malaria isn’t just bad for your health: it’s bad for your schooling

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Mosquitos: The Long-term effects of malaria eradication in India, a (relatively) recent paper by Cutler, Fung, Kremer, and Singhal at Harvard University finds that

Malaria eradication resulted in gains in literacy and primary school completion
of approximately 12 percentage points.  [from the abstract]

Big effects: it’s about half of all the education improvement over this time period.

I took ill in 2005 with the malaria strain caused by the parasite plasmodium falciparum, which “is associated with the most severe forms of malaria and accounts for most malaria fatalities” (p5).  I got out of the hospital two days before my dissertation defense: I think it might actually have helped me, but I’m willing to view that as an exception.

Africa Reading Challenge review: Purple Hibiscus, by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

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On Saturday I finished my first item of African literature for the year.  It was powerful and depressing; if you haven’t read anything by Adichie, read Half of a Yellow Sun first (I liked it better, more epic!).  But here’s what I thought of this one.

emotionally difficult bildungsroman against a backdrop of domestic abuse and military dictatorship

This is the story of wealthy Nigerian family with a deeply religious father who gives generously to family, the community, and other charitable causes; a loving mother; and two successful children (Kambili and her brother Jaja) who perform at the top of their classes in school. It also the story of a family wracked by domestic violence, a father with an uncontrollable temper, and two children who obey and perform through profound fear. Same family. Fifteen-year-old Kambili narrates the story as she and her brother go to visit their father’s free-thinking university professor sister, and attitudes begin to change.

The story is emotionally difficult (as it should be), and it never bores (although I occasionally became frustrated with Kamibili’s unrelenting shyness). Adichie – the author – effectively portrays the complex relationships between domestic abusers and their victims, the entwined fear and love and pride and anger. Adichie takes advantage of the father’s adoration of the West to get in a number of clever jabs at Western culture, and she uses the university professor aunt and her children to espouse a number of messages. (The aunt experiences – for example – the capricious nature of the process of applying for an American visa; for a much better characterization of that, however, read Kiran Desai’s The Inheritance of Loss.)

I can see why this was only shortlisted for the Orange Prize whereas Adichie’s more recent book, Half of a Yellow Sun, actually won the prize. Both books are emotionally effective, but Half feels more epic while it plays out on the backdrop of a major historical event (the Biafran War). Hibiscus is more of a domestic drama, although Adichie seeks to illustrate the challenges of life in Nigeria with a military coup, a significant amount of political intrigue, police oppression, and other dynamics.

One critique I had was with a subplot detailing Kambili’s first love interest, a priest. The future of the relationship was ambiguous enough to create real discomfort (she is fifteen and he is an adult, after all), and the reader experiences enough discomfort from the primary family relationship to satisfy all discomfort quotas for years to come.

I listened to the unabridged audiobook narrated by Lisette Lecat (published by Recorded Books, 10 CDs). Lecat is an excellent reader as always (she also narrated the excellent Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight and The No.1 Ladies’ Detective Agency series), but I couldn’t help being bothered by the erroneous accent: Lecat is South African, and that accent is very distinct from the Nigerian accent.

Minor critiques aside, I highly recommend this fine example of modern Nigerian literature.

[Note on content: the book contains graphic (not gratuitous) domestic violence.]

upbeat development fiction?

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My reading group reads books from developing countries, and after Purple Hibiscus (Nigerian novel dealing with domestic violence) and A Thousand Splendid Suns (takes place in Afghanistan, again with lots of domestic violence), everyone is desperate for something upbeat.

Can anyone recommend any upbeat development fiction?  (Besides the Ladies’ No 1 Detective Agency?)

Thiong’o on Kenya’s post-election violence

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The BBC publishes renowned Kenyan author Ngugi wa Thiong’o’s views on Kenya’s post-election violence.  I think he goes too easy on the election rigging, but otherwise I agree with him.

For the sake of justice, healing and peace now and in the future I urge all progressive forces not to be so engrossed with the political wrongs of election tampering that they forget the crimes of hate and ethnic cleansing – crimes that have led to untimely deaths and the displacement of thousands.

