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Stolen Lives by Malika Oufkir and Michele Fitoussi

May26

Stolen Lives: Twenty Years in a Desert Jail by Malika Oufkir and Michele Fitoussi.

Recommended by Laura at Musings: “In 1972, Moroccan defense minister General Mohamed Oufkir staged a failed coup d’etat against King Hassan II. Oufkir was reported to have committed suicide, but was found with five bullet wounds. In retaliation for the coup, his entire family was imprisoned: Oufkir’s wife, Fatima, and his children Malika, Raouf, Soukaina, Maria, Myriam, and Abdellatif. A cousin, Achoura, and a close family friend, Halima, joined them. Malika Oufkir was 17 years old; her brother Abdellatif was only 3.”

This nonfiction account of a family kept in cruel and unusual confinement in the desert of Morocco reminded me of nothing so much as Charles Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities. The Oufkir family were so badly treated and so cut off from the world for so very long that they, like the fictional Dr. Manette, were impaired in body, mind and soul when they were finally freed from the prisons of King Hassan II.

Malika Oufkir’s story is that of the spoiled rich girl brought low by injustice and subsequently redeemed through suffering and finally freed to appreciate a new life and love. It’s a classic plot, and the fact that it’s a true story, as trustworthy as memoirs can be these days, makes it all the more compelling. Some parts of the story are difficult to believe: Malika says that as a nineteen year old, educated and well-travelled, she had no idea that her father was a murderer and a tyrant. Perhaps not, but then again, maybe she chose her own blind spots. She also describes scenes of treatment so horrendous during the twenty years of her imprisonment that I would choose to disbelieve her testimony if I could, not wanting to believe that man can be so cruel to his fellowman. Western law embodies the principle that no person’s family should be punished for that person’s crimes. Malika, her mother, and her five brothers and sisters are cruelly punished for the crimes of Malika’s father, a fate that Ms. Oufkir says was not uncommon in Morocco under Hassan II.

An amazing story human resilience and courage. Read it and weep.

African Food for Africans Who Are Starving?

May8

In Ethiopia in 2003, for example, widespread drought occurred in the low-lying areas of the country and the very dry northern highlands. Some 12 million to 15 million people were at risk of hunger and starvation. But in the central and southern highlands of Ethiopia, farmers were producing a bumper crop of corn and other cereals. Yet with no market for the locally produced grains, prices collapsed.

If USAID could have purchased and helped distribute some of this excess, up to 500,000 small farmers would have benefited, as well as the millions at risk of starvation. But its only option was to import surplus food grain from the U.S.”

Right now I’m reading Timothy Egan’s book about the Dust Bowl of the 1930’s in which millions of pounds of wheat, a bumper crop grown on the Great Plains in 1929 and 1930, sat in or near silos and rotted because the prices went down, and the wheat was worth less than it cost to produce. I don’t understand how this happens exactly, especially when people in the cities began to have trouble feeding their families at about the same time because of the collapse of the U.S. economy.

Eventually, under FDR, the U.S. government did purchase some of the surplus wheat and other grain crops and distribute it to the hungry during the Great Depression. But the dust storms and the lack of income for those first two years caused the farmers to go bankrupt and their land to lie fallow.

Now in this Wall Street Journal article, two food experts say that we, the U.S., are causing much the same problem as what helped to create the Great Depression in our food aid program in Africa.

The Bush administration has urged, rightly, that the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) be allowed to buy food locally, particularly in Africa, instead of only American-grown food.

The U.S. government currently buys grain and other foodstuffs from American farmers for free distribution in poor countries where a disaster has occurred, or sells it in food-deficit nations to generate funds for food-security development programs. Under the law, the food must be shipped almost exclusively on American vessels.”

Why is Congress opposing this change in policy? Why not buy food there for distribution there and use our own grain surpluses here? Or sell the grain “surpluses” to the highest bidder since there seems to be a food shortage that I keep reading about? Is there something I’m not seeing?

