false wall, with the terrified man who talks rather than face another round of torture, and perhaps even with the teenager who has lost so much and now just wants to shoot somebody.

At the same time, you cringe when European teenagers are blown to bits when all they are doing is flirting and dancing to salsa music, or when tired businessmen grabbing a quick drink after work lose their lives because they neglect to see a basket left under a bar stool. You understand the colonel's perplexity when he says to reporters:

We aren't madmen or sadists, gentlemen. Those who call us Fascists today forget the contribution that many of us made to the Resistance. Those who call us Nazis don't know that among us there are survivors of Dachau and Buchenwald. We are soldiers, and our only duty is to win

But what about torture? a reporter persists. Colonel Mathieu gives the only answer he knows:

Should we remain in Algeria? If you answer "yes," then you must accept all the necessary consequences.

Terrorism and torture have a long and sordid history, and this film does not glorify either one. Yes, the terrorists eventually win and the French are expelled from Algeria. Yes, The Battle of Algiers has been accused of inspiring violence - though it has also been used as evidence that torture does not work. It's an ethically complex film that may haunt you for days. It might even turn you into a pacifist.

ONAEDO, THE BLACKSMITH'S DAUGHTER by Ngozi Achebe

Ngozi Achebe's first novel, Onaedo, The Blacksmith's Daughter, is a good book you're probably never going to read, and that's a shame.

Hey, it's not your fault. The book is not in your library, nor is it in any bookstore near you. You can order it from Amazon, but at $19.95 (even though discounted today to $17.05), it's overpriced. If you're looking for a historical novel by a Nigerian woman who lives in America, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's Half of a Yellow Sun is a better deal at $10.85.

And yet Onaedo is an engrossing story about a likeable, gutsy woman, and it is rich in fascinating cultural and historical detail. The story is set in western Africa some 500 years ago. Onaedo, the teen-aged daughter of a prominent Igbo elder, is resisting one suitor after another. Her heart belongs to Dualo, but he is not prosperous enough to ask for her hand. Enter Oguebie, a rich but unscrupulous suitor who is involved in some nefarious business with a couple of Portuguese fortune seekers. You guessed it, probably sooner than Oguebie does - these are slave traders, and they want him to help them capture his neighbors.

Like her uncle, the famed Nigerian novelist Chinua Achebe (Things Fall Apart, No Longer at Ease), Ngozi Achebe depicts a culture rich in familial relationships and traditional beliefs but threatened by European invaders (see my reviews of two of her uncle's books here and here). Whereas the uncle created tragic heroes who cannot reconcile the old and the new, the niece gives us a spunky heroine who manages to survive one disaster after another. Onaedo may never be a classic, but it's a page-turning historical romance.

The book has problems, though. It appears to be the first and only book ever published by Mandac-Goldberg, about whom I could find no information except the little that is on their website. To their credit, they have given the book an attractive cover (though the title needs more contrast with the background if they want bookstore browsers to notice it) and a functional interior design. However, their publicity materials, including back-cover copy, are amateurish; their pricing is unrealistic; and they apparently haven't figured out how to get the book into bookstores and libraries.

The biggest problem with the book is its inadequate editing at all levels. The copy editor, if there was one, did not understand standard syntax or comma placement. No content editor helped the author see that the 21st-century Prologue and Epilogue in no way helped the story, or that the Prologue's clumsy writing and tangled time sequences were likely to put off potential readers before the real story ever got started. Nobody helped the author shape her complex plot with its multiple points of view and its sometimes confusing roster of characters whose names, strange to Western ears, all begin to sound alike.

This is unfortunate, because Onaedo is a good story by a talented writer who deserves better than she got. The book ends just as a new adventure is about to begin, so there will surely be a sequel. In addition, Achebe told an interviewer that she is now at work on a "coming of age story ... set during the Nigerian/Biafran Civil war." An established publisher with a crew of professional editors and marketers could do well with Achebe on their list.