The world does not need another Bosnia; Africa certainly does not need another Rwanda.

la palabra de la semana: una perogrullada

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Aqui tienes el contexto, de «Fábulas de una abuela extraterrestre» por Daína Chaviano:

Es, por eso, una perogrullada, casi una tautología, decir que la magia es necesariamente falsa y estéril, pues si llegase alguna vez a ser verdadera y fructífera, ya no sería magia, sino ciencia.

La definición en español es «f. afirmación de veracidad y certeza tan evidente que resulta boba».  Si quieres la definición en inglés, haz clic aquí.

La palabra viene del nombre Pedro Grullo:

La palabra “perogrullada” viene del nombre propio Perogrullo, que a su vez es contracción de Pedro Grullo. Perogrullo es un personaje imaginario, popular y un poco fantástico, que se supone vivió en España entre los siglos XV y XVI, y se caracterizaba por decir con frecuencia verdades de ese tipo.

Perogrullo fue llevado del medio popular a la literatura en varias ocasiones. Francisco López de Úbeda lo menciona en su novela “La pícara Justina” y lo presenta como nativo de Asturias. Cervantes, en El Quijote, lo pone en boca de Sancho, quien le atribuye la condición de profeta, porque, efectivamente, Perogrullo solía decir sus “verdades” en forma de profecías. También Quevedo lo menciona en una de sus obras. [1]

[1] Alexis Márquez Rodríguez, Hispanista, [link]

first review of the Africa Reading Challenge

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Sarah over at Sarah’s Pensieve is the first to complete her first review for the Africa Reading Challenge: Mariama Ba’s So Long a Letter.

I’ve been pushing on my first two, but it’s been a bit of a downer (well-written downers, but still): a non-fiction account of British atrocities in Kenya in the 1950s and a novel about domestic abuse in Nigeria.  (Yesterday I picked up a bit of Cuban science fiction to try and balance my psyche.)

fifteen minutes of uncredited fame at the US State Department: my bus drugging

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A friend passed this on to me, from the U.S. State Department site for Uganda:

American citizens visiting Uganda are advised not to accept food or drink offered from a stranger, even a child, because such food may contain narcotics used to incapacitate a victim and facilitate a robbery.  In 2006, there were a number of reports of such incidents in the city of Kampala.  Victims included the patrons of bars or entertainment centers.  Similar crimes occurred on passenger buses.  In 2006, an American citizen traveling by bus from Kenya to Uganda was incapacitated and robbed on the bus when the passenger accepted a sealed beverage from a fellow passenger.  Expatriates traveling by bus to the popular tourist destination of Bwindi Impenetrable National Forest in southwest Uganda were also robbed under similar circumstances.

Sounds a lot like someone I know.

a year of development narratives

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Early last year I read an academic paper extolling the value of fictional narratives in illuminating the social dynamics of developing countries [1]. That launched me into a mélange of narratives in the course of the year, taking me from Kenya to Afghanistan to India to Cuba. The best of these books combined compelling prose, true characters, and insights into some of the world’s most desperately struggling populations.

Half of a Yellow Sun follows the lives of two adult sisters during the Biafran war of independence from Nigeria (Biafra didn’t stay independent; that’s why you may not have heard of it). I read this while in Nigeria for work and was completely absorbed. I remember finishing it in the wee hours of the morning (with a day of work ahead of me) and neither being able to sleep nor to pick up another book. Adichie really seems to capture the spirit of the time and illuminates ethnic conflicts that continue to flare up all over the world (most recently in Kenya).

What Is the What jumps back and forth in the life of a young male Sudanese refugee to the United States. Eggers, the author, novelizes the true story of Valentino Achak Deng, introducing fictional events and characters to capture experiences outside of those lived by Deng alone. Eggers reminds us of the pleasures people find even in terrible situations. He doesn’t shy away from the manifold tragedies of modern Sudan, but somehow he still manages to leave us with hope.