Long Way Gone: Pray for Kenya

Jan2

I just finished reading Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier by Ishamel Beah (which takes place in Sierra Leone), and this morning I read about similar violence in Kenya. We have a tendency to think that nothing like this could happpen here in a “civilized” ‘Western” country, but New Orleans, riots in Los Angeles, and other events within my lifetime indicate that our American sin nature is just as active and just as treacherous as that of any African.

So, pray for Kenya. And pray for ourselves: “Lord lead us not into temptation. But deliver us from evil.”

Blogs from Kenya:

Diary of a Mad Kenyan Woman

Kenyan Pundit

Joseph Karoki

Pure Christianity

What An African Woman Thinks

Thinker’s Room

Farmgal

The Hot Zone by Richard Preston

Aug7

I spent the day yesterday, unexpectedly, in the emergency room at a nearby hospital. (Everybody’s OK now, but emergency rooms take t–i–m–e.) Of course, I had to take some reading material along, and I chose a book I’ve been meaning to read for a long time: The Hot Zone by Richard Preston. The book is a nonfiction thriller about an outbreak of Ebola virus in suburban Washington, D.C. Did I mention that it’s NONfiction?

As I read about Ebola, maybe the nastiest virus yet discovered, and about how 60-90% of people infected by the virus don’t survive, and about a hospital in Africa that was literally wiped out by an outbreak of Ebola virus, I was sitting in the emergency room listening to a baby crying and people groaning, and I was wondering what kinds of germs, bacteria, and nasty viruses were floating around in the air. The emergency room nurse saw what I was reading and reassured me that “most of those hemorrhagic fevers stay in Africa or Asia, hardly ever here in the U.S.” Since I was reading, at that very minute, about how monkeys from the Philippines carried Ebola to Reston, Virginia in 1989, I was not convinced that the danger was as minimal as the nurse seemed to think. In other words, “hardly ever” isn’t good enough. Do we really need to import thousands of monkeys into the U.S. each year for medical research, anyway? Can’t the researchers go to the monkeys, if it’s really necessary?

Philosophical and practical questions aside, The Hot Zone is well-written, informative, exciting, and scary. The book was best-seller back when it was first published over ten years ago (1994). So some of you have probably read it. If you haven’t and you’re looking for a plot device for your terrorist thriller or apocalyptic dystopian novel, you could probably find it in this book. I can only imagine what that emergency room would look like if one of the viruses in this book managed to get loose in Houston. A long wait would be the least of our worries.

Of Camels and Salt and Deserts and Books

Aug1

The Camel Bookmobile by Masha Hamilton.

Men of Salt: Crossing the Sahara on the Caravan of White Gold by Michael Benanav.

Sister O’ Mine suggested The Camel Bookmobile as the July Selection for our family book club, and since I already had it on my TBR list, I concurred with the selection. Then, while browsing at the library I found the book Men of Salt and knew it would make a perfect companion to the fictional story of carrying books to bush villages in northeastern Kenya. Even though Men of Salt takes place in the desert of Mali, the concern in both books about changing cultures and intruding technologies and Western values is the same.

In The Camel Bookmobile Fiona Sweeney, a single librarian in Brooklyn with a boyfriend named Chris, a family who doesn’t understand her need for adventure, and friends who expect her home by March, makes a decision to go to Kenya to help start a travelling library. The books will be carried to outlying areas by camel. Fiona’s job is to take the books and make sure they are returned. She finds out that while her main concern is the first part of the job (“Books are their future. A link to the modern world.”), her African counterpart, Mr. Abasi, is more concerned about getting the books back and not at all sure that they should be taking books out into the countryside at all. And the people of Mididima, one of the villages on their route, have their own worries and agendas. When one of the villagers, nicknamed “Scar Boy”, fails to return his library book, the entire scheme starts to unravel, and the villagers learn more about themselves as Fiona explores the value of books versus traditional wisdom in her attempts to reclaim the overdue library books. The book never comes to a definite conclusion or answer to the central question: are change and cultural adaptation good, or bad, or inevitable?