If she is very lucky, some such publisher or editor will read Onaedo as if it is a manuscript, not a published book; will see its possibilities and the potential for equally gripping sequels; will buy the rights from Mandac-Goldberg; and will work with the author to turn it into the excellent book it ought to be. I'd like to be able to recommend Onaedo without reservations. Perhaps someday that will be possible.

THE POOR CHRIST OF BOMBA by Mongo Béti

If you're interested in African colonial history or cross-cultural evangelism or feminist sociology, or if you'd just like to read a good character study told from an interesting viewpoint, you might want to try to find a copy of Mongo Béti's shocking 1956 novel, The Poor Christ of Bomba. It probably won't be in your library, but you can get an English translation from Amazon or the original French from www.amazon.fr.

The Reverend Father Superior Drumont is a complicated man. He is a true believer, a Frenchman who has devoted over 20 years of his life to working in rural Cameroon. He is also a rigid moralist, a self-righteous minor despot, and a criminally negligent administrator. He knows something is terribly wrong, and he feels tired and confused and guilty. But he fails to understand his own role in a shocking web of corruption that comes to light during three weeks in February.

On the surface, The Poor Christ of Bomba is about Father Drumont. On the very first page Denis, the 15-year-old narrator, says that according to his father, Jesus Christ and Drumont are one and the same. The book's title probably refers to the priest, though it could be an ironic commentary on the collapse of the Bomba mission. Denis, however, does not foresee the impeding crisis. He is loyal to the Catholic church and adores Father Drumont. Through his naively admiring eyes, the reader comes to know the conflicted priest.

Besides being an engaging character study,  the novel is a trenchant commentary on colonialism. The setting is Southern Cameroon in the 1930s, a country that became a German colony in 1884 and then lived under French rule from World War I until 1960. Father Drumont has been trying to turn Cameroon people into Christians without understanding their traditional religions, their social systems, or their mores. At the same time his friend Vidal, a French administrator, is trying to turn the colony into a profitable venture without understanding or caring about the effects his actions will have on the indigenous people.

Reading the novel over 50 years after it was written, I was struck by its women. From the outset,  Drumont is unsympathetic to them. During mass he drags a woman to the altar and forces her to kneel in penance; the narrator has no idea what she has done. He demands that mothers immediately take fussy babies outside. He campaigns (unsuccessfully) against unwed mothers, and he insists that polygamous men abandon all their wives except the one they like the best.

By the end of the book, his rigidity has turned into something close to sadism, though Drumont doesn't see it that way. In fact, he almost seems to understand the sin he and the other men have been committing against women. Listen to him muse to another white priest:*

The indigenous woman, the docile little black woman - what an ideal machine! No need to oil her, you see! No need even to check from time to time to be sure she isn't rusting in the little garage we've stuffed her in.. .. She takes care of her own maintenance, and she  asks for work to do.... The worst thing is that we figured this out. Long before we came, the natives already knew that women make a fine machine; don't think for a minute that they're stupider than we are. So here we come - Christians, Christ's messengers, bearers of civilization. And what do you think we do? Do we give women back their dignity? Not a chance. Oh no. We keep them in servitude. But now we're the ones who profit.

Drumont's understanding does not seem to improve his behavior, however. When he finally figures out that something terrible is happening on his watch, he summons over 50 women who live on the compound to tell him what is going on. Predictably, they are afraid to talk - they have already been repeatedly victimized and fear reprisals. So Drumont has them beaten until they give in. But when they finally tell him what has been going on, he sends them away, even if they have nowhere to go. Knowing that many of them are ill, he provides no medical care. They are at the bottom of the food chain, and it seems not to occur to Father Drumont that his whole approach to evangelization has created a truly hellish situation for his most faithful followers.

Mongo Béti's characters may be literally black and white, but this story is not about villains and saints. Father Drumont's perceptions change as the story progresses, and at times he is almost sympathique. The colonist Vidal is often likable. The narrator's sidekick, Zacharie, is both amusing and appalling. Only the catechist Raphaël comes across as totally corrupt, and he is African - though, to be sure, an African who works for white missionaries. Evil lies not so much in the individuals as in the way power is allocated and used in colonial Cameroon. And in the end, the women suffer more than anyone else.

