A Cowrie of Hope - Binwell Sinyangwe

African Literature features quite heavily on my list of books that come from random countries that feature a natural UNESCO World Heritage site. This month I was off to Zambia and chose the novel “A Cowrie of Hope” by Binwell Sinyangwe. He’s a widower raising a son and two daughters, he studied Industrial Economics in Bucharest, Romania and now lives in Lusaka in Zambia.

This short tale is a revelation of Zambia in the 1990’s and as I travel the globe through various writings I come across wondrous tales of resilience and triumph over hardship. To tell a story of a single mother who lives day to day but can’t afford to send her daughter to school with compassion and an underlying tension is a great achievement.

‘They were lucky, those who went to school in the sixties, seventies and eighties, when education was not paid for and everything needed was provided free. Now in the nineties, things are different, we must accept what is happening to us. It won’t help if we complain and grieve. Who will listen to us?’

Our protagonist is Nasula (mother of Sula) and quite simply she wants a batter life for her daughter, an education so she can escape the hardship that all women have to endure in the small villages in Zambia, and our village of Swelini. With nobody able to pay for hired help, no means of income, no crops, what is Nusala to do?

These were the nineties, the years when there was a harshness and hardness in the land that had little sympathy for the weak. New people were in government and the sons and daughters of the land were breathing with a new spirit. Borrow to pay back, not to steal they were saying. A good spirit. A person must pay for what she or he borrows and work hard for what she or he eats. But when the rain is bad and the crop is bad as a result, what can a person do?

Nasula is poverty personified, each day a meal is gathered from the most unlikely of sources. So how to send your daughter to school to escape this madness? Nasula travels to the village of her in-laws, even though they had taken everything when her husband had died. Her hope is to borrow some funds as the deadline for school enrolment fast approaches. After a day long walk she finds the village in ruin, the patriarchs all dead or dying from AIDS and not a coin or even a meal available to borrow. The severity of the situation and the poverty is always our underlying theme here.

Sula, her daughter, was a blessing. She took her schooling seriously and had refused to be weighed down by the severity of their poverty or the reality that she had no father, and that she was a girl, not a boy. Given support, she would become successful and be able to make decisions about her own life, she make them achieve as a family. The child was a cowrie of hope. A great gift from the gods to one who was so poor and lowly, to wear round one’s neck for inspiration, and, above all, hope.

Our story takes a different turn when a friend arrives in the village and explains to Nasula that her one bag of beans is fetching a fortune in the capital city. She can travel to the markets of Lusaka, sell her beans and return to provide the secondary education her daughter so desperately requires.

As I do my best not to put spoilers in my reviews I’ll leave the tale here so you to enjoy Nasula’s travels yourself, will the bag of beans lead to further ruin, is the story of their wealth true, will Nasula be able to sell them and return home wit the required funds? You’ll have to explore this African novel yourself.

Another opening for me into the plight of people’s in the various countries as I travel around the globe from my various reading spots. A simple but rewarding tale of endurance, both individually and as a nation. With Zambia having a rich history in fiction the choices from here were many and varied and if you would like to lean more about this nation may I suggest the website http://www.jahn-bibliothek.ifeas.uni-mainz.de/Dateien/OVERSHADOWED_BIBLIO_final_REV_Dec_2011.pdf where a great list of works are available. 

March World Heritage Listed Literature Challenge – Zambia

A great February discovering the literature of the Andes and more specifically Peru, through Nobel Prize winner Mario Vargas Llosa’s “Death in the Andes” and Daniel Alarcon’s short story collection “War by Candlelight”. On 12 February the Society of Authors announced their Translation Prizes for 2014 and the Peruvian novel “the Blue Hour” by Alonso Cueto (translated by Frank Wynne) was the winner of the Spanish translation award. I’ve secured a copy (publication date was listed for 1 April but it has been brought forward) and once received will read and review it here as part of February’s visit to Peru.

Onto March and we visit Zambia, home of Mosi-oa-Tunya (Victoria Falls). As most of you would know these are considered one of the most spectacular waterfalls on the planet.