The nonfiction book Men of Salt approaches the same question from the point of view of the azalai, salt merchants, of the Sahara Desert. Michael Benanav, an experienced wilderness guide in the U.S., takes the journey of his life when he decides to travel along with the salt caravans from Timbuktu to the salt mines of Taouodenni and back. The caravans travel by camel, but Mr. Benevav has read that trucks are beginiing to make the camel caravans obsolete. The truth he learns on his trip about the interaction between modern technology and ancient tradition is much more complicated and interesting than a simple story of how Western technology destroys the traditional culture. The story tells of the challenges Benavav faces as he crosses the desert in the company of men who have made the same journey many times and who are accustomed to its hardships. Benavav finds himself tested to the limits of his endurance and amazed at the ability of the azalai and the salt miners to survive and even thrive in the most extreme desert environment. I was amazed, too, and thankful to be able to read about it instead of experiencing it for myself.

I recommend both books for anyone who wants to do a little “armchair adventuring.” A short reading trip to Africa and back this summer certainly gave me the illusion of exploring new territory.

By the way, I found Men of Salt shelved in the juvenile/young adult section of the library, but I’m not sure why. The characters are all adults, and the story is one that, although certainly appealing to adventurous young adults, would also interest those of us with a few more years behind us. Who can fathom the classification decisions of librarians and publishers? Also by the way, I tried to read Mark Kurlansky’s well-publicized tome, Salt: A World History several months ago, and I never got past the first chapter. It was laborious reading with an attitude –not that I put much labor into it. I learned a lot about the history of salt from Mr. Benavav’s adventure, and I enjoyed it, too.

A Place in the Sun by Jill Rubalcaba

Jul5

Setting: Thirteenth century B.C., Egypt under the rule of Pharoah Ramses II, New Kingdom, 19th Dynasty.

Main Character: Senmut, the nine year old son of the sculptor, Yuf.

Themes: hardship, suffering, luck, perseverance.

This seventy-five page historical novel is short but full of pain and suspense. Senmut is only nine years old (I kept reminding myself of his age throughout the story) when he is sentenced to hard labor in the gold mines of Nubia for a “crime” that was essentially an accident. It’s unfair and horrible, and I think that although the reading level of the book is fourth or fifth grade, the content is pitched at young adult readers.

I got a picture of ancient Egypt as a place that might be nice to visit, if I could successfully avoid breaking any of the many superstitious taboos that ruled the lives of the Egyptians, but it wouldn’t be a “place in the sun” that I’d want to call home. Senmut survives his ordeal and becomes something more than a slave in ther gold mines, but his escape and his success are really due to luck, or the favor of the gods, more than anything else.

I think this one would be a great choice to go with our ancient history study to show students that ancient Egypt wasn’t all Pharoahs and pyramids, that lots of common people suffered and died under the rule of some dictatorial rulers who thought they were gods and yet were afraid of the gods whose images they both worshipped and emulated.

Shadow Hawk by Andre Norton

Jul2

Setting: Ancient Egypt, mainly in and around Thebes, c.1590 B.C. during the reigns of Pharoah Sekenenre III and his son Pharoah Kamose. Also near the end of the Hyksos occupation of Lower Egypt.

Main Character: Rahotep, younger son of Ptahhotep, viceroy of Nubia. Through his mother’s lineage, Rahotep is entitled to be called Nomarch (Duke) of the Hawk, but his duchy is overrun and has been for some time by the Hyksos invaders.

Themes: war, obedience to authority, rebellion, freedom. (Even if you don’t care for Ms. Norton’s science fiction/fantasy works, which are full of “witchy” worlds and themes, you may very well enjoy this book, which is straight historical fiction, good versus evil, morally impeccable.)

Minor Details that I noticed:
There are a lot of battles and descriptions of battles. Boys might enjoy that aspect of the book more than girls.

Rahotep is a hero. He’s the younger brother, forced to flee from his older brother who is out to get him. So, he’s the underdog who makes good at Pharoah’s court. That sort of plot and protagonist still works for me.

