History – African Countries – Page 3 – education and deconstruction.com

Meskel

The Book of the Week is “Meskel” by Mellina and Lukas Fanouris, originally published in 1995.

This is the story of two families, two of whose members– the authors– married and lived in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia (formerly Abyssinia) through the 1970’s. Their forebears had originally come from Greece to live in Abyssinia in 1926. Upon settling in their new country, wife and husband of one family– Evangelia and Manoli Fanouris, started a Greek restaurant, and newspaper and magazine distribution business/bookstore. Then they began having children; Lukas was one of the younger ones.

In late 1934, there was border fighting between Abyssinia and Italian Somaliland. The Italians used poison gas against the Somalis. Although Evangelia’s brother Logotheti had designed the Royal Palace and had friends in high places, Emperor Haile Selassie still threatened Manoli with death because he sold foreign publications that were critical of the regime. Other untoward events occurred through the years, due to the Italian invasion and later, WWII. Nevertheless, the Fanouris did not leave the country, as their business provided them with a good life.

Mellina married Lukas Fanouris when he aggressively courted her. The families had known each other for years from the Greek community in Addis Ababa. She worked for the United Nations. In late 1973, Ethiopia was facing “… union unrest, drought in the north, and rumors of famine, allegations of corruption in the government and rising food prices.” Army soldiers were fed up with their living conditions and turned against the Emperor. Lukas’ parents lived richly, what with a five-bedroom, five-bath mansion, flower garden, balcony and verandas. But there came a time when they finally needed to flee anti-government strikes, protests and violence.

In September 1974, a documentary on Ethiopians’ starvation due to drought was finally released, after the military had taken control of the media. In December, the nation changed from a kingdom to a socialist state, limiting the imported reading material of the populace to Marx, Lenin and Engels. Businesses were nationalized and martial law was imposed. The new leader, Lieutenant Colonel Mengistu Haile Mariam, copied other dictators in recent memory– Stalin (U.S.S.R.), Mao Tse Tung (China), Peron (Argentina), Pinochet (Chile) and Pol Pot (Cambodia), by ordering citizens to do hard manual labor on farms, telling them to take pride in feeding the country; and by imposing the usual witchhunts, torture, arrests, show-trials and imprisonment for political dissidents and members of the old regime. Not to mention the trampling on what industrialized, democtratic nations would consider due process.

Read the book to learn the details of how the authors survived the attack on their freedoms through the 1970’s, and the suspenseful survival saga of Lukas and his brother Pavlos.

Mama Koko

The Book of the Week is “Mama Koko and the Hundred Gunmen” by Lisa J. Shannon, published in 2015.

This ebook is the product of the author’s interview of two generations of a family from the Congo, starting in the 1970’s (the anecdotes’ time frames are rarely specified). The book documents the fates of many of its members– victims of the ongoing system of violence, perpetrated by a political group called the LRA, which had migrated from Uganda. Shannon starts with biographical information on the matriarch of the family, Mama Koko.

Mama Koko’s elders arranged her marriage for her when she was a baby: “…she was called out of class at the age of twelve. Her classmates and the nuns watched as the young beauty in her Catholic-school uniform arrived in the mission’s courtyard garden to find a strange old man waiting for her, introducing himself as her husband.” She was rebellious and rejected him. She put off a life of servitude for three years in order to finish the fifth grade; after which, the priest finally pressured her, under threat of death, to accept her fate.

The culture in the Congo is to ask “Who is your family?” the same way Americans ask “What do you do?” when meeting people. Their livelihoods were mostly agricultural– growing cotton, coffee, cassava, rice and peanuts. The core family of the story ran a plantation and a shop. The people also practiced polygamy. ” Andre and his only brother Alexander were both sons of Game, who had four wives and forty-three children.”

The author suffered an attack of conscience, fantasizing about adopting a deprived child when she personally visited Congo. She saw for herself the life-threatening conditions under which the Congolese lived every day, even in geographic areas of relative calm. “I’d heard the snarky comments back home about white-savior complexes; I understood I was trampling too far into cultural sensitivities.”

Read this depressing ebook to learn the various ways people died (most of the time shot on the spot) at the hands of ruthless child-soldiers who themselves were tortured and drugged to make them kill villagers. One bright spot was that an American Peace Corps volunteer was able to provide a better life for one female in the family. They moved to the United States.

Keeping Hope Alive

The Book of the Week is “Keeping Hope Alive” by Dr. Hawa Abdi, with Sarah J. Robbins, published in 2013. This ebook is the personal account of a driven, fiercely independent Somalian doctor.

Around 1970, Abdi did seven years of medical training in the former Soviet Union. She then returned to her homeland of Somalia to practice obstetrics and gynecology. Through the years, she married, had two daughters and a son, and in August 1983, built a clinic.