My reading carried me from African-authored classics (So Long a Letter from Senegal and Petals of Blood from Kenya) to Western-authored thrillers (The Darling and The Mission Song), from fluffy (the Ladies’ No 1 Detective Agency books) to deeply sobering (The Inheritance of Loss). Several powerful, engaging books focused on the struggles of women, whether polygamous wives (A Thousand Splendid Suns and So Long a Letter) or prostitutes (Man, Woman, and Hunger and Instead of Cursing You).

I learned so much, and I didn’t even have to crack open an ethnography or a history book.

[1] David Lewis, Dennis Rodgers, and Michael Woolcock, “The Fiction of Development: Knowledge, Authority, and Representation,” Development Studies Institute Working Paper 05-61, September 2005. [link]

Here’s the whole list (with links to my reviews):
• 1 World Manga, by Roman (unnamed poor countries)
• Cause Celeb, by Fielding (unnamed African country)
• The Darling, by Banks (Liberia)
• En Vez de Maldecirte [Instead of Cursing You], by Moreno (Mexico)
• The Full Cupboard of Life, by Smith (Botswana)
• Half of a Yellow Sun, by Adichie (Nigeria)
• El Hombre, La Hembra, y El Hambre [Man, Woman, and Hunger], by Chaviano (Cuba)
• The Inheritance of Loss, by Desai (India)
• The Kalahari Typing School for Men, by Smith (Botswana)
• The Mission Song, by le Carre (unnamed African country)
• The Namesake, by Lahiri (India – United States)
• A Passage to India, by Forster (India)
• Petals of Blood, by Thiong’o (Kenya)
• So Long a Letter, by Ba (Senegal)
• A Thousand Splendid Suns, by Hosseini (Afghanistan)
• What Is the What, by Eggers (Sudan)

tricky English fake word of the day: Nigerois

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We have words for referring to people from every country.  People from Mexico are Mexicans; people from France are French.  (Wikipedia calls these words “demonyms” or “gentilics,” but that hasn’t made it into standard dictionaries.)  We usually don’t use the same word to refer to them as they do: Mexicans call themselves mexicanos, but we use a word that seems easier for us to pronounce.What about people from Niger (here it is on the map)? They are not to be confused with people from Nigeria, who are Nigerians. People from Niger speak French and call themselves nigeriens (just like Nigerians except changing the final a to an e). But if you look in Merriam-Webster on-line,* the word given is Nigerois.  (Nigerois used to be listed in the CIA World Factbook, but it has been changed.) 

Nigerois is tricky because not only do we not refer to people as they refer to themselves, we went to the trouble of creating a word that sounds to an English speaker as if it were French.  (I asked a French friend, and she said nigerien is clearly right and that nigerois sounds like the name of a small town in rural France.)

Tricky English people with their made-up, French-sounding words!

* To its credit, Merriam-Webster lists both Nigerois and Nigerien.

in praise of really old literature

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I read a lot of modern writing: out of 45 books read in 2007, a total of two were published over 100 years ago (Much Ado About Nothing and – a religious text – The Book of Mormon).  But I have a friend who loves the old stuff, and this quote from Charles Lamb – published in 1825 – captures something of that:

Rather than follow in the train of this insatiable monster of modern reading, I would forswear my spectacles, play at put, mend pens, kill fleas, stand on one leg, shell peas, or do whatever ignoble diversion you shall put me to.  Alas!  I am hurried on in the vortex.  I die of new books, or the everlasting talk about them. . . .  I will go and retrieve myself with a page of honest John Bunyan, or Tom Brown.  Tom anybody will do, so long as they are not of this whiffling century.

Mr Lamb, I am a slave to the insatiable monster and am loving it!  His “insatiable monster” makes me think of the spirit No Face in the film Spirited Away, who becomes a giant black blob, gobbling up everything in its wake.  Somebody shovel a few more audiobooks into my brain, please.

* The quote is proximately from Anne Fadiman’s book of essays At Large and At Small.