Very minor as far as the story is concerned, but I noticed how much respect and worship the Egyptians accorded their Pharoahs who were thought to be gods, sons of Re, the Sun God. We would be ashamed, and misunderstood, if those ancient Egyptians saw what little respect we Christians sometimes give to the God of the Universe and his Son, Jesus.

. . . by custom he did not raise his eyes to the man on the improvised throne. . . .

Rahotep went down on his knees. ‘Life! Health! Prosperity! May the Son of Re live forever! I am one unworthy of his notice! Let the Son of Re know that this one is less than the dust on his sandals . . .’

Rahotep advanced to put his lip to the Pharoah’s sandal strap.”

Author: Andre Norton is mainly famous for her science fiction titles, but she also wrote historical fiction. Shadow Hawk was published in 1960.

During those early days, agents were really unknown. So, when I was ready to submit my first novel, I got an alphabetized list of publishers and sent it to the first name on the list, and they accepted it.”

Can you authors believe that kind of sucess?

I was children’s librarian at the Cleveland Public Library for over twenty years, from 1930-1951. Each month the librarians would receive a book to review. If there was some objection to the book, and we still wanted it, we would have an opportunity to defend it. I remember getting The Hobbit and nobody had heard of Tolkien, so I had to argue for it like mad.”

I always say that I read and loved Tolkien before Tolkien was cool, but I don’t have as good a story as Ms. Norton.

A lot of children’s stories these days, while being well written, are downbeat. They have no hope, and the protagonist is someone that you wouldn’t like, and they are no better off at the end of the story than they were at the beginning. This is a new format, and it’s getting in to stories in the Science Fiction and Fantasy fields.”

Ah, someone else is concerned with that pesky “sense of hope” again. I must say that I agree with Ms. Norton and decry the loss of hope in children’s books.

Quotations are from a 1996 interview here at Ms. Norton’s excellent website. Andre Norton died in 2005.

To This Great Stage of Fools: Born June 29th

Jun29

Antoine de Saint-Exupery, b. 1900.

Here’s a Semicolon review of Saint-Exupery’s Wind, Sand and Stars.

A poem, Generation to Generation by Saint-Exupery.

Wikipedia on The Little Prince.

From The Little Prince:

Voici mon secret. Il est très simple: on ne voit bien qu’avec le cÅ“ur. L’essentiel est invisible pour les yeux.
Here is my secret. It is very simple: It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.

Les hommes ont oublié cette vérité, dit le renard. Mais tu ne dois pas l’oublier. Tu deviens responsable pour toujours de ce que tu as apprivoisé.
“Men have forgotten this truth,” said the fox. “But you must not forget it. You become responsible, forever, for what you have tamed.”

You risk tears if you let yourself be tamed.

Left to Tell by Immaculee Ilibagiza

May6

Subtitled Discovering God Amidst the Rwandan Holocaust, this autobiographical story tells one young lady, a mmember of the Tutsi tribe, who survived the slaughter by the Hutu majority of the Tutsis in Rwanda. Immaculee’s parents and her two brothers along with most of her extended family were killed during the Rwandan holocaust in 1994. Immaculee survived only because a Hutu pastor hid her and seven other women in a secret bathroom in his home for over three months.

During those three months, Immaculee came to know what it meant to depend on the grace and protection of God, and she came to believe that God preserved her life for a purpose. She also came out of hiding and was able to confront and then forgive those who had murdered her famly and tried to take her life, too.

I found this book difficult to read, difficult to believe that people could become so evil as to torture and murder the neighbors who grew up with them and the adults who taught and mentored them. There doesn’t seem to be any rhyme or reason to the Hutu/Tutsi enmity; according to Ms. Ilibagiza, there’s not even any simple way to tell members of the two tribes apart. Hutus feel that they were discriminated against in the past by the French-favored Tutsis. Tutsis felt that they were on the receiving end of the discrimination from the majority Hutus. And all the years of resentment and animosity exploded into violence and genocide after the death (assassination?) of Hutu President Habyarimana in April, 1994.

