sATURDAY, OCTOBER 17, 2009
I have jus finish reading Brian Chikwava’s ‘Harare North’. This book so funny it make me go ‘kak kak kak’ all the way. The protagonist is such a humour, he is run away Green Bomber come to London to make US$5000 to pay police back home to leave him alone and to organise umbuyisofor he dead mother. (Green bomber is famous name for youth doing ‘National Service’ under ZANU Pf government in Zimbabwe). He come stay in his cousin Paul and he wife’s Sekai’s house, but it clear to him from moment he arrive and Sekai ask him pay his ticket home that they don’t want him here. As clear to him as the propaganda which he see the news mud-piling on Zimbabwe and she hero Cde Mugabe. But he is determined, he constantly remind us that he is ‘not civilian person’ therefore he is not bothered by ‘civilian style’.
But when living in Paul and Sekai’s house get bad, our unnamed protagonist go stay with childhood friend Shingi. He get job shovelling mud and in the author’s own lyrical and comical style, tell us that ‘You spend them weeks shifting mud with shovels and sweat beads come out of every pore in the body because you is putting heaps of effort while your buttocks point to high heaven and migrant flesh start to stink around you as shirts and underpants get damp. Here you quickly learn that the weight of your buttocks increase by the hour and come down only by night when you is sandwiched between blanket and mattress.’ Being without papers in the then Tony Blair’s ‘Harare North’, job is not guaranteed and one is easy target for manipulation. They is lose jobs, ‘graft’, and an up and down search commence, ‘graft’ one day, no ‘graft’ the next. Many a time they is get good offer for doing job as BBC, ‘British Buttock Cleaner’, but, as our wise protagonist ask us- ‘you want to do something- what is better, to try doing it your own way and risk finding small success, or to do it in undignified pooful way and find big success?’-because, as he tell us, he is ‘principled man’. This hilarious novel is full of such pieces of them wise thoughtful lines dished out crumb by crumb in artful and lyrical way.
Via our protagonist, without having to spend doleful eyes fluttering in long queue of mish-mash English sentence put together to make sure you the reader know you is dunderhead, we is get to meet and laugh with childishly delighting Tsitsi, who make some living renting out she baby to women who is in need of bebe for Social Service help. Tsitsi is sweetish gal who sometimes remind one of them school gals dishing out girlish giggles to them school boys they is not agreeing to be meeting but is meeting every afternoon by street corner. We is also having Comrade Mhiripiri, commander of the Green Bombers back home and also the source of our protagonist’s most revering accomplished trusting adoration and the cause of his most wrathful confused manipulating need to dish out ‘forgiveness’. And of course Shingi, who is a tool of affection and manipulation for our protagonist.
Our protagonist may not be excellent with his English but he is excellent with his thought. He carry himself the way African man is proud of carrying himself, with the proud of a black warrior who even when he has nothing he has everything because what he is cannot be put in competition with what he has not. As he make it clear to whoever want to turn he ugly little nose at him, ‘You see me stepping down them pavements from graft with hands in my pockets and you think you know me?’ He is wise in what he knows even if what he knows may be stupid. He hold on to it with iron fist and in the end it seem like the cause of his comical dementia.
Me I love the sound of newness in this refreshing piece of work. It is comedy and it is light and tragic comedy but it is comedy all the same. It is good read; I love the way the author break the English language in such lyrical and beautiful manner. Recently people have been engaged in complaint about African writing which wants to be too serious all the time like a commando who does not put down his gun even at home and want to treat he childrens like they is his troops and he wife like she is war price to be conquered. So reading this piece of first person narration has been timely because it make me throw my head back and go ‘ kak kak kak’; there in the heart of lyrical laughter lies the nuggets of thought and life lesson. They is say (I do not know who is ‘they’ but they is always saying something) that if you is want people to remember something for a time, make them cry. If you is want them to remember something for eternal eternity, you is make them laugh. Because we is love to sooth our souls with sweetened memories which is why sometimes we find ourselves laughing at something which is full of pain. Brian Chikwava has made us laugh and laugh and laugh. And in this our laughter he has tickled us with them nuggets which overly serious African writing love to slap us with.
This was a very funny novel and my 'bad' English above is just a poor imitation of the style used in 'Harare North'- such was its inspiration that I had to give this 'gudo-bado language style' a try. Great stuff by Brian Chikwava- a big milestone for Zimbabwean Literature. Now this is a novel you can read lounging at home for pure entertainment or in your straight backed chair as a set-book; in fact I think it would be good as a set book- the students would definitely not be snoring through this one!