By mid-1992, Abdi had made available a farm and campus on which poor people and war refugees could reside, and receive medical treatment. In addition, she was a law school graduate. She also took in her sister’s large family when they were destitute. She risked her life many times during hostilities between and among Ethiopians and Somalian clans ruled by warlords and sheikhs.

Abdi gathered quite a following because she was so generous to her community. Her dream was that the Somalian people would unite as one country, instead of killing each other in tribal infighting. “People who are fighting will never be able to build.” By the early 2000’s, “… after fifteen years of civil war, the women and youth ran everything, while most of the grown men had either been killed or were away– out fighting or somewhere abroad, trying to make business deals.”

Read the book to learn the details of: Abdi’s trials and tribulations in protecting her property and family, how she was betrayed by her husband; how in some ways, she refused to comply with Somalian/Islamic culture; the cities to which she evacuated her children, and of her interactions with relief organizations, soldiers and journalists.

The Last Resort

The Book of the Week is “The Last Resort: A Memoir of Zimbabwe” by Douglas Rogers, published in 2010. The author of this extremely suspenseful ebook describes how his landowner-parents fared in the years after the spring of 2000, when Zimbabwean dictator Robert Mugabe ordered that land owned by light-skinned people be taken over by dark-skinned. The author’s family was light-skinned.

This is a lurid story of how the use of three major instruments of power– lawyers, guns and money– did not necessarily play as important a role in his parents’ fate as their history, the relationships they formed and actions they took.

Rogers was a travel writer who had moved out of the country long before. His parents had stayed to defend their property in Mutare, (about 180 miles from Harare) on which, because it was land unsuitable for farming, in 1992 they had built a resort that originally hosted young backpackers in its chalets.

Read the book to learn about:

a) the irreverent goings-on and clientele at the resort through the years,

b) how his father fared in attempting to deal with the lawless, bureaucratic Zimbabwean government, and

c) whether the author’s parents’ dealings with various people– pro-Mugabe (officials, thugs who perpetrated violence against whites, and those who had the government’s permission to move onto the property of the light-skinned) and anti-Mugabe (activists and fighters)– allowed them to survive.

The Bite of the Mango

The Book of the Week is “The Bite of the Mango” by Mariatu Kamara with Susan McClelland, published in 2008. This ebook is the personal account of a victim who survived Sierra Leone’s eleven-year bloody civil war that started in 1991.

Kamara was born sometime in the mid-1980’s– she doesn’t even know exactly when. Her childhood began in a way typical for her culture. She lived in a rural village hut with extended family and several siblings and half-siblings– due to her father’s polygamy. Lacking computers and even TVs, they sang songs and told stories around the fire at night.

WARNING: the story escalates quickly into a gruesome scene in which child-soldiers recruited by anti-government rebels perpetrate extreme evil.

Read the book to learn how the author received a lifeline unlike others similarly situated, in a miracle akin to winning the lottery. Prior to her being singled out for special treatment, however, she had it worse than the others, because in addition to suffering a life-changing disability, she was subjected to an extra ugly act by a different criminal, that sapped her physical and mental well-being for a prolonged period.

This is yet another book that details the suffering of powerless victims of a war-torn country and/or ruthless dictator. The storyteller somehow beat the odds and got the attention of someone who helped publicize her plight. After apprising the world of her experiences, the survivor then returned home to assist her fellow citizens who were not so lucky.

Looking For Transwonderland

The Book of the Week is “Looking For Transwonderland, Travels in Nigeria” by Noo Saro-Wiwa, published in 2012. This ebook’s author spent most of her childhood in England.

Born in mid-1970’s Nigeria– under the rule of a ruthless dictatorship– she was visiting the country for a few months in 2011 to find her roots. Corrupted by oil discovered in 1957, and a colony of the British Empire until 1960, the country has since become somewhat democratized. The author briefly discusses the history of Nigeria and its tribes, the Hausas, Igbos, Yorubas, Ogonis and Binis. Roughly half the citizens are Muslim, mostly living in the north; the other half are evangelical Christian. Many are Pentecostal, living in the south.

The author recounts her experiences of seeing her aunt in Lagos. Her aunt believes in witches, and many Nigerians believe in the supernatural. They also engage in daily public prayer. Saro-Wiwa met her cousin Mabel, a typical Nigerian 20-something who, every day, arrives at her journalism job in late morning due as much to anger and resentment at the nation’s greedy leaders, as due to a long, stressful commute. She gets paid irregularly, every several months; she’s in debt until then.