This book reminded me of Night, the book about the Jewish Holocaust during WW II that I read not too long ago. Not that the writing in Left to Tell was as distinctive and evocative as was that in Night, but the stories were much the same —unbelievable cruelty and tiny acts of mercy and charity nearly lost in a sea of horror. Immaculee emerges from her holocaust experience much more whole and able to grieve and forgive than did Mr. Wiesel; she seems to have a strong sense of God’s love for her and of His purpose in her life in spite of the suffering she had to endure in Rwanda.

Note: Although Immaculee herself talks and writes as an orthodox Roman Catholic Christian, her book was published by Hay House which is connected with the Hay Foundation, “established in 1985 to honor the work of metaphysical teacher, counselor, world-renowned author, and lecturer Louise L. Hay.” The foreword to the book is written by Dr. Wayne Dyer, another metaphysical, positive-thinking, New Age author and speaker. This connection doesn’t invalidate Immaculee’s experiences or insights, but it should make one cautious about reading and listening to her “friends.”

The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver

Apr17

In the first few pages of this novel, set in Zaire from 1959 into the present time, I found two quotations that I liked a lot.

“I attempted briefly to consecrate myself in the public library, believing every crack in my soul could be chinked with a book.”

“The forest eats itself and lives forever.”


After that, the story took over, and I forgot to keep track of individual sentences and paragraphs. It’s the story of a missionary family in Belgian Congo (Zaire) who set out to convert the Africans to Christianity and of the way that Africa transforms each member of that family. Ms. Kingsolver’s use of words and phrases in this novel is beautiful. I also liked the way the story was told from differing points of view: the dutiful daughter who becomes more African than the Africans themselves, the oldest daughter who worships, not books, but rather material comforts, and the odd twin whose disability and intelligence give her the detachment and eccentricity to do something that will truly help the African people. Even the youngest daughter, the sacrificial lamb of the family, tells the story from her vantage point some of the time.

The father, the preacher in the story, is a caricature. White missionaries to Africa are almost always caricatures: clumsy, insensitive, argumentative, violent, and self-absorbed. These fictional Cartoon Missionaries are always unable to communicate, always sure that Christianity is synonomous with American culture, always convinced that all truth resides in themselves and their own ideas. Although there were and probably still are missionaries who approach the spread of the gospel (good news) in this manner, I’ve met many missionaries, Southern Baptist and other evangelical missionaries, and I didn’t find them, for the most part, to be culturally insensitive or arrogant at all.

In spite of this stereotypical villain, I enjoyed reading The Poisonwood Bible. Some of the ideas, philosophies and scenes within the novel have stuck with me. I’m, in fact, still thinking about the novel and its implications a month and a half after having read it. Some of those “sticky” thoughts:

Africa is a vast and complicated continent, and understanding even the culture of one country within that huge continent of more than sixty countries and many more people groups would be the work of a lifetime.

It’s not really possible to understand and become a part of a culture outside of your own —even with the work of a lifetime. However, I believe Jesus transcends culture and unifies Christians across cultural lines.

African Christians have much to teach us about how to follow Christ and how to live lives of simple discipleship and obedience. However, I’m not sure that anyone is listening. One group wants Africans to fit into Rousseau’s ideal of the “Noble Savage” and not to adopt Christianity at all, and another is still stuck in a less extreme version of what the preacher father preached in this book: “see what we (western) Christians can do for the poor benighted Africans.”

Sisters, even twins, can grow up to hold very different views of the world and to espouse very different causes and beliefs. Even so, they can’t completely escape the link that growing up in the same family, and perhaps heredity, gives them. Sisters are inextricably bound together in some ways by their past and their shared heritage.

I can’t forget the image of an army of ants moving across the landscape devouring everything in sight. Could an army of insects, literal or figurative, devour our culture someday and make all that we’ve said, written, and invented, irrelevent?

Barbara Kingsolver’s website.