 

Image courtesy of http://www.places.co.za/html/victoria-falls.html

Here is the brief description of the Falls from the UNESCO World Heritage Site website, listed for their “outstanding universal value”:

The Mosi-oa-Tunya/Victoria Falls is the world’s greatest sheet of falling water and significant worldwide for its exceptional geological and geomorphological features and active land formation processes with outstanding beauty attributed to the falls i.e. the spray, mist and rainbows. This transboundary property extends over 6860 ha and comprises 3779 ha of the Mosi-oa-Tunya National Park (Zambia), 2340 ha of Victoria Falls National Park (Zimbabwe), 741 ha of the riverine strip of Zambezi National Park (Zimbabwe). A riverine strip of the Zambezi National Park extending 9 km west along the right bank of the Zambezi and islands in the river are all within the Park as far as Palm and Kandahar Islands, with the Victoria Falls being one of the major attractions. The waterfall stands at an altitude of about 915 m above mean sea level (a.m.s.l.) and spans to about 1708 m wide with an average depth of 100 m and the deepest point being 108 m. Sprays from this giant waterfall can be seen from a distance of 30 km from the Lusaka road, Zambia and 50 km from Bulawayo road, Zimbabwe. Basalts have been cut by a river system producing a series of eightspectacular gorges that serve as breeding sites for four species of endangered birds. The basalts of the Victoria Falls World Heritage property are layered unlike those of the Giants Causeway World Heritage site which are vertical and columnar.

I believed the literature challenge itself would prove a challenge, however finding a work that represents Zambia in English was not as difficult as I first thought. The amazing “bibliography of Zambia’s literature in English” compiled by Ranka Primorac http://www.jahn-bibliothek.ifeas.uni-mainz.de/Dateien/OVERSHADOWED_BIBLIO_final_REV_Dec_2011.pdf) contains hundreds of works. Some I may revisit at a later stage, however my choice was Binwell Sinyangwe’s “A Cowrie Of Hope”, first published by Heinemann in London in 2000.

Books I will review here throughout the year

So I've planned ahead and sourced a book from each of the UNESCO World Heritage places that appear on the list for 2014. Some were easier to identify a writer (or a number of writers) than others but I've settled on my listing for the year, that also doesn't mean I won't add more books or writers from the featured countries, this is just my baseline.

March – Zambia – Binwell Sinyangwe – A Cowrie of Hope

April – Tanzania – Abdulrazak Gurnah – Paradise

May – Denmark – Pia Juul – The Murder of Halland

June – Bangladesh – Shaukat Osman – The State Witness

July – Chad – Joseph Brahim Seid - Told by Starlight in Chad

August – Mexico – Cristina Rivera Garza – No One Will See Me Cry

September – New Zealand – Janet Frame (yet to decide)

October – Saint Lucia – Garth St Omer – A Room On The Hill

November – South Africa – Chris Barnard - Bundu

December - Norway – Karl Ove Knausgard – My Struggle – Part 3

Feel free to let me know if you think there would be better books to read.

War by Candlelight - Daniel Alarcon

Before I landed on a Mario Vargas Llosa ‘s “Death In The Andes” as my book to represent Peru, I had already purchased “War By Candlelight” by Daniel Alarcon, a collection of his short stories. Once I learned that Alarcon had moved to the Untied States as a three year old I thought a better representation of the nation would be the Nobel Prize winner. But not to let a book go to waste I made my way through the his stories. My edition (published by Harper Perennial) contains a meaty section on the writer himself and although he left a troubled nation when only a small child, he did return to teach photography as a Fulbright Scholar and in his younger years did return each year for a visit. This collection of short stories all reflect on Peru so maybe I shouldn’t have been so hasty to make Mario Vargas Llosa my pin up boy for the month!!

This collection contains nine short stories.