“A lack of professionalism characterises the top echelons of government, and extends down to the ordinary workers… [Including museum managers]. Nothing works, talent goes to waste, and nepotism is rife.” Approximately six of ten residents of Nigerian cities work “off the books” in the building trade, or selling small-ticket items and food. Water and electricity are considered luxuries. Infrastructure is hardly ever maintained. Instead of verbal mudslinging and spying on each other, to scare their enemies– Nigerian politicians employ cults to abduct foreign oil workers. Networking with militant groups is more likely to lead to a job than a university degree. Besides, due to lack of funding, “Lecturers were reduced to photocopying literature and selling it to students.”

Saro-Wiwa talks to people around the country. One told her about how a friend had died when a fire and explosion resulted from thieves’ punching a hole in an oil pipeline to get at the precious resource. That was not an isolated incident, as, unfortunately, cigarettes and paraffin lamps are items commonly present near Nigerian oil pipelines, which can heat up to about 900 degrees Celsius during a conflagration.

“Nothing in Lagos comes without a struggle or a squabble…” In one illustration, the author makes the quick-to-anger passengers of public transportation– along with the occasional evangelist and beggar riding overcrowded buses– sound worse than passengers in New York City. The disputes over trivial matters of perceived injustices do not usually come to blows, though. The author takes a number of hair-raising rides on motorbikes, too, minus the social entertainment. There are only a handful of traffic lights in Nigeria, but numerous Darwin-award-candidate pedestrians and drivers.

Read the book to learn more about the author’s observations of wealthy students on a college campus, her visits to Transwonderland and various other tourist attractions and a music concert in rural areas, Nollywood, the sorry state of her accommodations, Nigeria’s carnivorous, gerontocratic inclinations, and her other adventures.

Radio Congo – Bonus Post

This blogger skimmed “Radio Congo” by Ben Rawlence, published in 2012. It is an autobiographical account of a 2007 trip to still-dangerous regions of the Congo adversely affected by the the country’s four recent wars– in 1964, 1977, 1996 and 2002; the second of which saw eight national armies and twelve armed groups fighting. The author resented having to hand over his “…precious francs to the insatiable Congolese bureaucracy” to interview, among many others, the non-refugees– people who stayed put during the violence.

Two major causes of all that strife is that 90% of the world’s mineral deposits are in the Congo– making it ripe for exploitation, and the fact that various regional ethnic groups hate each other.

Other bad situations the author heard about included: the spewing of lava on Goma in 2002, the demand for higher bribe amounts among local court judges due to economic recovery, and the fact that the incidence of rape in eastern Congo was the highest in the world. There were protection monies paid to soldiers by ten to fifteen thousand miners (in the amount of about $10,000 daily), and by poachers of antelope (whose meat was cheaper than goats’). Animal-park rangers also collected from the latter.

It behooved the local thugs to continue the hostilities. “Peace would mean the unwelcome attention of the government, the advent of commercial mining operations, taxation and the end of their private income… The usual tools of wartime– men and guns– are the deciding factor in most business arrangements and the colonel has the most in the region.”

The author spoke with all walks of life during his travels via hired vehicles and boats. “Each of these towns is a little island community unto itself, with its own radio, market and military command.” In Bujumbura, he encountered Americans whose U.S. government contract called for training the Burundian military. When Rawlence told people his main goal was to visit Manono, they thought he had a death wish. On the way, he ate chili, goat stew and tea in Walikale before he was told to leave, as foreigners were banned from that area. He was shoved onto an airplane loaded with tin ore to be smuggled back to Goma.

“Often the best way to solve a difficult problem in Congo is to get drunk.” The author went to a night club whose door sign proclaimed the wearing of vests, sandals and guns to be banned. In Magunga, the author was obligated by his hosts to attend Christian mass on Sunday morning, as all villagers did. It was a multilingual service; in Swahili, Kibembe and Kinyamulenge. The music ranged from drum and choir to car-battery powered electric piano.

Read the book to learn about the lives of the numerous refugees from Congo’s neighbors and about a boatload of other distasteful circumstances to which the author became privy– glutton for emotional trauma that he was.

First Comes Love, Then Comes Malaria

The Book of the Week is “First Comes Love, Then Comes Malaria” by Eve Brown-Waite, published in 2009. This is the personal account of an adventurous idealist.

Although Brown’s late 1980’s Peace Corps experience in Ecuador prompted a painful realization about her interactions with a certain adult when she was an adolescent, there also occurred growth. Previously, she had fallen in love with her Peace Corps recruiter, who got a micro-financing job with the international aid organization, CARE. In August 1993, they ended up in Arua, Uganda.

They brought with them two pet cats, a cappuccino machine, a TV and a VCR. They had to have shots or medication to protect against malaria, yellow fever, typhoid and cholera. Brown was afforded a mentor who taught her the culture of the locals. She was advised not to purchase the cows in the open-air market with no flies on them– those cows had been sprayed with insecticide. Poisonous grasshoppers made holes in the laundry on the clotheslines, but other ones were edible.