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*I don't have a copy of the English translation, and neither does my public library. This is my own loose translation of a paragraph I found striking.

NO LONGER AT EASE by Chinua Achebe

Just about every list of great African novels includes Chinua Achebe’s 1958 classic, Things Fall Apart (see my review here). Achebe, a Nigerian by birth who now teaches at Brown University, wrote the novel when he was in his 20s. Two years later he published a follow-up novel, No Longer at Ease. The two books should be read together.

Both stories are tragedies: a good man comes to a bad end. His weakness combines with exterior circumstances to bring him down.

The first novel is about Okonkwo, an Ibo village leader around the turn of the 20th century when Britain was turning Nigeria into a colony. No Longer at Ease picks up the story two generations later in the mid 1950s, as Nigeria moves toward independence. Its protagonist is Okonkwo's grandson Obi.

Obi is the son of Isaac Okonkwo, who (in the first book) repudiated his father's ancestral traditions and converted to the colonists’ religion. A recent graduate of a British university, Obi no longer practices Christianity. His passion is for education, achievement, and moral rectitude. Obi wants to clean up Nigeria and, as he tells his friend Christopher, he knows how it should be done:

     "The civil service is corrupt because of these so-called experienced men at the top," said Obi.
     "You don't believe in experience? You think that a chap straight from university should be made a permanent secretary?"
     "I didn't say straight from the university, but even that would be better than filling our top posts with old men who have no intellectual foundations to support their experience."
     "What about the Land Officer jailed last year? He is straight from the university."
     "He is an exception," said Obi. "But take one of these old men. He probably left school thirty years ago in Standard Six. He has worked steadily to the top through bribery--an ordeal by bribery. To him the bribe is natural. He gave it and he expects it. Our people say that if you pay homage to the man on top, others will pay homage to you when it is your turn to be on top. Well, that is what the old men say."
     "What do the young men say, if I may ask?"
     "To most of them bribery is no problem. They come straight to the top without bribing anyone. It's not that they're necessarily better than others, it's simply that they can afford to be virtuous. But even that kind of virtue can become a habit."

Alas, as the reader knows from the very first chapter, Obi will run afoul of the law.

At first everything seems to be going his way. His Western education has qualified him for one of the coveted "European posts" - a senior-level government job usually reserved for white people. He lives in one of the better districts of Lagos. He has a car, a driver, a houseboy, and a woman he loves.

But Obi no longer belongs anywhere.

In many ways he is more like the colonizers than his countrymen. Having spent four years abroad, he sees his country with new eyes, and it looks shabby. He will not grease any palms. He will not allow the tribal council, his father, or ancient customs to dictate his behavior. He is independent and will make his own decisions about education, money, and whom to marry.

His Western leanings tend to isolate him from family and friends. Members of the Umuofia Progressive Union do not understand his clothing, his speaking style, his taste in food, and – especially – his intransigence when they object to his fiancée. His parents are hurt that he so readily flouts ancient traditions. Eventually Obi walks out on just about his entire support system.

And yet his British employers and associates do not see him as one of themselves (his boss has a visceral dislike for Africans). They do not help him get the practical information he needs to function in their society – information, for example, about insurance and taxes and cash advances.

In the end he is on his own, and no one - not the learned judge, not the British Council man, not even the Nigerian men of Umuofia – can understand why Obi would compromise his principles.

Achebe took the book's title from T.S. Eliot's poem "The Journey of the Magi." He quotes these lines in the epigraph:

We returned to our places, these Kingdoms,
But no longer at ease here, in the old dispensation,
With an alien people clutching their gods.
I should be glad of another death.

For all their faults, it is easy to identify with and even love Okonkwo and Obi. And for those of us who talk glibly of "culture wars," it is eye-opening to look through their eyes at a genuine clash of cultures, one whose repercussions are still being felt sixty years later.