First up we have “Flood” a tale of three youths who participate in a riot (after starting it by throwing a rock) in Lima during a downpour. The subsequent consequences of their actions and their visits to the local “university” (the jail) tell the story of a Capital in chaos. The city is divided by gangs, the jail by rebel forces and other criminals, the persecution as well as the disbelief that violence is not just a way of life. A simple story but one that reveals a melting pot of issues.

“City of Clowns” is also set in Lima where we have a journalist who has been assigned a “feature story” of following the city’s clowns. The people who make a meagre living whilst in disguise, the beggars who are dressed up to sell smiles, poetic words or mints. Our protagonist grew up as a single child with only his mother as support, on the wrong part of Lima, getting his life education (as well as his practical one) by being denigrated by his class mates. Another moral tale of a city in disguise, one that is not what it seems, a place of crime, extreme poverty and ignorance.

I worked and slept and worked, and thought as little as possible about my old man, my mother, Carmela. I thought about clowns. They had become, to my surprise, a kind of refuge. Once I started looking for them, I found them everywhere. They organized the city for me: buses, street corners, plazas. They suited my mood. Appropriating the absurd, embracing shame, they transformed it. Laugh at me. Humiliate me. And when you do, I’ve won. Lima was, in fact and in spirit, a city of clowns.

We then move to “3^rd Avenue Suicide”, set in the USA our hero is a Peruvian immigrant who is living in sin with his young Indian girlfriend.  Here we have the clash of three cultures (indian, Peruvian and USA) and what is acceptable as an immigrant – and what parts of our culture we bring with us, or leave behind. We all carry shame….

“Lima, Peru, July 28, 1979” – this is their Independence Day. A shorter story telling the tale of a boy killing black stray dogs and hanging them in the streets, with painted slogans on their bodies, as part of the clandestine people’s uprising. His fate is sealed when he chases a particularly sleek black dog.

In 1970, a town disappeared beneath the Andes. An earthquake. Then a landslide. Not a village but a town. Yungay. It was a Sunday afternoon; my father and I listened to the World Cup live from Mexico City, Peru playing Argentina to a respectable draw, when the room shook vaguely. And then the news came slowly; filtered, like all things in Peru, from the provinces to Lima, and then back out again to all the far-flung corners of our make-believe nation. We were aware that something unspeakable had occurred, but could not name it just yet. The earth has spilled upon itself, an angry sea of mud and rock, drowning thousands. Only some of the children were spared. A travelling circus had set up camp at the higher end of the valley. There were clowns in colourful hats and children laughing as their parents were buried.

“Absence” is also set in the USA where we have a young Peruvian artist visiting New York for the opening of his solo exhibition. His original request for a 90 day visa was declined in Peru, his actual 30 day visa was reduced to 14 days when he arrived in the States and we listen to his depiration as he struggles with the limited time to assess a potential new homeland (he would of course become an illegal immigrant) and his struggle with the languages and the feeling of disconnection he now has with his violent paintings.

A very short story is “The visitor” where we have the survivors of a landslide in the Andes, burying their own and counting and retrieving the parachutes which conatin aid, before they are graced by a visitor.

The title story “War By Candlelight” is the story of Fernando, a revolutionary, told in non sequential date snippets. You piece together his story and his journey to revolution through his family tales, his experiences at university, at protests etc.

Don Jose, watching his son toast the houses he would build for Peru’s homeless, watching his son tremble with emotion at the warmth of the family surrounding him, recognized that Fernando’s heart was like his own; nostalgic but combative, caring but suspicious, able to bundle great ideas into intractable knots of personal anxiety. It is the way men begin to carry the world with them, the way they become responsible for it, not through their minds, but through their hearts. And though they shared much, the differences between Don Jose and his son were also striking, and also a question of heart. Don Jose and his son were also striking, and also a question of heart. Don Jose saw that as well and did not, as others did, attribute those differences to something as simple as youth.

“A science for being alone” is the story of  a destitute Peruvian who proposes to his “sweetheart” every year on their daughter’s birthday. The day of this story is her 5^th birthday. Another story of pursued happiness, potential better times ahead, grand plans that are beyond reach.