Brown and her husband lived richly compared to Ugandans. Instead of cooking over an open fire, they used a propane-powered stove and refrigerator. Her expatriate multi-family compound had electricity from 7-10 nightly– absent a war, political crisis, or thunderstorm. The expats drank gin and played badminton and tennis. Sometimes goats wandered onto the court.

“It was common for men to hold most of the positions of authority in rural Uganda, even thought it appeared the women did most of the work.” The women did the domestic chores and the childcare while the husbands were out of the country on business for long periods. Brown searched in vain for work in her field of AIDS-prevention education. Once, she happened upon an alternative-medical facility. The doctor there believed that AIDS could be contracted through sex, which was curable, or through voodoo hex, which was incurable. Meanwhile, she did a lot of cooking and shopping. The expats enjoyed culinary diversity that included “…fish, chicken stews, curries, rice pilaf and fresh bread.” The area’s gardens yielded tomatoes, mangoes, potatoes, rice and okra.

Brown’s husband financially supported the kids in the community who begged most aggressively. There were food, clothing, medication and school fees to pay. On occasion, the couple took long road trips and were compelled to take kids to a family member, in the CARE Land Rover. The ultimate destination was an urban area with better medical care than Arua (which isn’t saying much). The roads were potholed, “…clogged with bicycles, pedestrians and dangerously overloaded commuter vans.”

The civil service appeared to consist of lazy bureaucrats. In the month of February, Brown needed to pick up packages at the post office. Those packages had been sent to her back in December. She was told to go to the customs house, reachable by a very short walk. The customs officer told her he needed to go to the post office with her. However, it was 4:42 and the post office closed at 5:00. Ugandan bureaucrats never walked anywhere, and the officer didn’t have access to a vehicle.

In 1996, the civil war in Uganda was serious cause for concern. Anti-government guerrillas were engaged in bombings, hijackings, and chopping off of facial features of villagers. Read the book to learn of whether Brown ever got her post-office packages, about her medical and family adventures, the terrorist incidents that occurred in Arua, and about other aspects of living in a rural village in Uganda in the mid 1990’s, as seen through American eyes.

Roses Under the Miombo Trees

The Book of the Week is “Roses Under the Miombo Trees” by Amanda Parkyn, published in 2012. This is a four-year chronicle of a family in Rhodesia in the early 1960’s. The country at the time was comprised of three territories, one of which later became the country of Malawi.

When she was in her early twenties, the author, an Englishwoman, married a Rhodesian. They, as light-skinned people, had all the creature-comforts a former British colony had to offer: tennis, golf, bridge, swimming, and yachting. However, technology in entertainment and telecommunications was behind that of the United States. Few people had television in rural areas, and telephone calls still had to be made with the help of a live operator. One of their neighbors had a tennis court made of dead anthills, that had been shaped with water and sun-dried.

The author describes their social life and how it changed as her husband was transferred to different territories in connection with his employment; the birth of their two children, her love of gardening and the job performance of the household’s dark-skinned domestic servant.

Read the book to learn the details of the ups and downs of the family’s life, in their specific time and place.

The Boy Who Harnessed The Wind

The Book of the Week is “The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind” by William Kamkwamba and Bryan Mealer, published in 2009.

This ebook is the inspiring autobiography of a boy born in 1988 in Kasungu, Malawi. He grew up on a farm where corn, tobacco and pumpkins were grown and livestock was raised. The people there believe in witchcraft, but his father believed God protected his family from it because they were Presbyterian. Nevertheless, he wrote, “Sadly, our country’s constitution doesn’t have a clause that protects us from witchcraft.” He recounted incidents in the single-digit 2000’s in which people were put on trial for witchcraft and when deemed guilty, heavily fined.

In the mid 1990’s, entertainment in the “trading center” near Kasungu consisted of “… a thatch hut with wooden benches, a small television, and a VCR” on which to watch movies. The author and his friends played a game they called “USA versus Vietnam.”

The Malawians celebrate their independence from Great Britain on July 6. Throughout his childhood, the author was a fan of the MTL Wanderers, aka the Nomads, a professional soccer club– the enemy team of the Big Bullets, in the Malawi Super League. He listened to the games on Radio One on a battery-operated radio. There was only one other radio station, Radio Two. Both were run by the government. The author wrote, “Only 2% of Malawians have electricity, and this is a huge problem.”

Read the book to learn of the extreme hardships Kamkwamba and his family faced with respect to famine and his education, and learn of his ingenuity, resourcefulness, persistence and industriousness in doing a project that was eventually noticed by people halfway around the world.