Reading the World (2): Zambia

We have a very special reason to find out more about Zambia - in just under a month's time, we will be heading off to volunteer with the amazing charity Book Bus, to work in local primary schools for two weeks. Thanks to a briefing day in London and following the work the Book Bus does for the past two years, we have a pretty good idea what to expect...in theory. Theory is a wonderful thing, but it is not the same as practice, and it will certainly be the first experience of this kind for Toby. As always with our projects, the idea for volunteering originated with him, and he is, as you would say in England "well up for it". When we tried to find books to prepare, we found a few suitable candidates - fewer for children than for adults. Our copy of "Wandi's Little Voice", a battered second-hand copy, took no fewer than 7 weeks to arrive. Still, it did arrive, and in time for Toby to read it!

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Toby: Wandi's Little Voice, by Ellen Banda-Aaku
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Wandi has a horrible life, or has she? Wandi is playing on the streets, but her mother is about to strike. She grabs. Wandi screams. She pulls Wandi’s ear all the way home whilst saying “Aunt Betty is coming to visit, get yourself looking beautiful!” Wandi’s mother thinks looking beautiful is very important. Wandi is not allowed to play with children she wants to play with, because they are not “right”, her mother says. Her mother is always about fashion. She always has lipstick or lip gloss on, things Wandi doesn’t care about.
 
Now, you might be asking yourselves: Where is Wandi’s father? Wandi’s father and mother had a massive argument a few years ago, so Wandi’s father doesn’t come to visit any more, except for one day, when her father takes Wandi out for the day, and they have lots of fun, but something bad is about to happen in their family. Wandi’s father is very busy, because he is a doctor, but the family still don’t have a lot of money, they have a guitar with two broken strings fixed with sticky tape.
 
Throughout the whole book, Wandi feels never listened to – she only has a “little voice”, but she has to learn to be confident and courageous as she grows up.
 
This story is interesting and exciting. This book can catch probably anybody’s attention with its amazing front cover and brilliant blurb. The style of the writing that says “Wandi’s Little Voice” is an interesting font. My favourite part was at the end, so I don’t want to tell you and give it away – you’ll have to read it to find out!

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Sabine: A Cowrie of Hope, by Binwell Sinyangwe

The lengths a mother will go through to provide for her child is the main premise of this moving short novel. Everything Nasula does revolves around her daughter - even her name, Nasula, means "Mother of Sula", and the reader does not discover her given name until the final pages of the book. Sula, the daughter, is the "Cowrie of Hope", hope for a way out of poverty in the Zambia of the '90s, where droughts and politics have made it difficult to eke a living in the countryside. The bag of beans Nasula is looking to sell is "the hope for the hope". If Nasula can sell the beans, she will be able to fund her daughter's continued education - consequences for Sula and alternative future pathways without an education are hinted at not so subtly, both in the city and in the village. Although the mother's own future is uncertain if she sells her beans, rather than eating them, she does not hesitate. But can she navigate Lusaka's market and its people to bring the desired outcome?

Sinyangwe takes on a female perspective in his second novel - a widow, shunned by her husband's family, sole provider for her daughter, who has to overcome incredible odds to enable her daughter to access education. Nasula is shown as a strong and resourceful woman, her many tears shed are never for herself, they are tears of desperation and helplessness. First forced to overcome her pride when she sets off to ask her husband's family for help, then setting off to sell what was meant to be her own food source, the story is in turns heart-wrenching and uplifting, when Nasula meets kind souls along her journey. 

The book is quite short (150 pages), but the journey it describes is a long one - emotional, powerful, and well worth reading.

Sabine: Patchwork, by Ellen Banda-Aaku

Toby enjoyed his book by Ellen Banda-Aaku so much that we looked out additional books by her. "Patchwork" won the  Penguin Prize for African Writing and was short-listed for the 2012 Commonwealth Book prize. The book follows "Pumpkin", a Zambian girl, first as a 9-year-old girl, then as a grown woman. Daughter of a mistress of a well-to-do man, Pumpkin is used to "Tata" arriving and leaving intermittently. When her mother's problems with alcohol become too obvious to conceal, Tata takes his daughter away, to live on his farm with his wife and their sons. "Mama T" is as cold as Tata is warm and generous, and Pumpkin struggles to find a way to fit in, especially as she realises that her mother was not Tata's first mistress, and won't be his last.

This book took several unexpected turns - Pumpkin herself is not your typical blameless, hard-done-by heroine, she lies and steals, then feels sorry, but unable to help herself. Her small acts of rebellion are ways to fell some sense of power in a world where everything is decided by grown-ups around her. At some point, Pumpkin remarks that, on television, grown-ups apologise to children. "I have never had an adult apologise to me", she muses. Pumpkin has a temper, and she doesn't lose it as an adult. She struggles to trust the people around her, including her husband in the second part of the book. Her flaws make her much more real, caught in a world between customary beliefs, religion, and science, drawn out in stark detail when her mother gets sick.

The "Patchwork" in the title refers to lies people tell, and hurt they cause each other - even if you mend the hurt, a scar remains, and the more often you cause pain, the harder it is to mend, until your life resembles a patchwork of hurt and apologies. I am very glad I found the author through Toby's book, and will be reading more of her work.

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