Finally we have “A Strong Dead Man” – a sixteen year old is being taken by his older cousin to the park for a wlk on the day his father has had his third stroke. A reflective tale of  sanctity of life, relationships, memory and loss.

Overall this is a great collection of stories, each a subtle reflection on a theme but holistically all what it means to be Peruvian, as well as the standard existentialist themes. Every story is a small movement, starting off quietly before the large crescendo, all contributing to a masterful symphony. I really enjoyed all of these stories and again I’ve had another glimpse into Peru and the years of political struggle, the hardships, poverty, natural disasters and more. I’m glad I took the journey.

Death in the Andes - Mario Vargas Llosa (translated by Edith Grossman)

As part of my World Heritage Listed sites Literature Challenge the month of February saw me travelling (via non fiction) to Peru. Where else to chose your writer than from the Nobel Prize in Literature which Mario Vargas Llosa won in 2010. His citation for the award reads: "for his cartography of structures of power and his trenchant images of the individual's resistance, revolt, and defeat"

“Death in the Andes” was written in 1993 and follows a character (Lituma) from his 1987 work “Who Killed Palomino Molero?” Lituma is a civil guard and has been sent, in disgrace, to the town of Naccos. The majority of the inhabitants of this rural shanty town are building a highway. Each night Lituma tells his story to his superior, Tomasito, his tale of meeting and falling for a prostitute Mercedes, the reason why he is in disgrace. The nightly tales detail Lituma and Mercedes life on the run from the mob.

Add to this mix an albino travelling merchant who is searching for his only true love, a mute who lived in the hills with a herd and is at peace with nature and a Government official hiding under a false name from the rebels. All three of these men disappear from the village and the suspicion immediately lands on Dionisio, a past travelling carnival leader, and his wife Adriana, a suspected witch, who run the local cantina.

This is a novel of fine character portraits:

From the time he was a boy, they had called Pedrito Tinoco half-wit, moron, dummy, simpleton, and since his mouth always hung open, they called him flycatcher too. The names did not make him angry, because he never got angry at anything or anyone. And the people of Abancay never got angry with him either; sooner or later everybody was won over by his peaceful smile, his obliging nature, his simplicity.

The mystery of the missing men is the main plot of the novel with the love story told at night being the sub-plot. But within the whole mix we have tales of witchery, sorcery, spells, ancient Aztec rituals, the history of Peru and the Andes. Small snippets of the rebels appearing and killing innocents throughout the region, also crop up, adding a further tension to the citizens of Naccos.

‘The ancestral gods, the tutelary spirits of the hills and mountains in the Cordillera,’ replied the professor, delighted to speak about the thing he seemed to love best. ‘Evert peak in the Andes no matter how small, has its own protective god. When the Spaniards came and destroyed the idols and the burial grounds and baptized the Indians and prohibited pagan cults, the thought they had put an end to Idolatry. But in fact it still lives, mixed in with Christian ritual. The apus decide life and death in these regions. They’re the reason we’re here now, my friends. Let’s drink to the apus of La Esperanza!’

This is a novel filled with Peruvian ritual and beliefs and it gave me an amazing insight into a Nation I know little about. How a nation can be politically, dogmatically, racially and culturally be divided. Apus, the gods of the mountains, and the evil Pishtacos, the vampires of Andean folklore rule the mountains, they are the ones who take your children, your partners, they are the ones who cause earthquakes and avalanches, they are the ones who have taken the three missing men. This is a portrait of a nation on the brink, of revolutionary change, of extreme economic hardship.

Only decay, what we have nowadays, is given away for nothing. You men don’t have to pay anybody anything to live in uncertainty and fear, to be the wrecks you are. That’s free of charge. Work on the highway will stop and you won’t have jobs, the terrucos will come and there’ll be a slaughter, the huayco will come down and wipe us off the map. The evil spirits will come out of the mountains to celebrate, they’ll dance a farewell cacharpari to life, and so many condors will be circling overhead they’ll blot out the sky. Unless…

As you can see from the few excerpts above the book is littered with Peruvian slang and terms that I was not familiar with, however it didn’t take me very long to get used to it and understand quite a number of the references. One thing I did find slightly distracting was the night time discussions where Lituma was telling his story, including his conversations with Mercedes, only to be interrupted by Tomasito urging him on for more details. This did confuse me at times.

For me this was a great introduction to Peru’s history and cultures as well as the pagan beliefs and given the theme of my Literature Challenge was to learn more about the nations that feature a UNESCO World Heritage Listed Park, it has succeeded on a number of levels.

I’ll be back with a review of Daniel Alarcon’s “War By Candlelight” later this week, a collection of short stories by a young Peruvian writer.

Cross posted at http://messybooker.blogspot.com.au/

February World Heritage Listed Literature Challenge – Peru

Well the struggle of finding something from Mauritania has passed and we are now into February where the “lucky” country that features on our UNESCO World Heritage Listed Literature Challenge is Peru.

I’ve chosen Nobel Prize winner Mario Vargas Llosa’s 1993 novel “Death in The Andes” –Mario Vargas Llosa was the 2010 recipient of the Nobel Prize in Literature, he even ran for the Presidency of Peru in 1990. My review will be posted here shortly. I have also purchased Daniel Alarcon’s collection of short stories “War By Candlelight” a young writer who lives in San Francisco but was born in Lima Peru. I’ll try and get to these over the month of February too.

Peru has eleven World Heritage sites, seven being cultural, two natural and two mixed. The challenge only related to natural World Heritage Sites so details of those four are below.

Historic Sanctuary of Machu Picchu

I don’t know if I need to write a lot about this place as it is featured in depth in numerous travel brochures etc. The Inca urban empire with terraces, giant walls and ramps all fitting into the natural rock escarpments. The natural side of the park is the eastern slopes of the Andes encompassing the upper Amazon basin, incorporating the diverse flora and fauna of that region.

 

Image courtesy of http://science.nationalgeographic.com/science/archaeology/machu-picchu-mystery/

Huascaran National Park

Huascarán National Park is located in the Cordillera Blanca Range, in the Sierra Central of the Peruvian Andes. The park covers the most of the Cordillera Blanca, the highest tropical mountain range in the world. It has 27 snow-capped peaks 6,000 m above sea level, of which El Huascarán (6,768 m) is the highest.

The park is populated with spectacled bear, puma, mountain cats, white-tailed deer and vicuna.The park contains 120 glacial lakes

Manu National Park

The Manu National Park is 1.5 million hectares in size and covers areas on the Eastern Slopes of the Andes and the Peruvian Amazon. Typically tropical rainforest the last 10 years has seen 1,147 new plant species being identified and that is only within a small area (for example a 1 ha plot near the Cocha Cashu research station supports more than 200 tree species along. More than 800 bird species and 200 species of mammals have been identified alone, with 13 different species of monkeys, over 100 of bats, 12 different reptiles and 77 species of amphibians.

Image courtesy of http://www.manu-wildlife-center.com/manu_national_park_manu_national_park_tapir_macaw_lick.asp

Rio Abiseo National Park

The park was created in 1983 to protect the fauna and flora of the rainforests that are characteristic of this region of the Andes. There is a high level of endemism among the fauna and flora found in the park. The yellow-tailed woolly monkey, previously thought extinct, is found only in this area. Research undertaken since 1985 has already uncovered 36 previously unknown archaeological sites at altitudes of between 2,500 and 4,000 m, which give a good picture of pre-Inca society.

Banc d'Arguin National Park - Mauritania

The Banc d’Arguin National Park is located on the West Coast of Mauritania, it was established in 1978 and then designated by UNESCO in 1989, under criteria (ix) and (x):

(ix) to be outstanding examples representing significant on-going ecological and biological processes in the evolution and development of terrestrial, fresh water, coastal and marine ecosystems and communities of plants and animals;

(x) to contain the most important and significant natural habitats for in-situ conservation of biological diversity, including those containing threatened species of outstanding universal value from the point of view of science or conservation.

The UNESCO World Heritage Site says in their “brief synthesis”:

The Banc d'Arguin is one of the most important zones in the world for nesting birds and Palearctic migratory waders. Located along the Atlantic coast, this Park is formed of sand dunes, areas of coastal swamps, small islands and shallow coastal waters.  The austerity of the desert and the biodiversity of the marine area results in a land and seascape of exceptional contrasting natural value.

Criterion (ix): Banc d'Arguin National Park is an ecosystem rich in biodiversity of nutrients and organic matter due to the vast expanse of marshes covered with seagrass beds, and an important windblown sediment addition from the continent and the result of the permanent upwelling of the Cap Blanc.  This wealth ensures the maintenance of a marine and coastal environment sufficiently rich and diverse to support important communities of fish, birds and marine mammals.

Criterion (x): Banc d'Arguin National Park comprises the most important habitat of the Western Atlantic for nesting birds of west Africa and the Palearctic migratory waders. The vast expanses of marshes provide shelter to more than two million limicolous migrant birds from northern Europe, Siberia and Greenland.  The nesting bird population is also remarkable in terms of diversity and number: between 25,000 and 40,000 pairs belonging to 15 bird species. The shallows and island area is also the centre of intense biological activity: there are 45 fish species, 11 species of shellfish and several species of mollusks. The property also contains several species of marine turtles, notably the green seaturtle (Chelonia mydas) on the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. Among the mammals, there are still some remnant populations of Dorcas gazelle (Gazella dorcas). The bottlenose dolphin and the Atlantic hump-backed dolphin are frequently sighted in the property.

Integrity

The rectilinear boundaries of the property suggest that they were not based on ecological parameters, but more likely correspond to administrative requirements. The eastern limit extends inwards to a desert zone, in places up to 50 metres, and constitutes a wide band where activities incompatible with the conservation of the property may be conducted. Certain revisions to the southern limit, to exclude the village of Cape Timiris and the military base, would not detract from the value of the property and could eventually be envisaged. The marine boundary forms, also, a straight line and crosses the shallows of the property through the centre. It would be particularly justifiable that the whole shallows zone be included in the property. The satellite reserve of 200ha located at Cap Blanc constitutes the habitat for a monk seal colony and presents issues as regards its integrity. First, the reserve boundaries encompass the habitat of the 100 monk seals found in the region, the remainder using the area to the north known as the Côte des Phoques. This means that the condition of integrity that requires sufficient area to ensure continuity for the species is not satisfied. Second, the extension of the Cap Blanc Reserve to encompass the key breeding and nursery area at Côte des Phoques, is not possible as the international boundary in this area of the Western Sahara remains to be determined. For this reason, the World Heritage Committee decided to inscribe the property and exclude the Cap Blanc Reserve, the inscription of which can only be envisaged after the resolution of the issue of boundary limits and when the part of the Côte des Phoques could be included.  The main threat to the property are projects likely to alter the traditional activities of local fishing. The introduction of new technologies and an increased catch could affect and seriously disturb the fish life of the region.

Camping in the park - Photo courtesy of http://www.panoramio.com/photo/6238035

Protection and management requirements

Protection of the property is regulated by the statute for protected reserves. The property has a management plan. The main threats to the property are most linked to unregulated development of maritime activities and coastal infrastructures. Fishing activities have considerably increased and the material and methods of fishing have changed as have the species targeted. Consequently, protection of the marine resources against over-exploitation is essential. To mitigate the problem, the implementation of a surveillance programme on the risks to marine resources, including illegal commercial fishing. The risk of pollution by hydrocarbons on the international maritime route of western Africa and from the petroleum industries is also considerable. Urgent planning to cope with the eventuality of an oil spill, is required for the property and its surrounds.  Another important issue in the management of the property is the prevention of poaching and logging causing the degradation of the terrestrial part of the property. As for the maritime part of the property, a full terrestrial surveillance programme is required.  The possible impacts of climate change must also be studied.